Baz Luhrmann wouldn’t change a thing (Picture: Neil Mockford/FilmMagic)
Filmmaker Baz Luhrmann has recalled his ‘most fraught’ experience on set to date and how it almost ‘killed’ him.
The 60-year-old director faced a whole raft of challenges while working on 2008 adventure epic Australia, having to deal with everything from torrential rain to equine flu while he was living back Down Under.
He told Deadline: ‘I was really living it, living in north Australia and working with some of our country’s great writers, like Richard Flanagan, learning about the stolen generation.
‘As a filmmaking experience, it was by far the most fraught. We were hit by equine flu. I went to the desert to shoot, and it rained for the first time in 150 years, so I had a grass-covered desert.
‘It nearly killed me, but I wouldn’t give a day of it up at all. Looking at it now, it’s probably the only thing I’ve done where there’s no confetti or fireworks. Actually, there might be, but if there’s no fireworks, there’s definitely a big rainstorm.’
Baz admitted the movie ‘didn’t really open in America’ despite the effort that went into the film, but it remains his top project in parts of Europe.
Australia starred Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman (Picture: 20th Century Fox/Bazmark Films/Kobal/Shutterstock)
Romeo + Juliet, starring Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio, was also challenging (Picture: Merrick Morton/20th Century Fox/Kobal/Shutterstock)
‘It’s the only film I’ve had that didn’t really open in America. Everything else has played there, but it’s the biggest film I’ve ever had in Europe, and it still is,’ he said.
‘It’s still my number one movie in France and Spain, and I’m still not sure why. I was in Paris a couple days ago. They really lean into Australia, and they talk about it like it’s this masterful epic.
‘I’m like, “Hey, isn’t it the loathed child?” But it’s the number two highest grossing Australian film of all time, so somebody saw it.’
Baz also reflected on his work on 1996’s Romeo + Juliet, which saw him filming ‘in Mexico with 19-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio and a young Claire Danes’ and was full of huge challenges.
‘One day someone should make a movie about the making of that film. I mean, we had our own army. We had things like our hair and makeup person being kidnapped, and us getting him back for $2,000. (Or was it $200?),’ he said.
‘Take the church scene where the helicopter attacks Leo. It was a real helicopter shooting at him, and it blew out all the windows in the local neighborhood. We shouldn’t have been there. And it was a totally real church.’
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