There are many great tales of Australian movies that create watershed
moments within international markets, but few have a tale like MAD MAX, celebrating
its 40th Anniversary.
The story, by James McCausland, was inspired by his
observations of the 1973 oil crisis, and the effect it had on Australian
motorists. “A couple of oil strikes that hit many pumps revealed the ferocity
with which Australians would defend their right to fill a tank. Long queues
formed at the stations with petrol—and anyone who tried to sneak ahead in the
queue met raw violence,” he wrote in the Courier-Mail in 2006.
While in residency at a Sydney hospital, Director Dr George Miller
met amateur filmmaker Byron Kennedy at a summer film school in 1971.
Eight years later, the duo produced the original Mad Max. Miller's first
choice for the role of Max wasn’t Mel Gibson, but rather the Irish-born James
Healey, who at the time worked at a Melbourne abattoir and was
seeking a new acting job. But upon reading the script Healey declined, finding
the meagre, terse dialogue too unappealing (the character has only about 16
lines of dialogue). He went on to play the fourth husband of Alexis
Carrington Colby (played by Joan Collins), in the US soap Dynasty.
Then, with filming just 4 days underway, Rosie Bailey, who
was originally cast as Max's wife, was injured in a bike accident. Production
was halted, and Rosie was replaced by Joanne Samuel, causing a two-week delay. With
$300,000 for the entire budget, principle photography continued, overran, and
ate through the mostly self-funded production as more artistic and history focussed
films scored the benefit from government grants.
George Miller, self-describing the movie as a silent film
with sound, recalls the entire experience as "guerrilla filmmaking",
where the crew would close roads without filming permits, nor use
walkie-talkies because their frequency coincided with the police radio. But,
as filming progressed the state police became interested in the
production, helping the crew by closing roads and escorting the vehicles, or so
the legend says.
Controversy followed release, as the film was banned
in New Zealand and Sweden. In New Zealand the scene where Goose
is burned alive inside his vehicle unintentionally mirrored an incident with a
real gang shortly before the film's release. It was later shown in New Zealand
in 1983 after the success of the sequel. The ban in Sweden was removed in
2005.
In order to make the language ‘understandable’ to US audiences,
in 1980 the original Australian dialogue was redubbed by an American cast. Much
of the Australian slang and terminology was also replaced with
American usages. "Oi!" became "Hey!", "windscreen"
became "windshield", "very toey" became "super-hot",
and "proby"—probationary officer—became "rookie”. The only
dubbing exceptions were the voice of the singer in the Sugartown Cabaret
(played by Robina Chaffey), the voice of Charlie (played by John Ley) through
the mechanical voice box, and Officer Jim Goose (Steve Bisley), singing as he
drives a truck before being ambushed, although his voice was dubbed elsewhere
in his dialogue. The original Australian dialogue track was finally released
in North America in 2000 on DVD with the US and Australian
soundtracks on separate audio channels.
And as for the subsequent sequels, the Guardian Australia sums
up the genre as a “portentous story of a broken man’s spiritual voyage back to
humanity via death-defying heroic acts.”
The film was awarded three Australian Film Institute
(AFI) Awards in 1979 (for editing, sound, and musical score). It was also
nominated for Best Film, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best
Supporting Actor (Hugh Keays-Byrne) by the AFI.
My interviews for KAPOW with some of the original cast can
be seen here:
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