by Gill Pringle at Cinemacon, Las Vegas
Surrounded by peers and colleagues from across the globe at CinemaCon, the official convention of NATO (not to be confused with the intergovernmental military alliance), The National Association of Theatre Owners is the largest exhibition trade organisation in the world.
Reflecting upon an extraordinary career, Miller talked about how he was actually working as a doctor when he made Mad Max in 1979, starring Mel Gibson.
The film’s success, he says, was down to a series of accidents. “It was almost impossible to do an action sequence in the streets of Melbourne or Sydney – block off the streets and bring in all the extras. So, the idea was to set it in a dystopian future, simply because we could shoot it anywhere,” he recalls.
“And my best friend Byron Kennedy, my producing partner, put the money in. They sold it first in Japan and then in Spain and then all of Europe. Warners International distributed internationally, but it didn’t work in America because of the Australian accents,” laughs the 79-year-old filmmaker.
The film’s huge global success, he has since concluded, is down to factors that he hadn’t foreseen when first conceiving of the idea of a dystopian Australia with an oil shortage.
“I was smart enough not to think it was because of something that I had done consciously, but instead I realised that I had touched inadvertently on certain archetypes – for instance, in Japan there’s the samurai and the French called it the Western on wheels, and then there were the Vikings for Northern Europe,” he says.
Even after the phenomenal success of that first Mad Max, Miller still wasn’t sure if he could be a filmmaker full-time, refusing to give up his job as a doctor. “I came from a family when my father had one year of formal education, and so education became very important to them. But I was always interested in cinema. And even though Mad Max was successful, I still didn’t think I had it in me to be a filmmaker. It felt like it was way too late,” he says.
With Chris Hemsworth and Anya Taylor-Joy now co-starring in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, the film marks a much-anticipated return to the iconic dystopian world he created more than 45 years ago.
Turning the page again, Miller has made an all-new original, standalone action adventure that will reveal the origins of the powerhouse character from the Oscar-winning global smash Mad Max: Fury Road. As the world fell, young Furiosa is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and falls into the hands of the great Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dr Dementus. Sweeping through the Wasteland, they come across the Citadel, presided over by Immortan Joe. While the two Tyrants war for dominance, Furiosa must withstand many trials as she puts together the means to find her way home. The film also stars Alyla Browne and Tom Burke, and is produced by Miller and his longtime partner, Doug Mitchell, under their Kennedy Miller Mitchell banner.
It’s thanks to fellow filmmaker Edgar Wright that Miller first came up with the notion of casting Taylor-Joy as Furiosa. “Edgar Wright showed me Last Night in Soho just before it was released. And I saw Anya in that, and I said, ‘She’d be good for Furiosa’ and he said how great she was.
“There’s something mystical about her. And she is somebody who is very, very disciplined even though she is very young. She was a ballet dancer. Charlize [Theron] was a ballet dancer too. And so, they understand physical discipline as well as emotional discipline.
“And then, in terms of Chris, I knew his career, but I never thought of Chris until we met, and we talked. And I realised he was somebody with a lot more dimensions to him than I initially thought. For me – as we say in Australia – he is the complete article. Somebody who, in every way, is brilliant.
“They’re both absolutely superb actors,” says the filmmaker.
Furiosa – A Mad Max Saga is in cinemas 23 May 2024
