Baz Luhrmann found 65 reels of lost Elvis Presley footage in Kansas salt mines

If Baz Luhrmann's projects are known for anything, it's their bravado.

In the Australian director's hands, an adaptation of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" is set in the present day, where the warring gangs of Capulets and Montagues wear leather vests and tropical shirts. A jukebox musical inspired by "La Boheme" becomes a dazzling smash hit featuring songs by everyone from Nirvana to David Bowie. And an "Elvis" biopic gets a change of perspective and a soundtrack featuring modern-day giants of rock and rap.

No matter the subject, Luhrmann's movies are defined by their showmanship — not just in their performances, but in their eye-catching cinematography, costumes, and production design. So it makes sense that one of Luhrmann's lifelong obsessions is with the king of showmen himself: Elvis Presley.

Growing up in the small town of Herons Creek in New South Wales, Australia, in the 1960s, Luhrmann quickly became fascinated by the King of Rock 'n' Roll. When his father, a gas station owner with an eye for photography, took over projector duties at their local cinema after the owner died, a young Luhrmann attended matinee screenings of Elvis movies on Sundays.

"I particularly remember watching 'Easy Come, Easy Go,'" Luhrmann, 63, told Business Insider, referring to the 1967 Presley movie. "Which is probably one of the worst ones. But I was just thinking, 'Oh man, he looks cool.'"

Luhrmann was hooked. He begged his grandmother to make him an Elvis jumpsuit and would dance endlessly to the Presley hit "Burning Love."

Decades later, he used his childhood obsession to create the acclaimed Presley biopic "Elvis" in 2022, which starred Tom Hanks as Presley's tyrannical manager Colonel Tom Parker and Austin Butler as the King himself. The film earned eight Oscar nominations and was praised for its unflinching look at the musician's life and authentic renditions of his stage shows.

Once "Elvis" was finally out in the world, Luhrmann was as exhausted as the singer after one of his high-octane Vegas shows. But like the King, Luhrmann couldn't help coming back for more.

With his documentary, "EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert," now in theaters, Luhrmann has restored never-before-seen archival footage from Presley's performances to craft a work that's part concert film, part autobiography. Along with footage from Presley's early-1970s tour and Vegas residency, the doc also includes 40 minutes of previously unheard Presley interviews.

It's the culmination of Luhrmann's lifelong obsession with a figure who's just as colorful as his work.

In our latest "Director's Chair" interview, Luhrmann goes deep on Elvis' continued influence on pop culture, the use of AI in documentaries, and the Alexander the Great movie he didn't get to make.

On discovering Elvis Presley footage in salt mines and how Bono got involved in 'EPiC'

Business Insider: It's fascinating that with all the influences in music these days, it always comes back to Elvis.

Baz Luhrmann: It's really remarkable. Bruce Springsteen, sure. But Bob Dylan revered him. Muhammad Ali said, "I saw Elvis, and I want to be like that in boxing." He's a trigger point for so many because, in a way, he was the first teen rock idol, then he was the biggest movie star, then he gets lost and comes back. The moment we're seeing in this film — he's at the godlike level.

But this is also the beginning of the end.

Yeah. He says in the doc, he thinks he's going to do [Vegas] just once and then go to Germany and Europe and Japan. It's a bird flying into a glass window and not being able to see it. He loses his spirit. But what he doesn't lose is the addiction, the only true love that he knows, and that's the love of the audience across the footlights.

So, were you just not done with the King after locking picture on "Elvis"? Is that how "EPiC" came about?

It was an accidental experience. We heard rumors of the footage. I have the money to go into the salt mines [where they're stored]. They find the 65 reels. From the get-go, Jon Redmond, who is my creative partner in this and my editor, was like, "You know, Baz, we can't just put them back in the salt mines."

From that moment on, we thought, what are we going to do? I still had to finish the movie, and I was exhausted by it.

It wasn't like everyone was going, "You must make another Elvis doc!" Nobody really wanted to do it, to be honest.

Then we found the 40 minutes of him just talking by himself, and that was the lightbulb moment: Why don't we just get out of the way? What if he just tells his story through song and speaking? And that was the trigger.

It took a long time to get all the parties to agree — all the publishing. There's 75 songs in this.

And finding the audio. A lot of this footage didn't have accompanying sound.

Yeah. That took two years. How crazy is that?

What depths did you go to get the audio?

The thing about mag tape is that's like finding negative. So a lot of songs had already been cut or recut, so you had that. Which gave you the Elvis voice, and it gave you the band. But sometimes the suites were not well recorded. So we had to find solutions. Like with "Oh, Happy Day," we did flashbacks of Elvis singing with gospel choirs. And sometimes we had people go out and meet with gangsters in car parks who were on the black market for Elvis stuff.

What?

There's a huge black market. And I can't give this person's name, but there was a collector, and collectors don't want to share their stuff, and he really helped us out in the eleventh hour with something we needed audio-wise.

You could have ended "EPiC" the way you ended "Elvis," which is with Presley's performance of "Unchained Melody," but you change it up — you have the voiceover of Bono reciting his "American David" poem. How did you land on that?

Bono is a friend of mine, and I was in the South of France. We're having lunch, and he read me the poem. We were thinking about putting in "Unchained Melody," but we didn't want to dwell on the Elvis deconstruction, because that's well known. We wanted to sum up what Elvis the performer is. To know the man behind the myth. So we put the poem in the edit, and we just could never get away from it. And Bono was so generous.

On his star-studded movie that was never made and what he thinks of AI in filmmaking

Let's bring up something your fans might find interesting. Has there been a project where you could have collaborated with two of the biggest stars you've worked with, Leonardo DiCaprio and Nicole Kidman?

When I was doing "Alexander the Great." I worked on it for years. Leo was going to be Alexander, but the idea was that because Alexander's mom was not Greek, I thought his mother could be Nicole.

Was that just an idea, or did that get any traction?

Leo was in, and we built studios in Northern Wales. Then Oliver Stone wanted to make a movie about Alexander the Great, and I just couldn't raise enough money. I had to abandon the project. It was something I was passionate about, and we got a long way down the road on it. It was definitely Leo, Nicole, and I think Mel Gibson was going to play King Philip.

We're in a fascinating chapter right now for filmmakers, especially in the documentary field. You described the lengths you and your team went to make "EPiC" as authentic as possible. Another director in your situation could have just said, "We'll use AI to fill in the gaps." What do you think of AI with regards to storytelling?

AI is a tool. The thing about AI is you can take a black-and-white picture of Elvis and give it movement, and go, "Wow, that's cool," but it's not actually Elvis. It has no soul.

What makes human beings human is what AI isn't. AI is perfect. AI does a perfect copy of something. What it doesn't do is be purely and absolutely original, and human beings are flawed. And it's the flaws that make them original. It's a bit like when photography was invented, the people who did portraits were like, "Well, my job's over." Until a guy comes along and says, "What if I paint you a psychology?" And the last time I checked, Picasso's paintings were still worth a few bucks.

So I think human beings have an innate ability to pivot. What AI can't do is have an original idea.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.