Baz Luhrman on Dancing With The Stars
On Monday night Australian director Baz Luhrmann will be making his debut as a guest judge on Dancing With the Stars. It’s not as odd as it sounds. He directed a sumptuous version of La Bohème for Broadway, reinvented the movie musical with the magnificent Moulin Rouge!, and of course started off his career with Strictly Ballroom, a hilarious peek into the world of competitive ballroom dancing. He spoke to Pop Vox about his new job.
Why did you decide to be a judge on Dancing With the Stars?
Actually, well, first of all it’s fun. The show is fun. But more importantly, a lot of people in the U.S. don’t know that Strictly Ballroom was the inspiration for the original BBC version, which then was the inspiration for Dancing With the Stars. It’s called Strictly Come Dancing in Britain, and Disney is re-releasing the DVD of Strictly Ballroom in the U.S. early next year. So this is part of me linking the disc to the show.
Don’t you come from a ballroom-dancing family?
I was a ballroom dancer. I grew up in a small country town. I did competitive ballroom dancing later on. My brothers got into it, and then later on my mother became a judge.
Were you good?
I was all right! I won the districts triple A something or other, blah blah blah. You could say I was a northern New South Wales champ at some point.
Not the whole of New South Wales. Just the northern part?
You know what? I was a little champ. We certainly took it seriously. We loved it. Ballroom dancing for us as children was…we lived in the country. It was a country person’s escape into theater and to be able to travel and be part of something. A world that is in one regard preposterous and fantastical and on the other hand it was a serious sport. You really had to be good at it. There is nothing like dance. Expressing yourself through dance is a really joyous thing.
Do you watch Dancing With the Stars?
I have watched it a lot more recently, now that I’m boning up on how to be a judge. I’m sure I’ll be a terrible judge and probably give everyone a nine.
Are you going to score?
Score as in…I don’t know, I’m a bit old for that, but I’ll give it a go.
I didn’t mean hit on someone. I meant hold a paddle.
You know what? I don’t really know. I said, “Look I’ll go in, I’ll participate, it’ll be fun.”
Do you think Nicole Kidman or Hugh Jackman would go on Dancing With the Stars?
I don’t know. I think the thing about all these shows is that they are fantastic arenas of popular culture. Dance is a joyous thing. Seeing a kung fu wrestler dancing, there’s something incredibly human and wonderful about that, and everyone has an opinion about what constitutes good and bad dancing.
What TV shows do you watch?
I’m a very busy man.
So no TV?
Well, sometimes. I love Mad Men and things like that. There’s some brilliant writing on TV.
Are you still working on a remake of The Great Gatsby?
It’s one of the things I’m considering. I’ve not decided which thing I will commit to. I own the rights to Gatsby. It’s one of the many things I have in my development department. I own the rights to it and a whole lot of other books.
Do you have an actress in mind for Daisy?
I’m nowhere near that part of the journey.
You worked on the Oscars sketches this year.
I conceived them and supervised. I worked with a wonderful choreographer named Rob Ashford who won an Emmy for it.
Do you think there’s enough song and dance on TV?
I don’t think I’m qualified to answer that. You have to watch a lot of TV to be able to answer that.
What are you working on now?
I’m doing the Blu Rays of Moulin Rouge! and Romeo + Juliet. It’s a great joy to be going back to those films. It allows you to realize the films in quite a spectacular and beautiful way.
One last thing. Do you think there’s such a thing as too many sparkly sequins in ballroom dancing?
I’m going to look into that in depth before I answer.
I think there’s never too much.
You know what? There are but a few things in life you can never have enough of, and sequins are one of them.
