‘Moulin Rouge’ w/ Jose Solís
Full Transcript of Technicolor Theatre podcast: Season 3, Episode 2
Aditya is joined by Jose Solís, film critic and the host of the Token Theatre Friends podcast, to dive into how the wild, campy, colorful world of Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge (2001) spoke to Jose during his childhood in Honduras.
The episode aired on December 23, 2020 and can be found here. Full transcript (below) was captured by Madelyn Gee.
Aditya Joshi: Welcome to Technicolor Theater — A podcast about representation on film. My name is Aditya Joshi. Joining me today, now that he has watched a gun fly out of the theater, bounce off a very tall tower and into the water is Jose Solís. What’s up, Jose?
Jose Solís: Hey, thank you for having me. I’m very excited to be here.
Aditya: Jose, you are the host of the Token Theatre Friends podcast. Listeners will notice that I said today that we’re recording as part of Technicolor Theater. We decided given the limited resources in the space, we didn’t want to overlap names. So our podcast has changed their name and ceded to the original Token Theatre podcast. Do you want to tell us a little bit about the Token Theatre podcast before we dive into our conversation today?
Jose: Token Theatre is something that I started almost two years ago in 2018. There was no space in the theater for critics of color, especially younger critics of color to talk about the shows that people were seeing and to interview people. I was like, “We have to do something about it.” I joined forces with my colleague, Diep Tran, and we have been going strong ever since. We launched independently over the summer and we’re doing pretty good. Listen to us if you’re into theater as well as movies.
Aditya: So before we get into today’s episode, which I think will be an interesting one and a little bit different than any of the ones that we’ve done so far, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background, what you do and how you identify?
Jose: Yeah, sure. I’m a critic. I have wanted to be a critic since I was three years old. I started as a film critic — I love movies so much. I’m very excited actually to get a chance to talk about movies again right now. Because when I moved to New York in 2012, I completely changed directions and started just focusing on theater. I’ve been writing for my own publication as well as the New York Times, Backstage American Theater, American Magazine, which the Pope reads in case you don’t know it or in case you’re a Pope person. Three Views and strangely enough I sort of ended up becoming some sort of activist in theater, and the search for equity and such. Which also led me to create the BIPOC Critics Lab, which is a program to train again, critics of color. It’s been a wild but fun ride so far.
Aditya: Yeah, I think that’s one of the many reasons that Li connected you and I, in addition to having the same name for a podcast, which I’ll take the blame for. I didn’t realize that another Token Theatre existed before I started this, but it is that you are also just so dedicated to this mission that Mediaversity has, that Technicolor Theatre has and that I have as a writer and a filmmaker. You are furthering very admirable and cool ways with this critics lab. I’m excited to see what the first … I guess you already had your first kind of beta batch of the lab. Then this next one is co-sponsored by the Kennedy Center, right?
Jose: Yep. It’s super fancy. Like I feel like Jackie O.
Aditya: That is really incredible. It’s like one of the theater bastions of the U.S. It’s super cool that they’re partnering with you on this. So, Jose. Today, we’re talking about Moulin Rouge, which is a movie that I had never seen, actually, before I watched it last night. It’s one of those movies that I thought that I had seen. I think it’s just because it’s part of popular culture. It was nominated for a million Oscars. It’s Baz Luhrmann. I was like, “Oh, I’ve seen this movie.” Then I went back and rewatched it. I was like, “Okay, now. I would remember really viscerally if I had seen this movie.” What was the first time that you watched Moulin Rouge like?
Jose: Yeah, I was gonna say that like if you’d seen it, you will remember. The first time that I watched Moulin Rouge … This is kind of strange because it’s very specific. When I lived in my home country of Honduras, I used to be a huge Entertainment Weekly reader. We got our Entertainment Weekly a month after so it was a little bit more like Entertainment Monthly. I was a huge fan of Lisa Schwarzbaum’s reviews and her criticism. I remember some time around the fall of 2000 in the upcoming movies special or whatever. I saw this picture of Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor and it was in a musical by the guy who did Romeo and Juliet, which I loved. Basically, I followed this upcoming feature in three different Entertainment Weekly previews, because they moved it. It never came out in 2000. They moved it to the spring of 2001. Then it never came out. Then they moved it to early summer or late spring in May of 2001.
I was like, “I really want to see that.” The seed had been planted in my consciousness before I even got a chance to see it. So living where I lived, we also got movies pretty late. So I remember I followed Moulin Rouge when I went to Cannes. I was like, “Give Nicole Kidman her award” after seeing it. The movie was set to premiere in my home country in August of 2001. Around that time, my grandmother, who I was very, very, very close to, was working for some benefit with other ladies. They decided to host a gala, which basically meant much more expensive tickets, but you still just went to the movies. They had this gala of Moulin Rouge. I saw it. I think it was exactly August 6, 2001 for the first time. Then it came out in the movies a week after that. I went to see it over and over and over again.
Aditya: I can see now that the anticipation was intense for this movie and I’m curious … We had talked about it briefly in email, but I actually wanted to save this part of the conversation for the podcast. When you picked this movie, which is obviously set in Paris, about a bunch of white people like Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, Jim Broadbent trying to put on a stage production and it’s highly dramatic and highly camp. Even when I was watching it, I saw John Leguizamo. I was really curious why this is a movie that you felt meant something to you in terms of representation or had an impact on you in a way that it did.
Jose: In very straightforward and basic terms, it’s a movie that I feel represents me at a soul level. It’s a movie that encompasses so much of my life experience and so much of the things that shaped me when I was growing up. Do you remember at the very beginning when the curtain opens and the orchestra director shows up? First, they play the 20th Century Fox fanfare that we all know very well. Then they play like a bit from The Sound of Music. Then it turns into the Can-Can, the famous tune that we all know. I remember the second time that I saw it, I actually went with my grandma, the first time I went with my mom. I was sitting at the movies with my grandma and she held my hand during that part. She said the 20th Century Fox fanfare reminded her of her late brother, who I barely knew because he died when I was very young. He was a huge movie fan and he would hum that Fox tune like all the time. The Sound of Music reminded her about being with us with her grandkids, because we’ve loved watching it with her when we were little.
Then the Can-Can thing was also something that she always liked singing and humming. Within, the first 10 seconds or whatever of the movie starting, it was my childhood. Basically, it was my family. So Moulin Rouge ever since for me becomes a movie that makes me feel like being with my family. It feels like going to my family. Then because of the songs that Baz Luhrmann chose to create his medleys and strange and anachronistic numbers, because the movie is set in the 1900s or 1899, it doesn’t represent me at an identity level that’s visible, necessarily. It’s all the sensibilities that I was raised on. My father, for instance, happens to be a straight man, but he has the gayest musical tastes. He would listen to show tunes when I was little and my mom would listen to Madonna and The Police. Even the song choices, everything blends together to make me feel like my spirit is basically distilled as a movie.
Aditya: Wow. That’s really cool and I guess not something I would have thought about. I’m curious — Why did you watch this movie in Honduras? What were the movies like there? Did you get all the movies that may have represented you that were coming out at the time identity wise or like visibly? Was it a very few and far between thing when you saw movies that you really connected with in the theaters?
Jose: They barely played any Latin American films. We get films from Mexico every now and then. There wasn’t really filmmaking back then. There’s a little bit more of a … I wouldn’t even call it industry but there’s a bit more of a movement now. Basically all we got was mostly big Hollywood movies like blockbusters. Then around April every year, like a month or so of all the award-winning films, if something doesn’t win awards or something doesn’t become part of basically what distributors want to send to smaller countries, we don’t get anything. I was very lucky to be able to rent movies and to be able to catch up on DVDs. The experience itself was the widest selection of films. There were no arthouse theaters. None of that. It doesn’t exist.
Aditya: It’s so interesting, because my parents are from India. I lived there for a while last year and India obviously has a very strong and prolific film industry. Not only in Hindi, but in Marathi and Telugu and Tamil and Bengali. All the different languages, even in India, have their industries. When I think about people who grew up thinking about representation on screen in countries outside of the U.S. who are people of color, I often think about how my parents never think about representation in that way. They’ve grown up watching 20 years worth of movies where everyone looked exactly like them, which I imagine is what it’s like to be white in the U.S. I’m always curious what it’s like living in other countries growing up as a film fan. Like you said, Honduras does not have a really robust or well regarded film industry. Moulin Rouge I think was the first musical to be nominated for Best Picture in 10 years. It was this massive event, but it also was extremely campy with showtunes and a jukebox musical which I assume that the other movies coming down there at the time were like The Matrix and Lord of the Rings.
Jose: Absolutely. Now you are gonna make me think a lot about identity in terms of … Something that I try to explain white Americans after moving to America and it seems to blow their minds is that they don’t understand that. Hollywood mainstream films and blockbusters are exported to Latin America. We grow up not seeing ourselves because no one’s really making films in every single country. The movies that are made there are barely getting distribution and less ironically, they become a thing in the States. We grow up seeing ourselves, like Latinos specifically, as gardeners, maids, drug dealers, people suffering crossing the border because they want to have a life in America. We grow up almost being told that we should aspire to whiteness. It’s a really perverse thing where we root for the white lead and we root against like the Colombian drug dealer, the Mexican cartel person, and all of that.
Since you don’t grow up seeing yourself, one of the other things that you made me think about was how much Moulin Rouge is so freaking queer? How it’s not coded necessarily, because it’s pretty fucking obvious. It’s a straight love story with Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor. But I felt for probably for the first time when I saw Moulin Rouge that all the things that I had inside, I was 15 years old and I was still in the closet and all the things that I felt inside like going on, all the weird firework display of feelings that I had inside me because I obviously knew was gay and I needed to come out. This movie came out for me. It was just like, “Oh, wow. That’s me inside.”
Aditya: Another movie that we’ve talked about in this podcast that I think has had a similar feeling for someone was when I talked to my friend Drew about The Talented Mr. Ripley, a much more coated but even still not that coated movie about queerness. It’s so interesting to hear that Moulin Rouge representation for you is not in the explicit. It’s both in the nostalgia of what it means to be going to the movies with your family, growing up in your house and also like what it means to see queer camp showtune musical stuff on screen. That’s really cool. I want to talk a little bit more about the movie itself. I’d love to know what you loved about the movie. Admittedly, I’m very hot and cold on Baz Luhrmann. I think Romeo and Juliet is great, Great Gatsby is solid. Moulin Rouge was not my favorite movie that I’ve ever seen. I really want to hear from you as someone whom it means so much like what it is about the movie that really drives you or strikes you in its content.
Jose: I was going to say, Do not mess with Australia. Australia is a misunderstood masterpiece. I loved Moulin Rouge so much. It’s really funny, going back to the queer thing. I wanted to show this movie to everyone. I knew since musicals, like you mentioned, are not a huge thing over there. A lot of my friends wanted to go see Moulin Rouge. Even my father who is a big showtune person. I remember when I got the DVD at the end of the year when it came out, I tried to watch it with him. He was like, “This is too much. I can’t deal with this.” Even not too long ago, he said something about how he knew I was straying from his tastes when I became obsessed with Moulin Rouge. He was like, “I don’t understand you anymore. Ever since that movie, I knew that I was never gonna get you again.” When it came out, it felt very, I won’t say groundbreaking necessarily, but it felt very radical. It felt like it was … I’m not gonna say reinventing the musical or anything like that. I remember critics comparing it to Singing in the Rain. It came out, although with much more dizzy editing.
It was that whole thing about grabbing music from another era, and then turning it into a spectacle. That took some courage and took some boldness to do it. If you think about that movie, imagine yourself trying to be a filmmaker trying to sell that. Trying to pitch to studios, “It’s a musical with a bunch of pop songs from all eras. It has quick edits and then the lead dies.” I want to sound like I’m an old fart. If you see Moulin Rouge now for instance, and it’s your first time, a lot of how the movie was made, edited and stuff has filtered into other films, music videos and into so many other things that I feel like it lessens the shock value of what it was like to see that movie 19 years ago when it came out.
Aditya: Baz Luhrmann in this movie especially loves a slow-mo head turn. There were some really greatly edited sequences that just cut away to some random guy for a quarter of a second and came back. Baz Luhrmann makes these really distinct editing choices. I love musicals. I’m a huge musical theater fan. I don’t like Phantom of the Opera very much. This movie felt like Phantom of the Opera turned up by a million in terms of the vibe, the backstage at a show, the metatextual quality of it.
Jose: I used to read Roger Ebert and I mostly disagreed with him, like all the time. When the movie came out, it didn’t really get rave reviews. It was very mixed. I remember that he specifically called it as “being trapped in an elevator with the circus.” I was like, “Okay, that’s a really good description.” You’re either the kind of person who would want that. I’m okay with that as long as there’s no clowns. You can also be the kind of person who doesn’t want that. When I saw that movie, I used to write reviews for myself, basically, I had a bunch of notebooks. I remember I wrote over 40 pages on Moulin Rouge. It was crazy. I kept coming back and back and back and adding more because every time that I saw the movie again, I would see something new. I would identify even more things that made it like almost a metaphysical biopic of myself. I was like, “This movie is me. If someone wants to know me, I would show them this movie.”
Aditya: Let’s talk about some of those metaphysical representations of you. I’m really curious as to what themes of the movie or what scenes in the movie you feel represent you in that way?
Jose: Although I’m not a courtesan dying, Nicole Kidman’s character is a teen who wants to be an actress. Right? She spent the entire movie almost wanting to go somewhere else. There’s an incredibly gorgeous number, “One Day I’ll Fly Away,” where she dreams about this and she makes it into her “I want” song. I was 13. I wanted to go far away from where I was born because I knew that it was not a place for me to fulfill my potential. There’s also the other side of me, which is Ewan McGregor and his cat. I don’t know if you know this, but when the movie came out, I remember there were some sort of extreme right wing Christians who were saying that the movie was devil worship because Satine was like code for Satan. Satan was trying to lure the Christians.
Aditya: That would make me like it a lot more, I think if that were true.
Jose: They were like, “She even wears red.” Christian is a writer, so it’s this writer who’s also wanting to capture love, beauty and essence. All these things that only he can see that he tries very hard to find in a world that doesn’t really have them. I felt like both. I was Satine wanting to get on top of the elephant and fly away and also Christian, who was trying to find truth, beauty, freedom and love in the country in the culture and context of the society where I grew up. It’s also when Nicole Kidman comes down from that trapeze as she goes into a mash up. It’s like Marilyn and Madonna. It was like my family growing up watching Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. My mom listened to Madonna when I was little while cleaning the house, while singing Papa Don’t Preach. There’s too many moments in the movie for me to go through all that because I could find something in every scene, I think.
Aditya: It definitely felt layered. There’s just in the writing just in the Christian character and the writing portion of it. Christian is the narrator of the movie and he’s writing about his own experience, in which he wrote about his own experience. It’s Baz Luhrmann, writing about someone writing about someone writing about themselves. I think as a writer who tends to rely on my own personal experience for a lot of the content that I produce as a filmmaker, that definitely resonated with me the idea of writing something in real time and changing the ending and moments as they’re happening to you.
The core of the story — The Romeo and Juliet nature of the story — I think holds up well. I think for me when I struggle a little bit is all of the things surrounding it. Which to out myself here, is something that I love about Bollywood movies. They are all like Romeo and Juliet, but with a bunch of fanfare and ridiculousness around it. I’m still trying to figure out because I just watched the movie, I don’t know 12 hours ago, still trying to unpack what it is that makes this movie different. Maybe I just didn’t like Ewan McGregor singing Hero by Enrique Iglesias. The movie is a choice and is a bold swing. I think it is super admirable, as a filmmaker or as anyone who’s trying to make art as a statement of purpose on a vision.
Jose: Absolutely. Something that I guess I admire so much about the movie that kind of became embedded in me. Maybe I had it before the movie even before I saw the movie for the first time. It’s like this movie wears its heart on its sleeve. It’s telling you, “This is who I am, love me or hate me.” It’s giving you the choice but it’s not trying to be something that it’s not. It’s so over the top, it’s so sincere. In that sincerity, I had the soundtrack also and I would like to listen to it over and over and over again. I was listening to it in my home one day and my cousin who was older, I was listening to the “Elephant Love Medley,” which is this huge mashup of love songs from different eras. My cousin loved “Lady Marmalade” because that was a huge hit also commercially. When I was listening to it, she was like, “This sounds like Aladdin.” I was like, “Yes, it does.” This is precisely why I loved it. I believe that despite my best efforts, I also am someone who wears their heart on their sleeve. I don’t hide my sensibilities like I am who I am. Maybe not as loud as Moulin Rouge. But I don’t try to moderate. I don’t try to be something that I’m not and that movie gave me the courage I would say to do that.
Aditya: Yeah, it really revels in the schmaltz and the cheesiness. We said camp, which I’d love to talk to you more about like that as a style, especially because it’s so prevalent in musical theater. I think you’re right. Baz Luhrmann is very much like, “This is what this movie is going to be.” He tells you that from the moment that the little conductor guy comes out, and does this little mashup at the beginning when it goes into the Can-Can. And Christian says that line, “To be loved and loved in return,” which is the motif of the movie? Yeah, they’re very much telegraphed for you at the beginning, “Here’s what the movie is going to be and if you don’t like the first six minutes, you’re probably not going to like the rest. But if you’re into the first six, you’re really going to be into the rest.”
Which is actually maybe a good transition to talking about it as a musical instead of just as a film. Obviously, it is a film about a musical, a musical film about a musical. I think it’s pretty explicit in its inspiration for musical theater. I think those are the parts that I like the most, where I’m like, “Oh, this is so musical theater-y of the movie.” I think musicals will also do that with your opening number, especially the classic musical, where it’s like … I don’t know, Wicked does this, Hamilton does it. Those are the new musicals. But even old school musicals do this big opening number before you get into the introduction of the character and the “I want” song and stuff. They’re like, “This is the style that we’re gonna have.” Sweeney Todd is another one. If you don’t like this opening number about the Demon Barber Fleet Street, sorry, you might as well walk out of the theater. How does it hold up to you as a piece of or anything about it compared to other musicals that you love? I’m sure you saw the Broadway version, which I actually didn’t get to see. I would love to know what you thought about that as well and how it compared to the movie.
Jose: In terms of style, aesthetics, that filmmaking, something else that I also really admire is that besides announcing its style, it tells you how it’s going to end in the first line. When Christian says, “The woman I love is dead.” So you’re like, “Okay, all right. Yeah, she won’t survive.” We know that. It still draws you in and you know where it’s headed. There’s a part of me that every time I watch it, especially in the final huge number, which actually incorporates some like Bollywood settings, every time I watch it I hope that she won’t die. I know that she’s gonna die. But every time I am like, “This time, maybe she’ll live.” I love that also the film is basically the Orpheus myth turned into a musical. You know where it’s headed and makes you hope for something different. That’s something that not even quote unquote original screenplays do very often for me. follow but I don’t want to follow necessarily. When I saw that they were turning this movie into a Broadway musical, It was me being 14 being like, “Yes, it’s coming.”
When it premiered two years ago in Boston, I actually went with one of my friends because I needed to see this. I was incredibly disappointed with what they had done. When it came to Broadway, I went hoping that they had changed some stuff. They had and I was even more disappointed. It’s one of my least favorite musicals of all time on either stage. The reason for that is because the Broadway adaptation ironically, feels like it’s been de-queered. Everything that makes the movie so freaking queer and inviting and exciting, is erased. What happened was that the people who wrote the book didn’t just grab it. They’re like, “Oh, we’re gonna do something different.” They didn’t just grab the numbers that Baz Luhrmann had created. They updated some, they got rid of some, and they added things to others to incorporate music that had come out since Moulin Rouge premiered, which was not the point of Moulin Rouge. It’s not a movie that’s basically trying to be a greatest hits compilation of pop music until 2001.
It’s more Baz Luhrmann grabbing bits and pieces of things that he loves from across all areas. The “Elephant Love Medley” combines music by Paul McCartney and “Love is a Many Splendored Thing” from 1955. Then also David Bowie, and it’s all over the place. The Broadway version substitutes those songs for commercial hits that appeal to everyone. I’m clutching my pearls so tight. Instead of getting “One Day I’ll Fly Away,” Satine sings “Firework” by Katy Perry. They sing “Chandelier” by Sia, which makes no sense anywhere. I mean, Christian sings “Rolling In The Deep” by Adele, and I’m like, “You’re just picking songs that are popular.” They make no sense in the context of what you’re trying to do. I strangled myself with my pearls — They get rid of the musical within them. They get rid of that and instead turn it into a naturalist play. Christian’s working on naturalist play.
Aditya: Oh, weird.
Jose: It tries to please audiences that are not ready to be challenged. It wants to be a musical that’s a little bit gay. But hey, here’s some fun or “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley out of nowhere, and it just betrays the spirit of the film.
Aditya: That makes sense. I never saw the musical but something about the movie that I didn’t have a complaint about that I actually thought was done quite well was the jukebox musical quality of it. I thought that it felt much more well executed than like a Rock of Ages or any of these like musicals that are Greatest Hits compilations for specific artists, Mamma Mia aside. I think jukebox musicals generally don’t work for me for that reason. It’s like, “We know that you like this song. So let’s make sure that this song gets put in the movie.” There was definitely a little bit of forcing in the movie version. I thought “Like a Virgin” was perhaps a little shoehorned. When the Italian guy who’s playing the Indian sitar player is like “Roxanne.” But for the most part, it felt very motivated. It felt like Baz Luhrmann had a story and had an arc and had an aesthetic in mind and then picked songs that fit that as opposed to the other way around.
Jose: It’s like a soundtrack to our lives. And if you think about specific moments in your life and even your super specific events, there’s probably a song that you can relate to that. It can be a song that has nothing to do with the event. It could be a dance song during a very solemn event or something like that. That’s what the movie feels like, for me. It defies the kind of music people expect to fit into a specific moment. That “Like a Virgin” thing, which also, he gets rid of. Can you imagine that? There’s no “Like a Virgin”? There’s basically no Madonna. The people who made the Broadway show even added “Single Ladies” by Beyonce to the Diamond Medley. It’s just so obvious, and “Diamonds” by Rihanna. It’s just a big no. So I like that. You know the songs that make you think of an era in your life. It was Baz Luhrmann showing us the songs that made him think about love and unabashed romance.
Aditya: That makes a lot of sense. It’s the kind of thing where it’s pure and unfiltered Baz Luhrmann. If you’re going to shoot it up, like you might as well not water it down. If you’re going to have it, you might as well not water it down. You might as well just have it for what it is. It is disappointing to hear that the musical version is bad and also diluted. I want to talk about one or two more things about this movie and then and then get into a little bit how … We’ve talked a lot about how it influenced you but I want to dive into this a little bit more in regards to your criticism. I want to ask you what your thoughts were on two things and we can start with John Leguizamo and what’s going on with the Greek chorus. When I saw it I’ll be honest, again because I think my mind was so rooted in the idea that identity is a visible thing. When I saw John show up, I was like, “Oh, great. This must be where Jose is at.” I love John Leguizamo. He doesn’t show up very much and he has this kind of weird slap-sticky kind of bit especially at the end. But he is based on a real guy, which is so interesting. What did you think of the Leguizamo character and the Greek chorus in general in this movie?
Jose: I don’t know if you’ve seen the other Moulin Rouge that came out like 50 years before this one. It was also nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture. It’s just called Moulin Rouge, but no exclamation mark. It’s actually a biopic about Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and then the painter who John Leguizamo plays in the movie who captured that era in Paris, Moulin Rouge, the Can-Can and the whole like … He’s a sidekick in the movie. When I saw John Leguizamo, again, I was very young and I was very used to the idea of whiteness as something to aspire to. So I actually didn’t admire that he was playing a French white dude but I was so happy to see him. I was happy to see that he was playing characters that didn’t necessarily have him you know rely on his identity as a Latino to be a character. The same happens when he sings Romeo and Juliet, unless you’re like a freaking racist purist, you never question why he is speaking Shakespeare. The theatrics of having a chorus almost announce everything that’s gonna happen. It just added to my passion for learning more about the form and relating it to other genres and to other films, but also to theater that I ended up falling in love with much much much later.
Aditya: Now that I’m reflecting on it, I think I am warming up to it just by talking to you. I really actually really enjoyed Leguizamo and then the other members of that little troupe that Christian starts out with. Even though he’s absurd, I’ve loved the Duke. I just felt like that was campy to the max. It was quite fun to watch them chewing the scenery. Those surrounding parts, which are also often the most fun parts of stage musicals. Not so much like the central love story, but the sidekick characters and the people who round out the cast. I think to your point that they are diverse just because and it’s like not a part of the character. Except for the narcoleptic Italian Brazilian guy, I actually don’t remember exactly what his situation is, except for he keeps falling asleep and he’s kind of dark. I’m with you there.
The other thing I want to chat about briefly is I had really mixed feelings on the use of like India as a musical. I couldn’t decide whether it was like taking advantage of the exoticism of India, even in 1999, if it was like playing off of the way that India was viewed in 1899 or if it was an homage to Bollywood. Especially with “Chamma Chamma,” I really couldn’t decide what to make of that. What do you think about that part of the movie, that inclusion?
Jose: It is what nowadays we would call quote unquote problematic. Appropriating culture. But you know, even 20 years ago, that wasn’t a theme in the larger social conversations surrounding art. It’s not that they weren’t appropriating culture. It’s not that they weren’t racist, because I mean, to have Nicole Kidman, who’s the palest white woman in the world, dressed in Indian attire is wrong. It might feel a little cringeworthy today. But back then, for lack of better words, we didn’t understand that. Back then, for instance, because of the “Chamma Chamma” moment, I actually started renting Bollywood musicals. I was so impressed by that choreography and the style that actually invited me to seek out things that had influenced it.
I know it’s not a great answer, but it’s what it was back then. It was like an invitation, like, I feel like most cultural appropriation just takes the culture, embeds it in its own thing and decultures it in its way. Then you learn about that culture through the appropriation, but it doesn’t really invite you to go find the root of it. For me, Moulin Rouge did that. It made me go back and find songs that I didn’t recognize immediately and learn about them, which also led me to other things. It’s all like a Russian doll where I was uncovering layers and going back to find out more about certain things.
Aditya: Cool. Okay, Jose, the fundamental question that this podcast is really about is how has this movie influenced your art and your work? I know obviously how much it means to you. We’ve spent 45 minutes talking about how much it means to you. You mentioned that you wrote a 40-page dissertation on Moulin Rouge when you first saw it. How did that experience drive you to where you are now as a prominent film critic and doing these labs?
Jose: It taught me in many ways that a film specifically because you know, it’s much more difficult than theater because theater you only get like a press invite and you go once and that’s it. In theater you have to react to this one thing that the next night if you saw it or more than once it’s going to be completely different. While Moulin Rouge and every other film by default are always going to be the same. Movies cannot change unless they do some director’s cut or whatever. But it’s going to be the same forever. Moulin Rouge taught me that the movie would always be the same but it reflected back things to me depending on where I was in my life. So for instance, when I was younger, it was such a love letter to love and the things that a 15-year-old wants, right? All these hopes and dreams and silly romance. Then as I got older, I focused a little bit more on the heartbreak. Seeing Christian actually never gets to have his musical really produced. It opens and the lead dies on opening night.
I was like, “Are they going to do it tomorrow with a different girl?” It’s about seeing your hopes crash. It is about knowing that you can write something or you can do a piece of criticism, or a piece of any kind of art and that it’s worth it just for one night. If you touch people one time and if you touch one person, it’s worth everything. Its focus and the focus that I also do as a critic is that it’s more important to let your opinion aside but to let your essence out and then it belongs to the world, right? You need to put things out. You need to express them. The film is so expressive that I would highly recommend, if you get the opportunity, to see this movie on the big screen. They don’t show it very often but for the past few years or so, the Alamo actually for Valentine’s Day screened the movie to this interactive thing where they give you props and stuff and you interact with the movie. It’s so freaking joyful. Seeing those flashy scenes and all that color on a big screen surrounded by people actually takes the movie to a whole different level. Although you could say that about almost any movie probably. It’s meant to be watched in theaters. It’s a movie that taught me that I needed to revisit art. I needed to acknowledge how art does become a part of who you are and how — This is very corny — But how a movie like Moulin Rouge, for instance, becomes a part of your soul basically.
Aditya: That’s awesome. That’s a great answer. I know you feel like it wasn’t, but it was a great answer. Thank you so much for being here, Jose, anything to plug before we end the episode?
Jose: I didn’t think about that. You can find my web series and podcasts Token Theatre Friends at tokentheatrefriends.com. If you want to read what I write about the theater, I’m on Twitter at @josesolismayen. I post everything that I do over there. Other than that, I guess watch the new Nicole Kidman show The Undoing on HBO. Although I don’t work for HBO. But have you seen it?
Aditya: I haven’t seen it yet.
Jose: She also sings the theme song.
Aditya: Oh, she also sings The Undoing theme song.
Jose: Yeah. If you want some Nicole Kidman songs in your life, go watch The Undoing. Thank you for letting me plug some stuff.
Aditya: Yeah, of course. Oh, I guess one last question. I would only ask you in this situation. If you could only listen to one song on the Moulin Rouge soundtrack, what would it be?
Jose: I am probably going to go with “The Elephant Love Medley.”
Aditya: You mentioned it a bunch of times. It’s pretty long, so I figured that would give you the most bang for your buck.
Jose: I sing both parts usually, like almost daily. I sing both parts by myself. I’m not like a good singer by any means. I don’t know how to sing but I sing all the time. I have this friend who’s straight and he’s a really great singer. He loves going to like gay bars and stuff. For months, we had been talking about him coming to New York, and we were gonna go to a bar and we were gonna do “The Elephant Love Medley.” He has a really great voice. So he immediately goes like, “Okay, so I guess I’ll be playing Nicole Kidman.” I’m like, “How dare you? There’s no way — I’m Nicole Kidman here.” So anyway, the night comes and he is in town and we’re both drunk. And We request the song at a gay bar and we get to the stage. When the song starts, he starts singing the Nicole part. I had to shove him and take my rightful place as Satine. That would be my song.
Aditya: What an amazing visual to end the podcast on Jose, thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate it.
Jose: Thank you for having me. This was so much fun. I don’t get to talk about this movie very often, which is what I told you.
Aditya: We’re glad we got to talk about it today.
Aditya: You have been listening to Technicolor Theatre, a podcast about representation on film. Today’s guest was Jose Solís, the host of Token Theatre Friends, which like Technicolor Theatre, you can find wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find out all of the Technicolor Theatre podcast episodes on MediaversityReviews.com You can find Jose on Twitter @josesolismayen. You can find me on Instagram @aditya.mov. Today’s movie was Moulin Rouge directed by Baz Luhrmann which is on HBO Max. Thank you so much for listening and we’ll catch you in two weeks with a new episode.
Mediaversity Reviews is a project that grades TV & films on gender, race, LGBTQ, disability, and more. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to join the conversation!
