By Erik Bauer.
Baz Luhrmann
He is well known for recent box office success with The Great Gatsby, and before that, Moulin Rouge. But Baz Luhrmann’s first two films, Strictly Ballroom and William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, blasted a path from the remote outpost of Sydney, Australia, all the way to the heart of Hollywood. Growing up on a pig farm in New South Wales, Luhrmann went on to attend the prestigious Australian National Institute of Dramatic Arts. His debut film Strictly Ballroom, initially written and directed by Luhrmann as a thirty-minute play, was produced as a feature film on a meager $2.6 million budget, but grossed more than $80 million world-wide and won the Prix de Jeunesse at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival. In the wake of this startling debut, Luhrmann and his company of collaborators took on an eclectic group of projects: mounting the productions of several classic and original operas in Australia, including Puccini’s La Boheme and Benjamin Britten’s operatic version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream; producing the signature issue of Australian Vogue; and orchestrating the re-election campaign of Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating. Luhrmann told me, “We do a lot of varied things, but it’s all about telling a story.”
His second feature film script, William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, co-written with Craig Pearce, successfully married Shakespearean verse to modern design, music, and MTV-style filmmaking. A hard core modernist version of Shakespeare’s classic tale, Romeo & Juliet remained quite faithful to the original text. Luhrmann felt Shakespeare “had an amazing genius for capturing who we are and revealing it to us. My job is just to re-reveal it.” In opening up that story for a new generation, Luhrmann used a number of innovative narrative and visual strategies.
Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo in Romeo + Juliet
Of all the projects you could have made after the success of Strictly Ballroom, why did you adapt Romeo & Juliet?
I was in a deal with Fox to make another film, and Romeo & Juliet was on a list of a hundred things I wanted to do in the cinema. I’d always thought about doing a kind of funky Shakespeare, telling a Shakespearean story the way Shakespeare would have presented the material when he was at the Globe Theater. For all our love and our respect for the Shakespeares that have been done, the way we view Shakespeare, not just in cinema but also in the theater, tends to be really informed by a whole tradition out of the ninteenth century. So it’s not an Elizabethan notion at all. I wanted to step away from that and back towards the way Shakespeare had originally presented his story.
When we went to Twentieth Century-Fox with it, under the terms of my first-look deal, I think rather than let me go, they sort of said, “We’ll give him $100,000, let him do his little workshop and maybe it’ll go away.” Well it did not. I was able to get Leonardo DiCaprio down to Australia before he was quite well known, and he worked with us there for several weeks. We evolved the workshop, but no one believed in it at all. In fact, it was extraordinarily hard to get the film made at a major studio. But we videotaped the workshop and when they saw the young lads running around in Latin costumes and suits they finally got it–“It’s kind of about gangs.” What I really wanted to do is get Shakespeare on film inspired by the way Shakespeare dealt with his own material. That’s really how we came to do it.
William Shakespeare
Regarding his choice of projects Luhrmann has said, “To thumbnail it, we are not for hire and we choose projects based upon what our life needs.” He also provides good advice for aspiring and established screenwriters when he reminds us to enjoy our writing itself, not just the triumph of a sale. “You can’t live for opening night alone; the journey there has got to be great, too.”
If Shakespeare was a contemporary filmmaker, what kinds of movies do you think he’d be making?
You can’t answer that with any degree of certainty. But what you can do, and what we did, is spend a good year-and-a-half going back and doing a completely fresh research journey about Shakespeare. What you can scientifically look at is the world in which he wrote these plays, and the fact that he was an actor in a company that was basically going broke. So he had to pack the house, a sort of 3,000-foot theater, with everybody from the street sweeper to the Queen of England, in the middle of the day, every day. You know, he just stole stories lock, stock, and barrel. Whatever was popular. He stole Romeo and Juliet — it was the popular Italian novella at the time. He just stole it — adapted it virtually in a few days. And the thing about it is, even then people were writing about how bad this nobody poet ripped off these great works of art and put them in his trashy theater. The undeniable fact about Shakespeare was that he wrote non-stop, and he was a hardcore entertainer through his stories. Nonetheless, one of his greatest assets was an incredibly resonant, clever use of language, but it was just an asset to him. His writing also had incredible spectacle, sword fighting, energy, comedy, and bawdy scenes. So these were the colors in his palette that he used to attack, to absolutely embrace and engage his audience, remembering that they’re all selling pigs and goats and ninety percent of them are completely drunk. I mean, the savagery of his storytelling and the absolute intensity of his devices are something that is scientifically existent in the text.
So I guess to answer your question very simply, what kinds of films would he make? We can’t be too accurate, but he would absolutely be over the moon, beating Sylvester Stallone at the box office opening weekend. Because packing the house was the primary and foremost concern for him.
Now, looking back specifically at Romeo & Juliet, what is it about the myth of that union that appeals to modern audiences?
Well, it has always appealed to audiences. You know there is an essential collection of primary mythologies that we always relate to: the individual against incredible odds, overcoming oppression, the ugly duckling structure, or the transformation structure where you reveal that which you are, not that which you want to be. Romeo & Juliet is the impossible love structure, and that structure is very primary. I mean, Hollywood does it every year, probably ten times, in different ways, whether it’s…you know, I was thinking about the Tarantino-Tony Scott film…
Christian Slater as Clarence Worley and Patricia Arquette as Alabama Whitman in True Romance
True Romance.
True Romance. That’s an example. That’s a very pop version of the myth. In a sense, it’s reconstructed. But what you’ve got is…we’ve all at some point understood the notion of having a youthful, out of control, drug-like love, with someone or something. And someone or something has stood in the way of that being a reality. Now if you’re really young, and you’re inexperienced, you’re likely to expend your life in achieving the next hit of that drug, the next hit of that person, no matter what the odds. Particularly if you have to go underground, if you’ve got to hide that love.
When you’re fifteen, you’re likely to do something stupid. You know? Most of us survive that and we grow up and we understand that love is really like a dangerous sports car that you’ve got to learn to drive, otherwise you end up going over the edge of the road on it. And I think those of us that survive look back upon that story with a kind of warm nostalgia. We think, “Oh yeah, I remember that.” That’s part of the appeal. It’s not that a modern audience particularly relates to it. It’s the task of the modern storyteller to reveal that myth anew or afresh. The stories don’t change. It’s about finding a language, whether that be cinematic or theatrical, that can communicate it.
How did you approach finding a modern style appropriate for this classic work?
Well, I guess the question is “appropriate.” Everything we did was about being inspired by Shakespeare. So, for example, the use of pop songs–Shakespeare used pop music in his productions. He would just stick the popular song of the day into the middle of the show. You know, to advance the story, but also to engage people through song. We followed the idea that Shakespeare was really a pop storyteller, that he was absolutely not pressured. So, “appropriate” sort of went out the door for us. Because if you are guided by what a bunch of academics tell you is appropriate, or by some critic whose favorite production was the John Geilgud from 1936, then all you’re doing is being guided by an old fashion. So the appropriate manner, the appropriate thing to do, was to go into a really intense research, and as much as possible, address the material in the way in which the author addressed it and also in the environment in which Shakespeare wrote it.
Leonardo DiCaprio, and Claire Danes as Juliet
One thing that Craig Pearce has said about your adaptation was you sought to keep as many of the Elizabethan customs as possible.
In a modern context, yeah.
Exactly. Why was that important?
We went down many roads. We looked at a direct adaptation, just translating it into the modern world. But then you get in a situation like My Own Private Idaho where you’re saying “What’s going on here?” The problem is, a bit like a musical–the filmmakers don’t have a strong enough contract with the audience. The audience needs a contract about the world in which you’re playing to understand the story and translate the language, mores, and customs. So we did a fairly scientific job of creating a fantasy world, which was based on the Elizabethan world: a very small number of rich people, a huge percentage of poor people, a world where young people are armed, and the kind of gun you have, the kind of gun-fighting you do, says something about who you are. As it ended up, the world looked a bit like a hybrid of Miami and Brazil. So why did we do that? Because we wanted to be socially accurate in terms of the world in which the story was playing, but we wanted people to have a direct understanding of it, so they didn’t have to decode what it meant to have a large floppy hat skewed to the left of your head, or what a particular type of gesture meant. It was really motivated by the need to reveal and clarify the world for the audience.
Harold Perrineau as Mercutio
How did you approach bringing the characters to modern life? Specifically, the character of Mercutio?
Everything you do in the theater is an interpretation. Everything is text based. First, there’s no question that Mercutio’s in love with Romeo, which does not mean he’s gay in an “out” kind of way. But he’s definitely jealous of Romeo’s love for Juliet. Second, he’s a flash of lightning character whose energy is going to get him killed. So when they go to the costume party, he’s the one who’s going in a dress, and he was so incredibly flamboyant, so much fun. Why this person tends to be such great fun is he hasn’t yet come to terms with his sexuality. Whenever you produce Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio is a non-stop show. Now whether you set a production in the Elizabethan period or in the kind of quasi-Elizabethan period of the Zeffirelli version, when Mercutio dies, Romeo is upset like he loses two lovers. I’m not suggesting they are necessarily having sex, but is there love between those two boys? Absolutely. No question about it. And the Elizabethan world certainly understood the notion of a homosexual relation or a bisexual relationship or any kind of sexual relationship. It is absolutely present. So, it’s not about translating Mercutio into a modern character. He’s not a modern character. He’s a character in the play. In the film he has a modern image. I don’t believe that there really are “modern characters.”
That’s interesting. You know, you’ve also said you associated the characters in Romeo & Juliet with twentieth century icons as a way of freeing the language that they use.
Let me clarify that. In the production we identified different icons and made veiled associations so you have a way of decoding the story really quickly. We’re giving you a kind of storytelling shorthand so that some young student from the Bronx goes, “Yeah, okay. I get it.” Like they see the sort of haircut–I mean, Romeo is a bit James Dean-like. He’s a bit Kurt Cobain-like. They say, “Oh I understand. That’s a young man who’s so in love with the idea of being in love that he’s a bit reckless and out of control and he’s very cool and he’s very self-obsessed, and he’s rebelling but he doesn’t know what he’s rebelling against. He’s anti his parents’ choices but he hasn’t yet worked out his own. Yeah I know who that is.” Subconsciously they’re identifying who that person is.
Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin
One thing that really interests me about you and your collaborators is how you work together as a team. I was wondering, how does that function in the writing of the screenplay? Say for Romeo + Juliet?
Well, there is a very specific process where I generate the ideas. I mean, I’m the team captain. Actually, I’m about to go away now on what we call “a mad raving,” which is a period where I go away for a month and I sort of sit around with my silly ideas and I look in my file and say what do I need, to actually create and sustain me for a year-and-a-half? And then I generally go to my immediate team collaborator, Catherine Martin. There are many people who are collaborative team members I either do or don’t work with. I’ve tended to work on screenplays with Craig Pearce, but if I’m doing an opera I might work with Felix Meagher, who is my kind of musical director. In this case, after deciding with Catherine Martin and my team where we wanted to go, I engaged Craig Pearce and we went on a very long, methodical journey of structuring and research. At the same time, and this is unusual, I engaged Catherine Martin, who is a production designer, to work with us. So the design and the music developed simultaneously with the script.
Do you find that approach more worthwhile than starting from the story and then working the other way?
The reason I personally do this, because it’s damn exhausting and painful, is the adventure of entering into another life. You take a year actually going on this quest to really fill your blood with the story and understand, and to be so absolutely a part of it, and be so absolutely absorbed in it, that you are completely and utterly possessed by the storytelling. So that when you come to do it, I mean, whatever went wrong on the shooting of Romeo + Juliet, if someone said to me “blah, blah, blah, blah, blah” it certainly was not without a clear opinion. Because I felt that we’d already lived the movie. We were just making it now, you know.
I really want to talk to you about the structure of Romeo & Juliet. It starts with a bang and then slows down. How did you structure the pacing of the film?
Well, again, it is actually based on the Elizabethan structure. I mean, it’s very traditional for the show to open with a big fight. Then two guys come along and do a comedy routine. Stand-up was the lowest form of comedy, but two very well known stand-up comics came onto the stage of the Globe and said, “Hello, hello, hello. Do you bite your thumb at me?” You know, that sort of traditional English stand-up. Everyone laughed and the next thing was there was a spectacular fight scene that went on for twenty minutes. Some of the fights in the Globe were so violent that the audience actually broke out in riots and people were killed. So it must have been very intense. And then after the fight scene, you introduce a distant, quiet place, and we find our romantic hero writing poetry. It’s a big chance. So presumably you’ve engaged the audience.
When you see what is called a traditional cinematic version of Romeo & Juliet, it tends to be a filmed version of the ninteenth century theater. The action is from left to right, progressing very sort of slowly and lyrically. That’s not how the play was written. It was written as an outrageously kind of rambunctious, violent, sexy, energetic, comic, tragic love story.
The play and your script have all these different styles and tones… comedy, drama, tragedy…. Were you concerned about that?
Well, you’ve identified something very interesting–we had to present the audience with some stable software to understand the style changes in the film, because in the Elizabethan world there’s no such thing as a consistent dramatic or theatrical style. They just did whatever was necessary for the story. So to follow that, we had to find a cinematic way of making these huge gear changes from really “over the top” stand-up comedy, to quite touching emotional scenes. And to do that, we linked the cinematic style to quotations from other films. One moment Romeo & Juliet seemed like a an epic film like Giant, then it became a kind of trashy young cult film like Rebel Without a Cause.
Right.
For example where Romeo kills Tybalt, that’s very much a Rebel Without a Cause taste, to a kind of energetic Spaghetti Western in the front. You know? You sort of say, “Get it? It’s really like a feud, an armed feud. A society where people walk around with guns, like a Western. This is like a shoot-out.” I mean the cinematic mythology of the Hollywood gunslinger is sort of like the mythology of youthful Elizabethan swordplay… who was the fastest and the quickest….
James Dean as Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause
So you used popular film references to bring the audience into the story…?
To a very great extent, we used it to buffer the extreme gear changes in the style of the text, so we matched that with extreme gear changes in cinematic style. Does that make sense? In the text you’re going from bawdy, low comedy to high tragedy within a space of one scene. So the filmic equivalent is going from Wayne’s World to The English Patient in the space of a scene. You know? And that’s really happening. We are sort of changing the cinematic style so that gear change doesn’t throw the audience around. If it all looks like The English Patient, then it’s going to be hard when the two guys come in with the comedy.
In the U.S. the young audience was able to decode that very, very well. And since then the film’s gone on to do another $90 million worldwide. I’m not ashamed of the MTV tag we’ve received, because I think MTV provides a lot of cultural reference for young people at the moment.
What challenge did the language of Shakespeare impose on your adaptation?
Well, actually, Shakespeare’s always cut, you cut 1/3 to 1/2 usually. I mean, the Zeffirelli film, which people sometimes refer to as the traditional production, is cut as much as ours. In fact, Zeffirelli rewrote extra dialogue. I mean, it’s much less an accurate Elizabethan text than the version we handed in. For us it was about maintaining the integrity of the language. The other thing was to embrace the language for poor people, for the actor’s own voice. Because the Elizabethan actors spoke basically with an American accent and a rolled “r,” you know. What is great is that a lot of young actors, particularly Latin actors, and black actors, they already use simile and metaphor and a sort of a rhythm in their language. “This does not forgive you boy for the injury you have done me,” is rap. Shakespeare was a kind of rap, the rhyming couplet is definitely a rap form, you know? So actually I found the young actors took to it really, really easily.
Was there pressure from Fox or elsewhere to cut the language more or to modernize it?
Yes, there was. Absolutely. In the early stages, they were like “Please God, we love the idea. But can you change the language.” You know, what a great idea, but just do it without the language. It’s kind of like, “We love Shakespeare, but just don’t use his script.” So we resisted, and you know, we took two years to finally get it made, because we had to do several workshops. We just have our ways of finally wearing people down. It’s not arrogance, but once we found something we believe we’re real passionate about it. We want to be convinced that there is a better way.
Why do you think most of the films based upon Shakespeare have been independent productions and not studio-driven?
As the studio said to me, “Shakespeare doesn’t turn a dollar.” Studios don’t do big Shakespeare, not since the ’30s, because there’s no money in it. They love the stories. “Yeah, sure, we do Macbeth every day,” you know? But not the Shakespeare takes. And you know, there was a time when I was doing Romeo & Juliet when there was all that hype about Hollywood discovering Shakespeare. It really wasn’t true. Only the independents really discovered Shakespeare. But that’s okay. It takes someone like Kenneth Branagh or Orson Welles, someone who really believes in and understands the material, to find a way to reveal it.
This article first appeared in Creative Screenwriting volume 5, #2
