Article: Strictly Cancan Baz Luhrmann's films have given ballroom-dancing box-office and Shakespeare street-cred. But can his career survive a twin obsession with reinventing the musical and recreating the decadence of 19th- century Paris? Jonathan Van Meter met the director on the troubled set of "Moulin Rouge"

Shortly after the Australian film director Baz Luhrmann screened an unfinished cut of Moulin Rouge last September, he was quoted as saying that his work in progress was "The Rocky Horror Picture Show meets Titanic". In fact, Luhrmann says: "Some kid in one of the screenings wrote that. I think it's a very true description of the potentiality of the film. It's like an audience-participation musical, but it's essentially a Titanic- like story: it's set in a world that's heading toward tragedy; it's impossible love. It's an all-singing, all dancing Titanic."

But, even as Luhrmann says this, he knows it's not exactly right. "Rocky Horror meets Titanic" is just the latest in a series of failed ...

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