By Erin Free
At the harbourside premiere of EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert (a companion piece to his hit 2022 biopic Elvis), Aussie master director Baz Luhrmann gave a glimpse into the film’s unusual creation and his affinity for Sydney.
“I cannot tell you from my heart how special it is to be here,” Australian director Baz Luhrmann told the audience at the Australian premiere of his new film EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert, which unspooled under a cloudy, ominous sky at The Open Air Cinema on Sydney Harbour in the picturesque Botanical Gardens. “This is a very, very special experience for me. I was born just up the road.”
With leather jacket and shades, Luhrmann certainly looked the part at a film featuring The King Of Rock’n’Roll. “My brother’s here, my friends and family…it’s great,” the director said. “Thirty years ago, I had this young guy that nobody knew come down here to workshop a film that is now thirty years old…Romeo + Juliet. That young actor’s name was Leonardo DiCaprio. We did a photo shoot with him in a Hawaiian shirt just around the corner from here, and those pictures helped us get that film made. And I think that the first film that was ever shown here at The Open Air Cinema was Romeo & Juliet, so this is a really special location for some of the films that I’ve made.”
Film audiences have been developing deep, passionate relationships with the movies of Baz Luhrmann since he hit the cinematic dance floor with his much-loved big screen charmer, Strictly Ballroom, back in 1992. Driven by dazzling dance numbers, peppered with brilliant performances, and boasting a swooning central romance, the modern movie classic was a local award-winning smash, and its bravura style saw its director recognised instantly internationally.
Luhrmann next took on William Shakespeare with his youthful, energised, contemporised reinvention of the aforementioned Romeo + Juliet (1996) starring young-guy-in-a-Hawaiian-shirt Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. The glitzy, exuberant musical Moulin Rouge! (2001) followed, starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, before Luhrmann mounted the massive local epic Australia (2008), with Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman. He applied his trademark eye-popping visuals to an American literary classic with the DiCaprio-led The Great Gatsby (2013), and proved that not all blockbusters have to be about superheroes. After that, Luhrmann delivered another bold-as-brass music themed movie with Elvis (2022), a highly stylised biopic on The King Of Rock’n’Roll.
A very happy by-product of Baz Luhrmann’s huge production of Elvis is the surprise new documentary concert feature EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert, which functions as the perfect companion piece. “I’ll tell you the crazy story of how this film came about,” Luhrmann told the audience at the Sydney premiere. “I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed making a film as much as this one…mainly because I didn’t have to shoot the footage and I was pretty confident that the star of the film was quite talented. We didn’t have to worry about that bit! When I was making the movie Elvis, we heard about these mythical film reels that were lost, and I had the money to go looking for them. MGM kept all of their footage in salt mines in Kansas…it’s true. I sent someone down there and they suddenly started sending me pictures of this shaky door that they pulled open…it was a bit like Raiders Of The Lost Ark.”
What was found was true gold: expansive outtakes from two exceptional Elvis Presley concert movies – 1970’s Elvis: That’s The Way It Is and 1972’s Elvis On Tour – along with various other audio recordings and assorted ephemera. “There were sixty boxes of Elvis performing both in Vegas, and on tour, in never-before-seen 8mm, and so began a two-year journey,” Luhrmann explained. “Not all of it had sound, so we had to search for that. Some of that came from primary sources, and for some of it, we had to meet with gangsters in carparks, and give them money, and put our lives in their hands,” Luhrmann said, laughing.
It was during the two-year period that it took to sync the picture that it truly became clear what EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert could really be. “We had an epiphany moment,” Luhrmann explained. “That was when we found forty minutes of audio only. It was Elvis speaking in the most unguarded way, telling his story from his side. In that moment, [editor] Jonathan Redman – who’s my creative partner in this – went, ‘That’s it…that’s what we’ve got to do.’ Everything about Elvis is someone talking about him. ‘I poured gas into his car one day. He looked at me. He was so close. I wrote a book about it.’ We just did one big idea. We just imagined that Elvis comes to you in a dream, and we got out of the way, and we let him sing, and tell his story. That’s why people are responding to the film in this way.”
Though unlike any of his previous films, EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert certainly fits right into Baz Luhrmann’s edgy, highly original cinematic canon. While all successes in their own way, the director has said that one of his greatest challenges from the very beginning has been convincing others to share his vision. “That has never been an easy road,” Luhrmann once told FilmInk. “When I made Strictly Ballroom, it was like, ‘You know that ballroom dancing is never going to work.’ Romeo + Juliet? ‘Shakespeare will never be popular.’ If I had a dollar for every time that I heard that…but that’s alright though. That’s our job.”
EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert is in cinemas now. Click here to read our review.
