A biography for Baz Luhrmannhasn’t been written yet.
“Sydney in general is eclectic. You can be on that brilliant blue ocean walk in the morning and then within 20 minutes you can be in a completely vast suburban sprawl or an Italian or Asian suburb, and it's that mix of people, it's that melting pot of people that give it its vital personality.”
“I always have a point of view. It may not be right, but it's my own.”
“Fitzgerald was a modernist.”
“Look, I had a passion for comic books growing up.”
“Everything I make starts very personally.”
“I never see things I make in the same way that the audience does. You can never do that.”
“Fitzgerald coined the phrase the 'Jazz Age,' and now we're living in the Hip-Hop Age.”
“In the '60s not everybody was wearing flowers in their hair and flowing caftans.”
“I wouldn't take a directing job if I didn't think it was enriching life.”
“In terms of the mechanics of story, myth is an intriguing one because we didn't make myth up; myth is an imprinture of the human condition.”
“I feel like a member of any group comprised of outsiders.”
“Some of the greatest relationship films of all time, the two stars have hated each other, but mostly you see that chemistry.”
“Opera was the cinema of its time, so to bring back that popular appeal, you just need to unleash its visceral immediacy and excitement. Most productions don't manage that - but when an opera does do it, you never forget it.”
“One of my great all-time loves in cinema, and I've seen it three times, is Bondarchuk's 'War and Peace.' Not a lot of people may have seen that film. It was made during the Soviet era.”
“All good, clean stories are melodrama; it's just the set of devices that determines how you show or hide it.”
“The food in Sydney is an Asian Pacific cuisine. It's eclectic but above all it's fresh, inventive and creative and that's what I love about it.”
“Historically, epics are set in Africa or Asia or the Wild West, but if you make an epic today it's hard to disassociate from the contemporary realities of those places.”
“I've tried to make 'Strictly Ballroom' impossible to date. It does feel a bit '80s but I consciously made sure there was no technology in the movie that could date it.”
“I do find walking is fundamental to my creative process.”
“I think dance in any culture, in any form, is a true leveler.”