by FilmInk Staff
For the last few years, these Melbourne based filmmakers have been seeking out an international cohort devoted to the leathered, bruising post-Apocalyptic Kennedy Miller Mitchell car action classics… and they found folks who seem to spend every waking hour and every bit of money they make on their obsession.
Privately financed and beautifully shot on location here, in the US, Europe and Japan by Beyrouthy (who also directs), the pair have made a film that it is like a virtual museum, a walk-thru ‘world’ tour of a kind of movie madness known to every fan who’s ever hung a poster on a wall or forked out for an action doll. Except maybe, as Lambert, a Mad Max fan himself, told FilmInk, “these people take it to the next level.
“In Vernon, New Jersey we met forty-something ex-WCW wrestler Jim ‘Tank’ Dorsey. He talks about dressing up as the Lord Humungus with such earnest commitment it’s like listening to an astronaut getting ready for a rocket launch. Then there’s Adrian Bennett, who built his own Interceptor and convinced his wife to move to Australia from their home in the UK. They settled in Silverton, where Bennett founded the Mad Max 2 museum, not far from where Kennedy Miller actually shot the movie. Simon Lloyd, an Aussie fan spent seven years and more building his own Interceptor… He takes it shopping. In Osaka Japan, Yoshiaki Murata loves Jimmy the Goose (Steve Bisley, MM1) and turns out replica bikes, while in Italy Roby Della Ricca pulled off Europe’s first Mad Max celebration. Melvin Zed in France is determined to publish the ultimate Mad Max book.
“I’ve always been into the films,” says Lambert, who produced Wasteland, with Beyrouthy through their production house, The Picture Lot; he also wrote the film’s fine score. “Even growing up in New Zealand, we had a big car culture, like Australia.” Adds Beyrouthy: “We’re not as crazy [about our fandom] as these people [we found]. They live their everyday lives. But they have an inner desire to pursue their passions.”
Wasteland doesn’t use any clips from the franchise (it’s not a Mad Max making of, it’s a movie about the fans, the filmmakers say.) But George Miller is seen in archive onset footage and Beyrouthy and Lambert use an ‘80s TV interview where the director offers his now famous ‘Max as Universal Warrior Hero Myth’ pitch in order to explain how the original 1979 film, a small, ferocious, low-budget revenge-thriller connected to a global mass audience.
Spending only five days in each country to shoot the picture, Lambert and Beyrouthy said they had great fun recreating camera set-ups from the Mad Max franchise; including one precious moment with a snake (“Phil was gonna shut down production if we didn’t manage to wrangle the reptile,” says Beyrouthy).
The documentary’s narrative is opposite to a Mad Max movie. It takes its time, observing the characters at home with their collections and costumes and later taking us to massive celebrations (imagine Fury Road, but, um, everyone is really nice.). Even when they are gushing or monosyllabic, we feel the excitement of fandom.
This is important because it’s obvious that the filmmakers have an affection for these people, whose eccentricities could be made to seem infantile, or irresponsible.
At one point, a work colleague of Tank says on screen: “He was very forthcoming about what he does,” as if Dorsey had a hobby strangling stuffed toys. “I wouldn’t be, if I did something like that.”
“I showed the film to my brother,” Lambert said. “He was one of those guys who would go to Rocky Horror and dress up. He’s now domesticated. He said after watching the film: ‘I don’t know why I’m not allowed to put posters up anymore.’”
Perhaps the highlight of Wasteland is the story of Bertrand Cardart. Coming to Australia from his native France in the early 1970s, Cardart was originally hired by the production on Mad Max to customise the bikes; Miller ended up casting him as Clunk, a member of the Toecutter’s Gang. Fans remember him as the tall, burly bikie who terrorises a young couple by putting a crowbar through the roof of their car.
At seventy years, he’s amongst the oldest fans here and as the film begins, he’s hoping he can make it to the Mad Max 40th Anniversary in Clunes in 2019; only age and ill-health can stop him.
Famous for their violence, their darkness and murky emotions, the Mad Max pictures don’t “seem the obvious films to emulate,” says FilmInk’s very own Erin Free in the documentary.
Lambert and Beyrouthy can’t lay claim to breaking through the mystique of the Mad Max cult, (and in the film they don’t really try to explain it, which is a good thing.)
“I think these fans are holding onto a part of their childhood,” Lambert finally suggests. “It’s holding onto an innocence.”
It might also be the strength of the films themselves to spring open imagination and link to identity. Fans in the film talk about how the franchise allows ‘difference’ to be accepted; be it physical, cultural, gender.
In building replicas, re-staging stunts (like the caravan gag in MMI), re-creating props – like a perfect reproduction of Dinky Di Dog Food in MM2 – Mad Max fans come away, says Beyrouthy, feeling, “empowered.”
Kennedy Miller Mitchell have passed on their blessings, which, say the filmmakers, is encouraging. Lambert explains that the fans of Wasteland had a personal message to pass on: “Every single person we interviewed thanked George Miller.”
Beyond the Wasteland premieres 5 February in selected cinemas nationally
