WHAT WENT WRONG - Mad Max: Fury Road (Part 1)

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

Join Lizzie as she guides Chris through a film that took almost 20 years to make it to the screen, how it was aided by a talking pig and dancing penguins, Charlize's fight to be in the fight, and why the ghost of Heath Ledger haunted its director.Go Ad-Free - Join Our Patreon!Check Out Our Merch!Follow Us on Instagram!What Movie's Next? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast, Full Stop, that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one. And I have to imagine it must have been literally impossible to make one this good. I can't. I don't understand how this movie exists. Nope, I remember when I saw it in theaters and just heart rate was at 150 the whole time. For two hours straight.

Before we get into this film, as always, I'm Chris Winterbauer here with Lizzie Bassett. A quick shoutout, we have a fun little, well, kind of sad little ripped from the headlines episode on our Patreon available for you all about celebrity divorces. They're back. They're back. It's a bummer. We talk about them in the context of divorce in general. Yeah, I think what I learned is that it actually wasn't that fun to talk about it. We want you to listen to it so that you then ignore all.

all future news about people's divorces, which should be their business and their business alone. Correct. However, we are here to talk about, I would argue maybe a runaway bride movie, would it be safe to say in kind of? I guess it's technically five runaway brides who are also sort of captured. All right, Lizzie, tell us, what are we covering today? Well, this is the result of a poll. You listeners voted, and if you don't know, you can.

and vote for one episode a month on our Patreon, so make sure you go over there and vote. This one pretty much by a landslide, and it is Mad Max Fury Road. Now, I knew this was a troubled production. I had no idea what I was getting myself into with this movie. My main source today is a really, really awesome book. If you are watching on video, I will show you. cover right now. It is Blood, Sweat, and Chrome, the Wild and True Story of Mad Max Fury Road by Kyle Buchanan. It's excellent. I highly recommend reading it. It's basically a curated

oral history, and he's kind of filling in some of the gaps periodically. But it's just an insane work of reporting on this absolutely bat-shit-crazy movie. So make sure you go pick up a copy of that book. It's great. Chris, I want to start, before we get into this, with two Two quotes. Great. The first is from Charlize Theron, who said, like anything that matters in your life or has some worth to it, it comes with complicated feelings. I feel a mixture of extreme joy that we achieved what we did, and I also get a little bit of a hole in my stomach. There is a level of the body remembers trauma related to the experience of shooting this film that's still there for me. And the second quote is from Steven Soderberg, who said, I don't understand how they're not still shooting that film. and I don't understand how hundreds of people aren't dead. Yeah, there it is. Yeah, really hit the nail on the head there. Dryed out husks in the desert.

I mean, it is just, well, we're going to get into it, but it is nuts. Yeah. So it was released May 15, 2015, directed by George Miller, written by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, and Nico Lothoris, who is credited as Nick Lothuris on IMD. I'm not sure why. Starring Tom Hardy as Max Rockatansky, Charlize Saren as Imperator Furiosa, Hugh Keyes Burn as Immorten Joe, and Nicholas Holt as Nucks, also starring Zoe Kravitz, Riley Keough, Rosie Huntington, Whiteley, Abby Lee, and Courtney Eaton, aka Lottie from Yellow Jackets, as The Wives, and many, many more. The synopsis, according to IMDB, is in a post-apocalyptic weight. A woman rebels against a tyrannical ruler in search for her homeland with the aid of a group of female prisoners, a psychotic worshipper, and a drifter named Max.

So, Chris, I assume you saw this in theaters. I did. Yes. Okay. What was your reaction then versus your reaction rewatching it now? So I watched the original Mad Max and Thunderdome when I was living. little. And even when I was younger, they felt very kind of like hokey 80s to me in a way. And so when I didn't, I guess, have high expectations for the new one for whatever reason. And it absolutely blew my mind. And for just, I think it's like two hours on the money, the runtime. Just two hours, I couldn't believe how every set piece just continued to escalate. It's crazy. And I was also blown

away how they kept it visually interesting, even though the whole movie is a chase movie. Yep. All the night stuff that they do, where they shoot everything in pure blue. Yep. The way that they introduced additional character. Like, weirdly, I felt emotional about Morton Joe's weirdo sons, like in the whole movie. I could not believe it worked on me at kind of every level. And then when I rewatched it, you know, I was watching it on a TV.

And so it doesn't have quite the same impact. everything that I had felt then stayed true. It still felt insane rewatching the movie again. And yeah, I'm very curious to see what will happen with Furiosa, the sequel that they're going to release. Well, it's a prequel, excuse me. We're getting more than just that one. Yeah. In theory.

In theory. If they don't all die on the next one. Not even that, which as we'll learn from this, George Miller has a bit of a hard time. getting things off the ground and also a bit of a hard time making successful sequels. Yeah. So we will get into that. I had kind of the opposite experience, which is that I saw this in theaters. I remember loving it, but it was like so, so hyped when I went to go see it.

And so it was kind of like, yeah, this is awesome. I also did not have as in-depth an understanding of movie making then as I do now. And I'm not an expert by any means, but just from doing this podcast and from working at IMDB and being very curious about it in a way that I wasn't in 2015. This movie just absolutely knocked my socks off this time. Yeah. Especially when you begin to learn more about it and about how much of it is not CGI. It's not CGI.

They are strapping them to the bottom of semi-truck. Yeah. Yeah. No, and can I hop in really quickly on the CGI thing just briefly? So I am sure there are going to be moments in this podcast, Lizzie, where you say as a shorthand, like, it's not CGI. To be clear, we both are well aware. CGI is used to enhance almost every frame of this movie. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, like they're replacing backgrounds, they're cleaning things up, et cetera. But the point Lizzie's making is that there are so many instances of just this is stunt work, you know, for the most part. And a lot of it is the actual actors doing it themselves, although a lot, a lot of it is, really probably the best stunt people in the world. Absolutely. Working on this. Also, they're actually not replacing a lot of backgrounds, by the way. No, no, no.

What I mean is like sky replacements. Like, they clean up a ton of stuff. I've seen the behind the scenes on that one. Yeah, they're cleaning up a lot of cables and I think there is wirework happening in this. So, yes, I am referring to. And like time of day, lighting matches, like all that stuff. You know, that's, you know.

When we say a lot of this is practical, we're referring to the. fact that they are not like generating a car crash, like animating something like that. They're not doing digital doubles with exactly. Yeah. Like think about a Marvel movie versus this, basically. Think about what the action looks like in a Marvel movie. Think about the CGI soup. That becomes the third act of a Marvel film versus this one.

No disrespect to any of the talented artists working on Marvel films. I think they would all agree they wish they had more physical things in the frame to play with. Well, but also it is not easy to make. There's a reason why people run. rely on that. So let's begin with a little bit of background on George Miller. Miller was born in Chinchilla, Queensland, Australia, which is very, very... That's just great. It's like, this is the boons. It is very rural Australian outback in 1945 to Greek immigrant parents. He has a fraternal twin. Didn't know that. I didn't know that. And believe it or not, George Miller did not begin his

career in filmmaking. Do you know what he started off as? An itinerant drifter who got in car racing fights with the numerous baddies in the Australian Outback? I have no idea. No, he's a doctor. What? Yes. So George Miller went to medical school. Why is he not Dr. George Miller? Well, because during his time off, he, I think, submitted, I think, submitted a short film he did with his brother and ended up getting into a film. workshop where he met his producing partner, Byron Kennedy. And during his residency, he would crew on short films and also directed his own short film, Violence in Cinema Part One, alongside Byron. It was actually the gruesome injuries he saw working as an emergency room doctor that would inspire a lot of the violence that you see in Mad Max and a lot of what was in Violence in Cinema Part One. He also, where he grew up, there are no speed limits. And it's just a lot of flat, straightaway roads.

Right. And people would just go wild. And there would be these horrible, horrible car crashes all the time. And they would lose a lot of people that they knew. Oh, wow. So all of that ends up weaving its way into Mad Max. Yeah, my limited understanding of the topography of Australia is that it is coastline and a giant pancake of desert in the middle. I think he was in giant pancakes.

The territory. Great. So the very graphic short film made a splash. It launched Miller into an up-and-coming class of Australian filmmakers, including Peter Weir, who we just talked about in the Do the Right Thing episode briefly. We're going to fast forward to 1979 when George Miller releases his feature directorial debut, which he also co-wrote, and that is Mad Max, starring an up-and-coming actor, fresh out of drama school, Mel Gibson, in his breakout role.

I am going to save most of the information on the original Mad Max for its own movie because, wow. Yeah, I would imagine. There's plenty. It's this, but with no money and no permits. Literally, yeah, it's this, but they did not know what they were doing. Exactly. So the film was, however, independently financed. And when I say independently financed, I mean, he and Byron Kennedy raised the money for the original Mad Max

themselves by doing emergency medical calls in a busted van in the Outback. Wow. They raised $350,000. That is how much it cost to make the original one. And, Chris, do you know how much it grossed at the box office? I don't. I'll guess $46 million. It made $100 million.

Whoa. Until the Blair Witch Project, Mad Max was actually the most profitable film of all time. Wow. That's, I always thought it was evil dead, and I must be way off. Wow. I believe it's this, I think, according to Guinness. This would also predate evil dead.

Yes, by probably a couple years. So, oddly enough, it was not a huge hit in America, potentially due to the fact that the Australian actors were dubbed over with terrible American voices. Why? Why? You could not even hear Mel Gibson's actual voice in the original theatrical release. of Mad Max. But Australian accents are better.

They're great. Also, it's about Gibson. I know. You can understand him. Yeah, he sounds fine. He sounds fine. I have no idea. Except in Braveheart.

A little hard to understand there. Well, you know, it was Scottish. Scott-ish. Scott adjacent. Whatever. Braveheart's a lot of it. It sounded like somebody named Scott. I'll give him that much.

Yes, it did. So George Miller said of this project and then eventual success, it was a very valuable experience to have something that felt like a failure. I love that quote because he's basically saying, had it been easy to have achieved that and then made the most profitable film of all time at that point, he might have gotten his head too far up his ass and not been able to go on to do what he would go on to do. It does, of course, spawn a franchise, which followed with Mad Max 2, the Road Warrior, in 1981 and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome in 1985.

Now, very sadly, between those two films, Miller's beloved producing partner, Byron Kennedy, died in a helicopter accident at only 33 years old. Oh, wow. And if you're familiar with George Miller's production company, it is Kennedy Miller Mitchell until this very day. He kept his friend's name in the company. That's terrible, though. It's really sad. And I think it really messed him up.

He was in production on Thunderdome at the time. that it happened and whether it was the troubled production of Thunderdome, coupled with his very good friend's death, it would then take a whopping 30 years before Mad Max would ever hit the silver screen again. He kind of just closed the book on it after that. So, let's dive in to Fury Road. And I forgot to mention this at the top, but this is going to be a two-part episode. This episode, I'm going to take you up until the beginning of filming. And then in part two, we will come back and we will go through the actual filming and everything that's related to that. So after Thunderdome, George Miller moves on to some very, very different projects. One of the most eclectic yet limited filmographies of a director

this successful, I would say. It's pretty crazy what he goes on to do. So he follows up Thunderdome with The Witches of Eastwick in 1987, another very troubled production that we might cover. We've had that requested. Exactly. We definitely will need to cover it at some point. It was on this film that Miller got some valuable advice from Jack Nicholson, which was Always Ask for More Than You Need, If You Need 150. If you need 150 extras, ask for 300. George Miller did learn that lesson. Now we're going to fast forward to 1993. When Miller was signed on on to direct what movie, Chris.

He does not end up actually directing it. In 1993. It is a sci-fi classic starring Jody Foster. Contact. Contact. Oh, I didn't know he was on board for that one. We could have had a George Miller contact. I think I would have liked it more.

Well, Warner Brothers does not agree. So George and Warner Brothers could not see eye to eye on the script and overall direction of the film. His take is that they wanted to over-explain everything, which kind of did, even though I love contact. It's a good movie. And meanwhile, they were desperate to get him to stop messing with the script. He just wouldn't stop. And two years into the process, after multiple delays, Warner Brothers fires George Miller and replaces him with Robert Zemeckis.

Now, Miller is so pissed that he sues Warner Brothers for first. breach of contract. This is very important because there's something I haven't told you yet. Warner Brothers was the distributor for every Mad Max film so far. Right. And they owned the rights to the franchise. Oh, wow. The lawsuit ends up getting settled. And guess what George Miller gets? The rights to Mad Max. Oh, wow. He got the rights back. He got the rights back. Yes. Because they're thinking, this guy's not going to touch this thing, you know, anymore. This franchise is done. I think they're also thinking they want nothing to do with George Miller at this point. That's what I'm saying. They're like, we'll let him go away. He can take his desert movies with him. Right. Back to Australia with you,

good sir. Yes. By the way, this is not the last time George Miller will sue Warner Brothers. So that's fun. Now, around the same time, this timeline is a little murky, maybe before he was going through this lawsuit. Warner Brothers TV independently floats the idea of a Mad Max TV show. They even went so far as to announce it in Variety in 1995. Even though this show never happens, it is the instigator for Fury Road. Interesting. So a big piece of the Fury Road puzzle arrives to chat with George around this time,

and that is Brendan McCarthy, who was an established comic book artist in the UK, and he would go on to be one of the co-writers of Fury Road. And he's there to kind of discuss this possibility, like what could this look like? They were already very interested in, I think, not necessarily using typical screenwriters for this film. Also, if he's a comic book artist, he's used to serializing things. And if it's going to be a TV show, you could probably help George break the story into a longer form. Right. Well, so as far as I can tell, George Miller is never fully on board for the TV. TV series. The Warner Bros. TV execs, however, are like desperately trying to get him to agree to this.

So they call this meeting in Los Angeles where they show him their plans for a Mad Max universe, and it includes a wide array of Mad Max toys. So the MMCU? Yes, the Mad Max Cinematic Universe. Absolutely. Cool. But what they don't realize is that prior to this point, George Miller, had kind of thought of each of the original three Mad Max movies as standalone films, which does make sense when you watch them,

but I don't know that he was really thinking about them as a cinematic universe. Right. And when they pulled the cover back on all these toys, all of a sudden something clicks in George Miller's crazy brain. And so he's like, hurry, very excited. He's like immediately running out of the room and they're like, wait, wait, wait. Yeah. Do you like it?

And he's like, I love it. And they're like, oh, fantastic. And he goes, I'm making a movie. And they were like, wait, no. Yeah. I love it. I want nothing to do with you. Yes, that's what he did.

And then he just left. It is on this trip to L.A. that Miller has the initial idea for Fury Road. And that is what if the movie is one long chase? Great idea. Remember, this is somewhere around 1995. And it comes out in 2013. He takes this idea to his in-house sketch artist Peter Pound, who then draws up a few

tabloes under the heading Fury Road. And this is at this point, 1996, actually, sorry. So almost 20 years before the movie will ever come out. So he decides to go full force into Fury Road and convenes a writer's room, including Brendan McCarthy and screenwriter Eric Blakeney. And this is where they start to break the story of Fury Road. So even this early, they were throwing around names for casting, particularly for Furiosa. Okay.

Some names that were considered include Uma Thurman. Would have been great. Would have been great. Bridget Moynihan. Interesting. All tall ladies, I want to point out. Monica Balucci, very interesting. Would like that movie, too?

Yeah. And Charlize herself. But 20 years earlier. Yeah. All of those women are very. young compared to where Furiosa ends up. Yes. Yeah, that's true. Because this would have been pre-kill bill. Yes. Yeah. And Charlize's. Yeah. Charlize is what, like devil's advocate? Yes, almost exactly devil's advocate. So she's early 20s at that point. Yeah, got it. Interesting.

They were told she wasn't interested, but she says she was never even told about it. So it seems like there was a bit of a miscommunication. I do too. All the time will quash projects and they won't even talk to their client about it. Well, I believe it because of her reaction later when she does finally hear about Mad Max. We actually need to rewind for a moment to discuss one of the reasons that Miller felt ready to tackle Fury Road again. Back in 1995, a little family film that Miller had co-written and produced was released and became a massive hit.

Chris, what is it? Babe. It's Babe. I love Babe. I thought Babe was so good. I thought Babe in theaters. And I loved it. And I rewatched it at some point.

And I thought, this movie's great. It's great. It's great. This is a movie I would actually, a kid's movie I would be excited to watch. Absolutely. There are very few. And it has a Pixar-S quality. It's really good.

It's very charming. And the, it's just great. Yeah, they'd figured out the technology of making the animals talk without it being too uncanny. It looks pretty good. Yeah. I was watching some clips of it when I was getting ready for this. And I was like, wow, I thought the talking animal mouths were going to look way worse than they do.

Yeah. No, it's really good. And James Cromwell is very charming. Yeah, that was like his breakout role. He is excellent. So not only did the success of Babe give Miller the confidence he needed to take on Fury Road, it also gave him an absolute buttload of money. That thing made $254 million worldwide on a budget of around $30 million.

But unfortunately, this means that while the long-awaited Mad Max sequel is underway, So is Babe 2, Pig in the City. Hell yeah, it is. I saw that one too. Well. I don't know if it was any good, but I saw it. No, that one didn't go so well. Got it.

So there's actually a bit of drama surrounding the original babe, which I won't go into too deeply. But the director, Chris Noonan, who had considered Miller his mentor prior to the film, said that afterwards he felt like Miller had taken all of the credit for its success. Interesting. He even initially said he thought Miller, was scrubbing his name from internet databases. Now, George Miller completely denied this,

said it's ridiculous, that's not happening. And to be fair, his name is on this everywhere. But then he also said, when it comes to Babe, the vision was handed to Chris on a plate. Okay. So, look, I'm not scrubbing his name, but forget about that guy. I mean, yikes. I will say he does seem like he gets.

gives credit to other people when it is due. So who knows what happened on Babe. But whatever happened, Miller decides that he should helm Babe's sequel instead, which, as we said, is pig in the city, which is bizarre because he absolutely does not have time to do this. He plans on splitting his time between Babe 2 and the development of Fury Road. But he's not really paying enough attention to either. Talk about putting your brain in two different worlds. this is not the first time he is going to try to do this. I don't know why he did George stop.

Like just do, you're so good. Do one at a time. Yeah. So he's not really paying enough attention to either project. On Fury Road, Brendan and Eric are fighting to the point where Eric actually gets fired due to how much he did not like Brendan McCarthy. Brendan, however, will stay on and end up being one of the final screenwriters on Fury Road. Meanwhile, pig in the city is costing way more than the first one, and no one is really sure what to make of it. Just I had to pay those pigs right the second time.

I think people are watching it, and they're like, this is really dark and weird and sad. And we're not sure this is for children. George, what's happening? By 1998, Mad Max has found a home at Universal with a slated release date of summer 2001. Also, keep in mind, Max, aka Mel Gibson, not officially on board. However, this would all come to a screeching halt when Babe, Pig, and the City hit theaters

because it was universally panned and was a big-time flopper. It did apparently make a lot of children cry. I vaguely remember there's a plot point about drug-sniffing dogs at an airport thinking that some of the animals have drugs on them. And, like, that is a very weird plot point for a children's movie.

Yeah, we need to find ourselves with special mushrooms and watch Babe Dick in the city. All right. So his confidence has taken a bit of a hit, but George Miller is not completely deterred. He reassembles his Mad Max team,

now including Brendan McCarthy and storyboard artist, Peter Pound, and Mark Sexton. They spend essentially two years in a room working on the screenplay, except they don't write it. They storyboard the entire thing. I had heard about this because I talked to an executive who asked if I've ever seen a George Miller Mad Max script before.

Yeah, it's not a script. No, I'd heard, yeah, it's it's storyboards, it's ideas, it's collages. It's like it is just a visual expression of his brain laid out. Yes. Yeah, it never has a screenplay, which will prove very challenging for the actors later on. but it seems like George Miller, what they said is that he really directs for the edit. Like, he knows exactly what every single shot is going to look like

and what he wants. And there's not a wasted shot in that movie. No. It's crazy. It's amazing. But it's the kind of thing where, like, he might roll the camera for literally 10 seconds to get what he needs. And the actors are like, wait a minute.

Which, by the way, I've heard the Cohen brothers operate not dissimilarly. And Francis McDormon has talked about how that's how she looks. for a quality director is if they know how to shoot for the edit. So anyway, just for what it's worth. Totally. But yeah, Mad Max Fury Road never had a screenplay. That is, think about the logistics. You don't have like scene numbers to refer to or page numbers to refer to.

They literally just have storyboards of every scene. And sometimes it would just be like three dots. And then someone would be like, what is this? And they'd be like, oh, that's the chain. That's the sequence of the chase. And they're like, oh, okay. You know, people would point at it and be like, what are, what are we getting here? What are we doing?

He'd be like, it's all in the storyboats. And they're like, uh-huh. What am I looking at here, George? All in the old Nogun. The reason for this does make sense, though, when you think about it, it's that it's really boring to write action. It's so boring. It's all action.

Yep. It would probably be a 55-page screenplay in the sense that, like, there's not a lot of dialogue, you know, and it'd be like, Nucks, keeps driving. Right. It's like it didn't. I don't know that a screenplay would have served them either. So everyone who's working on it is so excited. This is the dream for so many people working on this. But guess who is not excited?

That would be universal. Yeah. They are scared after distributing pig in the city, and they are slowly chickening. out on Mad Max. Now, surely one way to get more money would be, and to get a studio excited, would be to reattach your original star. Right. So, George Miller takes Mel Gibson out to dinner and pitches him the whole thing.

And their description of Mel Gibson is so funny. He's like, they say that he's just like, he's just like jittery. He's just kind of like all over the place. And then they said, like, the only way you can tell if Mel Gibson likes something is if all of a sudden he's just like, ha ha ha ha ha. Ha, just like laughing in the middle of the conversation. And then he starts laughing. So they were like, okay, okay, I think he's on board.

And George Miller was like very nervous trying to pitch this. And what year was this? This was 2001, too? Yes, this would have been around 2001-ish. So like Braveheart has come out. I mean, he is Pete Mel Gibson. I was going to say this is his apex because you had payback and ransom and sign. would be 2003, I want to say.

I think that's right. You also have the Patriot somewhere in here. And then he would do Passion of the Christ in 2004. Yeah, we're getting there. Hold that thought. So eventually, Mel Gibson's like, yeah, fuck it, let's do it, but let's do it fast because I'm almost 50 years old. I can't do this when I get older. I'm increasingly getting recorded saying some pretty bad stuff.

Well, not yet. So they had managed to hang on to the rights And so they were able to take the project anywhere they wanted Thanks to Mel, they're able to secure a deal with 20th century Fox Provided Mel Gibson was paid a quarter of the film's $100 million budget. Whoa! Yeah. Somebody was like, one of the people I can't remember who in the book was talking about this

And they were like, they were like, just nobody, nobody tell Fox. Someone was like, who wants to make this movie? And he was like, I don't know, I don't know if they said yes, I'm not sure why. That is wild. Yeah, well, they're full steam ahead. They've got their max. Yeah. They've even found their perfect filming location, which is Namibia.

Mm-hmm. They have crew over there building the cars and sets. For months, people are over there building. They are six weeks away from filming in February of 2003, and Fox pulls the plug. No. Why? They are scared about the rising costs, and they also don't love the idea of shooting overseas in Namibia. This really all has to do actually with 9-11.

Oh. Even though it was about a year and a half earlier, maybe not even. They do know 9-11 happened in the United States, right? Yeah. But they're very concerned about the costs and dangers of shooting overseas. Also, the American dollar in the wake of 9-11 plummeted compared to... both the Australian dollar and some other international currencies. So it was just becoming a shit show and was getting out of control expensive.

The craziest thing is they don't even do anything with the vehicles that had been built. They literally melted them down into a pile of steel in the desert. It was probably cheaper than shipping them. Probably, but like that's crazy. That was artists, truly artists' work. They had built roads and stuff. They had to just cover with sand dunes and leave. Wow.

Now, George Miller, not one to be deterred, always has something in his back pocket. And it tends to be a family-friendly animal movie. I know. I was waiting for us to get to his next animal film. Yeah, Chris, take notes. Happy feet. Yep, this time it is Happy Feet, which is somehow back with Warner Brothers, even though he had sued them. They're like that couple that just should divorce and can't get enough of each other.

They really should, but they keep, they keep, they keep sleeping together. Because the sex is great, clearly. Yep. I think they had a changing of the guards at Warner Brothers and Doug Mitchell. And this time it'll be different. This time will be better. Miller's producing partner, Doug Mitchell, had pitched them this script on the fly, and they loved it.

So, Miller pivots to the penguins. But from this point forward, he really never stops moving the ball forward on Fury Road, which is incredible that he just doesn't let it die. Yeah. Now, somewhere around this time, he brings in co-writer Nico Lathuris, who is a former actor and exceptional dramaturg,

who seems to have brought a lot of the history and backstory to the film. Fun fact, he's actually a mechanic in the original Mad Max. Oh, really? Yeah. So he wrote a 190-page analysis of Fury Road, which apparently explains the last year of Max's life prior to Fury Road. I have to believe this may be the genesis for Mad Max the Wasteland, starring Tom Hardy and Chris Hemsworth, if it ever comes out, which is supposed to be the prequel chronicling Max's life prior to. Fury Road.

Right. The pivot to Happy Feet pays off because, like Babe, it absolutely crushes at the box office in 2006. Yes. Wasn't it? It was not, didn't he win an Oscar, Best Animated Film? Oh, gosh, did he? I think Happy Feet won. It's just, yes, it is the fourth non-Disney or Pixar film to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

Damn. Well, I've never seen it. Oh, it's good. I'm sure it's good. Babe is great. Listen, he does a bang-up job on the first one out of his animal franchises and then not such a bang-up job on the second one. Now, instead of going straight back to Mad Max, George Miller pivots to another cursed production on the wake of the success of Happy Feet, which is Justice League. Oh.

Yeah. But Justice League, like before Man of Steel? Yes. Oh, interesting. It actually gets very far along. And the cast included Army Hammer as Batman. Seems like a good idea on paper. This gets relatively far along.

They had Adam Brody as the Flash. Would have been good. I like Adam Brody. They have Immorten Joe himself, Hugh Keyes Burn, as Martian Man. Hunter. Okay. And they have Megan Gale, who would also appear in Fury Road as the Valkyrie playing Wonder Woman in this version. Yeah.

However, just like Mad Max before, Warner Brothers pulls the plug on Justice League due to a writer's strike and budget concerns. I kind of would have maybe liked to see George Miller's Justice League. Would have been fun. So at this point, he goes back to Fury Road. and his producing partner, Doug Mitchell, makes a deal with Warner Brothers. He says, we will only do Happy Feet 2, which Warner Brothers was very excited about

because they're hoping this is their new billion-dollar franchise. I said, we will only make that if it is bundled in a two-picture deal with Fury Road. Right, happy, furious happiness. Yes, furious happy feat, too. As James Nicholas says, in the book that I read, quote, Fury Road was made off the back of a penguin.

So this is where the version of Fury Road that we see actually gets off its feet. Right. So there's just one little problem because this has taken so long. They don't have a max anymore because it is now around 2008 or 2009. And Chris, what happened between the last time we saw me? Mel Gibson at his peak and now. He was solidly canceled before canceling was known as a thing. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I believe he was recorded, drunkenly tirating his wife and went on it. You're actually mixing up a couple different meltdowns, so let me break it down for you. I just know he went on an anti-Semitic rant at some point. Yeah, there's multiple rants. The first one is in July of 2006. Mel Gibson was arrested on the Pacific Coast Highway for. driving drunk, and then proceeded to go on an anti-Semitic tirade to the cop trying to detain him, saying, quote, the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world, and are you a Jew? Fun. It's a great night for that cop.

Mel Gibson, by the way, not super remorseful about this. He says that it was just eight double tequila's talking, and that he has no discrimination in his heart. As he watched the passion of the Christ. Yeah, you're driving a car after drinking eight double tequila. That's awful. Listen. I'm saying me on. Everybody makes mistakes.

Yes, I clearly. No, I know. No. It's a, yeah, it's not good. His point was like, basically, as I read it, Mel Gibson's argument was like, come on, if I were really anti-Semitic, wouldn't there have been evidence of it before this? Right.

To which, again, I guess we should say maybe go watch The Passion of the Christ. I don't think there was any way Miller was going to bring him back after that incident, but there definitely wasn't after tapes of calls he made to his then-girlfriend, Oksana Grigoryeva, leaked in 2010. Miller said, quote, I remember hearing those tapes. when he was talking to his girlfriend, he was completely out of control. There was something deeply, profoundly enraged, and I was shocked. So George Miller wants nothing to do with Mel Gibson.

He also, and like, I actually, listen, regardless, independent of his personal behavior, which has been awful on numerous occasions. He's, I think, a very good actor. He is. And I think he's also a very talented director. But he was probably too old for this. role at this point? Well, he was probably too old, maybe.

I mean... Depending on the diversion of the character they wanted to go with, I guess you could say, but... I think he maybe could have... It certainly could have modified it for his age, and it could have been interesting. There is also a world where maybe he was more of a side character than he ends up being in the movie. I do think it is a credit to George Miller that he was just like, nope, we're going to replace him. Like there were so many people who were saying, you know, you can't replace him.

That is Mad Max. And George Miller was basically like, I'm not doing it with him. Yeah, I think it's good that he stuck to his guns. I also think for this movie really resonated with a new generation of Mad Max fans. Yeah, it was smart for a lot of reasons. And I don't think a lot of us associated, it's a vague recollection of the original films, I would say. Totally. Again, because I think he was kind of building.

slightly different worlds each time. So it's totally fine to have mixed it up. And Tom Hardy did eventually get Mel Gibson's blessing, sort of. Do they fight each other in a parking lot? I don't know. Oh, boy. So at this point, a worldwide search for the road warrior begins. Now, casting director, Rana Kress, said the process of casting, just Max, took well over a year.

actors who were considered included Michael Fastbender, Jeremy Renner, Army Hammer, again, got pretty far on this. His agents, man. He'll eat someone. Do you guys need him to eat someone? That could have worked, honestly. And then some Australians, Eric Banna. I love Eric Banna. I love Eric Banna. Yeah, I just rewatched Munich. And it's really good. He's so good in that. He's great. Sam Worthington. I think he's good in the Avatar films. Like, let's keep him in the Avatar. Yeah, you stay over there. And then Eminem was seriously considered.

Joe, Joe. I was like, this can't be real. I like 8 Mile, but that can't be real. No, it is real. George Miller was like, yeah, I really liked 8 Mile. I was seriously thinking about it. That's great. But there was one actor who George Miller had always had in mind from very early on.

Because I think to your point about Mel Gibson being too old, the impression I get is that George Miller was toying with the idea of someone else taking this on for a long time even before Mel Gibson had those meltdowns. Yeah. This actor checked pretty much every box. He had the right animal energy. He was Australian. And he could have carried a franchise on his back. Do you know who this is, Chris? Not one of the Edgerton's.

No. It's a bit of a trick question because it would not be possible for this actor to have taken on the role at this time. But it is Heath Ledger. Interesting. Heath Ledger was very much George Miller's top choice for a long, long time. In fact, every time Heath Ledger would come to Sydney, he would meet with George Miller. They had multiple conversations about this. Heath Ledger would have been great.

Would have been amazing. He obviously tragically passed away in 2008. But George Miller never got him out of his mind. And as he began in earnest the casting process, he was pretty much dead set on finding someone who had a similar energy to Heath Ledger. Here's what I, just my personal opinion. I think Nicholas Holt is pulling a little bit from Heath Ledger's Joker. in his performance as Nux in this movie?

I could see it, although he's sweeter. He's very sweet. That's what makes that this character works so well, obviously. I find Tom Hardy's energy very different than Heath Ledger in a good way. Well, I think they got something different than they were bargaining for with Tom Harking. I was going to say, I think it's a different type of animal. Heath Ledger is like Wiley like a Fox. Tom Hardy is like a bull and a china shop.

A bear. You know what I mean? Yeah, so it's just a very different vibe. I think he's so good in this. He's great. We're going to get into the Tom Hardy of it all in the second part of this. But I couldn't come away from reading about this, not enjoying Tom Harvey. He's a great actor.

Well, and he's got to some actors do have an energy. And I think James Gandalfini had this on The Sopranos where you really just felt like they could snap at any moment. Wow. And he has that energy. I think that is also potentially accurate. So everything finally changed when George Miller saw a film called Bronson. Yeah. Tom Hardy had been working for years prior to his big break in Nicholas Winding Reffin's 2008 film,

which is loosely based on the life of the very violent and very off the wall, Charles Bronson. And it is this performance that lands him both Inception and top consideration for Mad Max in Fury Road. He read opposite his top contender. which were Jeremy Runner and Army Hammer. There's no competition. And he apparently spat on Army Hammer in his audition, at which point Army Hammer said, he needs to be Max more than I do.

Get out of here, Army Hammer. It's a good quote, though. It is a good quote. I could see him saying that somewhat gracefully. Yeah. But now that they had a Max in mind, they needed to make sure that he matched with Furiosa because, let's be honest,

this is really Furiosa's movie. Yeah, he's second banana in this movie. He is, which is so smart as a way to revive this franchise. So actresses considered include Jessica Chastain, Gugu and Bata Ra, Ruth Nega, and Gal Gadote, whose audition was apparently so good that Rana Cress hints it may have helped her get Wonder Woman. She said Warner Brothers had that tape for years, that's all I'm saying. Wow. I think she has a sunnier disposition than the character calls for,

which I think works really well in Wonder Woman. I think that's right. I feel that it may have... Charlie Steron has a world weariness that she can call upon that I think works so well. Like in this movie, and I think of like Tully and other films. I love Charlie's Theron. She's great.

Yes, I did a lot of celebrity interviews when I worked for IMDB. It was amazing. One of the few people who I was unbelievably starstruck by was Charlize Theron. There is just no question that she's a movie star and something. She is like a next level human. Like there's something really powerful about her. She's an avatar. She's about that tall.

She's not as tall as I thought, I have to say. She's about 5'10, which is as tall. It's tall, yeah. As soon as they found out Charlie's Theron was interested, everybody else had to step to the side. Of her interest in the franchise, Theron said, oh shit, yeah, I want to be in a Mad Max movie. Great.

She explains that, quote, I was raised on a farm, and I was also raised in a country where I was kind of surrounded by violence. Watching the violence of Mad Max felt very visceral, very real, and very connected to my environment. I want to take a little detour now into Charlize Theron's backstory,

if anyone doesn't know. She grew up outside of Johannesburg, South Africa, on a farm, as she said, in a very tumultuous household. Her father was a lifelong abusive alcoholic. When she was 15 years old, he came home, absolutely hammered with a gun. She and her mother barricaded themselves in a room and were holding the door closed when he fired three shots at them through the door, somehow not hitting them. Her mother picked up a gun and fired back, killing her father in self-defense right in front of a,

I believe, 15-year-old Charlies. I saw 16 in some places as well, but she's very young. So when she says she understands the violence of this, she understands. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't know that. I knew she was from South Africa and had moved to,

model at a relatively young age. Yeah, shortly thereafter, I think she got a modeling contract when she was maybe 16 or 17 and moved with her mom. Yeah. She met George Miller for lunch in Los Angeles, and he cast her on the spot. As far as I understand, I think she and Hugh Keysburn may have been the only people who did not audition for Mad Max. Wow.

So they wanted one more test for Tom to make sure he worked opposite Charlize, and their screen Test was so good that when they were all leaving the studio in the parking lot, Ronne Kress accidentally crashed her car because she was so enthralled by watching Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy talking in a parking lot. She literally ran into a pole and Charlize was like, are you okay? She was like, I'm fine. She's like, we're going to crash a lot more cars than this guys. Yes, yes, they are.

So the auditions for Mad Max sound absolutely insane. They saw thousands of actors, the second round of auditions. They were doing four-hour workshops using a scene from, I believe, the Furiosa prequel. They saw hundreds of people for the wives and the war boys. One person that Miller was not sold on was Nicholas Holt. Problem one is that he's actually kind of huge. He's very big. He's very big.

He's six-three. Yeah, he's six-three, and he's not exactly a wiry six-three. No, he's like a put-together fella. Yeah, it's very attractive. Yes. And Tom Hardy is a totally normal size. I think he's like 5-9 or 5-10. So he looks kind of small next to Nicholas Holt, which was potentially a problem.

He was also concerned that I think maybe around 22 or 23 years old, Nicholas Holt might be too old for this part. Oh, yeah, because the war boys are like kind of child soldiers, you know, in a way. Yes, although a lot of them look older, which I wonder if they were just like, fuck it, and scaled them up when they realized. Or to make Holt feel young, you know what I mean? They aged the rest of them up around him. Probably. And also maybe when they realized they were going to be strapping them to the underside of semi-trucks, they thought, hey, maybe we can't cast people under 18.

Yeah, makes sense. But Holt truly has run a crest to think because she kept pushing for him, even when Miller kept taking him off of the casting. sheets. Wow. Eventually, they wore him down, and I'm super glad that they did. They should have listened to Toronto. I think it's his best role. He's really good.

He's really good. Casting the wives apparently took three and a half years. Jennifer Lawrence, Margot, Robbie, and Rihanna all read four parts in this film. Kind of want Rihanna in the movie. Well, she didn't get it. I don't think Rihanna wanted to be in the desert for six months. Wow. She did a...

Battleship instead. Yeah. Actors, by the way, were not the only ones who had to audition. Because so much of the action takes place inside vehicles, Miller knew he often wasn't going to be able to be in the space with the actors giving them direction. So he auditioned all of the camera operators. Wow.

Yeah. He wanted to make sure that they could relay his directions clearly and also be able to improvise when needed in a small contained space. Very cool. Yeah. It is pretty cool. They were all so flustered because they've never had to do anything like that. But what an opportunity.

That must have been so cool, you know, to have that autonomy as well. Totally. So finally, everything has fallen into place. In October of 2009, Hardy and Theron's casting is announced, and the movie is slated for a summer 2012 release. But remember, it premieres in spring of 2015. So here we go again. It's 2009, and pre-production is now fully underway in a suburb outside of Sydney, Australia. They pull together an incredible team of artists, mechanics, and particularly found object sculptors,

because everything in the Mad Max universe has to be repurposed from something else. An amazing example of this, you can see pretty early in the film, is the foot measurer thing that you would see in a shoe store that Furiosa uses to lock in the accelerator pedal on the war rig. They at one point went to an abandoned piggery. and bought all of the cleaver's bolt throwers. I don't even know what that is. And anything they could get their hands on, but it had to be functional, including the Duf Warriors guitar.

The artist who created it had made it capable of shooting flames, and it looked incredible, but George Miller saw it and was like, great, can't wait to hear it play. And they were like, what, what now? Yeah. Excuse me, what?

Rock and roll, George. So they had to retrofit the whole thing to actually make it playable. Very cool. And Iota, who is the poor band strapped to the front of a semi truck for the whole movie playing guitar. With a giant stack of speakers behind him. Said, quote, it is the shittiest guitar I've ever had the misfortune to have hanging in front of me. But also the best flamethrower you've ever gotten to hold. That's right.

All right. So the first step back on this one. one of many setbacks, arrives in the form of Miller's DP, Dean Semler, pulling out of the film. He basically just got nervous about the physicality of it and said, I can't do it. Wow. They call up John Seal, who Miller had worked with on Lorenzo's Oil, and who had experienced shooting in the desert from the English patient and see if he is willing to do it. But he is retired.

And he was also, wasn't he Peter Weir's? I think he was Peter Weir's cinematographer early in his career, I Ironically, we talked about Peter Weir as well. Interesting. Well, that would make sense if they're kind of sticking in the Australian. Yeah, exactly. But he does it. He comes out of retirement to shoot Mad Max Fury Road, and he does an absolutely incredible job.

It looks amazing. It does. He would end up being nominated for an Oscar for it, although he did not win. They were also trying to shoot this in 3D originally. But they felt that the cameras they would need to do it didn't exist. yet, so they tried to build them themselves. James Cameron style. James Cameron's style.

Except they were maybe a little more busted than James Cameron. They spent months working on it, and they did have things that worked. The problem was they were going to massively overheat in the desert. And so eventually Miller's producer and First AD, PJ Voughton, convinced him to let go of 3D. Thank God, Warner Brothers wasn't super happy about that, but there's something they could do about it because they were just like, the cameras don't exist and we can't spend any more time trying to build our own 3D cameras. So, early 2010 now, Fury Road's shooting furiously approaches, and they're all set to shoot in Broken Hill, Australia. The cast is literally there. And two weeks before they are set to start shooting, what happens? Chris? Wait, in 2009?

2010. Warner Brothers pulls the plug. Of course they do. There are a couple of reasons. One is that George Miller was planning on directing Mad Max during the day and happy feet two at night.

And I think they realized that was fucking insane. Yes. And then he would sleep. Never. And then And two, the bigger problem is that Broken Hill, where they were supposed to shoot this, was hit with the storm of a century. And suddenly their barren wasteland was a green bog full of ponds.

Right. Which was not going to work for anything. So Warner Brothers said, let's just wait and see if it dries up and they wait and they wait. And the thing does not dry up. It literally, the topography has changed completely. Life has returned to Australia. Life has returned to Broken Hill. and they can't shoot it.

Got it. So the cast disperses to do other things. Hardy goes off to film The Dark Night Rises at this point. Charlize goes to film Snow White and the Huntsman and Zoe Kravitz's X-Men First Class. Meanwhile, Doug Mitchell, his producing partner, spends most of the next year looking for somewhere else to shoot Fury Road. And he comes back to the place that they had discovered. and set up almost 10 years earlier, Namibia. Warner Brothers is like, hell no, we are not shooting in Africa.

Keep looking, buddy, we're not doing it. But unbeknownst to them, Doug Mitchell doesn't give a fuck at this point. He manages to get Australia to agree to still give them the tax credit they would have had from shooting a broken hill. So they can't say it's a financial thing. And then this crazy man just goes ahead. and puts all of the cars and everything they would need to shoot the film on a boat to Namibia. Wow. He literally leased a freight ship for $2 million, loads up every single piece of equipment, and it sets sail.

Wow. Once the boat. He pirated the set and all of the vehicles. Yeah. Wow. Once the boat is in the water, he gets a call. from an exact screaming, what the fuck are you fucking talking about? The cars are on a boat? Yeah. To which Doug goes, yeah, the cars are on a boat and that boat is going to Namibia.

Amazing. So he was just like, it's going to cost you too much to have to try and send everything back. We're going. Yeah. Yeah, he forced their hand. Yes, he did. On November 18th, 2011, Happy Feet 2 came out. And just like Pig in the City, it was. A disaster. Oh, no. Yeah, the irony is that outside of the Mad Max franchise, George Miller is quite bad at sequels. Yeah.

Like makes franchise killing sequels. Well, you know, I brought you into this world. I'm going to send you out. That's right. But this time, nothing is stopping Fury Road because Warner Brothers is still on the hook and they still want to make it. Wow. Miller plows ahead, grateful for a distraction from Happy Feet

to. They actually pause briefly for Miller to undergo surgery and have stents put in his heart, which is crazy. Charlize Theron, meanwhile, had filed for adoption, not knowing when Mad Max would be back on, and had just found out her baby had been born when she got the call to head to Namibia. So she ends up flying to Namibia with a seven-week-old baby son. No. Yes, she did this whole shoot with her.

brand new baby with her. Oh my God. Charlie's therein is a hero, like an actual action hero. Yeah. For anyone who doesn't have kids, a 70 week old baby is a slug that you are convinced is going to die at any given moment. Well, like when my daughter was seven weeks old, all I would do is get up and go put my head down by her head and be like, are you breathing? Like that's what you do constantly. So not being able to be around your child at that age because you're filming a movie, I can't even imagine. Well, she brought him with her.

But I mean, she's on set all day. Yeah. Long shoots too. Yeah. Finally, Warner Brothers deals them another blow right before they start filming that would have shut down many other movies. They forced them to cut four weeks from the filming schedule.

What do you know what the original schedule length was? I don't, but I mean, it's not like this is a substantial huge, huge cut to the schedule. I almost wonder if they were trying to kill it at this point. But maybe it was just budget-based, who knows. Yeah, or thinking we cut four because they're probably going to add more, you know what I mean? Yeah. The reverse of what Jack Nicholson told him, probably. Yeah, exactly.

But what is really admirable is that Miller and his team sit down and amidst this absolute shitstorm, they figure out how to do it. Wow. So finally, on July 9, 2012, filming on Mad Max Fury Road begins. Now, outside of a few interior scenes, this film is shot in chronological order. That means they begin on day one, which would be the beginning of, I believe, one of the longest outdoor shoots in Hollywood history, with the very first chase sequence where Max is captured. Now, even though it was frequently floated that they could do this sequence using CGI, as we discussed, Miller and his team insisted it had to be practical. And I really like their reason for this. They were like, the first thing that you see in this movie is going to affect everything else that you see.

If we fake this, it will make the whole thing feel fake. Like, this is not the shot to cut a corner on. Now, you might remember that in this shot, Max's car, the V8 Interceptor, is squished between two Warboys cars and rolls many, many times as it crashes. In order to achieve this, they put a retractable flipper. underneath the car that would push it up and then over the cars as it rolled. It's an insane stunt, one so crazy that Guy Norris, the second unit director and the stunt coordinator on the film, decides he's going to do it himself. Wow.

Now, Guy was also Mel's driving double in the Road Warrior, which is amazing, but also means he's not young. No, right. All right, Agest. I got you. So, as they're about to do the stunt for real, someone runs up to him and tells Guy that something has gone wrong with the brake line. The brakes in the car no longer work.

And Guy Norris looks at him and says, well, we're not going to use the brakes to stop it, are we? And the guy says, no. And Guy Norris. I quit. And Guy Norris says, well, let's go. And that is where we will pick back up next week. Oh my goodness.

That, when everyone's going to die. I love that quote so much. We're not going to use the brakes to stop it, are we? Wow. That's that Australian can-do spirit. Yeah. That we've come to know and love. Lizzie, that is quite the cliffhanger.

I'm very excited to come back for part two. I, wow. It is such a long, like, just for this thing to get to this point, it is crazy. And I skipped a lot, by the way. Like, there's a lot more. Yeah, pick up the book, guys. I just want to highlight one more thing. The idea that you could direct Mad Max during the day and Happy Feet 2 at night is one of the

craziest things we've ever heard on this podcast. And we've heard a lot of crazy things. Listen, George Miller's mind is a dark and twisted place. Yeah, clearly. Yeah, we have talked about drafts stepping on their own penises, but that sounds like the most self-inflicted sadomasochistic decision I've ever heard. Wow. Lizzie, thank you.

This has been already a wild ride and the car hasn't even started yet. That's right. The car has no brakes at this point. Yeah, exactly. It's just going to flip over and over again until we get to the end. Yep. Guys, make sure you check back. in 14 days.

That's a fortnight, if you didn't know, for the next episode of Mad Max, where we will, the car will just keep rolling, as Lizzie says, and so will the good times. So, yeah. As always, guys,

if you have any recommendations, feel free to send them our way. You can drop us an email, what went wrong, pod at gmail.com, or hit us up on Instagram, or you can join our Patreon, which is free. And if you join our Patreon,

for free, you can vote on films that we will cover. You can also pay us money. Yeah, you can also pay. I'm just saying there should be no barrier to entry for anyone here. And this was a film that won via poll, for example. And as always, we need to do a shout out for our full stop supporters, Chris Leal, Matthew Pelton, Tom Christen, Soman Chianani, Michael McGrath.

These folks are dropping out 50 big ones for this callout. So that's how they get the sweet sound effects. Lizzie, is there anything else that we need to address before we let these lovely listeners go? I don't think so. We will see you for the conclusion of Fury Road. I might watch Mad Max again before we convene. It's so good. It's so good. Yeah, very excited. All right.

All right, guys. Thanks for listening. Bye. Go to patreon.com slash what went wrong podcast to support what went wrong and gain access to bonus episodes, video content, and more. What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie. Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing Music by David Bowman with cover art from Euthonio.