Strictly Baz!

For the past two decades, director Baz Luhrmann has walked a fine line between the theatrical and cinematic. He brought Shakespeare to mainstream audiences by casting young heartthrobs Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in Romeo + Juliet that used a fast-paced visual style to forever imprint the star-crossed lovers into teenage minds across the world; and in Moulin Rouge, Luhrmann fused clips from dozens of pop songs to tell another (lighter) love story, restoring the popularity of the movie musical. TheaterMania sat down recently to talk with Luhrmann about his upcoming stage musical adaptation of his breakthrough film, Strictly Ballroom, and the Blu-ray transfers of Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliet.

THEATERMANIA: You’re in the process of developing a stage musical version of Strictly Ballroom in Australia. Has this been a long time in the making?
BAZ LUHRMANN: I’ve always imagined that it would happen. It’s been one of those pieces where, it happens occasionally, you make something, and it has a fundamental truth at the core of it. In the case of Strictly Ballroom, people think about the costumes and all that, but at the heart of it, it’s about overcoming creative oppression. I always thought it should come to the stage, and I worked with my good friend Cameron Mackintosh to try to find a way. Now with this production company in Australia, I get to go home and spend time with my kids while developing it. And we can farm it out if it’s good enough to go to Broadway. If you want to do an out-of-town tryout for Broadway, you can’t get more out-of-town than Australia.

TM: What did you discover as you oversaw the transfer of Moulin Rouge

BL: I saw the visual density of the film — just how much detailed work there is in every square inch, and when you’ve got Blu-ray, you start to see all the stitching. I really want to make sure we don’t lose that no matter what we make.

TM: In Romeo + Juliet, why did you give the characters guns yet have them say things like “put up your swords!”?
BL: Every decision in that film came from a pretty meticulous study of the Elizabethan stage translated to the best of my ability into some sort of cinematic form. Early on, Shakespeare would use high comedy, then he would set the plot, and then introduce the main dramatic hero. So, using that device early on, we wanted to show that just by taking one object and saying where our swords read guns — just that had a knock-on effect of the audience going “I’ve got it.” So anything that’s anachronistic, I’m going to translate. After that, you don’t have to worry about it.

TM: How different is the finished film from what you first had in mind?

BL: We originally had this sort of prologue with mock-Elizabethan explaining the rules of the game. There was a sequence like “nuns with guns” — it was so bonkers. There was also a documentary we thought we’d put into the film about the rules of sword fighting because a lot of the language in the play is about the style. Only gentlemen could carry guns, so you had to be of a certain social level. In westerns, people probably just pull their guns out and go “bang,” but in our imagined wild west it’s, “I meet you on the street. I look you in the eye.” To shoot a man in the back is the worst possible sin. We were trying to set up the idea that there were rules, but quickly, deftly, and without laboring it too much.