Latest / Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast / BPS 286: Inside Writing the Oscar® Nominated Mad Max: Fury Road with Brendan McCartney

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BPS 286: Inside Writing the Oscar® Nominated Mad Max: Fury Road with Brendan McCartney · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

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Hey guys, so I wanted to let you know what we're gonna be
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doing now on the show moving forward for a little while, I wanted to
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kind of bring in some amazing episodes from the indie film Hustle podcast network with
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guest hosts, and you might recognize some of these guests. Hopes, we'll
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have Dave Bullis, Jason Buff, and Scott McMahon guest hosting some of these
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episodes every week. Now, we're going to be doing still our regular episodes
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on once a week, and then we're gonna be doing these guest episodes second
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more amazing content and help you move forward on your filmmaking or screenwriting journey.
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So sit back, relax, enjoy today's episode with guest host Jason Buff.
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I'm your host Jason buff we're talking with mad Max Fury Road co writer Brendan
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McCarthy. I'm extremely excited about talking with Brendan. Mad Max Fury Road just
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blew my socks off. I can't believe that George Miller has gone back and
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made another Mad Max movie. For any of you that know the story about
2:49
George Miller in the background of the Mad Max movies, you've got to be
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excited to know that this movie is out there. Now. I've seen it
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once. I can't wait to go see it again. But anyway, you
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know, so Brennan and I talk a little bit about his background in comics,
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but then we get straight into talking about working with George Miller on Fury
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Road. So here we go. The first thing I was hoping we could
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talk about it because most of our listeners are, you know, have a
3:15
film background, but don't necessarily have a comic background. So I was wondering
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if you could talk about your background in comics and kind of what got you
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into doing comics in the first place. Okay, well, I read comics
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when I was a kid. I was I'm English and in the UK we
3:31
used to get American comics imported into certain newsagents, and I would pick off
3:38
spinner Rax things like original things like the speed Dik Spider Man Run, Jack
3:45
Kirby's Fantastic four run and some of the DC comics, the Silver aged ones
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like the Infantino Slash, Gil Kane's dream Land and Adam. So that was
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my choice. But I was raised on British comics, but right as you
4:00
moved over to the Americon comics and which at that time a quahaware in the
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UK, and that led to a lifelong interest in the comic book medium and
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a desire to develop it turn into something akin to what music occupies in culture
4:14
or use of that we could grow this medium up and do substantial work in
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the comic book field. I always had that intention, always felt it was
4:23
possible to become if you like, the beatles of comics, as opposed to
4:28
to turn comics into something much more exciting socially. And I was part of
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the eighties UK what's known as the British Invasion, which led by Alan Moore,
4:41
people like Neil Game and later Grant Morrison, John Wagner, Writer or
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Chard Sdred. While I was part of that original movement and I worked with
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a writer called Peter Milligan, who went on to be kind of big name
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writer in comics and worked for about fifteen years in comics before leaving to get
4:59
into computer animation. Did you always did you start out doing things subjects that
5:06
were more kind of surreal or did you start out doing more like traditional comics.
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But when I was a young kid of about ten, I was drawing
5:15
my own superhero comics. You know, the Puma was one of mine.
5:19
You may never have heard of them and work, Yeah, exactly. It
5:26
was drawing in the back of my school book. But as I went to
5:30
art college and studied painting and Surrealism and Dadaism and all the you know,
5:35
opened and expanded my understanding of visual art, storytelling, all sorts of stuff.
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I did a painting and film degree, so I was at a strong
5:44
interest in film as well. So when I started to actually produce my mature
5:51
comics from from my New Teams era, then the aspirations had grown, pasted
5:57
the heroes, and I was in tod in surrealism and the sort of at
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the time as when I came of age, pump rock was happening, so
6:08
that that infused my art with a kind of ed geographic sensibility, much of
6:14
it inspired by a non comic artist called now what's his name? He did
6:18
the sex fistols posters that did. His name momentarily escapes to me. He
6:23
did all the famous sex fistols Jamie something. Anyway, he was a big
6:28
influence on me with that very hard edged, photocopied cut up style, and
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I took that kind of style and just that just at the same time in
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the marketplace. A Rising Up was a British comic or two thousand a d
6:41
which featured judged Dread, which seems to kind of everybody whoever became anybody in
6:46
British comics worked on that comic for a certain period of time. I certainly
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did. Now two thousand AD was that? Did they have different topics that
6:57
were in the same magazine or what exactly what he does what you in America
7:00
would call an anthology. We just that's how our British comics come out.
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That way, They're always come out with about sixty different stories contained to them,
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and you followed the story every week, and they come out every week
7:10
rather than every month, so it's a different format, but that way you've
7:13
got a wide variety of stuff. Just dread was by far the best thing,
7:15
and everybody wanted to work on that character. He became a phenomenon and
7:20
was part of that revolutionary further that grip comics in the eighties, leading to
7:26
you know, the more kind of radical stuff from people like Howard Shaking in
7:30
America and Lost Bros. And Andez, you know, all that stuff.
7:35
Dave Stevens, even with his rocketeer, that was quite a substantial piece that
7:41
kind of whole period where the you know, it felt like the British had
7:45
taken over everything in the comic industry with their harder, more cynical, darker
7:50
tone. But it was a good, very exciting time, but you know,
7:58
it came to an end, like or all kind of movements too.
8:01
Now I want to fast forward a little bit, and since we're primarily talking
8:05
filmmaking, I was hoping that we could walk through kind of your backstory with
8:11
starting with Mad Max too, and then kind of you know, obviously going
8:16
through the entire story of working with the film. So can you describe You
8:20
said you were in Australia when you first saw the first the second Mad Max
8:24
film. I was doing what is now called a gap here where I finished
8:30
university, and I had saved up a few dollars in the days and then
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you didn't have to pay monstrous university fees, and I decided to go on
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a trip around the world. So I bactually took to the Hippie Trail as
8:43
as known, which was I went through Egypt, through India, you know,
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to through Nepal into Indonesia, down to Australia and then across through Hawaii
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into Los Angeles and back to London. So it's quite an interesting trip.
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Took over a year and we I got to Australia. Your a lot of
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work there as a because it's you know, it's part of the UK Commonwealth.
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And so I got a job, my very first job in animation with
9:09
Hannah Babera, doing something like a Yogi Bear special for something. It's pretty
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horrific sum you know that. Just let me stay in Australia, replenish the
9:20
water. And while I was there, they became interested in surfing, which
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then wasn't really much of a thing. I'm going back for hers a year,
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isn't it. It wasn't the thing it's become now. It was very
9:31
underground, just kind of a few coastal towns we'd had some sort of surfer
9:35
pothead type people and then so I was obviously at the surfing and also at
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the same time Mad Max two came out, i'd see mag maxwan. In
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those days you saw films in what we're known as midnight specials, which was
9:48
double bill screenings of our rated movies, usually in porn theaters that were being
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common here for the evening to show the film. So I saw Mad maxwe
10:00
on a double bill with Cars a Paris, which is a great double bill,
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and it kind of alerted me to suvoltploy Station films. As you know,
10:07
there seemed to be something strange about because Australian car movies. We'll be
10:13
right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show.
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But also over the two seminal directors of the Hollywood New Revolutionary New Wave,
10:28
which the Australian New Wave, which were Peter Weir and George Miller. So
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when I saw mag Max Sue would just come out when I was in Australia,
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I went on to see it and I was absolutely blown away. It
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was kind of like one of those fundamental moments where your psyche is rearranged by
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a piece of art, and you have to and you realize that you have
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to. You know it's somehow it's going to have this sort of enormous effect
10:52
upon you. Well, with the third thing and the Magmax film, I
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concocted a comic strip with Peter Milligan, writer called Free Wave, which was
11:00
basically mag Maxco surfing on my way back into La the first time in La,
11:05
I decided to try and pictures and really didn't know the hell I was
11:09
doing, you know, just sort of ridiculous really, But in the end
11:13
I mean to sell it as a comic rather than the film, and that
11:16
led to a career of American comics, and then the comic strip Freakwave,
11:22
which was this Magmaxco surfing thing, then led on to our own being given
11:28
my own comic called Strange Days, which it was produced with Peter Milligan and
11:31
Brett Humans and featured Freakwave in a more mutated form. I'd been influenced strongly
11:37
by Zardos, John Boorman Surf Fight film Floating Heads. So the Freakwave strip
11:45
that started off of the Magmaxco Surfing touch strip of water World evolved into more
11:50
of a psychedelic Alice in Wonderland, type of psychedelic version of Magmatics. And
11:58
so that was my interest in Mad Max. I think while I was in
12:01
Australia to try and meet called mad Maxpieve. I did Mad Max two and
12:05
I met everybody, the writers of producers, everybody except George Muller. He
12:07
was more elusive, so I never met him. I was just a young
12:11
guy, you know, He's just hanging around the offices of George Muller's production
12:13
company seeing you like and meet and loves behold, you know, sort of
12:18
about twenty years almost fifteen years later, or ending up in the offices of
12:22
George Miller writing your erode with him. So that was quite a strange twister
12:28
to face. Yeah, well, can we I want to rewind just a
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little bit to that first experience with Mad Max two. Can you talk a
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little bit about what you feel like you connected with specifically with that movie and
12:41
what really kind of like hits you. Yeah, I mean, did you
12:45
know when you were watching it that it was kind of like going to be
12:46
that old you know, life altering to you? It was, Yeah,
12:50
it was the thing about obviously in the air at that time, you just
12:56
had the massive punk revolution happening with the Sextist stores and the retail finistion of
13:00
music and culture by punk. It was very widespread and quite a deep turnaround
13:05
of you know, it upset all the sixties icons and all that stuff were
13:09
displaced by this new kind of or energy. And Mad Max two, the
13:16
first aad Max sort of had that feel in it as well, but Mad
13:18
Max two, because of the costuming and the more of a look, really
13:24
captured that energy. And I felt for me, Mad Max two was the
13:28
most immersive film experience I'd ever had up to that point in that as soon
13:33
as the film started and you cut through the early montage into mel Gibson and
13:39
Wez and all that stuff, you would right in the middle of his action,
13:41
and I was just absolutely taken with it, the shocking brilliance of the
13:46
costume designed, how good Mel Gibson was. I was just absolutely in that
13:52
movie from the moment it started right to the end when you know, he
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crushes the tanker collapses and he stands there holding the sands running through his and
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with a crooked grin on his face. From that whole that whole story and
14:05
how it arks and moves through it, the plots and stuff like that.
14:09
I was absolutely captivated. And when I walked out of the cinema, I
14:11
was so amboozled by what I've just seen. I just turned around and bought
14:16
a ticket and went back in again. I had to watch it again in
14:20
the vain hope that I could somehow figure out what they'd done, how they
14:24
produced this amazing work. But it took me about I saw it about probably
14:26
in the first month. I'd probably thought about twenty times, and you know
14:30
that you just had to buy a ticket and see it in the cinema because
14:33
we didn't have video recorders or anything. So you know, by asked about
14:39
the sixth or seventh viewing, I could start to actually watch the film as
14:43
to how it was being made. But because it took that long to not
14:46
get sucked into the narrative all the time. So it was become a very
14:50
important film to me, and it probably the film studied the most. And
14:52
so I've probably seen about one hundred times, you know, just and also
14:56
I revisited it then a lot when we were doing Fury Road. Um.
15:01
But so I feel, you know, there was something you know, George
15:07
captured lighting in a bottle in that film, and I think it's you know,
15:09
I think most people consider it the best of the man Max trilogy.
15:15
Readings from the Amongous, the Lord Amongous, the warrior of the Wasteland.
15:26
Here tula, how a repord roller. I am greatly disappointed. Again you
15:35
have media my door. Look at what remains gnant Scots. Why gasity you
15:48
were not? No my Christmas say you've land to take your gasity off the
15:56
wasteland. You'll send them out this morning to find a vehicle already big enough
16:03
the whole, that fat tank of gas. What a pune bland. Look
16:08
around you, it is a value day. Nothing could escape the amongous rules
16:21
away slides and nothing amongous. Will you not be any I gotta I gotta
17:02
go. Why no more gas, no more games? You're here we call
17:26
with an all. No, oh my god, we go and wait out.
17:37
Rut job, your lam law, stealing, my m stand pain.
18:00
We all are someone below, but we do it my way. We do
18:07
it my way. I fear is on my line. The gasoline will be
18:14
hours. Then you should have your revenge. M take you away. Oh
18:38
there has been too much violence, too much pain. Not here without seeing.
18:47
But I am an honorable compromise. Just walk away, give your palm,
18:55
the boy carefully and the whole car and that spare you live. Just
19:03
walk away? Do you see that? Just walk away? And the horror?
19:17
I waited to ask. So moving on, you tried over the years
19:21
you created um freak Wave, and you you were trying to get in touch
19:26
with George Miller, and you finally got in touch with him. Can you
19:30
describe a little bit that first meeting with him and kind of what you learned
19:33
and what that kind of maybe maybe how he was different than what you were
19:37
expecting, or just what that was like, right, Um, Well,
19:41
as a as a son by this stage, I'm a lifelong Mad Max fan,
19:45
I'm I've been disappointed by Thunderdome. Although Thunderdom had loads of great stuff
19:48
and it's somehow didn't quite gel and because they decided strategically to do it as
19:53
a family friendly film, it meant that stuff like the Thunderdome, which is
19:59
a phenomenally great idea, had become sort of watered down a bit. And
20:03
if that had been an R rated Mad maxilm from thetime, probably could have
20:07
been the best of them, you know, But that's the way h has
20:11
to go. So we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
20:19
And now back to the show. I mean, I had all those feelings
20:25
and you know, insights about the Mad Max trilogy. And so what happened
20:30
is that I was working on a TV series which is the world's first computer
20:33
animated long form pre Pixar and dreamwork stuff called Reboot. And Reboot was a
20:40
CGI TV series made in Canada in this sort in the in the TV series,
20:45
we featured different pastiches you know we might do. We did one based
20:49
on Michael Jackson's Thriller. We did another one based on the James Bond connorary
20:55
films. So we did one as a pastiche of Mad Max to Road Warrior.
21:00
And I actually sent a VHS of that episode to George Miller just saying
21:06
with a little card on it saying, whatever happened to Mad Max? Question
21:08
mark? And so this pastige of Road Warrior, which was really quite funny
21:11
and clever George saw it. At that time, computer animation wasn't widely known
21:17
and understood. Lots of people say what is this, and so it's called
21:21
CGI animation. Sobers a free pix up and so they were interested in finding
21:29
out more about the computer animation. Really, so I went down to Hollywood
21:33
to have a meeting with them, which I though would last about half an
21:36
hour, because they were thinking about doing a Mad Max TV series along the
21:40
lines of the Zena and Hercules. This is going back, you know,
21:42
well we nearly twenty years now pre Netflix. So they were looking to think
21:49
could we make vehicles or environments for a TV series with a you know,
21:55
possible Mad Max TV series wouldn't have been wouldn't have had mel Gidson, and
21:59
it would have just you know, being a Warner Brothers Zeno type TV series
22:03
and som and we just sort of talked, you know, and I talked
22:07
about you know, probably Joe, George and Walls talking about Mad Max and
22:11
stuff. But but we had a very good, intense, honest conversation about
22:15
Mad Max, why it was great and what worked and I didn't work,
22:18
you know in the trilogy. A fan of the third one, well,
22:26
well, I think there's a load of great stuff in the third one.
22:29
It just didn't quite work. And I think the first half is very good
22:30
and very credible as a Mad Max thought. Second half of the kids,
22:34
I think the kids are the biggest mistake on the third one that he instead
22:37
of instead of treating them with the rigorousness of something like Lord of the Flies
22:41
where we look at a child society, he just kind of went cute on
22:47
them, you know. So I think once you go cute, I feel
22:48
like you to get in grammatically. Um anyway, So look me and you're
22:56
just in the end gap shopping for about three hours or something insane. Rather
23:00
than that, we just kind of clicked and hit it off. And before
23:04
I left, I pitched him an idea from Ad Max four, which is
23:07
completely mental and very silly, but it had some elements in it that were
23:11
later going to turn up in Fury Road. So I left, and you
23:17
know, we said, you know, we'll coming in again at some point.
23:18
There might be something. In the meantime, George has now started to
23:22
because I've been talking so much about the Mad Max film, and I guess
23:26
it would been dormant in him. He'd probably been thinking about it too.
23:30
He starts to moll over ideas for a fourth Mad Max film, and I
23:34
think the TV series faded away and he just focused now then on the Mad
23:38
Max film. So I've got a phone call three or four months later after
23:42
that meeting saying, George has got an interesting new idea for the Mad Maxilm
23:47
and you have to go into Sydney and maybe knock it around with him.
23:49
And primarily thought me as just you know, he was going to hire another
23:55
writer and I was going to design it as we went along. You know,
23:57
I'd bought it and I'd design it and you know, to fill it
24:00
out as we sort of discussed the narrative and as as. So when I
24:06
went out to Australia con Sidney to work with George in the end, he
24:10
just said to me he liked my ideas, saying, like she said,
24:11
listen to you want to write the film with me? I said, I'd
24:15
love to write the film, but you've got there in mind. I've never
24:18
written the whole of near future film before, and he don't worry. I
24:21
have n so he'd be enough denominated for Babe and stuff like that. So
24:26
you know, ad Lorenzo's oil so um. So we just said about it
24:32
and he kind of adopted his way of working, I think to fit me
24:34
because I could write and draw as we went along. We used a thing
24:38
called a whiteboard with an electronic. It's an electro board. It's called it's
24:42
especied a giant whiteboard which you can which runs, you know, which you
24:45
can print out what you've drawn on the whiteboard. So what we would do
24:49
is every day we would write a little scene and I draw, you know,
24:52
little sun mail storyboards of the camera angles with if there are new vehicles
24:56
in it. If he came to a period in the Fury Ros films they
25:00
where the buzzards up here. Now I can remember when we we've got the
25:03
film to that point, he thought, right, we need a new tribe.
25:07
The audience is now getting used to everything. We've got to just get
25:10
them something they haven't seen before, and then they think okay. And then
25:12
gradually the buzzards evolved from an idea of looking at lizards in the Australian backlupping
25:18
out back. Thorny back lizards are covered in spikes, and also Peter Weir's
25:23
cards at eight Paris, that spikey volswagen, you know that sort of thought,
25:29
well, there's a look here. And then once I added bud sauce,
25:33
so they could go up there quick, nimble or card then get right
25:37
in and they can take the wheels out on a big truck in a few
25:40
seconds because of their bud saws that the idea they go in and out fast.
25:44
They're a bit like we wanted to do a vehicular equivalent of coyotes or
25:49
hyenas. Something scavengey badly feeling of being scavenged. Just come in an outfit
25:56
quick, let somebody else almost do the kill, and then take the the
26:00
booty, you know. So that would be an example of so how the
26:03
Buzzards appeared in the movie with be his armple of how Meny and George would
26:08
worked together on the film. He wrote it the film chronologically and really felt
26:12
every moment as he went along. And so when we get to the next
26:17
minute, we were acutely aware of where's the audience. How savvy are the
26:22
audience about what's just been shown. They're gonna, you know, they probably
26:26
have now absorbed everything. We've got to deliver something brand newt at this point
26:30
in the film, and that escalates the film further, so that we were
26:33
very aware of, you know, judge, George's great gift is he knows
26:37
where the audience is all the time. That's a fantastic thing that I learned
26:40
from him always know where the audience is in relation to where you are in
26:44
the film. Now, when you say where the audiences, you mean how
26:47
much they know about what's going on? Well, where are they emotionally?
26:51
Where are they at the point that you're showing them something? What are they
26:55
feeling? Because you have to orchestrate the emotional response of the audience. That's
27:00
ultimately what film is, isn't right, So what was the origin of I
27:04
mean, what did he have ready when you started working on it? Was
27:07
there already a basic story? Yeah, George had. George had just almost
27:12
like a one line, one sentence storyline about you know, there's a citadel
27:22
run by a warlord. He's got five he's got a bunch of girls and
27:26
there there weren't five at the time, and his favorite warrior woman takes his
27:36
sneaks these women out on a supplier run and takes them, then takes off
27:40
with them to take them to her own ancestral home called the Green Place of
27:44
Many Mothers, And in taking them there, she incites an armada to follow
27:51
her with mad Max strapped to the front of one of the hot rods,
27:55
and ultimately Mad Max, who's a man who is you know, probably a
28:00
saying through isolation who doesn't want to be involved against it, his instincts for
28:06
survival becomes involved, and by the fernale of the film we see that he
28:12
has actually formed an attachment and express his love to this warrior woman who probably
28:22
feels the same way about him. And so you have this quite interesting story
28:26
structure we've got. You've got two distart parks that join together and actually come
28:32
together right at the end of Back Too, where the reverse you know,
28:34
to return decision to return to Zell rather than rather than running away from where
28:42
you know your oppression is and all the rest is to find somewhere where the
28:45
grass is greener. And then they find there is no such place. There
28:48
is only the place they are in, and you have to change that rather
28:52
than leaving it. That's the kind of lesson we want to say in terms
28:56
of the subjects to the film. And so at the point when he then
29:00
turns around with her and takes control when he said it's his idea to go
29:04
back to the citadel, when she has led them on this, if you're
29:07
like will goose Chase to a green place that doesn't exist anymore, it becomes
29:14
Max's mission if you're like all of their mission, but he's fully joined in
29:18
earnest and is fully engaged. Above our writing board all the time, we
29:23
had a phrase that said engaged to heal, meaning that's Max's journey. Now,
29:30
can you talk a little bit about how you work with your creative process?
29:36
I mean, do you would you guys sit in a room and just
29:37
throw ideas out or would you go away and start kind of brainstorming on your
29:42
own and then come back and then start talking about what you would come up
29:47
with? And can you just talk a little bit about how you how you
29:51
work creatively? Yeah? All right, Well, well I'll talk about how
29:56
he worked on Mad Max Fury Road because I work on my own and if
30:00
I'm drawing a graphic novel, writing and drawing one very quiet in sort of
30:03
process, and I like that I need to be able to be very quiet
30:07
so I can travel imaginatively in my own mind to draw my graphic novels if
30:14
they're a fantasy based, which usually out. But for Mad Max, it
30:18
was very much something that if you like, it was like two men in
30:22
the Thunderdome. There was meat, there was a himself, and there was
30:25
George and basically suit of us are in this in his studio called the mad
30:30
Max Room. In the end of the room designated where we're stix sed uff
30:34
up on the walls and grated it and came covered in storyboards to the point
30:37
where the whole place was completely at the end of the movie. We had
30:42
the storyboarding process. We own get about over three thousand storyboards up in the
30:47
wall. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now
30:55
back to the show. And so really, what what what would do is
31:02
that we're coming to work every morning. I mean I'd run into work every
31:04
morning sometimes because it was so exciting to find out what the what the hell
31:08
can happen next in the story? And we didn't know, you know,
31:11
so we had a right There was a very different ending to Fury Road that
31:15
we were working towards. It was in the end. I just walked in
31:18
one day said you know what, they've got to go back, and then
31:19
we thought, well, hang on a minute, and we had a big
31:22
who are about that? And gradually, you know, the reasons for going
31:26
back overpowered the reasons for continuing to go out into the waist land. So
31:30
that was a big turnaround. But generally, you know, I'd think about
31:34
the we had a very powerful, strong, you know, creative game of
31:41
tennis going on myself and George. So if I'd come in, you know,
31:45
part of the thing was to come in with a great idea and say,
31:48
right, this is what happens next, and he go brilliant, and
31:49
then that happens, So you'd kind of have a brainstorming. You know,
31:53
I'd hit him one, he'd hitting you back one, and you know,
31:56
gradually the idea would cannon up was to become what it was. You know,
32:00
sometimes there go nowhere and you would come up with characters that didn't work
32:06
or were superfluous or two manny characters, so you have to shave them down
32:09
a bit. But really the first year was us to create the whole storyline,
32:14
figuring out all out, un drawing all designs. I did the first
32:17
path on the entire movie in the first year, and by the end of
32:21
it we had a kind of a document which was a kind of it was
32:24
like a mixture of a script and a manifesto and a design journal, and
32:32
from that we started to storyboard the film for the next year with Peter Pound
32:37
and Mark Sexton, these great Australian artists, and so that became then the
32:45
team and with the storyboarding, George could then become much more specific about cameras
32:51
and directing and really he's George has pointed out in other interviews, you can't
32:54
really script action, you know, it's very difficult to script action in a
33:00
it's much better to its actually to find through storyboarding where cameras are, where
33:04
people are located on vehicles, and it just makes it the process so much
33:07
easier because you know where everybody is and what they're doing. And you also
33:12
then start to realize how much design plays a part in the story, like
33:15
you have to because are certain things you want to happen in the script.
33:21
You then that then that then alters the design play of the vehicles. Like
33:25
example, when we come out with the idea of the thundersticks, there's beegle
33:29
lancers with explosives on the end of them that they throw things to blow them
33:32
up. That meant that the design of the vehicles had to change when we
33:38
came up with them a bit late. You know, we came up we
33:40
didn't come up under the beginning. We fund up to them later and then
33:44
retrospectively change the designs of the vehicles so that all the thundersticks would sit properly
33:49
in the vehicles, you know. So I'm just saying that there there's a
33:52
constant interaction between design, storyboard, text, dialogue. All that stuff was
33:58
just just a bond, giant feedback loop, right. Is there anything that
34:04
you specifically learned from working with George Miller? Oh? Yeah, I mean
34:08
I've never written a Hollywood feature film before, so I got to understand the
34:14
art of a Hollywood film and how how long, you know, just roughly,
34:17
the work that goes into it, how how much stuff needs to be
34:22
in a film to keep you interested all the way through. I particularly learned
34:27
about things like George's theory of the wave in a film, which is he
34:32
says you can't he says certain. I mean he didn't say this. This
34:37
is just me observing certain directors who aren't. If you take a director like
34:42
Tim Burton, for example, he's a very interesting director and now and then
34:45
his films work very well, sometimes they don't, And there's a sort of
34:49
site with Tim Burton. I feel that he has a problem constructing a narrative
34:53
through an entire movie that the narrative doesn't rise and fall and then pressend and
35:00
end in the way that he should. Through a feature film, that's sometimes
35:06
the way that you're following of the story collapses, and then he's got to
35:09
prank it back up again through special effects or music and get you back it
35:14
up into the place he wants you to be. So I've become quite aware
35:17
of of films that run out of steam particuarly in the second act, that
35:22
kind of stuff. So George's thing was that you have to make the first
35:25
act so strong that it propels you with all the drama through the long arc
35:31
of the second act of the movie. So and then you know you have
35:38
to end then on a very strong note. It's and also his thing of
35:43
how you leave the movie is you know, when you're walking out of the
35:45
movie, the feeling you have in you as you leave the movie is really
35:49
important as well how strong it is. An amateur resonance, I learned a
35:52
lot of that kind of stuff I learned from George that I wasn't that aware
35:55
of it. Was kind of vaguely aware of it, but I hadn't articulated
35:59
before. And I learned about camera placings about pure action. I happen to
36:04
think when George Miller does car action, I feel that he's at his most
36:08
pure as a director. That's why I love him the most, you know,
36:10
Like I mean, I like, I appreciate Babe, which is superb.
36:15
I appreciate happy feet in the Lonzo's Oil, et cetera. But to
36:21
me, the Shia poetry of George Miller doing the vehicular disruption, there's something
36:25
about that. It's a bit like Jackson Pollock doing his drip paintings, or
36:30
living about the Eights writing Easter nineteen sixteen or something. You know, There's
36:34
something about George Miller doing vehicular destruction that rises to the level of art.
36:40
I don't know why that is, but the first time I saw Fury Road
36:45
finally finished at the premiere the other night, I felt like, this is
36:51
actually like more of a work of art, you know, as a as
36:53
a example of an art form. This is really good, you know,
36:57
like in terms of the cinematography, the action, and the structure. It
37:00
felt very accomplished to me, like like like a great painting or something,
37:06
or a piece of great music. I felt that George had achieved that in
37:09
Fury Road. I will just point out a personal HiPE high point in my
37:16
life was actually going to the premier of Mad Max Fury Road down at in
37:22
Hollywood Boulevard the other last week a few days ago, and I sat down,
37:29
you know, in a nice chair to watch Fury Road and who sat
37:31
down behind me Mel Gibson and George Miller directly behind me, and we lotched
37:38
the film together. And at the end of the film, you know,
37:42
I turned around and George put his hand down and said Thankspend and that was
37:45
fantastic, and Mell said, good job man. So I got my handshaken
37:50
by Mel Gibson and George Miller, which was was Yeah, it was a
37:52
great as somebody who absolutely loved The Road Warrior and for whom it was a
37:59
life change in film. George Miller and Mel Gibson are the sort of Martin
38:02
Scorsese and Demiro of Australia and film. You know, they're they're a very
38:07
deep combo, you know that Lennon McCartney, Simon garfunk Board, They're one
38:13
of those very very powerful to watch a film, you know that I've had
38:17
a hand in making with those guys together as a great moment. Now,
38:23
was there a difference in the U Was there anything that surprised you when you
38:27
saw that at the premiere, like about the story or anything. Yeah,
38:30
well, I I purposely kept away from really looking at any other versions of
38:35
the film, like you know, screenings and fact you know, all that
38:38
sort of So I didn't want to say, I just want to see George's
38:40
final version. I just want to see what George Miller you know, does
38:45
to mad Max Fury Road. You know, that's what I wanted to see.
38:46
I didn't want to see the previous versions, you know, where this
38:50
season has been distilling it or that seen being cart or I didn't have the
38:52
narrative or whatever. I just wanted to see the final thing. And it
38:57
was different. Yeah, I mean it's it's it's an eighty five percent what
39:00
I wrote with George, you know. I it's exactly the same story and
39:04
everything happens the same way. Some of the dialogue is different, and you
39:07
know, honestly, I would take issue with some of the dialogue, but
39:13
that's that's that's you know, that's me as a writer sort of thinking,
39:17
no, I don't think that works, or I wouldn't have done that.
39:20
There and there's other bits where I where I looked that stuff with George which
39:23
he changed and he made it better. So you know, it's all swings
39:27
and roundabouts or it isn't right. Yeah, I always you wonder what it
39:31
would have been like with Mel Gibson in it too, you know. Yeah,
39:35
well I wrote. I mean what I wrote and was involved in was
39:37
the Mel Gibson version, you know, in the fourth Mel Didson film in
39:42
the Magmax series. So that's why I was interested in I actually wanted.
39:45
I was an advocate for Mel Gibson, probably long after anybody else was,
39:50
because I thought, I think it's interesting that he got this guy when he
39:52
was really young in the first Mad Max film, and if you do Magmax
39:55
four, you've got him on the cusp of going into your age. We'll
40:01
be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show,
40:10
and then really come back to him in another twenty years when it's like
40:15
melt you know, it's Mad Maximi Vigison and he's a crazy old continent.
40:21
I think I think that would have been an amazing arc of that, you
40:24
know, of an actor and a film series that nobody had ever done before.
40:28
Anyway in the end, because of because of the reality of filmmaking and
40:34
how long it took to get Melt traded out of it. It did go
40:38
to Heath Ledger apparently George the sod of me the other day and and once
40:45
he passed away it you know, George was looking for that slightly similar kind
40:52
of animal spirit that you found into some hardy. But if you look at
40:57
if you go to the website which features my original concept art for mad Max
41:01
Fury Road, it's called art Brendon dot com aartbr e n da N dot
41:08
com art Brendon dot com. If you go to that, you'll see a
41:15
production art which shows mel Diodson in certain you know, sequences and stuff,
41:21
so you know, you'll get a feeling of what it could have been like.
41:24
Now, are you going to be involved with the future films or is
41:29
that something that's kind of on the on the horizon. I don't know,
41:32
And you know, I mean, let's see how it, Let's see what
41:36
it does at the box office, and if there are any future films,
41:37
you know what I mean. I thought that's you know, there's a long
41:39
way to go with took of eighteen years to get this one made, so
41:44
if there is another one, if there is another one or two, that
41:49
they won't take along the thing about but I'm very you know about when I
41:57
when I entered into the relationship for George in order to produce the Fury Road
42:01
script and designs, we always had an agreement, a hand shape agreement.
42:07
But if this wasn't absolutely stunningly brilliant, we shouldn't do We should not disappoint
42:15
Mad Max people by putting out a lackluster reboot. And so thankfully Fury Old.
42:21
I feel everybody feels it's past the test and it's probably as good as
42:25
Mad Max two. A think it's better, but it's certainly as good as
42:29
the best in the series. That's that's pretty much when we were, when
42:32
we were actually writing and working in the early days of Fury Road. I
42:37
mean, I couldn't from myself to look like like we both did everything that
42:40
we could, like things like Bullet and you know, Fast and the Fury.
42:45
It's just look at the competition, see what do we have to beat
42:50
out there? And quite frankly, in the end, the only competition we
42:52
had is Mad Max two. Really nothing has to feel beaten. Mad Max
42:58
two in terms of sheer through all power, and so that became the thing
43:02
that we had to not something beat, but that was the art thing that
43:07
we had to at least equal or surpass Mad Max two in the new one.
43:12
So I think having proved that with Fury Road, that George can you
43:15
know tick ass on the vehicular destruction thrull side of life, Well, you
43:22
know you might find the next Mad Max if one's made. You know,
43:27
I don't believe I'd be quiet. I think people would be bored by a
43:30
rerun of Fury Road, which just like loads and loads of just cars smashing
43:35
into each other. You can't do that again, you know, you've got
43:37
so really I feel that the sequels of Fury Road, you know, it's
43:44
got an inch upon a great idea. There's got to be a core concept
43:46
at it, you know, that is compelling enough, just as this one
43:50
had a guy who's breeding wives, a guy who's breeding with women to try
43:57
and perpetuate his own dynasty, which is what it kind of became in Fury
44:00
Road as the core idea that around which the whole story revolves. You need
44:06
something very strong and compelling in a sequel, and a core idea which motivates
44:12
an entire story. So you know, that's you know, sometimes that can
44:15
the easiest said and done. If that maybe George has got that idea.
44:20
I don't know, but you know that's the thing I'd be looking for though,
44:23
is too is again, don't make Mad Max sequels just for the hell
44:30
of them, you know, just make make one if you've got one to
44:31
make. And I think George has an integrity around the Mad Max franchise that
44:36
he's not going to He's not going to dilute it and to turn it into
44:39
you know, some yeah, just yeah, another terminator, a sequel that
44:45
you're usually sort of hump, you know, right, Okay, Now what
44:50
are you working on now in terms of your your own projects? Well,
44:53
at the moment, I'm um, I'm in the tail end. I'm in
44:58
the final sort of a few episodes of a graphic novel comic book series called
45:05
Dream Gang, which could be best described as the X and Men meets Inception,
45:09
although it's a lot more David Lynch than that. But basically it's about
45:15
a group of psychics you perject themselves into dream worlds and uncover a kind of
45:20
conspiracy to destroy the higher functions. Of the human race, so that we
45:24
stop having dreams and visions, and you know, musicians stops making songs,
45:30
and poets stop writing poetry. My luc Kane doesn't say I have a dream
45:34
any because all that's gone. We've remove all that. We just become kind
45:37
of a keen to cattle consuming cattle anyway. That's the sort of conspiracy that
45:44
these these psychics find when they're wandering around in people's dreams, and they have
45:49
to kind of pull themselves together and do something about it and sometimes defeat this
45:55
this dark conspiracy. So that's what I'm working on at the moment, and
45:59
I'm when I get back to my home, I shall be starting work in
46:02
a couple of days again and get and bring it a thing. I've also
46:07
written a couple of new feature films, and that's why I'm here in Hollywood,
46:10
just doing some meetings and seeing capitalyzing on the bugs from Mad Max.
46:16
Right have you are? You? Have you more comfortable now with like writing
46:21
actual screenplays and things like that. I like working with somebody. I'm I'm
46:28
collaborated. Really, I enjoy working with somebody. So I'm one of those
46:30
guys that sort of you know, you know you think of a cichade Hollywood
46:35
writing partner. One guy sits at the type writer guy walks around punching the
46:38
air and coming up the crazy ship. Well, I'm sort of those tart
46:43
relationships suit me the best, you know, where I have a the person,
46:46
you know, the kind of I collaborated that can kind of give it
46:53
structure and you know, he knows that the traditional structures of the screen,
46:59
right, and then I can then take take it and collaborate and bounce ideas
47:05
with them and hopefully between two of us come up with something better than we
47:07
would on arn. Well, Brendan, I appreciate it, and I know
47:13
you've got a run, so I'll let you go, but I really appreciate
47:15
your time and best of luck in the future. And you know, congratulations
47:19
with the success of Mad Max Free Room. You've seen it? Yeah,
47:22
yeah, I saw it and I was absolutely blown away. Yeah, and
47:27
do you did you know the original trilogy? Yeah? I mean Mad Max
47:30
Too is one of my all time favorites and the original Mad Max. You
47:35
know, those are two of my favorite movies. And how did you did
47:37
you how did you feel Thunderdomes sat with the original trilogy? I was never
47:43
you know. I my memory of Thunderdome was always seeing the Tina Turner video
47:49
that was on like MTV, like over and over and over. Yeah.
47:52
Yeah, And I remember seeing that and I don't think I ever even saw
47:54
it in the theater. When I saw Mad when I saw Mad Max two
47:59
or Road Warrior, you know, I saw it on TV, and so
48:02
I would watch it on a VHS tape and I you know, I recorded
48:06
it and it was kind of edited down, so it was like they cut
48:08
out a lot of the scenes and everything. But I would watch it in
48:12
slow motion. The first scene where um Wez is chasing after him, I
48:15
would watch all that in slow motion to see how they you know, And
48:19
I wanted to be a filmmaker. Yeah, since I was a little kid.
48:22
I was like, that was my movie, you know. And how
48:24
did you feel that Fury Road? How did it compare to the front of
48:29
you Do you think it's perfect fit into the cannon? You see? Well,
48:32
the thing that I was excited about because when I first saw the preview,
48:36
I didn't know it was even something that they were making, you know,
48:38
because when I would go see like I saw Babe, and I saw
48:42
all these other movies, and I would see George Miller's name attached, and
48:45
I was like, is that the same is that Road Warrior? George Miller?
48:47
And so I didn't really know he was even making it. And then
48:51
all of a sudden one day I see the preview for Fury Road and I
48:54
see that it's involving a truck. Yeah, the trailer, and you know,
49:00
it's got the truck and it's got everybody chasing after it. And I
49:02
was like, Wow, this is gonna be like taking the second half of
49:07
The Road Warrior, and that's going to kind of be the framework for the
49:10
entire movie exactly. So I was, you know, I really kind of
49:15
couldn't wait. You know, it was one of the I mean a lot
49:17
of people are excited about Star Wars. I was just like, you know,
49:21
counting down the days to watch Fury Road, you know, and I
49:23
was absolutely yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean they were the
49:28
only thing that I was was maybe different was just Tom Hardy playing the character
49:34
of Match. That's the big thing, right, And you know, there's
49:40
sounded a good job. And you know, I think overall the film and
49:45
mostly are pretty pleased with them. Yeah, And and for me, you
49:49
know, I really love you know, I had previously, like a week
49:52
or so before, gone to see The Avengers, and I can't tell you
49:57
how fed up I am with just digital effects and everything is like if I
50:02
left after about an hour and a half, I couldn't. I just a
50:06
so bored with it. Yeah, we'll be right back after a word from
50:10
our sponsor, and now back to the show. So I was just thrilled,
50:20
and especially I mean I've been glued to like YouTube looking at all the
50:22
behind the scenes footage and how they were able to put everything together, and
50:25
I think there's going to be there's there's really a vault going on to all
50:30
this CGI. And I think you see it in a new Star Wars movie
50:32
too, that people are like they want to see people in danger, you
50:37
know, Yeah, they want to really see a movie being made instead of
50:39
just everything done in the computer. Yeah. I think Mad Max Fury Road
50:44
is going to have a big influence on usual making from now on. It's
50:46
going to change the gear of it. As you're right about just all that
50:51
very unbelievable CGI. I want to thank Jason so much for doing such a
50:54
great job on this episode. If you want to get links to anything we
50:58
spoke about in this episode. Head over to the show notes at bulletproof Screenwriting
51:01
dot tv. Forward slash two eighty six. Thank you for listening, guys,
51:06
As always, keep on writing no matter what, We'll talk to you
51:08
said. Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv