Oral History: "Mad Max: Fury Road"
“It was one of the wildest, most intense experiences of my life.” Here’s the oral history of “Mad Max: Fury Road,” in the cast and crew’s own words, 5 years after the film’s release. https://t.co/0YSWdGjF3L
- The New York Times (@nytimes) May 12, 2020
Random excerpts:
COLIN GIBSON (production designer) I was in Namibia in 2003 when I got the call to stop spending money. I don’t know whether [the studio] decided to reroute their money back to the Iraq war, or if it was the email I got from Mel Gibson’s wife asking me how many Muslims there may or may not be in Namibia and, therefore, how interested she may or may not be in the whole family coming to visit.
HARDY Charlize arguably laid down the finest lead character in an action movie, and that credit is much deserved, in my opinion; both to her as a phenomenal talent and also to George for recognizing from the very start that it was time to pass Mel’s shoes onto Furiosa.
THERON George was really incredible in just hearing me out. I called him and said, “I don’t know how she’s getting by in the mechanics’ room with all this hair. I think we need to shave my head, and she needs to be a more androgynous, grounded character.” You know, he trusted me so much that it kind of makes me emotional. In that sense, I feel like I let him down.
ZOË KRAVITZ (Toast, one of the five “wives” fleeing Immortan Joe) I did a chemistry test with Jeremy Renner reading for Max, because they hadn’t hired Tom yet.
Many of the young actresses were cast as the sex slaves Furiosa was trying to smuggle to freedom. To help them better understand their characters, Miller engaged a surprising recruit: “The Vagina Monologues” playwright Eve Ensler, who was working with Congolese survivors of gender violence.
EVE ENSLER It was really surprising for me, too! George would send me pieces of the script for feedback, and we began to get into a dialogue about the women who were going to play the sex slaves and how they would know what that lived experience was. Eventually, he invited me to Namibia to spend time with them in workshops, and my contribution was really to help those actresses become confident in that world. I think it was a really radical thing that he asked me to do that.
MILLER When someone is directing a film, they’re thinking about it every waking hour, and even processing it in their dreams. The problem is, if you’re a studio executive, you tend to think about it for 10 minutes on a Wednesday.
5 years after its release, Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy get candid about why they fought during the making of MAD MAX: FURY ROAD https://t.co/cvYSHDcosZ pic.twitter.com/Qf7jUYlVvF
- Kyle Buchanan (@kylebuchanan) May 12, 2020
Sources: 1, 2, 3.
OMG
