How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Baz Luhrmann - ‘I self-medicate with creativity’

Starting point is 00:00:00 I was embarrassed about being this geek from a small country town. And I was ashamed. I love her. And if she was gone tomorrow, I don't know what I'd do. The relationship works in a way in which it works for us. It's not traditional in so many ways. So I see my job as keeping fear out of the room. I take the fear on in the morning when I get up.

Starting point is 00:00:26 Welcome to How to Fail, the podcast that believes there is no growth or creativity without failure first. Before we get into this conversation, please do remember to like, follow and subscribe so that you never miss a single episode. Few contemporary directors are as instantly recognisable as Baz Luhrman. For over three decades, he has made films that feel less like traditional dramas and more like operatic spectacles detonated from a glitter cannon. His work is unapologetically maximalistic, spectacular and romantic. And the chances are your life has been shaped in some way by his vision. Whether it's watching the fish tank scene in his 1996 version of Romeo and Juliet,

Starting point is 00:01:14 or gasping when the 19th century characters burst into 20th century song in 2001's Moulin Rouge, whether it's recalibrating how we think about Elvis Presley in Lerman's 2022 biopic, or using the Leonardo DiCaprio martini glass gift from his great Gats, be, or whether it's owning a sticky-fingered copy of his debut film Strictly Boreham on VHS, as I did. Lerman's cultural influence extends far beyond the screen. A storymaker and world builder who once described himself as the Stanley Kubrick of Seekwins. Lerman's own story starts in Herons Creek, a small rural town in New South Wales, Australia. His father owned a petrol station and cinema.

Starting point is 00:02:02 His mother had a dress shop and was a ballroom dancing teacher. Little wonder, perhaps, that Lerman's fascination with spectacle and the nature of performance started so young. At 19, he changed his name from Mark, which he thought was boring, to Bazmark, after his classmates compared his hair to Basil Brush. Lerman's latest film sees him return to Elvis, this time in documentary form. Epic Elvis Presley in concert features long-lost footage from the singer's Las Vegas residency. Variety has called it one of the most exciting concert films you've ever seen, while Lerman himself describes it as a tone poem on the shadow selves of person and performer. It's something he's thought about a lot, once claiming that for artists or people with big holes in their hearts,

Starting point is 00:02:53 the self-medication is the creative process. Baz Luhrman, welcome to How to Fail. A lot of home work there. That was probably one of the longest intros I've ever written, and I was nervous saying it out loud in front of you. Look, I mean, I can't talk about the stuff in terms of the effect on people individually. But yes, quite often people do that sort of stuff. And I'm like, really?

Starting point is 00:03:21 I don't think I ever said that. But you were dead accurate. I can't. I wouldn't deny. anything you said. Oh, I'm so happy to hear that. As far as the story goes. I'm so happy to hear that. Well, let me see if I can make you deny anything over the course of the next 60 minutes. Sure, go for it. I, there were so many quotes I could have chosen from you to end on. I love the way that you talk about creativity, but that idea of creativity as self-medication, yes. How is your self-medication going, Baz?

Starting point is 00:03:49 Yeah, well, right now I'm medicating heavily. And I mean that in the, that for someone at my stage in life, I sort of was struggling a bit with, I often say when I make the last movie or something, this is it, I'm going to become a recluse. I've been saying that for so long, and just go and read books somewhere. But then you get through them. And right now, I'm more creatively busy if it's possible than I was when I was 28.

Starting point is 00:04:18 Like, I've got, you know, I'm opening epic, I'm working on John Darks, when I just announced this lovely Belmont dining car, we do other things. I'm very medicated. Okay. And is it helping you feel loved? I think there's all sorts of love. You know, I'm in the love business if you see my films.

Starting point is 00:04:42 And there's like champagne love is like a youthful love. It's like the giddy intoxicated romance love. And there's love for children or your child. And there's a kind of love that is just that which is between friends. or that is sort of a bond. There's so many different brands and kinds of love. But it's certainly fulfilling. I mean, what I mean is not that I go, oh, I'm so fulfilled.

Starting point is 00:05:09 It's just I'm so consumed with it. A lot of negative vibes won't get in. I'm not spinning out. Look, when I'm finishing a big project, I go on a kind of, I call it the Methodome program when I go and do everything the opposite I do when I'm hugely responsible for giant things, which usually entails going on some journey and acting like a fool and getting smashed a lot, you know,

Starting point is 00:05:34 and growing old disgracefully. Yeah. So I'm not doing a lot of growing old disgracefully right now. Okay. How does I try? Elvis is clearly someone who fascinates you, and I feel having had the privilege of watching Epic and seeing Elvis when it came out,

Starting point is 00:05:53 that I could draw some parallels between the two of you, But what is it that you think draws you in to him? Well, originally, look, he was very big in my life when I was young because when we do that in cinema, we had the Elvis Matanais, you know? That's where it started. And he was there present. But then fairly quickly after the 70s, as I was growing up, I went on to Bowie and Elton and, you know, the Michael Jackson's

Starting point is 00:06:17 and the Elton's and, you know, other artists musically. But Em Madonna, I'd have mentioned M. But when I came to doing a biopic, I'd always admired Amadeus. One of my favorite films. One of my favorite films. And you realize that that biopic is not about Mozart. You learn a lot. It's about jealousy.

Starting point is 00:06:41 And I always thought, well, if I do a biopic, I want to use a life that is about something bigger and more universal. And Elvis is the perfect page on which you can explore America in the 50s, 60s and the 70s. and his life is almost perfectly broken into these three acts. So I started just recently to discover notes and things I'd put away on Elvis like literally 30 years ago. And Epic does such an amazing job of showing him as this superlative performer and as a person in the moments in between. And I realized watching it how little I'd seen both in a way because so much of it has become cliche or caricature. Sure.

Starting point is 00:07:24 I'm fascinated with how you did it, and I'm sure you've been asked this a million times before. Because it's so hyper-real when you're watching it. But you didn't use AI in a single frame. No, there's not a single frame of AI. There's no visual effects. The only visual effect is the one he has on the audience. What happened was was an accident. I was making Elvis the movie.

Starting point is 00:07:48 And Ernst & Augustin, who's this great professional on Elvis, the expert, So look, there are these lost reels from the 70s concert in Vegas. I thought, oh, maybe I can find them, use them in the movie. So I had the resources to actually literally send a guy into the salt mines in Kansas City, where MGM kept all its footage, and he sort of kicks the door open. I didn't go, but then I get these pictures back of like, it was like Raiders of the Lost Ark, you know, these dusty 67 boxes of footage. And then this moment happened when we've found.

Starting point is 00:08:23 found this 45-minute tape of Elvis in this really unguarded way just talking about himself, which in any Elvis materials he really doesn't do, it's always someone talking about him. Or there's a film in which there's a voice impersonator speaking a script that was written, but not just spontaneously. And so we thought, well, what if we get out of the way? And Elvis just comes to you in a kind of dream concert and sings and tells his story. story to you in a really intimate way. And that's why what you're experiencing, I'm

Starting point is 00:08:57 hearing this a lot. People are going, people who don't care about Elvis have been seeing the film going, who is this guy? He's so funny. He's so vulnerable. He's so good at making everyone to relax and on stage, you just feel you're the only person in the room.

Starting point is 00:09:13 Before we get into your failures, can I just ask you about a few key moments that just live in my brain rent-free? The fish tank scene, the aquarium in Romeo and Juliet. How did you come up with that idea? Okay, here it goes. So I'm working with Craig Pierce, my high school friend who I'm writing,

Starting point is 00:09:30 eventually we're writing the Romeo and Juliet together, Sam and a few of us are down in Miami. And I'm working on that actual sequence. And I can't think like, well, how do we, we know we're going to meet Juliet, but how does Romeo meet Juliet? And yet you surprised them. And I'm out at this nightclub called the Dome. It was a restaurant nightclub in Miami and Florida.

Starting point is 00:09:53 and, you know, I was only about, I think I was 29, 28. And so, well, I'd had a few sherrys, lesbians. You know, I might have had a tippling. And I went into a bathroom and came out, and I grew up doing fish tanks, actually. I had, Dad, made sure we all had little businesses, and I sold tropical fish. And there's this beautiful tropical fish tank in front of me. So I'm washing my hands, and I look up and see a girl, through the tropical fish tank, combing her hair. And this nightclub had worked out this idea of you couldn't see the stalls or anything,

Starting point is 00:10:26 but when you were washing and doing your reflection, you could see each other through the fish tank, really to hook up, I think, or to flirt. And in that moment, I went, that's it. All I have to do now is work out, why is Romeo, you know, going into the bathroom and that had something to do with Queen Map. I'm not sure what it was, but whatever he took, made him feel queasy. A couple of shires. Something.

Starting point is 00:10:51 Something magical. Music is a hugely important part of your work. It's the sort of fabric of your storytelling in so many ways. One big part of the fabric, yeah. That song, Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen, which came out in 1999. I remember exactly where I was when I heard it for the first time. I listened to it again on the way into this interview, and it still makes me well up every time I listen to it. How did that come about?

Starting point is 00:11:15 Oh gosh, I do a lot of music, actually, and I was learning to produce music. And although I work with great producers, I'm literally in there. I'm in on Elvis. I'm in the studio. And I love it. It's one of my great joys. But I was trying to learn, I was making this charity album with the guy called Anton Monstead. He was my music supervisor.

Starting point is 00:11:33 And he was my assistant. And now he runs music at Amazon. And I love him. And he's dear dear friend. There was this thing called the World Wide Web. That's how long ago it was. And there was this speech on it by, and it was apparently ascribed to being by the author of Slaughterhouse. five and Kurt Vonnegut, who I was maybe going to work with, and found out there's a hoax.

Starting point is 00:11:56 But I went like, hang on, but it's really meaningful. Why didn't I record it as a spoken word? So I do it. It's like seven minutes long, and I use the choirs from Romeo and Juliet on it. It's like 11 minutes long. So I finish the album, go down the local radio station, they won't play it. They go like, oh, terrible. The whole album, it's too weird.

Starting point is 00:12:16 And so I go on the arts program that night. and I say, yeah, on one condition you play this seven-minute long spoken word song. So they play it, and just like in a movie, there's a guy tapping on the glass while we're in the students playing, and he's pointing in all the lights are lining up on the dashboard. And the next day they went, wow, this is an amazing response. They play it the next day, and by the afternoon, cars are stopping listening, and by 48 hours later, it's the biggest song in the country. I then go to the US, same thing happens.

Starting point is 00:12:49 The label said, no, it's too long, it's too strange. So I went in a college radio, played it, boom, next thing, it's huge, it's gone golden, like we bring out the guy that did the voice and he's on all the chat shows. And actually, it ended the charts in England at number one. And the thing was, I recorded it probably in 97, and then I thought, well, what if they needed class of 98, class of 99? And I did to 2000 thinking by 2000 no one would care. So, you know, I ran out of like beginnings,

Starting point is 00:13:21 but it is just endured. And I think it's because, you know, what is said in it, my whole point was, does it matter whether it was Vonnegut or not, or this lovely writer from the Herald Tribune? What's in it affects people. And in this dark time, I reckon they should remix it and re-release it because it does seem to cut through ugly noise. It does.

Starting point is 00:13:47 Thank you for that. We'll talk more about your films as they pertain to your failures, but your first failure, and thank you, because I can tell you've really thought about these. Yeah, yeah. Your first failure is that you went to the National Institute of the Dramatic Arts in Australia, but you felt that you lost your instincts.

Starting point is 00:14:06 Yes, so true. Tell us about that period of your life. Well, before I went, I mean, I've always done this, and I'd been in movies with Judy Davis and I had my own little theatre company. You've got to remember all of this now. But I kind of had just done this. I mean, even in high school, I was running off.

Starting point is 00:14:21 You know, I barely graduated because I was mainly running my little theatre company and all of that. And even in the tiny country town, I was making films and shows. But I auditioned for night and actually I didn't get in. And eventually I became so successful. I think they're embarrassed.

Starting point is 00:14:37 And they just basically said, turn up and we'll let you in. So because I was very well-known. by then. So I go to NIDA and I think, God, now I'm like a serious actor, serious creator. What does a serious person do? Well, they isolate themselves. And I was having actually this relationship with someone, but even that I kept secret. And I guess I was acting out being an actor. You know, you do that. Drama schools are invariably these kind of hot houses where everyone thinks that one's a star and, you know, you think that's the universe and it's not very real, And it's useful.

Starting point is 00:15:12 I mean, I loved the history of theatre. And you had an opportunity to do a lot of plays and things. And indeed, I even devised strictly bore room. But I got so self-conscious that when I came out, I really lost who I was. And I was having a relationship with someone, and she came out. And I thought I'd just pick up where I left off and be,

Starting point is 00:15:41 even doing more things. Suddenly I had nothing, nothing. And I fell into this, she was actually in a movie with a very famous English actor. And I thought, wow, it's all gone horribly wrong. What have I done? And I fell into one of these rare deep depressions. I was so dark and so lost.

Starting point is 00:16:00 I couldn't get out of bed. And I remember just dragging, eventually, I dragged myself down to this old 1930s swimming, placed by the ocean. And I just sit there all day staring. And then I added reading the paper to it. I think I used to eat an ice cream. And I wanted to get into the water, but I was so depressed. I couldn't even swim. And then one day I did swim and I felt better. So what am I going to do? I've got this idea about, this is this crazy idea, this Russian ballet dancer because it was during the Soviet Union washing up and he meets. It was sort of Macbeth.

Starting point is 00:16:40 set in surf clubs or something. It was nuts. But I thought, I'm going to get all my friends back together and just do a little show. And I did it. I did this little show. And at the end, there was this kind of tsunami wave and we did black-like theater. And we just did this one workshop of it. And it went crazy. It was so nuts. I remember I got him to go out and get fresh fruit because the audience were actually in the foyer and I still hadn't finished the show. But they game and it was kind of went really well and this agent for directors and creators saw it called Hilary Lindstedt and she said this is one of the craziest coolest things I've seen and then all of a sudden I just started to make things again and then I got an invitation to go to a drama school to take

Starting point is 00:17:26 Strictly ballroom we took it and there were all these great artists from the Soviet Union there but we won. And from that moment on, I've been doing what I'm doing ever since. But what I learned there was that I was embarrassed about being this geek from a small country town

Starting point is 00:17:50 and I was ashamed that I liked people, that I really liked people and I really liked being with people and connecting with people and that I was kind of quite affable and that just didn't seem cool enough and I learned from that I had a natural affinity with observing people in a room being in a gas station people coming by and you're sort of invisible and I'm quite good with that but I learned not to get too focused on myself I remember a writer called

Starting point is 00:18:27 Johann Hari saying that the opposite of addiction is connection because when you're experiencing a degree of isolation and alienation, which is what fuels addiction, actually reaching out and having that moment of connection can save you. And I think that's such... I couldn't agree more. And I think we're living in a world where, and with our kids, we'll look back and we go, hang on, we put this thing called, you know, a smartphone in their hands. And look, I'm not going to get into like, I'm blanketly against it all, but we just live online and internally so much that loneliness and disconnection is a really big issue. And I think connection, connecting with people.

Starting point is 00:19:04 But what we're seeing is that younger people actually want to go out and commune more. That's why touring is so big. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Starting something new can feel terrifying.

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Starting point is 00:20:02 sign up for your one pound per month trial today at shopify.com.com.uk slash fail. That's shopify.com.com.uk slash fail. Can we go back a bit in your childhood and talk about whether you felt connected as a child? So you were from this, yes. You were from this little town, but it sounds like this extraordinary gallimorphy of technicolor experience. Yeah. I mean, at the time I didn't see that way, but now I realize like, Dad, and mom in a different way, but we were in Sydney, we go, they buy this rundown gas station and dad absolutely transforms it. And we have a farm, a pig farm, and then we have, and we all had to have businesses and mum at dress shops and they bought a place, and you buy them, we were running the cinema and then artists come to live with us, and then dad was just like non-stop. And literally we were doing ballroom dancing and commando training. And breeding, we all, I was breeding fish and I had quite car.

Starting point is 00:21:02 and I had my own business, and it was non-stop. And I think that doing magic and, you know, putting on shows, I had a radio station that I used to run at the gas station with this one record called One is the Loneliest Number by John Farnham. And then I got my brother to read the sports page, and he went on a bit. Yeah, we were so connected. And I was also invisible because I was like the 10-year-old that was pumping gas, And so people would do stuff in front of you

Starting point is 00:21:33 and they were always this panoply of fascinating human beings. But then dad being the kind of, you know, he just made worlds, this world building. And so we had a restaurant where we had sizzle plates and used to wear a white shirt and a bow tie and serve people food. And then there was Lynn's international snack bar. So looking back, we were kind of the Renaissance players

Starting point is 00:21:53 of this Heron's Creek. We were learning lots of skills, photography. I was filming things. You never said no. He was always an enthusiast, and he drove us the kind of two hours every night to learn ballroom dancing. I'm fascinated by your dad because he was a Vietnam veteran. Yep. And I wonder if this world building was an attempt to escape that or move on from what he'd witnessed?

Starting point is 00:22:22 Yeah, I think he absolutely, like he built a house when we were in Sydney, when we were very young, before he left. the Navy after Vietnam. And it's a beautiful midmodern house. And when I look back, I was born on the sand in front of that house. And when I look back, he learned how to build it with his own hands out of a book. I mean, how do you do that? And mom was pregnant with us and she used to put bricks on a conveyor belt. And he was always sort of hustling too, you know, like cut to me and my brothers. you know, if there was free blue metal or something up the road, we'd get up and shovel it in and he'd invent

Starting point is 00:23:03 a pathway. It was quite inventive. He'd invent machines and things. And he transformed this gas station into this kind of caravansia of fascination. And it became really famous. People would stop, not just for the snacks or the way it looked or to see the plants

Starting point is 00:23:21 but there was always, we'd have copper corn night and events. So it was a kind of, it was a world in itself, for sure, and he built that with us. It's beautiful. Your parents got divorced when you were 12, and I imagine that was shattering. It was enormously 12thous because, well, of course, any 12-year-old, any kid, your parents at the centre of your life, and dad, and mum in her own way too, she was off going to

Starting point is 00:23:48 theatre and stuff, and she went through quite a transformation too, like, she's still incredibly vital. I mean, she's nine and lift a truck. she's really strong. But she split. Heron's Creek was too small for her. She took my little sister in a lamp. It was really too altruous.

Starting point is 00:24:09 And then dad remarried this woman, had kids. And this woman actually was a really lovely, kind woman. But for us, our world had been shattered. And so eventually I ran away too. reconnected with mum, have my own apartment out of the back, so I love that. But I went for this really forward-thinking school

Starting point is 00:24:36 in Port Macquarie that was experimental, and it was co-ed, boys and girls, to this really oppressed Christian Brothers school, which actually is the location in the Great Gatsby for Gatsby's Mansion. We use it with visual extensions. So that was a shock. That's where I got the...

Starting point is 00:24:57 the drug because dad kept our hair very short. We were sort of beaten up for that. Now I've been beaten up for having crazy curly hair. And they used to call me Basil Brush, which became Baz. And in an act of defiance, I put the two names together. I thought, you know, I'm going to be someone. So I need a brand name, Bazmark, which is on my passport. And I've had it ever since. This idea of connection and those early experiences of the most important relationship in your life really being ruptured. Do you think that informed how romantic your style is, albeit it focuses quite a lot on doomed romance. But in the Red Curtin trilogy, particularly,

Starting point is 00:25:37 I'm just interested in how much you think that romanticism and that lens was informed by what your parents went through and what you went through. Well, I think both things. I think Dad put us in a world and encouraged us to invent, create. There was no cap on what you could do with your imagination. and then the rupture, I'm sure, left a kind of feeling of trying to put the world back together again. I think if you, without getting too serious about my own pain, because there are people that lose parents forever and go through much greater pain than I did.

Starting point is 00:26:15 But I think if you're a pain in your life, you tend not to want to make films about pain. Yeah. You want to make films that either. have happy endings or a heightened or escape. You want things to be. I mean, romanticism, which I used to rail against being called a romantic, but now I accept that I am a hopeless romantic. Romanticism just means things are more than they possibly can be. They're heightened. And I am drawn to that. And I even create a romantic world around the act of making the films. It's not just that the films have a romanticism. Anyone who comes into my world,

Starting point is 00:26:55 they come into a complete, that's why they take so long to make, a world in which the outside world doesn't count that much, only what we're making together does. Talking about collaboration, it remains incredibly important to you. Yes, it's everything. And you don't do a normal audition process. You do these collaborative workshops with actors. Can you tell us a little bit about that process and how it works?

Starting point is 00:27:18 I learnt this. I mean, I've acted myself when I was young and I was with Judy Davis and things like that. And what I don't do is let someone come into my space. And everyone else might roll their eyeballs. No, definitely not. And I just go, my job is to get you the job, one. And two, I don't do it that often. So if we spend a half day on it, I want to learn something about this scene through you.

Starting point is 00:27:42 It's a privilege that I've got you in front of me. Let's work on the scene. And don't you be thinking about are you right for the role? I won't be thinking about it. I'll be thinking, what can we learn out of the scene? And then I'll go away and I'll go and we'll do more. and what it usually reveals itself. I mean, with Austin,

Starting point is 00:27:57 Butler, it just revealed itself. Like, he was already down the road when he came in, and by the time he says, I forgot to tell him he had the job, which I want to do because I just keep doing it. But it was more, we would just eventually start doing it, you know. And same thing, just recently with Jean-Darque. I saw some wonderfully talented young actors who I didn't know. and by doing the workshops which I actually did,

Starting point is 00:28:25 I think I can say it, in the Chiltern after it was burnt out, Andre learned it to me because it was a secret, nice environment to do it in. Place where I'd had so much fun, but there we were doing scenes out of Jondack. But Ila Johnson, who's playing that role, it came out of that process

Starting point is 00:28:43 where we were just focusing on, what can we learn about this character and the story? And I feel so, precious and privileged. And it's so my, look, children play, act really brilliantly. It's called a screen play. You know, we are but players. But if you scare a child, they can't play.

Starting point is 00:29:08 So I see my job as keeping fear out of the room. I take the fear on in the morning when I get up. And I really allow everyone to play and fail, as they like to say. Sometimes I say, oh, it's a safe environment you can fail, but you really can't. But with me, I want you to go so far that it does go too far, it does too wrong. Because then we're going to find a third idea, not yours, not mine, a third idea. I never say no, really. Oh, I never say no.

Starting point is 00:29:38 Your second failure takes us forward a few years. And there's the Australian bicentenary in 1988. And there's a huge grant offered for a young artistic director to create a theatre company. And you get it, Baz. Yes, I get it. Why is this a failure? Well, it was 98. By then I think I was quite well known.

Starting point is 00:30:03 I've been in films. I had my own Bond Theatre Company. I'd been in NIDA. I think I was known-ish, but everybody wanted this gig. I mean, it was a lot of money being thrown around because of Byzantenary. And the most important theatre company in Sydney, the Sydney Theatre Company, was run by this artistic director called Richard Warritt. And he was a great guy and he was a great director.

Starting point is 00:30:26 But this giant grant came where some young person could have their own theatre company. And out of everybody in the whole country, I got the gig. I was the artistic director. But what happened? And again, it was me kind of stepping on my own instincts. But the technical things I tried to do, like originally I was just going to do, an open space with flowers and mirrors. But the technical things I tried to do was so high-end, you know, with amplified voice. I got lost again. And the opening up was so catastrophic.

Starting point is 00:31:03 Very well-known people came and sort of left. And the reviews were beyond, I mean, there was a lot of jealousy about it. I mean, I had long curly hair and was probably, I don't know, 22 or something. So there was a bit of like how he only got it because he had long curly black hair. But, you know, I was really, it was the first time I had. felt I was actually super attacked in the press. And I felt it. And the reviews were absolutely scathing. And it sent me into this dark, dark depression for the second time.

Starting point is 00:31:37 And we did that show, which was failure. And then the second show was this other person who was a dramaturg who wanted to do their show and this other writer. And it was kind of a mess. And the third show, the final show, So I went, well, I'm going to bring back that piece I did called Strictly Ballroom, because that is actually me. So I did it, extended it, added in the sort of Spanish, you know,

Starting point is 00:32:04 the sort of immigrant plot line. And we went to this festival 88. And at the end of it, I also went, look, this, I actually just put on this joyous kind of event at the Sydney Theatre Company, which was called Coca-Cola Bollars Day. dance hall, whereby everyone had to go and learn to dance, you've got a ticket. And we recreated 1945 Victory Night. And I did all these cabaret numbers and it was just for fun. And it blew up. And then the next day, the guys from the Australian opera saw my Strictly Borum and offered me

Starting point is 00:32:39 my own opera company to do an experimental opera. My life went from being completely dead, creatively. And then this guy, this lovely guy and his wife called Ted Albert said, look, I saw your Strictly Ballroom. I want to start a film company. I have this band, ACDC, rather famous.

Starting point is 00:32:59 Yeah. We'd like to buy the rights of your play Strictly boring to make a film. And I said, well, no, I'm going to make a movie of it. And they went away and he came and said, hmm, okay, you can do it. And I never stopped. Wow. And I learned from that again, my

Starting point is 00:33:16 instincts is always being, it's not, are they my friends? It's that am I having a conversation with someone and there's more to have? And I don't really read CIVA, it's a bit. But I really go, is there more to a conversation? And that means I can really work with someone. And with CM, for example, or Craig or anyone I've worked with a long time. That's your wife. Yeah, my wife, Catherine Marnec or Ciam.

Starting point is 00:33:41 She came in, I was looking for someone to work as a designer in that company. and she had this other partner she worked with, and went back to my drama school. And she came to this place I lived up by the brothel, King's Cross, and I had like two sticks of furniture, and I had to offer a croissant. And we started talking about Bertolt, Brecht and Madonna, and it was supposed to be an hour,

Starting point is 00:34:04 and the conversation went on for three hours or something, and we're still having a conversation today. So that's how I realized that this whole idea that you are, I just, it's not me. I have to have some connective tissue, some connectivity with primary collaborators. And that's how I decide, is the conversation going on? Is the music going on? People have a weird fascination with your marriage.

Starting point is 00:34:32 Yes. Does it annoy you? The fascination, I mean. Well, I can understand it. I mean, my stuff is really camp and our relationship is, well, camp in one regard. Like, I use that theatricality, and there's a sort of underlying seriousness to it. And Sim and I, people say, well, when did you get married? I said, I don't remember.

Starting point is 00:34:53 I just know we've always been together. And it's a truly real relationship. I love her. And if she was gone tomorrow, I don't know what I'd do. But we also are very distinctly different individuals. We understand each other. The relationship works in a way in which it works for. us. It's not traditional in so many ways. My kids make lots of jokes about me.

Starting point is 00:35:20 What kind of jokes? Oh, you know. I mean, they just kind of mock me a lot. It gives me very grounded. Sometimes they call me RuPaul. I mean, I don't know, like in a fun way. But we have this absolutely real relationship, but we also have our commitment to each other, which is, I think, what real marriages are, which is there contracts with each other that you know are good for each other.

Starting point is 00:35:52 And there are things you can change and things you can't. But weddings are actually advertisements to everybody else that you're together. And, you know, CM does her stuff sometimes and like Epic, I did that, that's my gig. She's got her homewares. But then on the visual language stuff, on the films, we work very, very closely together.

Starting point is 00:36:13 But, you know, there's, I think, really deep love and love transforms over the years is the person that you can have the most trust with. So there's a profound trust. She's the person I would turn to, and I'm the person she would turn to, when you've really got things you can't say to anyone else, you know. One of my favorite pieces of Baz Luhrman footage is actually a TikTok, video. You know where I'm going with this. It was just casually iconic. It was so funny. Yeah, did you, have you, what happened? What happened? I was taking their kids. It was Mardi Gras and we always go,

Starting point is 00:36:55 always take the kids and we were buying ice cream actually in Newtown and I turned around in this kid. She was sort of being kind of cheeky asking me questions and I'm like, I wasn't going to go. And it became pretty clear that she had no idea it was. So she was asking pretty straight up questions. And I just gave my honest answers. Yeah. And I think what happens is she goes home and someone says, you know, that's Baz Luhrmann. And she didn't know.

Starting point is 00:37:26 So I don't know. I thought it was kind of fun and charming. Well, I loved your response because it just shows how open-hearted you are to the world. And actually it's a lesson to every interviewer to just ask the direct question. It was brilliant. Final question on this failure. Did it teach you how to deal with criticism? Yes.

Starting point is 00:37:46 I mean, well, when you first get really, yes, it did. I mean, when you first get really criticized publicly, you actually think that everybody in the streets is pointing out and going like, there he is, that terrible, he's the moment, right? And you're so embarrassed and ashamed. But then as things go on, you learn, as Elvis says in Epic, he says, well, you know, you can't please everyone. And you learn, it doesn't, it still hurts if someone viciously attacks something that you and a bunch of people have really given your heart and soul to.

Starting point is 00:38:17 And you think like, well, couldn't you just say why it's not working as opposed to somehow we're bad people or whatever that is. But what you learn to do is understand that they've got a job and they're, you know, they're criticizing. And some criticism is really, really good. And some are like, yeah, I kind of get that. but you curate that. I mean, early on with the press, I'd read everything, you know, I'd write, I'd do a thing, oh, did I get it right? And you feel really compelled to sort of explain yourself completely like it's your

Starting point is 00:38:50 biography in one interview. Then as you go through this, I never look back at this stuff. I just sort of tell it from the heart. And, you know, in print, sometimes people are really lovely to be with, and then they've got editors. and editors know that, you know, a headline is going to get clickbait or whatever. But I just don't take it. I've got this little mantra, which is, you know, focused, simple, simple, focused, humble, and it's not that deep.

Starting point is 00:39:20 Your final failure, I'm so happy we're going to talk about one of my favorite films of all time, strictly bore them. But as you say to me, it wasn't a failure. It was a success, but you never realized its full potential. Well, I'm actually talking about there, a stage version. Okay. Can we talk about the movie afterwards? No, no. Well, the movie was a whole journey. And actually, great dramas because we finally, no one wants her. We finally get the money.

Starting point is 00:39:48 That lovely man, Ted Albert, suddenly dies on the eve of us about to make the film. His incredible wife steps in and says, we will, my husband new talent. And even though the family is saying, we're in the music business, no, she funds it. when we screen strictly boring, the one cinema we have cancelled, say it's the worst film I've ever seen. I go up the coast, I think, well, this film thing's not going to work out

Starting point is 00:40:11 because they say it's too theatrical. And they also say the woman playing, the mother in it is the worst performance she's ever given, you've ruined her career. I get a phone call, and this guy's got a French accent, he says, my name is Pierre Sienn from the Ken Film Festival. I just saw your film Strictly boredom.

Starting point is 00:40:31 I'm going to offer you a 12 o'clock screening, we go, the rest is history. It still has the record for the most around a thousand, 24 hours, and off we go. And I remember a security guy grabs me because the crowd gets around and he says, Monsieur from this moment on your life will never be the same again. He was kind of right.

Starting point is 00:40:48 But years later, years and years later, I do this relationship with Carmen Pavlovich. He's a great theatre person to do, and we're going to do Strictly Borum, Monorra. So I think I'll do the strictly ballroom because it's a way of being back in Australia, and I was very distracted and I couldn't get there and it's not like the play was a complete failure.

Starting point is 00:41:13 I just know that it's the first show I'd done in years where I was kind of off-keel on it. And when I did it, I realized I should never go back and try and repeat the past to quote a line from Gatsby. I just couldn't be me when I was 28 and I realized that's not the right thing so the next time with Milan Rouge I was sitting at a dinner party

Starting point is 00:41:39 a friend of mine's in New York and Alex Timbers whose work I really loved and seemed to be like a nephew of mine in kind of his style I just said to me hey would you like do Milan Rouge and you went, you're kidding? Now I'm so glad he did it

Starting point is 00:41:53 the theatre show because he went I would turn up and see runs and give some notes, but I was more like Uncle Bass. And he did things and like all the new music. I probably wouldn't have done that because I would have gone, oh, the fans. And you see, I'm not, I love that.

Starting point is 00:42:11 I don't want to go back to my old works and captain them. I'm happy to support someone else reinterpreting them. And I'm not precious about them. As long as the essence is there, I love the way that someone will take something I did and reinterpret it. Because that's like Shakespeare, you know, you take Shakespeare and you recode it and rediscover it for a certain time and a certain place. There's this forward momentum but also this sort of presenteism in you.

Starting point is 00:42:37 Yeah, I agree with that. You're fully present. Yeah, I'm fully present, but I'm always moving forward. I made all my films for the future not to be hip in the moment. Say that again? I always made my films for the future not to be sort of hip in the moment or right in the moment or get the ticks and crosses. You know, I know there would have been a way of doing certain things where the, Critics all go like, yeah, this is really on point. But like, for example, in Romeo and Juliet, you can't date it

Starting point is 00:43:04 because early on I realized it must be nothing you could date in it. Or even Strictly Borum, it's kind of vaguely 90s, but there's nothing in it that really perfectly dates them because I want them to have a universality. And I wanted them to move through time and space and grow as their time alone. Although you don't look at you're in your 60s now. I think. Well, I've got sunglasses on.

Starting point is 00:43:31 I'm holding my bags. No, you've got excellent skin. Oh, well, thanks. You don't make films quickly because they are these beautiful collaborative processes. Well, I really live them. Once I go inside the world, I live them. Have you thought about how many films you have left to make? There's been about a talk about that.

Starting point is 00:43:50 Sam's been saying, look, he's only got, like, she said 10, and I think Skyl said, kidding, three at the most. I keep thinking I've got one Couturee. It's like a fashion house in a way. The big films are like Couture. Then we do all these other creative adventures. But I think I will do, I have this one large piece. And there's many, many, many, many.

Starting point is 00:44:11 I never have to think of a new idea. I've always got them. They're there, sitting there. But I just think this is the right time. And I was always going to do Alexander the Great. I worked on that for a long time. And then for various reasons I didn't do it. But I just feel the story of this 17-year-old.

Starting point is 00:44:27 you know, dark world where she says we've got to peel this world away from the nobly old hands of these old men. I mean, could there be need for a clearer hero than a generationally changing young person who says what you're doing to this world is not right? And I've got a vision and I'm here to lead us our generation into a new time and a new place. Jean Dark, that's your next film. I can't wait. A very superficial question. But one that I've always wondered about.

Starting point is 00:45:04 You know that our version of Dancing with the Stars is called Strictly Come Dancing. Did they ever give you royalties for the title? No one was actually, I found out the woman who did it. She was a bit worried about it. We weren't. But she wanted to do Strictly Ballroom. And she didn't.

Starting point is 00:45:19 So she came up with this idea, Dancing with the Stars, strictly come dancing. And it's a great success and only kind of helps. So once, actually, when I was doing the Blu-ray of Strictly Ballroom. You know the older gent, who was the judge?

Starting point is 00:45:32 Yes, Lang Goodman. There's an American version called Dancing with Stars. Yes. And I went on that to promote the Blu-ray, took his gig for a nap. I was terrible. I'm terrible on those shows because I spent my whole life lifting people up. I'm not very good at saying, you know, listen, Mr. UFC cage fighter, you, your chacha sucks, you know. It's not me.

Starting point is 00:45:57 That's terrible. Baz, this has been such a joy. And I know lots of other people, including myself, have opinions of your work and your brilliance. How would you like people to think of your work or remember your work? If one person gets affected or... Look, I was growing up in a very tiny country town and I was a fan. Whether it was a Bowie or an Elvis or a movie or an apocalypse now. or whatever it was, discovering Bergman and constantly opening my mind to all sorts of creativity

Starting point is 00:46:34 or whatever, I was a fan. And those things that touched and affected me sometimes didn't just thrill me for a weekend or stayed with me. Sometimes they were my guide. So if something I've made helps one person have some kind of epiphany or uplift, or even if it's just a scale, from a difficult time for a couple of hours into the cinema and come out and feel renewed, which I actually think Epic is doing to a lot of non-Elvis fans. They just sort of go in and in this very dark world we're in, if there's one thing about Elvis, he's a uniter, and he's also really empathetic and funny, and his music and the way he performs lifts you up.

Starting point is 00:47:21 So getting out of the way in this case and providing that, I just hope if one person has that, then I feel like I'm kind of useful. Baz Luhrman, thank you so much for coming on How to Fail. It's really, I didn't know how I'd go on this, you know, talking about failure, but I really enjoyed the therapy session, Doctor. Thank you so much. That's the ultimate compliment. Do I have to pay you for my therapy? No, you've paid me already in the culture you've produced.

Starting point is 00:47:48 Thank you so much. No, it was beautiful. Please do follow How to Fail to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts, please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Baz Luhrmann - ‘I self-medicate with creativity’

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