How to make an entrance, Baz-style...

On a recent Saturday afternoon at the Hollywood Dance Center in sunny Los Angeles, filmmaker Baz Luhrmann accomplished what should have been the impossible - leave a gaggle of 30 or so jaded media journalists completely enraptured. With James and Jaana Kunitz, two of the country's best ballroom dancers in tow, Luhrmann transformed what should have been the media's private circus - snap the Oscar hopeful and his dancing duo to promote the upcoming DVD release of Strictly Ballroom - into Baz's own Cirque du Soleil.

With the frustrating habit of appearing both casual and dapper when others would just look disheveled and frumpy, Luhrmann disarms with his charm. But now, his famed "Red Curtain Trilogy" is drawing to a close - that's Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet and, of course, Moulin Rouge! - so what's he going to do for an encore? After fighting with the several other hungry journalists, all falling over themselves to get their turn at Luhrmann (and having been to a number of these events, trust me, this is not something you ordinarily see), even the controversial auteur's detractors may be in for a surprise...

While I still can't say I'm completely won over by Luhrmann's hyperkinetic visual style - just try to take in all the detail in the first 30 minutes or so of Moulin Rouge!, without blinking - he's so witty and intelligent that he's impossible to dislike. I many not have left entirely a fan of his work, but I did leave entirely a fan of Baz Luhrmann.

Moulin Rouge! is the end of your "Red Curtain Trilogy." Was that something you set out to do when you started Strictly Ballroom?

It wasn't when I began. I didn't go, "Now, I'm going to begin the Red Curtain Trilogy!!!" (laughs) What happened was, I created Strictly Ballroom as a play, which was an interest of mine in universal storytelling. To set simple myths in heightened creative worlds. Then I went to write the screenplay for my first film, and I take this very heightened, expressive play that is a metaphor about oppression - and the side story is, we took the play to Czechoslovakia to a festival before the wall had come down, and it was a huge success and won all these awards. And the Bulgarians and all those repressed Europeans ran on the stage, going "Bravo! Strictly Ballroom!" And they knew something about the all-powerful Federation, let me tell you!

Anyway, the metaphor was understood very well, and when I went to write the screenplay, we first did a naturalistic version first. I did it with Andrew Bovell, who just did Lantana. And it was a very solid script, and was set in a steel mill. There were union issues, and the final scene I can remember to this day was a walkout at the factory. It wasn't enough to denigrate Dirty Dancing, but it had become just a naturalistic film and lost the metaphor, the double meaning. The ability to play to a child and an adult.

So, what to do? We reached back to the musicals I loved in the 30s and 40s, and the expressionistic style and cinematic language of which Citizen Kane is made of. Of which The Red Shoes is made of. We embraced that in the screenplay and the development of what became Strictly Ballroom. And as with all my films, a lot of critical scuffle. Some love, some hate. "He's destroying cinema, let's kill him." Blah blah blah. (laughs)

Then, after Strictly Ballroom, we went off to India to work on A Midsummer Night's Dream, which was an opera based on, of course, the Shakespearean play. And one night, we saw a big poster for a Bollywood movie - 2,000 audience members, high comedy, high tragedy. Brother kills brother, break out into song, big musical numbers, all jumbled up together, and it goes on for four hours. So we're in the middle of India, going "Wow, that was amazing!"

So, the question was, could we create a cinematic form like that? Could a musical work in Western culture, and it had to be comic and tragic. It was a commitment to move towards Moulin Rouge!, and I decided I would Romeo + Juliet and then a musical form. And that was the rest of the the ten year journey, of which Moulin Rouge! is the end of that.

And I'm here now talking about it because I've finished the three DVDs, the soundtrack albums are coming out, and I'll do everything I can to help identify the good work of everyone involved. And then that's the end of ten years. I began when I was 30, and I'm finishing as I'm turning 40. (smiles)

Watching Strictly Ballroom now with the Olympics just since passed, why is it that ballroom dancing does have sort of a stigma, but yet we accept the same sort of "quirks" in the world of ice skating?

I totally agree with you. Whenever art meets sport, it's like the awards season. It's like Crouching Tiger versus Traffic last year. Two great films, which is the best? Whichever one is the fastest? It's like two great ice skating routines. We might love one star, but the other is also extraordinary. And it's not like a foot race, where you can look at the photograph and go, "Yep, his nose is in front." So I think when sports and arts mix, you're on dangerous ground.

How did you expect the film to be received, and how does that compare to the way it was received? Was there any indication of getting the Golden Globe, and now moving into the Oscars?

Everything I've made on my ten-year journey has gotten exactly the same reaction and followed exactly the same pattern. There was always this great critical passion for, and passion against. And then what happens, it opens in a not-very spectacular way, and then goes around the globe, gathers momentum, and eventually takes on this very committed audience. The audience will discover it. Same thing with Romeo + Juliet. When it opened, some people said, "Burn the negative!" Then it went on to win many British Academy Awards, against many rather outstanding films. It was accepted in England, the land of Shakespeare, and was eventually rediscovered. Same thing now with Moulin Rouge!

I make no judgments, and that makes sense to me. I'm dealing in a language that most of naturalism, most of what we consider the common vernacular for modern cinema, is rejecting. And I've reinvented that. In terms of Golden Globes, in terms of the Academy Awards, my single mission is to find a way to make musical cinema work again for this time and this place. (Awards) are not so much a vindication - although you feel good - but, if I feel I'm off the hook, it's not for me. I'm used to being ridiculed, to burning, but I take a lot of people with me who are not good with that, who risk their careers, their efforts and their time. And I don't feel like I'm off the hook until every person I can possibly get to see the work has seen it.

When they're acknowledged like that, when Nicole won the Golden Globe, I was like, "Yes!" Because I know what she went through, I knew what a test it was, and I heard one of the greatest actors in the world say she plays comedy, she plays tragedy, she sings, she dances, she pulled it off. That is an incredible test, and that is an unbelievable achievement. And that's why I'm out campaigning. Because we don't have the same bucks some of the others out there do, so I'm here to articulate the film. Not to stump for it, but just to please make sure you go and see it. Because I'm an Academy voter, and even I don't see all the films...