Picture this: you are driving late at night when suddenly there's a flash of blue lights in your rearview mirror. You pull over, expecting to get a ticket. But who strolls up to the car to give you a lecture about traffic safety? It's the King of Rock 'n' Roll himself, Elvis Presley.
This happened to many speeding drivers in Memphis in the 1970s.
Presley - who had his own police scanner in addition to his blue strobing light and collection of law enforcement badges - often roared up to accident scenes on his motorbike, and directed traffic until officers arrived to take over.
Knowing Presley's penchant for police work and paraphernalia gives context to his famed encounter with then US president Richard Nixon.
The friendship between Presley and Nixon, though brief, became one for the history books, and the inspiration for the 2016 movie Elvis & Nixon.
In December 1970, the singer rolled up to the White House (wearing a purple velvet suit and brandishing a pistol) to hand deliver his own fan mail to Nixon. Presley also wanted to offer his assistance in combating drug abuse, and to receive a badge from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. (Ironic, given Presley died seven years later, at age 42, from heart failure linked to years of prescription drug abuse.)
There was method to the King's madness.
His ex-wife Priscilla wrote in her memoir that: "The Narc badge represented some kind of ultimate power to him. With the federal narcotics badge, he believed he could legally enter any country both wearing guns and carrying any drugs he wished."
Despite the obvious differences between the two showmen, a kinship developed between the King and the President, according to Presley's friend and long-term aide Jerry Schilling.
When Schilling accompanied Presley to the Oval Office, he saw "two people who had been at the top of their careers... they identified with being lonely at the top... and they hit it off against all odds."
There is no transcript of that meeting (in which Presley did indeed secure yet another badge for his collection, albeit honorary). But the unlikely pairing was captured in a single and iconic photograph, which has become the most requested item in the US National Archives - more popular than photos of the moon landing, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.
This bizarre get-together is also humorously explored in Elvis & Nixon, starring Michael Shannon as Presley and Kevin Spacey as Nixon.
Before playing Presley, Shannon didn't think of himself as a fan. "But I read the script and I was very charmed by it," he explained to Time Magazine.
"I was very excited because it wasn't a standard biopic, it wasn't trying to tell Elvis' life story in 90 minutes - because that's kind of a foolish errand.
"The fact that it was focused on this particular event and this particular period in Elvis' life was a great opportunity to actually reveal a lot about him in a very concise way. I really immersed myself in his world and actually really fell for the guy. He's pretty irresistible."
Shannon has his own theory as to why Presley was so interested in role playing as a cop.
"I think the badges represent a sense of authority for someone who probably didn't always feel in control of his own life," Shannon says.
"I think as popular as Elvis was, he was looking for respect. Obviously not respect as a celebrity, because everybody agreed that he was a celebrity, but respect as a person, that he wasn't simply a gimmick."
Director Baz Luhrmann feels similar empathy for Presley after researching him for his 2022 biopic, Elvis, and his new musical documentary EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert.
That's why, in both his projects, Luhrmann aimed to reveal the man behind the myth.
"Once in his life he said: 'I'm so tired of playing Elvis Presley,'" Luhrman reflected to Rolling Stone magazine.
"Suddenly you put the mask on, and you're really famous.
"For the ones that came to it so young - Michael [Jackson], Elvis, Prince - they've never known anything but the love over the footlights that they could trust. And I think that the character becomes stuck on the mask. And eventually it makes you lonely. And it can suffocate you. And in different ways, all three were suffocated by that level fame."
Elvis & Nixon is streaming on TUBI.