Under the Radar: The Kings of Tupelo

a docuseries Faulkner could have written

It’s tough to live up to the complexity, depth of feeling, and historical scope the word “saga” invokes,¹ so when I saw the subtitle of the 2024 docuseries The Kings of Tupelo boldly proclaiming itself a “A Southern Crime Saga,” I was both intrigued and skeptical. After watching the series, I think it mostly delivers on what it promises.

The three-episode Netflix doc follows Tupelo, Mississippi, native and Elvis impersonator Kevin Curtis as he narrates, through the frame of an unsold self-authored screenplay for his own biopic, the story of his descent into believing and proselytizing the conspiracy theory that major hospitals are harvesting and selling body parts, and the largely disastrous consequences of same. I won’t spoil how Kevin’s spiral away from the reality based community leads to divorce, estrangement from his brother (who is ALSO an Elvis impersonator), a public feud with his local congressman who happens to the be the town’s premier undertaker, and eventual arrest by the FBI for trying to assassinate President Barack Obama, because I think this is one doc where the episodic structure works. The creators revel in each twist and turn of Kevin’s downfall, redemption and re-downfall, as the interviewees, who, along with the brother, ex-wife, and congressman include local Tupelonians who all know Kevin and the major players, collaboratively and communally tell the story with evident glee.

The word saga could also be applied to many of the novels of William Faulkner, particularly those that involve the Compson family—desiccated aristocrats watching their antebellum world collapse under the weight of its racism and delusions of nobility—and the Snopses: the working-class clan emblematic of the limitations and promise of the “new South.”² Faulkner’s works argued that the citizens of his Yoknapatawpha County³ were as embroiled in tragedy, machinations of power, and doomed love as any Shakespearean monarch, and he told their stories with the same magnificence and power. In its way, The Kings of Tupelo does the same thing. It takes Southerners and Southern storytelling seriously, and avoids the voyeurism and mockery into which even some premier documentarians⁴ slip.⁵ Yes, the “Kings” of the title is a nod to the multiple Elvii in the town, as well as Presley himself (who was born there), but it’s also both elevating and ennobling the documentary’s subjects.

I both laughed and gasped aloud when watching the series, though it probably helped I had forgotten a lot of the details of the 2013 ricin poisoning case in which Curtis was implicated. However, the light and rollicking tone does come at a cost: there are serious crimes surrounding this story, including some involving children, that the doc cannot deeply engage with if it is to maintain its “just here to spin a good yarn” spirit.

Perhaps my connection to this part of the country is biasing me in the doc’s favor. I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and visited Tupelo several times. I haven’t been back to Memphis or the Mississippi delta in nearly ten years, but maybe my affection for this story means I need to plan a trip this year. After all, as Faulkner said, “the past is never dead, it’s not even past,” which means no matter how long I live in New York, part of me is still sipping a mint julep in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel, which, as Faulkner also said, is where Mississippi begins.

1. Just ask Twilight

2. The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! for the Compsons. The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion comprise the Snopes Trilogy.

3. A fictionalized version of Jefferson County, Mississippi, two counties over from Tupelo.

4. I have light beef with the otherwise excellent Paradise Lost trilogy on this count.

5. The creators, Emmy-winning brothers Maclain and Chapman Way, are native Californians and Kurt Russell’s nephews!