Im stephen sackur. There are some film directors who strip things down, shun artifice and worship at the altar of realism. Well, might guest today sees movie making through a very different lens. Baz luhrmann made his directorial name with a wildly entertaining debut movie called strictly ballroom, which was theatrical, sentimental and sweet. And since then, hes continued to make larger than life film is based on epic stories. So, how did this kid from the aussie back woods get to make his celluloid dreams come true . Baz luhrmann, welcome to hardtalk. Im very happy to be here, stephen. I want to start this interview in herons creek, this tiny little place north of sydney, where you grew up. Mmm. It was a long way from anywhere, really. How come you there developed this incredibly vivid artistic imagination . Mmm. You know, at some point, midway through my journey, i started to get quite self conscious, about, you know, and you do when youre young and youre trying to be someone and be creative. And i gave up on the self consciousness of going too deep into the, who i am, and tried to work that outjust by doing. Having said that. Having said that. how are we going to keep these answers, short, right . Ive never given a short answer in my life. But having said that, it never seemed exceptional or strange or unusual to me. I always imagined, when i was in that tiny little island, which was really a gas station and a restaurant and we had a farm down the road, and. And your dad ran the gas station . My father ran the gas station. But what was crazy about it was that dad was obsessed that the isolation wouldnt keep us isolated. So, we had so many interesting people come and live with us, you know, painters and. He sort of had this idea that we would be the renaissance players of herons creek, really. So, was he an australian who felt out of tune with australia . Because, you know, my perhaps stereotypical and cliched vision of the australia of your youth. Yep. Particularly in the non metropolitan areas, would have been about a very macho culture, pretty much preoccupied with sports and maybe for the men, beer. Yeah. And yet you gravitated to things including cinema and dance and a bunch of other stuff that were nothing to do with that stereotype . Well, first of all the stereotype, right . Because i think youre probably somewhat on point. But i would also proffer that one of the idiosyncratic qualities about australia, which is a tremendous thing, is that its what i would call a flashes of lightning culture. Meaning, you might look at sydney and go, what a generic bunch of buildings and then suddenly. The sydney opera house. You know . You might go, well, there it is, isolated on the edge of the world. Along comes a gough whitlam, and our forebearrs who say, we must have a drama school. We must have a film school. This is in the 70s. Mmm. And we, the government, will fund it. And had they not done that, that extreme action, i wouldnt be sitting here, all those well known storytellers that you know wouldnt exist. So, lets go back to my father. He was all those things. He was a very. He was, you know, in the vietnam war, he was the equivalent of a kind of navy seal, that was his job. He was really disciplined, he really pushed us. It was such an extr. I now realise it was an extreme existence. But. He was also a very, erm, he was a romantic, i think. So, isuppose, when. Because im going to fast forward a little bit. Yeah. You got into acting, you went to sydney, you got into lots of different creative staff. I was already doing a, stephen, i was making films. Were you . Yeah. I was always doing it. So, it was a new from a very early age . And i was doing ballroom dancing. And ballroom dancing for me was a kind of working class escape into the theatre. You dressed up in costume, you performed, we travelled miles, you got very wrapped up with your partner. It was showbiz. And if you dont mind me saying, i dont mean this in any. I dont. Camp, to a certain extent . Ballroom dancing is camp . Let me think about that i dont know its camp, and i wonder if that appealed to you, too, the sort of gender fluidity, as we would now. . Well, look, one thing at a time, i think. Well, camp lets define that. Meaning. And i said this yesterday, i think i said, oscar wilde once said. And he probably didnt, maybe it was said about him. But that camp is dealing with something quite serious but in a very silly, offhanded way. Right. And the idea of using silly or theatrical or cue the petal drop to, as a device, to affect an audience, so that youre dealing with something quite serious and emotional or a big idea, that mechanism i guess is inherent in me, you know . And i think whats so odd is that when i started exploring that. I mean, i went to drama school and did brecht and minimalism. But when i started being honest with my own gestures, and that came into my way of expressing myself, whats so odd about it is that now, we live in a world where that particular sensibility, whether its in fashion, cinema, music, is kind of de rigueur. Its hugely popular. Hugely popular, yeah. Yeah. So, i tell you what, for people who havent seen strictly ballroom. Right. Lets have a look at at just a little clip. And see if its camp yeah, see if its camp. Lets get a flavour of it, lets have a look. Thats the future of the dance, sport, and no one but no ones going to change that this, we should remember, was your first movie. It was indeed my first movie. In fact, that was my first day of shooting. And it was at a break in a real dance competition, and we said wed get it done in an hour. And it took, as all things do, three. And everyone left and i. It was a crazy thing. But i mean its kind of an outrageous success that making your first movie, you make something that not only breaks the bounds of australian cinema, but gets shown at international awards, cannes, becomes big in america its just a Massive International hit that sounds great, but. And we havent got time to go into the real story, but the real story begins with making the film, committing at some point to the knowledge, to the idea that i had to make a cinematic language that somehow reflected what it was as a play. I did it, i devised it as a play. You had written it as a play. I devised it with a group of actors i was working with at the National Institute of dramatic art, where we were experimenting with how you make plays. And i took a subject that i knew, the world of ballroom dancing, and i also took the triumph, the heros triumph myth, and i was really interested in splicing mythologies and the Ugly Duckling myth. Yeah. And then it was political. We took it to a drama school in czechoslovakia during glasnost against all the soviet state theatres, thinking, oh, this will be ridiculous. But at some point in that production, it was a bit more brechtian. We used to have tapes of like Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher and stuff in it. So, it did have its sort of underlying political ideas. It was sort of about. This is important with your other movies, it was sort of about. Yeah. One message in the movie is about breaking the rules, not being a conformist. Absolutely. The australian Dance Commission had its own rules, and the girl in the movie says, i want to do something different, and she persuades the boy to sign up to just doing things different, breaking the rules, being yourself. Correct. And hilariously, you could apply the undercarriage of that story to a popular revolution. I mean, overthrowing the incumbent generation and leaders who say theres only one way to cha cha cha. Ive got the rule book, ill give you the ticks. Ill let you know whether youre right or not. And then the youth say, no, were going to step outside that rule book, and were going to go up against it and then you meet another youth who says that, and then you go on and its popular revolution. Sounds heavy but thats where were coming from. Its interesting, you say sounds heavy, it sounds fascinating. But what it doesnt sound like to some people i think. Yeah. Is a baz luhrmann movie, because youve become so associated with the sort of over the top grandiose epic scale and the glitz and the glamour and all that. Sure, yeah. Do you feel that a lot of people havent taken your movies seriously enough . Er, yes, sure. And certainly critically. But whats so strange. Because im quite old now, stephen, and ive seen the miracle of, like, one of the great critics like owen gleiberman, whos a huge critic in the states, who absolutely slayed moulin rouge just went, like, here we go again. And there was a time when you could take the reviews for strictly ballroom and apply them pretty much to moulin and so forth but owen gleiberman, ive never seen this happen before in his book, he rewrote his review for moulin rouge ten years later. Because i actually met him, and i was really. Of course, youre really happy that someone finally liked. You mean he decided ten years on that actually hed missed the point . His language was, there was a method to the madness and i could see that actually, this wasnt actually like campery for the sake of it, it was employed in the pursuit of a slightly bigger idea. But i suppose my question then would be, do you ever reflect and think, you know what, maybe i got a little bit seduced by the fact that hollywood was flinging money at me. No. So that by the time you made the great gatsby, i dont know how much that cost, probably 100 million roughly . Yeah, around that. Im not good with numbers check with the studio but you see where im going. No. You were spending more and more money, you were using the biggest stars from hollywood, making an enormous splash, taking i think im right in saying, years to make these movies. Yeah. Maybe you got a bit sort of overwhelmed with the money, the glitz, the glamour and the power. Maybe. It sounds like that, but that didnt happen. I mean, never does someone come at you, nobody in hollywood comes to you and say, you know that ioo year old book the great gatsby, you know, that period piece. They say the opposite. Cant you, like. . When i made strictly ballroom and then i wanted to do a shakespeare, a modern day shakespeare and they said, look, look. And i was in an overall deal with fox and they were like, cant you just do like strictly ballroom ii, more of that . And then when i did moulin rouge it was like, why do you want to do the gatsby . Please there was no, hey, heres 100 million, go do gatsby. Theres cajoling, convincing, convincing yourself, convincing others. Leonardo being a great partner in that process, toby being a great partner in that process. Dicaprio and maguire, we should say. Yeah. Getting them on. A list hollywood people. Yeah, but also artists that want to make sure theyre making something different. And so what im saying is, i mean, you know, let me just say, all that stuff you identified. Yeah. Gatsby, rightly, whether you like it or you dont, and whether i made the right choices or not, its a very quiet internal narration about a very noisy time, about a very brightly coloured, noisy time. So i, rightly or wrongly, exploited that. Which is a great cue just to have a little look, another flavour of your movie making, by having a look at one of the memorable scenes from the great gatsby. Lets have a look at this. Thanks. I cannot find anyone who knows anything real about mr gatsby. Well, i dont care. He gives large parties, and i like large parties, theyre so intimate. Small parties, there isnt any privacy. If thats true, whats all this for . That, my dear fellow, is the question. Are you ready . Little party never killed nobody. Right here right now. As im watching that. Yeah. Im actually thinking about you the director, and it seems to me there is something extraordinary about the hollywood director, the amount of resource you can call upon, the hundreds of actors and extras. Yeah. Right. The vast stage sets. There is a power to being a director that interests me. Do you think theres something potentially difficult, maybe even potentially dangerous, about the power that comes with being a director . Look, i think were living in a world where the subject of power, and the danger of power and the corruption that comes with, you know. I didnt write. I didnt write that fantastic line about parties i wish i did. Yeah. And i didnt write absolute power corrupts absolutely. But its certainly topical right now. And when you do what i do, the responsibility of power is absolutely forefront in your mind. I mean, i thought you were going to look at that and go, oh, that must be the friday night dinner at bazs place, because everybody thinks that thats how i live, right . i dont think thats how you live, but i am very interested in the answer youve just given me. All right. Because youve alluded to what weve just seen in hollywood and the movie business in recent times, which is the fallout from harvey weinstein. Yep. And heres what another director, judd apatow, said in the wake of what we learned. Yeah. He said, people in our industry were and are willing to ignore Violent Crime to line their own pockets or protect their careers. And thats what this weinstein thing is about. Right. I mean, that makes it sound like there is something very sick at the heart of. Well, i didnt. And i knew harvey. Harvey had strictly ballroom. And early on, i had a power play issue with harvey, about the way he dealt with strictly ballroom. So, i never worked with him again. And this is. Getting into harvey is too detailed. I think where youre going, though, is this. Is that i do think, when i am directing, the question mark for me in terms of the entertainment world, but were not just seeing it in entertainment, were seeing it at every level, in governance, in every level where power sits. Agreed. And what i am very focused on is that when youre trying to make something like. I mean, whos not attracted to. . You can be attracted to. You can have your attractions, right . But in the creative space, the fear and vulnerability of performers, i mean, that. The power that you have, but also yourjob is to remove that fear. Its called play acting. Theyre players. Youre meant to help them be playful. Work yes, work. But to take away the fear, and to play. Now, if in any way youre muddying the waters with your own politics or your own sexual desire, and all of that, then youre corrupting the art itself. So. And obviously its wrong. Imean, its. You know, profoundly a misuse of power. And i think what were seeing is, its probably being an old. I mean, let mejump right in there and say, i think its bigger than that. I think were sitting in a moment where the tectonic plates of history are squeezing like this, and the old period. I dontjust mean old guys were old guys, right . But the old period has got its snails and its trying to claw back to making things the way they were. To quote gatsby, you cannot repeat the past. And yet the new and the young and the Forward Movement want to go that way. So, its causing a sort of rupture. I mean this point, and the point is that i think there is an old school of thought. Were you part of it . No listen, are you changing the way you work . 0h. Well, look, i can honestly tell you, i can honestly tell you that when im in the room, i am so worried about making it work. Mmm. And i see it as myjob to take on everyone elses fear, but there is absolutely no way how i might feel about someone when im anonymous and meet them in the street, i just cant feel like that about a cast and crew member. Im just too completely responsible for making sure everyone does their best to serve the greater thing, and that is what were trying to make. Youve just talked about our sort of age group, and ageing and. The old guys. Yeah, and a new generation who are looking to do things in different ways. Just one quick question about your future, and your intent. Yeah. You did make one netflix box set style big budget tv series, the get down. Yeah. Yeah, i loved doing it. Didnt get recommissioned. I wonder in your future, do you see yourself moving more into tv, because thats where a lot of the money and creativity is . Or are you absolutely in your mind a movie maker . I have to say, two things. One, we could have done another season. But just. It cost an awful lot of money, though. Yeah, and for that reason, it required me to be at the centre of it that was the requirement. And contractually, id already made arrangements whereby i owed creativity somewhere else that had been deferred. Ijust wondered whether you needed a big screen notjust a small screen . Dyou know what . Lets get back to the other point i dont see myself necessarily as a film maker or music maker or a Television Maker or a. Or. Weve worked on a hotel, and we might do another one. You know we made stuff. Ideas and storytelling. Affecting culture. Leaving an imprint on culture. As to the medium, the size, the scale, what it might be, whats the right thing, theyre such secondary thoughts. And its not like, i mean it might sound arrogant, but its not like we need it. Im not going, like, wow, i really need. Something. Theres one project we havent talked about. Yeah. And i want to finish by bringing you to it, because it raises lots of interesting issues for me about you as a person, and thats your movie australia. Yes. Because in a way, its kind of unusualfor a director to make a movie so clearly about where hes from. Yes. And you named it australia, and its epic and it weaves a lot of australias relatively recent history. How foolish can you be . Yeah. Yes, and it did pretty well, but some critics liked it and some didnt like it at all. Yeah. But was it very personal to you . Totally. What were you trying to. . What was i thinking . Was it a love letter to australia . Was i crazy . by the way, look, its. None of my films in my view are complete. None of them are everything i imagined them to be. All of them get to a place where i go, well, its kind of working now. And its like a child it has to go out in the world. Are you telling me it wasnt actually finished . I dont think any of my movies are finished. Never. Theres an old saying you dont finish them, they take them away. You know . Im not one of those parents who go, like, oh, theyre not ready to go off to school yet, you know . But lets come back to why i did it. Absolutely, we had our children, we had been living. Weve lived around the world, australians are great travellers. And i wanted to make sure that there was an early period when my two kids were connected to their homeland. Mmm. That, and i also. Yes, i do have a great love of my homeland. And it probably was. I dont know if it was a love letter, but it was definitely a way of getting into the myth, but also the facts. One of the things about australia, by the way, and by the way, whether its a good film or not, is the biggest film ive ever had in europe. It was number one for five weeks in spain and that was a surprise to even me, right . So, it had a different life in the us it went nowhere. And here, not so much. Yeah. And it has themes in it, including the massive injustice done to the Aboriginal Peoples of australia. Yes. And might i say, and ive never said this, and ifeel like i should say this i remember Germaine Greer, i was on one of these shows, came on, and she spoke. I mean, i never push back on stuff. Well, of course we did the research, and of course we lived it. And everything. Theres a justifiable factual reference for everything in that movie. And when in the press Germaine Greer came out and attacked an actual stolen generation aboriginal academic, i just thought, like, you know, ill let time answer that. But what i do want to say is, nothing that we do do we research lightly. But the thought in my head was that the arc of your career took you away from australia to the united states, and thats obviously where you spend most of your time. But in a funny sort of way, you could make an argument that australia is moving towards you. I obviously dont mean geographically. Come over here, australia just in terms of what is happening in that country today. For example, we speak just after a nationwide non binding referendum. Yeah, about time. Which has seen australians overwhelmingly approve the idea of gay marriage. Mm hmm. Yeah. Do you see your australia changing, becoming more tolerant and open and progressive, or is that too simplistic . First of all, for the first time in my life, ive not been back to my home country for over 18 months, maybe even longer. Im going back at christmas. And its really important. I mean, i think, flashes of lightning, i think the countrys always had tremendously open hearted vision. But it also pulls itself back into a sort of conservatism, and it jostles between the two things. So, i got great. I shouldnt. Im not in a position to speak with great information. Im going back to reconnect. But i think australia, and australians, they really believe inafairgo. And theyre really open hearted. And i have. Im looking forward to being energised by their kind of positive uplift. A last and really unfair question a lot of people, critics. Mm hmm. I think feel that your first movie was your best movie. Mm hmm. Do you think that your best movie is yet to be made . I think probably mickjagger probably has the same problem with satisfaction. Its like, you know,. And i. Ithink. But that the answer to your question, and im not very good at staying on track you see my movies, right . the answer to the question is, youve got to believe that. Otherwise dont do it. And sometimes i think, oh, you know. But recently ive been going, like, id really like to do at least one more, and see if i could, you know, make it better. Great way to end. Baz luhrmann. Lovely. Thanks for being on hardtalk i really enjoyed it thank you very much indeed a significant change on the way in our weather for the next few days. It will turn considerably colder, especially through the weekend. That said, the cold air is already moving into scotland and this morning there is a risk of some disruption, particular conditions on the road thanks to snow. Radio scotland is a great place to keep up with conditions local to where you are. 25 centimetres of snow likely to lower levels this morning, 2 5 centimetres of snow likely to lower levels this morning, up to ten centimetres across highlands and the grampians. By windy start to the day and it goes without saying, a pretty chilly one as well. For Northern Ireland, early showers for the north west england as well. Further south, a quieter picture. Still quite windy but some Early Morning sunshine was a bit of cloud and rain through east anglia in the south east quite quickly. A few more isolated showers for the south west and wales. In the more organised area of rain and snow will pull away from the north east of scotland through the morning and be followed on by plenty of showers coming into the north and west to showers, Northern Ireland and Northern England as well and many of these could turn wintry at times, especially when they get heavier. Further south, more in the way of sunshine but a high of 1a in london and that colder air is sinking its way south across the british isles. By the time we reach friday, the cold air will make way and you can see on saturday and sunday it heads into europe and theres no chance of us getting warm in a hurry this weekend. This is the way friday is shaping up. A frosty start across the northern half, a light wind on friday, the cloud and showers across the south for a time through the day. Not such a bright day at today. Definitely lower temperatures, still a risk of wintry showers. Particularly for northern and western scotland. Looking ahead to the weekend, there should be some lovely sunshine around but it will be tempered by a chilly wind and we are looking at a couple of frosty nights. A chilly North Western wind. And temperatures, on the face of it we are looking at highs of perhaps seven or eight degrees but it will feel cold in the wind. The same can be said for sunday, there will be a lot of sunshine around. If anything, perhaps sunday is the slightly quieter day of the two, slightly fewer winds and showers are still sitting in that cold air so it will be a chilly start. Highs ofjust eight or nine at best. Im rico hizon in singapore. Welcome to the bbc. The headlines the man set to take over as Zimbabwes President says his priority is rebuilding the countrys economy. Papua new Guinea Police move into the manus detention centre, where 400 migrants have been refusing to leave. Also in the programme, ratko mladic known as the butcher of bosnia convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity. 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