Australia the movie took its bow in Sydney this week in preparation for its box-office and marketing assault on the rest of the world. Its cast and creators talked to Russell Baillie
KEY POINTS:
Hugh Jackman is nothing if not versatile. He's been a superhero-wolfman, a vampire hunter, a European prince, a stage song and dance man. This time he was cast as a true blue Australian. So, Hugh, mate, any problems with the accent?
"It was fantastic. It was heaven. It was great," he laughs, in regard to his role as "The Drover" in Australia, Baz Luhrmann's outback extravaganza tipped as Oz's biggest cultural assault on the world since the 2000 Olympics - as well as a saviour of the country's film and tourism industries.
"I did have to work on it though. It's softer than what a lot of the guys who are really out there have. But I had to be aware of the international audience and not make it too strong. It was more the quality of those guys - they are very rooted to the land and very centred. So I wanted that quality to the voice."
It's about eight hours away from the world premiere of Australia and Jackman is holding court at the Actor's Centre in Sydney's Surrey Hills.
If he has any first night nerves, they aren't showing. Then again, he hasn't seen the finished film yet - after a long shoot fraught with location difficulties (flood, equine flu) the famously fastidious Luhrmann stretched the completion deadline past breaking point.
Which puts TimeOut at a bit of an advantage - we'd seen the finished product the previous night. Jackman comes out of it looking pretty good for a character who spends most of his time in the saddle under the outback sun.
He might be there to act, but Jackman's cattle man is there as beefcake too. And no, he doesn't feel used.
"Working on a Baz film is more forgiving on your features than any other film because he is a lover of the aesthetic and visually he's got a great eye."
He got the role after Russell Crowe pulled out citing scheduling and budgetary difficulties: "I don't do charity work for studios" was his parting shot.
Jackman stepped up and arguably his own stage and musical background was a better match of Luhrmann's theatrical sensibilities - Australia may be about a perilous cattle drive, the country's stolen generations of aboriginal kids, and the Japanese bombing of Darwin. But it's presented as a highly stylized epic melodrama which has The Wizard of Oz as an undercurrent to the story and is heavily influenced by the golden age of Hollywood classics such as Gone with the Wind and The African Queen.
The film came about after a then Paris-based Luhrmann ditched his plan to make a film about Alexander the Great starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the wake of the Oliver Stone bomb about the ancient conqueror.
He says at a press conference for the film later that day he wanted to make a movie set against Australia - though it was a long time before that was its title as well - a sweeping epic built on those classic lines.
"We have amazing landscapes. We have historical events and these epics are made up for these things and couldn't we do one of these in Australia? And on a personal level it was 'where is the home going to be for my children? What is their home?'
"The journey was using our country as a canvas of landscape and history on to which to paint a great romance."
Cue leading lady Kidman in what is her broadest appeal movie since she last teamed up with Luhrmann for Moulin Rouge. She's had a string of flops post her Oscar win for The Hours. Even her last blockbuster, The Golden Compass, failed to light up the box office.
"I have kind of quirky taste," she says. "I didn't go out and choose a big blockbuster after I won the Oscar. I think I did Birth and then I did Fur but that is my body of work, I am not going to apologise for it. I have kind of unusual tastes. Sometimes it's mainstream and a lot of times it is not.
"With Baz I have such a pull to him and he understands me, so he is able to mould and draw things out of me which relate to people in a much broader way than, say, other directors. Creatively he's my soulmate."
In Australia, Kidman plays Lady Sarah Ashley, who follows her errant aristocrat husband to the cattle station Faraway Downs only to find herself attending his funeral and facing a takeover bid by a rival cattle baron.
But she finds love, eventually, in the arms of the drover while trying to protect young Nullah, a local half-caste aboriginal kid, from the authorities. Nullah, through whose eyes the film is told, is played by now 13-year-old newcomer Brandon Walters who Luhrmann discovered after a country-wide search.
Barely reaching the microphone at the press conference, Walters confessed he didn't know who Nicole Kidman was before being cast in the film and that she was a little intimidating. "I felt a bit scared when I first met her," he admits.
He got over his nerves and his winning performance is likely to make him a star at home and abroad, something Luhrmann says he took into account when casting him.
"When we went to make the choice of this young actor, part of this process was knowing what a young actor like this would be going through. And part of that was not only an assessment of Brandon's abilities but of his family around him. Part of that deciding factor was that they were such a terrific strong family unit and they were there with him all along."
In Australia, Nullah's grandfather is played by veteran aboriginal actor-dancer-musician David Gulpilil who has starred in outback-set movies since his screen debut in Nicholas Roeg's 1969 Walkabout.
He was also part of the production's strenuous efforts to get the aboriginal elements - from body decoration to notions of magic and spirituality - in the film right.
Says the film's indigenous liaison and script consultant Steve McGregor: "The one word that summed up Baz's contribution to the indigenous content was 'respect' and it wasn't a token gesture. It was very real. There were aspects in the film that weren't culturally appropriate and once they were pointed out Baz accepted that and said 'how can we navigate our way through that and still enhance the story?"'
With its budget of A$150 million-plus it's the biggest film in Australian cinema history. As Bryan Brown, one of the many Aussie screen veterans in supporting roles says: "When there is 800 head of cattle running behind you you get a fair idea it's not going to be a drawing room comedy."
But the question now isn't how big it was - with its shoot which stretched from Darwin and the Northern Territory to north Western Australia to Queensland to the soundstages of Sydney - but how big will it go?
Luhrmann, who has made a series of tourism ads for a campaign screening in parallel to the movie's release, says he was initially reluctant to widen his efforts to make Australia be an advert for Australia.
"'Come to a movie' is different to 'come to a country'. But there was something in the idea of it - in the film Lady Sarah Ashley is forced to go the extra distance to the far, far, far away to get outside of her comfort zone. And because of that she is forced to confront herself, to have some sort of adjustment in her own spirit.
"And I thought to myself ... if you fly over a lot of beaches to come to ours you will be out of your comfort zone and here you may have experiences that are more than a holiday."
And as for the expectations of the country his filmed is named after, the box office returns, the industries hoping for a windfall from it?
"The short answer is yes, I feel under a lot of pressure."
LOWDOWN
What: Australia, starring Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman; directed by Baz Luhrmann
When and where: Opens at New Zealand cinemas on Boxing Day
