BAZ LUHRMANN: “Hey now, George, tell me about the film you’re making. Because it’s shrouded in mystery! Or maybe you can’t?”
GEORGE MILLER: “It’s set in present day Istanbul and London.”
BL: “Oh, I love Istanbul …”
GM: “It’s called Three Thousand Years Of Longing. It goes back 3,000 years to the time of Sheba, right through the Ottoman Empire.”
BL: “Did you hang out in Istanbul, do the palace and all that?”
GM : “Yeah, yeah. Some of it’s set in there, but of course, it was all done in Sydney due to Covid.”
BL: “Did you build a big harem set? The harem is a thing! Actually, not as saucy as you think. What I’ve learned is that it was a sort of system of governance.”
GM: “Exactly.”
BL: “And you did it all on stages?”
GM: “Yeah, all of it.”
BL: “That really sounds beautiful.”
GM: “You know, you can never tell how your film’s going to be. The truth is you never know.”
BL: “Never! You never know! I don’t know about you, but I have this thing in my mind I call the line. And what it means is I know it’s playing. And it’s never what you want it to be, it’s just a matter of … well, it’s crossed the line. Meaning it’s not dead on arrival. You’re like, ‘Okay, this is playing, but as to what it is, who cares …’ Every 48 hours I’m like, ‘Does anyone give a shit about this movie? What is it?’”
GM: “Well, you know, that’s how it always is. It’s always the case and the audience tells you – it exists only in the hearts and minds and viscera of the audience. It’s not up there on the screen.”
BL: “That’s a conduit, isn’t it?”
GM: “Exactly.”
“And here’s the thing, very, very similar between you and I. The isolation, looking back, was a huge boon. Because we lived in our imaginations”
“You’re a young sprite, but as I’m getting older, sometimes someone will come up and go,
