Baz Luhrmann - ‘I self-medicate with creativity’

Few filmmakers have a style as bold, romantic and unmistakable as Baz Luhrmann. From his breakout debut Strictly Ballroom to the glittering spectacle of The Great Gatsby starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and the fever-dream energy of Elvis, Luhrmann has built a career on transforming familiar stories into cinematic events. In this episode, he takes us inside one of his most iconic creative decisions: the unforgettable fish tank scene in his 1996 adaptation of Romeo + Juliet - and reveals how that moment came to life. We also explore his latest project, EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, a return to Elvis Presley through newly uncovered footage from the legendary Las Vegas residency. Beyond the films, Luhrmann reflects on the journey that shaped him. Raised in Herons Creek, a tiny rural town in New South Wales, Australia, he grew up surrounded by performance and storytelling: his father ran a quirky petrol station and cinema, while his mother owned a dress shop and taught ballroom dancing. We discuss the setbacks that tested him, his unconventional audition process, his enduring creative partnership with his wife and the viral TikTok moment that sent the internet into a frenzy. I hope you enjoy this candid, wide-ranging conversation with one of modern cinema’s great showmen. ✨ IN THIS EPISODE: 02:28 Creativity as Self‑Medication 05:52 Why Elvis? 09:22 The Romeo + Juliet Fish Tank Origin Story 11:01 Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen: The Accidental Hit 13:56 Failure #1: Losing Instincts, Depression and Finding the Way Back 26:16 Casting Without Auditions: Baz’s Workshop Method 27:58 Creating a Fear-Free Room 28:47 The Big Break That Became a Public Flop 30:56 Rebounding with Strictly Ballroom 32:19 Choosing Collaborators 33:36 Marriage and Deep Trust 35:42 Criticism and Staying Humble (Plus the Viral TikTok Moment) 40:38 Future-Focused Filmmaking & Final Reflections 💬 QUOTES TO REMEMBER: I see my job as keeping fear out of the room. I take the fear on in the morning when I get up. I was embarrassed about being this geek from a small country town... I was ashamed that I liked people - and that just didn't seem cool enough. I always made my films for the future, not to be sort of hip in the moment... I want them to have a universality and I want them to move through time and space. 🔗 LINKS + MENTIONS: EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert is in cinemas now THAT TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@god_worthy/video/7374740069866884368?lang=en Join the How To Fail community: https://howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content Elizabeth’s Substack: https://theelizabethday.substack.com/ 📚 WANT MORE? Stanley Tucci - On grief, cancer…and failing to swim swap.fm/l/WCW054IGNZnSnTzEXPTN Phoebe Waller-Bridge - On creative risk-taking, ambition and what happens after a cultural phenomenon like Fleabag swap.fm/l/gTCOCJUmXX9t22mTABSa 💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories 👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @elizabday TikTok: @howtofailpod Podcast Instagram: @howtofailpod Website: www.elizabethday.org Elizabeth and Baz answer listener questions in our subscriber series, Failing with Friends. Join our community of subscribers here: https://howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com Production & Post Production Coordinator: Eric Ryan Engineer: Matias Torres Assistant Producer: Shania Manderson Senior Producer: Hannah Talbot Executive Producer: Alex Lawless How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 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.

• 0:26Elizabeth Day?

  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.

• 0:42Elizabeth Day?

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• 1:28Elizabeth Day?

  before committing. And Ernesta's design team will help with sizing completely free of charge. Visit ernestacom and order five samples for only $10 and you'll get $50 towards any rug of your choice. That's ernestacom.

• 1:44Speaker 02

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• 2:13Elizabeth Day?

  Few contemporary directors are as instantly recognisable as Baz Luhrmann. 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, or gasping when the 19th century characters burst into 20th century song in 2001's Moulin Rouge,

• 2:53Elizabeth Day?

  whether it's recalibrating how we think about Elvis Presley in Luhrmann's 2022 biopic, or using the Leonardo DiCaprio martini glass gif from his Great Gatsby, or whether it's owning a sticky-fingered copy of his debut film Strictly Ballroom on VHS, as I did. Luhrmann's cultural influence extends far beyond the screen. A storymaker and world builder who once described himself as "the Stanley Kubrick of sequins", Luhrmann's own story starts in Herons Creek, a small rural town in New South Wales, Australia. His father owned a petrol station and cinema. His mother had a dress shop and was a ballroom dancing teacher.

• 3:37Elizabeth Day?

  Little wonder perhaps that Luhrmann'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 Baz Mark, after his classmates compared his hair to basil brush. Luhrmann'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 Luhrmann himself describes it as "a tone poem on the shadow selves of person and performer".

• 4:16Elizabeth Day?

  It's something he's thought about a lot, once claiming that "for artists or people with big holes in their hearts, the self-medication is the creative process".

• 4:28Elizabeth Day?

  Baz Luhrmann, welcome to How to Fail.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  Lot of homework there.

• 4:33Elizabeth Day?

  That was probably one of the longest intros I've ever written and I was nervous saying it out loud in front of you.

• 4:40Speaker 00

  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 going, really? I don't think I ever said that. But you were dead accurate. I can't, I wouldn't deny anything you said.

• 4:59Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, I'm so happy to hear that.

• 5:00Speaker 00

  As far as the story goes.

• 5:01Elizabeth Day?

  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.

• 5:08Speaker 00

  Sure, go for it.

• 5:09Elizabeth Day?

  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.

• 5:18Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:18Elizabeth Day?

  How's your self-medication going, Baz?

• 5:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, right now, I'm medicating heavily. And I mean that in 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. I 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. Like, I've got, you know, I'm opening Epic, I'm working on John Dark's, even I just announced this lovely Belmont dining car because we do other things. I'm very medicated.

• 6:01Elizabeth Day?

  Okay. And is it helping you feel loved?

• 6:04Speaker 00

  I think there's all sorts of love. You know, I'm in the love business, if you see my films. 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, 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. It's just I'm so consumed with it.

• 6:44Speaker 00

  A lot of negative vibes aren't, won't get in. I'm not spinning out. Look, when I finish a big project, I go in a kind of, I call it the methadone program, when I go and do everything the opposite I do when I'm hugely responsible for giant things, and which usually entails going on some journey and acting like a fool and getting smashed a lot, you know, and growing all disgracefully.

• 7:07Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 7:08Speaker 00

  So I'm, I'm not doing a lot of growing all disgracefully right now.

• 7:11Elizabeth Day?

  Okay.

• 7:12Speaker 00

  Hard as I try.

• 7:15Elizabeth Day?

  Elvis is clearly someone who fascinates you. And I feel having had the privilege of watching Epic and seeing Elvis when it came out, that I could draw some parallels between the two of you. But what is it that you think draws you in to him?

• 7:29Speaker 00

  Well, originally, look, he was very big when I, in my life when I was young, because when we did that cinema, we had the Elvis matinees, you know, that's where it started. And he was there present. But then fairly quickly after the seventies, as I was growing up, I went on to Bowie and Elton and, you know, the Michael Jacksons and the Eltons and, you know, other artists musically. But, and Madonna, I forgot to mention M. But when I came to doing a biopic, I'd always admired Amadeus.

• 8:04Elizabeth Day?

  One of my favorite films.

• 8:05Speaker 00

  One of my favorite films. And you realize that that biopic is not about Mozart. You learn a lot. It's about jealousy. 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.

• 8:37Elizabeth Day?

  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 realised watching it how little I'd seen both in a way, because so much of it has become cliche or caricature.

• 8:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, sure.

• 8:55Elizabeth Day?

  I'm fascinated with how you did it, and I'm sure you've been asked this a million times before.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  No.

• 9:01Elizabeth Day?

  Because it's so hyper-real when you're watching it.

• 9:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:06Elizabeth Day?

  But you didn't use AI in a single frame.

• 9:09Speaker 00

  No, there's not a single frame of AI. There's not, no visual effects. The only visual effect is the one he has on the audience. What happened was it was an accident. I was making Elvis the movie and Ernst Jorgensen, who's this great professional on Elvis, the expert, said, look, there are these lost reels from the seventies 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, of like, it was like Raiders of the Lost Ark, you know, these dusty sixty-seven boxes of footage.

• 9:51Speaker 00

  And then this moment happened when we found this forty-five 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 to you in a really intimate way. And that's why what you're experiencing, I'm 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

• 10:36Speaker 00

  funny. He's so vulnerable. He's so good at making everyone feel relaxed. And on stage, you just feel you're the only person in the room.

• 10:45Elizabeth Day?

  Before we get into your failures, can I just ask you about a few key moments that 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?

• 10:56Speaker 00

  Okay, here it goes. So I'm working with Craig Pearce, my high school friend who I'm writing, eventually we're writing the Romeo and Juliet together. Siam and a few of us are down in Miami and I'm working on that actual sequence. And I can't, you're like, well, how do we, we know we're going to meet Juliet, but how does Romeo meet Juliet? And yet you surprise them. And I'm out at this nightclub called The Dome. It was a restaurant nightclub in Miami in Florida. And, you know, I was only about, I think I was 29, 28. And so, well, I'd had a few cherries, let's be honest. 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.

• 11:40Speaker 00

  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 I 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, but while 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 Mab. I'm not sure what it was, but whatever he took made him feel queasy.

• 12:20Elizabeth Day?

  Couple of cherries.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  Something, something magical.

• 12:24Elizabeth Day?

  Music is a hugely important part of your work. It's the sort of fabric of your storytelling in so many ways.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  One big part of the fabric, yeah.

• 12:32Elizabeth Day?

  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?

• 12:46Speaker 00

  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 a guy called Anton Monsted, he was my music supervisor and he was my assistant and now he runs music at Amazon and I love him, he's a 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 gonna work with, and found out it was a hoax. But I went like, hang on, but it's really

• 13:29Speaker 00

  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 to the local radio station, they won't play it. They go like, oh, terrible, the whole album, it's too weird. 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 and all the lights are lighting up on the dashboard. And the next day they went, wow, this is an amazing response. They

• 14:09Speaker 00

  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. The label said, no, it's too long, it's too strange. So I went into 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 entered 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? I did to 2000, thinking by 2000, no one would care.

• 14:49Speaker 00

  So, um, you know, I ran out of like beginnings, but it has 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.

• 15:17Elizabeth Day?

  It does. 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.

• 15:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:28Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah. Your first failure is that you went to the National Institute of the Dramatic Arts.

• 15:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:34Elizabeth Day?

  In Australia. But you felt that you lost your instincts.

• 15:37Speaker 00

  Yes, so true.

• 15:38Elizabeth Day?

  Tell us about that period of your life.

• 15:40Speaker 00

  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. 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 NIDA, actually I didn't get in. And eventually I became so successful, I think they're embarrassed 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, I think, God, now I'm like a serious actor, serious creator. What does a serious person do? Well, they isolate themselves.

• 16:24Speaker 00

  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, oh, that one's a star. And you know, you think that's the universe and it's not very real, but, and it's useful. 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 Ballroom. But I got so self-conscious.

• 16:58Speaker 00

  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 just pick up where I left off and be 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, I, 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, I couldn't get out of bed. And I remember just dragging, eventually, I dragged myself down to this old 1930s swimming place by the ocean.

• 17:43Speaker 00

  And I'd 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 in the water, but I was so depressed, I couldn't even swim.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  And then one day I did swim and I felt better. So what am I gonna do? I've got this idea about, this is a crazy idea, this Russian ballet dancer, because it was during the Soviet Union, washing up and he meets, it was sort of Macbeth set in surf clubs or something, it was nuts. But I thought, I'm gonna 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 light theatre and, and we just did this one workshop of it. And it went crazy, it was so nuts. I remember I got a want to go and get fresh fruit because the audience were actually in the foyer and I still hadn't finished the show. But they came and it was kind of, went really well.

• 18:42Speaker 00

  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 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 learnt there was that I, I was embarrassed about being this geek from a small country town.

• 19:22Speaker 00

  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 learnt from that. I have 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 learnt not to get too focused on myself.

• 19:56Elizabeth Day?

  I remember a writer called 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-

• 20:14Speaker 00

  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'll 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 a 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, but what we're seeing is that younger people actually want to go out and commune more. That's why touring is so big.

• 20:44Elizabeth Day?

  One of the things I hear a lot from listeners is how tiring it can be when your mind just doesn't settle. And I can only imagine this feels even heavier with intrusive thoughts. It's that quiet sense of being worn down by something you never asked for and never wanted, but just can't seem to switch off. If you struggle with this, I want to tell you about NoCD, because it's a resource that genuinely helps people. NoCD provides specialised treatment for OCD. And what I appreciate about their approach is how human it feels. You're matched with a licensed therapist trained in ERP therapy. That's Exposure and Response Prevention. And over time, you learn skills that help your OCD symptoms become manageable so you

• 21:27Elizabeth Day?

  can live more of the life you want to live. If you're struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NoCD can help. Book a free 15-minute call to get started at learn.nocd.com/fail.

• 21:41Elizabeth Day?

  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.

• 21:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, at the time, I didn't see it that way, but now I realise, like dad and mum in a different way. But we were in Sydney, we'd 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 had dress shops and he bought a place nearby. Then we were running a 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 carp and I had my own business and it was non-stop.

• 22:33Speaker 00

  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. We had 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.

• 22:50Speaker 00

  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 and there 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 I used to wear a white shirt and a bow tie and serve people food. And then there was Len's International Snack Bar. So looking back, we were kind of the Renaissance players of this Herons Creek. We were learning lots of skills, photography, I was filming things.

• 23:27Speaker 00

  He never said no, he was always an enthusiast and he drove us the kind of two hours every night to learn ballroom dancing.

• 23:34Elizabeth Day?

  I'm fascinated by your dad because he was a Vietnam veteran.

• 23:38Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 23:38Elizabeth Day?

  And I wonder if this world building was an attempt to escape that or move on from what he'd witnessed?

• 23:49Speaker 00

  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 mid-modern house. And when I look back, I was born on the sand in front of that house. And when I look back, he, he learned how to build it with his own hands out of a book. I mean, how do you do that? And mum was pregnant with us and she used to put bricks on a conveyor belt. And he, 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 invented pathways, quite inventive, he'd invent machines and things.

• 24:34Speaker 00

  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. Or, but there was always, we'd have cup of corn night and events. So it was a kind of, it was a world in itself for sure. And he built that with us on the wing.

• 24:59Elizabeth Day?

  It's beautiful. Your parents got divorced when you were 12 and I imagine that was shattering.

• 25:05Speaker 00

  It was enormously tumultuous because, uh, well, of course, any 12 year old, any kid, your parents are the centre of your life and dad and mum, mum in her own way too. She was off going doing theatre and stuff. And she went through quite a transformation too, like she's still incredibly vital. I mean, she's 90 and lift a truck, she's really strong. But, um, she split, Heron's Creek was too small for her. She took my little sister and a lamb. There was, it was really tumultuous. And, 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.

• 25:48Speaker 00

  And so eventually I, I ran away too, reconnected with mum. Had my own apartment out the back, so I love that. But I went for this really forward-thinking school in Port Macquarie that was experimental. And it was co-ed, boys and girls, to this really oppressed, um, Christian Brothers School, which actually. Is the location in the Great Gatsby, Gatsby's Mansion. We use it with with visual extensions, but so that was a shock. That's where I I I got the 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.

• 26:33Speaker 00

  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 Baz Mark, which is on my passport. And I've had it ever since.

• 26:43Elizabeth Day?

  This idea of connection and those early experiences of the most important relationship in your life really being ruptured.

• 26:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:52Elizabeth Day?

  Do you think that informed how romantic your style is, albeit it focuses quite a lot on doomed romance? But in the Red Curtain trilogy particularly, 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.

• 27:10Speaker 00

  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. But I think if you have pain in your life, you tend not to want to make films about pain.

• 27:49Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 27:50Speaker 00

  You wanted 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 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, they 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.

• 28:33Elizabeth Day?

  Talking about collaboration, it remains incredibly important to you.

• 28:36Speaker 00

  Yes, it's everything.

• 28:37Elizabeth Day?

  And you don't do a normal audition process.

• 28:39Speaker 00

  No.

• 28:39Elizabeth Day?

  You do these collaborative workshops with actors.

• 28:41Speaker 00

  Workshops, yeah.

• 28:41Elizabeth Day?

  Can you tell us a little bit about that process?

• 28:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:44Elizabeth Day?

  How it works?

• 28:44Speaker 00

  I, 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. Yeah, 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 wanna learn something about this scene through you. 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.

• 29:24Elizabeth Day?

  Butler.

• 29:24Speaker 00

  Butler, it just revealed itself. Like, he, 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, um, which I want to do, cause I just keep doing it. But it was more, we would just eventually start doing it, you know? And, um, same thing just recently with Jeanne D'Arc. I saw some wonderfully talented young actors who I didn't know. And by doing the workshops, which I actually did, I think I can say it, in the Chilton, after it was burnt out, Andre learned it to me because it was a secret nice environment to do it in.

• 29:59Elizabeth Day?

  Wow.

• 30:00Speaker 00

  Place where I'd had so much fun, but there we were doing scenes out of Jeanne D'Arc. But Isla Johnson, who's playing that role, it came out of that process where we were just focusing on, what can we learn about this character and the story? And I, and I feel so precious and privileged. And it's so my, look, children play, act really brilliantly. It's called a screenplay. You know, we are but players. But if you scare a child, they can't play. 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.

• 30:43Speaker 00

  I really allow everyone to play and fail, as they like to say. Sometimes they 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 or 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.

• 31:01Elizabeth Day?

  Hmm.

• 31:01Speaker 00

  Oh, I never say no.

• 31:05Elizabeth Day?

  There are so many things I wish I'd known when I started this podcast and my production company, Daylight, like, why am I spending hours trying to make a website look good? Why am I designing everything from scratch? And why am I spending all my time just doing admin? What I really needed was one place that could do all of this for me. Enter Shopify. Shopify has beautiful, ready-made templates that make your website look polished without needing to become a graphic designer overnight. Its AI tools can help you get your site up and running quickly. And Shopify Checkout makes it really easy for customers to actually go from, ooh, I like that, to, yes, I'll have one. If Shopify had existed when I started out, I could have saved myself a lot of time, stress,

• 31:50Elizabeth Day?

  and some rogue design choices. If you're ready to hear the of your first sale today, head over to Shopify.co.uk/fail to start your free trial today. That's right, start your free trial at Shopify.co.uk/fail. Two Girls, One Ghost.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America. Where each week we dive into all things strange, spooky, and supernatural, and share stories of paranormal encounters from our community of listeners. Satisfy that spooky itch and entertain your inner witch with Two Girls, One Ghost. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts and check us out on YouTube at Two Girls, One Ghost. But be warned, side effects might include a haunting or two. Listen at your own risk.

• 32:37Elizabeth Day?

  Your second failure

• 32:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:40Elizabeth Day?

  takes us forward a few years.

• 32:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:42Elizabeth Day?

  And this is the Australian bicentenary in 1988. And there's a huge grant offered for a young artistic director to create

• 32:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:49Elizabeth Day?

  a theatre company. And you get it, Baz.

• 32:52Speaker 00

  Yes, I get it.

• 32:54Elizabeth Day?

  Why is this a failure?

• 32:56Speaker 00

  Well, it was 1988. By then, I think I was quite well known. I'd 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 Bois and Tenney. And the most important theatre company in Sydney, the Sydney Theatre Company, was run by this artistic director called Richard Werritt. And he was a great guy and he was a great director, but he, he, 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.

• 33:38Speaker 00

  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 gonna do it in an open space with flowers and mirrors. But the technical things I tried to do were so high end, you know, with amplified voice. I got lost again. And the opening up was so catastrophic. Very well known people came and sort of left. And the reviews were beyond, I mean, there was a lot of jealousy about, I mean, I had long curly hair and was probably, I don't know, 22 or something. So there was a bit of like, oh, he only got it because he had long curly black hair. But, you know, I was really, it was the first time I felt

• 34:21Speaker 00

  I was actually super attacked in the press, like, and I felt it. And the reviews were absolutely scathing. And it sent me into this dark, dark depression for the second time.

• 34:36Speaker 00

  And we did that show, which was failure. And then the second show was this other person who was a dramaturg, wanted to do their show and this other writer. And it was kind of a mess. And the third show, the final show, I went, well, I'm gonna 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, the sort of immigrant plotline. And we went to this festival eighty eight. 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 Ballers Dance Hall,

• 35:21Speaker 00

  whereby everyone had to go and learn to dance if you've got a ticket. And we recreated nineteen forty five 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 Ballroom and offered me my own opera company to do an experimental opera. Like 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. Yeah. We'd like to buy the rights of your play Strictly Ballroom and make a film. I said, well, now I'm gonna make a movie of it.

• 36:05Speaker 00

  And they went away and he came and said, hmm, okay, you can do it. And I never stopped. Wow. And I learnt from that. Again, my instincts has always been, it's not, are they my friends? It's that am I having a conversation with someone and there's more to have? Hmm. And I don't really read CVs a bit, but I really go, is there more to a conversation? And that means I can really work with someone. And with Siam, for example, or Craig, or anyone I've worked with for a long time. Wife. Yeah, my wife Catherine, Anna, called Siam. She came in, I was looking for someone to work as a designer in that company. She had this other partner she worked with that went back to my drama school.

• 36:48Speaker 00

  And she came to this place I lived at by the brothel, King's Cross. And I had like two sticks of furniture and I had to get offer a croissant. And um, we started talking about Bertold Brecht and Madonna and it was supposed to be an hour and the conversation went on for three hours or something. And we're still having a conversation today. That's how I realised that this whole idea that

• 37:14Speaker 00

  You are, I just judge, it's not me.

• 37:16Elizabeth Day?

  Mm.

• 37:17Speaker 00

  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?

• 37:28Elizabeth Day?

  People have a weird fascination with your marriage.

• 37:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 37:32Elizabeth Day?

  Does it annoy you? The fascination, I mean.

• 37:34Speaker 00

  Well, I can understand it. I mean, my stuff is really camp and our relationship is, well, camp in one regard, like I, 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, 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.

• 38:19Elizabeth Day?

  What kind of jokes?

• 38:20Speaker 00

  Oh, you know. I mean, they just kind of mock me a lot and it gets me very grounded. Sometimes they call me rude Paul. I mean, I don't know, like in a fun way.

• 38:32Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 38:32Speaker 00

  But we, we are this absolutely real relationship, but we also have our commitment to each other, which is, I think, what real marriages are, which is they're contracts with each other that you know are good for each other. And there are things you can change and things you can't. But weddings are actually advertisements to everybody else that you're together.

• 39:00Elizabeth Day?

  Mm.

• 39:00Speaker 00

  You know? 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. 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?

• 39:35Elizabeth Day?

  One of my favorite pieces of Baz Luhrmann footage is actually a TikTok video.

• 39:42Elizabeth Day?

  You know where I'm going with this.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  I do.

• 39:43Elizabeth Day?

  It was, it was just casually iconic.

• 39:46Speaker 00

  It was really funny.

• 39:47Elizabeth Day?

  It was so funny. Yeah. Did you, have you, what happened?

• 39:50Speaker 00

  What happened? I was taking the kids. It was Mardi Gras and we always go, always take the kids. And we were buying ice cream, actually, in Newtown. And I turned around and this kid, she was sort of being kind of cheeky, asking me questions. And I was like, I wasn't gonna go. And it became pretty clear that she had no idea who it was. So she was asking pretty straight up questions and I just gave my honest answers.

• 40:16Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 40:17Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I think what happens is she goes home and someone says, you know, that's Baz Luhrmann. And she didn't know. So I don't know. I, I thought it was kind of fun and charming.

• 40:29Elizabeth Day?

  Well, I loved your response because it just shows how open hearted you are to the world.

• 40:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:34Elizabeth Day?

  And actually, it's a lesson to every interviewer to just ask the direct questions. It was brilliant.

• 40:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:39Elizabeth Day?

  Um, final question on this failure. Did it teach you how to deal with criticism?

• 40:44Speaker 00

  Yes. I mean, well, when you first get rea-, yes, it did. I mean, when you first get really criticised publicly, you actually think that everybody in the street is pointing you and going like, there he is, that terrible, he's the one. 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. 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.

• 41:24Speaker 00

  But what you learn to do is understand that they've got a job and they're, you know, they're, um.

• 41:32Speaker 00

  Criticizing and some criticism is really, really good and some I go like, you know, 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, and you, and you feel really compelled to sort of explain yourself completely like it's your, your 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, you know, they, they've got editors and editors know that, you know, a headline is gonna get clicked by it or whatever. But I just don't take it, I've got this little mantra, which is, you know, focused, simple,

• 42:16Speaker 00

  um, simple, focused, humble, and it's not that deep.

• 42:19Elizabeth Day?

  Um, your final failure, I'm so happy we're going to talk about one of my favorite films of all time, Strictly Boredom. But as you say to me, it wasn't a failure, it was a success, but you never realized its full potential.

• 42:31Speaker 00

  Well, I'm actually talking about there, the stage version.

• 42:35Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, okay. Well, can we talk about the movie afterwards?

• 42:37Speaker 00

  No, no, well, the movie was a whole journey and actually, great dramas because we finally, no one wants it, we finally get the money, 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, my husband knew talent. And even though the family's saying, we're in the music business, no, she funds it. When we screened Strictly Boredom, the one cinema we have cancelled, says it's the worst film they've ever seen. I go up the coast, think, well, this film thing's not gonna work out because they say it's too theatrical.

• 43:14Speaker 00

  And, um, and they also say the woman playing, um, the, 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 Rissien from the Gen Film Festival, I just saw your film Strictly Boredom, I'm gonna offer you a 12 o'clock screening. We go, rest is history, it's, it still has the, um, record for the most around 1,024 hours and off we go. And I remember a security guy grabs me, because the crowd gets ready, he says, monsieur, from this moment on, your life will never be the same again. He was kind of right. But years later, years and years later, um, I do this relationship with Carm and Pavlovich, who's a great theatre person to do.

• 43:58Speaker 00

  And we're gonna do Strictly Ballroom, Moulin Rouge. So I think I'll do the Strictly Ballroom, because, you know, it's a way of being back in Australia, la, la, la. And I was very distracted and I couldn't get there. And it's not like the play was a complete failure. I just know that I, I was, 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 realised 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 realised that's not the right thing. So the next time with Moulin Rouge, I was sitting at a dinner party at a friend of mine's in New York.

• 44:40Speaker 00

  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 him, hey, would you like to do Moulin Rouge? And he went, you're kidding? Now, I'm so glad he did it, the theatre show, because he went, I did, I would turn up and see runs and give some notes. But I was more like Uncle Baz. And he would, he did things in like with 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. 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.

• 45:25Speaker 00

  Because that's like Shakespeare, you know, you take Shakespeare and you re-code it and rediscover it for a certain time and a certain place, you know?

• 45:32Elizabeth Day?

  There's this forward momentum, but also this sort of presentee-ism in you.

• 45:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, I agree with that.

• 45:37Elizabeth Day?

  You're fully present.

• 45:38Speaker 00

  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.

• 45:45Elizabeth Day?

  Say that again?

• 45:46Speaker 00

  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 because of... You know, early on, I realised there must be nothing you could date in it. Or even Strictly Borum, it's kind of vaguely nineties. 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.

• 46:23Elizabeth Day?

  Funny thing. Although you don't look at you're in your sixties now, I think.

• 46:28Speaker 00

  Well, I've got, I've got sunglasses on, I'm holding my bags.

• 46:31Elizabeth Day?

  No, you've got excellent skin.

• 46:32Speaker 00

  Oh, well, thanks.

• 46:34Elizabeth Day?

  You, you don't make films quickly because they are these beautiful collaborative processes.

• 46:39Speaker 00

  Well, I really live them. Once I go inside the world, I live them.

• 46:44Elizabeth Day?

  Have you thought about how many films you have left to make?

• 46:47Speaker 00

  There's been a lot of talk about that. Sam's been saying, look, he's only got like, she said ten and I think Skyler said kidding, three at the most. I keep thinking, I've got one couturier, like, 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, and there's many, many, many, many. 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 seventeen year old, you know, dark world where

• 47:29Speaker 00

  she says, we've got to peel this world away from the nobly old hands of these old men. I mean, could there be, 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.

• 47:56Elizabeth Day?

  Jeanne Dark, that's your next film. I can't wait. A very superficial question, but one that I've always wondered about. You know that our version of Dancing with the Stars is called Strictly Come Dancing?

• 48:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:07Elizabeth Day?

  Did they ever give you royalties for the title?

• 48:09Speaker 00

  No, what happened 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. So she came up with this idea, Dancing with the Stars, come Strictly, Strictly Come Dancing. And it's a great success and only kind of helps the, so once actually, when I was doing the Blu-ray of Strictly Ballroom, you know the, the older gen, who was the judge?

• 48:31Elizabeth Day?

  Yes, Len Goodman.

• 48:33Speaker 00

  There's an American version called Dancing with the Stars.

• 48:35Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 48:35Speaker 00

  And I went on that to promote the Blu-ray, took his gig for Adap. 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, you, your cha-cha sucks, you know? It's not me. So I was terrible.

• 48:57Elizabeth Day?

  Um, 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?

• 49:11Speaker 00

  If one, 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, or a movie or Apocalypse Now as I got older or whatever it was, discovering Bergman and constantly opening my mind to all sorts of creativity, 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,

• 49:54Speaker 00

  or even if it's just escaping 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. 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.

• 50:30Elizabeth Day?

  Baz Luhrmann, thank you so much for coming on How to Fail.

• 50:34Speaker 00

  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.

• 50:40Elizabeth Day?

  Thank you so much. That's the ultimate compliment.

• 50:42Speaker 00

  Do I have to pay you for my therapy?

• 50:44Elizabeth Day?

  No, you've paid me already in the culture you've produced. Thank you so much.

• 50:48Speaker 00

  No, it was beautiful.

• 50:51Elizabeth Day?

  Please do follow How to Fail to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcasts, 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.