The Business of Baz

“It takes a certain audacity for an Australian director to make a film about an American idol. Then along comes Baz Luhrmann.” (Good Weekend, Sydney Morning Herald).

Baz Luhrmann is a master storyteller, award-winning filmmaker and a pioneer of pop culture who delights audiences with his signature blend of fantasy, romance and theatrics. He is a risk-taker and innovator who fuses high and low culture and happily skips across film, opera, theatre, music and even hotel design. Come and hear from this creative visionary about his latest, the hugely ambitious film, ELVIS, and how he and his Australian collaborators, production/costume designer and producer Catherine Martin and screenwriter Craig Pearce have captured imaginations around the world.

There’s the whirlwind of awards, parties, superstar friends and fans, Met Gala glamour. Then, there are machinations in overdrive backstage. Glimpse behind the scenes to discover what fuels Baz’s visionary drive.  In his chat with Marc Fennell, Baz takes you back to his small town NSW childhood where the off-kilter dynamic between a Navy diver father and ballroom dance instructor mother seeded a boy with a rare combination of a vivid imagination, supreme confidence, and the leadership qualities to muster anyone who’d listen to his latest flight of fancy.

It’s a combo that has rocketed him from Narrabeen High School on Sydney’s surf-oriented Northern Beaches to the uppermost echelons of Hollywood. All via NIDA, opera, and independent Aussie filmmaking.

With credits ramping steeply from the indie Strictly Ballroom (1992) through cult triumph Romeo + Juliet (1996), Academy Award-winning Moulin Rouge!, sweeping epic Australia, American classic reborn The Great Gatsby (2013) to the June 2022 release of maximalist extravaganza Elvis, Baz clearly has the ability to charm powerbrokers and tease open their purse strings.

Yet, Baz’s not-so-subtle art of persuasion only opens the doors. It takes singular vision, relentless drive, and pure passion to see each project to flamboyant fruition – often despite critical contempt and a plague of self-doubt. It’s a heady mix – Get inside the mind of the maestro with this Vivid Ideas Global Storyteller before he announces, “Ladies and Gentlemen, Elvis is in the building”!