Mad Max

Mad Max is an Australian science fiction film starring Mel Gibson. Released in 1979, it was directed by George Miller, and written by James McCausland with Miller and producer Byron Kennedy. The film is set in a semi-post-apocalyptic Australian outback, with an anarchic society on the verge of collapse.

Two sequels followed, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (The Road Warrior in the USA) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and a fourth movie, Mad Max 4: Fury Road, is in hiatus. Some consider Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior) to be a retreatment of the original premise, using similar themes, characters and images, rather than a true sequel.

Conception

Whilst in residency at a Melbourne hospital, Dr George Miller meet amateur film maker Byron Kennedy at a summer film school in 1971. The duo went on produce the short film Violence in the Cinema, Part 1, which was screened at number of film festivals and won several awards.

Eight years later the duo created Mad Max, with the assistance of first time screen writer James McGausland. George Miller was an M.D. in Australia who worked in the Emergency Room of a hospital, who had seen many of the injuries and deaths of the type depicted in the movie, and felt that the audience would not believe such things were happening today, so he decided to write the story instead as a post-nuclear holocaust.

The film was shot over a period of twelve weeks, between December 1978 and February 1979, just outside Melbourne. Many of the car chase scenes for the original Mad Max were filmed near the town of Lara, just north of Geelong (Victoria, Australia). It was shot with a widescreen anamorphic lens, making it the first Australian film to do so.

Due to the film's low budget, the post-production was done in Miller's house, with George editing the film in the kitchen and Byron Kennedy editing the sound in the lounge room.

Success

The film achieved incredible success, holding a record in Guiness Book of Records as the highest profit-to-cost ratio of a motion picture, and only losing the record in 2000 to the The Blair Witch Project. The film was totally financed independently and had a reported budget of $300,000 AUD - of which $15000 was paid to Mel Gibson for his performance - and went on to earn $100 million world wide. The film was awarded four Australian Film Institute Awards in 1979.

When the film was first released in America, all the voices including that of Mel Gibson's character, were dubbed with US accents. The only exception was the singer in the Sugartown Cabaret, played by Robina Chaffey.

Vehicles

Due to the film's low budget, all the vehicles in the film were just existing vehicles of that era modified. The yellow pursuit cars were originally used as police cars. Max's yellow Interceptor, is a 1973 Ford Falcon GT Coupe with a 300bhp 351C V-8 engine, customised with the front end of a Ford Fairmont and other modifications. Likewise the black Interceptor was a standard production Ford XB Falcon Hardtop, sold in Australia from December 1973 to August 1976, modified by the film's art director Jon Dowding.

Of the motor cycles that appear in the film 14 were donated by Kawasaki, and a local Victorian motor cycle gang, The Vigilantes, appear as members of Toecutter's Gang. By the end of filming, 14 vehicles had been destroyed as a result of all the stunts.

References

• To the Max - Behind the Scenes of a Cult Classic, Mad Max DVD (Village Roadshow)

External links

• Mad Max (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079501/) at the Internet Movie Database
• Mad Max Movies FAQ (http://www.madmaxmovies.com)

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