Interview of the week: Baz Luhrmann

LOS ANGELES, March 21 (UPI) -- Writer/director/producer Baz Luhrmann says he thinks the runaway success of his Academy Award-nominated film "Moulin Rouge!" may have paved the way for a revival of the big-screen musical.

"As we speak, people are trying to rush musicals into production. I know of three already," Luhrmann stated, pointing out that productions of "Jesus Christ Superstar," "Rent" and "Chicago" are currently in the works.

"These huge corporations all have music companies and film companies. Could be good, you know? The music and the film all in one little package. It's just about money," noted the writer/director of the critical and commercial hits, "William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet" and "Strictly Ballroom."

"If something works, people are there. But, it's up to folk like ourselves to lead the games. We don't expect the studios [to approach us.] No one came to me and said: 'We really want you to do a film about ballroom dancing. We've got this vibe. It's going to be hot.' That ain't happening."

Luhrmann added texture to his 1899 "comic-tragic, Bollywood-like musical opera" by using anachronistic pop music by the likes of Dolly Parton, Elton John, David Bowie, Madonna, Nirvana, U2 and even musical theatre kings Rodgers and Hammerstein. But, the auteur pointed out that using music written later than the story is set was actually a common practice employed by writers and directors of musicals in the 1940s and 1950s.

"[Using contemporary music] is quite an old idea," Luhrmann noted. "When Judy Garland sings: 'Clang, Clang, Clang, goes the trolley,' in "Meet Me in St. Louis," that film is set in 1900, but she is singing 1940s big-band music. She is singing radio music... and the device is to get inside character and story to understand it through your own music... It's a basic rule of musicals that the audience have a relationship with the music pre-existing."

Luhrmann said that, with the exception of Cat Stevens, all of the recording artists he approached were thrilled to have their music included in his story about the legendary Paris nightclub, which was peopled with bohemian artists, writers and performers committed to the ideals of truth, beauty, freedom and love during the early 1900s.

"They loved the idea. They were like, '"My Song" in a musical? That could be good.' Because these people would be writing musicals if we were in the 1940s," Luhrmann recalled, adding that he understood why the deeply religious Stevens didn't want his song, "Father and Son" featured in a film about a dying courtesan (played by Nicole Kidman,) who engages in a doomed affair with a poor writer (played by Ewan McGregor.)

Surprisingly, the wholesome-imaged Rodgers and Hammerstein board, which decides how and where the late composers' music may appear, leapt at the opportunity to share

"The Sound of Music" with a new generation.

"They've got this really groovy, swinging board, and the board has to decide everything and they're really like, 'Yeah, how can we get the music out in a more interesting, modern way?'" Luhrmann explained.

The filmmaker said he was especially surprised when the board responded enthusiastically to a scene in an early draft of the script that calls for "bohemian outdoor sex."

"And the Rodgers & Hammerstein board wrote back: 'We really like this idea. We're going to give you permission and we particularly like the 'lots of bohemian outdoor sex line,'" he said.

Viewers might be disappointed to see that the film does not actually contain such a scene.

"Unfortunately I had to cut [it,]" he apologized.

Asked why there hasn't been a successful Hollywood musical in recent years, Luhrmann said he believed it was just part of the life-cycle of cinema.

"I think it's like all these genres. Action is king [now,] right? But there was a time when the musical was king and really [the absence of the movie musical] was a big reaction against artifice," Luhrmann explained.

"Quite interestingly, what we are doing... is kind of a reaction to supernaturalism," he noted. "You get back to the early 1970s, late 1960s, 'The Sound of Music' and 'Cabaret.' 'The Sound of Music, Julie Andrews is running to the top of a hill singing. 'Cabaret,' it's great chorus. None of the numbers advance story and there are bad Nazis. What that is about is we hit a period of extreme reality. 'Mean Streets.' Reality cinema. It was about destroying the artifice of their parents. Martin Scorsese's parents were into 1940s and 1950s artifice. So, the circle just goes around. The stories don't change. Just how you tell them. So, the new, younger generation found it less plausible, less acceptable, to have a whole lot of people leaping around doing songs."

"Moulin Rouge," garnered eight Academy Award nominations, including nods for best picture and for best actress for Kidman.