Baz Luhrmann, director

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 25 December 2022

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Baz Luhrmann is an Australian director whose debut film, Strictly Ballroom, became one of Australia’s most successful releases, and also inspired the title of the BBC’s popular Saturday night dance show. He went on to direct Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge!, the Great Gatsby and, more recently, Elvis starring Tom Hanks and Austin Butler. Baz was born Mark Andrew Luhrmann in 1962. His friends nicknamed him Baz after the puppet Basil Brush because of his unruly hair. When he was five the family moved to Herons Creek, a remote settlement in New South Wales. Several years later Baz started ballroom dancing after he picked up a leaflet advertising classes while travelling on a bus. At drama school in Sydney he devised a play called Strictly Ballroom with his fellow students and later wrote a screenplay with his school friend Craig Pearce. The film was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 1992 where it received a rapturous response and went on to win eight Australian Film Institute awards and three BAFTAs. Baz’s most recent film, Elvis, tells the life of Elvis Presley from the perspective of his infamous manager Colonel Tom Parker, played by Tom Hanks. The film has been a commercial success – making almost $300 million around the world to date. In addition to making feature films Baz has directed theatre and opera productions. He lives mainly in New York with his wife and frequent collaborator, the production designer Catherine Martin, and their two children. DISC ONE: Changes by David Bowie DISC TWO: One by John Farnham DISC THREE: Spanish Flea by Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass DISC FOUR: Suspicious Minds by Elvis Presley DISC FIVE: Puccini: La Boheme / Act 1 - 'Che gelida manina' by Luciano Pavarotti DISC SIX: Unfinished Sympathy by Massive Attack DISC SEVEN: Lady Marmalade by Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, MYA, Pink DISC EIGHT: No Church in the Wild by JAY Z, Kanye West, Frank Ocean, The-Dream BOOK CHOICE: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy LUXURY ITEM: A silk eye mask CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Puccini: La Boheme / Act 1 - 'Che gelida manina' by Luciano Pavarotti Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Paula McGinley

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts
0:04.9	Hello, I'm Lauren LeVern and this is the Deser Island Disks Podcast.
0:08.6	Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them
0:13.9	if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:16.5	And for right reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast.
0:21.2	I hope you enjoy listening.
0:45.0	My cast away this week is the director, Baz Lerman.
0:47.9	He describes his films as an emotional banquet, spectacle theatre and big bold ideas
0:53.7	are his calling card, but he developed his outsize aesthetic appetite somewhere very small,
0:59.6	a town called Heron's Creek, 200 miles north of Sydney.
1:03.6	Growing up there, his family ran numerous enterprises, including the local cinema
1:07.9	and in a bid to counter their rural isolation, his father encouraged bars and siblings to
1:12.9	sign up for every activity going, scuba diving, painting, commando training and ballroom dancing.
1:19.2	The vicissitude scene counted in that competitive world inspired his debut film,
1:24.0	Strickly Ballroom. The local movie industry was skeptical, but it turned into one of the most
1:28.7	successful Australian films ever. He is, he says, obsessed with giving misunderstood or
1:34.8	moribund concepts a new life. Strickly made ballroom dancing cool.
1:39.1	He followed it up by taking Shakespeare to the top of the American box office chart with Romeo
1:43.4	and Juliet and reviving the fortunes of the big screen musical with Mulan Rouge.
1:48.4	He saw his home country with fresh eyes in Australia and brought jazz age excess to the great
1:53.8	Gatsby. More recently, he reassessed an American icon, Elvis, for a new generation.
2:00.4	As for his motivation, he says, I'm from the planet audience. I'm far away,
	...

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