The Electric Playground
100th Episode Spectacular
Saturday 22 June 2002 on G4

We celebrate our 100th episode with a look back at some of our great and not-so great moments of the past 7 and a half Seasons.

• 
  external: Podcasts about Baz's 2008 film... May 20, 2008 (Score: 21)
  
• 
  external: Luhrmann to revisit World War... Nov 7, 2006 (Score: 21)
  

On October 9th, 2006, Baz Lurhmann donated a cap for the National Storage Celebrity Garage Sale which raised money for the charity, The Australian Children Foundation. (edit) He is sometimes credited as 'BLAM'. (edit) He was among the guests at Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban's wedding. (edit) He was nominated as Best Director at the 2003 Tony Awards for La Boheme.

(edit) In 2004, he directed the world's most expensive advertisement for Chanel No. 5 starring Nicole Kidman. (edit)

Baz: One of the proud moments for us was Robert Wise, who directed Sound of Music and West Side Story, he is the great-great grandfather of musical cinema and he said, "I've seen Moulin Rouge and the musical has been re-invented". I bring this up because you get that kind of thing and that's wonderful.

(edit) Baz: The Red Curtain requires some basics. One is that the audience knows how it will end when it begins, it is fundamental that the story is extremely thin and extremely simple - that is a lot of labour. Then it is set in a heightened, created world. Then there is a device - the heightened world of Strictly Ballroom, Verona beach. Then there is another device - dance or iambic pentameter or singing, and that's there to keep the audience awake and engaged. The other thing is that this piece was to be a comic tragedy. This is an unusual form, there's been a few goes at it - [like] Dancer in the Dark - but it's not common in Western cinematic form.
(edit) Baz: We went to this huge, icecream picture palace to see a Bollywood movie. Here we were, with 2,000 Indians watching a film in Hindi, and there was the lowest possible comedy and then incredible drama and tragedy and then break out in songs. And it was three-and-a-half hours! We thought we had suddenly learnt Hindi, because we understood everything! [Laughter] We thought it was incredible. How involved the audience were. How uncool they were - how their coolness had been ripped aside and how they were united in this singular sharing of the story. The thrill of thinking, 'Could we ever do that in the West? Could we ever get past that cerebral cool and perceived cool.' It required this idea of comic-tragedy. Could you make those switches? Fine in Shakespeare - low comedy and then you die in five minutes. (edit) Baz: But above everything else, Shakespeare had to deal with a city of 400,000 people and a theatre that held 4,000 and everyone from the streetsweeper upwards. Not unlike your local cineplex, and he used everything possible to arrest and stop that audience - really bawdy comedy and then, wham! Something really beautiful and poetic. Everything we did in Romeo and Juliet was based on Elizabethan Shakespeare. The fact that there was pop music in it was a Shakespearean thing. We would be fearless about the lowness of the comedy. (edit) Baz: The primary myth part came out of a revelation of the value of Shakespeare. Those are dramas that play to the simple person and the complicated person. (edit)

Guest Star
Rove Live November 6, 2001 Himself	The Electric Playground 100th Episode Spectacular Himself
The View March 19, 2002 Himself

Director
Great Performances La Bohéme