Baz Luhrmann's Diary Excerpts
The November 2002 edition of Variety magazine featured sections of the diary Baz Luhrmann kept while making La Bohème.
These excerpts were found in the excellent Alexander the Great news archive at OmniLeonardo.com. Unfortunately, I do not have the entire article containing all selections from Luhrmann's diary. If anyone has a full transcript, or knows how I can obtain a November 2002 edition of Variety magazine, please contact me.
Entries were dated from 10 May 2001 when he was in Cannes for the opening of Moulin Rouge, until 17 September 2002 when he was in San Fransisco putting together the finishing touches to his production of La Bohème. The following excerpts provide a fascinating insight into Luhrmann's early conception of Alexander the Great:
"The director can't stop trembling. There's a plane to catch. Dino DeLaurentiis is on the phone about Leonardo DiCaprio. Opening night is almost here. And the star has disappeared. ~ Selections from the diary Baz Luhrmann kept while making one of the biggest gambles in Broadway history."
Singapore ~ Friday, July 6, (2001) Raffles
Hotel -- "For months now, I've been trying to put the finishing touches on the
Red Curtain Trilogy [a DVD box set that contains "Strictly Ballroom,"
"Romeo and Juliet" and "Moulin Rouge"], and I've taken a day after
MR's opening here to think about things. The trilogy represents the completion of a
ten-year period in my life in which I set out to reinvent the cinematic language of the
musical through stories about love and the bohemian spirit of rejecting the rules and
living a life of freedom. Fitting that into a neat little box that I can put on the shelf
makes me feel I can now move on to what's next. Why I'm ambivalent about that being
LB--which is where the Red Curtain period began and could nicely end--is that now the
fight to keep the "Moulin Rouge" baby alive is seriously threatening to push our
master schedule back. My big worry is that if that happens, LB may complicate my next big
gesture, which is to explore a trilogy of epics--on Russian, one Australian, and one about
the life of Alexander the Great, which I hope to make first."
Morocco ~ Saturday, June 29, (2002) Erfoud, on the border of the Northern Sahara Desert
--"While pushing to finish all that has to be in place for LB rehearsals to begin in
August, a nightly subplot has been playing out, as I recently formed an alliance with Dino
DeLaurentiis [Hollywood film producer], who has also long had a dream about making a film
about Alexander the Great. First we spent a week in the middle of the month at his
favorite hotel on Capri, where we agreed to join forces on Alexander. Then we flew to
Morocco, where we struck a deal with King Mohammed VI, which would allow us to shoot the
film in his country with the option of using 5,000 soldiers and 1,500 crack cavalry as
extras if we financed a small movie studio in Ouarzazate, the Hollywood of North Africa.
At sunset this evening, seeing for the first time the Sahara's mountainous sand dunes, I
had a vision in the desert--to cast Leonardo DiCaprio, whom I first worked with on R&J
seven years ago, as Alexander the Great."
San Francisco ~ Tuesday, September 17, (2002) the Clift Hotel -- "Ever since
we arrived, the crisp autumn air has helped the cast shake off the humidity of New York
City, and yesterday's rehearsal proved to me for the first time that the work we've been
doing on Act II with more than 60 people onstage has put things in a solid state. That's a
relief because LB can no longer be our sole focus. In the middle of rehearsal, Dino called
to say that with all the talk of invading Iraq, which might complicate things with
Morocco, we should consider Australia as a backup location for "Alexander." At
that moment, I remembered once having had the fear that LB might topple my
"Alexander" plans, and here was Dino, like the great commander himself, never
more determined than in the face of war. Surrounded by all three pairs of Mimis and
Rodolphos and a human mass of extras and stagehands that in two weeks would be in front of
our first audience at the Curran Theatre, I knew for the first time that
"Alexander," the second act of our lives, was finally upon us."
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