Inside "The Great Gatsby": Director Baz Luhrmann, wife and collaborator Catherine Martin talk film's circus-like vision

(CBS News) "The Great Gatsby" -- one of the most anticipated movies of the year -- opens Friday. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan in a decadent remake by director Baz Luhrmann and his wife, Catherine Martin, the production and costume designer on the film.

During a wide-ranging interview with CBS This Morning" co-host Gayle King at New York's Plaza Hotel, Luhrmann and Martin discussed the circus-like sensory overload that has come to his films over the last two decades, and in particular, how it is expressed in the couple's latest collaboration -- the film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel about a mysterious party-throwing millionaire amid the Prohibition era.

How F. Scott Fitzgerald's Saturday Evening Post success helped "Gatsby" vision come to life

"I tried to make choices like Fitzgerald would have if he was making the movie," Luhrmann said. "So I thought could we make a blend between jazz and another African-American visceral street music that is dangerous and of the moment, and that would be hip-hop."

Luhrmann turned to hip-hop mogul Jay-Z to provide the beat that would mix old with the new. Luhrmann said of the artist, "He's one of the greatest collaborations I've ever had. He's a serial collaborator by his own admission."

The director said he learned from Jay-Z that "we're in a new world in music." Luhrmann explained, "You can create music not in a studio. You can scratch it up, you know, and have people all over the world. ... If he's a master chef, you can have people making sauce in one country and, you know, doing the baking in another and bring together the meal at the table."

As for how the film looks, Martin said her visual philosophy originated moved from her husband's vision as a director. "As a director, he's a visualist," she said. "One of the very first things he came with was he really did not want New York to feel nostalgic. So he wanted it to feel modern and sexy, as if Zelda and Scott were seeing this world in '25 or '22 when the movie is set."

Luhrmann and Martin -- after 25 years -- are what some call an unusual and unlikely partnership, King noted. Asked about that partnership, Martin said, "Ultimately I think that one of the things that keeps Baz and I together -- and I notice it in my parents -- is fundamental values are the same. We value discussion, resolving arguments through discussion and finding, you know, a piece of common ground."

King asked at one point in the interview, "Is it just a given that you will always work together on his -- on his films?"

Luhrmann interjected with a laugh, "Even after the divorce, yes."

For more with Luhrmann and Martin with King, watch their full interview in the video above.