WHAT WENT WRONG - Mad Max: Fury Road (Part 2)

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

It’s Tom Hardy vs. everyone in part 2 of our coverage of Mad Max: Fury Road! Lizzie & Chris learn how the tempestuous star and Charlize Theron almost came to blows, why he apologized to George Miller after seeing the film and the bumpy post-production road to Oscar valhalla!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.

bum bum, do do do do. 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 a good one. But when they do make a good one, it sometimes takes us more than one episode to cover them. So I'd like to bring back on Lizzie Bassett, who is guiding us through the tumultuous would be an understatement. Yes. World of Mad Max Fury Road.

Hi, Lizzie. Just like George Miller. It's taking me. Although, hopefully, I have better luck with my sequels than George has in the past. Yeah. Of course, you will experience a great failure in the next episode. I am, of course, not talking about the Mad Max franchise, which is the only franchise that he has managed to not kill with sequels. But we love him.

He's amazing. Listen, babe pig in the city, I've heard pretty good. Yeah, we've actually gotten some great DMs on that movie, people saying, like, this movie defined my child, please watch it. Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying it's bad. It's just that it didn't perform. It deeply upset a lot of children, and I'm not against that. So that's fine by me. Lizzie's not.

All right. So, again, my main source for both these episodes is Blood, Sweat, and Chrome, the Wild and True Story of Mad Max Fury Road by Kyle Buchanan. If anybody on this podcast or anybody listening happens to know Kyle Buchanan, please, just what an amazing book. It made me cry. It made me laugh. It's really, really worth reading for anybody. I don't care if you don't care about Mad Max or if this is not your thing. It is so good.

It's just excellent storytelling and an excellent thing to read if you want to get an even deeper understanding of, as Chris said, how hard it is to make a movie. If you haven't listened to Part 1, please go back and do that. now because none of this will make sense. Yep. I would like to start part two with Tom Hardy. Now, Tom. Tom, or as in the Revenant.

Yeah, the hardiest of all the Tom's. Now, listen, there are going to be large portions of this episode where Tom Hardy doesn't look so good. But unlike his Mad Max predecessor, Mel Gibson, he does show at least a little bit of humility. So please bear with me, Tom Hardy fans. I promise you will not leave this episode completely hating him. But there may be portions of this where you do. So going into this research, I kind of had the impression from a lot of the press that maybe Charlize had been the particularly difficult one. I don't know if you also had gotten that. I think recently more

had come out about it being Tommy Boy. But at that, but at the time, but at the time, you. That darn Hardy Boy. The darn Hardy Boy just can't keep his tamper. So she definitely did struggle with Miller's directing style, but it was Tom Hardy who really, really clashed with him. In addition to clashing with Charlize, which we will get to. Got it. So I want to read a quote from Tom Hardy, and this is him actually talking about his role as Venom in 2018. He said, it's like acting out mental illness in some aspects of which I have a fair on

understanding, having had a certain amount of mental health problems of my own, which are relevant being an addict. So I might as well fucking use it. I'm used to being in the third person. I think I have multiple personas and characters in me that present and represent different parts of me that I allow to sit in the driving seat. They're all me. So the reason I read this is because he is very open about having had struggles throughout his life. And also, he is very method in terms of really, as he said, sort of like that he's allowing these personas to sit in the driving seat. I think that's exactly what we are about to see happen to his detriment in Mad Max. So Hardy grew up in the London suburb of East Sheen to an ad executive father and artist mother. He briefly

attended prep school, which he hated. And in his teens, he fell in with a less law-abiding crowd, let's call it, started smoking weed, hanging out in pubs, etc. At 15, his parents brought him to a doctor who diagnosed him as a, quote,

minor psychotic schizophrenic with psychopathic tendencies. Or an actor. Or a 15-year-old boy. Yeah, I was going to say. Yeah, or his prefrontal cortex is not fully developed. And we're all kind of insane at that age. That's basically what Tom Hardy has said.

And that's his own. He basically was like, a doctor diagnosed me with this. He said it's bullshit and that the doctor had really just written him off before he ever even spent enough time with him. And he's... Having witnessed multiple meltdowns by my two-year-old daughter today that... So she would not put her underwear on. I don't know why. I get it.

And she... I had to trap us in her room and she proceeded to just run into the door. multiple times and then run to the window and scream, let me out, let me out. And I thought the police were going to come. So, you know, two-year-old or sociopaths. Yeah, I mean, he said, you know, had he acted out during the interview, yes. Basically, difficult kid, yes, psychopath, no. He found an outlet for his energy in drama school, but also fell into harder and harder drugs

and alcohol. eventually hitting rock bottom and going to rehab in 2003, at which point he very much got his shit together. But all of this is to say, Tom Hardy doesn't do anything at less than 110%. He throws himself blindly in whatever direction he wants, and he sort of suffers the consequences later. He told Esquire magazine, quote,

experiential hindsight is better than 2020. Why? Because I'm burnt. Like my little finger. I don't have a little finger. Don't play with knives. Don't do that. Why? Because I'm a fucking walking roadmap of mistakes. Kind of love it. Kind of love it. He's very, very funny. I read a very in-depth Esquire interview with him where the interviewer was like driving around with him.

And the interviewer was like, I don't know what's going on. Yeah, yeah. It's not, just that phrase measure twice cut once with Tom Hardy's just, you better cut a lot, motherfucker. Yeah. So an initial concern of Tom's once they started shooting was that Matt, doesn't really say very much, which... Almost nothing. How many... Yeah. Yeah.

A dozen lines, it feels like in the movie? I'm sure it's more. Not a lot more. But it feels like, yeah. It is very minimal. That was also a concern of the studios. But George Miller brings on screenwriter Kelly Marcell, who had worked with Tom on Bronson. Oh, cool.

She agrees to come for one week. She ends up staying for the entire shoot. Right, of course. Do you really think you're living... Leaving Namibia? No. Once you get there? You're not.

Unless you're one of the studio executives flying out, you're not. So as we discussed, George Miller has a very particular vision. And Tom Hardy just kind of constantly is pushing back against that. At one point, he put an iPod earpiece, or sorry, an iPhone iPod earpiece in his ear and was playing music and voices to distract himself. So sort of a literal take on the idea of hearing voices in his head, which they sort of allude to in the movie, but which by the way was added later in the edit. So I don't even think that that was part of this when this was being filmed.

They had to paint it out of every shot in post because it made no sense. Yeah. And you wouldn't take it out. Yeah. As time wore on and their disagreements over character increased, George Miller told one of his camera operators, I can't stop thinking about what it would have been like if Heath was here and he was still alive. Oh. Sad. However, he could be extremely generous. There were stories about how he would bring ice cream

trucks to the middle of the desert for the whole cast and crew on his dime. But remember, also, they don't have a script. They have pictures. So I can understand a lot of their frustrations. I can too. It requires already. It requires so much trust, right, to perform. And you know, it's not going to be the take that you necessarily want as an actor. Yeah, you don't have any control. And then it's like, can we talk about the script? No, but he has this. picture book that I put together. Yeah. This is a collage of Mex's feelings.

You might find this collage helpful. And I got that one from a Sears catalog. So Charlie Staron did have very similar frustrations. What? No, just Rees Darby would have to play George Miller, even though he's from New Zealand, as just in the comedy version of the making of this movie. I think that's right. Because they described George Miller as very, very soft-spoken.

and sweet and he's so small. He's like 5-7. Yes, restart. All right, Tom, let's do it more time with the iPod. Eddie here and let's give it a go. What if you weren't hearing voices in an iPod? Yeah. There he's not even it.

So Charlize did have similar frustrations, but it does sound like Charlize's creative additions to the film were much more impactful, probably because they made sense. Credit to Charlize. So for example, Furios' shaved head came from Charlize's. Oh, really? Really? Yes. Almost her entire look was her.

So she would have had a wig of blonde dreadlocks, and that's what they were fitting her for early on. And she was the one who was like, George, this makes no sense for someone who's working in a mechanics room. They would get caught in the engines. I should have a shaved head. And she was like, to his credit, I could call him and be like, hey, I'm in the haircutter chair. and I think I should have a shaved head, and he'd be like, um, okay. And then two minutes later, she would just do it. And it was great.

And she also has consistently throughout her career been very open to changing her appearance in ways that are very shot like monster, if you think, back in the day. But even Tully, like, she, her commitment to the post-pregnancy body of the character is wonderful and gives her character a lot of pathos, but also humor. No, she's amazing. She also asked for a more androgynous less sexy costume, and she got it. Great. But one of the most incredible additions that she made to the film during shooting is one of the most iconic shots in the whole thing.

It is the moment after they have discovered that the green place is lost and she drops to her knees in the sand dunes. That was never storyboarded. That's one of the only shots in the entire thing. She was like, I feel like we really have to have a moment where we can feel her pain completely, like there's a missing shot. here. And cinematographer John Seal saw the perfect light hitting at the top of a sand dune. They just ran up there. No idea what they were going to capture. She walked into frame, took off her prosthetic arm, dropped to her knees, and just screamed. It is maybe the only shot in the entire film that was not choreographed. Very cool. Very, very cool. And it's like one of the most memorable

in the whole thing. It's a trailer shot. I believe that's just in the trailer. For sure. For sure. Yeah. It's like one of the most famous. So, We're going to get to this in a bit. I think many people know that Charlize and Tom did not enjoy each other's presence. However, their stunt doubles were a very different story. So I thought we would just start to get this out of the way first. Charlize's stunt double Dana Grant was actually violently ill during that first fight with Max after eating garlic snails. Okay, and that one's on her.

It sounds good to be. Got a big fight tomorrow. What's on the mean you? I would do that. I did do that. I ate Chipotle for my first half marathon and then just puke my guts out for like nine hours. I'm the opposite.

I'm like, I will eat toast for the next 36 hours. But garlic snails aside, she ended up meeting and falling in love with Tom Hardy's stunt double. Dang, Grant, they got married. Good for them. Yeah, they're divorced now, but they did get married. Wow, you really buried the lead on that one.

And it didn't last, but they did get married. Oh, love is real. So anyway, as tensions were building on set for everyone, except for Dana Grant and Dane Grant, also their names are like this same. I know. As tensions were building, so was physical discomfort. So the desert was incredibly uncomfortable to film in.

The sand in Namibia is also a problem. apparently something like 60% silica, which is terrible to breathe in and got into every crevice of the equipment. It got in people's mouths and noses. Medics would be on set to rush in and wash out people's eyes. The first four months they were there, it was like freezing cold all the time. But the wives all had to be hosed down because they were supposed to look sweaty. So they're out there in like, you know, like tissue paper diapers being hosed down in like, you know, 30 degrees. Apparently Riley Keough actually got hypothermia. And on top of all of this, they were not staying in like a fun chill town.

Yeah. They're staying in a tiny town called, I'm definitely going to get this wrong, swakopmund, swakopmund. And they were completely isolated from the rest of the world. So everyone, including the stuntmen, playing the warboys, had to carry pepper spray and knives with them when they walked anywhere. People described hearing the doors to their houses just rattling at night all night because people were trying to test them and get in to rob them. Some crew members did get robbed and mugged. However, Charlize Theron did say that the war boys helped her feel safe and that she could call or text them at any time if she heard something.

and two minutes later, she would see their flashlights out checking the perimeter of her house. So that's pretty cool. Yeah. And I hope Nicholas Holt was at the front of that band every single time. I don't know if, like, Nicholas Holtz who you're calling. I feel like you want. He's very tall. He's very tall, but I feel like you want the one that's like yelling, witness me and diving onto, yeah, I guess.

I want Tom Hardy. If I'm going, I want Tom Hardy 10 times out of 10. That's true. Yeah. I know I might get punched too, but I want him. You are going to get punched, too. So at least some people, however, were having fun, and those people were Morton Joe and the War Boys.

Of course. They'd spent a lot of time together before the shoot developing a bond the War Boys had and an entire culture with this actress and assistant dramaturg named Nadia Townsend, who's really amazing, worked with them for a long, long time. It shows on screen. Like, a lot of the things you see them do, they developed with her. Yeah. To get hyped up in their rigs,

The warboys would quietly begin singing demented nursery rhymes and letting it spread through their cars until they're all just like screaming the itsy-bitsy spider. Great. And that's how they would know it was time to go. And Tom's like, this is what I was like when I was 15 and what's wrong? Yeah. Well, speaking of Tom, he would apparently play a game with all the stunt men called Not the Face. Can you guess what this game entailed? No.

It's when you shoot each other with whatever you want. and the only rule is you don't hit the other person in the face. It couldn't be anything that would kill you or put you in the hospital. No, the face. Don't tell your daughter about that game. No. So Morton Joe himself, apparently, was having the best time of all. He kicked off the table read by writing notes to all of the wives and what appeared to be blood.

Right. And then kindly just passed them all out to them at the table read. He also posted photos of himself around the stunts. for the war boys to worship. So when they're working out every day, they would be looking at a Morton Joe. Wow. And apparently upon arriving on set,

he grabbed the first AD's microphone and said, Daddy's here. Which made the war boys go insane. I have seen some funny videos of him behind the scenes, just like walking around the set. And he does look. And in his full costume, like he loves it.

Oh, loved it. He had a great time. Theron said they would even salute him in the grocery store. He was like, it was weird. It was very wonderful, however, that he enjoyed it so much since Fury Road would end up being his last film. Keyes Burn would pass away at 73 years old in 2020, but he had a hell of a time on this.

He absolutely loved it. It's a great one to go out on. So George Miller wanted the wives to have as rich of a backstory as the War Boys had managed to achieve with Nadia. And he called in a pretty unusual person to help. And that is Eve Ensler, playwright activist and author of the vagina monologues. Wow. Yeah. She'd spent 20 years traveling to war-torn countries and working with the women there in particular. She had worked with a lot of women who had been sold in sex slavery, which is why he brought her out to the set to meet with them.

Wow. For seven days, all day, she spoke with the wives about how complicated their relationship to a Morton Joe would be, as. sex slaves. She answered their questions, told them about her experiences. They said it was really amazing, and I think it helped them really deepen those characters. And, like, I think a lot of that sort of complexity comes across on screen for sure. Absolutely. Yeah, it's interesting. There are a lot of surprisingly complex moving relationships, obviously I've mentioned Morton Joe and his sons as well in a weird way. In a weird way, the least emotionally complex characters are Charlize and Max.

And you know what I mean? And it's in the sense that like they're very just binary. And there's a lot of gray areas that the other characters occupy in between them, which I find interesting. I feel like even Furiosa is is more complex. Like Max is is maybe the least in some least. Yeah. Max is, yeah, he's like the kind of cipher character. But I, which is hard.

I think Tom Hardy did do a great job. Yeah. So the cars. there were at least 88 separate vehicles with full stories and character arcs. There were three separate versions of the war rig, one for the cast, including an interior set, one as a stunt version, and then one you could basically just blow up. The expletable one, yes. Around $1.8 million was spent on fuel alone.

Holy shit. Yeah. Well, some of these cars, they were like, it could literally go 10 feet and you had to rebuild the tank. Yeah. Yeah, okay. That makes sense. All of the bones and skulls, both animal and human that you see on the vehicles, are real. Ooh, a little poltergeist action. A little poltergeist action, but it's a little different because many of them actually came from the key prop maker himself, who had a large... Prolific murderer. collection, including his uncle's beloved pet wombat skull, which appears on the steering wheel of one of the cars. That's a wombat. So many layers to this that we can't even get into right now.

It's incredible. Pet wombat's uncles. Yeah. Skulls. It's my uncle's favorite pet wombat skull. I love it. Chalk it up to Australia. Yep.

I know I'm. I'm powering through this, but it's because we have a lot to get to. So remember Guy Norris from the last episode, who was the stunt director and coordinator who did that absolutely insane stunt himself. It is not the only insane stunt that he did in this movie. Do you remember the shot where the duff wagon smashes into the overturned war rig? Yeah. Well, our friend Guy did this stunt himself as well because it was so dangerous and he did not want to put any of his stunt men in it.

They actually created a little driving pod for him that dangled off the side of the truck and was hidden from the cameras. So he's on like the far side, basically. Right. He's like remotely driving it where he's looking down at like a camera versus driving forward, basically. And it was designed to detach and crumple on impact as the duff wagon flew ahead. And the reason for this was that the level of impact they were talking about by doing this practice. practically, one of the guys was like, I think it could literally rip your heart out of your chest if it's not done right. So, Guy Norris is like, do we need a heart?

Wow. Yeah. Well, thankfully, it all worked as planned. Okay. And even Guy Norris decided that that was enough of a stunt to end on. And he said that's his last one. The effects team took the crash seat and made it into an extremely metal rocking chair for him to retire in. That's very cool.

Really, really cool. Yeah. So there was at least one time when someone did get a bit hurt, which is surprising that there were not more of these. Now, this was during the pole cats segment. So that's when they're swinging on the polls, which is just absolutely crazy that that is real. It is crack cocaine circ diso-lay on moving cars. It's nuts. It's nuts.

When I was reading about it, I was like, who said yes? to this. There is a bit of wirework in this segment, but there is less than you think, which is crazy. And for the most part, it really is just people on top of sticks swinging around on driving cars.

Apparently, they weren't allowed to get on the sticks until they showed they were strong enough to climb up and down them three times easily. This is one of the only incidents that did happen on set. Stuntman, Chris Patton, fell off of his pole in the middle of the armada of cars. and was knocked unconscious when he hit the ground.

But he was not hit by another car? He was not. Fortunately, the driver immediately behind him saw what happened, radioed everyone, and then started circling him on the ground so that no cars could drive over him. But it's like kind of a miracle he was okay. It is. That's what I was going to say,

that the fall was the only thing that went wrong. He was all right. But, like, if that person hadn't been paying attention, I mean, I think it just, it does go to show that, like, there was hypervigilance on this. Like, I think that they all understood the danger of what they were engaging in, and nobody was slacking off. Yeah. Yeah.

Wow. Also, Riley Keo met her husband on this shoot. It was stuntman Ben Smith Peterson. Are they still together? Oh, are they not? I thought they were. No, I'm asking if they are. Oh, yes.

I think they are. Unlike the other marriage. This one appears to have worked out. I'm a big fan of hers. She's great. She was, I don't know if you guys, if you guys are, have not seen yet it comes at night. She's really good in that movie. The lodge. I think she's great in everything. Yeah, she's great in the lodge. Just a few examples, select examples. Indeed.

Indeed. Indeed. Well, two people who definitely did not get married on this were Tom Hardy and Charlie there. So, now that we've gotten all of the fun stuff out of the way, let us get to the incident. The tension between the two leads apparently did start in pre-production. It just became pretty clear. They really, really did not like each other. When they started getting Dailies back, it was clear that, oh, wait, no, they actually hate each other. Like, they're watching this tape, and people were like, oh, fuck. Like, they really don't like each other. They would frequently fight in the war rig, while Nicholas Holt and the wives would just sit there really uncomfortably, like five inches. away from them watching.

Nicholas Holt was like, it was like watching your parents fight and you're on a road trip and you can't go anywhere. It's really weird. I feel like in the movie version of the making of this movie, everyone needs to be played by somebody else except Nicholas Holt has to play Nicholas Holt. He has to come back and play himself. He seemed very sweet. All the interviews with him were interesting.

And everyone said he was very nice. But just for the record, it was not just Charlize. There are reports that the wives also really didn't care for Tom Hardy. And on at least one occasion, we're all just screaming at him in front of everyone. I think Zoe Kravitz in particular did not have a great time and seemed very uncomfortable. Now, this is all probably due to their very, very different styles of working. So Charlize seems to operate on the rule that early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable. And if you want her there at 8 a.m. on the dot, she is there at 8 a.m. on the dot. And remember, she has a newborn baby. She wants to work, wrap it up on time, and get back to her kid. Tom Hardy, on the other hand, showed up whenever he damn well pleased. He was constantly late. Everything came to a head one day, where, as Charlize puts it, things kind of came to blows between me and Tom.

Literally? I don't know. So we're going to talk about this. I am not sure. Okay, so this is apparently what happened, according to camera operator Mark Gelnacht. Their call was 8 a.m. in the war rig. And Charlize, as always, was there right on time.

She is hair and makeup ready, sitting in the war rig, ready to go. 9 a.m. rolls around. No, Tom. 10 a.m. rolls around. No, Tom. She refuses to get out of the war rig, not even to go to the bathroom. She will not talk to anyone. She will not move. She just stared straight ahead. Finally, three hours later, at 11 a.m., Tom Hardy casually strolls through the desert toward the war rig. Charlie's Theron jumps out and starts screaming, quote, find the fucking cunt $100,000 for every minute he's held up this crew. How disrespectful are you?

I would just like to pause and say, she's right. Yeah, no, sure. But can you imagine Charlie's there and like flinging herself out of there? Fine. And she dropped the word. Yes, she did. I'm kind of a secret big fan of when that word has dropped. I feel like it's very spicy.

It is spicy. She dropped it big time. Yeah. And but to reference, by the way, on a movie, even a relatively modestly budgeted movie, you are spending $10,000 to $20,000 an hour in your location fees and your payroll for everybody that's on set. And that's on a small budget movie. So on something big like this, you are. Hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Spending maybe $100,000 an hour, maybe up to a million, depending on what you're, doing that day, a day could be a million dollars, you know, at the end of the day, if it's a big stunt day or something. And so it really does burn the budget. Yes. And again, it not just prevents her from getting to see her kid, but then she might not get to do as many takes to get the performance that she would be happy with. It affects everyone. It's an incredibly rude thing to do. And they said, you know, maybe he was doing it to piss her off. They couldn't tell. Maybe he was doing it because he just couldn't handle the pressure. But regardless, Like, it's not just her that he's costing, if that's what he was trying to do.

To your point, he's costing literally everyone. However, Tom said, what did you say to me? And started towards her. Apparently, he got very aggressive to the point where Charlize insisted that she needed protection moving forward at all times. So, I don't know what happened. It is very hard to find an actual play-by-play of what was. went down, it seems like people will sort of talk about it to this point, and then they don't talk about much more. So when she says, we kind of came to blows, I don't know what that means.

I do know that multiple other people said that he was really scary. And of this moment, Tom Hardy says it's, quote, bollocks that she would ever feel intimidated or threatened by him because she's such a strong, powerful woman. But again, I want to be very clear that is not what other people who witnessed the incident on set said. And I also don't think Charlize Theron, who again witnessed her mother, kill her father right in front of her, would call in protection lightly. She said that she felt like this was a case of men forgiving very, very bad behavior of another man, which is spot on, I think.

I would, though, say, add to that. It's also, it's forgiving the behavior of a star in the sense that, like, which happens across gender constantly. Of course. And that's the frustrating thing in Hollywood is that if you are of a certain level, oh, but that's just being creative. That's just being a genius.

That's just the method. That's just, you know, whatever it is, the excuse. Sure. And it's just... It's a job. It's a job. It's a job at the end of the day. And the sad reality is, if you're important enough,

sure, you can get away with being late. That doesn't make it right. No. That doesn't make it okay. So it's just beyond time. Show up. Maybe show up three hours earlier. I was late to this podcast, and Lizzie called me the C word the minute I sat down.

You have to say it. I said it. I can't be the only one. I can't. No. I'm a-exed. Hey. I will say it in the English version, the British release of this podcast.

It has a different meaning over there. All right. Fine. David, believe me saying it. They did bring on a veteran female producer for Charlize. However, she was not allowed on set. so I don't really know, like, what good that did. Yeah.

It seems like Miller's... I had this great woman, and we shipped her back to the United States. And she's only allowed in this cage behind us line. We put her on an iPad, on a segue. She's just a FaceTime going around. It seems like Miller's producing partner, Doug Mitchell, was trying to protect George Miller's vision and was very cautious about allowing anybody onto the set at that point.

But as we've learned with the issue of intimacy, coordinators before, they are there to make the movie better. They're not there to compromise anyone's vision. Pretty much everyone seems to agree that maybe it wouldn't have been such a bad idea to have had a woman producer on set for a lot of this might help. George Miller even admitted that he absolutely should have been more mindful and that he didn't handle this as well as he could have. I also feel bad for George Miller. Like this is the worst case scenario and he's just sitting there with so much pressure. Yeah. I think he just wanted it to be.

over. Yeah. Now, Hardy has said that he was in way over his head and the pressure was getting to him, which I do understand. I mean, this whole thing was him fearing that he couldn't fill Mel Gibson's shoes. And his sort of halfway apology was, quote, what she needed was a better, perhaps more experienced partner in me. That's something that can't be faked.

I'd like to think that now that I'm older and uglier, I could rise to that occasion. I'll take it. I'll take it. I wish there wasn't. I'm sorry in there somewhere. But I think it's up to Charlize whether or not she would like to take it. But I'll take it. But yes. I don't know whether she did accept it or not, but they did seem to come to terms with each other by the end of the shoot. And we're actually getting along quite well by the end. Some people even said that it may have been a result of the fact that he was taking the story arc a little too literally. And that he was good, very good and sweet to her by the end.

So, I mean, if you think about, like, when they're in the war rig, maybe it's, maybe that was a method acting thing to try and, like, you know, it's totally possible. You know, I, again, not to excuse any behavior, but I do think, ironically, he's the smaller of the two stars. Oh, yeah. In this movie, especially going into this movie. Yes.

And probably even, and even now, I would certainly. Yes, I think so. say, even though he's obviously extremely accomplished. But I wonder to if like her coming at him, again, appropriately, in the instance where he's late, that triggers something where it's like, you know, he knows she's the bigger start. Like if she really wanted, she could probably get him fired at the end of the day. You know what I mean? Yeah, she probably could.

I wonder if that weighed on him as well. Who knows? Totally. I could also see being so wrapped up in the. idea of the dynamic that you are trying to have with this character that you think that pissing off the person is like akin to doing a good job. Like I, I don't get the impression that he's just a dirtbag. I really don't. No, no, no, no, not at all. But I think, yeah, I now just want to know, did he and Christian Bale, like, I just, come on.

Christian Bale's got to be a Charlize. Like, there's no way Christian Bale is not there at 7.55 a.m. doing push-ups. But Christian Bale, but Christian Bale's also. of very method. And so my question is in Batman Dark Night Rises, was he just like, I'm going to break your back? And then Christian Bale's like, do it. Okay, do it. And then Christopher Noel had to be like, no, no, we still have more movie to film. Don't break his back. Probably. I just want to know. Probably. I don't know. Who knows? We'll never know. We'll never know. But they did seem to be all right with each other at the end, which is good. And I think if they could squash it,

that it goes to show in making a movie as we learned and do the right thing, people of vastly different approaches, styles, et cetera, come together and nine times out of ten, it seems like, are able to actually put that stuff aside for the betterment of the project, even if they are almost coming to blows. I would also like to say, you know,

She also made, she made quite a statement. Yeah. As well, leaping out of the war rig. Listen, listen, I get it. I get it. But if we're talking about this being a job, nobody's being particularly work-appropriated. Yeah. It's not how you pop out of a Zoom.

I'll say to that much. That's how I leave Zooms. All right. So. I think we've talked that point today. We're going to leave it alone now and move on because they're okay with each other. Now, Chris, the chairman of Time Warner, was supposed to be. to retire very soon. So in 2003, there is an anticipated power vacuum with three dudes up for the job.

One of these dudes is Jeff Robinov, president of the film division. This guy knows every financial decision is going to be heavily scrutinized in this choice. So he starts sweating bullets over George Miller with hundreds of millions of dollars unsupervised out in the desert. Sure. Now, listen, could George Miller go over budget? Yes. Any director can. He's not known for like going crazy, crazy, crazy over budget. Like, it's not, I don't think it's as bad as some other people we have talked about on here. Yeah. So the rumor was this was actually due to two other movies that were in production at the time that were going massively over budget. And those were Superman. And then the other one was, Baz Luhrmann's The Great Getsby Oh Which I kind of like

The movie's fun I hate that story so much I find it so unappealing I'm just like I hope you all die But it's a very entertaining movie I really like Baz Luhrman's stuff It's wildly entertaining Elvis is a mess and I loved it

He's what? He's what? It's so It's great It is just it is, well, there's all this, it only goes to 10, we're going to crank it into 11. Yeah, I'll tell you what Boslerman is maybe not great at and that's staying on budget, but God love him. Give him all the money he wants.

So Jeff's kind of hoping that he can claw back some of the money from those two movies via Fury Road, which by the way, not super smart. This is not the movie to cut budget back on. Yeah. So Doug Mitchell, Miller's producing partner, is on the phone with the studio, screaming at them every day to back off. People said his trailer would just be shaking. Like he literally was like front lines just calling them being like, leave us alone. Stop asking us like about the money.

So Robinov starts sending suits out to Namibia to check in on the production. And all I picture are just like a bunch of versions of the lawyer from Jurassic Park showing up in Namibia. But every time they go out there, they get sent. back to LA with their tail between their legs and they come back with like no no better information. There were stories about them getting put in one of the cars with some of the camera operators because there's like nowhere else to put them and they're like so nervous in a full suit like sweating in the desert being like so do you think this is going to like end on time?

And the camera operator is like, I hope it never ends, man. Yeah, yeah. Spray paint all over his mouth. Yeah. Witness me. So finally with three months of shooting left, Jeff himself. flies out to Namibia on the private jet and had what cinematographer John Steele describes as a gold-plated fit. He tells George Miller that he has had enough that the cameras must stop rolling on December 8th, no matter what.

They explained to him they only needed two additional weeks in order to shoot the beginning and end of the film that takes place at the Citadel. That's it. And they were right. They needed two weeks. That was all. And the sets were built. That is the thing. Everything was ready. So remember this. He tells them, nope, they have to stop on December 8th, and you will figure it out. So production swiftly moved to Cape Town for the last three weeks to try and cram in what they could, but it wasn't enough to make it make sense. And on December 8th of 2013, the cameras stopped rolling. Now, George Miller's editor on this film is his wife, Margaret Sixel. Margaret had edited Happy Feet and Babe Pig in the City, along with some short films and made for TV specials,

but she had never edited an action movie. So think about that the next time you watch this movie, especially, as we're about to learn, since so much of the success of this film was due to the edit. Of putting Margaret on the project, Miller said, quote, she happens to be the love of my life, my partner, and my editor. I'm probably the only person in the world who'd know she could do it, but I know how she does everything else.

It's so sweet. Good man. Also, great hire. I was going to say. It's amazing. She's so good. She's so good. Who cares if he loves her?

She's an amazing job. Give that woman more jobs. And then she divorced him. No, they're still together. On top of this being her first action film, Miller insisted on also cutting it sequentially. I don't know if you can tell our listeners why that is difficult. So, sorry, but they shot it sequentially, right? They also shot it sequentially, yes.

So that makes it a little easier. But like, so obviously an editor will often be working during production, as obviously assembling dailies, but then doing rough cuts of scenes for the director to watch and figure out if you're missing coverage. And if you don't, you're obviously not shooting in order. And so, except in this instance they are. So you would be editing scenes out of order and then you'd build out reels. A reel is usually anywhere from 12 to 20 minutes. It's like a section, a sequence of the film that then always exists.

those scenes are always locked together kind of throughout the edit. But if they're shooting sequentially, it does make sense to edit sequentially. Again, editors out there, tell me if I'm wrong. That's my understanding. Well, I'll tell you what doesn't make sense. The studio insisted on seeing a cut of the film eight weeks after they wrapped shooting. That's tight. Ten is the minimum mandated by the DGA.

They said 8 to 10 here, but it sounds like it was really, really tight. Like, they were so nervous about this. I got four on mine. Oh, no. I wasn't making Mad Max. No, you weren't. But that's still so tight. It was still crazy.

It was really tight. But can you imagine making Mad Max and, like, how much they shot and they give you eight weeks? They were probably five times as many shots in this movie as anything I've ever worked on. Yeah. It doesn't compare. It doesn't compare. It doesn't compare. crazy number. So they did it. They're literally playing it out of Avid. Like they don't even have,

they just have like a computer plugged in. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make sense. They didn't give them anywhere near enough time to edit a cut of the movie. And so the studio absolutely freaks out, mostly because it doesn't have a beginning or end. Why? Why? So if they didn't shoot the beginning or the end, then of course it's not going to make sense. Exactly right. They didn't let them shoot it. And then they're like, we want to see a cut in eight weeks. And they're like, we don't get it. And George Miller's like, I know. Yeah. So vendors are getting word of it. People think this thing is an absolute bomb. At this point, press starts leaking about Tom and Charlize on set. And basically the rumor is this is a $250 million chunky turd. Right. But somehow, George and Margaret are unshaken. Margaret is able to fix a lot of the problems that can. came from the shortened shoot in the edit.

This is where they end up adding more VO, like the voices and a little bit of the backstory you see at the beginning for Max. They also had to dub almost the entire movie anyway because the sound in the desert was so bad. That's what I was going to ask, because just the engines running and everything. Like, it just, there's no way to control for sound out there.

And if we talked about that in Lord of the Rings, they dubbed the vast majority of that film as well because shooting in the New Zealand wilderness is just like constantly. So anyway. No, Charlie's there had to do

like so many of the loop groups that are like just crazy. Yeah. However, without those two weeks shooting at the Citadel, as Chris pointed out, there is only so much that they can do.

Fortunately, Jeff didn't get the job. Kevin Suchihara did. And when Kevin saw the most recent cut of the film, he said, well, it doesn't make any sense. And they're like, We know. Jeff wouldn't let us film the beginning or the end. And Kevin's like, well, that's incredibly dumb.

Here's the rest of the money. Go back and film it. So at the end of the day, they were right. And it cost Warner more in the long run because they had to destroy so many of the sets. At the end of the shoot, they now have to... Even just traveling people there and back again. Yes. Well, they now have to set up in Australia because they can't go back to Namibia.

It doesn't exist anymore. It's there. But a year after the original shoot, they had to bring the cast back to Australia. They had to rebuild all of this stuff. Charlize had to be bald-capped. So beginning and end, she is wearing a bald cap because her hair was growing back. But there was one advantage, which is that Miller had finally decided on an ending. Guess what?

They didn't have an ending the whole time. Well, and the other thing is, in a weird way, I'm sure it really worked out to their advantage because he got to see the whole movie. accept the things they were missing. It's like getting, you know, mandated reshoots with Marvel, where they shoot the movie, they test it, but they already have reshoots planned that allow them to fix things based on what people aren't understanding. Yeah, at the end, it actually was an advantage.

Had they shot it a year earlier, Max actually would have gone up in the elevator with Furiosa and the wives, and there's even a chance it might have hinted at a romance between Max and Furiosa. Wow. So very glad that that didn't. happen. But also, like, he just didn't really know how it was going to end. And I think he was just going to kind of wing it. So I'm glad that they got more time. Now, while Warner Brothers was still

freaking out over the movie, their marketing lead saw the diamond in the rough edits and created an absolutely kick-ass teaser trailer. When it dropped at Comic-Con, all of a sudden, everyone was confused about the rumors that this was a mess because it looked awesome. Awesome. Yes. Yeah. But still, the execs were not convinced. And I should say some of the execs were not convinced. They had some really incredible advocates on their side. But it is pretty crazy how hard some of these executives at Warner Brothers just do not buy into this. Well, here's the one thing I'll say, though.

And again, I know it starts from the original sin of they didn't let them finish the movie. But once you have seen something in a form when it does not work, I think it's incredibly hard to see it with fresh eyes after that. It's why, you know, as a creative person, you should not send multiple iterations of the same script to somebody for repeated feedback. It just becomes a soup of nonsense at a certain point. So, you know, I just, I do think that's why you have to be careful with when you show the director's cut because you get one chance to make a first impression. Well, also, why it's maybe not a great idea to ask somebody to cut Mad Max in eight weeks after not letting them film the beginning and end. Like, I get it.

they were scared because they just didn't understand what they had. Yeah, it was a regime change. Well, and also, like, people who saw the rough cuts and even earlier cuts were like, I don't know about this. Like, it was, it didn't make a ton of sense. Just imagine the action scenes with, like, one second added to every action cut, and you could see how clunky it could become because it's such a fine-tuned machine now. So they start making George and Margaret assemble versions for test screenings.

And I don't know how. this compares to what you did, Chris, but they assembled 14 versions at least. No, that's, I did, I did three tests with each of, I've only obviously done two movies, and they were both very small budget compared to this. And we did three in each case. Yeah, that's crazy.

So the studio would watch one version, and they'd be like, cut the doof warrior. And then they'd watch another, and they'd be like, oh my God, Nicholas Holt can't eat a bug. And then they'd watch another and be like, wait, Renfield, yes, you can. Then they'd watch another and be like, no, ugly people, get them out of here.

No, I was in here. And then they were insisting that it be... Are they in the Great Gatsby now? Yeah, everything's wished. They're insisting that it be PG-13 or even better, PG. Happy feet three. Literally.

But George and Margaret continue to stick to their guns. Thank God. We could put a CG pig in every one of these shots. I would love to see that. Just penguins dancing on top of all the course. So good. Oh, my God.

So finally, for the last test screening, they called up George Miller and they said, hey, we actually made our own edit of the film with our own score. Do you mind if we run our version to see how it tests? Oh, no. Yeah. They said, no, no, no, this is totally standard. We actually did the same thing on the Great Gatsby. Well, you know what they did do it on was Fantastic Four, if you remember.

And so you don't want to do that. Well, I wonder how happy Buzz Lerman was about it, and who knows if that was true. Didn't he just re-release Australia as a miniseries because he was unhappy with the edit? I don't know. But anyway, George Miller is like, yes, I mind. And also, I have final cut. He has final cut. Like triple fuck you.

Like this is standard. Quad triple fuck you. Absolutely. We redid it. We just replaced all this every day. We got our own music. We got our own voice over. Not totally standard.

All we did is just make an entirely different movie. It's not a big deal. It's just for K dog. It's just for K. Friends and family screening. He wants them to think he's a director. But the execs on his side were basically like, listen, let them do it because I guarantee it will not test as well.

as yours. So these people were like, we have faith in you, let them hang themselves, which is the smartest thing you can do. What they're really saying is we have faith in a general audience, which I would be nervous. I don't know. So on December 8th, 2014, at a theater in Alhambra, goes San Gabriel Valley. I wonder if it's our multiplex. Two versions of Fury Road went head to head against each other. Now, at the last minute, they changed the plan on Miller and said that instead of back to back, they would run the screening simultaneously with two different audiences. Miller almost pulled the plug after this bait and switch, but then he thought, you know what?

What, I don't care. There's absolutely no chance that their editor did a better job than Margaret, so go right ahead. So he lets them do it. So one theater saw the studio's version, and the one next to it saw Miller and Margaret's version. And guess who ruined the movie for 200 people? Yeah, they showed them a horrible version.

Exactly, yeah. Miller and Margaret's version. Absolutely. The studio version was absolute garbage trash, and it tested horribly. It was a landslide that people were absolutely on the side of George Miller's version. So, tail between their legs, the studio finally said, do whatever you want. It's your edit. Make it are.

We don't care. And George Miller, to his crew, credit, mentioned that he is, watched their version, and actually reopened his own edit to make a few changes that he liked from theirs. So this is someone who does not let their ego get in their own way, which can be pretty unusual for directors at this level, that he did it for a couple of scenes. He was like, you know what, that actually was better. And he changed it. I love George Miller. He's great. He's great. He then went and took a dump on their average machine. I hope he did.

I love picturing Reese Starby as all of this. And if you could just leave the room for about six minutes. So, Buzz had been building ahead of the May 15th premiere at this point. And when the review embargo lifted, critics could not say enough about the movie. On May 14th, the film screened at Cannes to a massive standing ovation. And this was the first time Tom Hardy and Charlize had seen each other. At a press conference after the screening, Tom Hardy didn't. something pretty surprising. When asked how it felt to watch the movie, he turned to George Miller

and said, quote, for seven months, the most frustrating thing for me was trying to know what George wanted me to do at any given minute on a minute by minute basis so that I could fully transmute his vision. I feel I really have to apologize to you because I got frustrated. There is no way that George could have explained what he could see in the sand when we were out there. I mean, I knew he was brilliant, but I didn't know quite how brilliant until I saw that. That's what my first reaction was. Oh, my God. I owe George an apology for being so myopic.

Tom. See, I told you we'd come back around. You son of a bitch. That hearty boy. I know. It's a great quote. It's so good. I saw that quote before and it's, yeah, it's really good.

I also love this. He would later say he was trying to explain to us a color we hadn't seen yet. Aw. It's a good way to describe it. He's a sensitive, you know. I think he is a. a sensitive soul. I wish there was a record on Paul Apology of Charlize Theron, but let's just hope he gave her one in private.

Theron said something very similar, by the way, that she really wishes she had trusted George Miller more and been along for the ride versus being sort of constantly questioning. But again, like, they need to give themselves some credit. It would be very, very hard to understand in that scenario what any of it was going to look like. Yeah. The film premiered on May 15th and made $45 million. dollars its opening weekend. It came in second to pitch perfect two. All in all, it would take in $374 million on around a $150 million budget. So it did fine. Not amazing. And when award season approached, Warner Brothers had no intention of campaigning for Fury Road whatsoever.

So, because it had opened to 10 films, Best Picture by now, so I don't know why they wouldn't make a push. I don't know why either. It seems pretty, as Tom would say, myopic. However, others did get it. In the lead up to the Oscar nominations, Fury Road, with zero campaigning, started cleaning up at other awards shows. Yep.

It's at this point that they do finally start campaigning for it, but it's very late in the season. And one has to wonder if this is maybe why Miller did not get the directing Oscar and Charlize didn't even get a nomination, but Jennifer Lawrence did for joy. Just throwing that out there. I haven't seen it, so I can't, I can't comment. It's fine. It's not this.

I will say I recently watched No Hard Feelings. It's so good. It's very charming. It's so good. She's amazing in it. Surprise. She is, she really, she like, and actually the young man opposite of her, whose name I don't know, he's wonderful.

There's a great scene at the midpoint where he plays man-eater on the piano and it's, like, extremely, extremely moving. We just watched it too. We loved it. Yeah, very fun. She has an absolutely incredible full frontal nude fight scene that made me laugh so hard I was crying. So if you haven't seen no hard feelings, go see it. It was amazing. It's wild. I can't believe she did that. And really, I was like, good Lord, good for you. So still, when the nominations were announced, it got 10, including Best Picture and Director. In the end, it would take home six Academy Awards, including Margaret Sixel for editing.

But George Miller Yes, she got it. That's great. She got it. George Miller would go home empty-handed when Alejandro Gonzalez In your E2 won for directing The Revenant. Ironically, also Tom Hardy

also shot sequentially. Oh, that's true. I believe that movie was shot in order to listen to our episode. But a lot more from both Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy. I didn't like the Revenant. I'm not a huge fan either. I prefer, I can appreciate the accomplishment, but I prefer Mad Max Fury Road as a film.

And Spotlight won best picture. Spotlight was pretty good. But still, Mad Max, come on. Mad Max is better. I love Mad Max. It's better. It's better. It's better.

Margaret said it best, though, when she said, we were disappointed that George didn't win, but basically they were all his Oscars in a way. Yeah. So that's nice. Yeah, that's great. Also, great year at the Oscars, I would say. It's some really good movies that year. Very good.

The big short. Yeah, that's right. That was that year. Now, remember when I said in part one that Miller's lawsuit around contact wouldn't be the last time he'd sue Warner Brothers? Let's hear it. Here we go again.

So, in September of 2017, Miller files a lawsuit in Australia against Warner Brothers. He alleges that his company is owed a $7 million bonus if the final budget of Mad Max did not exceed $157 million, which he says it didn't. Warner Brothers says it did. Now, how could there be a discrepancy, you might ask?

Well, Hollywood Mass. Well, even more than that, it sounds like what's happening is Warner Brothers is trying to include the additional costs incurred by the fact that Jeff Robinov made them stop filming when they should have just taken two more weeks and finished. If they'd done that, they would have come in under budget, no problem. But they are including that, and they are trying to deny him the additional $7 million because of it. That's Hollywood math, guys. I think Ed Solomon, the original writer of Men in Black has a very funny series of tweets where he posts how he still never gets any residuals from the first Men in Black because

they just keep throwing additional costs against the movie to offset any money that's ever made. Oh, good. He also says they didn't give him. his company right of first refusal to step in and finance if a co-financer was sought, but they didn't even ask him. They went straight to Ratpack Entertainment, co-owned by Brett Ratner and future treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin. It eventually went to arbitration.

I can't figure out if it's settled yet or not, but given the fact that Furiosa has an air date, I have to imagine that they came to some terms. And I hope those terms were paying George his money, give him his money. Or just give him more money for Furiosa. No, I don't trust them. Give him his money for this. And then give him more money for Furiosa, too. And then give him more money for the other Mad Max movies that are allegedly happening.

That I'm not entirely sure. Great news, yours for green lighting, happy feet three with the $7 million we say. No. No, son of a bitch. Well, that wraps up the wild and true story of Mad Max Fury Road. A great one. I loved Tom Hardy's arc. Yeah.

I think with a lot of these, it's even. easy again. We've talked about, we talked about Tim Allen on Galaxy Quest, you know, folks who develop a difficult reputation, and then people are complex. And I'm glad that it came full circle. I mean, Lizzie, this one was wild. I love this movie. It's great. I actually watched it twice for this episode because it's just so wildly entertaining. I had watched it once, and I was cooking, and I was like, I was going to throw a Mad Max one again. And then I just kind of stopped cooking and I was just watching Mad Max. Yeah. So, my, can Can I throw out my what went right first?

Please do, yeah. It's a little spoken part of it. I love unhinged Nicholas Holt. Yeah, he's great. I think he's great in this movie. I think, I hope he finds more roles like this. I think it's easy to cast him as the kind of not sad sack. We know, like, kind of down on his luck straight man.

He kind of has played that a number of times. And obviously he's very good at it. But he's so good in this. He's great. Because the boyishness, in contrast to the unhinged behavior, allows for him then to arc back toward good. You know what I mean? Yeah.

In this movie in a way that's so fun. So I just wanted to give Nicholas Holt a shout out. I really enjoyed him upon rewatch in this film. I think he's an underrated relative to, obviously, we think of Charlize and Tom as incredible as the two leads. Well, he's also, like, unrecognizable in this. It honestly becomes hard to remember that it is. Michael's Holt at certain points, which is amazing. Yeah, I agree. He's wonderful. And as we learned in part one, he was not a shoe-in for this role at all. So pretty cool that it ended up

being so awesome. I think my what went right, I'm going to go with George Miller and Margaret Sixel's relationship. And the fact that they were able to, like, in the midst of that total disaster tornado of everything, still just focus and like get the edit that they, did. I think it's amazing. And she's an incredible editor. Yeah, and good for them, like you said, to watch what the studio had done because there's still a chance. Hey, maybe we missed something. Maybe there's something to put in here.

Like you said, I think the best directors know it doesn't matter where an idea comes from. If it's a good idea. It's the best idea. Yeah. Exactly. And I think he definitely knows that, especially like looking at the stuff with Charlize and, you know, the way that he listens to his collaborators. Yeah, I would go with their edit, Margaret's edit, and their relationship, I think it's pretty amazing. But also, like, upon rewatching this, you know, to your point about Nicholas Holt, I think it is easy to disregard the performances because the spectacle of it is so huge and impressive. They're amazing.

They're amazing. They're amazing. The bullet farmer. The wives, like, yeah. So He Kravitz, Riley Kyo, they're all really good. Yeah.

The movie survives without having these sweeping plot turns because you can feel the emotional connections between the characters. It all feels very textured and lived in and real. It feels like, okay, we're going to drop into this world for two hours and it's not going to explain everything. No. But that's okay because it feels very real.

And we don't need to explain everything. Totally. And the fact that you understand a lot of her, backstory with like almost no dialogue or explanation of it it's it is pretty amazing and I do think that's a testament to her and to the work that you know the wives did the war boys

did everybody um yeah so that's it this movie's great if you still haven't watched it what's wrong with you go watch it it's amazing um yeah kudos to that Warner Brothers uh marketing individual who saw the potential and made the teaser trailer that's super cool

they were talking about this guy and they were like you know we have one or two awards shows a year that like nobody really cares about, but when his name gets announced, everybody like loses their mind. And I can't remember his name right now, which is driving me nuts. But he is apparently kind of a savant at this stuff. And he's one of the few people early on who was like, no, this is awesome. Good on him. All right, guys, that about does it for our coverage on Mad Max Fury Road. As Lizzie mentioned, check out Kyle Buchanan's wonderful book. Yes. It is blood, sweat and chrome. As always, we need to give a shout out to our full stop supporters on Patreon.

Yeah, we have a Patreon. And it has lasers. And that would be Chris Leal, Matthew Pelton, Tom Kristen, Simon Chianani, who I just saw another, I saw he has a new book out, I believe, and I saw signed first editions in the bookstore by my house. Check it out. The School of Good and Evil is the series that he is the author of. And of course, Michael McGrath. And a very special What Went Wrong. Welcome to two new. full stop supporters, Hannah T and Sadie C. Thank you so much. Thank you guys so much. You're crazy. Guys, if you're interested in more content, check out our Patreon. We have additional bonus episodes. Those are interviews with folks that have worked on some of the movies that we've talked about,

as well as further, deeper, or more shallow conversations, depending on how you see it, between me and Lizzie about important topics like The Strikes and Hollywood Diverses. Lizzie, is there anything else before we let these folks go? Aside from telling them what our next episode's going to be. Oh, Chris, why don't you tell them? All right, you guys, you voted and you picked Big Trouble in Little China. Yeah. So that is going to be the next episode we cover.

I am researching it now. And I've been watching all of the commentary done by John Carpenter and Kurt Russell together. And you can do the thing and Big Trouble in Little China. And they clearly got a little drive before. and they're just laughing their asses off the whole time making fun of each other. It's very fun. Yeah, it's going to be really exciting. It, you know, basically this movie exists because of Eddie Murphy's The Golden Child.

I'm just going to give you that. Okay. There's a weird time in Hollywood. We'll get into it. I love this movie, so I'm excited. Yeah. It's a doozy. It's a doozy.

So, guys, check out Big Trouble in Little China. and as always send us your recommendations for films. You can hit us up on Instagram or What Went WrongPod at Gmail.com. And with that, we'll let you go. We'll see you in two weeks. Bye. 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 and music by David Bowman with cover art from Uthana UOos. Thank you.