www.MelbourneObserver.com.au
Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, September 25, 2013 - Page 15
er N rv se IO Ob CT SE 2
Melbourne
Observer Magazine
BAZ LUHRMANN Interview with JAMES SHERLOCK ■ Australian director, screenwriter and producer Mark Anthony ‘Baz’ Luhrmann has come a long way since he appeared in small roles in such early 1980's films as Winter Of Our Dreams and The Dark Room, and on our TV screens in A Country Practice. The young boy from the small country town of Herons Creek in NSW would sit mesmerised by the flickering images of such films like Lawrence Of Arabia and Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid on his local cinema screen projected by his father in the early 1960s, and it was here that would prove to be the beacon in what would become an extraordinary filmmaking career. He is best known for the flamboyant Red Curtain Trilogy, which includes his films Strictly Ballroom, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge for which he received and Academy Award nomination. In 2008, he released his film Australia, starring Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman, and now his new creation, The Great Gatsby has defied many critics with the most successful opening for an Australian film in Australian cinema history and proving a box office hit around the world. With The Great Gatsby he has achieved the ultimate realisation of an almost unfilmable novel. I t is what going to the cinema is all about, a pulse-pounding feast of sight and sound in every way, a breathtaking spectacle unlike anything that has been made before and in a class all by itself. It is an eloquent, a moving and haunting experience that is destined to become a classic in the true sense of the word! An extraordinary cinematic achievement! Married to set and costume designer Catherine Martin and with two children, his favourite films include Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot and Sunset Boulevard, Bob Fosse's Star 80, Sergey Bondarchuk's Russian epic War And Peace, Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool and Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, to name a few. The Great Gatsby is a layer cake, clearly driven by his passion for storytelling and the cinema he so fondly grew up on. Baz Luhrmann is still very much that young boy from a tiny country town in New South Wales mesmerised by the images of his screen idols flickering across the old cinema screen, and not unlike F. Scott Fitzgerald's creation Jay Gatsby, he had the passion and determination to become what he once dreamed. I caught up with Baz to talk about The Great Gatsby and here's what he had to say: You must be very proud of the end results and success of The Great Gatsby?
The director of The Great Gatsby chats with James Sherlock of the Melbourne Observer Absolutely! Of all of the Australian crew of all of the Australian cast, the whole city of Sydney, actually the whole country, and all of that great support. When you think, for so long, that Hollywood, the American filmmaking centre, taking Russian and foreign classics and making films out of them, now we've taken an American classic and made a film right here in Australia, then I'm really proud of all of those people that gave so much and over came so many obsticles to make the film, I'm really happy for them. How difficult was it putting together the balance between the film and the iconic music of the Jazz Age for audiences today? In the time of Jazz, it was this new African-American street music. It was dangerous, it was considered really edgy. They lived in the Jazz Age and we live in the Hip Hop Age, and I had a very intimate collaboration with Jay Z for two years and we worked very closely together. I was able to blend it with traditional Jazz and that traditional Jazz is by Bryan Ferry and the Bryan Ferry Jazz Orchestra, and that is a new album coming out in the next couple of weeks. So there are two albums, there's the Jazz one and there's the kind of Hip Hop one. Your passion for cinema and that vision as a young boy is very prominent throughout: I grew up in a very small country town in the middle of nowhere with 11 houses. And at one stage my father helped project the movies. And sitting in that bio box and seeing tins of Lawrence Of Arabia or Hello Dolly arrive, and in those days James, you probably remember, the curtains used to open and God Save The Queen
● Baz Luhrmann came on. We had to stand up wait for God Save The Queen, and then the curtain opened and I entered into the magic of the movies. That was the beacon for me. You can imagine being in the middle of nowhere and being in this old cinema, and my father actually projecting them and seeing the machines project the footage, and there's films like Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid and Robert Redford, the coolest man in the world, who consequently went on to play The Great Gatsby in the earlier production. Have you ever seen the 1926 silent version of The Great Gatsby? You know that that film is completely lost and I've looked for it everywhere. You know what James? I think I'm right. I just saw photographs, I'm pretty sure of The Regent cinema in Melbourne with 1920s cars lined up outside, people arriving to see The Great Gatsby dressed up in the costumes of the period, and arriving in 1920's cars. And it blew my mind! Why do you think The Great Gatsby still resonates with people today? I think the story in the book resonates with audiences at all times, but particularly today because is about a decadent world that comes to a terrible crash. And it's also, with the main character Nick Carraway, gives up his desire to be a writer, goes it pursuit of making money on Wall Street and ends up realizing he should have a life of purpose. There' nothing wrong with a little bit of partying, and there's nothing wrong with a great suit, and there's nothing wrong with a bit of materialism, but you've got to have a purpose and a cause to your life.
And I think the bad idea, we've gone through that crash in 2008, and I finally said no I've got to do it. Even though it's lush and entertaining and we get all wrapped up with the parties, I hope it leaves a feeling that you've got to have a point and a purpose to your life. Was Jay Gatsby sitting in the shadows waiting for you to come along and make this? The thing is this. I was on a train after Moulin Rouge, travelling through Siberia and I was about to meet my wife and child, and I had a recorded book of The Great Gatsby and a bottle of Australian red wine. And I thought I'm just going to sit here and listen to this book in my private cabin, which was not very comfortable, and I listened to it straight through for five hours and I couldn't wait to finish it off and I just realised if I could crack the inner voice of Nick Carraway there's a movie that hadn't yet been made in a particular way. I just couldn't let it go. It's what you said James, it couldn't let me go, I just couldn't get away from it. And now it is done. Your skill and vision of The Great Gatsby now compares you with the likes of Billy Wilder: I think Billy Wilder is one of the great storytellers. You know, any film is a very tough undertaking and no one sets out to make a bad film. So when you think of someone like Billy Wilder whose range, I mean the thing with Wilder is that he could do anything really. So I'm tremendously honoured. It fact I only happened to be looking at Some Like It Hot about three days ago. Was the underlying theme that carried his passion for cinema intentional?
It is an underlying theme. When you speak about Billy Wilder, it's my passion for cinema of a certain kind. That kind of cinema, which is participatory cinema, I have a passion for that older cinema where you kind of know the journey you're going on, but it's how you're taken on the journey that counts. And Billy Wilder was a master of that. My films are designed to see more than once, they're like layer cakes. So yes, you're right. You would have seen certain winks and nods of famous classic cinematic moments in the movie. I'm always celebrating the films that made up my DNA that I saw in that little movie house, all those classics. Was filming The Great Gatsby in 3D inspired by Alfred Hitchcock and Dial M For Murder? Total inspiration! Jim Cameron showed me everything he was doing with 3D before he did Avatar. I was think about doing Australia in it but it wasn't financially viable. Then I saw at Warner Bros. the old reels of Dial M For Murder in 3D and I saw actors acting in 3D. When you see Grace Kelly in that beautiful frock just walking around a room and acting, it wasn't about things coming out at you, it was just acting in the space, you recognize that it's an active medium. Hitchcock's film was the total inspiration for this film in 3D. By filming in 3D were you inviting the audience into the the world of Jay Gatsby's story? You're so right to use that language. Because what Hitchcock does, and you've seen it, and when you see it in 3D it's a bit like the theatre. He says come and be absorbed in this, it's almost like he gestures you in, whereas 3D is being used mostly with things coming out and flashing you. When Leonardo through Nick's perspective is revealed, you'll literally be invited by Gatsby into his world, into his mind and into his story. Did any surprises occur for you throughout all this? But the most beautiful thing that happened to me, I was at the opening in New York and this very regal woman just came out of the shadows and said "I've come all the way from Connecticut to see what you did with my Grandfather's book." And of course I went very cold, because it was the Granddaughter of F. Scott Fitzgerald. And she said: "you know, I think he would have been proud of this film. Because people have said for so long that you can't make his first person narrative work as a piece of the movies, and he loved the movies." So one can't ever tell if he would like it or not. And she said: "by the way" and she was quite regal, "I loved the music." She was pretty happy. Of everything that's happened James, that has moved me the most. I didn't know her at all, she just came out of the shadows. - James Sherlock