Happy Sad Confused - George Miller, Vol. II

Episode Date: August 26, 2020

Five years after the release of "Mad Max: Fury Road" and we're still obsessed with George Miller's masterpiece! Josh reunited with George (virtually of course) for this comprehensive retrospective on the film that redefined the action movie genre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Conditions apply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. Prepare your ears, humans. Happy, Sad, Confused begins now. Today on Happy, Sad, Confused, five years after Mad Max Fury Road, director George Miller reflects on his masterpiece. Hey, guys, I'm Josh Horowitz. Welcome to another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused.

Yes, it's true. My obsession. The movie that I can't stop talking about five years later, I'm sorry, I'm going to be talking about it until the day I die. The great Mad Max Fury Road and the even greater filmmaker behind it, George Miller, is the subject today on today's Happy, sad, confused. I've said this before. I feel like every episode of Happy, Say, Confused, I'm out there talking about Michael Shannon or Fury Road. Wait, what if Michael Shannon is in a Mad Max film one day?

Oh my God, my brain might melt. Anyway, let's not talk about that. That's too much to handle. No, but you know I'm obsessed with this movie. It's a classic. It redefined what action movies could be. I've seen it more than any other movie in the last five years. And this was just such a treat.

I talked to George five years ago on the podcast. You can go back into the archives and listen to that. He was fantastic then. He's just an eccentric, odd, brilliant filmmaker who makes art. He makes, and just what eclectic art he's made. I mean, look at his IMDB, look at his filmography. will not find somebody with a more diverse, fascinating range of films. Happy Feet and Mad Max and Babe and Witches of Eastwick and Lorenzo's Oil.

He's just all over the place in the best possible way. Well, five years after the fact, I reached out to George and his team, and he was willing to chat with me to reflect on this mad masterpiece that is Fury Road all these years later, and to talk about what went into it. and the difficulties in making it from a logistical standpoint, from casting, challenges. This was not an easy movie to make, and if you see the movie, that will not surprise you. So this is really, this is for the fans of filmmaking, the fans of Fury Road out there, because this really almost acts as a masterclass for any aspiring filmmaker,

any just film fan that wants to dive deep into what it means to make something as challenging as Fury Road in every respect. This was fantastic to do. This was a true delight. This was the first thing I taped after my dad sadly passed away. And in some ways, it was very difficult and challenging in that way. But it was also great to kind of get back and talk about something that I love so much. Filmmaking, and in particular, a film that I just revere so much and a filmmaker that I respect so much. This was also done, I should say, the video form of this, you can watch on YouTube.

I did this for Metaverse, which is the folks that put on your Comic-Con and many of your favorite conventions out there. I've done a lot with them, and they reached out to me and asked me if I wanted to host some special kind of panels for this first virtual con that they were putting together. Well, I did, and this was one of the events that we put together that I put together, and I'm happy to say that we're going to hopefully do more. New York Comic-Con is obviously not going to happen in the traditional way this October, but they are going to do another Metaverse, and there's some really exciting plans afoot, and I'm trying to put some cool stuff together, and hopefully that pans out, and hopefully you guys will hear more of it soon.

But in the meantime, if you want to watch my delicious face and George Miller's delicious face all the way from Sydney, Australia, you can watch this conversation on YouTube on New York Comic-Con's YouTube page, which I believe is just YouTube.com slash NYCC. So this conversation is there for you free, along with dozens of other great panels and discussions that they put together. So that's available to you, too. Other things to mention, I want to plug a friend of mine's

a great new podcast that I've been enjoying lately. And if you're a fan of movie and industry news, it's a really super smart digest, a daily digest called The Wake Up. And you can subscribe to it on any podcast platform. It's usually between five and ten minutes. It's like, it's really short, and it gives you all the information that you need at the start of every day about sort of what's going on in media. And it's a, you know, I think it's a really well done smart. It's got a fun a little, you know, snark may be too strong a word, but a good viewpoint, I'll say, on the industry. And if you're looking for just like a quick, easy to digest, roundup of what's been happening in the last day in the industry and movie and TV and media, check out the wake-up on your

podcast platforms. Other things to mention in the Josh Horror, what's universe? Comedy Central's Stur-crazy show, my stir-crazy talk show continues with a new episode this week with the great Joe Koi. He's one of the biggest stand-up comedians on the planet. I frankly, I actually wasn't that familiar with Joe before taping this, but now I'm in love with Joe. He's smart and funny and interesting and cool, and this was a really fun chat. So go to Comedy Central's YouTube page or Facebook page and check out my new conversation with the very funny Joe Koi. For MTV, I got a chance to talk to Keanu Reeves and

Alex Winter, guys. You know what? This is about the third Bill and Ted movie. Bill and Ted face the music is out this Friday on VOD. It's in theaters. If you're able to see it in the theater where you are, and if you're a Bill and Ted fan, guys, this work for me. I was so happy. I just had a smile on my face for 90 minutes watching this movie. And I had a smile on my face talking to Keanu and Alex after all these years. If you know my work, if you followed me, you know I'm obsessed, maybe not as much as with Fury Road, but pretty close with Bill and Ted. And I've been talking to these guys for over a decade. about this third Bill and Ted movie, and when's it going to come,

and what's the problem, what's the issue? So this was like a kind of a cathartic end-of-the-road discussion about the crazy journey that it took to get to Bill and Ted face the music. So that was a lot of fun to do, and I hope you guys enjoy it. That I'll tweet out when it's out. It's going to be out in a matter of days if it's not up already by the time you listen to this. So, yeah, so a lot of fun stuff out there.

I'm happy to say, podcast continuing, MTV Conversations Continuing. continues, I am just, I'm just a content machine. What can I say? I hope you guys enjoyed this conversation with George Miller. As always, remember to review, rate and subscribe to happy, say I can't refuse. Oh, one other plug, one do-gooder plug. You guys have been so nice since my dad's passing, sending me nice notes. If you're feeling charitable, go put a donation into the Michael J. Fox Foundation. It's a great cause. They're trying to end Parkinson's as we know it and find the cure and working on treatments, etc. And they do such amazing work. So yeah, if you have a few bucks that you want to spread to a good cause, Michael J. Fox Foundation, do it up. Anyway, on to the

main event. Here's my conversation with the great George Miller. By the way, there's a little preamble when I talk. It's for the YouTube version of this. Don't, don't be confused. It's going to be okay. Here's me and George. Hey guys, welcome to a very special event, a co-production of my podcast, Happy Say I Confused, and the Metaverse. Now, usually on my podcast, we talk about other guests' comfort movies, but today we're talking about one of mine, the brilliant and audacious Mad Max Fury Road. I am beyond thrilled to welcome back to Happy Say and Fused for this fifth anniversary retrospective all the way from Sydney, Australia, the genius that it is, the writer and

director George Miller. Hi, George. Hi there. Wow, thank you. I'm thrilled to catch up with you, even in these crazy times via Zoom. You know, I remember, you know, we're gonna revel in all things Mad Max Ferry Road today.

The last time I spoke to you was when the film was coming out. And one of the things you actually said to me in that conversation was you can really measure a film by how long it follows you out of the theater. Well, mission accomplished. I would say, because as much as it was revered at the time, Fury Road is now, I feel like, even more revered and acknowledged as just a stone cold classic.

I just was wondering if we could start there. Like, how does it feel that five years in, the estimation of this film has only increased? Well, obviously, it's very gratifying. You don't know what's going to happen to a film. You put all you know into the process. I mean, everything you know. at the end of the film you're pretty spent and you think and you're never sure there's always

uncertainty and this film in particular until it was all together in a very mature state literally every sound effect every every frame was basically significant in the overall rhythm of the piece so until it gets in front of audiences and until until it has a chance to marionate as it were in typically people's minds, it's ultimately the audiences that tell you what your film is. And I'm very, very thankful that we're still talking about it because the default position is usually the opposite. People forget it, not too long after they left to cinema or in these days, you know, turn off their television. I mean, I have to say, this is not hyperbole to say, but the filmmakers that I've talked to in the five years since, there's no movie that's come up more. that they bring up more as, and the adjectives they use,

the words they use to describe the film are, you know, it seemed impossible. It's a miracle. How did that, how did that film happen? Steven Soderberg had this amazing quote where he said, I don't understand how they're not still shooting that film. I don't understand how hundreds of people aren't dead. And this is Steven Soderberg, who knows what he's doing.

He knows what he's doing. He knows. He said, that's a significant thing. So I guess my, my, my, My silly but serious question is, was this movie as difficult as it looks to make? Oh, yes. Look, every movie, even a small movie, even a bad movie, even a big visual effects movie, they're always difficult and they should be difficult.

Otherwise, there's no effort. They're never casual. And so, yes, it's a little. I was bewildered when I first made my first feature. I thought I wasn't cut out to make movies because it was so unpredictable. The best laid plans all went wrong. And it wasn't until I spoke to Peter Weir actually, who had done an Australian director, a great Australian director who had done already two features.

And he said to me, George, don't you realize it's always like that? And it wasn't long after the Vietnam War. He says, think about it. Think about it as if you're going into patrol, you're on patrol in the jungle and you've got your platoon and you've got to get through your mission and you won't know where the snipers are. You won't know where the landmines are. You don't know who's going to get sick from some disease or whatever. None of this is predictable, but you've got to be flexible enough and agile enough to get through and complete the mission. And that really, that stayed with me all these years

and it was particularly necessary in this case. Well, I was going to say, and the cruelty is you would think after 40 plus years of directing films, like it gets easier, but it doesn't necessarily, especially when you're trying to pull something as audacious as this off. Yes, I think that's the point. If it's easy, you're doing, you're repeating what you've done before. And, you know, I think we tend to forget, not only do we change,

the individual storytellers change. But the audience has changed and the technology changes. Yes. So if you kind of get stuck in doing what's been seen many times before, you're basically not really trying hard enough, I believe. And at least we tried with this film. And I'm genuinely thankful. It seems to have a resonance,

which is ultimately what gives you the most, satisfaction, not to the point of hubris, I must say, because, because you start on your next film and you say to yourself, oh my God, you know, I know nothing. And then that's a really good way to start, particularly if it's a difference. I want to go back to the beginning of the development of this film. And I actually asked for a few prominent filmmakers to send in some questions, and they were, they were eager to ask you some questions. So here's one from a woman who actually just collaborated with Charlize on a great film called The Old Guard, Gina Prince Beithwood.

Oh, yeah. She's a big fan of yours and she wanted to know what- Well, it goes both ways. I've just seen, I've just watched it on Netflix, I think it is, and yeah, it was great to see. Her question for you is, what was the first image you saw in your head that fed your vision of this film? Well, it's interesting. It wasn't quite an image.

I realized after a time making films, I tend to think in kind of scenes or potential scenes. The images are there, they're very vague in the mist. But I remember the first moment that popped in my head. It was the late 90s. I remember I was in Los Angeles. I can't remember what I was doing, but I was crossing a traffic light. I was walking pedestrian crossing.

And I got halfway across the pedestrian crossing. And this idea came to me, which was what would happen if there was a film, which was entirely on the move, and there were a number of women escaping some tyrant, some, some tyrant. And it, and that little Geiger counter that says, oh, there's interesting drama there.

You, you, it's sort of sparked there. And I remember very distinctly getting to the other side of the road and thinking, no way, I'm not going to do another madman accident. Then, as what, in terms of what happens, I remember flying back about two weeks across the Pacific through the night back from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia, where I lived. And I woke up in, you know, from sleep, and the movie started to play in my head. That's when the images came.

And I was surprised how far I got through into the movie. And I, and I'm not saying that was a complete movie, but that's when I start to see an image. I tend to see images more than I remember worse. I, you know, so then it's, then it starts and it all, it all works together. But I've never, never forget the first walking across that, that, that, that, you call it zebra crossings, you know, yeah, yeah, it was one of those. And 15 plus short years later and 3,500 storyboards later. Yes, exactly. Yes.

I want to ask you about casting because you had a challenge in this film. At a certain point, you decided this was not the tale of an older Max, this was a tale of a younger Max, and you had to switch out of using the great Mel Gibson in this iconic role. We spoke once, and you've been candid, you talked about Heath Ledger at one point. Was Heath actually cast? And what do you think he would have done with Max that would have been different? Well, sadly, we'll never know that he wasn't cast, but every time he would come to Australia to visit his family, he would call him. and we talk and and he and I always had it had it in mind, always had him in mind. Look, he, look, I think Mel, when he, when I first met he, he, when I got to know him a little bit and chom, all have in common the quality are kind of, it's a cliche, but a kind of animal,

magnetism, and I literally mean animal magnetism. When I worked on the Bay Murmys with animals, and I got to know the animal trainers, I mean, to walk up to a cage with a tiger or a big grizzly bear, and in some cases where they allow you in there, there's this wonderful quality, wonderful thing that happens where you want to pack them and roll around with them and whatever. On the other hand, you're very aware of some inner mystery that goes on. On the one hand, they're highly accessible as people. I'm talking about three guys. And on the other hand, there's a mystery you'll never get to, never get to the other.

And I think that's one of the essences of charisma and the paradox of that. And they all had it. And, you know, I guess they were, they were, they were, they were, the Venn diagram of who they were as people and the character would have, were pretty, would overlap to a fairly high degree. And then in terms of casting Furiosa, I mean, this film, as we'll get to, I mean, you were greenlit a couple times and I think early as around 2001 you were going to go into production on this film. Was it always, I mean, Charlie, that's a different age for Furiosa. Was Charlie's always your Furiosa? Well, she wasn't in the first case, because way back in 2001,

I remember we asked which I leave, you know, which are leaves with the script. And the answer is, the answer came back from her agent, oh, she's not interested. Years later, when we asked her again, she did read the script. And I mentioned to her, did you remember getting the script way back when, you know, almost a decade before? And she said, no, I never, I never, ever, never heard of the film back then. So who knows what happens between age and right. But she certainly was the first character that came into mind as we were reading it. Initially, we were cast, Mel was cast.

Things changed the, you know, in terms of Mel's public persona with all these issues and stuff. And time went on, I've made two animations in the meantime. in the meantime. The film kept on falling away, kept on rising somehow, and the venture was made. And by then, I kept on thinking it wasn't like the unforgiven about an old warrior. So Tom was the guy who walked through the door and had that same quality. Was it always envisioned, I mean, it's kind of stealthily, or not so stealthily, Furiosa's film. Max's is obviously integral to the story, but it is really, Furiosa's arc that we really latch on to the most.

Was it always conceived that way that Furiosa would be your kind of central road warrior, as it were? Well, it emerged that way, but I don't think, I don't necessarily think it was conceived that way. I, basically you formulate the story and you let it play out and you go through, I'm not talking about the process of making the film, I'm talking about the process of evolving the film,

writing and so on. And characters emerge. It was very, very clear that she had to be a woman. There are five wives being basically stolen or taken away from the male principle, as it were, the guy at top of the dominance hierarchy, and they're trying to escape that. If it was a male warrior, that's a completely different story. It had to be a female. And she had to be somebody who wasn't just a female impersonating a warrior. She had to be a warrior without any regard to whatever the female qualities. And that's what happened.

And Charlize was equal to the task. And I guess she really took to the role as difficult. it was and she was resolute. She said, I don't want to, I don't want to shoot a gun like I'm a woman who's just learned to shoot a gun. I don't want to hit somebody like I'm a woman and in a highly choreographed piece of work. All the fights scenes and so on were highly choreographed, but she didn't, didn't want to do it

as if by numbers and you determined to do that. You know, some productions are talked in retrospect as, you know, easy and harmonious. from the start, you know, this candidly wasn't that. This was a long shoot, an arduous shoot. This went on for a while. You shot in Namibia after some false starts. And I talked to a lot of your actors, and in retrospect, they're candid.

They say at the time, some of them didn't know what was in your head at the time. They say it was tough for us to imagine what was going to be on the screen. Did you feel that at the time? Did you worry that you were losing the confidence of your actors, that something was getting lost in translation? Oh, yes, I did.

I mean, the big problem of the film, and this is not to excuse it, it was definitely an atypical movie. There was no sort of, you could rehearse, you could rehearse the physical stuff, and you had to rehearse it, but in terms of the performances, in terms of what was happening with the actors, you couldn't really do that in any form, in any continuity. I mean, there's, there were, there were 2,800 cuts in the world. than me in 114 minutes. Right.

So I think the math says that there's about 2.9 seconds, two seconds, nine frames, average shot. So it's very hard, and actually in particular, or movies that move fast, you can't do sort of the classic master's sake you feel the wrong. All the actor could do was present their character and response of the moment.

but really understand the character and get immersed in their character. And that's quite different approach. And we were out there in that isolated place. We started off in winter and we ended up close to summer. And it was cold in the mornings even though it was meant to be. It was meant to be, you know, sun at hot. But again, eventually it got hot, there's dust everywhere. And I think it was uncomfortable for all of this, but also it seemed into the movie.

It wasn't a visual effects movie. But yes, it was hard. Yeah, it was probably my fault as a director. I couldn't express what it was going to be like, you know, in the final cut when everything was together. everything was together. I couldn't sort of say, this is what it's going to feel like. I could talk about the characters. I could probably talk about where they were.

So it's funny to me to hear you say that because if anything, there was a visual Bible like no other film has ever had one for this film. This film, for those that don't know, I don't know if you ever had a conventional screenplay, but you had 3,500 storyboards that essentially you gave to the production and the actors. So in a way to me, it's like,

That there's your movie. Read the story. Like you can literally visualize it. But I guess it's different to be on set and to be in the moment. Well, there were, there were, you know, I don't know, $3,500, $3,800, a whole room full of storyboards. Because after we laid down on paper a kind of a pretty detailed outline of what the story would be, we basically rendered it as a story board's,

because that's really the only way you can convey the causality between one shot and next, the framing, and it's just much simply. The old picture is worth a thousand words and definitely applies to a highly visual film like this. And so storyboards were there, but there was a script. It was, otherwise we couldn't have gone to a studio. I mean, people can't read story boards.

They're not like graphic novels. Right. They have different structures. They have much more detail and they're more production, you know, aid more than they are. They don't convey the experience of it. But we tried to do that in the screenplay, again, descriptive, sometimes using some pictures when it just saved a lot of detailed description. But again, there were very few words spoken.

And so essentially it was a silent movie with a lot of noise, but no. dialogue or not much dialogue. I hope this doesn't feel like we're, we're talking so much about the problems, because I think that's one of the inspiring things about the film, is that even a film that came out as perfectly in many ways as this one did, had to go through these tough journeys to get to the finish line.

I mean, for instance, I'm curious, like, did you have a low point on the film where you were like, this is getting away from me? Did you have a day where you were like, I've lost control of this movie? Look, I definitely had those days, but I learned a little bit like that being on the, you know, in platoon in the jungle in Vietnam or wherever. That must happen all the time. I knew, as I said earlier, my very first film was the film where I not only felt I lost control.

When the film ultimately became a surprise success, I just, I was just, I just felt I was. wasn't cut out to make movies and until someone said, hey, it's the same. This is the way it is. This is it. And I've learned that the hard way, really, that if you surrender to that feeling, that you basically are going to sort of lose the attention. Now, you earn the right to keep going by the work and your preparation. preparation. Right. I would feel completely a lot that I've lost control if it wasn't so

prepared if I didn't have an idea of the whole how each little piece of the mosaic was going to fit fit into the hole. So you have to rely on that. Plus I, plus I knew that I had really, really great people. You know, Doug Mitchell, the producer who would jump in and fix any problem that he saw and tried to sort of protect the film from that. And there were a lot of those things happening. Guy Norris, who was the stunt coordinator, a second-hand director, really understood what we're doing, every detail of what we're doing. PJ Verkner, AD, and, you know, an amazing man who really,

I'm giving a whole list of people, but PJ, who was also one of the producers, knew the production, really well, Colin Gibson, you know, the production designer, all the water makeup people, everybody knew what they were doing. It wasn't as though it was out there we were improvising at all. We were adjusting as we were going and you always have to do that, you have to do that. So that's what, you know, those feelings that you get and the more I talk to directors, a little story. I had a friend who was directing their first film, a very good director. And he said, can you got any tips? And I said, I've only got two. Always play something a little faster

than you think it should be simply. And that's from Frank Capra way back, because there's a lot of adrenaline on set, particularly. But in the cinema, you're watching in repose. You're sitting back and watching the movie. So it's a different So things will seem a little faster perhaps to you than it might be in cinema. And I said, my other, my other tip is the day will come on your movie that you will not make any sense to you. You'll think you're completely crazy. And when you finish the film, which turned out to be very good, he said, George, you remember what you told me about the day will come?

I feel a little bit crazy. What you didn't tell me is that it would happen on every day. And it's true in a way. And I think it's part of the process. If you're prepared, if you're prepared, I think that allows you to adjust and to respond very intuitively to the moment. It's exactly like the sport. A basketball player has drilled, they've got the innate talent,

they drill, they drill, the team works together. But in the moment of performance, it's not a rehearsed thing. They have to just almost reflectively responsive the moment. And that's when you get people doing amazing things. My next question for you comes from the great Ryan Johnson, a great writer and film maker. Oh, see, it is. They're wonderful people here.

Thank you for this. So Ryan said to me, on his behalf, he wanted to ask you, I'd be curious specifically in the action set pieces, how much does Mr. Miller shoot specifically for a preconceived edit versus how much does he play with the footage in the edit room? You have to do both. You have to preconceive it. Look, the film language, I like going to too long an answer,

but the film language was basically decided, I'm a big fan, I don't know if you know of the book, The Parades Gone By by Kevin Brown by, he wrote it in the 60s. He said something very, his basic idea was something very significant. This new film language, which is basically we learned, as in a quiet language, it was determined pre-sound in the silent era. And if you look at the syntax of those movies, particularly Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd and those sort of silent movies,

where the cameras were agile, where they were able to do a lot of things, They didn't shoot, they didn't shoot in a way that they just shot wide masters. I mean, Chaplin shot wide masters and performed all, because they were all from the theatre initially, but they didn't understand, they didn't necessarily, what I'm trying to say is to do a film properly in the silent area, you had to have a way of connecting one shot to the next. And you can't do an action movie unless you know what's happening.

The feeling, the onrush of action cannot be done. It cannot be rehearsed like a one-shot scene. It can be, but it doesn't give you the intensity of what you can do when you can sort of play with the movies. So, yes, you have to preconceive

the shots, but again, you have to adjust them. When you get into the editing room, you confront it with the notion that you failed most of the time and you need an editor who is, has not only the technical skill, but the artistic skill to able to make something really work and find its ribbons. I was very lucky to have my partner, Margaret Cecil, because she can she she she is one of those editors who can see things very very clear see what at the end result of a potential readjustment of shots can be and and quite often you know I

thought I was pretty good but they're pretty good at that but but she was the one who's able to say hey George you don't need this and we can do this and this and this and I'd say oh, I can't see that, but please go ahead, I go away, and there it was. So it's, sorry, it's both those processes. I was going to say, for the edit, I'm curious, because one of the curious things that I think people were shocked by is your manipulation of frame rates in the film, sometimes just like speeding up and slowing down the action,

which was very innovative, and I hadn't seen, you know, some people compared it to like watching a Loonington's cartoon at times or something. Was that something that you, again, you found with Margaret in the edit room, or was that something always in mind? Like, we're going to play with frame rates and play with speed. That was very much in the edit room. The big difference, as I said earlier, not only do we change as audiences and cinemas always evolved and much more rapidly than we think. And one of the main things is, you know, not long ago, let's say two decades ago, basically the only way you can make. manipulate a film or worker film is the cut of celluloids, you know, between the beginning

and the end of the particular shot. Now the plasticity is inside the frame. You can adjust the frame if you're shooting a higher resolution. We did a lot of vignettes. We did a lot of corrections. We did a lot of sharpening because eye trace is really, really important to make something play smoother. And that was all something that was done in post.

Margaret did a lot of that, we did a lot of it in D.I. And you can't preconceived that. You can't, you know, at the time, well, I was gonna go on, we were gonna shoot in native 3D. I remember, yes. And I realized it was impossible to do it for a film like this. Number one, we would have only had three cameras

and we would have lost them very early to dust or damage. We didn't lose any major cameras, but we had a lot of small cameras that we buy at the local airport in Namibia for about, you know, for about 1,500 US dollars and we put them in jeopardy and we lost, I think, two or three and and, but if you did that with our key cameras,

here's the basic problem with shooting in 3D. You cannot predict, where the eye will be looking, the variable is in and out of the screen. You couldn't predict where that would be. You'd try to predict it, but with fast cutting, you couldn't. And I'm so glad that we actually decided it was one of the most significant decisions we made, was to do the 3D post. But anyway, look, to answer Rout's question,

you have to, I believe you have to preconceive the action. the action or attempt to understand where the cutting would be because of the causality of one shot to the next. You've got to try. And I'm looking at his films, I believe he does that. I'm curious because, you know, you're kind of alluding to this how technology evolves and you adapt to the technology and you use the new tools at your disposal at the time. For instance, when I look back at the first three Mad Max films, while they have obviously so much in common with Fury Road, aesthetically, there's a lot different. It just, it feels different in many ways.

When you look back at the, like, when you want another crack at the first three Mad Max films using the tech today, could you imagine approaching those three films in a much different way? Everything had changed. I mean, I can give you so many examples, but the principal one was that things could be,

you could do things much more safe for me. You can actually put, you know, there's a moment there in the movie where Max is hanging upside down between the wheels of the war rig, the prime move of the war rig, and Furiosa is hooked his, hooked his hanging upside down and holding him. Now that was Tom Hardy hanging upside down. It wasn't his wonderful stuff, double. It was him hanging upside down. He had very, very strong and strong.

thick cables and fail-safe cables and whatever and a very secure rig. And the, and they were so easy to erase. I mean, that was, that was, just that is a big thing. And everyone could be harnessed, they could be on top of the vehicle going and speed. And in other very simple ways, I remember I used to watch action movies, really good action movies like bullets and, you know, I always love watch up, Doc, the Madanavish movie. And if you look at those movies, you, you can see how many tapes they did because you'd see the skim marks, several skim marks in the car did a kind of a wheelie on the road.

You could see how many tapes they did, and I always used to look at the road. Now you're shooting many vehicles in the desert and you can erase all the previous tracks. Simple things like that, most important overall, was the agility of the camera, right? And you can put a camera wherever you like, and that adds to camera safely. And then probably the big thing is that you have 45 minutes, you have a chip inside the camera,

you can run the camera for 45 minutes. Now, if you have, just for instance, you have a big explosion, explosion. This is what used to happen. You'd have the biggest magazine you could get. You'd have to run it, I don't know, 96 frames a second. So you're churning up that magazine. You have to have someone turn on the camera. You have to have someone get that person who turns the camera and get them out of there, out of your shot and safe before you call action. Now you're sweating because you think, oh, we're about to get to the big explosion,

but the film's going to run out. And so that you don't worry about. Lots and lots of those things. So that made a big difference, yeah. I have a couple more questions from some filmmakers that want to get in. We've covered in some ways, but I want to honor their questions because they were kind enough to send them in. This is from the great Patty Jenkins,

director of Monster and Wonder Woman, of course. She says, I'm a huge admirer of the movie in your work, My question is, what were your inspirations for the stunning visual style of the action sequences in Fury Road? It was like nothing I'd ever seen before. How did you go about building the language for the action? Ah, gee, Penny. Um, um, um, uh, Bill, look, um,

look, I, I, I, I remember in the past there were a film, makers who, who admired, who said, really, there's only one perfect place for the camera at any given moment. And when I got into animation, like with Happy Feet, the thing I discovered was that you could take, I didn't discover it, it was a realization, it wasn't, but you could take exactly the same performance, voice performance, you know, body animation performance, lighting and everything, everything. And by just adjusting the camera and cutting pattern, you can change the perception of the scene. And I learned that, and it sort of got me really worried because there is only one perfect place for the camera. So I can you get a note, a sweet spot on a note.

Somehow if you listen to an orchestra playing, a really trained ear can hear where the notes are off. I can't, but, you know, I've certainly known people who can. I think it's the same. thing. Yeah. So you have to think, basically you have to, it's play between the cerebral and the intuitive, and you've got to feel out, not only where that that's the perfect place for camera, but you've got to understand how that, how we get to the next shot. It's usually story driven, but it's also, you know, formal way, compositional and so on. So I remember thinking of Fury right, I think that was what made me story more the movie, because I thought, I'm not going to go on to sit and work out, you know, work out on the spot how things should go.

Or I'm not going to sit there and talk to the second unit director and say, what do you think there on the day? And because you can take the same stunt. And if you don't have the camera in the right place and you don't really think about it, it could be very mediocre. And the proof often is when you see those making of movies, where you see a camera there, you know, some crew has been put there

and basically us to step back because they don't want them, you know, the publicity crew say or the people making a documentary, they can't be there. They can't have to find the switch bump for the camera. And the stunt, particularly a five scene, you see the mat or you see, you know,

the mat that the actors fall on, you see all that. And it's not as dynamic as when, you actually see it in the cinema where it's fully formed. So I think, yeah, I think you really, you really have to, I think the question is a simple. I mean, it's amazing. Patty and the other directors you're talking about,

I see it in their work anyway. And if it's, you know, I'm glad to be able to to reinforce that. Yeah. Another question from another great filmmaker. This is also about the language. I'm not sure if he's talking about the visual language again or maybe the literal language, but let's tackle it.

This is from N. Night Shyamalan, of course, the writer-director of six months with so many great films. You know all these directories. I have the privilege of getting to talk to these guys, so I hit him up. They were eager to talk to you, sir, through using me as a vessel. He says,

there are the rarest of films that have mastered their language to such an extent that they make us fluent when watching right away. As the storyteller, what would Mr. Miller credit the main reasons for this mastery of language on Fury Road. Now, I'm not sure the next particular angle, but the one I'm curious about, if you'll indulge me,

is the literal language in the film, that you, like, mediocre, witness me, all the language that kind of like whizzes by us that we absorb and feels authentic. And if we don't understand it at first, by the end of the film, it all makes perfect sense. I'd be curious to hear a little bit about how you create, such a cohesive language in a film like that?

Well, putting the film language, the actual structure of shots and so on aside, you know, to make a film, we have at least a thousand people working on the film and some very, very great talents. But you have to make them, you have to find a way, to make them cohesive.

And for instance, we had, you know, I'm really glad because they all won Academy Awards. We had Colin Gibson, the production designer, and his team. We had Jenny Bevan, the wardrobe designer, or costume designer, and we had Leslie Van Van Wals. Now, Leslie did all the makeup and so on. Now, she, they all, basically, very busy departments had a massive amount of work to do. And they have to, their work has to be unified by some very clear strategies that you, that you come up with. And that's probably one of the most important jobs of the director,

is you're trying to harness all these different creativities. And so basically, you know, for, and it takes a while. sometimes to find this. Basically for Fury Road, we basically said, look, the world, this post-block, well, we had to, we had to decide that everything was made from found objects, repurposed. And that was one rule. The second rule, what is not rules, they're tools. I don't like the known rules. The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the second notion. was that just because it's the wasteland, it doesn't mean that people don't make beautiful things.

That was very important because you look at human behaviour and we see that no matter how impoverished we are or how reduced we are in resources, even early man made beautiful things. And often it's more important when you've got very little. So there's always the aesthetic. And the third one and the less important was that everything had to have more than one purpose. So this applied to the language as well.

The language, as you know, there's always slippage in language, there's always drift in the way that language involves in every language. And so the language had to be found object to repurposed. So they always, and this is in passing, people either pick it up or not, but the warm always call themselves camera crazy war boys, you know, for obvious reasons. Even the word mediocre is used in a way that perhaps is not, is not sort of typical has some of the meaning. So when we go into any culture, if you look at an anthropological movie and you go into any culture, and you don't know what some of the rituals are of a culture that I'm familiar

with, but you do understand that the people in the film know what everything means. So I think we applied those sort of things. That's how I think we got there. You notice probably there's no modern-day expletives in the movies. If they use that, it makes it too colloquial, it makes it too present. And so there's a dissonance between something that you're expecting people to sort of take themselves into some future dystopian world and yet they're using the language of the street today.

We talked a bit about the edit and the challenges for Margaret Sixel in crafting this. Charlize says that the initial cut she saw was four hours. The final film is two hours. That's a lot of footage that didn't make the final cut. Can you say any sequences or what the big chunks that came out of this film were? And would you ever entertain, we saw the Chrome version, could we ever see a longer version of Fury Road? Well, look, when you're making a film like this,

you cannot afford to shoot scenes that you know won't be in the movie. So the version, I'm not sure it was four hours, but it couldn't be, was basically extended shots extended shots which were ultimately in the movie. It's not as though we had to lift complete sequences or whatever. I've experienced that before

in television sometimes but I've never experienced it in a feature film because it's so hard, one, the footage to do it well But to have to lift things, in a way, you know, we always say if you don't lick the problem in the writing, you have to lick it in the editing room. If you don't look it in the editing room, then the audience has to lick it for you, and that's not their job. And it's true. You have to try to deal with it in the writing.

So there were scenes that I thought were important, and I like the way we shot them. And that this is what I meant by Margaret, she saw immediately which scene you could drop. And there was one, for instance, that really comes to mind. And these are the sorts of things. This is probably the biggest scene that we lost. It'll give you an example. But just to make it clear, most of it was trimming and cutting existing shots. Okay.

So there was a scene where when Max says to Furiosa, we should go back. And they kind of clasp hands. So these two mortal enemies, as it were, basically beside the only way we're going to survive on the waste level, is joint forces. Okay, that's the end. That's basically the end of the classic end of the second end. Then we had around there a scene, a scene where the Immorten Joe was having this sort of big rally with his war boys. And they were thumping and chatting, they were thumping their vehicles and banging things together. And they were basically like a political rally.

And he was there angry and whipping them up. We had that scene. Then we had a scene where, and he was basically telling them all, go out across the wasteland and look for tracks. So it was continuing the story. Then we had a scene where the war rig arrives up on top of the hill above the wasteland. And we see that Max is there,

pops up through the roof with his binoculars, and he sees what's out there, reconnoit as it were. He signals to Furiosa. You see the Vovolini hanging off the vehicle like shotgun riders. You see the motorbike pull up alongside and the character played by Megan Gale in Valkyrie. She's riding on the back of the motorbike and they all look at each other ready for the battle.

Then you see the Morton Joe singing to himself and in repose until someone says, hey, Is that the warring? Because in the background, you see the war again by. Okay. Now, Margaret said one day, she said, I want to try something. And she lifted the two things I talked about, which was so much better. Because here I was expositing everything. Here I was.

But it was the third act. It was the being a third act. The main reason why they went back is they couldn't have done anything else, both within the story. And we, as storytellers, if they kept on going, we needed more exposition. And we've just spent the first two acts expositing. You have to sort of pay off in the third scene. So we knew everybody, and we knew the circumstances of what's going back.

So she said, we'll lose the rally, which I was sort of a little bit upset about, you know, just because we shut it. I like how we shut it. And then we lost that scene off the top of the hill the record going to see. So what it is now is that Max and Furosa class pants, then you cut to the Immorten Joe, who you know is out there, and he's singing to himself, he has a little staff, he's sitting down. Everyone's, you know, even the Dufra is slipping in the sling of his vehicle.

Everyone is completely opposed. And suddenly, hey, is that the war rig? And that's the beginning of the chase. Way better. wouldn't be. That's a big assertion we lost. I think I got the best of all possible worlds because I think it works so perfectly in the film, but I feel like I just watched that wonderful sequence with you describing it in such a very everyone goes through that. I'm not saying. I was particularly, I think we're

particularly lucky that you could lift that scene not only to the detriment of the film, but to the enhancement. In other words, we want much more than we lost. We lost very little. I was going to say, so what happens after? Does Furiosa rule the Citadel? What happens to the wives? Is Nux becoming, is he a hero to the rest of the war boys? What do you imagine in your mind's eye happens after Furious?

Well, there's two ways to go that it's, I've often thought about it, But there's two ways to go. One is a utopian, which is, which is not an interesting story, really. I somehow imagined that the first thing she would do in line with that is go up and release the water so people can go below. It wasn't withheld. There was, what's the equivalent of today, a sort of a new deal, you know, politically. But following history and following storytelling, what tends to happen, and this is from Joseph Campbell, who is significant.

What's his significant about Joseph Campbell? It's not just his opinion. He basically made it his business to understand all of folklore, all of storytelling, whether it was religious text or or some basic small stories in a very circumscribed region. You know, there were always things in common. And he basically, sorry, I'm wafting on now. The main thing I want to say is Campbell said that the usual story is that today's hero becomes tomorrow's tyrant.

The hero is the agent of change. They basically are relinquish of interest in order for some common good. Okay. So this is Campbell, not me. And he basically says, so what happens is you love what you built or saved too much. and you become whole fast, you become the orthodoxy, you develop the dogma, and basically, then you have to protect it. And that tends to be the rhythm of these things. I think it's probably, I think it's probably healthy, for instance, there's limited terms in politics in those countries

that happened because you can see that you can see the opposite happening and I'm not just talking about present-day politics you see it all through time sure so in a way I'm torn between two things I believe that whatever motivated Furiosa to do this thing came from a really brave and courageous space and I think that's presented in the movie part of me would love if she if she pushed the world to a more, you know, more equitable world, and I'm not saying to a utopia because the world is already being destroyed. The green place was more utopian. The place he aspired to was more utopian.

But back in the citadel, she could also turn the other way, even though the way I see the way that Charlize played her, even that she was really tough. I don't see that happening. I think she's too smart to fall into that trap. seen it happen with the Morton Joe. I believe he went through the same process. He was probably an heroic character in his own time. So anyway, a good question. I haven't really had to think or talk about it very much in a little. Well, that's not the story we're going to see in the future,

but if all aligns correctly, we are going to see an earlier story of Furiosa. You know, the great news is that it sounds like it's closer to happening. It's a little bittersweet because Charlese won't be playing Furiosa because you need a bit of a younger actress to tell the story you want to tell. Talk to me about what your, have you cast your Furiosa yet? No. Look, it's too early to talk about it. And I'd love to talk about it. But, you know, I have always, I always have this, this slight superstition. You don't want to give hostage to fortune by basically talking, talking about a film, you know, I remember I talked about Mad Max 1 just before 9-11 as if it was going to happen in a few weeks time.

It was, we're only a few weeks away. So it took, you know, close over a decade to get it right. So if you don't mind, I won't talk about until this actually concrete. Okay. You know, I was meant to be shooting a film as we speak now. And, of course, with the pandemic, you know, it's not like. like everybody else, it's starting to have some of the things. I am curious, if you'll indulge me just, this we even talked about five years ago.

You had, you had two stories. It sounded like that you had kind of ready to continue with, a Max story and the Furiosa story that we alluded to. Do you imagine, I mean, these movies are huge undertakings, do you still have the itch to tell that Max story? Do these both exist in screenplay form, like, ready to go when you're ready? Well, one exists as a screenplay form and one exists as virtually a novel because we wrote it instead of, look, writing a screenplay is in many ways much more dramatically rigorous than writing a novel. You can sort of, you can almost pre-associate in a novel to some degree.

You don't have to pay as much mind to the dramatic architecture of the piece. And so we, Nico Muthurus and I basically free-form that and we got to that story. And with Furiosa, we got to a complete screenplay. This was done almost accidentally. One of the things I talked about, you know, earlier the strategies when you're creating a world. The other one was you have to understand where each object which each found object came from. Right.

The people making it had to make up their own little stories. Most of them I would not have heard. Where did, where did, for instance, the hospital bedpan that the doof back warrior has in his double neck guitar? Where did that come from? How did he come to be in this world? Why is he wearing that sort of ones onesie thing that's red? What's that around his face?

around his face that you know we had to understand where that would happen and the or at least the actors or the main person working with that had to understand that right and i think that's what we did with furiosa you know how did she lose her up what is the green place why does she do why she does so desperate to get back those sorts of things with which met with max why is he so burned out and alone at the beginning of the movie. Those are the sort of questions that we had tried to answer. So we wrote these as part of the Bible. Got it. And they just, and, you know, the, it's part of what, without any real intention of making it necessarily. They were just there for the actors and for us, right, anyone who cared to look at them. Yeah. So it is,

it is safe to say. So those, those questions you're alluding to, if hopefully we get to see these stories, those answers are provided. We do learn a little bit more of Yarm, how she escaped the green place, how she was taken from the green place, et cetera. That's the idea. Yeah. That's it. That's it. It is. A couple more questions for you, if you'll indulge me. I don't let you go, sir, you've been so generous with your time. Are you, are you at all interested in letting another filmmaker take a crack at this world that you've so beautifully created? We're talking about all these streaming shows now. Could you, imagine a Mad Max world set TV show that you either show run or let someone else show run?

Look, I can. I can. We back in the 80s, we did quite a bit of television and with really good filmmakers who have done feature films. It was mainly what we used to call parish pump, mainly for Australia specifically. There were with no regard to them being seen overseas. and outside of the country. And it was a very, it's a great thing. Look, I have, so it's something that I don't necessarily have the bandwidth to do it, but it's something I would really like to do again. I mean, I have, you know, I think for a lot of reasons the best writing,

as well as the filmmaking, but the best writing comes out of those writers' room where you get that sort of concapenation. I think the word is of people together, all these forces coming together. And I think they interplay that you get, the collective experience providing it, the collective effort providing its well-managed can often synergistically throw up much more

than the creativity of one individual. And you know, for me, there's so much brilliant work being done. You know, for me, the high watermark was breaking bad. As a one, I know that wasn't conceived necessarily as one piece, but if you look at the structure of the whole thing, I mean, and I think there was some mind behind that, probably Vince, but, you know,

who was assiduous about it and collected the whole thing. So I, you know, it's not something, it's certainly something I've considered, but again, it's, it's, I'm a good. too much to do at the moment. Going back to your Joseph Campbell discussions, I'm itching for 50 hours of a Breaking Bad like

TV show of how a Morton Joe became a Morton Joe. As you said, he probably wasn't, maybe he was a nice charming man once. He was. He was someone admirable in my head. And he becomes that classic Joseph Campbell thing. He became hold fast and manipulative.

Anyway. Amazing. Well, this is honestly, I don't know, for me, and I think for a lot of people watching, this feels like getting a masterclass in filmmaking and just shows you how tough it is, how inspiring it is to tackle important, audacious pieces of work. And the fact that this film exists is kind of a miracle. And you are the key, you are the key man to thank for it. And I'm so thankful for your time today, George, as you've always been generous with me. And I hope you take as much pride as you should in creating this work.

Yes, I really appreciate it very much. Look, great questions. Could you think all of the wonderful directors that have asked questions? I know, you know, I don't know if you know the term teaching your grandmother have to suck eggs. I don't know, but I love it. I don't know. Well, I feel like when I'm answering those questions,

it's teaching their grandmothers, or teaching my grandmother how to suck eggs. I think it used to come from some way of sucking, making, getting the shell and sucking the yolk and everything out of the egg by a little hole. I don't know where it came from. Amazing. Well, as you can tell you,

I'm teaching stuff they already know too well because it's in all their work. Yeah. Well, they, they've got a lot of families. out there, both as just the common folk out there and the greatest filmmakers revere you. And I do want to just say, if you'll indulge me on a very personal note, I just want to dedicate this conversation. I told you earlier, my dad recently passed away, and I got a lot from my dad, including a real love of cinema, and it's meaningful for me.

You're kind of the first thing I've done since he's passed, so I think you'd be happy that I'm doing something that he would love to. So this is for my dad. What was his name, Josh? His name was Larry Horowitz, and he up until the end could quote any movie and movie cast that he had ever seen.

So hopefully something of him is still in me. And so ends another edition of happy, sad, confused. Remember to review, rate, and subscribe to this show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm a big podcast person. I'm Daisy Ridley, and I definitely wasn't passionate.

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