More on Baz

I don’t think Baz needed to clear up anything about that ending story. It isn’t going to matter one way or the other if the movie is good. Supposedly Robert Towne wanted a happier ending for Chinatown and Polanski changed it, deciding, as he would be inclined to, that life is just too horrible for a happy ending and thus a classic was born. Woody Allen wanted Annie Hall to be about a guy with a phobia of people but in the editing room realized it was about the girl and thus, another classic was born. If films are changed, even at the last minute, it isn’t a bad sign necessarily. At any rate, Baz gives an interview with The Envelope’s Scott Feinberg where he talks about Australia being a “cinematic banquet” but this quote of his, to my mind, is the real standout:

I am inviting all of America to “Australia” for Thanksgiving, and we’re gonna serve a cinematic banquet.

Baz is as bold an artist as he is a visionary and I’m sure Americans are starving for just this kind of thing. More on Luhrmann’s “setting the record straight” here.