Baz Luhrmann lifted the curtain on his music career, recalling a major artist who could have changed his 2013 composition for “The Great Gatsby” entirely.
The director, who recently wrote, produced and directed the shimmering musical biopic “Elvis,” starring Austin Butler, opened up about his longtime affair with pop music at the BAFTA’s Life In Pictures event in London on Friday.
The evening greeted Luhrmann’s return to London after his worldwide box office success with “Elvis,” which honors the rock ‘n’ roll catalog and offers contemporary reinterpretations of the songs of the era, such as Doja Cat’s new hit “Vegas,” which tests and paraphrases the blues. The 1953 “Hound Dog” by Big Mama Thornton.
Luhrmann described pop music as a “translation” of the story in all of his films, referring specifically to “The Great Gatsby” in order to highlight how he worked with Jay-Z (who was an executive producer in the film’s score) to evoke the meaning of jazz in Modern age by paraphrasing many classic sounds into hip hop music. “I don’t put great soundtracks in my films because it’s nice to have a hit recording,” the director said. “I do it as a translation act.”
But he also revealed, while showing audiences at BAFTA HQ a key scene from the movie, that Prince wrote a song for the movie that ultimately didn’t work. Lana Del Rey’s contribution “Young and Beautiful” ended up taking its place.
The scene in question sees Del Rey’s track reworked by a classical orchestra led by Brian Ferry, and the song returns throughout the film as a romantic element to the characters of Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan, fans of Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan.
Luhrmann revealed, “Prince worked on a song for six months and then suddenly decided to write a new song and it just didn’t feel right.” The director said he and Prince – who died in 2016 – worked together twice, before later calling Del Rey to find an alternate path.
Elsewhere in the conversation with Bryony Hanson, director of films at the British Council, Luhrmann spoke about his methodology when it comes to musical cues, revealing that “Elvis” doesn’t actually feature many of the director’s favorite Elvis Presley songs.
“I think personal taste is the enemy of art,” Luhrmann began, when asked how he would choose the songs that would be featured in the film. “What I mean by that is that despite what people may think, my choices are not personal taste. My job was to take someone who was the poster-owner of American pop culture, and use Elvis as a canvas to explore a bigger idea.”
He added of the final soundtrack: “Musically speaking, it’s not Elvis’ favorite tracks, it’s about the tracks that really move the story. Kentucky Rain is a great song, but we didn’t have a scene that was in a cold Kentucky rain.”
Since it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May and then opened in cinemas around the world this summer, “Elvis” has become Warman’s highest-grossing film in the United States and across 21 international regions. It is currently ranked as the second highest-grossing musical resume of all time, after 2018’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.
Recently, Luhrmann ended production of “Faraway Downs”, the six-part Hulu series to expand the universe of his 2008 feature film “Australia” which also brings new music to the fore. The director explained that he “filmed so much” for the original film that he shared previously unseen footage and worked with Aboriginal musicians and artists to create new music within the story. There is a “huge plot difference” in the narration, Luhrmann said, which he likened to “Eric Satie doing different versions of Claude Debussy.” He added, “It’s not just director’s cuts. It’s a completely different world, drawn from the same well.”
20th Television has confirmed the arrival of “Faraway Downs” in June 2022, but a launch date has not been set yet. The series will premiere on Hulu in the US and on Star overseas.
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