Hanks continued: “I was prepared to hear horror stories of, as I was familiar, of the Colonel, how he was manipulative, how he was a puppet master, how he was evil and how he was a Rasputin and both Priscilla and Jerry said ‘the Colonel was one of the most delightful men I’ve ever met. He was caring!’ Was he a carny? And was he cheap? Can’t really call him a crook, but was he fast and loose with some of the profits and some of the money? Yes. And when the time came, we got it all out from them. But in the day, he always said ‘yes’, he always had a sunny attitude and he brightened up every room that he walked into.’ And this was completely contrary to not only what I had heard, but also sort of to the direction that we were going. And Baz and the myriad of writers had created one of those kinds of relatively understandable show business sagas of a one-of-a-kind artist with a manipulative manager. And that’s what we were going to go off and make. And when Priscilla and both Jerry said ‘you have to understand this about the Colonel. He was not Elvis’s manager. He was Elvis’s promoter.’ The Colonel did not have an, an, an artistic bone in his body.”
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