So, do you really think Elvis Presley walked on the moon?
No, silly. This book is fiction. Fake. A farce. Satire. Would I be married with child and gainfully employed if I thought Elvis Presley walked on the moon and was later replaced by a dead-ringer? No, I’d be stuck in the loony bin somewhere reading old copies of Redbook and National Geographic while waiting my turn at ping-pong. No, I don’t think he walked on the moon – the book, like my high school social life, is a joke.
What made you write a book about Elvis going to the moon?
Watching a TV show about how NASA faked the moon landing made me think of all those supermarket tabloids with outrageous news stories like, “Bill Clinton’s Face Spotted on Surface of Mars” and “Boy Trapped in Refrigerator Eats Own Foot” and “75 Year Old Elvis Found Working Express Lane at Red Owl in Woodbury, Minnesota.” I thought it was only natural that the NASA moon hoax be combined with the fate of Elvis into a humorous satire that poked fun at our obsession with celebrity gossip and sensational journalism.
What is ELVIS AND THE BLUE MOON CONSPIRACY ABOUT?
It is the ultimate what-if scenario. It’s not a book about Elvis but a book that uses fiction to combine two famous conspiracy theories: the NASA moon hoax with “Elvis is still alive.” It’s basically the supermarket tabloid Weekly World News done as a humorous novel.
It’s ultimately the story of two men trying to put Elvis on the moon. What would that entail? What kind of person would think that was a good idea? How would they convince Elvis to do it? What is their backup plan if something goes wrong?
And finally it asks the question, who and what can you believe? Your government? The newspaper? Television? It takes our society’s obsession with celebrity gossip, hero worship and sensationalism into a ridiculous world of satire and spoof and uses humor to explore the power of television in our daily lives and our history.
