This article originally appeared in the February 2004 issue of Venice Magazine. It was the second time I've interviewed Baz, the first one being for the theatrical release of Moulin Rouge! back in 2001 (Still looking for that interview! It's on the ancient technology of floppy disc somewhere in my files.) This interview was for the Los Angeles run of "La Boheme" at the Los Angeles Opera.
It's hard to believe that it's been seven years since Luhrmann has had a theatrical film released as a director. But his Australia, starring Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman, will be released later this year. Looking forward to it.
Closing the Red Curtain with “La Boheme”
Before moving on from the cinematic delights of his Red Curtain Trilogy, Baz Luhrmann revisits the Puccini masterwork which kicked off his career.
By Terry Keefe
I first spoke to filmmaker Baz Luhrmann in the spring of 2001, on the eve of the opening of his feature Moulin Rouge!. He was already a highly accomplished director by any standards, with the box office successes of Strictly Ballroom (1992) and Romeo + Juliet (1996) under his belt. But Moulin Rouge! was a different level of project entirely. Working with his biggest budget to date, 52 million, Luhrmann was attempting to revive the movie musical, a genre that couldn’t have been deader at the time. And in what must have caused even more sleepless nights for the studio bean counters, he wasn’t doing it in the most safe and conservative manner. Moulin Rouge! combined the style of traditional movie musicals with every imaginable strain of pop culture to create something very new, a giddy pastiche that was intoxicating as absinthe to some, and a little too much for others. In the days leading up to its release, it was impossible to gauge what critical and popular reaction would be. Studios and careers have fallen many times in the past on daring film projects and Moulin Rouge! was as daring as they come. Knowing full well that positive publicity was going to be a key factor in the film’s future, Luhrmann leaped into a barnstorming tour of interviews, seeming to be everywhere at once. Although he was clearly aware of the stakes, Luhrmann didn’t seem to be unnerved at all by them, and that probably shouldn’t have been a surprise. After all, this was a man who had previously created a Shakespearean film that teenagers embraced, and he had also made ballroom dancing actually seem cool with his debut picture Strictly Ballroom. The impression I received was that he was primarily concerned with explaining his bold vision to the prospective audience, hoping to convince them that his magic carpet ride was one worth taking. The audiences agreed that it was. Moulin Rouge! would go on to be a smash in every way, grossing $175 million worldwide and receiving eight Academy Award nominations, winning two. The film’s influence reached wide in Hollywood, as it unquestionably paved the way for the success of Chicago the following year.
The Baz Luhrmann who I met last month is obviously now in a very different position career-wise from when we first spoke. Having conquered the world with Moulin Rouge!, he’s a proven commodity on the largest of scales, and investing in his next big undertaking is most likely now seen less as a risk than as a wise decision. And in terms of his creative direction, things are also changing for him. Moulin Rouge! was the cinematic culmination of what Luhrmann refers to as his “Red Curtain Trilogy,” which began with Strictly Ballroom. The term “Red Curtain” refers, in a broad sense, to the hyper-realistic style that Luhrmann, along with his longtime partner, production designer, and wife Catherine Martin, have pioneered. Luhrmann has announced that his next film will be the story of Alexander the Great, which will likely be a step in a new aesthetic direction for him, but before he moves on to that next chapter in his filmmaking odyssey, he has decided to return for one final time to the opera which was like the opening notes in the Red Curtain Trilogy, “La Boheme.” No, Luhrmann never made a theatrical film of the grand Giacomo Puccini masterpiece, which is the story of a doomed love affair between the seamstress Mimi and the writer Rodolfo in Bohemian Paris, but it was his production of it in 1990 at the Sydney Opera House which truly began his career and led to the financing of Strictly Ballroom. And the spirit with which he and Catherine Martin reinvented the opera is the same one which drove their Red Curtain Trilogy.
It’s part of the Baz Luhrmann legend that when he was first announced as the director of “La Boheme” at the Sydney Opera House in 1990, 9/10ths of the subscribers cancelled. At the time, he was best known as a very experimental theater director. But when the red curtains rose on his production of “La Boheme,” Luhrmann would quickly silence most of his critics, with the show going on to set box office records in Sydney. Although he kept many of the traditional elements of the opera in place, Luhrmann updated it in ways which brought the original spirit of the piece back to life. In Puccini’s day, opera was the popular entertainment. It was sexy. And in keeping with that, Luhrmann cast attractive twentysomethings in the leads, while pushing the time period from the 1800s to 1957. The result not only satisfied opera purists, but it also introduced a whole new, younger audience to opera for the first time.
In the audience at the Sydney Opera House were the future Broadway producers of “Rent,” who drew inspiration from the production, and more than a decade later convinced Luhrmann to re-mount “La Boheme” for a Broadway run. Luhrmann went on a worldwide talent search to find the top young opera talent in the business, eventually landing an international cast which alternated shows. Three different performers were cast for both the roles of Mimi and Rodolfo. Amongst the Mimi’s were Lisa Hopkins from the United States, Ekaterina Solovyeva from Russia, and Wei Huang from China. And the Rodolfo’s included David Miller and Jesus Garcia from the United States, and Alfred Boe from the United Kingdom. Opening on December 8, 2002, the new version of “La Boheme” was an instant smash, nominated for six Tony Awards and winning for Best Scenic Design (Catherine Martin) and Best Lighting Design (Nigel Levings). Starting in January, the show will be presented in Los Angeles at the Ahmanson Theatre.
Baz Luhrmann has been doing interviews all day long by the time I see him, but he never seems to tire. Once again, I shouldn’t be surprised. Someone who tired easily would never have been able to create the vast new worlds which he has been showing us behind his Red Curtain for over a decade now.
So does this new staging of “La Boheme” feel like a closing of a circle of sorts for you?
Yeah, that is why we did it. We did it for two reasons probably. One, I really wanted to live in New York for awhile and stop touring. We’re always running around, doing crazy things, which is part of the work that we do. But also, “La Boheme,” when we originally did it, was the very beginning of this period of work that the Red Curtain Trilogy, those three films, belonged to. It was the same investigation of style. It was the same idea of taking emotional stories and telling them in heightened, creative worlds, right? So as I was moving out of it, and as I was turning 40, and given that when I first did it, I always said rather arrogantly, as I was an arrogant little thing [laughs], “We don’t want to be 40 and doing ‘La Boheme.’” But I figured that I should revisit it, as a way of closing off, as a way of making sure I wasn’t past 40 doing it, right? And what was really interesting, and this was not artificially looked for, but I think in all honesty if you look at the one I did in 1990, and here we are in 2003, it’s a coarser show but what’s true about it is that it has a sort of brash youthfulness. It’s all about the possibility of life and energy and “Wow, isn’t life going to be incredible?” And I’m the last person to turn around and say that it wasn’t because we’ve had a great journey and it still remains that. But having just done it again, and having turned 41, and having just had a baby in the last few weeks, a little girl, Lillian, I think this production is a finer work. But it’s also more melancholic. It’s not about lamenting the passing of that youth in a sense of “life will never be good again.” It’s the naiveté of the ideals. An understanding that while the ideals are very real, the way in which one maintains an open heart, or a belief or a search for some sort of truth, is not by keeping all the doors open. It’s not by being extreme. It’s not by going “I’d rather die than -” Because you’re just going to end up dying. We all know our friends from our bohemian youth and there were three kinds. There were those who actually did die of a drug overdose. Those that actually stayed there and they are very sad. You just can’t get through to them that it’s time to grow up. And there are those that grow up, and of the grown-up ones, there are the ones who get angry about it for some reason and say, “Oh, I was an idiot and I got ripped off by the commune,” or whatever it was, “and you owe me money.” And [there are those who are in] the category that I hope stories like “La Boheme” help you with, and [they say,]“It was beautiful, it was extraordinary, it was exquisite, it was naïve, and it was perfect. But it could only be for a certain amount of time.” You can’t explain this to a young person, but in trying to keep all the doors open, you’re actually imprisoned by them. You’re super-imprisoned by them. But when you shut them off, you get this kind of next journey, which isn’t a physical one but a sort of spiritual one.
In terms of the staging, what differences are there between Sydney and now?
Well, Sydney itself was a very low-budget, tiny work. And it was part of a rep, remember, so it had to go in and out of the theater each night. The fundamental idea of it, the heart of the idea of it, is very much the same. But in terms of the execution of it, now we’re on a multi-million dollar budget. And what I did was, the audience although young and new in Sydney, they were coming to the opera house. Whereas now, we’re going out to meet them half-way. We’re going out into the jungle and we’re saying, “Even if you’ve never seen an opera before, not only will you get the story, but you’ll get everything and you’ll be moved by it.” And for that reason, one had to be very pictorially clear. We’re clear about the fact you’re on the streets of Paris in the 50s. It comes into the theater itself, so it’s more into the theater, the set itself. And then it’s just more lavish, it really is quite lush compared to the extremely minimal production that Sydney had.
It is true that when it was announced you were doing “La Boheme” in Sydney, 9/10ths of the subscribers cancelled?
It happened. It was so weird. We were kids. I had my opera company, under the state opera company, and it was experimental and we made operas, and I had my theater company. So I was one of those sort of irritating, young theater dynamos that made everyone go, “I want you dead. How can you be 25 and have 2 companies?” [laughs] But hey, it was a small town. Then the opera came, and it was a big risk, it was a big idea. We were only like 23, 24. So I spent like a year researching Puccini. The key thing for us is that it wasn’t about reproducing the opera exactly as it was [in the 1800s]. It was about recapturing what it felt like to be sitting in an audience in 1890, watching a show that was shocking. Young middle-class guys hanging out with prostitutes, basically, living the bohemian life and dining on coffee. It was very hard to communicate to a new audience that checked velvet pants and britches were shocking. So the choices were all based on how to make it feel like that experience. There were virtually demonstrations from the opera lovers [when our show was announced]. On the week we opened, the Gulf War broke out. I can remember George Bush going, “We’ve got a war with Iraq,” and we’re doing “La Boheme.” I noticed that in the letter section of The Sydney Morning Herald that there were more letters saying “We’ve got to stop these kids from doing ‘La Boheme,’” than there were about what was going on in Iraq! What’s slightly disturbing is that over 10 years later, George Bush Jr. is in Iraq and I’m still doing “La Boheme.” [laughs] I’d better stop doing it or we’re really going to get into trouble, you know? So indeed, the subscription cancellations happened. There were two big issues in this. One, is that Joan Sutherland is really like our royalty. She’s like the Queen in Australia. She was very negative about updating in general. We got the word that “Joan’s not happy.” So the Opera now is really out on a limb. I then learned to do what I’m doing now, to publicize. I learned that if you’re going to take risks, you really need to get out there and explain it. I got on the chat shows, I had punk hair at the time, I’ve always had wacky hair, and that helped. I got the opportunity to sort of state my case. So young people started to buy tickets and this became a big story. Sort of “Old is out, young is in.” There weren’t that many of them, but they started to line up and buy tickets. The next thing, we had Opening Night, and it was a great performance. People really rose to their feet, led by Joan Sutherland. She came backstage with incredible emotional grace and she embraced us and she told us how much she loved it. It went on to become their highest-grossing opera of all time. The subscribers came back.
What were some of the biggest challenges of doing the show on Broadway?
Number one, above all else, was that in Sydney, it was this one young boy and one young girl [cast in the leads]. And now we needed three. Not only did they have to be truly able to sing it, but they had to look and act like their roles. So we did like a year of auditioning all over the world. I can’t remember the numbers, but they’re in the thousands. I did at least 200-300 all over the world. You’ve got one from Shanghai, one from Russia, one from America. It’s the United Colors of Opera Singers, you know? They are all legitimate young stars and it’s a real circus. They’re brilliant young kids. It’s a beautiful thing, actually, that really only happened after we got going, that they really realized how special it is. I’m not here to diminish the value of opera houses. I’m from the opera world. Half my team came from the English opera. We get that. But it’s a club. And when you’re young, there aren’t that many young people around opera houses. So you’ve got these good-looking young groovy kids who equally like Radiohead and Puccini. So they just realize how special it is. On Broadway, there were fans looking for them. It was very cool.
How did the decision to mike the performers come about? That’s not traditional in the opera.
Big, big decision. Because, you see, those kids can sing it any day you like. We’ll come in and turn the system off and they’ll fill the room. The difference is that when you’re sitting in La Scala, or one of the other old houses, acoustically, you can sit in the cheapest student seat, and it’s immediate. It’s not like that in the big houses on Broadway or here. So what the boys at Acme Sound have done, and we’ve spent a fortune getting this right, is not so much to amplify the voice as change the acoustics of the space. So that if you’re in a cheap seat, it feels resonant. It’s not like a rock sound, where it’s blaring out of a speaker near your left ear. In fact, I have a rule that if they spot where the sound is coming from, we’re in trouble. So it’s about it feeling resonant and sort of feeling liquid in the space.
Is the show different from night to night, because you have such a diverse cast who rotate in the lead roles?
Totally. But it delivers. People have their personal emotional connections to the performers. So it doesn’t matter who it is. Someone will say, “I saw Wei Huang,” and someone will say, “Well, I saw Ekaterina.” And you can’t argue with them who’s better or worse. They just have their passions, right? But the truth is, mostly what happens is, people who have seen more than one night have said, “I really enjoyed it because of the nuances in the differences of the performances.” But it’s a nuance, not a different story.
So is the Red Curtain kind of closing now and are you going to move on to a new act in your filmmaking journey?
Well, the curtain’s come down on Act One on my life. These are undeniable things. Like we don’t have endless acts in our lives, not yet. I think we might become really unfortunate if we do [laughs]. I have no doubt that in my lifetime, and yours, we’re going to discover another 20 years. They’re going to go, “Guess what? You’ve got another 20 years!” and we’re going to go, “What do we do now?” Take another holiday I suppose [laughs]. So, the first act is closed. I’ve turned 40, I had a little baby, and you go, “Life’s fresh and new again. Act Two!” I mean, I could make a living out of doing funky musicals. I sort of invented some of that language, so I could go on and do that forever. But I’ve made a choice that it’s not about being the richest practitioner of what I do, or even the most famous, but making sure that what we make is truly educating me and making my life just a rich one to live. Just a few weeks ago, working on Alexander the Great, I was in the jungles near the Burmese border with a bunch of elephants. I mean, how good does it get, you know? [laughs]
How is your Alexander the Great project going?
I’ve been working on the screenplay with David Hare. I’m basically back 6 months now because I need to give the screenplay another round. That’s me, I take forever to do stuff. And Oliver Stone’s doing his [own version of the Alexander story], so everyone’s happy I’m out of the way. And I have other epics too. The first way I get into trouble is that I talk about what I’m doing. Once I know what I’m going to do, I talk about it. But when I do it, is up to me. We don’t work for people really.
Have you settled on a style for the film yet?
Oh, I’m involving a language. Absolutely, absolutely. And I work on that very academically really. It’s a process-driven thing.
You’re not going to give us any hints on what that language will be, are you?
Only in that its DNA belongs more to Lawrence of Arabia than it does to musical language. Its DNA comes from quite classical storytelling, quite classical cinema. But with an edge I guess. Although “edge” is a tricky word, because it’s like [disdainfully] “let’s make it edgy,” you know? In the end, you shouldn’t be starting at style, you should be making stylistic choices that help the audience experience and feel the story in this time and in this place. Stories do not change, but the way we tell them does. So that’s where that thinking comes from.
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