Has Baz Luhrmann, the stylishly edgy director who turned William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet into a surprise box-office hit, reinvented the musical movie with Moulin Rouge? According to Luhrmann, Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor certainly made music together.
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Months and months ago, early-bird culture vultures began describing Australian director Baz Luhrmann's new film, Moulin Rouge, as, variously, The Rocky Horror Picture Show meets Titanic, The Wizard of Oz meets Apocalypse Now and Topsy-Turvy meets Cabaret by way of Brazil. Like Luhrmann's earlier films, Strictly Ballroom and William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge promised to be a visceral blast. But no one could quite imagine what sort of blast might include, as Moulin Rouge was known to, singing, dancing, mythical doomed lovers, a lascivious Toulouse-Lautrec, divine decadence, satire and a music score filled with pop songs and show tunes sung by stars Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, along with assists from pop culture icons ranging from Lil' Kim and Christina Aguilera to Placido Domingo and David Bowie. The more people heard and saw of Moulin Rouge, the more it seemed that the Day-Glo fairy-tale fizz of Strictly Ballroom and the urban theatricality of William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet were merely opening acts. Luhrmann's sexy, bawdy, hellzapoppin' new opus had raised his game to a whole new level.
The son of a mother who ran a dress shop and a father who owned a back-country gas station and tried his hand at pig farming before buying the local cinema in the desolate little community of Herons Creek, New South Wales, Luhrmann began his show business career as a costar of Judy Davis in 1981's The Winter of Our Dreams. He then shifted from acting to stage directing with a wildly acclaimed La Bohème for the Australian Opera when he was just 27. These days he operates out of a rambling, two-story, late 1880s mansion in the trendy Darlinghurst area of Sydney. Dubbed the House of Iona, this is where Luhrmann has amassed a close team of about 35 people that includes his wife Catherine Martin ("C.M." to intimates), whom he married on the stage of the Sydney Opera House while the word L'amour flashed in neon behind them; screenwriter Craig Pearce (a friend of 20 years who has worked on each of Luhrmann's films); music supervisor Anton Monsted; and choreographer John "Cha-Cha" O'Connell. All play, work, create and argue together constantly. It was at the House of Iona that Luhrmann recorded "Everybodys Free (To Wear Sunscreen)," the novelty chant that became a gold record.
In person, Luhrmann is as groovy-looking, worldly, friendly and out there as you please. Handsome, with graying hair in short pigtails, he seldom speaks at less than supertrain speed. When he brilliantly trip-hops through the entire backlog of pop culture, he emits the air of one who has seen and tried everything and can't wait for more, more, more, and he comes off as equal parts P.T. Barnum, Sid Vicious, Noel Coward, Ken Russell and an unofficial member of the Monty Python troupe. No wonder virtually any actor one talks to will swear he'd give his eyeteeth to get Baz'd.
STEPHEN REBELLO: How do early screening audiences appear to be reacting to the fact that Moulin Rouge is a musical, straight, no chaser?
BAZ LUHRMANN: [Laughs] Shhh, we're not supposed to talk about the "m" word much. The thing is, the film is even worse than that because of the "o" word. [Laughs] It's partially an opera, with fully scored sequences that are really operatic. The movie moves among various forms of musical comedy, musical opera, recitative--it is its own creature. The point was to make a musical that was popular in form. That is, like Shakespeare, it can be enjoyed by the Queen of England and the street sweeper. No one making a musical since Saturday Night Fever or Grease has picked a really popular cinematic form. If we've succeeded, it's because we've decoded the correct cinematic language that allows the musical movie to live and breathe in our time.
Q: Did the surprise box-office success of your first two films mean you could pretty much write your own ticket on your next project?
A: At the House of Iona, our company, where we have dance studios, rehearsal halls, a ballroom, we just decide what we're going to make, find a "king" who is prepared to finance the art, then do the project in our own way and in our own time. We're not for hire. People come knocking on the door asking, "Can you do the Bazmark thing on Evita or the movie version of Chicago or Harry Potter?" In the end, it is always "No." I knew I wanted to do a third "red curtain" movie--that is, another movie that is highly theatrical. And loving musicals as I do, I wanted to reinvent musical cinema.
Q: That's not really surprising, since you've directed La Boheme and _A Midsummer Might's Dream _on the musical stage, and your first two movies are really musicals in disguise.
A: You get it! I'd been leading up to a break-out-in-song musical. But I specifically didn't want to do one that had an original score by a single composer. I wanted many different voices, many different styles. I loved the eclecticism of the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack, and, alter that, I coproduced Something For Everybody, a charity record, as practice for this idea of extreme eclecticism. Also, I knew I wanted to use familiar music, music that we all already have a relationship to. For me, one of the fundamentals of musicals is that, when Judy Garland sings "The Trolley Song" in Meet Me in St. Louis, the movie is set in the early 1900s but the song was the pop radio music of its time. Lil' Kim or Missy Elliot are pop radio music of our time. "Lady Marmalade" just seemed perfect because of the hook, [leaping up and singing] "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?--Do you want to sleep with me tonight?" I wanted to find contemporary language that told the story and continually change the game every five minutes. We go from an over-the-top, ridiculous ballad version of "Your Song" by Ewan McGegor backed by three tenors--Placido Domingo, a young, groovy Italian guy named Alessandro Safina and a local singer from Australia. Then. I've got Beck doing David Bowie's "Diamond Dogs," and David Bowie, a lovely man, doing "Nature Boy." John Leguizamo actually sings "Nature Boy" in the film and Bowie's vocals on the song weave through the movie, too. It's a constant warp-and-weft weaving of musical ideas.
Q: What made you decide on the sexy, sordid Parisian nightclub Moulin Rouge as your setting?
A: The first thing I do is identify what kind of story is going to thrill me enough for me to explore it for the next three years. I wanted to deal with the Orphean myth: "Idealistic young man with a gift descends into the underworld looking for idealistic, perfect love, finds her, tries to rescue her from that underworld. He makes a very human mistake, loses that love forever and is scarred." That myth is about that moment that comes for us all when you realize that some relationships, no matter how perfect, cannot be. People die. Doors close. You won't always be young. You go through that journey, and in place of the gifts of youth come the gifts of spiritual growth. You're bigger inside.
Q: The classic '50s movie Black Orpheus set the same story against the carnival in Rio. Why the Moulin Rouge?
A: We looked at setting the story against Studio 54. Our young poet hero would have been the young Bob Dylan, who would have fallen in love with Roller Girl and fallen in with Andy Warhol and his crowd in a place where the young and beautiful mix with the rich and powerful. Instead of the can-can, it would have been disco. We also looked at bohemianism in the '40s and '60s as possibilities. But I had really wanted to do an 1890s musical because I thought it would be a great way of looking at our millennial moment. The pop culture of the 20th century basically grew out of that moment in time, from Debussy and a 19-year-old Picasso and Toulouse-Lautrec, who was the Andy Warhol of that time.
Q: One hears that before deciding on Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, you saw just about everybody for the roles of the beautiful Moulin Rouge star and the young poet who falls in love with her.
A: I did, just about. You see, whenever I do a work, I spend a good three months seeing everybody, all the new up-and-coming actors, all the ones I've seen before. I particularly wanted actors who could sing. I didn't want to have to turn singers into actors. That doesn't always work.
Q: Some might wonder why Catherine Zeta-Jones, who's funny, gorgeous and had a career in London in musical comedy, isn't starring in the movie.
A: Touchy subject. I saw her and she has a tremendous voice and all those things. For certain kinds of characters, for the right role, she is absolutely amazing.
Q: You're suggesting that you needed other qualities?
A: In the film, what this character looks like on the outside is not what she is internally. Since she sells love, her one rule is that she can't fall in love. She plays that character, but she's not that character. She's servicing the guys, but underneath, she's actually a full-of-life, energetic, fun, kooky, wacky thing. I felt Nicole really embodied that, particularly in the comedy.
Q: What did you see in Kidman that made you want her so much?
A: The incredible quixotic quality she gave off in The Blue Room on the stage in London had to come from the very heart of her spirit. That excited me.
Q: What is the price of harnessing that quixotic quality? A: I wouldn't put my name on many guarantees, but I will guarantee that audiences will discover her in a way they couldn't imagine. Until you see it for yourself, you won't really believe it because she's belonged to that kind of "Royal Family," distant thing. I'm not passing judgment on it, but it is a very real thing to be part of Hollywood Royalty, which has made a particular image for her. You want to be that which you're not, and she's been drawn to the roles of a refined, complex, distant ice queen--probably the one thing she isn't. I've known her for 10 years, and that image is a very minuscule slice of the Nicole Kidman pie. She's a comedienne with this fabulous, kooky, musical comedy side to her. She's funny and loud, in a really nice way.
Q: What's her essence as a person?
A: Everything about Nicole is totally paradoxical. On the one hand, she's the girl next door. On the other hand, she's completely crazy--in a really good way. You cannot tie her spirit down. In one moment, you could be having the most normal conversation with her and the next moment, you're having a mad, champagne-induced, Edie Sedgwick-like moment with her. And yet, particularly in a crisis or crazy moment, you find her the most sane person you could imagine. That paradox makes for unbelievable screen magic. This is not a pedestrian person to work with at all.
Q: Did you two bump heads, as we've been hearing for months?
A: Fights? I don't have fights with actors. In absolute honesty, I've never fought with any actor ever. Nicole is no saint. We had crazy mornings. Were there tears? Were there times when I felt this very faint whiff of a desire to murder her? Yes, but if this was a circus high-wire act, she walked that wire without a net. I'd love to say we screamed, we yelled, we got into all sorts of theatrics, but I never yelled once at Nicole. And I never yelled at Ewan. I would say, "Why are you yelling? What is going on? OK, let's sort this out because, whatever happens, you're going back in front of that camera and we're going to make a great moment of drama." I understand that anything actors are doing, good or bad, is motivated by fear. I'm not allowed to be frightened--though, of course, I am.
Q: How do you manage your own fear?
A: It's a technical thing. I feel fear coming on and I'm not allowed to succumb. I have to face it. So, I say, "Whatever happens, we're going there. I'm leading all these people that way." I clear my mind, think about a plan and do it. That's the job. You have to live in extreme absolutism because you almost have this religion that you've built, which goes like, "We know where we're going. We have to believe." Anyone who is an absolute religious zealot grapples with faith and with blind waves of insecurity. "This will never work. We're all doomed." I'm the captain of process, so I can never show that. But do I feel it? Absolutely.
Q: Heath Ledger, who has a strong musical theater interest, told me how much he wanted to play the part Ewan McGregor got.
A: Before I knew that Ewan could sing, Heath was so very close to getting it. I've got these fabulous scenes on tape of Heath and Nicole Kidman rolling around on the floor in New York. I think the rest of the world is pretty much onto Heath by now, but this was three years ago when he had done just about nothing. He's got this incredibly paradoxical mixture of being a boy and a man. But, in the end, he was only 19.
Q: So why did you go with Ewan McGregor?
A: I had auditioned Ewan to play Mercutio in Romeo + Juliet. At the time, he was completely unknown. He hadn't even done Trainspotting. What you get out of Ewan in this film is the tense emotional depth he is so capable of. He's seen for the first time as a truly romantic hero. Ewan is also a deeply romantic person, but the emotional depth you see in him is truly remarkable.
Q: Was Nicole Kidman pretty much decided on before Ewan McGregor?
A: My philosophy was that I had to get them together because it was about the chemical equation of the two actors. But for a very long time, I was unable to get them together. The problem was that Nicole was in The Blue Room on Broadway and Ewan was doing Little Malcolm in London. Eventually I just went with Nicole.
Q: And the chemistry worked out?
A: At first, they were like a mad honeymoon. Whenever you're doing romances and relationship films, by degrees, there is a relationship. Some of the greatest relationship films of all time, the two stars have hated each other, but mostly you see that chemistry. There's a certain kind of order, but you can't spend all day playing lovers and having fun without there being something in the air. We all work in the business of illusions, so we recognize and enjoy that. But we also recognize that it has a border.
Q: There have been rumors that the border might have been crossed in real life.
A: When you're in theater or the circus or film--to me it's all one--affairs happen. People fall in love. It's much like a circus for us at Iona, because we travel with a lot of people who are all freakishly gifted in one way or another and also complex. We're all in the show. Sex, relationships, drugs--it never changes. But the truth here is, Tom [Cruise] was around. Of course people said, "Nicole and Ewan are having an affair. They're inseparable." People love stories like that. I'm not surprised by it. It can happen. But as far as I know, there was a line. It just didn't happen. But it was very close. I mean, look, they're two gorgeous-looking people. I just remember the early days being about a lot of rehearsal and fun. We put on a lot of dinners and I remember one where we all drank absinthe, got wildly crazy and saw lots of green fairies. I'll always remember the first four or five weeks of rehearsal. Those days were quite magical.
Q: When you were shooting, were you aware of particular problems between Kidman and Tom Cruise?
A: During the period we spent shooting in Sydney, Tom Cruise came to the set a lot. He was intensely supportive of this project. Tom and Nicole live in a unique spot because of the nature of who they are. The extraordinary stress they both were under was clear. At the time, though, it just seemed part of the not-ordinary existence they lead.
Q: Are you concerned about the publicity surrounding Nicole and Tom's divorce impacting negatively on the public's interest in your movie?
A: You consider that as you would anything that potentially relates to something that's very precious to you. But Nicole is revealed in this movie as so new, refreshed and reborn that where she is in her personal life can only be part of that story. I know that the publicity you're talking about will have some effect. When it was announced that the film was going to Cannes, there were 25 TV cameras coming down to cover it. Of everything I said about the movie, the only thing that appeared was, "Nicole is very strong." OK, I accept it. Maybe later something I said about the movie will get used.
Q: How do you propose to put this movie over with people who have the absurd belief that only gays like musicals?
A: That's a big, fascinating subject to me. It's probably true that football or sports are more popular than musicals with some heterosexual males, but the key thing is great story. It wasn't that long ago that musicals were bigger at the box-office than the action flick and, presumably, not every male that rushed off to see all those musicals was gay. Men make music. The love of music has got to be pretty huge and deep for someone like Eminem, you know?
Q: Are you nervous about how the movie's being marketed?
A: Well, they're behind the picture, but they also fear how to communicate it. The movie is a comic tragedy, and comic tragedy is not normal fare. You have a ridiculous joke so that you can have very direct tragic emotion--high comedy and high tragedy.
Q: You've overseen virtually every element of this movie, from its inception to the advertising. Could someone fairly label you obsessive? A control freak?
A: To me, it's natural to want to control as many things in life as possible. When I'm making something, I do want it to be the way I finally see it after a great journey. I never get there. On Strictly Ballroom, I got 60 percent of what I imagined. I love to argue if I'm passionate about an idea, but it's rare that I say, "I know you all think this but we're doing that." What invariably happens is that a third idea rises up. That's why I love to work with people I consider creatively challenging--difficult, exhausting, but with a point of view.
Q: Does your company have any sort of artistic credo?
A: We have four production rules. Communication. Transportation. Accommodation. And hair. I warned people on this movie, Hair will cost us like you won't believe. And it did. Whether it's your own, the performers' hair, hair in general is one of the things that just grind things to a halt. You have no idea the days we lost over hair. It's funny, but it's true. More broadly, we have policies about the way we do things. They may not be right, but they're the Bazmark way. Some people say that we're about truth, beauty, freedom and love--because, to a certain extent, we are bohemians. We have our rules, our way of living. We protect it because it's our very fragile culture.
Q: Was making this film as difficult for you and your team as one hears?
A: The story of the film and the story of our lives have been incredibly parallel-- "The show must go on." Here's the simple truth: the movie has tested me and everyone in it. While we were shooting, my father died. He was sick, so it wasn't unexpected, but it was so typical of my father, you know? He doesn't do anything without some degree of drama. But that was just part of it. The reality of "the show must go on" is one we've lived daily for four years now.
Q: Having brought out the born-to-sing qualities of Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, are you looking to do that with other established people?
A: Robert Downey Jr. is an amazingly beautiful singer who should be in musicals. He'd be brilliant. I would love to have Christopher Walken in a musical--a fantastic dancer. As a kid, I acted in a movie with Judy Davis and lived at her place for a while. She's just done the Judy Garland movie on TV, but she herself is a fabulous singer and musician. Oh, there are so many in which the gift just sits there. I want to give them an environment in which that gift flourishes. Rufus Wainwright sings "Moulin Rouge" in the movie and he's someone I want to work with more. If ever there was a man born to write musical cinema, it's him.
Q: Are you spent, so far as the musical form goes?
A: I am spent. I'm considering redoing La Bohème onstage in New York, which my company has already done in Australia. I'll do more musicals, but for now, I'm about to go on to other cinematic language. The first thing I always do after making a film is to go on a journey around the world on my own to debrief, to think out, What's the point of it all? I just take a credit card, a backpack and go. Last time, I went from Egypt to Paris, to Kuwait and Sri Lanka. Then, I'll come back and bore everyone with a hundred different ideas to see which they react to. As for specifics, there's one project which could be very simple and quick and psychological. I'm also interested in doing an Australian epic in a way you've never seen before. And I'm very interested in reflecting modern societies through great, iconic love stories of the ancient world. Humanity has never changed, just the stories in which you reflect it. Ultimately, I'll always be chasing the same theme--the revelation of human nature.
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Stephen Rebello interviewed Jacqueline Bisset for the May issue of Movieline.