“Talent is in the eyes,” Hollywood casting veteran Bonnie Timmermann always said, able to recognize the spark of art “by the light in people’s eyes.” However, sometimes talent manifests itself in other ways. For an Australian Baz Luhrmann60 years, Director Elvis and the godfather of many talents that eluded Timmermann, the last love at first sight for the actor came in an unusual way: looking at him from behind. “I was looking for the right person to play Elvis,” he says, “but in the end it was he who found me. Audition video Austin (Butler) he was different from everyone. He sat on his back in front of the piano. The camera saw him in the distance, slowly approaching as he played Uninhibited melody. It was so strong, so sincere. Austin instantly became Elvis to me. I didn’t have to look at his face because I was sure that Elvis had a soul.”
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The rest is history: the “recommendation” appeal Denzel Washington, charmed by a boy (“We didn’t even know each other”), a film made during covid in Australia, a box office success, eight Oscar nominations, including for best film and best actor. Nothing new for Luhrmann, already a candidate in 2002. Moulin rouge! along with its actress Nicole Kidman: The Movie, it was 1991, was the first musical to enter the top five for Best Picture, won two technical statuettes but left both with nothing. Therefore, some caution is taken for granted: “Oscar for Elvis? I was making a movie and it was like having a baby. I sent him to the movies and he became a teenager. Now that she’s in college, her life no longer depends on me.” But if you ask him about Butler, “his” creation, he will explode: “An Oscar nomination is just right for him. That’s right: I can’t find any other words.
I don’t think I could bear the thought of not seeing him among the candidates.” Important words spoken by the man who discovered Leonardo DiCaprio the year before Titanic (Romeo + Juliet1996) and which launched Kidman’s solo career, immediately after her divorce from Tom Cruise and her journey into the Kubrick universe. Eyes wide shut. “More than an actor maker, I define myself as a relationship maker. I’ll start with a fact: Auditions are often terrible, even terrible for those who put them on. So when someone comes to me for a role, my mission is to put them in the best position to get the role. Or at least that he can give me his take on the character, that he comes up with ideas that I didn’t have myself. Talent is a matter of alchemy. By itself, in its purest form, it does not exist: it is the result of dynamic communication and cooperation.” Silver hair, slightly singsong speech, a proletarian childhood more than redeemed by cinema (father is a gas station and mother is a saleswoman, at the age of 18 “Baz” gives herself to the theater, making her debut with Judy Davis), Luhrmann is a man who Hollywood, for thirty years can’t say no. The last to give in was Tom Hanks, who to play Elvis hung up his American hero uniform, slipping into the role of Colonel Tom Parker and giving himself to brushes for endless hours of make-up and prosthetics. “Tom is simply one of the greatest actors not only of our century, but of all time. He has sense and vision. If you ask him to do his duty, he will do it well. But if you want me to do something different, he replies like this: “Look what I’m doing now.” And at this moment, there is much more at stake than you yourself hoped. That’s why Tom Hanks is Tom Hanks and there is no one like him.” An intuitive relationship, Luhrmann’s relationship with talent that doesn’t end with the search for the perfect face, that alchemy of intentions that, for the director of The Great Gatsby, is the basis of a magical “relationship” with the translator. Talent is at the heart of his Elvis, “a film about such a big icon as the icon of Marilyn,” tenaciously constructed from what should not have been: “I didn’t want to do a biography and I didn’t want to fall.” in a nostalgic operation. I was looking for epic. And with Elvis, it’s pure epic, the epic of America in the 50s, 60s and 70s.
A story that cannot be told without addressing racism, especially when it comes to music. He was at the center of that scene, for better or worse. I went to Memphis, found his childhood friends, African American children, with whom he sang in church when he was 13 years old. He loved gospel music and it was important to me that his passion for those roots was brought to life in the film.” A character blazing with passion and talent, Elvis is inseparable for Luhrmann from his counterpart, the good-natured Parker. Because the rise of the former coincided, the chronicles say, with the exploitation by the latter of an insatiable new market force: teenagers who, on the altar of radio and television, adored their myth to the point of absorbing it. “It’s very difficult to keep up with your image,” Elvis once said at the height of his fame. Talent has a price, even icons: who knows if Hollywood can forgive Luhrmann for exposing so clearly the worst dynamics that drive success.
Source: Elle