Baz Luhrmann ponders the drama of it all.

Luhrmann’s regimented approach to life can be traced directly, he said, to his upbringing in the tiny town of Herons Creek, about 200 miles north of Sydney.

Raised by his vivacious mother, who ran a dress shop, and his father, a discipline-focused Vietnam War veteran who owned a gas station and a farm, Luhrmann, then known as Mark, was often drafted to pump petrol, which he found vastly more fascinating than schoolwork. “I sat there watching every kind of human being come and go,” he said. “As a 10-year-old, people were breaking up in front of me or having sex or, you know, plotting stealing things. I was invisible: a watcher, absorbing characters.”

nyti.ms/1d7M92z