His Moulin Rouge (not at all based on the five movies with the same name) tells the story of Christian (McGregor), an idealistic young writer seeking bohemian revolution. He finds it, impossibly, at the Moulin Rouge, a Dionysian theme park operated by Harold Zidler (Jim Broadbent) whose attractions include a crimson windmill and an adjoining elephant-shaped gentlemen's club. But the star of the Moulin Rouge is Satine (Kidman), the diamond-studded, cancan dancing courtesan. Christian instantly falls in love and, with the help of a theater troupe led by diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec (John Leguizamo), writes a musical for Satine. When asked by Zidler to finance the production, a menacing moneybags known as the Duke (Richard Roxburgh) agrees--provided that Satine sleeps with him. A love triangle ensues, jealousy erupts into violence, and along the way, everyone sings songs that weren't exactly on the charts in 1899.
Luhrmann, 38, has been keen on doing a movie musical since his film debut, 1993's quirky dance spectacle, Strictly Ballroom. At the time, he was better known as the enfant terrible of the Australian theater scene, thanks to his avant-garde early '90s staging of the opera La Boheme. He didn't earn this rep alone: He belongs to a circle of collaborators (including his wife, production designer Catherine Martin) devoted to a bohemian lifestyle, which in the early days meant "doing art, taking a lot of drugs, just completely f---ing out of control."
He'd come a long way from Heron's Creek, the remote town where his parents ran a farm, a gas station, and--formative influence alert--a local cinema. In fact, Luhrmann grew into a pop-culture junkie, and it all suggested worlds beyond Heron's Creek. "All my life, I was watching people coming from fabulous places, going to fabulous places," he recalls. "Through TV, cinema, and music, I knew life out there. I wanted to find it." After his parents divorced in his late teens, Luhrmann had a falling out with his father (he declines to elaborate), and ran away to Sydney.
Luhrmann was visiting India in 1994 to research an opera based on A Midsummer Night's Dream when he took in a Bollywood movie. "Corny comedy, incredible drama, and then suddenly, a musical number. Everyone was riveted," marvels Luhrmann. "I remember thinking, Could you make this work with an audience in the West?" After Romeo + Juliet, Luhrmann told his troupe (now known as Bazmark) it was time to try.
Moulin Rouge is yet another Luhrmann film made in his "Red Curtain" style: a story based on myth (Orpheus); a setting familiar yet reinterpreted (the Moulin Rouge); a theatrical storytelling device (sung dialogue); and self-conscious pop-culture referencing (19th-century novels, musicals, and established songs, though Moulin Rouge would break that rule with the original "Come What May"). From there, Bazmark spent most of 1998 researching and developing a story.
But before there was a finished script, there was casting, since part of the Bazmark process is an extensive workshopping period with actors. Heath Ledger was an early candidate for Christian. But when Luhrmann and cowriter Craig Pearce opted to make the character older, the director tapped McGregor, who had auditioned impressively for Romeo + Juliet and had singing and dancing credentials (the 1993 U.K. miniseries Lipstick on Your Collar, 1998's Velvet Goldmine).
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