An Exclusive First Look at Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin’s Fantastical Belmond Train Carriage

Meanwhile, the Belmond connection arose after Gary Franklin, Belmond’s senior vice president of trains and cruises, was considering who his dream collaborator would be, and Luhrmann’s name was the first that came to mind. (He eventually tracked down the couple through their longtime attorney.) After Franklin invited the Luhrmanns for a family trip aboard the Belmond-owned Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, the director immediately realized that designing the train cars would be the ultimate assignment.

“It seemed like a dream, and I think that made it attractive because that’s what we were doing anyway,” Ruhlmann said. “That’s what I think my responsibility is to the audience: to get into a space, leave their lives behind, and go on a journey, whether it’s through a play or a film or a train. They should feel spiritually refreshed because they’ve been able to leave themselves and come back—hopefully having realigned the energy that might have been weighing them down. It feels like a lot of crap to say: it’s a simple ‘yes.'”

Simple maybe, but it’s hard to understand how Luhrmann and Martin were able to fit this into their jam-packed schedules. They helped oversee the Met Gala’s creative direction on Monday and are in the final stages of a year-long pre-production process for Luhrmann’s Joan of Arc biopic, which is set to begin filming later this year. “I will say, even for someone who’s always at four o’clock on the compass, I was probably a little more nervous than usual,” Ruhlmann said with a laugh.

As he explains, though, it’s these creative side quests—or “adventures,” as he and Martin call them—that get his creative juices flowing, inevitably feeding back into their next film project. “Whether it’s a hotel in Miami, a small bar downtown, or a campaign event, it’s always great to do something we haven’t done before.”