Tim Johnson
Until now, it has been Baz Luhrmann’s untold story. The Australian film directing phenomenon known for his large, theatrical cinematic experiences like ”Moulin Rouge,” ”Romeo + Juliet” and ”Strictly Ballroom,” the latter of which spawned his life as a filmmaker almost twenty years ago, is just now explaining how his film career almost ended before it had even begun.
Luhrmann’s ”Strictly Ballroom” is the story of Australian ballroom dancer, Scott Hastings (Paul Mecurio) and his battle with the Ballroom Confederation to break away from the sport’s traditional steps, but finds the only person who truly believes in him, is the most unlikely of partners – the Cinderella-like, Fran (Tara Morice).
For many, it may come as a surprise just how the film came about for creator and director Baz Luhrmann, who himself was a ballroom dancer. Luhrmann explains the film’s conception on a fascinating new documentary featuring on the Special Edition DVD release of ”Strictly Ballroom.” Moviehole’s Tim Johnson spoke exclusively with Luhrmann, who is currently in Australia working on the stage adaptation of the film, where he talked about the long struggle to get the film financed and which rock band ended up funding the film.
While Luhrmann’s success may appear like a fairytale from one of his films, the reality of his breaking into the film industry is far from fairytale and one he has talked little about. “That’s a chapter of that story that I’ve never really had to, or talked about,” he says. He goes on to say one of the toughest struggles he encountered in getting the film financed, was almost all were interested in a less riskier, more ‘Dirty Dancing’ Hollywood approach to the film. “The pressure was extreme and at the time. To resist that, to finally find a way back to a cinematic language that was for arguments sake, you call it theatrical, it’s actually kind of Old Hollywood – that was a really big and long term fight. Though Luhrmann recalls it was the government film body that had the most surprising request at the time. “The film financing board in Australia was insistent that there be an American character. That somehow we cast an American in one of the roles.”
As a first time director, and certainly the first time he had gone about pitching a screenplay to investors, Luhrmann went to extreme measures to get ”Strictly Ballroom” off the ground. “If you look in that documentary, you’ll see there’s a comic in there, momentarily. And we drew up that comic as part of the process to convince financiers to do this film … I might have spent six months on that. I mean, on that level … pushing for what was the beginnings of what was the red curtain language that became utilized in those three films (”Strictly Ballroom,” ”Romeo + Juliet” and ”Moulin Rouge”), like really going down that road – it really wasn’t like financing bodies were going, ‘Now that is a really fresh, different way of going!’ They were going, ‘but this doesn’t feel like Dirty Dancing.’”
Despite endless closed doors on the project, Luhrmann was unwilling to budge on what would become his trademark style. “I was really aware at the time that if you deal with something that is a heavy … if you want a broader audience to deal with it… and you clash it with fun; the clash of those two allow the greater audience into it. So it was an experiment with that,” Luhrmann explains.
With financing organizations unwilling to commit any money to the film, Luhrmann explains, “It was Ted Albert who owned a music company, (so) AC/DC really financed this – they were his band. He just said, ‘No, I get it. I get exactly what you’re doing, we’re going to stick by this.’”
Though an unknown and inexperienced director, Luhrmann explains once he got on set, he felt completely sure about his creative decisions. “It’s a funny irony that there’s probably more bluffing as one goes on, than you do when you first start out … Because in that film (Ballroom), I had prepped it so much, it was so alive in my mind.” Luhrmann gives the example of choosing to use extreme close ups. “Literally the experienced crew were going, ‘the guy knows nothing about cinema, he’s doing all these crazy, extreme close ups. They’ll never play on screen.’”
Decades later, and perhaps hinting to his last film ”Australia,” which despite earning over $200 million worldwide, didn’t receive the mass critical praise of his previous films, Luhrmann says that big budgets and fame may have misguided him at times. “Maybe you don’t have to fight as many healthy battles, and (they’re) not such a bad thing … You know, the problem when films get bigger and bigger is that you end up spending so much time fighting on too many fronts … the politics of casting and location and so on and so forth. It’s always a learning curve and I only think in terms of my own creative education. I just think I’ve just got going. I really feel like I’m in primary school.”
The Special Edition DVD of ”Strictly Ballroom” is available now.
