![‘Epic’: Baz Luhrmann On The Pull Of Elvis Presley, And The Creative Spark He Can’t Ignore [Interview]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/27170910/EPiC_KeyStill_05.jpg "‘Epic’: Baz Luhrmann On The Pull Of Elvis Presley, And The Creative Spark He Can’t Ignore [Interview]")
Filmmaker Baz Luhrmann didn’t necessarily set out to re-enter the orbit of the King. What began as a post- “Elvis” detour—a curious sidebar—gradually transmuted into “EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert,” a cinematic retrieval mission born from a deep-dive into the Kansas City salt mines. There, Luhrmann and his team unearthed an archival windfall: 67 long-rumored reels of Elvis’s Vegas and touring material, a discovery that immediately presented a fragile, high-stakes aesthetic problem. This wasn’t just a matter of technical restoration; the incomplete sound and decayed footage demanded a more rigorous, soulful excavation.
READ MORE: ‘Elvis’ Review: Baz Luhrmann Turns Raw, Gyrating Machismo Into Loud Charisma [Cannes]
That specific challenge, however, speaks directly to Luhrmann’s fundamental strengths. A filmmaker defined by his ability to translate larger-than-life iconography into heightened, emotionally-driven landscapes—spanning from “Moulin Rouge!” to “The Great Gatsby”—he refused to treat the material as a static museum piece. Instead, he approached the find as a living organism requiring a distinct rhythm, a narrative shape, and a definitive point of view.
As Luhrmann describes it, the connective tissue of “EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert” only truly coalesced once he discovered a 30-minute recording of Elvis speaking candidly about his own life—a rare moment of vulnerability amidst the spectacle. In a recent conversation with The Playlist, Luhrmann dug into the granular details of his process once that spark hit. He compares the film’s architecture to the act of writing a song from a single riff, detailing the creative discipline required to avoid the easy trappings of the standard concert doc. In doing so, he traces the familiar, obsessive pattern of his filmography: an attraction to outsized figures, a commitment to the live creative thread, and the moment of total immersion once a project finally “clicks.”
Not too Elvis-ed out? It’s Friday, end of day, and you’ve probably had a lot of Elvis on your mind—but I hope it’s okay to pick your brain about this again.
No, it’s good, man. I mean, after the journey on this film, after so many years, it’s an “EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert” weekend, you know? I’m happy to do whatever I need to do—not to celebrate it, but to get what we call the EP core fans, and the new kids, to come see it. I’m there for them.
If we go back for a minute, what first drew you to Elvis as a subject? You’ve now done the feature and this music documentary, but what was the initial pull?
Well, he was in my life early. We lived in a very tiny country town, and at one stage, we ran the local cinema for a bit. They were doing Elvis matinees, and as a 10- or 12-year-old, I thought, “Oh, this guy’s the coolest guy in the world.”
Then I was doing ballroom dancing, which was kind of my introduction to working-class theater, I think. “Burning Love” dropped, and I’d go up to the guy in the competition and say, “Hey man, can you play ‘Burning Love’?” That was my thing to get me going. So Elvis was with me. But as I got older, my musical tastes opened up very quickly—there was Bowie and Elton and AC/DC and opera. He was always there, though.
I’m a great fan of “Amadeus” as a film, and I always thought you learn about Mozart, but really, it’s about jealousy. A biography is only someone’s telling of a life. But the canvas of Elvis and the Colonel was one where I could explore America in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. I thought that could be a really revealing story.
Particularly, the more I learned about the Colonel being this kind of never-a-colonel, never-a-Tom, never-a-Parker, but also this carnival barker. He’s a genius of selling, but not a genius of the soul. In Elvis, he thought he had a carnival act—but what he had was a genius of the soul.
You do that movie, and most filmmakers would say, “Okay, I’m done with that chapter. I’m moving on.”
Well, I did do that. I did do that. It was an accident—this film was an accident. While I was making the first movie, I’d heard about these lost reels. It was a bit like, I don’t know, the Epstein files.
And fans were going, “Find it, find the tapes.” I had the resources to literally go into the salt mines in Kansas City, where all the MGM negatives were. I thought we might find one reel. Then the guys kicked the door open and gave this report: there were 67 reels—both from the Vegas show and the tour. And Angie Marchese from Graceland, at the same time, said, “Look, I found this 8mm no one’s ever seen.”
So now we had all this material, but no sound. We bring it back, and it smells like vinegar because it’s basically falling apart. The negative is degenerating. It’s anamorphic, so the first thing I do is get it transferred and make it safe so it won’t get lost.
Then we thought, well, what do we do? We can’t do all 67 reels or heat up the other docs. But then we found a 30-minute tape in which Elvis, in a really unguarded way, tells his story. And I thought, anything about Elvis, there’s always someone telling you about him. What if he comes to you in a kind of dreamscape and tells you his story from his point of view?
And we articulate that through music. It took a long time to find the sound. Some of the sound you’re hearing is coming off the stage, but some of it was damaged, and we had to deal with lost orchestrations and missing backing vocals. We managed over two years to scrape it all together. Then it’s not like everyone ran and said, “Oh, we must fund this”—so props to Sony Music Vision. Then we just said, let’s do it.
And it was really enjoyable. Filmmaking is very passionate, and I’m privileged to do it, but it’s not usually something you’d call “enjoyable.” It’s a lot of work. This one was enjoyable.
It sounds accidental, then almost like an obligation—like, “Oh my God, I found this.”
A hundred percent. I just said, I’ve got to do this. I came to peace with the idea that maybe Elvis hadn’t left my building, and perhaps he never will.
The more I worked on it, the more it led into this idea Elvis says—you know, there’s the image, and then there’s the man. That’s the thing I hoped for most, and that’s what’s happening with people who’ve seen the film.
Elvis fans, great—but people who are not into Elvis at all, who are like, “Isn’t he the fat guy in the white suit? Isn’t he a Halloween costume?”—they come out and go, “Who is that guy? I really like him. He’s so affable and funny.”
Then they go, “Wow, he did that three times a day?” The energy. The thing with Elvis is that he didn’t rehearse steps. He just, as he said, did what he felt. It meant everyone had to watch him. They never knew what he was going to do—what next song, nothing. That kept everybody on their toes and gave you that incredible vibrating energy.
The way you describe it sounds like chasing a thread in the creative process—something appears, and then you have to follow it. Almost like when you’re writing a song and stumble upon a chord that leads you to an unexpected song. Is that fair?
One hundred percent. It’s exactly like writing a song.
If I were writing a song, I don’t know if you start with a lyric or a riff, but say you’ve got a bit of a riff. The riff here was this 40-minute tape of Elvis just talking. That was it—okay, okay, we’re going to build it on that.
Then we had to find every bit of the interview, every bit of Elvis. Jono and I combed through it—any time Elvis spoke. Out of all the songs, we had to be really disciplined. That’s why we didn’t complete all the songs; otherwise, it would just be a concert film. It was really about him telling his story.
So, like writing a song, now you’re filling in the beats. Now you’re putting in the bass line. Now you’re orchestrating it.
So the narration is the eureka moment that sparks it?
I think the narration is like the hook. But if you write music and you write a hook, where it leans in terms of feel matters. It’s like watching the Stones make “Sympathy for the Devil.” They’re doing it in thatJean Luc Godard documentary—they’re doing it in 4/4 all the way through, and it’s not really working. They work on it for days, and then one day Charlie Watts does a sort of samba rhythm and boom—that’s it.
You often treat your characters as larger-than-life figures and tell their stories in similarly grand ways. Is that what you’re drawn to?
I’ve been talking about this a little bit because I’m promoting it—but more than promoting it, I’m trying to get as many people as possible in. Keeping Elvis up on the big screen—he’s a big-screen experience.
But I tell stories the way I tell stories at a dinner party. I’m a bit jump-cut, I’m a bit energetic. I tease the audience a bit. I flip between emotion and stupidity and irony and campness. Why? I sort of tell the same story over and over again. There’s a running gag in my team—you could cast the films almost from the same cast. There’s always like a grandmother, and there’s a florid sort of fop, or the Colonel.
I’m not really sure about that. I have many, many ideas, and I always think: what is the idea that might be most useful now? I’m never sure if it’s something to make. But being from a tiny country town, I think I am drawn to something.
It’s a bit Gatsby-esque, really. Sometimes people say, “Are you Gatsby or are you Nick?” and I go, well, I’m a bit of both, really. “Are you Christian?”—as in Christian in “Moulin Rouge!”—and I go, well, I’m also a bit Satine (Nicole Kidman’s character), you know, the femme fatale in the underworld. And I’m a bit Zidler (Jim Broadbent’s character in “Moulin Rouge”) as well. There is a thread you could trace through them all, but I’ve got to leave that till after I’m not here anymore, and someone can write that up.
A lot of filmmakers at your level keep everything secret. You tend to plant a flag early and say, “This is what I’m making,” as you did with “Joan Of Arc,” your next film. Why do you work that way?
Well, I go through a lot of process to ask: what is useful now, or what’s going to be useful in two years?
I’ve always liked a different epic. I worked on “Alexander the Great” for a long time, actually. Dino De Laurentiis—and Spielberg and I were going to do “Napoleon.” But I always, in the back of my mind, went, “Oh, ‘Joan of Arc’—that’s kind of the story really.”
I thought, Oh my God, animals and a young girl—that would kill you making that movie. But then I went, no. In the world we’re in, the Hundred Years’ War—there’s a line in a screenplay about “got to peel this world away from the gnarly old hands of these old men.” And I just thought: maybe in two years’ time, maybe now, a story about a 17-year-old girl who comes along for her generation and claims the world back is going to be needed.
So I don’t make what I want. I make what I think will be useful.
And you’re right—once I make that decision, yeah, I’m right down the road. Casting, well, into different drafts, building the Loire Valley in Queensland, learning how to ride in armor—I have been doing that lately.
So it’s still the same thing—the calling? You find a kernel, a spark, and once it’s there, you don’t really have a choice?
I think that’s a good way of saying it. Once the click goes on—the spark—I have abandoned a project once, but basically that was for reasons. There’s only time. But once I put the flag down, it becomes my life. It’s my life. That’s all there is.
Just like Elvis was for four or five years?
Yeah. I know I can sound pretentious—which is odd for me, because it just comes out pretentious—but I’m not being pretentious when I say I felt a kind of obligation not to let that footage go back in the salt mine and languish.
The interview below was lightly edited for clarity.
“EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert” is in theaters now, including on IMAX screens.
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
