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Memorable moments
from a storied history90 Years of THR
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 80 JULY 31, 2019
20TH CENTURY FOX/PHOTOFESTTop: Nicole Kidman in 2001’s Moulin Rouge! Above right: A 20th Century Fox ad placed in the July 12, 2001, issue of THR, five weeks after the film’s U.S. release.119991 1 1 999922 1199933 3 1 994 4 1 199955 1 9966 1911 997 19998 119999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2 20042 200522 5 2006606 22007 22000088 2000999 20110 220011
Moulin Rouge! Revived the Hollywood Musical in ’01
It was probably for the best that
Baz Luhrmann gave Moulin Rouge!
an exclamation point. It differ-
entiated his 2001 film from John
Huston’s Moulin Rouge, the 1952
drama that served as Zsa Zsa
Gabor’s big break. “I think it gets
the exclamation point because
it’s the nature of that world,” says
Luhrmann. “It’s ‘The Moulin
Rouge!’ Nothing is flat; everything
is over the top.” The director’s
$50 million Fox production
($72 million today) starring Nicole
Kidman and Ewan McGregor was
predicted to flop and opened at
No. 4 behind Pearl Harbor, Shrek
and Rob Schneider’s The Animal,
but went on to gross $180 million
worldwide ($260 million today),
got an Oscar nomination for best
picture and won a Golden Globe
for best musical or comedy. When
the musical set in the legendary
Parisian nightclub premiered at
Cannes, THR was unimpressed.
Though the review called Kidman
“iridescent,” it said the film was
“like a Busby Berkeley musical for
the MTV age.” However, the prem-
ise has aged well and become a
Broadway musical (reviewed on
page 73) that opened July 25. It’s
directed not by Luhrmann but by
Alex Timbers, who also helmed
a Broadway musical based on
Rocky (no exclamation point).
Besides the financial success,
what pleases Luhrmann, 56, most
about Rouge! is that “it smashed
the door in to allow musicals to be
legitimate,” he says. “I wanted tofind a way of getting the cinematic
musical back in the vernacular of
cinema.” At the time there hadn’t
been a movie musical in years,
and Luhrmann took some heat for
using contemporary music that
ranged from Madonna to Nirvana
and Hindi movie songs to Rodgers
and Hammerstein (“Cute at best
and cloying in its smugness,” said
THR). But he’s convinced this
was the right choice. “The idea of
using familiar music came from
old musicals,” says Luhrmann.
“Music in old musicals was
popular music. It wasn’t nostalgic.
It was the music of that time.”
Luhrmann is now in produc-
tion on an Elvis Presley biopic
musical with Once Upon a Time in
Hollywood’s Austin Butler playingthe iconic rocker. The director
says he’s still “in process” regard-
ing the film’s music, adding, “I can
never rid myself of my own way of
telling a story.” — BILL HIGGINS