Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. The hands down highlight of my SXSW this year was the brief 15 minutes I got to spend talking to George Miller about Road Warrior and Fury Road. The man was smart, enthusiastic and very open about the evolution of this particular project, which began life as a Mel Gibson Max movie and had to roll with some devastating punches to finally make it to the screen this May.
We talk a lot about that process, the changes in stunt and effects technology in that time and how Road Warrior still plays today. Mr. Miller actually sat and watched The Road Warrior with us the night previous to this interview, his first start to finish viewing on a big screen since 1982, he said. We also touch very briefly on his Justice League movie and how amazing Weta Workshop is.
It's a great chat. Hope you dig it!
Quint: Thanks for sitting down with me. I'm a big fan and like most movie geeks out there I came to your work via the Mad Max films, so it's especially exciting to get to talk to you about this universe you've created. I'd like to start with the long development of the movie. You've been trying to make Fury Road for a while. I visited the set of The Beaver and got to talk a little bit with Mel Gibson there... I don't remember if Tom Hardy was onboard yet, but I do remember that Mel said you two were trying to get Mad Max 4 together for a long time.
George Miller: We got pretty close. We got within 11 weeks in 2001. There were still some issues with Mel's deal to work out and then 9/11 happened. We were shooting in Australian dollars and the American dollar dropped close to 25% and that just ballooned the budget. By then Warners had read Happy Feet and there was a window for the digital house to start, so we limped into that. Then we regrouped, but by then Mel had all his stuff going on and we cast Tom and Charlize. We rigged up again and got within 12 weeks of shooting out at Broken Hill and then the rains came.
It hadn't rained for 15 years and it flooded and what was flat red earth was now a flower garden and the great salt lakes in the center of Australia where we were to shoot were full of pelicans and frogs. The studio said “We'll wait a year and see if it dries out.” But it didn't, so we had to put all that stuff, close to 200 vehicles, including the big trucks, and boat them to Namibia. We eventually got to shoot it!
Quint: At a certain point do you go, “Maybe God doesn't want this movie to happen?” That's some Terry Gilliam level bad luck right there.
George Miller: (laughs) The interesting thing was that although this happens with movies, the planets have to align, but somehow (Fury Road) wouldn't go away. I mean, I had other stuff that I wanted to do, but somehow you couldn't kill it with a stick! It just wouldn't go away.
Quint: So, is this version of the movie the one you were trying to get off the ground with Mel back in 2001 or did it evolve into something else entirely over the years?
George Miller: The basic story didn't evolve because we planned the whole film as a chase, pretty non-verbal and you get to know the characters and their relationships and the events on the ride. In order to do that, when we wrote it we did it as storyboards, so it was 3,500 panels around a wall and that's what Mel started with and that is what we ultimately went into production with.
But, in the mean time, I kept changing it and improving it and interrogating it. Most importantly things we never imagined we could do for real, that I thought was going to be greenscreen... like, if you saw the trailer, the guys on poles. We call them Pole Cats. Well, I always thought we were going to shoot on greenscreen and comp them to the car. Then I thought, “Well, we can do it on a real car, but the car can't move,” because it's too dangerous. One thing happens and people are dying.
The time let the special effects guys and Guy Norris, the stunt coordinator, to work it out in small increments. One day I was in Sydney working on Happy Feet and got a video tape from Broken Hill from Guy Norris, who said, “I've got a little surprise for you.” I saw six or seven of them, coming down the road and I almost started to cry. I thought, “My God, they've done it and it look so safe!” Not only that, but Guy was on top of one of them filming it. So, those sorts of things evolved.
Quint: That's great. I think having real people doing crazy real stunts is something the fans are most excited about seeing in these movies. I'm sure you've got a fair amount of CGI in the film, but I'd wager most of it is pure metal on metal carnage. The real stunts and stunt driving is such a huge part of the identity of the series, it's almost as important as Max himself. It's not a Mad Max film if there isn't a moment where we, the audience, are convinced someone died, like the famous flipping through the air stunt in Road Warrior.
George Miller: That was Guy Norris! This is not a film that defies the laws of physics. It's not a fantasy film. There are no people who fly. There's no spacecraft. If you've got cars, why make them CG cars? Not only did our stunt team appear to be in actual jeopardy, but our actual actors were. You have Tom Hardy who is very gifted physically. He was a rugby player and he's very quick. You have Charlize who was a serious ballet dancer, so she's very, very skilled, and Nick Holt is naturally athletic.
So, at a certain point working with stunt crew they'd say, “We can do that one, we can do that one” because we could put wires on them and keep them safe. That was a big (benefit) of CG, to be able to do that. Apart from the storm sequence in CG, we were able to erase tracks. You know when you used to watch movies as a kid you could count the skidmarks to tell you how many takes they did. We were able to erase tracks, erase wires and then there's the big storm sequence, which was naturally CG.
Quint: I love it when there's an amalgam. What I love about movies is it's kind of a magic show. When everything is always CG you know what the trick is and see through the illusion. Spielberg did it really well when he kind of busted the door down to all of this in Jurassic Park.
George Miller: Yeah.
Quint: I think there are moments in Jurassic Park that people think are CG, but it's actually Stan Winston's dinosaurs because he combined tricks, sometimes in the same shot.
George Miller: Yeah, that's the key, to mix and match.
Quint: I was really happy that you decided to rewatch The Road Warrior with us at the big SXSW screening and that you got to watch it in our big movie house, the Paramount. I'm from Austin, so I've seen a lot of classics grace that screen.
George Miller: It's a wonderful city. You know, it reminds me a lot of Wellington, New Zealand where Peter Jackson and his cohorts have created a community. They're a smaller population, but...
Quint: I'm going to Wellington next week!
George Miller: Are you?
Quint: Yeah, it's my second home. I love that city. I went down there for Return of the King and have been back many, many times since. I absolutely fell in love with that place.
George Miller: Do you see the similarity?
Quint: Absolutely! I think it's part of the reason I feel so at home in Wellington. It has the same kind of small, keep it weird arty culture, but still within a substantial city that Austin has.
George Miller: Yeah, it's like an oasis of creativity. It's fantastic.
Quint: But I'm glad that you got to rewatch Road Warrior with the crowd and feel how they responded to it even now, some 30+ years later.
George Miller: That was a big life experience for me. As Drew (McWeeny, moderator of the Q&A at the Road Warrior screening and handsome sumbitch) said, it was time travel. It was really strange because I've watched parts of the film, but to watch the whole thing on the big screen with an audience was going back 32 years in time. It was weird!
Quint: Now it's going to be fresh in your mind when you're in full on Fury Road release mode and watching the new movie with some crowds. Do you think it's going to play audiences the same way Road Warrior still gets to them?
George Miller: I've seen it... not the complete film, but in test screenings, and we're getting this sort of thing. There were a lot of laughs last night, which caught me by surprise. Things that were small moments, which is really good. That's similar to this one. But it's not for me to say what I think the experience is because audiences in time will tell you, but (Fury Road) is a more immersive, fully realized world because the technology has allowed to do it. Film has become more plastic. When we shot (Road Warrior) there was no video split, it took one week to see dailies, which had to be sent to big cities to be processed...
Quint: You got what you got.
George Miller: You got what you got and then had to deal with it in post, but now you can manipulate it more. You can change skies, you can erase tracks, you can erase wires, you can put the camera anywhere. Back then if you lost a camera, and there were a couple of shots where we lost the camera on Road Warrior, it was devastating. On this one you can just go to the airport and buy another camera!
Quint: We mentioned Wellington. I have many, many good friends at Weta and although I haven't seen anything they were all speaking so highly of the Justice League stuff they were doing for you. The costumes in particular.
George Miller: Richard Taylor is a God-like figure to me. For many reasons... his stories, his comprehensive knowledge and the way he can find talent. The designs he did were just fantastic.
Quint: Do you think any of that stuff is ever going to come out? I know there are a lot of people who would love to see it.
George Miller: It'd be great to see it because the work was so wonderful. I have the maquettes that they sent me very prominently in my office. I see them every day. It's just beautiful work.
There you have it. The highlight of the fest for me and I hope you Ayatollah of Rocknrollas got some enjoyment out of it is as well.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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