Exploring Mad Max

[Music] Mad Max the 1979 Australian film made by a first-time director that took American cinema by storm and changed film making forever George Miller was an Australian doctor that dreamed of making movies the problem was Australia didn't have a very large base of filmmakers due to the overwhelmingly harsh restrictions of the government today there's no industry in this country making feature films we ranked with Ecuador and Iceland which like us are among the great non filmmakers the Australian censorship board was incredibly oppressive at the time that is until Don chip was brought in as the minister for customs and excise in 1971 chip brought the R rating to Australia and with that opened the floodgates for Australian Movie Makers to create racy content beyond anything the country had previously seen this kicked off a wave of Australian exploitation films or exploitation with action movies like Stone and the man from Hong Kong being released Miller knew now was the time to make his film he was working as an emergency room doctor at the time and saving up for the production after watching The 1975 postapocalyptic film a boy and his dog as well as the insane action sequences of director Brian trener Smith he began writing a post-apocalyptic Revenge film while in the ER he saw lots of car WX which influenced him to add a heavy focus on automobile Carnage after amassing roughly $350,000 he hired firsttime Director of Photography David eggby and began to work on the film Miller co-wrote the film with James mcausland before filming George Miller did tons of location scouting to find the best desolate places in Australia the scenes were all shot on location which was mostly areas in and around Melbourne Australia the Hall of Justice was an old sewage plant the house on the hill was abandoned the crew cleaned it up and brought in some furniture to make it look lived in 21-year-old Mel Gibson was attending the National Institute of dramatic arts or naida in Australia Mel gave a friend a lift to the casting session for the film after seeing him in the waiting room the casting director won to hire Mel as one of the freaks for the film since he was in a fight a few days prior and his face was swollen and bruised when he returned a few weeks later after his face healed the casting director didn't recognize him he was introduced to director George Miller and after a brief interview Gibson was hired on the spot for the lead Mel's friend who he brought in for the audition was Steve bizley who was cast to play Goose Max's wife was played by Joanne Samuel originally the part went to another actress but on the first day of shooting she was in a motorcycle accident and both her and the stunt man had their legs broken the stuntman was able to work with a broken leg but the actress couldn't so they brought in Samuel as the replacement a large part of the cast of the film was filled with bikers they hired actors for the villainous leads but needed to fill in the ranks for the miscellaneous bikers they brought in members of two local biker gangs the Hell's Angels and the Vigilantes many of the bikers were paid in beer actually a lot of the payment was in beer they rented the ambulance for a case of beer when they needed the bikers to do their own stunts they gave them beer and so on about a month before film filming the Motorcycle Company Kawasaki donated dozens of motorcycles to the film they were all late model demo units in that time the actors and the bikers got used to them and formed a makeshift gang complete with its own hierarchy there was no wardrobe for the bikers so they wore their own clothes now with everything lined up filming was underway with a firsttime director firsttime dop and firsttime leading man with high expectations and a low budget they had to be creative in order to stretch their funds since they were all new at this there was a lot of improving on the set now with the dialogue but with the shooting Miller called it bovie film making with aov aspirations the mfp were written have leather outfits but they couldn't afford them the Wardrobe Department made their outfits out of vinyl which on film looked like leather Mel being the main character was the only actor to actually have a leather costume they only had three mfp cars for the production they were used and reused so much that there were some scenes where the paint was still wet while they were filming the cars were Ford Falcons which were ex police cars Max's interceptor was a modified Ford Falcon the Night Rider's car was a repainted taxi for Night Rider's death they hooked up a Navy grade rocket to the back of the car when it fired off it pushed the car with such pressure it moved off course and veered towards the crew completely missing where it was supposed to crash they needed signs and props for a Milk bar but didn't have it in the budget the art director stole some signs and milk crates from a local Milk Bar after they shot the scene he snuck back the next morning and returned them when Mel's waking up from a nightmare a light's shining in his face this was done in a very lowtech Way by cutting a hole in a shoe box and Shining a light through it the amputated hand was a $5 joke shop prop that they smeared with pork to attract the dog for some of the scenes to make the vehicles appear to go faster they underc cranked the camera giving the illusion of speed to capture the aggressiveness of the vehicles they shot many of the scenes low to the ground with a wide- angle lens they mounted cameras on the cars and some scenes were filmed mere inches away from the camera for the scene where Goose was speeding away on his motorcycle the cameraman sat behind the driver and held a c camera in front of him to get the speedometer and frame for Goose's bike accident the stuntman flew 87 ft through the air and they probably compensated him with beer they paid a truck driver $50 in a case of beer to run over the toe Cutter's bike he didn't want to mess up the front of his truck so they took a piece of sheet metal and painted it like the front so it wouldn't damage his truck the art department created a rig with spring-loaded eyes inside the helmet to show toe Cutter's eyes bugging out of his head before he got run over they needed another car for a major wreck but didn't have it in the budget Miller donated his old van to be trashed they removed the engine from it which is why it spins out so dramatically even though the film has lots of action there was even more planned but were never filmed because they couldn't afford it Tim Burns who played Johnny the boy never left character for the entire shoot the cast hated him so much on the day he was handcuffed at the car they called lunch and left him chain there the score was by famous Australian composer Brian May after 12 weeks the film wrapped it was released in 1979 and was an instant phenomenon audiences loveed Lov it but many critics complained about its overuse of violence however if you watch the film you don't really see the worst scenes you usually see the aftermath of the violence because of the buzz on the film it was brought over to the US in 1980 American International pictures was afraid us audiences would have a hard time understanding the Australian accents so they dubbed the whole thing into English even though it already wasn't English although listening to the original dialogue it's not that hard to understand them oh it feels good after 3 days that feels so good oh that feels good after 3 days that feels so good the actors were annoyed that an entire audience was seeing the film without their performance still the film was a smash hit in the US and went on to gross $99 million theatrically Mel Gibson became a huge star and was the first Australian actor to be paid a million for a single film the influence of the movie rippled through the industry action films were now more viscer and films like the Terminator die hard and Rambo were green lit because of Mad Max it also single-handedly started the Italian post-apocalyptic genre scores of movies with armored cars motorcycle gangs and outlandish stunts poured into the Grindhouse theaters even now the film's still influencing movies Australian director James Juan and Australian actor writer Lee wiell grew up watching Mad Max the end scene where Max handcuffed Johnny the boy to the wreckage directly influenced them to write the foundation of the film that would eventually become saw the chain in those handcuffs it's high tensile steel going it take you 10 minutes to heck through it with this now if you're lucky you could hack through your ankle in 5 minutes he doesn't want us to cut through our chains he wants us to cut through our feet George Miller continued directing and made the sequels the the road warrior and Mad Max beond Thunderdome which I'll cover in future episodes Miller's had an interesting career going from violent post-apocalyptic films like the road warrior to babe pig in the city and the animated penguin movie Happy Feet in a cool homage to the original film Hugh Keys burn who played the toe cutter in Mad Max is emerton Joe in Fury Road in 2002 the DVD was released and for the first time it included the original Australian audio track so American audiences could finally hear the real film this movie is an amazing feat of film making not just in Australian Cinema but in cinema worldwide and it goes to show that you don't always need tons of money or experience to make the movie that you want to make passion drive and natural Talent will often be the proper fuel for creation although a few cases of beer wouldn't [Music] hurt change the subject I was right there I hate gun old lady

Channel: GoodBadFlicks

Views: 259,740

Keywords: good bad flicks, good bad movies, mad max, George Miller (Film Director)

Id: _GuVYUakJuU

Length: 9min 19sec (559 seconds)

Published: Mon May 25 2015