The "Strictly Ballroom" and "Romeo + Juliet" DVDs

How hard is it to create a Special Edition DVD for a movie that's already 10 years old?

Actually, good question, very good question, because it's very hard. The simple truth—I've been involved all in the three DVDs: in fact "Romeo + Juliet" comes out next week, I think—but as you go back in the archaeological dig, there are less findings. And the truth is that in a low-budget Australian film, virtually every frame I shot was in the movie. So the only thing that I cut was that one little scene. The other thing is that in those days we didn't even have digital video handi-cams, so we didn't even… there just aren't that many materials, there isn't that much stuff available, so what I did was I made each DVD progressively more simple. "Romeo + Juliet" is quite elaborate; there's stuff with Leonardo [DiCaprio] doing workshops in Sydney when we're trying to convince the studio how modern-day Shakespeare can work. But in "Strictly Ballroom," the main feature is—apart from what I think is a very accurate and beautiful transfer of what I call quasi-MGM Technicolor, which is what we tried to do—I tried to make that the priority. The other thing is, I included in it a documentary which, I mean it's the 70s, it's pretty out there, but one of the things that people often say is that it's so over the top, those characters couldn't possibly have existed. When you see the documentary, you'll come back and you'll say, "Boy, you really toned it down." It reveals the world of ballroom dancing at that time, which was a much more extraordinary place than it is now.

A Filmmaker's Involvement in DVD and Easter Egg Design

Can you talk about your actual participation in the design of the DVD? Do you decide if the disc is going to have Easter eggs and what they are going to be?

Yes, I deal with it… We knew nothing about DVD when we started a year ago, we know everything about DVD now. I have Holly Radcliffe who was the head of my special effects unit, and she became my head of the DVD unit. Everything—if you took the disc, the content, the ideas, the structuring, the packaging, everything—we do everything. I mean we work with other organizations, with Fox we say, "What are the perimeters, budget, etc.?" But we dealt with it like a movie. It's a creative project. I set out perimeters, we discuss ideas, we scripted it, some ideas fell by the wayside, some we couldn't achieve, but it's exactly the same as anything.

How do you decide what's going to be a feature so hidden that only a few people will see it?

I'm only learning. It's very interesting about that because the Easter eggs—I didn't actually understand the mechanisms for hiding them, you know? So I'm just going to print where they all are so people can go and find them because apparently no one has yet found—what are they, 15? How many have you found?

Four.

If I value my life, I suggest I send that circular around telling you how to get there. I know it's driving people crazy. But they are there, there are 15 there. I think what I'll do is publish it on the Web.

Which disc are you saying has 15?

"Moulin Rouge."

They say there are only 10 on that one?

Trust me. No, no, no, there are 10. The studio will tell you that I'm not good with numbers, dates or numbers. So check whatever the print is, but it's like 10.

(A note from About.com Home Video/DVD Guide Ivana Redwine: There are at least 15 Easter eggs on the "Moulin Rouge" Disc 2 DVD. Since the release of the DVD, reports of these Easter eggs have been circulating on the Internet, from Web sites to online forums to the Usenet. If anyone wants a quick and easy way to find them, read my feature with clear, detailed instructions on how to locate all 15 eggs!)

The thing I'm proud of is the extended dances. I think that is a great feature. What a great opportunity. I mean, in the "Wizard of Oz" they had to take the scarecrow routine right out and we never saw it until "That's Entertainment 1." We could actually take all those dances and in a real elaborate way, extend them. I love the fact that somebody is interested enough in us to do that. The Green Fairy documentaries—we made all those. The Easter eggs it was like, they said, "Easter eggs, Easter eggs, you've got to have Easter eggs." I said, "Well, before we have them maybe I should learn what they are." So we went and studied all the other Easter eggs on "Matrix" and stuff like that, so anyway, because I've got a very young team that I work with, I said, "Guys, you'll do the Easter eggs. As you work through all this material, if there's something you think is interesting or may be a little glimpse of something… So let me get this right. Me, making an idiot of myself fooling around showing off some dancing, that's valuable to people?" They say, "Oh, yes, that's hilarious! They love it." So I've never lived that down. To a certain extent, I guess, if you are really going to expose the process, it's very serious work, it's very hard work, but a lot of it is very silly. I suppose you have to be vulnerable in it and that's what some of those things are. Personally, I'm not sure I see the value in our Easter eggs or others, to be that frank. I guess on the other hand, offhandedness or a sense of… in a way maybe it is the fact that it is just candid, candid camera stuff is valuable.

There's a bit there where I'm actually working with the tango dancers, and I said, "But Holly, honestly, what could people possibly find interesting about this?" She said, "The fact that you are actually directing, we can actually hear what you are saying to the actors." I said, "OK, you win."

The "Red Curtain" Trilogy

It's said ["Strictly Ballroom"] is the first of the "Red Curtain" trilogy.

It wasn't when I began. I didn't go, "And now I will begin the 'Red Curtain' trilogy." What happened was that I created the play—this was an interest of mine of universal storytelling, simple myths set in a highly creative world. I go to do the screenplay for my first film, I take this very heightened, expressive play that had a metaphor about oppression in it. There's a side story actually because we took the play to Czechoslovakia to a festival there before the wall had come down. It was a huge success—it won the awards—and the Bulgarians and all those sort of oppressed Eastern European countries ran on the stage going, "Bravo Bulgaria, Bravo 'Strictly Ballroom'!" They knew something about the all-powerful federation, let me tell you. So that political metaphor read very well. When I wrote the screenplay, we did a naturalistic version. I did it actually with Andrew Bovell who wrote "Lantana." Now it was a very solid script and it was set actually in a steel mill. There were union issues… The problem was—this is not to denigrate "Dirty Dancing"—but it had become just a naturalistic film and had lost the metaphor—the double meaning. The ability to play to a child, an adult, simple mind or complex. So what to do? So then what we did was we reached back to really my love of the old musicals of the 30s and 40s—of that expressionistic style, of that cinematic language of which "Citizen Kane" is made of. Of that cinematic language of which "The Red Shoes" is made of, and began to embrace that in the screenplay and in the development of what then became "Strictly Ballroom." As with all these films a lot of critical kafuffle—some love, some hate, "He's destroying cinema. Kill him!" And then after "Strictly Ballroom," C.M. (Catherine Martin) [Mrs. Baz Luhrmann] and I went to India to work on "Midsummer Night's Dream" and we went one night—there was a big poster up for a Bollywood movie—and I said, "Let's go see that." So we did. Two thousand audience members, high comedy, high tragedy, you know, brother kills brother, break out in some musical numbers all jumbled up together in 4 hours of Hindi, and we thought that was amazing. So our question was, "Could we create a cinematic form like that? Could a musical work?" A musical must be able to work in Western culture again, and could it be comic-tragic? So then began this commitment of moving toward "Moulin Rouge." I decided I'd do "Romeo + Juliet" and then a musical film. And that was the rest of the 10-year journey of which "Moulin Rouge" is the end of that. I'm here talking about it a lot because I finished the three DVDs, the second album comes out, I do everything I can to help identify the good work of everyone involved, and then that's the end of 10 years for me. I began when I was 30, and I finished this film when I turned 40.

Films in the "Red Curtain" Trilogy

• "Moulin Rouge" (2001) - DVD Release Date - December 18, 2001
• "Romeo + Juliet" Special Edition (1996) - DVD Release Date - March 12, 2002
• "Strictly Ballroom" (1992) - DVD Release Date: March 19, 2002

I would like to thank Action-Adventure Movies Guide Fred Topel for the Baz Lurhrmann interview and Romantic Movies Guide Rebecca Murray for transcribing the interview tape. Coming soon: more of this interview and related content from other About.com guides.