Baz Luhrmann remembers exactly where he was on August 16, 1977 — the day the King of Rock and Roll left the building.
“This kid gets on a bus and hears Elvis Presley died,” Luhrmann, 63, told The Post of his 14-year-old self back in Australia.
Rattled by the tragic news, the teenager then had a spooky premonition.
“I went, ‘Oh, that’s not right. I was meant to meet him and become his friend.’ Weird, huh?”
Forty eight years later, the “Moulin Rouge” and “Great Gatsby” director has, in a way, turned into Presley’s most loyal companion.
Luhrmann has devoted much of the past decade to the iconic musician. In that time, he’s helped shake off the cartoonish, sweaty “fat suit” image that’s shackled Elvis’ cultural memory and dwarfed his stratospheric talent, while introducing the genius singer to younger generations.
The director started with the sexy 2022 biopic “Elvis” starring Austin Butler and has just doubled down with “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert,” his revelatory half-gig-half-documentary of mostly never-before-seen performance footage that’s now in theaters.
Improbably, one of Hollywood’s most dazzling showmen has made that “Hound Dog” guy in the white jumpsuit who your grandparents liked cool again.
“I feel like it kind of happened by complete accident,” Luhrmann said. “I mean, I’m not Elvis’ friend, but I feel I know him as a person — probably in a quite profound way.”
If the Oscar-nominated Butler movie reminded audiences that Presley was musically vital, effortlessly sexy and human, what’s the director’s lofty goal with “EPiC”?
“We wanted to give him the world tour he never had,” Luhrmann said.
That unlikely journey to fulfill Presley’s unrealized dream began during production of “Elvis,” when Warner Bros. granted Luhrmann access to its Kansas City, MO, underground salt mines where the studio stores valuable, old negatives.
“I accidentally found this footage,” Luhrmann said of the previously rumored film of Presley’s famous International Hotel residency in Las Vegas that lasted from 1969 to 1976 as well as stops on his US tour.
He found a lot of footage — some 65 boxes of 8 mm and 35mm film of the early part of his Nevada stint, other national shows and goings-on behind the scenes that were meant for an unreleased doc.
Yet, a trove though it was, it was soundless and in bad shape. So Luhrmann turned to his friend Peter Jackson (“Lord of the Rings”) to help restore the buried treasure. Jackson had done similarly remarkable work on 2021’s “The Beatles: Get Back.”
Fans did their part, too. To get the audio, crafty Lurhmann sought help from the passionate community of obsessive King collectors and a somewhat more down-and-dirty element.
“There’s a big black market [for] trading,” he said.
Back in September, Luhrmann got laughs onstage at the Toronto International Film Festival premiere when he described meeting shadowy sellers in parking lots. Now, “someone told me, you better turn that down or you’ll get whacked,” he said.
As he gradually snapped up the right recordings, an assistant editor named Jim Greco spent two years meticulously matching the sound to the video. And it began to work. Lurhmann was blown away by what he saw and heard, and knew there was a movie in it.
“What would Elvis do?,” he remembered thinking. “Could it go on IMAX?”
The last piece of the “EPiC” puzzle was an unearthed Nagra-tape interview in a box the director found of Elvis intimately ruminating on his life for almost an hour.
Screw the scholars and talking heads, Luhrmann decided.
“There are always people telling you about Elvis,” he said. “And I thought, ‘The hell with that. Let’s just have Elvis tell his story.’”
The mix of Elvis singing and dancing in his prime, rehearsing and speaking candidly about himself combines into an eye-opening and exhilarating movie experience that’s arrived on both IMAX and regular screens.
At the premiere, excited women got up and danced.
The project taught Luhrmann even more about his should’ve-been pal. Seeing Elvis revealingly away from the spotlight, especially during chummy backstage glimpses, the director was surprised by how smart and funny his subject was. “Goofy,” he said.
And listening to the rare recordings of Elvis singing, he also could not believe the extent to which the man was truly the consummate artist.
“He is never out of tune,” Luhrmann said incredulously.
“I’ve worked with some of the greatest iconic musical people in the world, and they always sort of slightly hit a bang note. He’s never out of tune.”
