The Belmond connection, meanwhile, came about after Gary Franklin, Belmond\u2019s senior vice president of trains and cruises, was thinking about who his dream collaborators would be, and Luhrmann\u2019s name was the first that sprang to mind. (He eventually managed to track the couple down via their longtime lawyer.) After Franklin invited the Luhrmann clan to take a family trip on the Belmond-owned Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, the director immediately knew that designing a train carriage was the ultimate assignment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seemed like a dream, and I think that made it attractive, as that\u2019s what we do anyway,\u201d Luhrmann says. \u201cThat is what I consider my responsibility to an audience: to come into a space and to leave their lives behind and go on a journey, whether that\u2019s through a play or a movie or a train. They should feel spiritually renewed, because they\u2019re able to leave themselves and come back\u2014hopefully having readjusted the energy that might be pulling them down. Which feels like a lot of verbiage to say: It was an easy yes.\u201d<\/p>\n
An easy yes, perhaps, but it\u2019s difficult to fathom just how Luhrmann and Martin were able to fit this into their jam-packed schedules. On Monday, they helped oversee the creative direction of the Met Gala, and are currently in the end stages of a years-long pre-production process for Luhrmann\u2019s Joan of Arc biopic<\/a>, which is set to begin filming later this year. \u201cI will say that, even for someone who\u2019s always a bit four points on the compass, I\u2019m probably a little more stretched than usual,\u201d Luhrmann says, with a chuckle.<\/p>\n Though, as he explains, it\u2019s exactly these creative side quests\u2014or \u201cadventures,\u201d as he and Martin call them\u2014that keep his creative juices flowing, inevitably feeding back into their next film project. \u201cWhether that\u2019s the hotel in Miami<\/a>, or the little bar we\u2019ve got Downtown<\/a>, or an election campaign<\/a>\u2014it\u2019s always great to do something we haven\u2019t done before.\u201d<\/p>\n
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