Matt Patches: Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge and all your films for that matter, have a strong visual language and it's almost surprising we haven't seen these films out in the format earlier. Was there something that attracted you to finally upgrading to Blu?  

Baz Luhrmann: I think I'm a natural fit for Blu-ray. All those film in the [Red Curtain] trilogy, were reaching for a kind of tri-color process. Trying to be The Red Shoes, trying to be MGM. We tried it - and with Blu you get it. But with Blu, unlike video, it has a kind of film quality to it. I think I've gotten the definitive look for those films on the Blu-rays. I spent a lot of time Jan Yarbrough [the Blu-ray colorist] - he did Wizard of Oz, he did North by Northwest, he did Fight Club. He worked around the clock.

To do this properly you have to be very gifted. My issue with Blu-ray is that sometimes, directors, or studios without directors, take the film into Blu-ray, because they can and they do, and you feel like the films are friends who've gone away and had surgery, too much surgery, and they come back and you can't recognize who they are. A friend who's changed so much you have no relationship with them.

I set out with Jan to make sure that the films that fans know, or that they've come to know, born from the cauldron of creativity in that moment, but deeply enhanced. That's what attracted me to it. And my team does everything: the packaging, the menus...

Matt Patches: I'm always curious if there's a fear of going to Blu-ray. If that high of resolution would begin revealing things you didn't intend for an audience to start seeing.

Baz Luhrmann: That's the subject I'm really focused on, Matt. When Jan was doing Wizard of Oz...you see, we looked at Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge as a film restoration, not a transfer; we went back to the negatives. So we built those two films from the negatives, brand new, right in the realm of Blu-ray. When Jan was doing Wizard of Oz, the wires on the monkeys could be seen, so the question is: do you leave the wires in because they're part of the film or do you take them out? You'd have to check this, but I believe they decided to take them out.

My view is...every film I make is only just across the line in my own mind. Once that film goes out there, its relationship with fans, its relationship with audiences, is a relationship that I am not inbetween. It's like having a child who grows up, goes out into the world, meets someone, goes to college and occasionally, Dad hears about what's going on. I can't interfere in that relationship - things I think of as flaws others may think are the best thing in the film. So I'm very conscious and respectful to the creativity that was born in the cauldron. My choices are always about, 'gee, sure we can make it that shot, but people won't recognize that image.'

So I make it deeper, richer, more beautiful, whatever it was. A quantum leap of what it was, but it's not the friend with surgery. I'm not making a new person.

Jump to:

A different kind of DVD extra: Luhrmann's personal behind-the-scenes footage.

Baz Luhrmann rattles off a few dozen of his favorite films.

The Great Gatsby, a New York musical and the comic book movie that never happened.