Happy Sad Confused - George Miller, Vol. III

Episode Date: May 27, 2024

The mad genius that is filmmaker George Miller is back! Miller joins Josh to chat about his latest film FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA and yes there are some SPOILERS ahead! Millers opens up about his storytelling influences and passions, why he keeps returning to the wasteland, and how he came to cast his new Furiosa.  SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Storyworth -- Go to Storyworth.com/HappySad to save $10 on your first purchase! UPCOMING LIVE EVENTS ⁠⁠Julia Louis-Dreyfus June 10th in NYC -- ⁠Get tickets here⁠ Dakota Johnson June 11th in NYC -- Get tickets here Check out the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Happy Sad Confused patreon here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! We've got discount codes to live events, merch, early access, exclusive episodes, video versions of the podcast, and more! To watch episodes of Happy Sad Confused, subscribe to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Josh's youtube channel here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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always now being aware of the power of myth as Joseph Gap, of stories and how at any level, whether there are anecdotes between two people, your family stories about your local football team, your community, whether they're folklore, fairy tales, religious stories. All of those, all of those are basically a timeless and they are in all cultures. We're hardwired for them. as humans, happy, sad, confused begins now. I'm Josh Horowitz, and today on Happy, Sad, Confused, George Miller is back. It is his third time on the podcast. I'm privileged to say, if anybody watches or listens to this podcast, I know my favorite topic

the last nine years has been Fury Road. Well, George has done it again with Furiosa. It is my new obsession. I am so thrilled to have him back on the podcast. Welcome, sir. Thanks, Josh. Thank you. Good to see you.

Congratulations. First of all, look, I want to set up a little bit of the background, the storyline of how this came to be. For those that don't know, this is a very unusual circumstance. This was born out of Fury Road and I guess the back story that you felt was important to outline for your characters. Two stories came out of it, a wasteland story for Max, and this script. And correct me if I'm wrong.

was originally going to be an anime film way back then so what how much does this resemble what that was going to be well it was pretty it was pretty close actually surprising the essential structure of it was pretty much the same obviously things changed and there were embellishments and amplifications I suppose but it in order to tell Fury Road there's no way I'd we could do something that was on the run when all the exposition had to be as I say on the run and yet you had to somehow it had to have have the world and the characters and every bit of design had to have a very coherent internal logic the so we had to write the story of

Furiosa we had to write the story of Max and in the process define everything we see in this world. We had to understand how the wasteland worked. And we thought, oh, this would be great. If we make Fury Road, we can release soon after

an anime. And we did that, but as you know, Fury Road kept on being delayed and delayed. There's no point in making an anime before, but it was very, very useful to have this screenplay and show it to the cast and crew

before we start to shoot. And here we all these years later, and we've just finished this one. And just a mere few thousand people working on a film, and 10 years later, here we are. Talk me a little bit about, and there are going to be some light spoilers for this. We're releasing this after the film

has been out, so you've been warned. But it strikes me that, like, this is a film about, the first line of the film is something to the effect of no one knows what is true anymore. And you've been dancing with this throughout the Max series of myth, of the power of myth. Yes. Max at

times, like, there was talk of, like, what was true and what wasn't true, but the legend of Max. And that leads all the way to the end of the story, of the many different ways maybe Dementus met his fate and what is true and what is not. I guess I'm curious, like, what the power of myth is to you, myth versus truth in a story like this. Well, I think, I think every story worth its salt. Even, let's say, documentaries have an allegorical element. to them, right? And I find myself really drawn to Allegory. I just, it, I wasn't even aware of it for most of the time. But, you know, way back with the first Mad Maxes, they were recognized, particularly by the French critics, they said, oh, they're Westerns on wheels. And that suddenly made a lot of

sense to me, because like the Westerns is about elemental world. where the rules of engagement are much more simple, you're able to sort of understand a look, maybe make the stories less cluttered so that the stories are less cluttered and you can somehow clean some sort of resonances and meaning from them. No different from, say, a Happy Feet movie or a Babe movie.

Sure. So that's the big thing that attracted me to doing these movies. And in terms of, it's funny, because, like, I also see this recurring theme throughout your films. And, like, I actually, of all films, I watched a little bit of Lorenzo's Oil last night, which I've always appreciated. And it's another, it's a film, if you'll grant me this kind of indulgence, a film about how we are tested and what we do when we are tested. Do we accept the fate that has been kind of given to us? us, or do we make our own fate? And to me, that's kind of what this film is about, too.

This is about how Dementis decides to react in this extreme circumstance and how Furiosa applies to yourself. Is that something that you feel is, I would imagine this is something that's maybe born out of your own background in medicine and seeing how people react under duress. Yes. Is that fair to say? There's no question about that, Josh. In fact, I think that's how life happens.

Yeah. One way or another, to some degree or another, life is always throwing up obstacles or problems or whatever. For some, it couldn't be more extreme. For others, it might be minor things. But it's still, we are forged by those sort of random contradictions of life. As John Lennon best said, life is what happens when you're making other plans. No question.

and so that's definitely what's that that's definitely the case with all these stories but particularly a film like Furiosa's story in this one she gets taken put in an extreme situation basically all the trials and tribulations and the conflicts she endures and somehow survives, it reveals more and more about her until it gets to some essence about the character. I think that's an essential thing out of all stories, every fairy tale, every myth, every almost, let's say, religious stories. So anyway, that's what, I think that's why I'm still drawn to make films like this.

Well, it's funny. it's like, and I think of someone, I think of someone like James Cameron, who in the last, like, decade plus of his life has decided that the Avatar world is where he can put all the ideas that consume him. And in a similar way, it seems like you've found this bucket, like you found this world where, like, you can deal with every aspect of life in the Mad Max world, in the wasteland. Yes, I, I'm, with that actually, thinking of that as a strategy, it's what I've realized that that's happening.

You can tell us, look, a story is in the eye ultimately of the beholder. We all apprehends the stories according to our own worldview. And I think these sort of stories are

I think the important thing is that the meanings. I know what virtually everything means to me in this story. I have to. And I know what it means to each of the actors who play certain characters. But we're offering it up. We're inviting the audience into the experience and they're there to make of it what they will. Right. And I've been astonished by if the narrative can breathe enough, if it's not closed enough, how wonderfully different interpretations of certain things are. I can give plenty of examples of that, but I won't right now. I won't take out the time. That's an exciting thing to me. Of course. And even in this process now, we only finished the film about three weeks ago,

and I've now been on this press tour in many countries. And, you know, in Asia, South America, in the United States, Australia, and Europe. And it's really interesting how the film and the story is reflected back at we who made it. I find that one of the most exciting things about the process. There's a bit of an irony to the fact

that after the last two films, which are the first films that have dealt with the Furiosa character, we know way more about Furiosa's story than Max's story at this point. Have you ever gone back and outlined Max's past in a specific way in terms of what actually happened, how society fell in the way that you have outlined or now scripted Furiosa story? Well, we again, in order to tell the story of Mad Max Fury Road, we had to know what happened to Max at least in the year before we encounter him at Fury Road.

And if you look at Fury Road, they're little flashbacks. and he's somehow carrying a lot of trauma with him so we have to know that story but not only for those characters in order to make something that is pretty a world that's pretty flamboyant and keep it consistent and real

so it's not just randomly designed we had to know that about everything and everybody every gesture, every utterance, and even the doof warrior. You know, the big thing, we, the big thing, we really had to know because how could a guy who's blind and all he can do is play a guitar, how can he survive the wasteland? And we have a story for how that may have happened, only so that the Iota, the actor playing him, had some idea of who he was, he's just not appearing.

And so that happened to happen with everything in the story. So if that happened on Fury Road, did something similar happen on this? Did this story spark any elaborations? Like, is there a Dementous backstory? There is. I had to do it. In fact, in fact, you know, the, the, when we were doing the anime, Mahiro Maida, the great Japanese anime artist

he did some concept art and he drew Dementous, a different-looking Dementous than we see Chris Emsworth play. But he did a Dementous, but he had a teddy bear hooked onto his costume. And that grew into the narrative of the teddy bear. And he refers to the teddy bear of belonging to his own children.

So we had to go back and figure out Dementus' story just to understand how he speaks in that way, why he has that sense of showman pageantry. He's one of those flamboyant characters that are kind of variations on the theme that we see right throughout history. Even today, part of their charisma and bringing people together is quite different than, say, Immorton Joe, who's another warlord.

And we had to know how that all happened. So what was his occupation? What was he in the real world? Well, I'm not going to say. I know who his father was and his parents were. Pretorian Jack refers to his parents. My mother and father were warriors. I know where we know where dementia.

what happened to his father, 45 years earlier at the moment when the world fell, all of that. I mean, I won't say too much because it'd be interesting to see what people, you know, people carry their histories with them. Right. They'll bring their own. Yeah. They'll bring their own. Do you imagine, look, there's only so much time in the world, and I know the wasteland film might happen at some point. Do you imagine exploring any of these other stories in any other form? Oh, I like, you know, anime is great. Comic books are great.

It's just a question. If I'm lucky enough to do some of them, they're fine. But also I've got some other films, non-Man Max films I would love to do before I can no longer do them. You mentioned Pretoria and Jack. This was one of the great surprises of the film for me was Tom Burke and this film. He's so wonderful in this. And you can't look at that character and see that character without, you know, he's not Max. But there is some, there is some elements of Max there.

And what I think what I find curious is I haven't watched Fury Road again. But I'm trying to imagine now, does the Furioso we see in Fury Road when she sees Max almost recognize, oh, this reminds me of a man I once knew. This reminds me of Jack. You know, until, this is what I mean. until I saw the film and people, sorry, until people who saw the film came back and like you said, they, he reminds, he reminds them of Max, it didn't occur to me.

Oh, really? Now, but this is the sort of thing. Right. So, so, but the moment was said, I thought, of course he does. Yeah, of course he is. Very, very, very similar. The kind of the Venn diagram overlaps a little bit. But again, it just arose out of the work.

I'm happy to say if I went back and saw Fury Road, if I saw Furiosa butts directly into Fury Road so you can watch the two films as one extended four-hour movie. If you saw, if the moment when Furiosa in Fury Road sees Max and there is a couple of moments of interaction where they finally come together, there might be, the audience might put that together saying, oh, this is familiar, I've been here to some extent before,

particularly when Max is talking about joining together rather reluctantly but realizing they have no choice. And they basically have some regard for each other. So again, these are the sort of things that come out of these stories. No, it's delicious. Yeah, totally. Tim's new scrambled egg loaded croissant. Or is it croissant?

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Based on 3.5 study of active. engaged new musers with minimum starting BMI of 25. Individual results may vary. Visit our website for more information. I want to talk a little bit more about casting. I mentioned Tom Burke, but look, it was a tall order to cast a new Furiosa. Anya is fantastic in this. And I know Edgar Wright was involved in kind of like recommending her.

I'm curious, though, like, there are so many stories about casting Tom Hardy as Max, and we know a lot of the names that were associated. For casting Furiosa, and this was in the pandemic time, so it sounds like you didn't even get to meet with people in person. Correct me if I'm wrong. Did you do a lot of, like, Zoom? Like how many people, how many Furiosis did you meet with? To be honest, we did some, but there was just, it was just exploratory,

and it was just before, literally, I was finishing up, I was in Turkey finishing up casting on 3,000 years of line. longing. I was in London and it was just as the pandemic, if you like, was announced. Right. In fact, I, and Edgar had just shown me a fine cut of last night. So he says this was like the dinner right before everything closed down. We did. And if I remember, if I remember properly, he had a bit of kind of flu and I had a bit of a flu. And we thought, oh, gee, is it? We got the scene. As it turned out, we didn't.

But however, he showed me the movie, and I saw, and I had never seen, I'd seen the clips of the witch, but I hadn't seen her. And somehow, somehow I had this very strong, I mean, response to what she did, there's so many people did, there's something just very powerful. She's a very powerful presence, and then he basically told me that how she's, her level, of skill he said he didn't even know i was thinking about furiosa but he just said if you're thinking of casting it do it do it do it she's got everything she can do it all and and that proved to be the case but so i didn't you know it's really really weird i didn't meet with anybody

else i did speak and we we talked about but i had no idea yeah very similar thing happened with tom burke when we were where we finally came had to we finally we finally we we we We had Anya and we were sort of, and Chris, and then, and I remember Nikki Barrett, the casting agent, made lists. I think there are about 20 people on the list, as people do, and I think Tom's name was third or fourth on that list, and it was really stark. I got to his name, and the moment I saw it, never thought of it, but the moment I saw Nicky's suggestion, I didn't read the rest of the name. Wow. Sometimes you just know, yeah. I just knew because I was struck by his work in the souvenir. And then I think by then, Mank had come out.

And I was like, God, this guy is just, there's just something about him. And again, and you always go, look, I've spoken to a lot of directors, and so many of them say, you know, I know the first two seconds they walk in the door. And it's true, there's something about it. Something about who they are, the characters are theoretically in your mind, and the presence, that immediate sort of first impression that you get in. And then it's just a question of confirming that impression and reinforcing it, not only right through the auditioning process,

but the rehearsal process and the shooting process, and then you see what comes out at the other end. And then you sort of thank the movie guides that it all worked, you know. I mean, there was talk, like, the only other actor that I heard reports about was Jody Comer, who I have a lot of admiration for. Was she somebody that you at least spoke with? I think we spoke to her. But I don't, I think that was quite a bit before.

The movie hadn't, you know, I was still in the preparing to do 3,000 years of longing. We hadn't had a date, and that felt. fell apart but it was really when it got serious we had to that finally we got we got to yeah yeah there is a glimpse in the film of max maxes in the film kind of witnessing the events from afar for a moment was there ever consideration of using tom did you ever see if tom could make the trip to do that cameo no no because we had just just in terms of the the logistics of it again we shooting during COVID and Jacob tomorrow who is a wonderful stuntman from New Zealand did so much work brilliant work you know with Tom and I think subsequently has worked with Tom quite a bit

he was doing he played it he did some other stunt sequences in in the movie and I thought oh he's here and he certainly knows the character and he certainly looks the part and for the shot he worked, no, but we didn't think in terms of Tom. One thing I find fascinating is kind of what you decide to show and not show in this film. So, for instance, towards the end of the film, you kind of gloss over a 40-day war that could have been a film in and of itself, I would imagine. Another example is, like, I don't know if we, correct me my wrong, I've seen the film twice. I don't think we ever see Jack actually die. I don't think we actually see Praetorian Jack. I don't think we see literally

what happens to Furios' mother. It's inferred. But can you talk a little bit about like the choice of what to show and what not to show? Well, you need to show, you need to show it virtually from the point of view of the character. Right. Particularly to tell something that, you know, a saga over 18 years, you can't digress too much. It has to somehow be somehow tangentially. involving the main character in some way. Otherwise, you can lose track.

It's not like a novel. Can't change perspectives. Especially with something like this where it is so Furious's story. It has to be. Yeah. And so for instance, the war, all stories of war involve so many people. But the stories that somehow, you know, I remember there was a war, I think, there's a war in Europe. And I remember there was a couple, there was a story that stuck in my mind of a couple who was shot.

Though each, a male and female who had fallen in love in their village, and they were trying to make their way away, to get away from the theater of war. And they died on a bridge together. It always struck me. And you hear stories. You know, over and over again, I hear family narratives of people I know who went through the 20th century

and the several walls. And they always talk about how their family got out. It's always those individual stories that somehow at the center of it are really, the way we access, the largest story of the war, the dynamics and the logistics of the war. So, sure, that war might have been interesting, but Furiosa wasn't involved in it. She only observed it from afar.

She helped Immorten Joe side by revealing Dementis's plan. She says he's not going to gas down. Meantime, she has to recover. So we had to stick with her. And then, so that's one thing. In terms of the death of Praetorian Jack, it's implied, as is the mothers, but we're not there to, so long as the audience knows that that happens, we're not there to kind of make a little documentary about the death of Barry Jabasa or Praetorian Jack. Again, our perspective is always got to be with Furiosa. So you mentioned Immorten, Joe, and I find it fascinating.

Like, suddenly he is the lesser of two evils in the film like this. And we kind of alluded to this in one of our past conversations about sort of like, you know, that Immorden wasn't necessarily the evil that we knew in Fury Road at a certain time. And this is the nature of power and power corrupting. and you talked about this with me about Furiosa herself about what happens to her afterwards does she get corrupted or not

so I mean that's a fun thing to play with in a film like this to play with our expectations of who a Morton was because we're seeing him at kind of an interim period between like do you imagine again his backstory being even further on kind of the side

of like being a rational man a good man as opposed to the monster he became well we we we His backstory is, again, like most of them, people, he actually was there during the cascade of catastrophes that basically led to the apocalypse. Whatever they are, whether they're, as they say, a nuclear skirmish, if there could ever be such a thing. Or a war to war, or an oil war, or a catastrophic climate. change where everything all happens at once. He was there before, like the history man, and he says, you know, for him, he's initially

he was Colonel Joe Moore, and then he gets out into the wasteland, he becomes this sort of, he's sort of a deified in some way, or at least uses some sort of religious belief to become what's him. But again, that, you know, I always struck by me. most stories throughout history about how if the hero is the agent of change once they want so to the and it's often said that yesterday's hero becomes today's tyrant they become so wholefast as josephal said they they hold on they love what they built so much that they become rigid and whatever. And so someone else has to arise to, you know, to basically break down those sort of

orthodoxies. I mean, that's a constant pattern in history. So do you still believe, though? You hesitated, though, on our last conversation about charting Furiosa's path afterwards. You didn't think necessarily she would fall prey to that patent pattern. Do you still subscribe to that? In my mind, that's usually what happens. But in her, I think she's been too, through, too much. Right. And I think she would carry the residual, she hasn't fallen totally into despair. She would carry something of what she had as a child, the way she grew up in the green place, which is not utopian. I mean, notice, those, those, the Vavallini, they have, you know, they're subject to moral injury as well. They have, they have, they have, you know, they're subject to moral injury as well.

they have to kill everybody who might no man and no one shall live to tell of this place otherwise that place is dead it only it only survives because of its isolation so it's one thing to say oh you know we've got this lovely green place of many mothers but but to protect it you have to be brutal you have to be brutal and that's I guess that's the moral dilemma that in one way

just small degrees or large we all face in some way are there other versions of this film obviously Fury Road you did the Chrome version will you do that for this we've done it already you have it it's ready it's the last thing I did on this film and I call it tinted black and chrome

I want to call it tinted black and chrome and I must say it's really interesting there's something I'm still trying to demystify why the black and white for me has something more elemental to it. I still can't quite put my finger on it. It's not because they look like old black and white

movies. It's something else. It's like if we took a picture of ourselves right now it might be a little bit more dramatic if it was black and white. Right. And I know it's premature to talk about this other film but there is, so correctly I'm wrong because I've heard different things. I know this wasteland story

is out there but are there two more Mac stories that you have kind of written out? No, only one. And it began as a novella, but it is now a script. No, it's still a novella, and we've been working on a script for it. And again, it's premature, I get it. But the basics that is, it's the year before, and from what I gather, it concerns Max and a young mother

and a journey that they go through. More or less, yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, with these things, I really don't like talking about it. Fair enough. I've been, being through so many movies that, you know, that you want to make, you've got almost within a couple of times. Literally with the cameras up and ready, the actor's there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's true, I found that, I found that a lot. Yeah. It's better not to talk about it. Would you even say, like, what it's analogous to in terms of form, whether it's more of a chase film or an epic of this size of what it would feel like? Bankmore Oncores when you switch to a Scotia Bank banking package. Learn more at scotiabank.com slash banking packages. Conditions apply. Scotia Bank, you're richer than you think.

I'm Amy Nicholson, the film critic for the L.A. Times. And I'm Paul Shear, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from the League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters. We come together to host Unspool, a podcast where we talk about good movies, critical hits. Fan favorites, must-season, and Casey Mistoms. We're talking Parasite the Home Alone. From Greece to the Dark. So if you love movies like we do, come along on our cinematic adventure.

Listen to Unschooled wherever you get your podcast. And don't forget to hit the follow button. I'd say it's certainly has a lot of action in it, but it is also a saga. It's a year-long story. I mean, Fury Road happened over, I don't know, in three days. and two nights. I don't know how many hours that is, but you could almost say that the first act,

some part of the second act, the third act, mostly play in real time. So it's quite a different kettle of fish than, say, Furiosa. Yeah, the wasteland, you know, still figuring out what to do with it, but I'm just simply waiting to see the reception on Furiosa.

And if it all lines up, we'll go ahead with it. Okay, it's official. We are very much in the final sprint to election day. And face it, between debates, polling releases, even court appearances. It can feel exhausting, even impossible to keep up with. I'm Brad Milkey. I'm the host of Start Here, the Daily Podcast. from ABC News. And every morning, my team and I get you caught up on the day's news in a quick,

straightforward way that's easy to understand with just enough context so you can listen, get it, and go on with your day. So, kickstart your morning. Start Smart with Start Here and ABC News, because staying informed shouldn't feel overwhelming. You mentioned kind of like, yeah, this dance with other films that almost, happened and I don't know if we ever have talked about the Justice League film. It's one of those like unrealized projects that will always be a fascination for me to see what George Miller's Justice League would have been. What was your, in a nutshell, what was your fascination and excitement about taking on those characters? Basically I'm driven by curiosity

and the thing that sustains my curiosity is not only trying to figure out how to tell stories but why we tell them. Right. And of course, you know, one of the significant thinkers that basically shone light on storytelling for me was Joseph Campbell but I had no idea after we made it why the first Mad Max seemed to have a lot of resonance around the world until I read Joseph Campbell after the event and then that led to to Mad Max too and so on and here I am still sort of doing it so Justice League I've always been interested in that I've always now been aware of the power of myth as Joseph Gapb, of stories and how at any level, whether there are anecdotes between two people, your family stories about your local football team,

your community, whether they're folklore, fairy tales, religious stories. All of those, all of those are basically a timeless and they are in all cultures. we're hardwired for them and of course the great attraction of the justice league is that they are their roots go way back to the greeks and the north but particularly the greeks and then i you know and i'm so acutely aware of that of that sort of force in the world and as particularly i feel particularly privileged to grow up in Australia where we have the oldest continuous culture on the planet in the Indigenous Australia narratives, at least 65,000 years old. And the more I get to know them, the more remarkable they are.

And without going into a long story, Fury Road was about five wives being taken away from the Morton Joe. And it was only after Fury Road that I remember that one of the base story, one of the founding stories in all the narratives, the so-called songlines of the nomadic indigenous culture

that can go back all that time was a story of seven sisters escaping a malevolent male force. And in their travels across the wasteland, they explained everything. Right. Everything, every watering hole, every, every nook and cranny, every rock, every hill, and indeed the stars. And I thought, wait a remember, this is a part, this is a continual.

These stores are so in our bones that you can't. In our bones. We are hardwired. Yeah. That's why cinema, despite all the prognoxication that, oh, cinema, I think, will stay. Yeah. Simply because we need that shared experience somehow. And it's in a way, like, you know,

the callous way of talking about why we keep seeing reboots of Superman and Batman is money, but it's also because those stories have power, those myths, they are the modern myths. They are, without question. And they're completely being reworked and recycled and reinterpreted according to the times. Right. They basically have new meaning in the zeitgeist. That's been the progression of stories throughout time. That's the thing that really blows me away.

And I think, you know, that's why I'm attracted to them so much. A couple other things that I'll let you go. You've been very generous with your time, as always. I saw you with Hideo-Kajima briefly, and I know you're in the New Death Stranding game. He's a great admirer of yours. And one thing I love about you and something like James Cameron is, like, you adapt. You know storytelling is changing. You know, filmmaking is changing.

We're still in its infancy. But I'm curious, like, do you, like, are you excited by AR? and VR and gaming and exploring all of those facets when it comes to storytelling in the future. Excited and fascinated to see where it goes. To see, because it's always changing. If you trace, you know, cinema is only 130 years old, right? A brand new language, which we learn from when we're

little, even now before we learn our own language. But it's always changing and in an ever-accelerating way. So the difference between the digital dispensation and when we worked on celluloid and analog is huge. The difference between shooting Furiosa nine years after we short Fury Road is significant. Yeah. So we were able to do things we couldn't even think of. then, and it will continue to change.

And now you have all these new technologies, you know, waiting in the wings and being used, and it will change, and different ways of viewing and different tools. And I'm excited by all of them. You just never know where it's going to lead. However, there's always the constant, the basic process is always going to stay the same. I'll never forget being in drive-ins not many people go to drive-ins now but I'll never forget going to drive-ins

and whenever the audience was excited by something the way they showed their excitement they couldn't yell out the window or anything they flashed their headlights on and off and the screen would suddenly go white and you knew everyone else in there they couldn't honk their horns because you couldn't hear the dialogue

but the scene and again it has to be shared experience. That's that I think will always be there in some way. Have you ever considered doing a actual silent film, a film with no dialogue? Because it's always this talk and I don't know what people are surprised with every Max film. Like they always say, oh, she has 30 lines of dialogue. If you go back to any of the films, your protagonist always has about that amount to say. It's not a far cry, I would think, to go completely without dialogue in a George Miller max film. I'd never thought of it. but only because

only because I think they are kind of silent movies, meaning they're silent movies with sound and you make I remember I used to when I first started, you know, it was interesting in making films, I used to watch movies

or I turned the sound off on the television and just to see how much how they'd work I always remembered back then that Hitchcock quote where he said, I try to make movies where I don't have to read the subtitled in Japan. However, it's also interesting to me what you can do with sound.

And I remember a startling moment when I met a critic. I don't know if I told you about it. I met this critic who told me that he wrote film reviews for the Royal Blind Society. And I said, what, you mean? Blind people go to see movies? He said, of course they do. they don't see them they listen to them and i suddenly thought yes you can you can really get a lot of story from sound in fact it's you see with your ears in many cases i there are moments in this

movie and it should be in every movie where you the audience actually does that and uh so now those two things working synergistically sound at this the sound and the vision uh allows the experience to be more immersive, I think. But I'd never thought of making a silent movie. Because I think most movies should be seen as, see if they can be read, a silent movie's first, and then you see what you've got, and then you add the sound and so on it.

It's kind of why I love Dementis, because he is so contrary to so many of your characters in these films. I mean, you end this film with perhaps the most dialogue-driven sequel. of a max film ever and it is you know for all the bomb baths and the car wrecks it's two two human beings just interacting yes in a max film which is fantastic yes well he again he he being a showman uses words just like in morton joe when he makes these big pronouncements you know i'm your redeemer and all that sort of thing the the words are part of the pageantry but someone like a Max or a Furiosa

or a lot of those classic characters that we saw in the westerns they were utterly laconic because they had no need for words so I'll end on this there's so much doom and gloom talked about in cinema but this is why I love talking to you because you're such an inspiration

both in your words and the films you make and there are some great in recent years some spectacles like the Max films that have really inspired folks like me and any movie lover, whether it's Top Gun, and it's James Cameron, the John Wick films. I mean, what is excited you as someone that loves film in recent years? Have you been inspired by any filmmakers or specific films?

Well, I am. Believe it or not, this is going to say, coming over on the plane here, I watched some extended South Park. Not what I was expecting. I thought they were fantastic. I mean, that that's, that's really, really high-end storytelling to me. There was one on the, there was one on COVID. I don't know if you've seen it.

I'm a little behind on it. They're extended. That's great storytelling. And, and, and, but there are lots and lots of movies. Yeah. It's, uh, that, that, that, and bits. of movies. Sometimes it's just a passage of a movie. Or sometimes it's

one shot. But to list them all I'm still incredibly excited by cinema. Because again, it's evolving. It's always changing. We're reading movies differently now.

We're speed reading them. We're bringing a lot to each story. It's not just a brand new. We're bringing a lot as a audience and it's there's a kind of a cultural evolution that that's happening in front of our eyes sometimes scary sometimes hard to get hold of but it's happening and that's one of the excitements of it um again it's always a privilege to catch up with you sir i you know i i think you know this but i mean our last talk i got a lot of filmmakers to send in questions you know how

revered you are by others and and and this film again is going to inspire so much conversation and interpretation for years to come. So hopefully it won't be so long before I see you again soon. All right. Congratulations. Don't call me sir. I said it's a I sound like a school teacher. No, no. George. Always a pleasure. Please, George. Thank you again. Thank you. Thanks, Josh. Thank you. 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 pressure to do this by Josh. Goodbye, summer movies, hello fall.

I'm Anthony Devaney. And I'm his twin brother, James. We host Raiders of the Lost Podcast, the Ultimate Movie Podcast, and we are ecstatic to break down late summer and early fall releases. We have Leonardo DiCaprio leading a revolution in one battle after another, Timothy Salome playing power ping pong in Marty Supreme. Let's not forget Emma Stone and Jorgos Lanthamos' Bugonia. Dwayne Johnson, he's coming for that Oscar.

In The Smashing Machine, Spike Lee and Denzel teaming up again, plus Daniel DeLewis's return from retirement. There will be plenty of blockbusters to chat about two. Tron Aries looks exceptional, plus Mortal Kombat 2, and Edgar writes, The Running Man, starring Glenn Powell. Search for Raiders of the Lost Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.