Interview with Baz Luhrmann and Austin Butler
Source: www.elvis.com.au
March 4, 2022
In the interview Luhrman stated:
'The great storytellers like Shakespeare, they didn't really do biographies, they used a life as a canvas to explore a larger idea ... The life of Elvis Presley could not be a better canvas in which to explore America in the '50s, the ′60s and the '70s. That 42 years, until his death in 1977, is three great lives put into a short period of time'.
I had the privilege, as the ultimate outsider, to be allowed into the world of Elvis. 'That meant having a place to work in the Graceland barn for 18 months and recording Butler singing in the same studio Elvis used in Nashville'.
Luhrmann said one of the challenges was showing a modern audience how strange and shocking the young Elvis was to audiences more familiar with country music, with his rock and roll look, swivelling hips and singing style: 'Elvis was the original punk in some regards. He was wildly provocative ... there really were riots'. Being from Australia, the Australian The Age newspaper from Melbourne already picked up the news on their front-page.
The relatively poor quality of Elvis' early recordings in mono and 'somewhat nostalgic' required inventive thinking for the singing scenes. Luhrmann revealed: 'We came up with an unusual language – a musical language – for the film. Austin would sing all the young Elvis. But from the '60s on, we would blend it with the real Elvis. So when you hear 'In The Ghetto' it is Elvis'.
Luhrmann said he learnt how much black music and culture were essential to the story of a musical legend who was surprisingly spiritual.
Austin Butler confirmed... 'For maybe a year before we even started shooting, I was doing six, seven days a week of voice coaching and working with different experts and just trying to get the register to be in the right place and the dialect and the way Elvis inflects and everything. But ultimately we realised the life is what's important ... You can impersonate somebody but to find the humanity and the life within and the passion and the heart, I had to release myself from the constraints of that'.
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