Latest / Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast / IFH 693: Inside Writing the Oscar Nominated Mad Max: Fury Road with Brendan McCartney

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IFH 693: Inside Writing the Oscar Nominated Mad Max: Fury Road with Brendan McCartney · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

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You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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podcasts, just go to IFAH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Indie
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Film Hostle Podcast, Episode number six ninety three. If you want success,
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dot film bizbook dot com. That's film bizbook dot com. Enjoy today's episode
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with guest host Jason Buff. We're talking with mad Max Fury Road co writer.
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We're in McCarthy. I'm extremely excited about talking with Brendan mad Max Fury
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Road. Just blew my socks off. I can't believe that George Miller has
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gone back and made another Mad Max movie. For any of you that know
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the story about George Miller in the background of the Mad Max movies, you've
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got to be excited to know that this movie is out there. Now.
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I've seen it once. I can't wait to go see it again. But
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anyway, you know, so Brendan and I talk a little bit about his
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background in comics, but then we get straight into talking about working with George
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Miller on Fury Road. So here we go. The first thing I was
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hoping we could talk about it because most of our listeners are, you know,
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have a film background, but don't necessarily have a comic background. So
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I was wondering if you could talk about your background in comics and kind of
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what got you into doing comics in the first place. Okay, well,
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I read comics when I was a kid. I was I'm English, and
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in the UK we used to get American comics imported into certain newsagents and I
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would pick off spinner Rats, things like original things like This Big dig Goo,
3:08
Spider Man Run, Jack Irby's Fantastic four Run, and some of the
3:13
DC comics, the Silver aged ones like The Infantino Flash, Gilkane's dream Land
3:20
and Atom. So that was my choice. But I was raised on British
3:24
comics, but right as you moved over to the American comics and which at
3:28
that time acquataware in the UK, and that led to a lifelong interest in
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the comic book medium and desire to develop it turn into something akin to what
3:37
music occupies in culture or use of that we could grow this medium up and
3:42
do substantial works in the comic book field. I always had that intention.
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I always felt it was possible to become if you like the beatles of comics
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as opposed to you to turn comics into something much more exciting socially. And
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I was part of the eight UK what's known as the British Invasion, which
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led by Alan Moore, people like Neil Game and later Grant Morrison, John
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Wagner, writer or Chard strad Well. I was part of that original movement.
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And I worked with a writer called Peter Milligan who went on to be
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kind of big name writer in comics and worked for about fifteen years in comics
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before leaving to get into computer animation. Did you always did you start out
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doing things subjects that were more kind of surreal or did you start out doing
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more like traditional comics. But when I was a young kid of about ten,
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I was drawing my own superhero comics. You know, the Puma was
4:43
one of mine. You may never have heard of him and work. Yeah,
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exactly. It was a draw in the back of my school book.
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But as I went to art college and studied painting and Surrealism and Dadoism,
5:00
all the opened and expanded my understanding of visual of art, storytelling, all
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sorts of stuff. I did a painting and film degree, so it was
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at a strong interest in film as well. So when I started to actually
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produce my mature comics from but from my New Teams era, then the aspirations
5:19
had grown, pasted the heroes, and I was interested in surrealism and the
5:27
sort of At the time when I came of age, pump rock was happening,
5:31
so that that infused my art with a kind of ed geographic sensibility.
5:38
Not much of it inspired by a non comic artist called now what's his name?
5:44
He did the sex fistals posters. I did his name momentarily escapes to
5:46
me. He did all the famous sex fistols, Jamie something. Anyway,
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he was a big influence on me with that very hard edged, protocopied cut
5:56
up style, and I took that kind of style and just that just at
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the same time in the marketplace, Arising Up was a British comic or two
6:04
thousand AD, which featured Judge Dread, which seems to kind of everybody whoever
6:10
became anybody in British comics worked on that comic for a certain period of time.
6:15
I certainly did not. Two thousand A d was that Did they have
6:19
different topics that were in the same magazine or what exactly what he does what
6:25
you in America would call an anthology. We just that's how our British comics
6:28
come out. That way. They always come out with about six different stories
6:30
contained to them, and you followed the story every week, and they come
6:33
out every week rather than every month, so it's a different format, but
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that way you've got a wide variety of stuff. Just Dread was quite far
6:40
the best thing, and everybody wanted to work on that character. He became
6:44
a phenomenon and was part of that revolutionary further that grip comics in the eighties,
6:49
leading to you know, the more kind of radical stuff from people like
6:54
Howards Shaking in America and Lost Bros. And Andez, you know all that
7:00
stuff. Dave steven Zeten with his rocketeer, that was quite a substantial piece
7:05
that kind of whole period where the you know, it felt like the British
7:10
had taken over everything in the comic industry with a harder, more cynical,
7:15
darker tone. But it was a good, far, very exciting time.
7:21
But you know, it came to an end, like all kind of movements
7:26
too. Now I want to fast forward a little bit, and since we're
7:30
primarily talking filmmaking, um, I was hoping that we could walk through kind
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of your backstory with starting with Mad Max too, and then kind of you
7:39
know, obviously going through the entire story of working with the film. So
7:44
can you describe You said you were in Australia when you first saw the first
7:47
the second Mad Max film. I was doing what is now called a gap
7:53
here where I finished university, and I had saved up a few dollars in
7:59
the and then you didn't have to pay monstrous university fees, and I decided
8:03
to go on a trip around the world. So I beatually took to the
8:07
Hippie Trail as as known, which was I went through Egypt, through India,
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you know, using through Nepal into Indonesia, down to Australia and then
8:15
across through Hawaii into Los Angeles and back to London. So it's quite an
8:20
interesting trip for over a year. And well I got to Australia. You're
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a're allowed to work there as because it's you know, it's part of the
8:28
UK Commonwealth. And so I got a job, my very best job in
8:33
animation with Hannah Babera, doing something like a Yogi Bear special for something it's
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pretty um you know that. Just let me stay in Australia, replenish the
8:43
water. And while I was there, they became interested in surfing, which
8:48
then wasn't really much of a thing. I'm going back for as a year,
8:50
isn't it. It wasn't the thing it's become now. It was very
8:54
underground, just kind of a few coastal towns. We'd had some sort of
9:00
for pothead type people. And then so I was at the third thing and
9:05
also at the same time mad Max su came out, I'd see mag Maxwan.
9:09
In those days you saw films in what we're known as midnight specials,
9:13
which was double bill screenings of our rative movies, usually in porn theaters that
9:18
were being commonpeered for the evening to show the film. So I saw mag
9:24
Maxwe on a double bill with cars for eight Paris, which is a great
9:28
double bill and it kind of alerted me to sort of ultiploy station films.
9:31
As you know, there seemed to be something strange about because as Australian car
9:35
movies, but also the over the two seminal directors of the Upper Hollywood Revolutionary
9:41
New Wave, which the Australian New Wave, which were Peter Weir and George
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Miller. So what I saw mag maxsu would just come out when I was
9:52
in Australia. I went on to see it and I was absolutely blown away.
9:54
It was kind of like one of those fundamental we'll be right back after
9:58
a word from our sponsor and now back to the show moments where your psyche
10:09
is rearranged by a piece of art and you have to and you re like
10:11
that you have to. You know, it's somehow it's going to have this
10:15
sort of enormous effect upon you. Well, with the surf thing and the
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Magmax film, I concocted a comic strip with Peter Milligan writer called Freak Wave,
10:24
which was basically magmaxco surfing. On my way back into La the first
10:28
time in La, I decided to try and picture as a really didn't know
10:33
the hell I was doing, you know, just sort of ridiculous really,
10:35
but in the end I mean to sell it as a comic rather than the
10:37
film, and that led to a career of American comics, and then the
10:43
comic strip Freak Wave, which was this magmaxco surfing thing, then led on
10:48
to our own being given my own comic called Strange Days, which it was
10:54
produced with Peter Milligan and Brett Huans and featured Freak Wave in a more mutated
11:01
form. I'd been influenced strongly by Zargos, John Boorman, Surfight film,
11:05
Jazz Floating Heads. But so the Freak Way strip that started off as a
11:09
mad Max Goes surfing coat strip the water World, evolved in two more of
11:15
a psychedelic Awls in Wonderland type of psychedelic version of Magmatics, And so that
11:22
was my interest in Mad Max. I think what I was in Australia to
11:26
try and meet called Mad Maxpive. I did Mad Max too, and I
11:28
met everybody, the writers of producers everywhere, except George Muller. He was
11:33
more elusive, so I never met him. I was just a young guy,
11:35
you know, age twenty, just hanging around the offices of George Muller's
11:37
production company, seeing you I could meet and lets behold, you know,
11:41
sort of about twenty years one month, fifteen years later, I'm ending up
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in the offices of George Muller writing for Your Road with them. So that
11:50
was quite a strange twister to faith. Yeah, well, can we I
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want to rewind just a little bit to that first experience with Mad Max two.
12:00
Can you talk a little bit about what you feel like you connected with
12:03
specifically with that movie and what really kind of like hits you. Yeah,
12:07
I mean, did you know when you were watching it that it was kind
12:09
of like going to be that you know, life altering to you? It
12:13
was, Yeah, it was the thing about obviously in the air at that
12:18
time, you just had the massive punk revolution happening with the sex Pistols and
12:22
the redefinition of music and culture by punk. It's very widespread and quite a
12:28
deep turnaround of you know, it upset all the sixties icons and all that
12:33
stuff were displaced by this new cur or energy. And Mad Max two,
12:39
the first aad Max sort of had that feel in it as well, but
12:43
Mad Max two, because of the costuming and the more of a look,
12:48
really captured that energy. And I felt for me Mad Max two was the
12:52
most immersive film experience I'd ever had up to that point, in that as
12:56
soon as the film started and new cuts the early montage into mel Gibson and
13:03
Weiz and all that stuff, you were right in the middle of his action,
13:05
and I was just absolutely taken with it. The shocking brilliance of the
13:11
costume designed, how good mel Gibson was. I was just absolutely in that
13:16
movie from the moment it started, right to the end when you know,
13:18
he crushes the tanker collapses and he stands they're holding the sands running through his
13:24
hand with a crooked grin on his face. But from that whole, that
13:28
whole story and how it arked and moved through it, the plots and stuff
13:31
like that, I was absolutely captivated. And when I walked out of the
13:35
cinema, I was so bamboozled by what I just seen. I just turned
13:39
around and bought a ticket and went back in again. I had to watch
13:43
it again in the vain hope that I could somehow figure out what they'd done,
13:46
how they produced this amazing work. But it took me about I saw
13:50
it, but probably in the first month i'd probably thought about twenty times and
13:54
that you just had to buy a ticket and see it in the cinema because
13:56
we didn't have video recorders or anything. Um um. You know, by
14:01
after about the sixth or seventh viewing, I could start to actually watch the
14:05
film as to how it was being made. But because it took that along
14:09
to not get sucked into the narrative all the time. Um. So it
14:13
was become a very important film to me. And it's probably the film I
14:16
studied the most, and so I've probably seen about one hundred times, you
14:18
know, just then. Also I revisited it then a lot when we were
14:22
doing Fury Road. So I feel, you know, there was something you
14:30
know, George captured lightning in a bottle in that film, and I think
14:33
it's you know, I think most people consider it the best of the Mad
14:35
Max trilogy. Reading rom the Amongus, the Lord You Amongus, The Warrior
14:46
of the Weight Bland Heah Pola, a rap dead roller. I am really
14:56
disappointed again you have made unleash my jokes. Hole look at what remains,
15:05
but you can't scouts why because you're sending you all your gasity You're not no
15:16
my Christmas say you planned to take your gasitye all the waist land. You
15:22
send them out this morning to find a vehicle already big enough the whole that
15:28
fat tank of gas. What a pune plan. Look around you with you
15:37
is a day nothing could escape the humongous rules the waistlands and nothing humongous.
15:52
Will you not be hell? I gotta I gotta do? Why do more?
16:45
Gay? You're here? Brother? We call with an ah, no
16:57
be going wait out right out r D. It's still my door. I
17:22
understand you can. We all are someone below. But we do it my
17:29
way. I was a way. We do it my way. I fear
17:34
it's all my align. The gasoline billy horse. Then you should have your
17:41
revenge. M take you away. Oh let us been too much violence,
18:06
too much pain. Oh here I see, but I able compromise. Just
18:15
walk away the pomp, that boy, the gaff and the whole compound,
18:25
and I spare your lives. Just walk away, says, just woke away.
18:33
And there we've been into the horror. I wait, okay, So
18:42
moving on. You tried over the years, you you created um freak wave,
18:48
and you you were trying to get in touch with George Miller, and
18:51
you finally got in touch with him. Can you describe a little bit that
18:55
first meeting with him and kind of what you learned and what that kind of
18:59
maybe maybe how he was different than what you're expecting, or just what that
19:02
was like. Right well, as as a by this stage, I'm a
19:07
lifelong Mad Max fan. I've been disappointed by Thunderdome. Although funderdom and had
19:11
loads of great stuff, and it somehow didn't quite gel And because they had
19:15
decided strategically to do it as a family friendly film, it meant that stuff
19:22
like the Thunderdome, which is a phenomenally great idea, it had become sort
19:26
of watered down a bit, and it had been an R rated Mad maxilm.
19:30
Thunderdome probably could have been the best of them, you know, but
19:33
that's the way he chose to go. So, I mean, I had
19:37
all those ceilings and you know, insights about the Mad Max trilogy, and
19:41
so what happened is that I was working on a TV series which is the
19:45
world's first computer animated long form pre Pixar and Dreamwork stuff called Reboot. And
19:52
Reboot was a CGI TV series made in Canada. We'll be right back after
19:59
a word from our spont and now back to the show in this story.
20:07
In the in the TV series, we featured different pastiches you know we might
20:11
do. We did one based on Michael Jackson's Thriller, which did another one
20:15
based on the James Bond Connery films. So we did one as a pastiche
20:21
of Mad Max two Road Warrior, and I actually sent a VHS of that
20:26
episode to George Miller just saying with a little card or saying, whatever happened
20:30
to Mad Max question mark And so this pastichi of Road Warrior, which was
20:34
really quite funny and clever George Sawer. At that time, computer animation wasn't
20:40
widely known and understood. Lots of people to say what is this and sow
20:44
it's called CGI animation. So God did a three Pixar and so they were
20:51
interested in finding out more about the computer animation. Really, so I went
20:55
down to Hollywood to have a meeting with them, which I thought would last
20:59
about half an hour, because they were thinking about doing a Mad Max TV
21:03
series along the lines of Zena and Hercules. This is going back, you
21:06
know, well we nearly twenty years now free Netflix. Um, so they
21:11
were looking to think could we make vehicles or environments for a TV series for
21:18
with you know, possible Mad Max TV series wouldn't have been wouldn't have fact
21:22
Mel Gibson, and it would have just been a Warner Brothers Zena type TV
21:26
series. And so we just sort of talked, you know, and I
21:30
talked about you know, probably Joe Georgian Walls talking about Mad Max and stuff.
21:34
But but we had a very good, intense, honest conversation about Mad
21:40
Max, why it was great, and what worked and what didn't work,
21:41
you know in the trilogy. A fan of the third one, well,
21:48
oh well, I think there's a loadly of great stuff in the third one.
21:52
It just didn't quite work. I think the first half is very good
21:55
and very credible as a Mad Max thought. Second half of the kids,
21:57
I think the kids are the bigger the stake on the third one that he
22:00
sort of it's sort of treating them with a rigorousness of something like Lord of
22:04
the Flies where we look at a child society. He just kind of went
22:10
cute on them, you know. So I think once you go cute,
22:11
I feel like you to get in grammatically anyway. So look, I mean
22:19
you're just in the end shopping for about three hours or something and saying,
22:22
you know, rather than that, we just kind of clicked and hit it
22:26
off. And before I left, I pitched him an idea from Mad Max
22:30
four which is completely mental and very silly, but it had some elements in
22:33
it that were later going to turn up in Fury Road. So I left
22:40
and you know, we said, you know, we'll come then again at
22:41
some point there might be something. In the meantime, George has now started
22:45
to because I've been talking so much about the Mad Max film, and I
22:48
guess it had been dormant and he'd probably been thinking about it too. He
22:52
starts to moll over ideas for a fourth Mad Max film, and I think
22:59
the TV's he has faded away and he just focused now then on the Mad
23:03
Max film. So I've got a phone call three or four months later after
23:07
that meeting saying George has got an interesting new idea for the Man Maximum and
23:11
you have to go into Sydney and maybe knock it around with him. And
23:14
primarily thought me as just you know, he was going to hire another writer
23:18
and I was going to design it as he went along. You know,
23:22
I bought it and I'd design it and to fill it out. As we
23:25
sort of discussed the narrative and as as so when I went over to Australia
23:30
to Sydney to work with George. In the end, he just said to
23:33
me he liked my ideas, saying, she said, listen to you want
23:36
to write the film with me? I said, I'd love to write the
23:40
film, but you've got there in mind. I've never written the whole of
23:41
New Future film before and he don't worry. I had Ken so he'd be
23:48
enough. The nominated to Babe and stuff like that. So you know,
23:51
Adam Lorenzo's oil. So so we just said about it and he kind of
23:56
adopted his way of working, I think to fit me because I could write
24:00
and draw as we went along. We used the thing called a whiteboard with
24:03
an electronic it's an electro board. It's called it'spected a giant whiteboard which you
24:07
can which runs, you know, which you can print out what you've drawn
24:11
on the whiteboard. So what we would do is every day we would write
24:15
a little scene and I draw little submail storyboards of the camera angles, if
24:19
there were new vehicles in it. If he came to a period in the
24:22
Fury Road film, say where the buzzards appear. Now, I can remember
24:26
when we we've got the film to that point. He's got right, we
24:29
need a new tribe. The audience is now getting used to everything. We've
24:33
got to just getting something they haven't seen before, and then they think okay,
24:36
and then gradually the buzzards evolved from an idea of looking at lizards in
24:41
the Australian backup in outback thorny back lizards have are covered in spikes, and
24:47
also Peter wears cars at eight Paris, that spikey volswagen, you know that
24:52
sort of thought, well there's a look here, and then once I added
24:56
bud sauce so they could go up there quick, nimblet or card then get
25:00
right in and they can take the wheels out on a big truck in a
25:03
few seconds because of that bod sorts. That was the idea. They go
25:06
in and out fast. They're a bit like we wanted to do a vehicular
25:10
equivalent of coyotes or hyenas. Something scavenge you and it's badly feeling of being
25:17
scavenged. Just come in and outfit quick, let somebody else almost do the
25:22
kill, and then take the booty you know, so that would be an
25:26
example of so how the buzzards appeared in the movie. The visions arple of
25:30
how me and George would worked together on the film. We wrote it the
25:33
film chronologically and really felt every moment as he went along, And so when
25:38
we get to the next minute, we were acutely aware of where's the audience.
25:45
How savvy are the audience about what's just been shown? They're gonna you
25:48
know, they probably have now absorbed everything we've got delivered something brand new to
25:52
at this point in the film, and that escalates the film further. So
25:56
that we were very aware of, you know, judge George's great gift because
26:00
he knows where the audience is all the time. That's a fantastic thing that
26:03
I learned from him. Always know where the audience is in relation to where
26:07
you are in the film. Now, when you say where the audience is,
26:10
you mean how much they know about what's going on? Well, where
26:12
are they emotionally? Where are they at a point that you're showing them something?
26:18
What are they feeling? Because you have to orchestrate the emotional response of
26:21
the audience, define an ex sense. Ultimately, what film isn't it right,
26:26
So what was the origin of I mean, what did he have ready
26:30
when you started working on it? Was there already a basic story, Yeah,
26:33
George had. George had just almost like a one line, one sentence
26:38
storyline about you know, there's a citadel run by a warlord. He's got
26:47
five he's got a bunch of girls and there there weren't five at the time,
26:52
and his favorite warrior woman takes his speaks these women out on a supplier
27:00
on and takes them, then takes off with them to take them to her
27:06
own ancestral home called the Green Place of Many Mothers, and in taking them
27:11
there, she incites an armada to follow her, with mad Max Struck to
27:15
the front of one of the hot rods, and ultimately mad Max is a
27:21
man who is probably insane through isolation, who doesn't want to be involved against
27:27
his instincts for survival, becomes involved, and by the fernale of the film
27:36
we see that he ever actually formed an attachment and expresses love to this warrior
27:41
woman who probably feels the same way about him. And so you have this
27:48
quite interesting story structure. We've got. You've got two distart parks that join
27:52
together and actually come together right at the end of act two where the reverse
27:59
you know, to return, decision to return to the Zitadel rather than rather
28:03
than running away from where you know your oppression is and all the wrested to
28:07
find somewhere where the grass is greener, and then they find there is no
28:11
such greace. There is only the place they are in, and you have
28:15
to change that rather than leaving it. That's the kind of lesson we want
28:18
it to say in terms of the subject to the film. And so at
28:22
the point when he then turns around with her and takes control, when he
28:26
said it's his idea to go back to the citadel, when she has led
28:30
them on this, if you're like while Goose Chase to a green place that
28:33
doesn't exist anymore, it becomes Max's mission, if you're like all of their
28:40
mission. But he's fully joined in, earnest and is fully engaged. At
28:45
our writing board all the time, we had a phrase that said engaged to
28:49
heal, meaning that's Max's journey. Now, can you talk a little bit
28:55
about how you work with your creative process and you would you guys sit in
29:00
a room and just throw ideas out or would you go away and start kind
29:04
of brainstorming on your own and then come back and then start talking about what
29:08
you would come up with, And can you just talk a little bit about
29:12
how you how you work creatively, Yeah, all right, Well, well
29:18
I'll talk about how you worked on Mad Max Fury Road because I work on
29:22
my own and if I'm drawing a graphic novel, working and drawing one very
29:26
quiet insula process, and I like, I need to be able to be
29:30
very quiet so I can travel imaginatively in my own mind to draw my graphic
29:36
novels, if they're fantasy basishally usually out. But for Mad Max, it
29:41
was very much something that if you like, it was like two men in
29:45
the Thunderdome. There was meat, there was in itself, and there was
29:48
George. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now
29:56
back to the show. And basically sort of us were in this in his
30:03
studio called the Mad Max Room. In he had a room designated where we're
30:07
stixed up up on the walls and grated it and came covered in storyboards to
30:11
the point where the whole place was completely By the end of the movie,
30:15
we had the storyboarding process. We own had about over three thousand storyboards up
30:19
in the wall, and so really what what what we do is that we're
30:26
coming to work every morning. I mean I'd run into work every morning sometimes
30:29
because it was so exciting to find out what the what the hell can happen
30:32
next in the story and we didn't know, you know, so we had
30:34
a right There was a very different ending to Fury Road that we were working
30:38
towards. It was in the end when George walked in one day said you
30:41
know what, they've got to go back, and then we thought, well,
30:44
hang on a minute, and we had a big who about that,
30:47
and gradually, you know, the reasons for going back overpowered the reasons for
30:51
continuing to go out into the waste land. So that was a big turnaround.
30:56
But generally, you know, I think about the that we had a
31:00
very powerful, strong, you know, creative game of tennis going on myself
31:06
and George. So if if I'd come in, you know, part of
31:08
the thing was to come in with a great idea and say, right,
31:11
this is what happens next. Then you go brilliant and then that happens,
31:14
So you'd kind of have a brainstorming. You know, I'd hit him one,
31:18
he'd hitting you back one and you know, gragually the idea would cannon
31:21
up was to become what it was. You know, sometimes there go nowhere
31:25
and you would come up with characters that didn't work or were superfluous or two
31:30
manning characters, so we had to shave them down a bit. But so
31:33
really the first year was us to create the whole storyline, figuring all out,
31:38
un drawing all designs. I did the first path on the entire movie
31:41
in that first year, and by the end of it we had a kind
31:45
of a document which was a kind of it was like a mixture of a
31:49
script and a manifesto and a design journal, and that from that we started
31:56
to storyboard in the film for the next year with Peter Pound and Mark Sexton,
32:01
these great Australian artists, and so that became then the team. And
32:08
with the storyboarding, George could then become much more specific about cameras and directing
32:14
and really he's George has pointed out in other interviews, you can't really script
32:19
action, you know, it's very difficult to script action in a way.
32:22
It's much better to actually to find through storyboarding where cameras are, where people
32:27
are located, on vehicles, and it just makes it the process so much
32:30
easier because you know where everybody is and what they're doing. And you also
32:35
then start to realize how much design plays a part in the story, like
32:39
you have to if these are certain things you want to happen in the script,
32:44
you then then that then alters the design, say of the vehicles.
32:49
Like example, when we come up with the idea of the thundersticks, those
32:52
beagle answers with explosives on the end of them, they throw up things to
32:55
blow them up. That meant that the design of the vehicles had to change
33:01
when we came up with them a bit late. You know, we came
33:04
up, we did come up under the beginning. We fund up with them
33:06
later and then retrospectively changed the designs of the vehicles so that all the thundersticks
33:10
would sit properly in the vehicles. You know. So I'm just saying that
33:14
there was a constant interaction between design, storyboard, text, dialogue. All
33:20
that stuff was just just a one giant feedback loop, right. Is there
33:27
anything that you specifically learned from working with George Miller? Oh? Yeah,
33:31
I mean I'd never written a Hollywood feature film before, so I got to
33:36
understand the art of the Hollywood film and how you know how long you know,
33:40
just roughly, the work that goes into it, how how much stuff
33:45
needs to be in a film to keep you interested all the way through.
33:49
I particularly learned about things like George's theory of the wave in a film,
33:54
which is he says, you can't he says certain, I mean, you
34:00
didn't say this. This is just me observing certain directors who aren't. If
34:04
you take a director like Tim Burton, for example, he's a very interesting
34:07
director, and now and then his films work very well. Sometimes they don't,
34:10
and there's a sort of site with Tim Burton. I feel that he
34:15
has a problem constructing a narrative through an entire movie. That the narrative doesn't
34:20
rise and fall and then crescendo and end in the way that he should through
34:27
a feature film. That's sometimes the waves that you're following of the story collapses
34:31
and then he's got to prank it back up again through special effects or music
34:36
and get you back it up into the place he wants you to be.
34:38
So I've become quite aware of of films that run out of steam partly in
34:45
the second act that kind of stuff. So George thing was that you have
34:47
to make the first act so strong that it propels you with all the drama
34:53
through the long arc of the second act of the movie. So and then
35:01
you know you have to end inn on a very strong note. It's and
35:04
also this thing of how you leave the movie is you know, when you're
35:07
walking out the movie, the feeling you have in you as you leave the
35:10
movie is really important as well, how strong it is. An amateur resonance,
35:15
I learned a lot of that kind of stuff I learned from George that
35:17
I wasn't that aware of, you know, it was kind of vaguely aware
35:21
of it, but I hadn't articulated it before. And plus I learned about
35:23
camera placings, about pure action. I had to think, when George Miller
35:29
does car action, I feel that he's at his most pure as a director.
35:32
That's why I love him the most, you know, Like I mean,
35:36
I like, I appreciate Babe, which is superb. I appreciate Happy
35:39
Feet and Lovenzo's Oil, et cetera. But to me, the shier poetry
35:45
of George Miller doing the vehicular disruption, there's something about that. It's a
35:50
bit like Jackson Pollock doing his drip paintings or living up the Yates writing Easter
35:55
nineteen sixteen or something. You know, there's something about George Miller doing vehicular
36:00
destruction that rises to the level of art. I don't know why that is.
36:07
The first time I saw Fury Road finally finished at the premiere the other
36:10
night, I felt like, this is actually like more of a work of
36:15
art, you know, as a as a example of an art form.
36:19
This is really good, you know, like in terms of cinematography, the
36:22
action, the structure. It felt very accomplished to me, like like like
36:28
a great painting or something, or or a piece of great music. I
36:30
felt that George had achieved that in Fury Road. I will just point out
36:37
a personal HiPE high point in my life was actually going to the premiere of
36:43
ad Max Fury Road down at in Hollywood Boulevard there the other last week,
36:49
a few days ago, and I sat down, you know, in a
36:52
nice chair to watch Fury Road, and who sat down behind me? Mel
36:57
Gibson and George Miller behind me, and we watched the film together. And
37:02
at the end of the film, you know, I turned around and George
37:06
put his hand down and said, frankspend and that was fantastic and Mel said,
37:09
good job man. So I got my handshaken by Mel Didson and George
37:14
Mulloch, which was what man was. Yeah, it was a great as
37:17
somebody who absolutely loved The Road Warrior and for whom it was a life changing
37:22
film. George Miller and Mel Gibson are the sort of Martin Scorsese and Demiro
37:28
of Australia and the film. You know, they're they're a very deep combo,
37:32
you know that, Lennon McCartney, Simon Garfunkel, They're one of those
37:37
very very powerful to watch a film you know that I've had a hand in
37:42
making. With those guys together, it's a great moment. Now, was
37:46
there a difference in the U Was there anything that surprised you when you saw
37:51
that at the premiere, like about the story or anything. Yeah, well,
37:52
I I purposely kept away from looking at any other versions of the film,
37:59
right, you know, screenings and fact you know, all that sort
38:02
of. I didn't want to say, I just want to see George's final
38:05
version. I just want to see what George Miller, you know, does
38:07
to mad Max Fury wrote, you know, that's what I wanted to see.
38:09
I didn't want to see the previous versions, you know, where this
38:13
scene has been distilling it or that's in Himan cut, or I didn't have
38:15
the narrative or whatever. I just wanted to seem the final thing and it
38:20
was different. Yeah stuff, I mean, it's it's it's about eighty five
38:23
percent what I wrote with George, you know, and it's exactly the same
38:27
story and everything happens in the same way. Some of the dialogue is different,
38:30
and you know, honestly, I would take issue with some of the
38:35
dialogue, but that's that's that's you know, that's me as a writer sort
38:38
of thinking, no, I don't think that works, or I wouldn't have
38:43
done that there. And there's other bits where I where I worked that stuff
38:46
with George, which he changed and he made it better. So you know,
38:49
it's all swings and roundabout, sort, isn't right? Yeah, I
38:53
always you wonder what it would have been like with Mel Gibson and it too,
38:57
you know, Yeah, well I wrote. I mean why I wrote
39:00
and was involved in was the Mel Didson version in the fourth Mel Didson film
39:05
in the Magmax series. So that's why I was interested in I actually wanted.
39:08
I was an advocate for mel Didson, probably long after everybody else was,
39:13
because I thought, I think it's interesting that you've got this guy when
39:15
he was really young in the first Mad Max film, and if you do
39:19
Magmax four, you've got him on the cusp of going into a mature age,
39:23
and then really come back to him in another twenty years when it's like
39:28
melt. You know, it's Mad maxims the Gison, and he's a crazy
39:30
old continuent. I think I think that would have been an amazing arc of
39:37
that, you know, of an actor in a film series that nobody had
39:38
ever done before. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
39:47
and now back to the show. Anyway, in the end, because of
39:53
because of the reality of filmmaking and how long it took to get Melf traded
39:59
out of it. Um it did go to Eathal Ledger apparently George the side
40:04
of me the other day and and once he passed away it you know,
40:10
George was looking for that slightly similar kind of animal spirit that you found into
40:15
some hardy. But if you look at if you go to the website which
40:22
features my original concept art, for mad Max Fury Road. It's called art
40:27
Brendon dot com aartb R E n DA N dot com art Brendon dot com.
40:34
If you go to that, you'll see a production art which shows mel
40:39
Diodson and certain you know, sequences and stuff, so you know, you'll
40:44
get a feeling of what it could have been like. Now, are you
40:47
going to be involved with the future films or is that something that's kind of
40:52
on the on the horizon. I don't know, And you know, I
40:55
mean, let's see how it, Let's see what it does at the box
40:59
office, and if there are any future films, you know what I mean.
41:00
So that's you know, there's a long way to go. We took
41:04
eighteen years to get this one made, so if there is another one,
41:08
if there is another one or two, that they won't taste along the thing
41:14
about But I'm very you know about when I when I hitered into the relationship
41:21
for George in order to produce the Fury Road script and designs. We always
41:28
had an agreement, a hand shape agreement. But if this wasn't absolutely stunningly
41:34
brilliant, we shouldn't do it. We should not disappoint Mad Max people.
41:37
By putting out a lackluster reboot, and so thankfully Fury Road, I feel
41:44
everybody feels it's path the test and it's probably as good as Mad Max two,
41:50
A thinly it's better, but it's certainly as good as the best in
41:52
the series. That's that's pretty much when we were when we were actually writing
41:58
and working in the early days of e Yar Road. I mean, I
42:00
couldn't prompt myself to look like like we both did everything that we could,
42:04
like things like Bullet and you know, Fast and the Furious. Just look
42:08
at the competition, see what do we have to beat out there? And
42:13
quite frankly, in the end, the only competition we had is mad Max,
42:16
who really nothing had to fill beaten Mad Max two in terms of sheer
42:22
thro all power, and so that became the thing that we had to sorting
42:28
beat. But that was the ard thing that we had to at least equal
42:30
or surpass Mad Max two in the new one. So I think having proved
42:36
that with Fury Road, that George, can you know tick ass on the
42:39
vehicular destruction thrill side of life, Well, you know, you might find
42:45
the next Mad Max if one is made. You know, I don't believe
42:50
I'd be quiet. I think people would be bored by a rerun of Fury
42:54
Road with just like loads and loads of just cars smashing into each other.
42:59
You can't do that again, you know you've got so Really, I feel
43:01
that the sequel to Fury Road, Um, you know, it's got in
43:07
j upon a great idea. There's got to be a core concept at it,
43:10
you know, that is compelling enough, just as this one had a
43:14
guy who's breathing wives, a guy who's breeding with women to try and perpetuate
43:21
his own dynasty, which is what it kind of became in Fury Road as
43:24
the core idea that around which the whole story revolves. You need something very
43:30
strong and compelling in a sequel, and a core idea which motivates an entire
43:35
story. So you know, that's you know, sometimes that can the easiest
43:38
said and done. It's that Maybe George has got that idea. I don't
43:43
know, but you know that's the thing I'd be looking for, though,
43:46
is too is again, don't make Mad Max sequels just for the hell of
43:52
them, you know, just make make one if you've got one to make.
43:54
And I think George has that integrity around the Mad Max franchise that he's
43:59
not going to he's not going to dilute it and to turn it into you
44:02
know, some yeah, just yet another terminator. See called that you're usually
44:07
sort of hump you know, right, Okay, Now, what are you
44:13
working on now in terms of your your own projects? Well, at the
44:16
moment, I'm I'm in the tail end. I'm in the final sort of
44:22
a few episodes of a graphic novel comic book series called Dream Gang, which
44:28
could be best described as the X and End meets Inception, although it's a
44:32
lot more David Lynch than that. But basically, it's about a group of
44:37
psychics you project themselves into dream worlds and uncover a kind of conspiracy to destroy
44:45
the higher functions of the human race, so that we stop having dreams and
44:49
visions, and you know, musicians stops making songs, and poets stop writing
44:53
poetry. My Luther Kine doesn't say I had a dream anymore, because all
44:58
that's gone, we removed that. We just become kind of a keen to
45:02
cattle consuming cattle anyway. That's the sort of conspiracy that these these psychics find
45:08
when they're wandering around in people's dreams. And they have to kind of pull
45:13
themselves together and do something about it and sometimes defeat this cons this dark conspiracy.
45:20
So that's what I'm working on at the moment, and I'm when I
45:22
get back to my home, I will be starting work in a couple of
45:27
days again and get it and bring it things. I've also written a couple
45:30
of new feature films, and that's why I'm here in Hollywood, just doing
45:34
some meetings and seeing catalyzing on the bugs from mad Max. Right have you
45:40
are? You? Have you more comfortable now with like writing actual screenplays and
45:45
things like that. I like working with somebody. I'm a collaboratorally, I
45:51
enjoy working with somebody. So I'm one of those guys that sort of you
45:54
know, you know, you think of a cicheade Hollywood writing partner. One
45:58
guy sits at the type right guy walks around punching the air and coming up
46:01
to crazy ship. Well, I'm sort of those cite relationships suit me the
46:07
best, you know, where I have a the person, you know,
46:10
kind of collaborated that can kind of give it structure and you know, he
46:20
knows that the traditional structures of the screenwriting, and then I can then take
46:24
take it and collaborate and bounce ideas with them and hopefully between two of us
46:30
come up something better than we would on our own. Well, Brendan,
46:34
I appreciate it, and I know you've got a rhyme, so I'll let
46:37
you go, but I really appreciate your time and best of luck in the
46:39
future. And you know, congratulations with the success of Mad Max Free Room.
46:44
I think you've seen it. Yeah, yeah, I saw it and
46:45
I was absolutely blown away. Yeah, and do you did you know the
46:50
original trilogy? Yeah? I mean Mad Max Too is one of my all
46:54
time favorites and the original Mad Max. You know, those are two of
46:58
my favorite movies. And how did you did you see? How did you
47:00
feel fundsome sat with the original frology? I was never you know, my
47:07
memory of Thunderdome was always seeing the Tina Turner video that was on like MTV,
47:13
like over and over and over. Yeah, yeah, and I remember
47:15
seeing that and I don't think I ever even saw it in the theater.
47:19
When I saw mad when I saw Mad Max two or The Road Warrior,
47:22
you know, I saw it on TV, and so I would watch it
47:27
on a VHS tape and I you know, I recorded it and it was
47:30
kind of edited down, so it was like they cut out a lot of
47:31
the scenes and everything. But I would watch it in slow motion. The
47:36
first scene where um Wez is chasing after them, I would watch all that
47:39
in slow motion to see how they you know, And I wanted to be
47:42
a filmmaker. Yeah, since I was a little kid. I was like,
47:45
that was my movie, you know. And how did you feel that
47:49
Fury Road? How did it compare to the Frology Do you think it perfect
47:53
fit into the cannon? Do you feel? Well? The thing that I
47:55
was excited about because when I first saw the preview, I didn't know it
47:59
was even something that they were making, you know, because when I would
48:01
go see like I saw Babe, and I saw these other movies, and
48:06
I would see George Miller's name attached, and I was like, is that
48:07
the same? Is that Road Warrior? George Miller? And so I didn't
48:12
really know he was even making it. And then all of a sudden one
48:15
day I see the preview for Fury Road and I see that it's involving a
48:19
truck. Yeah, the trailer, and you know, it's got the truck
48:22
and it's got everybody chasing after it, and I was like, Wow,
48:25
this is gonna be like taking the second half of The Road Warrior and that's
48:30
going to kind of be the framework for the entire movie exactly. So I
48:36
was, you know, I really kind of couldn't wait. You know.
48:39
It was one of the I mean a lot of people are excited about Star
48:42
Wars. I was just like, you know, counting down the days to
48:45
watch Fury Road, you know, and I was absolutely yeah, yeah,
48:47
yeah. So, I mean they were the only thing that I was was
48:53
maybe different was just Tom Hardy playing the character of Mats. That's the big
48:59
thing to get them right, and you know, there's son did a good
49:05
job, and you know, I think overall the film, most are pretty
49:08
pleased with it. Yeah. And and for me, you know, I
49:12
really love you know, I had previously, like a week or so before,
49:15
gone to see The Avengers, and I can't tell you how fed up
49:20
I am with just digital effects and everything is like if I left staff for
49:27
about an hour and a half, I couldn't. I just are so bored
49:29
with it. Yeah. So I was just thrilled, and especially I mean
49:31
I've been glued to like YouTube looking at all the behind the scenes footage and
49:36
how they were able to put everything together. And I think there's going to
49:38
be there's there's really a vault going on to all this CGI. And I
49:43
think you see it in a new Star Wars movie too, that people are
49:45
like, they want to see people in danger, you know, Yeah,
49:50
they want to really see a movie being made instead of just everything done in
49:52
the computer. Yeah. I think much Fury Road is going to have a
49:57
big influence on viusy making from now on. It's going to change the than
50:00
gear a bit. As you are about to still that very unbelievable CGI.
50:05
I want to thank Jason so much for doing such an amazing job with this
50:07
episode. If you want to get links to anything we spoke about in this
50:10
episode, head over to the show notes at Indy film Huscle dot com Forward
50:14
slash six ninety three, and if you haven't already, please head over to
50:19
Filmmaking podcast dot com, subscribe and leave a good review for the show.
50:23
It really helps us out a lot, guys. Thank you again so much
50:27
for listening. Guys. As always, keep that hustle going, keep that
50:30
dream alive, Stay safe out there, and I'll talk too soon. Thanks
50:32
for listening to the Indie Film Hustle Podcast at Indie film hustle dot com.
50:37
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