Rocking with the legend of Baz

He is a collaborative artist who has worked with the same writers, designers and cinematographers since the late Eighties but his disciples hang back and wait for their prophet to receive his vision before they speak up. To find it, Luhrmann treks into the wilderness, roughing it on anonymous backpacking holidays to foreign lands where, eventually, he divines what is missing from his life. His La BohËme at Sydney Opera House in 1990 thus redressed a romantic deficit. His Hindu-infused interpretation of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream four years later filled a spiritual vacuum.

The pre pre-production stage of Moulin Rouge was a fraught solo-trip to Africa and Egypt. He got into such a state that his wife, Catherine Martin or "CM", abandoned her holiday in Portugal to comfort him in Marrakech where he was in the throes of a minibreakdown.

In Alexandria, he became "weepy" again and found himself unable to get out of bed. Salvation came, in this instance, from hiring a horse to ride across the bay. "It was a white horse and I had a red cloth under the saddle. I know it sounds mythological ...

"What came out of it was the recognition that the story would have to be Orphean, about the transition from youth to older age, from the loss of the gift of youth to the scarring of age. It would be about coming out the other end changed and able to see an adult life ahead of me.

"I was surrounded by so many dead adults, people walking through life, people whose spiritual life had been killed off through the loss of youth. So I knew I was going to do the Orphean myth, which is about this idealistic young man who has some abilities, goes into the underworld and eventually comes to that moment when he realises some things are bigger than himself.

"People die. Relationships can't be. Love does not conquer all. And you are either destroyed by those scars or you are healed and you grow spiritually and your life continues."

While, therefore, there are parallels to be drawn between Luhrmann and Moulin's bombastic impresario, Harold Zidler (played by Jim Broadbent), the director really identifies with Christian, the love-struck writer played by Ewan McGregor.

His other realisation was that the movie would conclude the trilogy of non-naturalistic films that began with Strictly Ballroom and continued with his brilliant, hip-hopping take on Romeo and Juliet in 1997. When the curtain falls on his "Red Curtain" period, he will say farewell to his loyal company. So Moulin Rouge is a riotous passingout ceremony too, which may help explain why he released that strange hit CD, The Sunscreen Song, a couple of years back, a spoof graduation speech offering the departing millennium such advice as "always wear sunscreen" and "don't mess too much with your hair".

What Baz did not predict was that making a musical about Hell would be so hellish. On the first day of shooting in Sydney, just as he was about to shout "Action!", a mobile phone call told him his father had died from skin cancer (the Sunscreen Song was serious about sunscreen). Then came Kidman's injuries. Worst, he felt awed by the film's technical difficulties. As much as an animated cartoon, it could never risk looking like real life. Keeping Moulin Rouge looking unreal was a real problem.

"I wanted Romeo and Juliet to be my Heart of Darkness (Eleanor Coppola's documentary about her husband's miserable experience making Apocalypse Now). For a young film-maker, what an adventure! I wanted it to be hell, but ultimately, I enjoyed every minute of it. I enjoyed it when bandits kidnapped the hair and makeup people, when storms blew things away. I enjoyed defying the studio, Leonardo (DiCaprio) and those kids racing around in fast cars and helicopters.

Loved it. I just thought it was the Heart of Darkness experience.

"Going back to Australia, building sound-stages and making a musical was meant to be the mature way to make a movie. The truth was every single day was a far greater test. There was great love among those involved but we were all in a very dark, difficult place, me, Ewan, Nicole. There were times when I looked up to the heavens with the hand on the rope saying: 'I cannot go on.' It was the hardest game I ever played and there were times I thought it was beyond me."

I bet he never felt that before. " So there's the adult moment. You realise you can go too far. Things can get too big. I came back from it. I remember the clouds parting just in time, but it damn near wasted my spirit."

So now I know why, at 38, he is prematurely grey.

Some critics, perhaps half of them, feel that he did not, in fact, quite beat the odds, that technique finally got in the way of emotional impact, but no one can accuse him of breaking faith with the sensibility that makes a Baz Luhrmann production unique.

The wilful cultural blindness, the belief that neither time nor geography matter when relating a myth is all pervasive. In Romeo and Juliet, the Montagues and Capulets sported automatic weapons brand-named Sword and Rapier. In Moulin Rouge, a 19th century Parisian music hall rocks to lyrics by Elton John and David Bowie.

It can also be in plain bad taste. When I complain about the smutty jokes about McGregor's legendary impressive penis, Baz throws the Bard at me. "Shakespeare's audience would have made the roughest multiplex look positively tame. If, to get their attention, he had to use the bawdiest comment, make a double entendre about Ewan's cock, Shakespeare would have done it. Shock, engage, use crass humour. But the crassness leads you to an odd beauty, I hope."

The third element of Luhrmann's style is, of course, camp and Moulin Rouge, with its top hats and froufrous, often worn by the same (male) actors, is as camp as karaoke. When we met in 1997, I had assumed Baz was gay and was shocked by him telling me he'd just married CM, his devoted production designer.

"There is a whole gay sensibility to the work I do,î he says today. "You can see it in the films, in the evolution of the work. And that is something that should be there both for CM and me. As I said before, I see all sexual possibilities. We are married and are a real couple but we have never denied ourselves any of the possibilities in life."

So she's bisexual too? "Well, I won't speak for her but I think if you delve into her history, let me put it this way, she has seen all the possibilities in life too."

They met - she is a substantial blonde a few years his junior - in 1987 when he interviewed her for a design job with his company. They talked Brecht and Madonna until 10 at night. Becoming a couple was, however, "an ongoing evolution not a blinding wow" and there were "deviations" over the years.

But it is a monogamous union now? "The contract is deeply personal. All those things that take place between couples are very real and alive for us. We marvel at how great all of that is and at the same time there is a total embracing of ..." I think he is going to say " possibilities" again, but he says instead: "There is a set of rules."

Might they have children? "They are scheduled. They are scheduled for next year."

In seven years' time, he swears, he will forsake the studio so handsomely funded by Fox, withdraw from public life, and become "a recluse". " You know people say, 'I want to go to Pago Pago one day because that would be an interesting country to visit'? Well, I want to go to the world of the recluse one day because that will be an interesting country to visit for me."

I suggest we hum the chorus of that terrible song, "I've been to Paradise but I've never been to meî. "And you know what? That is a great example of our work. We may all think that it's a terrible song, but what a great lyric!"

I've always said he finds the sincerity at the heart of kitsch. "And there is nothing wrong with that."

He thanks me for the "couch session". I congratulate him on his remarkable recollection of our last encounter, which is so detailed that I later berate myself for not realising he must have read the cutting just before seeing me. There is much craft behind Baz's persona. That hair for instance: it turns out that while it has been greying gently for years, he has, of late, been helping the process along by dying it. A healthy head of black hair, you see, just wouldn't fit the Orphean myth of the film-maker who returns from his Hellish soundstage aged and saged. But I don't mind the legerdemain. Luhrmann is the real thing.