MAD MAX -conference- (en) Cannes 2015

la Stella Kosovo's de pez do but knock you over okay photographers just a few seconds longer thank you very much while photographers disappear as it were a quick reminder if you want to ask a question please raise your head a little bit ahead of time so that we can see you and so that we can get the microphone to you civil servant case to oppose this way a seventy de la vela meant fascist calm peaceful world FSOs will disappear at least less odessa keep endodermis copies la Vida Scavo composable Miko lo de vous présente poo-poos a votre question we SEL del amico if you want to ask a question is Veggie handle it paid ahead of time when you get the microphone please stand up introduce yourselves ask you a question and then sit down and give the mic back thank you very much bonsoir to send thank you for being here for this Nouveau Mad Max installment and I will introduce the people who are here at this table far right uh she's a chief editor she her name is Margaret and sick soul and he sit alive despite the job she had to do on this movie sitting next to her a longtime business partner of George Miller's producer dog pitcher sitting next to me as Knox the war boy I'm not going to go through his filmography Nicholas Hoult but I will mention one film that he acted in with the lady sitting next to him which is dark places she knows you and you know her Charlie's her own skip one as the title role in the title role mr. Tom Hardy and the man who brought it all together director George Miller I know you've been asked two thousand times since you arrived in canvas Tamila so make this your journey George George make this 2001 as it were what took you so long I never wanted to make another Mad Max movie but the idea popped into my head and it just wouldn't go away and you push it away but it kept growing and growing and one day I said to Doug I think we're going to make enough another Mad Max movie but I didn't realize it would take us over 12 years to to be in this moment where we just finished two weeks ago right however you once you decided you guys were gonna do it or you were going to do Jordan it takes a world to build it takes trucks to build it takes finding the actor it takes an unspeakable logistics to come plus what is the story going to be how am I going to go about it and how did you go about it well to do a movie like this that we really wanted to do it as an extended chase I call it visual music and and basically as Hitchcock said where you don't have to where they don't have to read the subtitles in Japan so it's basically one long it was written basically as one long graphic novel the first iteration the movie was 3,500 storyboards all around the room and in those you could it gives you a lot of content you don't have to describe the scene you know where everyone's sitting hands or standing or whether vehicles are going left or right or where the camera would be very atypical we also condense that down to a screenplay kind of an illustrated screenplay with which these guys had to interpret but if you don't have dialogue and you're making little bits of movie it's like a mosaic art and you don't know where all the bits are going to go it's very difficult and then I always say it was diving in the Olympics it would be the highest degree of difficulty diet because then we went out there with real vehicles and real people in a real desert for seven months and there wasn't a day when I thought we're crazy for doing this the question has been asked also three thousand times so make that three thousand one mr. Hardy any kind of qualms about taking up the Mad Max character you mean taking them taking over the role yes yeah initially I was super jubilant really excited to land the part and like any actor you get really excited when you land a part because it's brilliant and then I realized that you know the the role of milk no but Mad Max is synonymous with Mel Gibson and that you know there's a there's a large group of people who love Mel as Max and if it's not Mel then it's not max so you know as I was a little bit um this is a bit crestfallen moment for a second but then I'm what I understood from from further conversations with with George because it was a concern that there was no need to step in or replace or try to do better or try to bring something new it was just ultimately George amel went on a journey for three movies and the the legacy still continues to develop and at this point it was time for me to switch switch in and I'm and ultimately Max is led by George and was created by George so I just had to not take comfort in in George being the anchor of that and just do what you wanted me to do Charlize I have a question also for you which you may not have answered before but to the best of my knowledge this may be the first film where an action hero is one-armed was that from the from the beginning from the from the script writing was it something that was added as script was developed was it something that you said oh guys why don't we go one step further if I answer that it was in the very first story books she had to be a warrior uncompromising there was a backstory the moment you see that you know she's been through a lot you can figure out as you're watching it what it might be and and it was going to be expensive to do and and because you know because I didn't want to cut my own she didn't want to cut you and and at one point when we had stress on the budget there's a lot of talk well you can lose the arm and Charlize was the first to say no way so so when we figured out that you did the arm and it's difficult you know you're wearing this thing and you had to you had to fall and stuff as if you don't have any harm but you were a ballet dancer you know how to work in space and so on so I'm really happy that it's there was it physically easier for you Nicholas yes with both arms yeah obviously it was yeah I had a great time I could eat and drink at the same time but it was remarkable watching that the fight sequences between Tom and Charlize that were so beautifully choreographed by a stunt team and each Chris it's so action-packed this movie each action sequence and each beat has to tell a story and something about the character and watching these two guys develop those fights with while I was I was knocked out throughout most of it and kind of dragged around with a chain so it was a lot easier for me but watching it and you were only using one arm as well was remarkable um beautifully choreographed the the vehicles and all the all the fights will take question from the audience okay go ahead hello Peter Howell from the Toronto Star in Canada congratulations on making not only a great Mad Max movie but I guess a great mad Maxine over here over here I have a question for Tom Hardy Tommo preface my remarks by saying that I have five sisters a wife a daughter and a mother so I know what it's like to be outgunned by estrogen I just wanted to ask you as you were reading this script did you ever think why aren't all these women in here I thought this is supposed to be a man's movie no not for one minute it's just kind of obvious but like um but also in reference to the concept of having a script that would have been nice so that was also huh that was more of a concerned big yeah that was a luxury we didn't have but I actually heard someone coming out of the screening this morning saying that this was a surprisingly intimate film which considering how big it is but also a socio-political whip Pro feminist film well okay this is this is a very French question yes statement oh just that's a statement sorry no it was that Charlie's just answered it never thought of it initially you know there's never a feminist agenda that was the story it came simply for there to be an extended chase and the thing that people were chasing was to be not an object but human the five wives they needed a warrior it couldn't couldn't be a man taking five wives from another man that's a entirely different story so there was furiosa and everything grew out of that meanwhile max is like a wild dog a wild animal trap trying to find freedom and to bring those two together we're essentially try killing each other when they first meet and then having to find some mutual regard in order to survive that was that was the essential story and and if once you build the architecture around that that's this stuff pops out go ahead go ahead stand up hi a question for mr. Miller we almost all appreciated the movie this is clear just one little thing I would like like to ask is how does the movie fit in the continuity of the series should we consider it a reboot or a sequel or mid-well or what else well I had the impression it's just like a Mad Max world just expanding the Mad Max universe I would like to know if you agree with this definition Thanks yes it's got all the film's have no strict chronology it's probably after Thunderdome but it's an episode in the life of Max and this world it's an it's basically an episode and it's us revisiting that world and that never never wrote the story with any of the stories with a chronological connection question here sir mr. Miller I'm from Netherlands thanks for your film I want to ask you if it can elaborate about you Oliver collaboration with junkie XL or Dutch composure and how did it work and how did you work together and how did you come up with a guitar player on the Turner well when Tom Hulkenberg I know him as well as Tom Hulkenberg or Toto Jackie Excel when he first walked in the room he said if it aint Dutch it ain't much and and that he you know him he's a he's a wonderful guy he's a kind of a polymath he studied law he started a faculty in sound design he has done everything from pop music - big classical scores and he's a I've worked I've had some fantastic privileges working with him with composers John Williams Jerry Goldsmith Murray Shaw and they learned so much for them but Tom because he was a teacher in many ways was able to explain me to me who has no idea about music is is structured what he was doing and we had a wonderful discourse interestingly enough I see these action movies as kind of visual music the same issues when you're putting the note stick that the visual notes together trying to find a causal connection in one moment to the next just as one would try to put music together so it was left to Margaret the edits which actually get into that and it's amazing how the two processes overlap what of the guitar player well it's logical the it's logical the the first there's always the music of war when the priest before there was modern communication there was the the bugler the drummer the bagpipe player calling people to war and using the signals here with vehicles you needed a lot of speakers you needed taiko drummers and you needed a guitarist to sort of wail away and thrash away but like everything else in this movie everything had to have dual purpose it had also to be a weapon so it was a flamethrower and and it grew out of the story well passing on the baton to Margaret how many hours did you have of film stock if it was out on film and how did you make your way through it to bring it down to two hours well we had 450 hours of material because they just put digital cameras everywhere we had three to 12 cameras on every setup but basically you know if you get two years to cut a film you just put in ten hours a day six days a week which works out to 6,000 hours of editing and you can get started - oh really it's just hard work yes but but yeah no I understand that but what what sort of thing did you deliberately or with George's consent yeah set aside saying this doesn't belong to the movie this one or maybe for next episode for next installment well that takes a long time and when we when we do our first cut we put everything in and give everything a chance so George believes in cutting every scene to its highest level and then we screen it you know we had five to ten test audience screenings and you know you listen and take notes and adapt the film as we go so it's a long drawn-out process it doesn't really happen overnight really he does also to your sound editor I think if I'm to dues to the sound editor also a great job yes the sound and the music amazing integral part of the whole show storytelling with I've got to say that Margaret is also my wife and when she said she's never cut an action movie before and when she said why would on earth would you want me to cut the movie and I said because if it was the usual kind of guys it would look like every other action movie we see and so and and she basically said my main job here is to stop you embarrassing yourself but also yes that's true and just one quick thing as she's also able to it is like a giant giant Ruby cube so it needed a lot of brain power and someone who's got a very low boredom threshold Margaret would not let any repetition in the movie so she won't say that but I can say that thank you question here go ahead hi pulp draw from the particular journal so question for mr. Ron I guess we all agree that the beginning of the festival has a very nice feminine touch of course it all began with the Miss Bergman smile but we also have you in Draven testosterone film I want to ask you how how did it felt to go on this rollercoaster which were you are extremely well oh I I saw a great potential in this right from the beginning mm-hmm does not want to work okay uh okay oh no God George Miller please um I I had heard kind of just loose talk about it and um and there was a lot of talk about a female character that would stand alongside max and so for a female actress for an actress that's you know it sounds really good seeing it through is something else so I was you know I've been doing this for a while and I was had my cynical self kind of peek out every once in a while and George just never disappointed you know George really kind of promised me something and delivered on it and and never veered away from that and so for me of course it was incredible to get to play in the sandbox literally and be a woman not try to be a man and celebrate everything there is about being a woman and not trying to put women on a pedestal but being surrounded by other women who are just real in a story that was informed and real so I was I know that I was given a great opportunity question here yeah here right hi guys a question for the actors Nicholas released some what was your reaction after everything happened that you finally got to see what we all think I think the amazing end result what went through your mind mine was a finally box okay I suddenly got what George was talking about actually cuz for seven months that I think the most complicated piece for me when was frustrating thing for me or the hardest part of it was trying to know what George wanted me to do at any given minute on a minute-by-minute basis that I could fully transmute his vision but because he's orchestrating such a huge vehicle literally in so many departments and every his signature is on every single detail of that and because the vehicle is and all the vehicles are moving in the whole the whole movie is just motion there was no way that I really I feel I have to apologize to you because I got frustrated and I'm there is no way that George could have explained what he could see and in the sand when we were out there and because of the due diligence that was required to make everything safe and to make everything which is incredibly complex I'm so simple and what I saw which is a relentless barrage of complexities simplified in a fairly linear story I mean I knew he was brilliant but I didn't quite know 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 I was blown away I with the the post-production was really long and so I you know you kind of go on with life and and you kind of forget in a weird way and then I saw it and I was in a dark Theater kind of by myself and I was you know a kid back in South Africa watching a movie I didn't feel like I was watching myself it felt like I was in a world that was so different and it and I think that the time you know if post-production kind of just I think gave us all a little moment to breathe and so I had full appreciation when I watched it in the theater and I was just really blown away by the time and the effort that so many people put towards this film including you and I knew it was a long time cuz my hair was in a ponytail ain't so new a lot of time it passed yeah for me the thing watching the film obviously I'd blown away by the scale of it and how it will come together and that but then it was the the kind of how real the world felt and that's all because there's so much work behind what ends up on the screen there's a huge mythology behind all of this where when we first got down to to start the film George had gone through each character's backstory through each vehicles back story every single prop every detail so it was one of those things where it was a really subversive welter to to go into and I think that you feel that even though it's one big chase watching the film everything feels so real and well thought through and the attention to detail was was remarkable yeah I was blown away and then did you think that I look great I thought I looked sick yeah question over there Ben here hi I'm Manisha from Bloomberg I wanted to follow on from an earlier question and just ask Georgian and Doug perhaps what conversations have you had about another film it does seem that this is presented in the form of a new franchise a new world where new continuation can you set talk to maybe the challenges of another one what conversations you've had with say Warner Brothers any information like that Thanks well asking that that question it feels to me like I'm a woman who's just given birth to a really big baby and I we finished 12 days ago and and and then someone says do you want to when are you going to have your next baby I'm just not recovered enough to get into it but you know these characters live in your head and and we've got a lot of backstories and and if we get the appetite again to go out into the wasteland there's other films we've all wanted to want to do and yeah so that that's the the answer I can give this moment now I've just come out of labor but that's the same question can be asked to dodge a Mitchell tell George we're starting the next book about a week and a half's time okay as George said but there is talk of other things with one brother the possibility of a Mad Max slide show which is exciting it's not a film that and more of that in discussions - comedy yeah it's just in case any anybody seen that footage on the honey badger the honey badger we call Doug Mitchell the honey badger just so you know it described him and getting this movie made and destroyed it I think the honey badger is the most amazing creature on the planet I mean the grit and the guts of that have a look at it it's 70 million hits on YouTube and I just want to sort of have an answered your question but that that's the best sort of it can come up with of the moment and I just want to also say about the actors this is very difficult to do this movie normally you know there's a master scene there's dialogue you can block out the scene but this is made up of so many small fragments that by the time you say action three seconds goes by then you're saying cut so it's very hard for people to get into that there's no continuity and and and the the you know acting is is athletic and and and to ask a runner or a football player or someone keep stopping and starting again it gets very tough so but we were able to sort of run the shots across the wasteland and across the desert and do repetitions and stuff like that and then we had to get all the little bits and then Maggie had to put it all together so I just want to acknowledge right here I've never really told them that I was very aware of of that and also in the pit of my stomach the biggest biggest issue by far with a thousand crew was safety the idea of if this was real world stuff and the idea in any moment something could go wrong it could be catastrophic that that really wore us out but we had a fantastic fantastic group of people and there was a trust that developed and and we got here and not one broken bone bruises cuts no not one broken bone great the filming set four to five years in the future and the world looks in a fairly bad state I just wondered if the film could be read as a cautionary tale and whether people felt very concerned about what the future would look like in 45 years perhaps to Shelley's which Tom I much think it is and I I don't want to speak for George but what I took as a viewer of all of the Mad Max films was they felt very grounded in a lot of real events or events that we've talked about or scholars have talked about the idea of globalization and global warming and the issues of drought and value of water and leadership becoming completely out of hand the control of people I think for me I've never I don't know if I could function in a very far-fetched world I I don't know if maybe my imagination isn't good enough so for me this felt very real I felt like it was grounded in so much truth I you know the sandstorm in the in the film there are images right now on Google of you know Sahara desert sand being blown like that in that state all through Asia and it's frightening it's absolutely frightening because I didn't know that before I watched the movie and I watched the movie and I was like oh ok we went a little crazy there and then I saw these images and I was um the hair stood up on the back of my neck there were frightening so I think I feel like Georgia's the kind of filmmaker that he likes to raise the stakes and there's there's for me when I think of the world of Mad Max I think of do-or-die and I think of that reptilian brain kicking in and just saying what do I do to survive and it's in a world that I think is makes it even scarier because it is something that is not that far off if we don't you know pull it together fishing over there question for dr. Miller ed Gibbs from ABC News Australia congratulations on the film um I wanted if mel gibson's had a chance to see it yet and what his thoughts are and whether he may feature in any future plans for the franchise well Mel has seen the movie because he was at the premiere of the movie and I sat with him next to me and Tom right behind us and Mel it we hadn't seen each other for a long time and Mel is someone who in a sense cannot lie and he started chuckling during the movie and I thought ah that's that chuckle I remember and then he kept chuckling and then he started digging me in the ribs and then he started I'm asking about the actors because he's about to direct a film down in Australia and and then he he gave me great respect at the end as a director because I think he's a wonderful a wonderful actor but also a really great director so it was a kind of a kind of a an emotional moment for me and there's Tommy at the back sort of keep putting his hands around us it was strange I as you probably know I was I was heartbroken to see what was happening with Mel because I've always known him to be a really really good man so I'm a French website and I have a kitchen for George Miller thank you for so much for this amazing movie and what the action scene was the most difficult to shoot um the the ones that I never expected I'd ever see for real with the guys on the polecats that I thought we'd film among them with the vehicles and then ucg to complement to the scenes and then one day I looked up and coming out of the desert were eight of them coming in towards us and so what you see is exactly right and it felt safe enough to put tongue up on top of one of those things and she wasn't safe and I I'm I'm scared of heights but Tom only when he got up there said you do know I'm scared of heights so but it was great that was difficult and the other the other thing it's one thing to do a big stunt for real but it's another thing to land it exactly in the sweet spot in front of the cameras there's no point of it going past cameras and that big stunt at the end to do it for real we actually thought we couldn't we were going to do it with them I don't know model CG or whatever but they took it on and we only had one take and to roll that thing between those two massive rocks and right in front of our phantom camera running at height speed hitting the sweet spot it's just it was just a magnificent thing to see and leeadams and the driver just I just don't know how did they rehearsed it as best they could with with with a dummy vehicle but to hit that way that was something sir no sir Jason go from twitch Hillman Cineplex first of all once again second time through it's an amazing amazing movie wondering if the performers could talk about shooting in Africa and George if he could be on the record whether you prefer to or 3d and why okay oh I'll I said I'm a shooting and everything okay 3d okay I love 3d stereo in fact when we were going to shoot this back in 2001 I was dumb enough to try to do it classic anaglyph and just have a few scenes with it with it with the you know that green and red as it were when in this film if I had a choice I said in 3d but I'm extremely aware that some people can't tolerate we're asking audiences to do something that we do not do in nature and that is force where you look in that in space in that so-called zero z axis and if you don't get it right you can cause pain and you can cause nausea and with a quick action movie like this with your average cuts 2 to 2 seconds 90 frames that that can be really distressing so the lot what one of the things that took so long and we were working 20 hours a day right up until the very end was to make it as crew me as possible and and I'm very happy to say that it's really creamy shooting in Africa you know it was just we were in it that was the world what you see on screen that's Namibia and it's absolutely gorgeous uh to go and see and you know trek through with a backpack for three weeks and then after that it becomes kind of hard um but it was it's a beautiful place somebody just recently told me and I feel shame that I didn't know this because Namibia used to be a part of South Africa when I was a kid but uh that Namibia is the place that God created when he was angry and it's kind of powerful and it felt powerful when we were in it and it was visually tangible we were there and we could feel it and there were a moment there were moments before when we were in rehearsal where you know we would talk about things like you know awareness for us as actors and there versus one moment where we were talking about you know let's remember there's always gonna be dust on day one Nick and I just looked at each other we went I don't think we can forget if there's gonna be dust like we couldn't see anything um but it was tough because we were in it all the time um there was really no escaping it literally the airport was closed most of the time and you had to like special order a plane or like be there at a certain time it was like we were there we'll take one last question go ahead sir yeah my name is Mario from Globo Brazil the film have a lot of action a lot of special effects but the performers are amazing and a lot of eye contact between the actors so I want to know if it was a something that you think before you start the project that the actors have to a lot of eye contact because you say so much in the film over the eyes it reminded me the last scenes of Casablanca when the burger dragwon was looking to each other and you say so much much more than you you say with words so election Olaf was an option to do that and how is the actors you react for that you know like going from Mad Max to Casablanca is quite a stretch yeah see but that's why things terrific it's amazing yeah good too yeah okay I'm afraid our time is up thank you very much look I'm sorry sorry sorry it's not the question I answer the person goes oh well just to answer that question that's that's why you work with these people who have ice not eyes just more than eyes but you know the cliche it's the window to the soul people who somehow carry something with them there is a there's a mystery you want to unfold and and you've got tongue and Charlie's and Nick who are capable to do that it's a big trust it's a big thing you have to trust that you can get you can get that kind of interaction silently and and I so really glad you appreciated that thank you thank you thank you very much baby

Channel: Festival de Cannes (Officiel)

Views: 1,493,636

Rating: 4.9006572 out of 5

Keywords: Cannes, Festival de Cannes, films, Cannes Film Festival, cinema, montée des marches, red carpet, selection officielle, competition, stars, mad max, press conference

Id: tI6k_8tomRE

Length: 39min 31sec (2371 seconds)

Published: Thu May 14 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/Rhymes_with_ike]

I never once thought about "omg what's with all of the women". It was a fucking badass movie.

Just idiots trying to find hidden agendas.

[u/[deleted]]

Tom Hardy is such a cool guy. Picks roles very well.

[u/TheCityWest]

To be fair, this is Peter Howell from the Toronto Star, I think it was just a poorly worded questions to a guy (Hardy) who has probably been asked similar questions about the role of women in Mad Max for weeks now.

Questions are often worded in this style to get a better response from the person being asked. Isn't the movie being congratulated for taking women more seriously that the average action movie? A surprise can be pleasant.

[u/MarkKnightRises]

I think the guys question sounded a lot different in his head, but at least Hardy answered that question perfectly without making it any more awkward.

[u/Fucked_up_Individual]

all Mad Max films have had female characters

[u/TheVerraton]

Why does everything have to bee about gender these days.

[u/REDNOOK]

Makes me embarrassed to be from Toronto. What a dumb question.