Beyond the Wasteland (2022) Movie Script
- We made the
first film, Mad Max,
it was a low budget
Australian film
which seemed to resonate somehow
with every film going
territory in the world.
The obvious answer was
that it was full of car action
and it was violent.
But it seemed to have
something else there.
When I went to Japan,
people would say,
oh, it's just like the
samurai movies.
And then you'd go to
France and they'd say,
it's very much like
the spaghetti westerns.
They're stories that
recur, we call them myths,
they recur in every
time and in every culture.
That's why we recognise
these stories almost anywhere.
It allows us to have
experiences and to share them
with all people who
have gone before
and those that may come after.
- All right, thanks everybody
for being a part of this.
It's been a really interesting
exercise putting it together
so I hope you get a
real big kick out of it.
Now, if you have a
look at your sheets,
primarily you're going
from can to can to can.
They are your markers.
That's what you're looking for
when you go to each location.
- I'll sit on
somebody's lap, it's all right.
You can use any means to
work out the quiz questions.
So you can get on
your mobile phones,
you can pop the movie
in and check the film
if you have the
facility to do that.
- We got it.
- All right, next clue.
- I love winning.
- Just behave yourselves.
We're not actual Road Warriors.
- No one was ready
for a film like Mad Max.
- It felt new and exciting.
You couldn't help
but talk about it.
- Does anybody
have any questions?
- What no speeding?
- No speeding.
- It started out as a
small, very low budget film,
very limited expectations
that turned out to be huge.
A big enough film
to create a sequel.
- Mad
Max is back in town
and tackling Hollywood head-on.
- Which then became
a phenomenon.
- Opening night
at cinemas across the nation
was a sell out.
- Now 30 years later,
a fourth film is on the way.
- Those two words, Mad Max,
they're like the McDonald's
or Star Trek or Star Wars.
You might not like
Mad Max, but by God,
you know what's
being talked about.
- Donald Trump was describing
some Mad Max America.
- The
world of Mad Max
might not be as far
away as we think.
- Film can tell us a lot about
who we are and where we live
and how we feel about things.
- Britain plunged into
a Mad Max style world.
- Mad Max is so dystopian
and so unpleasant that, yeah,
it's not the most obvious
film to want to emulate.
- Saturday.
You can film the
syringe, it's even worse.
So every morning
a little .
It's not pleasant.
We'll start looking like a
Frenchman, here we go.
Bonjour, I am Bertrand Cadart,
liberal candidate
for the Seat of Lyons.
You may know me as the
scooter riding French mayor
from the east coast
who appeared in
the film Mad Max.
And this is my frog bathroom.
My frog shower mat,
my frog shower curtain.
My frog bath bubbly stuff.
I lived on the east coast
of Tasmania for 15 years.
I've been the mayor
for seven years.
- You've been in Australia
for about 40 years, I believe.
Is that seriously your
best Aussie accent?
- Yeah, yeah, ha ha.
Right.
I don't think I will be
able to ride anymore.
At least my doctor
doesn't think so
and I am advised not to
ride because if I do crash,
what is the normal gravel
rash for a healthy person
would become a
death trap for me.
The doctor, he said, it will
take six months of chemo
to know if I can save your life.
Now, my leave was denied.
It is why I have no
choice but to resign.
Thank you.
I'm 70 years of age.
I have terminal cancer.
Incurable, I know it.
I know I'm going to
fight as best as I can.
I have a plan to last until
at least January, 2019,
because there is a 40th
anniversary of the Mad Max shoot.
And we have a big
gathering in Clunes.
Here we go, that's it.
My doctor has
allowed me to do it,
he even reckon it's probably
good for me to fight my cancer.
He said that will motivate
you to live and to survive,
as long as you want
to live and survive.
And so far I do.
When the reunion
started to be organised
I wanted to be
there, and I went.
- Mad Max, the movie that
catapulted Mel Gibson to fame,
is celebrating its 30th
anniversary this weekend.
- And I went to one
of the very first ones,
I think in Little River.
At the time it was
not very popular
and I was one of
the only actors there.
This film shot on a shoe
string has developed a cult.
In Italy, in Germany
and in Japan,
in America, I mean everywhere.
This is like a tribe, a
sort of a world tribe.
All those people are
extraordinary people.
They are all
incredibly interesting.
Oh God.
- When I started All
American Pool Service,
I dreamt of working that
job until I was ready to retire
and then selling the
company and retiring off of that.
I soon learned that that
wasn't particularly realistic,
that's not really how it
works anymore, unfortunately.
So I dissolved that, got rid
of that stress out of my life.
And Jeff offered me a job here.
- He was very forthcoming
with what he did
and if I did something like that
I probably wouldn't
tell anybody.
And I don't.
- You have defied me.
You will know the vengeance
of the Lord Humungus.
- He was totally comfortable
with it and it's like,
yeah, he's having
fun and good for him.
- Nobody gets out of here alive!
- I watched them all
and he loves them,
that's all I can say is,
you know, he loves them,
he was first doing the
Mad Max character.
- I thought he was good
looking enough, you know,
to be a lot better
character than he picked,
but he thought Lord
Humungus was neat.
- When we first got the
house it came with a pool,
which I really didn't
want, but it was there.
And I come out the door
and my wife's standing
out there with three guys
and there's this hulking
mass of a human.
He's like, here, here, I'm
gonna give these to you,
these are something
I think you'll enjoy.
And I'm looking, I'm like,
who's Lord Humungus, right?
And I'm like, this you?
He's like, yeah.
I'm like, holy crap, right.
- About 1981 my dad bought
me an issue of Starlog Magazine.
I don't think I ever
read the article,
but I certainly
looked at the pictures.
Immediately, this was
it, this was all I wanted,
this was all I watched.
- He was in his room a lot.
- You could turn the volume off
and he could tell you
every line in that movie.
He had it all memorised.
- I was a Road
Warrior in my mind.
When I was like 15 years old
I was so deeply into Mad Max,
that that was the
world I wanted to live in.
The cars that I wanted to
drive, the way I wanted to dress.
And you know, once I
got out of high school
and got into the
punk rock scene,
I did kind of dress
that way a little bit.
- He just was
crazy about the Misfits
when he was 14, 15 years old.
He had the guitar
and he would go out in the
garage and sing and play.
And all the neighbours loved it.
I'm joking.
The Misfits offered him the job
to sell merchandise on the road
and then it went from
merchandise to the road manager.
He had a ball, he got to see
the whole world effectively,
from Alaska to Moscow.
Everybody got a
nickname on the bus
and Jim was a big bodybuilder
and they just called him Tank.
So he's Jim "The Tank" Dorsey.
- This is how the
Humungus rolls.
Once you get started
and you start to see
and you start to feel some
results, it's very addictive.
You know, once the
shoulders start coming in
and the triceps pop a little bit
and then you crank the bicep
up and you're just like, oh.
You know, the waist
is coming in tighter.
That's the
inspiration right there,
that's where the
obsession comes from
because it's like, oh, I
like that, I want more.
- Sensei.
- Yes, sir.
Jim came in here, oh, good
lord, probably eight years ago.
He's black belt, as you can see,
and doing quite a good job.
I do remember the
first thing I said to him
when he came in here,
first time he trained was,
Tank, you gotta get
rid of the muscles,
they're just in your way.
But he didn't and
he's doing fine.
When he's on the
floor, he's very physical
and you know that if
you can defend yourself
against somebody that's
that big and that strong
then you're doing
something right.
When I talk about
my karate school,
I show 'em a picture of Tank
with his massive muscles,
with some small person on the
ground and they go, oh my God.
But yeah, Tank is a lot of fun.
- Too much is never enough.
I always have that
feeling like there's more,
there's more that I can do,
there's more that I can be.
Yeah, I could put the
Humungus costume on
and throw the mask on,
but if I'm not in shape,
you're not going to believe it.
- Your waist.
- Yeah, yeah, right here.
Where the fat bit is.
The idea is not to
do an exact replica,
but to do a, so people, the fan
who are die hard Mad Max
fans, they will recognise Clunk.
I'm going to get
another set of boots,
hopefully the same type.
And the red bit here,
because all this is
what people remember.
My role in Mad
Max was very small,
being one of the
Toecutter gang members.
Now we all say the same thing,
I never thought that 40 years
later I would be remembered,
let alone talked about.
Look at that.
Good for them, you
know, like good for them.
As he said, it beats
cleaning swimming pools.
- The first time I
went over to his house
is kind of when I really started
to appreciate his passion
when I saw his costumes
and just the stuff
that was in there.
- Well, my wall of fame, if
I had to venture to guess,
probably started about
four years ago, maybe 2015.
The first guy I ever met was
Garret Graham who played Beef
in Phantom of the Paradise.
Each one of these
was really cool
to get the reaction
from each actor
who played the
characters that I cosplay.
But number one and the one
that I was the most
nervous going in
was meeting Kjell Nilsson,
the original Lord Humungus.
I was nervous about
how he was going to take
my portrayal of the character,
whether he thought
I did a good job of it.
'Cause this is, this is a
world-class athlete bodybuilder
in his prime where this is
just some middle-aged fan boy
trying to recreate something
he sees on a screen.
I didn't want him to think
that I was trying
to steal his thunder
or take over, replace
him or anything like that,
I just wanted them to feel
that I did his character
justice and he did,
he was proud of me.
He said, you are the next
generation of this evil character.
And that really meant a lot.
How is it?
Chocolatey?
- Good.
- Can you ever
eat more than one?
- No.
- Probably not.
- Probably not, well daddy
makes some pretty thick pancakes.
I've often wondered if other
dads, you know, my age,
mid forties, think of what I do
as being like
immature or childish,
because it doesn't
seem like something
a normal adult would do,
is make these
costumes and dress up.
- Viola!
- Look at that.
That's magnifique, magnifique.
And you managed
even to do the red bit.
- Well, we were saying
the plastic would be too hard
for the driving and everything.
- Yeah, yeah,
no, no, this is fine.
I am impressed.
- All right, let's try it on.
- Yeah!
I know at my age
and in my condition,
I will never, ever in
my life, what's left of it,
I have an opportunity to
have another trip like this.
- I've always
been a daydreamer.
I've always wanted to live in
another time or another place
being another character.
Getting the opportunity
to be a different person.
But for so many years, decades,
I thought I was the only
person who was into Mad Max.
- I thought it would be much
smaller, but I don't know,
it's like I have
nothing else to do.
I never worked a regular
job in my entire life,
I just do illustrations
or stuff like that
and sometimes I can earn
money from the things I'm doing.
My Mad Max stuff
cost me everything.
All my time and all
the money I can make.
- He's just speaking
about Mad Max every time
that I think, this
is the Mad Melvin.
- I started to collect stuff about
Mad Max when I was a kid,
after I saw the
movie the first time.
10 years ago I had
like a handful of stuff
and I thought that it was enough
to start to work
on a small book.
But 10 years after my collection
went a little bit
out of control.
I began to pick articles,
magazines, records,
and every material I could
find that was Mad Max related.
My idea is to collect
every original item.
I have books and
papers, and pictures,
press pictures
and stuff like this.
I have a ton.
- Well, this is my
Mad Max collection,
at least for the first movie.
I don't know what possesses me
to pick out a particular
item that I look for on eBay.
I guess those were
the things that I just
thought I could find and sure
enough I tracked them down.
Alpine Stars high point
motocross boots are not cheap,
especially to find them
with the proper heavy
lug on the, on the sole.
- It never occurred to me
that somebody would
go to all the trouble
to acquire some of the
props that were used
or to build their own props.
- The first thing that I
remember that he showed me
was he made the dog food,
the food that Mad Max ate,
and then he
replicated the labels
on a can of hash or something
and he was so proud of that.
- Those are the most
accurate ones ever made.
When I first got a copy of
the Blu-ray of Road Warrior
I took it to my friend Tim's
house with a 95 inch screen
and I took that scene frame
by frame and dissected it.
And that was when I found out
that the circle that
says 800 grams in it
is actually a starburst.
- And he goes, I
want you to know,
everything in this
room is screen accurate.
I'm like, I realize, okay, I'm
gonna screw with him now.
So I'm looking
at 'em like, well,
you know, I'm sorry
to disagree with you,
I'm gonna call a little
bullshit on this one, but this,
I distinctly remember
the slight scratch near the,
you know, like the trigger here.
And he like leaps
up out of his desk
and he's like, whoa,
wait a minute, wait.
And he's like looking at it
and he's like picking it up.
He's like, no, no, I'm
pretty sure that's right.
I'm like, dude, I don't know.
And he's ready to
like pop the DVD in.
- It's hard work finding
the actual screen accurate
baseball face masks or
the five draw telescope
as opposed to the
standard four draw.
- Dude, I don't even know
what the hell half
this shit is, okay.
- Anybody who's into
it knows you nailed it.
- I spent 10 years in
underwear behind my computer
searching for items on eBay,
searching for articles,
searching for magazines.
- When he's working on something
he's working on it really hard
and speaking
about it every time.
- In my Mad Max folder
it's around 15,000 pictures,
scans of articles.
Mostly scans of articles.
The biggest task was to read
them all and it took me years.
Actually really years.
I think the Holy Grail for
me is a Mad Max 1 script.
And I got it from
Bertrand Cadart.
- Have you heard
of Mad Max before?
Yeah?
Don't tell me you watched it.
- Yeah, I have.
You're too bloody young!
What about you, young man?
You should not, you're only 14,
when it was released
you had to be 16 to see it.
Let alone this little bloke.
- I was just about to turn
14 and this movie came out
and it's rated over 18
in France so I thought,
well, I've got to see this.
We just snuck in
to the movie theatre
so we didn't get caught
and I remember being
petrified watching the scenes.
We talked about
it at school and,
mates would say, oh,
you see that movie?
It's filmed in Australia.
I thought, wow, Australia.
I ended up on the Sunshine
Coast because of Mad Max.
When I first met Bertrand
he came here as a customer
and I didn't even know
who he was, you know,
and then he said, oh,
you've seen Mad Max?
And my wife is rolls
her eyes, as usual,
don't get my husband
getting to start about Mad Max
because he'll never stop.
And then he told me who we was.
- There is a big bloke that
goes on the roof of the car
with a mighty crowbar.
You're looking at
the crowbar man.
- You're the crowbar man?
- I am the crowbar man.
I am the crowbar man.
- Bullshit.
- I say, you betcha I remember,
the crowbar, yeah, wow.
I went and watched
everything, all the scenes
where I can see him and
then all my mates in France,
they're just gonna freak,
it's just like, I'm gonna be
a rockstar now, you know.
- With Mad Max people would
sit at the end of the screening
and just sit and try to recover
from the previous 100 minutes.
There were a lot
of mild films around
so this Mad Max stood out.
We knew we had
something that was going to
impact on audiences.
- For me, it was
all about the cars,
the Aussie classic muscle cars.
And especially the
black Interceptor.
Was always a favourite of mine,
you can never get sick of it.
- When they went
to the drive in 1979,
we see on the screen were
cars that they actually owned.
Monaros, Falcons, HJ panel vans.
- Everyone has a story about
their car or their family car.
And it stays with them,
it's something you'd never,
well I don't think
I'll ever forget
'cause my dad loved his cars.
It had to be a V8
and we all loved it
being revved up
after a drink at the pub
and driving home
from the tennis club
and whose dad could
outdo whose dad with the V8.
- Over 10 years ago I
decided to build myself
a Mad Max black
on black Interceptor.
It took me seven long
years to find the parts,
figure out how it
all bolts together,
and then finally I
put the wheel flares
and the nose cone
and the roof spoiler on
and molded it all in and
gave her a shot of high fill
and then chiseled her
back to her straight lines
and then hit her with some
black and here it is today.
I use it to go down and
get my lottery on a Sunday.
It's not something I just
want to put away and stare at,
it's something that I
want to use and enjoy.
And I do really enjoy it.
- When I first arrived in
Australia on a motorcycle
I never thought
in a million years
that I would live here.
I was bumming around
the world on a motorcycle
trying to have a good time.
And waiting for life
to give me opportunity.
And I discovered
this immensity of land.
Roads with no end.
At the time was not many
police and a lot less people,
it was in the early seventies.
You could open the
throttle of your motorcycle,
go as fast as bloody thing
would go for 200 kilometres
without seeing one single house.
That worked for me.
I decided to customise
Japanese bikes,
which nobody was
doing in Australia.
I did that with a
couple of French friends
and we had to learn everything.
We had to buy a book,
how to laminate fiberglass.
We knew nothing.
And no one wanted
to buy our stuff,
it was just, come on, you know.
We are real bikers here,
we want a crust of a dead fly
on our Belstaff jacket.
At the same time, George Miller
was trying to convince people
to help him shoot his film.
Nobody believed in George
as much as they
didn't believe in me.
So I had all those fairings
dangling in the shops
and when George sort of
approached those people to say,
look, I need someone
to customise bikes
that we got from Kawasaki to
look as futuristic as possible.
One of the dealer said, look,
there is one guy that
might be able to help you.
Here is his number.
We made absolutely
no money out of it.
The price was
probably below cost.
Eventually George
one day said to me,
would you like
a part in the film?
I said to him, but what
about my accent, you know?
He said, it's all right,
you don't say anything.
- This here is
my original script.
My wife read this
and she was horrified.
And I said well, what's
so crazy about it?
And because my English
was not good enough
to understand what was written,
she said, you have no idea
what you're
getting yourself into.
I never thought that 40
years later I still would have it.
We are doing these trips
for me as a pilgrimage
back to where we shot the film.
It means a lot to me
to do this after 40 years.
Who is there?
This is Clunk!
Every year in Japan
you do Mad Max festival.
- Yes, yes, yes.
- Yes?
Look, this is crazy.
- I felt like a pop singer,
I felt like the Beatles.
- They were not afraid
to show their emotions.
Some of them
were almost in tears,
in fact, not almost, in tears.
- They were actually falling
against me, crying on my chest.
Just falling on you,
just sobbing, you know.
- Saying, I cannot
believe you are here.
- You thought, oh
my God, you know,
for God's sake, get off me!
But inwardly I
loved it, you know.
I'll be walking down the street
and all of a sudden I'll hear
somebody's voice in my ear.
"You and me, Max, we're
gonna give 'em back their heroes."
What that hell, people
are quoting my lines.
There are fans all
around the world.
I went on my honeymoon to Sri
Lanka, a young waiter come up.
He said, excuse me, sir,
what is your good name?
I said, my name is Roger Ward.
Oh, very famous name
here, sir, very famous name.
I said, I think you're
thinking of Roger Moore.
Oh no, no, no, Roger
Moore, he was a saint.
He was James Bond, no,
no, you were Fifi in Mad Max!
Oh my God.
You know, you get
that all around the world.
Just people identify
with that and with you
as if we're all one.
That's ridiculous, I
know, but I love it.
- If you're not moved by that
then I think you're a
bit of a cynical bastard
who should have a long,
hard look at themselves.
- Jim Goose.
Fifi.
And Johnny the Boy.
- Donuts, donuts.
- No donuts.
Here are the donuts.
Bit more, maybe here.
Yeah, maybe here.
- Yoshi bought a bike off
eBay from South Australia.
He paid good money for
it and it got to my place,
it was a piece of,
won't say any more.
The rims were rusted out,
spokes were broken and missing.
Broken piston, wheel
bearings were shot,
all the brakes had seized.
The thing was the
biggest pile of crap
I've ever had in my shed.
So that's what we started
with, and away we went.
- I've built
many, many Kawasaki's,
I can't tell you how
many I've done.
Hundreds of them,
it's been an addiction.
I've owned well over a 1,000.
I'm nuts on Kwakas, that's it.
I'm quackers over Kwakas.
It was successfully completed
and soon after they
found Dale's original bike.
They're both here
today, they look fabulous.
- Well, this one belongs
to Yoshi from Japan
and he leaves this in Australia.
- What?
- The bike.
- Oh, yeah, yeah.
- Yeah.
- This is the original
bike that I owned,
I was the first owner.
Whoa, clutch is not real good.
There've been five
owners of it now.
I sold it in about '79,
but in 1994 for its class
it established the
land speed record.
142 point something
miles per hour.
So that's another little piece
of very interesting
history of this bike.
- He always comes up to my place
because now his
spare bike is kept there
and he collects
it and off he goes.
And only found
out last week that
he's got another
burnout bike in Japan.
That was a surprise to me.
- Beautiful.
So when did you build
this, how long ago?
- 15 years.
But it's old now, it over
heats and sucks a lot of petrol.
- You tell me, my
Trans Am is just as bad.
- Hey, Clunk!
- Yeah!
Long life to Clunk!
What a ride.
- Thanks, cobber.
- Yeah, sure, I'd be happy to.
- Thank you so much.
- Thank you for coming,
I really appreciate it.
How are you doing?
How was your night last night?
- Is this the most fans
you've ever seen in one place?
- Yes.
- The vehicle is a mid 70s
F100 I built from ground up,
built it on pictures,
the original pictures
from the movie vehicle.
And it's probably
one of the most
reliable vehicle I've
built, it goes and stops.
The special features are
really the flame throwers.
If we all did the same thing,
life's pretty boring
sometimes, isn't it, you know?
- My name is Bill Hatzigiannis,
I run a small
business on Facebook,
Steel Edge Constructions,
where I create model cars.
I'd never seen a coupe with
that sort of body structure,
I'd never seen any of
the vehicles, motorbikes,
looking as tough as they were
on the actual Mad Max movie.
My son loves vehicles,
he's a motorhead,
no influence of mine whatsoever.
But yeah, like I'm hoping
that he'll be able to carry
the Mad Max tradition on.
Just awesome that there's
other people out there
that really enjoy it as much
as I do and my family does.
- Seeing all these
replica vehicles
and the guys that like
spend their last dime
to put these vehicles together,
I understand that passion,
if I had more dimes to spend
I'd be doing the
same damn thing.
- Gidday, welcome
to the Mad Max event.
This is the biggest
convention of Mad Max actors
since 1979 movie release
and they're here in one
spot and they're here,
and this won't happen again.
Make the most of
it, it's a one-off day
and we're gonna bloody enjoy it.
Let's talk to the actors,
we'll go through one by one.
Vince Gill, the Nightrider!
- Thank you, ladies
and gentlemen.
- It just overwhelms me,
this movie and the
love you all have for it.
Thank you so much.
And to think that we're all
still here like 40 years later
and once we were young too.
- Who would've thought
40 years down the road,
thought everyone
had forgotten about us.
But apparently not.
- You couldn't do
this in America,
they would arrest every
one of you folks, seriously.
- Who thought the stupid Swede,
body builder could come
here and do something like this
and still here.
- Remember the crowbar man?
- Yeah!
- I am the crowbar man!
- Just remember who was the guy
they nearly hit with a crowbar
and they nearly hit with the axe
and they nearly
dropped the bike on.
As you know it
wasn't a huge budget
so none of us got
paid very much.
But we were young, we
were inventive, we were keen,
and I think we
contributed to the world
as far as how to make
movies and action movies.
- I can tell a bunch of stories,
but I just want to say something
about this film and
what it means, you know.
I grew up in the Southern
Tablelands and when you were 13
all you want to do is get on
the road and get out of there
and there was garages
around with lots of uncles,
boring out V8s and
trying to find a way
to create a sense of
freedom and the road
and what was possible.
But what this story also said
was that this story's
about the road,
it's about freedom,
and it's about death.
And how we all, all you
people understand that tension
and what that means.
And this is a great
Australian story
because you
understand that this film
was about the soul
of part of Australia
that you guys and
women, you all grew up in.
It's a bit tongue in
cheek, it's a bit different,
and the audience for
this film around the world
understand that very well.
And nobody
understands that better
than the people
standing in this crowd
and I just want to say,
I'm proud to meet ya,
I hope to shake all your
hands and thank you so much
and don't forget
your part in creating
this great myth and
narrative, thanks very much.
- When I was first
starting out to ride
I'd be watching Terry Gibson
riding fast on the
Goose bike thinking,
that's how you sit
when you ride fast.
I've always been into stunt
riders and stuff like that,
I was amazed by the stunts
that were done in Mad Max.
There's that style,
it's raw, it's real.
- I'm old school, I'm
one of the very last.
Actually someone
introduced me the other day
as being the oldest
stuntman in Australia.
My goal is to be the oldest
stuntman in the world.
- We had this car lying around
and we decided we'd
build it for the anniversary.
We were contacted
by the organisers,
as they heard we
may have a vehicle
that could be sacrificed
to go through the caravan.
- So the caravan stunt,
I was asked to sort of
come up with the concept
and I wanted to keep it to
the original scale, low budget.
But my idea was to
make it bigger and better.
So I decided, well,
two's better than one.
- It's intended life
was as a race car,
which it's still going to do
after it's finished
its job here today.
It just fast-tracked
our build a little quicker
than what we expected.
It was very stressful,
the paint's still wet,
we were still putting it together
at00 AM this morning.
- The biggest problem is
basically the cupboard hardwood
and cabinets, hinges,
sinks and things like that.
You will get stabbed more
than likely from debris like that.
I once had a splinter that
was three metres long.
But that's fine, I
just pulled it out.
- Do you want
to jump in and give it a rev?
- I'm hoping it'll start, I
think the battery's nearly flat.
- I'm old school, no smoke
and mirrors, no cameras.
You can't cheat.
We're not going high-tech.
We're keeping it grassroots
so even the ramps are
just pretty ramshackle.
My gear is not
megabucks safety here.
I've been alive 65 years,
so I can't be too damn bad.
I really hope you enjoyed it!
- Yes, excellent job, Rob.
- I've just made history, that
has never been done before!
And I never practiced.
If anybody's interested
in some of the shrapnel,
if you wanna collectible,
it'll be available over there
in about a half an hour.
- How much
for a piece of caravan?
- You've
done it, you've done it!
You came out all right!
- Haven't lost me touch.
- All right, everyone,
this car's the one
that you were all
asking about before.
It's been signed by the actors.
I'm gonna put Bertrand on,
he's gonna tell you
a little bit of a story.
- All right, good evening.
I'm sort of okay,
this is why I'm here
and you can see me
with the walking stick.
And the reason why
I have a walking stick
is because I've been
diagnosed with leukaemia.
It is fatal and it
can't be cured.
So I decided to come here
with you guys as I am myself,
as you can imagine,
a Mad Max fan,
and I would like to give
some proceed of this auction
to the Leukaemia Foundation.
As much as it is okay
for me to go at 70,
I don't think it is okay, I'm
going to become emotional,
I don't think it is okay
for a young person of 25
to die of leukaemia, you know,
and if we could help
them, there you go.
- I will start the
auction at 200 bucks,
so who is going to
go over 200 bucks?
- Come on!
- 250!
- We got 250, 250,
we got a three, we got
a three, we got a three?
We got a three over there,
we got a three, we got a
320, we got a 320, 320?
We got a 320 over
there, we got a 350, 350,
350 over there, 400 over here!
500 over there, 600 over there,
can we get 650, 650, 650?
- 1,000 - 1,000 over here!
$1,500!
Going, going and, sold!
- I think I'm going
to cry, so thank you.
Thank you very much.
- We're up here at
Maryborough, at the racing track,
and the shows over, folks,
and she's 100% snafu.
But we're still here
chipping away, packing up,
and still enjoying it.
That's what we come for.
- So we got some amazing
memorabilia from the show,
which was sensational.
But my two brothers here
got pieces of the caravan
with the tire marks on it,
and I think that's
the greatest thing
these blokes can drag out
and show somebody one day.
- The first film is
the balls to the wall,
skinflint explosion of energy
that is only created when you
kind of have nothing to lose.
- I was not
particularly excited to see the film
because I thought, my God,
with what we went through,
you know, it's
going to be a flop.
- Even the film crew, I
remember them all mumbling
and cursing and saying,
oh God, it'll never work.
I could hear it, and I'm
sure George could hear it.
- Australia didn't have much
in the way of action cinema,
so no one really could
have possibly anticipated
the hell that broke loose when
Mad Max arrived in cinemas.
- A lot of people did question
some of the
violence in the film.
- One ABC journalist
actually threw up
during one of the screenings.
- The most famous kind
of voice against the film
was Phillip Adams.
- He condemned Mad
Max, saying that it had,
quote, all the emotional
uplift of Mein Kampf.
- The film would be
great for future sadists
and psychopaths and
pedophiles, which is, you know,
a lot more than a thumbs down.
- The main thing about
Mad Max was word of mouth.
Everyone that saw Mad Max
had never seen anything like it,
not just as an Australian film.
- Holy shit.
It was an exciting
film to watch.
- Standing with George
at the back of the cinema
when the film finished
and the lights came up,
the response was just amazing.
Bill Collins wrote that
George Miller has made
the most exciting
film of the decade.
- But still, if somebody
then had said
that I was going to
be flown to Japan
and treated like a rock star,
I would have
said, you are crazy.
- It really blew everyone away.
What was this
story really about?
Why are people
connecting with it?
And so in order to answer
some of those
questions for himself,
George Miller started investigating
Joseph Campbell's work.
- We finally found Joseph
Campbell or his writings,
do you know who
Joseph Campbell is?
- Campbell's work goes back to
pictures on the side of caves.
So while we look at
Mad Max and we say,
this is an astonishing film,
we've never seen
this film before,
it didn't just come
from nowhere.
It came from recurring
patterns of narratives
that began 40,000 years ago.
- The person who alerted
everyone to Campbell
more than anyone
else was George Lucas.
From A Hero with
a Thousand Faces,
he based the Star Wars sagas.
They all dressed
in different clothes
but the essential themes
and the essential
experiences come through.
- When the mythology is alive
you don't have to tell
anybody what it means.
It's like looking at a picture
that's really talking
to you, it gets to you.
- The success of
Mad Max in Japan,
prompted Warner
Brothers in the States
to take another look at it
and give it a bit more backing.
And that's what enabled
it to get off the ground.
- It was
really a turning point
for modern Australian cinema.
- In Road Warrior
we attempted to be
much more consciously
mythological.
- Every year, hundreds,
if not thousands,
I'm not sure of the
figures, of Mad Max
dedicated true blue fans
come from all over the world
to Broken Hill and Silverton.
This was the best
possible location
for the filming of Mad Max 2.
Silverton is a place a
Mad Max fan must attend,
he must attend that, and
so this is where we're going.
- A friend of mine told
me, oh, Broken Hill,
it's the gate of the desert.
But when I get there, I said,
this is not the
gate of the desert,
this is the fucking desert.
I was overwhelmed.
I found it was really,
really beautiful.
If you go there, you
understand right away
why you want to shoot there
because it's like an
Australian Monument Valley.
In France and Europe,
everything is tiny and dense
and I suddenly discovered
empty spaces and a remote place.
- It's a cult following now for
Mad Max and Bertrand Cadart
is the man that played
Clunk in Mad Max 1,
he joins me this morning,
Bertrand good morning.
- Mad Max 2 is really
the decay of society
and all its props is now
well and truly on the way
to nothingness.
- I came to Silverton in
1973 and bought the pub
and shortly after
that various film crews
started rolling into town.
- It was still dirt roads
coming into the place.
You always saw people
broken down with the bonnets up.
- When they were
filming Razorback,
they made the pub look
absolutely disgusting,
the outside of it.
When cars would drive
past they wouldn't pull up.
- Probably up until then
we'd never ever seen a
drag queen in Broken Hill.
We've had some famous
people through here.
- I had copies of
them all on videos,
but they've been
damaged with heat
and they don't work anymore.
- A lot of movies have
come here for the outback.
Though Mad Max is the main one.
- I think everybody got
paid 20 bucks a day more
if they had a mohawk,
more than the other extras.
People were a bit shy about
having a mohawk to start with
but it wasn't long before
there were a lot of
mohawks around town.
- And we thought, gee, what's
going on here, you know?
- I can remember waking
up early one morning
and I looked out
through the side window
and there's this
bloke walking around
in all this leather gear
and feathers hanging off
and the cheeks of
his arse hanging out
and I just couldn't believe it.
I thought, oh
God, this is weird.
I got quite a shock
when I looked out the
window and saw that.
- In behind Yoshi there a bit.
For decades in
my group of friends,
I was like the only person
who loved Mad Max.
Come up a bit more
behind Nick here.
Nobody else got it,
nobody else was into it.
And then to discover there
is an international community
of cosplayers and vehicle
enthusiasts and Mad Max freaks.
It's like, holy shit!
- And I couldn't believe it
when they started coming
here for these reunions.
- The Silverton Collective
started many, many years ago.
Being a collective
everyone's just basically
doing their own thing,
having their own
particular fun way
of looking at everything.
- Coming to Silverton, for
me it's like sacred ground.
Just knowing that the
movie was made here.
- Yoshi comes over here,
Tank comes over from America.
And Melvin comes from
France, it's a universal movie.
- You are 14 years old
and you discover the movie
for the first time in your
life in a movie theatre
full with strange guys in
leather and crazy haircuts.
That was like, awesome.
Three, two, one.
- The people that are around
that come and see them
and they think, oh
geez, what are we doing,
filming another Mad Max?
- Little children sometimes
are a little bit scared of it.
I have to walk up to
them and go really gently,
look I'm a nice
person, it's okay.
- I guess you could say
I'm a little intimidating
just due to my size.
I'm a nice guy, but
people don't get that
until they get to know me.
- I'm trying to calm them
down and the parents are like,
yeah, yeah, scare them
more, scare them more.
- I feel like I'm at home
with all the other crazies.
It's like coming to Mecca.
- I'm Michael, Stacie,
my daughter, Josh, Cody.
Family trip.
- Well, it's been
the trip of a lifetime really.
Like traveling back to
Silverton from Maryborough
in a big convoy
of about 12 cars,
that was one of the best
experiences I've ever had.
- I'm like my
father in many ways,
just looking at the
old cars and stuff
and helping out
and all that so yeah.
- 'Cause I needed all
the drivers too, hang on.
So yeah, so I needed
a back up vehicle.
Joshua brought the Griffin car,
and he's our little navigator.
And it's just awesome, you
can go out to the scenes out here
and it's exactly
like in the movie.
When I hit the
Mundi Mundi plains,
go on over the hill and down,
you know, it's just awesome.
Just like on the movie.
- I've always been more
a loner you might say,
rather than big groups,
I don't know what drives
people to get together like that.
Really.
- Hundreds tonight,
I've never seen the lookout
as busy as it is tonight.
It's just phenomenal,
the crowds, the cars.
- You can stand
on the spot and go,
shit, that rock looks like
it was still in the movie.
- I think it just captures
a bit of a dreamtime
for a lot of Australians
how they would like to
play and live their life.
Anything to do with
wheels and motors
is always a popular
thing with guys.
- Off the road.
Get off the road!
- Back in the day, those
cars were on the road for us.
We'd like to catch
the bus to school
and be looking out the window
and you see all these cars
that could have been in Mad Max
and yeah, we just
loved those cars.
- Mid-seventies, petrol
had been hugely cheap.
- And my car
needed so much of it
that I was continually
running out of petrol.
- Young men could
quite simply go out
and buy themselves a ridiculously
overpowered automobile.
And the sense of freedom
you get from that was massive.
And then there
was the oil crisis.
- This may be the worst
weekend they've ever faced
for finding gasoline to give
them the automobile freedom
they take as their due.
- You had these
incredible automobiles
that sucked a huge
amount of juice
and all of a sudden petrol
wasn't cheap anymore.
- Big V8s and the like were
just cut up and got rid of
because it looked
as though the fuel
was going to keep on
getting more expensive.
- I remember being
told things like,
fuel is going to run out
in two, maybe three years.
- When we had fuel rationing
we saw what started to happen
after about three or four days.
- I will not take the
blame for this thing,
I will not take the crap
and the harassment
from these customers.
- Why didn't they come out
and tell us there was no gas?
- Lives were
disrupted by something as simple
as not having enough
fuel to run their cars.
- When Mad Max came
out it kind of crystallised,
oh this is what
it could look like.
We'd see a breakdown in
order and chaos would ensue.
Gangs would take
over the highway.
- Timing of Max and
the timing of that whole
car culture, power
high-octane thing
was right in the sweet spot
to create even more reverence
to these beautifully illogical
overpowered vehicles.
- I remember when
I first arrived here
for the first time in 2004,
we came over the brow of
the hill and just parked up here.
I got goosebumps, the hairs
went up on the back of my neck,
it was just
absolutely incredible.
It just felt, well for me,
it felt like I'd come home.
I was so familiar with
seeing this place in the movie.
Just absolutely incredible.
- We actually call
Adrian Mad Max
because he thinks he's Mad Max.
He dresses like Mad Max,
got a dog like Mad Max,
he does everything Mad Max.
I think he eats dog
food and all that.
- I remember sitting
at the kitchen table,
I had my head in my
hands, I was like this,
and my mum came and she said,
is everything all right, you
know, is everything okay?
And I said, Mum, you
know, I've just been to see
two of the most extraordinary
films that I've ever seen.
And that was the start
that set me on this quest
to find out more and more
about these incredible movies.
To me, Mad Max 2 was film
perfection, it was flawless.
The first thing I wanted to
do was see if I can find a car,
which I did, I found an
Aussie coupe in Texas,
funnily enough,
and I bought the car
and over the next 18 months
turned into the Interceptor.
I think at the time I was
the only person in Europe
that had one of these
replicas and I was happy.
But I knew that there was
something more I needed to do,
something else I wanted to do.
My future plans including
the family and the car,
is moving to Australia to live.
I actually said to
my wife, Linda, I said,
do you think you
could live there?
Well thinking it would never
happen, she actually said yes,
you know, just to
kind of pacify me.
I've been with Linda
now for 35 years
and our first date was
actually taking her to the cinema
to see Mad Max 1 and 2.
But I don't really think
she ever expected me
to do all this.
Thinking back now, I got
away with things that maybe
a normal husband
wouldn't have got away with.
At the time it was just a
dream but I thought to myself,
if I'm ever lucky enough
to ever live in Australia,
and certainly live out here,
I would love to do
some kind of display.
- We all thought it
was going to be bullshit
and you know, no one's going
to go to the Mad Max Museum.
But it's the most
popular thing out here.
Everyone that comes here
and they don't know where it is,
well, where's Mad Max Museum?
Up the hill.
- This being known as the
Hollywood of the Outback,
I just found it odd that
there was really nothing
to show that films
are shot here.
Especially with a
film like Mad Max 2
which of course is one of
the biggest films ever made.
The majority of photographs here
were given to me by
cast and crew members,
extras as well from Broken Hill.
There's a lot more to the film
than the 90 minutes
you see on the screen.
For instance, we have
just this photograph here
that shows one of the bad guys
eating a chocolate
bar, having a laugh.
And I think that's important,
just to let people
know, and show people,
exactly what went
on at the same time.
These are just a few of
the people that I've ever met
or people that have called
in to see us at the museum,
which is a real honour
for me, a real big honour.
Oh, actually we were
doing some work at the back
and a chap came round the back
and he just said, oh,
are you the owner?
I said, yes, he said,
my wife would love a
photograph with you.
And I said, yeah, that's no
problem, I'll come around.
And he said, oh, I
should let you know,
it's Mel Gibson's sister.
So you can imagine that
I was a little bit nervous.
You never know who's
gonna walk through the door.
- Go up there and
growl at the camera.
Right down the
lens, run up to it.
- Mel came into the bar one day
and he had all this gravel rash
and it was all weeping
and it looked terrible.
And I said, ugh, I'll go and get
someone to do
something about that
and he just laughed
because it was just makeup
and here's stupid me
thinking that was the real thing.
- Well, this display here
features parts from the
Interceptor double car,
which is the one that
they rolled and wrecked.
If you're lucky enough
when you're fossicking around
you can find little bits and
pieces that are still around.
To some people
it looks like bits
of broken glass
and things like that,
but for me, finding something
like these pieces here,
the bits off the car,
must be like a
prospector finding gold.
- Oh, that's rock.
God dammit.
- Oh, I found it, I found
what you were picking up.
Mad Max first entered
my life on June 8th, 2016.
That's the day I met Tank.
I was working for
a television station
at Eternal Con on Long Island
and I'm interviewing an Iron Man
when out of the corner of my eye
I see this hulking,
naked figure.
I think my first
question to Tank was,
who the hell are you
and why are you naked?
I said, can I just come up
to your house for a weekend
and do a little three minute
video for my news station?
- Ham and Swiss
or spinach and feta?
- I'll go ham and
swish, swish, swish.
- Two days later,
we start filming.
He calls me up a couple
of days later and he goes,
by the way, this is
what I do all year long.
- And some cake to
chase that coffee down.
Just the plain one.
- And he said, do you want
to come to Australia with me?
I said, hell yeah I do.
We traveled the world
together many times over.
And eventually we fell in love.
Some days I want to kill him,
but he feels like my
best friend, you know?
- I have lipstick on now?
- No.
- Okay.
- I think that he has a very
rigid view on masculinity
and I challenge that a lot.
Men can have feelings,
men can open up.
- I don't know what it is.
- It's a piece of car.
- He hides behind
a lot of walls.
He gets to hide behind the mask.
- Oh!
- Oh, yes!
- Yeah!
- Holy shit!
Oh my god!
- It's a piece of
potentially Toadie's badge!
- Yep.
- Wow.
We got to compare it
to some screenshots.
- Well done, Tank,
that's gold, mate.
Suck it, King Tutankhamen.
- I like to visit
the movie location
and after a while I
started this rock museum.
I went quite everywhere
where they shot the movies
so I have quite a lot.
Obviously rocks
were really important
for me at the beginning.
Now I succeed to pick
up a little piece of the road,
of the bitumen.
I mean they shot the
movie on that bitumen
so it's like, you
know, interesting.
Actually I don't
really care about
how beautiful the rocks are,
it's just they were
picked at the right place
and now it's a beautiful
collection of stuff.
- Gradually I realised
that whilst I was
from a completely
different background,
I had through this film
extraordinary unforeseen affinities
with those people.
I would like to really
congratulate you
on keeping this cinema open.
I'm now very fond of
them and strangely enough,
they seem to be very fond of me.
- We all rub
shoulder to shoulder.
We're all stars
in our own right.
Being a fan of Mad
Max, it grows on you.
It grows on you.
- Hey, for a 38 year old
movie that's not bad, huh?
- It's a story of survival,
and I thought about myself.
In 1998, they said, you've
got a tumor in your spinal cord.
The doctor got all the
tumor out of the spinal cord
but it left all this damage.
It took me months, but I
finally got the big toe moving.
Nine months later I
walked out of there.
It's up to each
and every one of us
to have that determination
to push ourselves through.
- I've got that fighting
spirit, I won't give up.
I've been through a
hell of a lot of trauma
and this one's been
through it with me.
Still fighting the
fight of cancer now,
and I'm not going to give
up, I won't stop smiling
and keep the fight.
Every day is worth living
and you've got to fight it.
- And that's Mad Max,
daily battle to survive.
We'll get there,
yeah, we'll make it.
- First thing I done,
when I got back
I asked the person with
me to get a handful of soil
and put it in my hands.
I rubbed it through my
fingers and I said, I'm home.
- Now you'll
be able to walk.
- I can die happy now,
it's all good.
- Last of the V8 Interceptors.
It fills people's lives,
makes 'em happy.
If it makes 'em happy
then it's good to do.
- The mateship, the
comradery, it's infectious.
It's Australian and I love it.
- And it only lasts a few days.
And then it's time to
go back to the real world
and that's hard.
That's a bit of a let down,
I mean, you're not only
going back to your day job
and taking the costume off
but you're leaving
family behind.
This is not just a Comic
Convention or something.
This is a family reunion.
- And it's incredible
'cause 10 days maybe total
have been spent
together and they feel like
I've known them my whole life.
- There's been so
many great things
that have come out of all this,
people that have
come into my life.
That have changed my life,
and hopefully they'll stick
around for the rest of my life.
- You're a special one.
- Am I now?
- Mister Tank.
How'd we do?
- We did great.
- There was always
individuals inspired to create
and over time if you
love it, you just stay with it
and it doesn't matter if
you don't know anyone else
who's involved in it.
Certainly, you want
to be executed?
But the beauty of it is there
is a big community out there
of people who
are all like-minded,
who have the same roaring
desire for this franchise.
Nothing can prepare
for that moment
when you drive towards
the Wasteland city
for the first time.
And you're seeing it
rise out of the desert
and it's on.
- We started Wasteland
Weekend in 2010.
We wanted to have a
gathering of Mad Max fans
and do it out in our own
little piece of the wasteland
and we thought some
people might show up.
- It's a crazy
event, it is massive.
I think last year they
had probably around
4,000 people attend.
It takes hours to get
in, it's just, it's insane.
- We go in, we kill,
we capture them!
Being Wez at Wasteland Weekend
is nothing short of being
an epic rock star for a week.
Wez, you missed your cue.
Valley of Death?
- This is the Valley of Death!
- Tank's tribe
is really the tribe for
screen accurate Mad Max 2 stuff.
- We kill, we capture!
- Wez, no!
- I don't think anybody's
living a better life
than Steve Scholz when
he's dressed up as Wez.
It's incredible to watch.
- I understand your pain.
- And now it's Lord
Humungus and Lady Faye
of the Dogs of War.
- People ask me all the time,
with all this cosplay
stuff that I do
do you make any money doing it?
And I say, believe it or not,
the one thing that actually
makes money is the DJing thing.
DJ Humungus is very
heavy, unforgivingly heavy.
Still very danceable.
It started out as just
a silly idea, who knew.
- My dogs, we're
gathered here today.
- So good.
- You must not be selfish.
You must not hoard your
gasoline from one another.
You must listen to each
other's reason, especially hers.
- So many people showed up.
There's people like
ringed three and four deep
outside the dome.
I'm looking up, there's
people climbing the dome,
local Cal City Police
Department was there
working the event,
they were on the dome
to see what was going on.
- Local sheriff's department
was on the dome.
- Oh man.
- We have multiple
wedding requests every year,
but okay, if you
want to do that.
I mean, it's, it's your wedding
if you want us to ruin it.
- With the power assumed by me.
And once I did
one, everybody else
just wanted to follow
suit at Wasteland,
said, I've got
to get in on this,
I need the Lord
Humungus to marry me.
- If any Wastelander has
an objection to this union.
- Tank doesn't become
Tank until he puts that mask on
and then he just gets
to become this funny,
lighthearted guy, everybody
eats it up, everybody loves it.
Tank's only just started doing
that without the mask with me
in the last couple of months.
Gently over time, he's
changed into something
a little softer and a
little more open-minded.
- A lot of people give me
strange looks when they ask me,
oh, where did you
meet your husband?
I always hesitate.
They might think, well,
why do you want to go
and celebrate the apocalypse?
You know, isn't that
kind of depressing?
But it's quite the
opposite for us.
Sometimes when you
face the potential end
you face the ability
to celebrate life itself.
- The whole
post-apocalyptic genre
is I think a positive thing,
because it means there
is a post-apocalypse.
There is something after.
- You can be more
your own person.
Like everyday you get
up and you go to work
and you're, you know, you're
Joe Schmo in your cubicle job
being told what
to do by your boss
and you feel like you have
no autonomy in your life.
The end of the world,
you're in charge.
It's easier to feel like you're
more important in the waste.
- Wasteland is very inclusive
and people may think,
oh, only certain
people can come here.
Let me tell you,
everybody is beautiful
and passionate about what
they do as far as Wasteland goes.
- The real world I work
for the Port of Los Angeles.
- I'm a middle school
science teacher.
- Anybody could belong.
It doesn't matter how old you
are or what your background is
or what country you're from
or what language you speak.
It doesn't matter, I
think everybody fits in.
I think everybody's
trying to fit in somehow.
- I had no idea that
there was other people
as weird as I am, but
like I found my family.
It's like my home
away from home.
We've got people
in Japan, Australia,
Holland, Italy, Ireland.
- Canada, Mexico.
- Scotland.
- We know there's other groups
out there, there's Germans.
- Oh yeah, the Germans!
- Our group consists
of more than 300 people.
Prop makers, models, dancers.
In this rotten and rusty world
the Cult of Chrome's the cult
to achieve something bigger.
- We all understand
the language of survival.
We all understand
the apocalypse.
- Everybody
somehow can relate to Mad Max.
- There's always a new
fan base that rediscovers it.
And that's where it
keeps on growing.
- When Fury Road came out
it gave a real shot in the arm.
Now we have a new set
of inspirational visual things
that we can play with.
- Fury Road changed how
I look at the whole series.
- It was at the
festival of Cannes,
so Mad Max gained
cultural prestige.
- Having Furiosa as a
strong female character
that's also disabled,
it's just really great to see
that representation in film.
- Women can kick arse
just as much as men can.
- When I saw the
movie, made me free.
More Japanese women
watched that movie.
- Max and Furiosa
stand their own ground.
I really liked that
balance, that equality.
- None of us would
ever know each other
if it wasn't for the
Mad Max movies,
if it wasn't for Mad
Max and then Wasteland
we all wouldn't
be here right now.
- Dressing up didn't seem like
it was ever going to
be a thing that I did.
Now that I'm
comfortable doing it
and I don't feel like
a complete doofus
it is transformative.
Meeting Tank brought
out the doer in me.
- I think he is a
very lucky individual
to have found something that
he is that passionate about.
Even if people do not understand
how somebody can be so
passionate about a movie.
- It opened up a
world of adventure
that I otherwise would
not have encountered.
And of friendships and of
understanding of other people.
- A lot of people say, it
took me a lot to get out here
and to be around people
'cause they're not a people person
or they're an introvert.
But you know what,
they have this passion,
like I want to do this.
- There are people that
live Wasteland all the time.
They bought land
out near the site.
- My life has always been,
if a door opens
I'll run through it.
I've done a lot of really
dumb stuff in my life
because of it.
But on my death bed, I
would lay there and go,
yeah, I've lived.
- We can open her up a bit.
- Whoa, whoa!
Woo hoo!
- My general formula
for my students is,
follow your bliss. I
mean, find where it is
and don't be
afraid to follow it.
The influence of a
vital person vitalises.
The world is a wasteland.
People have the notion
of saving the world
by shifting it around and
changing the rules and so forth.
Any world is a living
world if it's alive.
And the thing is
to bring it to life
and the way to bring it to
life is defined in your own case
where your life is and be
alive yourself it seems to me.
- There was a moment I
had climbing up the mountain
overlooking the Pinnacles
where a friend of mine was worried
and he's like, you
know, be careful,
watch your foot
here, let me help you.
I said, don't worry, this
is where I want to die.
And I mean that, this is, can
you imagine a better place
to call the home for the
rest of your existence?
- One of the requests
that I've made
when my time is eventually
up is I've asked my wife, Linda,
to come out here on a windy
day and scatter my ashes
and make sure they
blow all across the plains
and that would make
me a happy man.
- All the Mad Max fans,
they are fans forever,
until their last day and
some of them are going to be
buried in their car or
in some sacred land
in the wasteland somewhere.
Me, when my
book will be finished
I will turn the page and
move onto something else.
Now my next dream is to
maybe write a book about
Crocodile Dundee's movie.
I have a lot of ideas on
what maybe the next dreams
I will fulfill in 20
years, who knows?
I mean, I don't know.
- Life is very
short in the scale of things.
And so bite on it, make every
day, every hour, every minute
as intense as can be.
I never thought one day
that I would go
back to the wasteland
as maybe the last thing I do.
first film, Mad Max,
it was a low budget
Australian film
which seemed to resonate somehow
with every film going
territory in the world.
The obvious answer was
that it was full of car action
and it was violent.
But it seemed to have
something else there.
When I went to Japan,
people would say,
oh, it's just like the
samurai movies.
And then you'd go to
France and they'd say,
it's very much like
the spaghetti westerns.
They're stories that
recur, we call them myths,
they recur in every
time and in every culture.
That's why we recognise
these stories almost anywhere.
It allows us to have
experiences and to share them
with all people who
have gone before
and those that may come after.
- All right, thanks everybody
for being a part of this.
It's been a really interesting
exercise putting it together
so I hope you get a
real big kick out of it.
Now, if you have a
look at your sheets,
primarily you're going
from can to can to can.
They are your markers.
That's what you're looking for
when you go to each location.
- I'll sit on
somebody's lap, it's all right.
You can use any means to
work out the quiz questions.
So you can get on
your mobile phones,
you can pop the movie
in and check the film
if you have the
facility to do that.
- We got it.
- All right, next clue.
- I love winning.
- Just behave yourselves.
We're not actual Road Warriors.
- No one was ready
for a film like Mad Max.
- It felt new and exciting.
You couldn't help
but talk about it.
- Does anybody
have any questions?
- What no speeding?
- No speeding.
- It started out as a
small, very low budget film,
very limited expectations
that turned out to be huge.
A big enough film
to create a sequel.
- Mad
Max is back in town
and tackling Hollywood head-on.
- Which then became
a phenomenon.
- Opening night
at cinemas across the nation
was a sell out.
- Now 30 years later,
a fourth film is on the way.
- Those two words, Mad Max,
they're like the McDonald's
or Star Trek or Star Wars.
You might not like
Mad Max, but by God,
you know what's
being talked about.
- Donald Trump was describing
some Mad Max America.
- The
world of Mad Max
might not be as far
away as we think.
- Film can tell us a lot about
who we are and where we live
and how we feel about things.
- Britain plunged into
a Mad Max style world.
- Mad Max is so dystopian
and so unpleasant that, yeah,
it's not the most obvious
film to want to emulate.
- Saturday.
You can film the
syringe, it's even worse.
So every morning
a little .
It's not pleasant.
We'll start looking like a
Frenchman, here we go.
Bonjour, I am Bertrand Cadart,
liberal candidate
for the Seat of Lyons.
You may know me as the
scooter riding French mayor
from the east coast
who appeared in
the film Mad Max.
And this is my frog bathroom.
My frog shower mat,
my frog shower curtain.
My frog bath bubbly stuff.
I lived on the east coast
of Tasmania for 15 years.
I've been the mayor
for seven years.
- You've been in Australia
for about 40 years, I believe.
Is that seriously your
best Aussie accent?
- Yeah, yeah, ha ha.
Right.
I don't think I will be
able to ride anymore.
At least my doctor
doesn't think so
and I am advised not to
ride because if I do crash,
what is the normal gravel
rash for a healthy person
would become a
death trap for me.
The doctor, he said, it will
take six months of chemo
to know if I can save your life.
Now, my leave was denied.
It is why I have no
choice but to resign.
Thank you.
I'm 70 years of age.
I have terminal cancer.
Incurable, I know it.
I know I'm going to
fight as best as I can.
I have a plan to last until
at least January, 2019,
because there is a 40th
anniversary of the Mad Max shoot.
And we have a big
gathering in Clunes.
Here we go, that's it.
My doctor has
allowed me to do it,
he even reckon it's probably
good for me to fight my cancer.
He said that will motivate
you to live and to survive,
as long as you want
to live and survive.
And so far I do.
When the reunion
started to be organised
I wanted to be
there, and I went.
- Mad Max, the movie that
catapulted Mel Gibson to fame,
is celebrating its 30th
anniversary this weekend.
- And I went to one
of the very first ones,
I think in Little River.
At the time it was
not very popular
and I was one of
the only actors there.
This film shot on a shoe
string has developed a cult.
In Italy, in Germany
and in Japan,
in America, I mean everywhere.
This is like a tribe, a
sort of a world tribe.
All those people are
extraordinary people.
They are all
incredibly interesting.
Oh God.
- When I started All
American Pool Service,
I dreamt of working that
job until I was ready to retire
and then selling the
company and retiring off of that.
I soon learned that that
wasn't particularly realistic,
that's not really how it
works anymore, unfortunately.
So I dissolved that, got rid
of that stress out of my life.
And Jeff offered me a job here.
- He was very forthcoming
with what he did
and if I did something like that
I probably wouldn't
tell anybody.
And I don't.
- You have defied me.
You will know the vengeance
of the Lord Humungus.
- He was totally comfortable
with it and it's like,
yeah, he's having
fun and good for him.
- Nobody gets out of here alive!
- I watched them all
and he loves them,
that's all I can say is,
you know, he loves them,
he was first doing the
Mad Max character.
- I thought he was good
looking enough, you know,
to be a lot better
character than he picked,
but he thought Lord
Humungus was neat.
- When we first got the
house it came with a pool,
which I really didn't
want, but it was there.
And I come out the door
and my wife's standing
out there with three guys
and there's this hulking
mass of a human.
He's like, here, here, I'm
gonna give these to you,
these are something
I think you'll enjoy.
And I'm looking, I'm like,
who's Lord Humungus, right?
And I'm like, this you?
He's like, yeah.
I'm like, holy crap, right.
- About 1981 my dad bought
me an issue of Starlog Magazine.
I don't think I ever
read the article,
but I certainly
looked at the pictures.
Immediately, this was
it, this was all I wanted,
this was all I watched.
- He was in his room a lot.
- You could turn the volume off
and he could tell you
every line in that movie.
He had it all memorised.
- I was a Road
Warrior in my mind.
When I was like 15 years old
I was so deeply into Mad Max,
that that was the
world I wanted to live in.
The cars that I wanted to
drive, the way I wanted to dress.
And you know, once I
got out of high school
and got into the
punk rock scene,
I did kind of dress
that way a little bit.
- He just was
crazy about the Misfits
when he was 14, 15 years old.
He had the guitar
and he would go out in the
garage and sing and play.
And all the neighbours loved it.
I'm joking.
The Misfits offered him the job
to sell merchandise on the road
and then it went from
merchandise to the road manager.
He had a ball, he got to see
the whole world effectively,
from Alaska to Moscow.
Everybody got a
nickname on the bus
and Jim was a big bodybuilder
and they just called him Tank.
So he's Jim "The Tank" Dorsey.
- This is how the
Humungus rolls.
Once you get started
and you start to see
and you start to feel some
results, it's very addictive.
You know, once the
shoulders start coming in
and the triceps pop a little bit
and then you crank the bicep
up and you're just like, oh.
You know, the waist
is coming in tighter.
That's the
inspiration right there,
that's where the
obsession comes from
because it's like, oh, I
like that, I want more.
- Sensei.
- Yes, sir.
Jim came in here, oh, good
lord, probably eight years ago.
He's black belt, as you can see,
and doing quite a good job.
I do remember the
first thing I said to him
when he came in here,
first time he trained was,
Tank, you gotta get
rid of the muscles,
they're just in your way.
But he didn't and
he's doing fine.
When he's on the
floor, he's very physical
and you know that if
you can defend yourself
against somebody that's
that big and that strong
then you're doing
something right.
When I talk about
my karate school,
I show 'em a picture of Tank
with his massive muscles,
with some small person on the
ground and they go, oh my God.
But yeah, Tank is a lot of fun.
- Too much is never enough.
I always have that
feeling like there's more,
there's more that I can do,
there's more that I can be.
Yeah, I could put the
Humungus costume on
and throw the mask on,
but if I'm not in shape,
you're not going to believe it.
- Your waist.
- Yeah, yeah, right here.
Where the fat bit is.
The idea is not to
do an exact replica,
but to do a, so people, the fan
who are die hard Mad Max
fans, they will recognise Clunk.
I'm going to get
another set of boots,
hopefully the same type.
And the red bit here,
because all this is
what people remember.
My role in Mad
Max was very small,
being one of the
Toecutter gang members.
Now we all say the same thing,
I never thought that 40 years
later I would be remembered,
let alone talked about.
Look at that.
Good for them, you
know, like good for them.
As he said, it beats
cleaning swimming pools.
- The first time I
went over to his house
is kind of when I really started
to appreciate his passion
when I saw his costumes
and just the stuff
that was in there.
- Well, my wall of fame, if
I had to venture to guess,
probably started about
four years ago, maybe 2015.
The first guy I ever met was
Garret Graham who played Beef
in Phantom of the Paradise.
Each one of these
was really cool
to get the reaction
from each actor
who played the
characters that I cosplay.
But number one and the one
that I was the most
nervous going in
was meeting Kjell Nilsson,
the original Lord Humungus.
I was nervous about
how he was going to take
my portrayal of the character,
whether he thought
I did a good job of it.
'Cause this is, this is a
world-class athlete bodybuilder
in his prime where this is
just some middle-aged fan boy
trying to recreate something
he sees on a screen.
I didn't want him to think
that I was trying
to steal his thunder
or take over, replace
him or anything like that,
I just wanted them to feel
that I did his character
justice and he did,
he was proud of me.
He said, you are the next
generation of this evil character.
And that really meant a lot.
How is it?
Chocolatey?
- Good.
- Can you ever
eat more than one?
- No.
- Probably not.
- Probably not, well daddy
makes some pretty thick pancakes.
I've often wondered if other
dads, you know, my age,
mid forties, think of what I do
as being like
immature or childish,
because it doesn't
seem like something
a normal adult would do,
is make these
costumes and dress up.
- Viola!
- Look at that.
That's magnifique, magnifique.
And you managed
even to do the red bit.
- Well, we were saying
the plastic would be too hard
for the driving and everything.
- Yeah, yeah,
no, no, this is fine.
I am impressed.
- All right, let's try it on.
- Yeah!
I know at my age
and in my condition,
I will never, ever in
my life, what's left of it,
I have an opportunity to
have another trip like this.
- I've always
been a daydreamer.
I've always wanted to live in
another time or another place
being another character.
Getting the opportunity
to be a different person.
But for so many years, decades,
I thought I was the only
person who was into Mad Max.
- I thought it would be much
smaller, but I don't know,
it's like I have
nothing else to do.
I never worked a regular
job in my entire life,
I just do illustrations
or stuff like that
and sometimes I can earn
money from the things I'm doing.
My Mad Max stuff
cost me everything.
All my time and all
the money I can make.
- He's just speaking
about Mad Max every time
that I think, this
is the Mad Melvin.
- I started to collect stuff about
Mad Max when I was a kid,
after I saw the
movie the first time.
10 years ago I had
like a handful of stuff
and I thought that it was enough
to start to work
on a small book.
But 10 years after my collection
went a little bit
out of control.
I began to pick articles,
magazines, records,
and every material I could
find that was Mad Max related.
My idea is to collect
every original item.
I have books and
papers, and pictures,
press pictures
and stuff like this.
I have a ton.
- Well, this is my
Mad Max collection,
at least for the first movie.
I don't know what possesses me
to pick out a particular
item that I look for on eBay.
I guess those were
the things that I just
thought I could find and sure
enough I tracked them down.
Alpine Stars high point
motocross boots are not cheap,
especially to find them
with the proper heavy
lug on the, on the sole.
- It never occurred to me
that somebody would
go to all the trouble
to acquire some of the
props that were used
or to build their own props.
- The first thing that I
remember that he showed me
was he made the dog food,
the food that Mad Max ate,
and then he
replicated the labels
on a can of hash or something
and he was so proud of that.
- Those are the most
accurate ones ever made.
When I first got a copy of
the Blu-ray of Road Warrior
I took it to my friend Tim's
house with a 95 inch screen
and I took that scene frame
by frame and dissected it.
And that was when I found out
that the circle that
says 800 grams in it
is actually a starburst.
- And he goes, I
want you to know,
everything in this
room is screen accurate.
I'm like, I realize, okay, I'm
gonna screw with him now.
So I'm looking
at 'em like, well,
you know, I'm sorry
to disagree with you,
I'm gonna call a little
bullshit on this one, but this,
I distinctly remember
the slight scratch near the,
you know, like the trigger here.
And he like leaps
up out of his desk
and he's like, whoa,
wait a minute, wait.
And he's like looking at it
and he's like picking it up.
He's like, no, no, I'm
pretty sure that's right.
I'm like, dude, I don't know.
And he's ready to
like pop the DVD in.
- It's hard work finding
the actual screen accurate
baseball face masks or
the five draw telescope
as opposed to the
standard four draw.
- Dude, I don't even know
what the hell half
this shit is, okay.
- Anybody who's into
it knows you nailed it.
- I spent 10 years in
underwear behind my computer
searching for items on eBay,
searching for articles,
searching for magazines.
- When he's working on something
he's working on it really hard
and speaking
about it every time.
- In my Mad Max folder
it's around 15,000 pictures,
scans of articles.
Mostly scans of articles.
The biggest task was to read
them all and it took me years.
Actually really years.
I think the Holy Grail for
me is a Mad Max 1 script.
And I got it from
Bertrand Cadart.
- Have you heard
of Mad Max before?
Yeah?
Don't tell me you watched it.
- Yeah, I have.
You're too bloody young!
What about you, young man?
You should not, you're only 14,
when it was released
you had to be 16 to see it.
Let alone this little bloke.
- I was just about to turn
14 and this movie came out
and it's rated over 18
in France so I thought,
well, I've got to see this.
We just snuck in
to the movie theatre
so we didn't get caught
and I remember being
petrified watching the scenes.
We talked about
it at school and,
mates would say, oh,
you see that movie?
It's filmed in Australia.
I thought, wow, Australia.
I ended up on the Sunshine
Coast because of Mad Max.
When I first met Bertrand
he came here as a customer
and I didn't even know
who he was, you know,
and then he said, oh,
you've seen Mad Max?
And my wife is rolls
her eyes, as usual,
don't get my husband
getting to start about Mad Max
because he'll never stop.
And then he told me who we was.
- There is a big bloke that
goes on the roof of the car
with a mighty crowbar.
You're looking at
the crowbar man.
- You're the crowbar man?
- I am the crowbar man.
I am the crowbar man.
- Bullshit.
- I say, you betcha I remember,
the crowbar, yeah, wow.
I went and watched
everything, all the scenes
where I can see him and
then all my mates in France,
they're just gonna freak,
it's just like, I'm gonna be
a rockstar now, you know.
- With Mad Max people would
sit at the end of the screening
and just sit and try to recover
from the previous 100 minutes.
There were a lot
of mild films around
so this Mad Max stood out.
We knew we had
something that was going to
impact on audiences.
- For me, it was
all about the cars,
the Aussie classic muscle cars.
And especially the
black Interceptor.
Was always a favourite of mine,
you can never get sick of it.
- When they went
to the drive in 1979,
we see on the screen were
cars that they actually owned.
Monaros, Falcons, HJ panel vans.
- Everyone has a story about
their car or their family car.
And it stays with them,
it's something you'd never,
well I don't think
I'll ever forget
'cause my dad loved his cars.
It had to be a V8
and we all loved it
being revved up
after a drink at the pub
and driving home
from the tennis club
and whose dad could
outdo whose dad with the V8.
- Over 10 years ago I
decided to build myself
a Mad Max black
on black Interceptor.
It took me seven long
years to find the parts,
figure out how it
all bolts together,
and then finally I
put the wheel flares
and the nose cone
and the roof spoiler on
and molded it all in and
gave her a shot of high fill
and then chiseled her
back to her straight lines
and then hit her with some
black and here it is today.
I use it to go down and
get my lottery on a Sunday.
It's not something I just
want to put away and stare at,
it's something that I
want to use and enjoy.
And I do really enjoy it.
- When I first arrived in
Australia on a motorcycle
I never thought
in a million years
that I would live here.
I was bumming around
the world on a motorcycle
trying to have a good time.
And waiting for life
to give me opportunity.
And I discovered
this immensity of land.
Roads with no end.
At the time was not many
police and a lot less people,
it was in the early seventies.
You could open the
throttle of your motorcycle,
go as fast as bloody thing
would go for 200 kilometres
without seeing one single house.
That worked for me.
I decided to customise
Japanese bikes,
which nobody was
doing in Australia.
I did that with a
couple of French friends
and we had to learn everything.
We had to buy a book,
how to laminate fiberglass.
We knew nothing.
And no one wanted
to buy our stuff,
it was just, come on, you know.
We are real bikers here,
we want a crust of a dead fly
on our Belstaff jacket.
At the same time, George Miller
was trying to convince people
to help him shoot his film.
Nobody believed in George
as much as they
didn't believe in me.
So I had all those fairings
dangling in the shops
and when George sort of
approached those people to say,
look, I need someone
to customise bikes
that we got from Kawasaki to
look as futuristic as possible.
One of the dealer said, look,
there is one guy that
might be able to help you.
Here is his number.
We made absolutely
no money out of it.
The price was
probably below cost.
Eventually George
one day said to me,
would you like
a part in the film?
I said to him, but what
about my accent, you know?
He said, it's all right,
you don't say anything.
- This here is
my original script.
My wife read this
and she was horrified.
And I said well, what's
so crazy about it?
And because my English
was not good enough
to understand what was written,
she said, you have no idea
what you're
getting yourself into.
I never thought that 40
years later I still would have it.
We are doing these trips
for me as a pilgrimage
back to where we shot the film.
It means a lot to me
to do this after 40 years.
Who is there?
This is Clunk!
Every year in Japan
you do Mad Max festival.
- Yes, yes, yes.
- Yes?
Look, this is crazy.
- I felt like a pop singer,
I felt like the Beatles.
- They were not afraid
to show their emotions.
Some of them
were almost in tears,
in fact, not almost, in tears.
- They were actually falling
against me, crying on my chest.
Just falling on you,
just sobbing, you know.
- Saying, I cannot
believe you are here.
- You thought, oh
my God, you know,
for God's sake, get off me!
But inwardly I
loved it, you know.
I'll be walking down the street
and all of a sudden I'll hear
somebody's voice in my ear.
"You and me, Max, we're
gonna give 'em back their heroes."
What that hell, people
are quoting my lines.
There are fans all
around the world.
I went on my honeymoon to Sri
Lanka, a young waiter come up.
He said, excuse me, sir,
what is your good name?
I said, my name is Roger Ward.
Oh, very famous name
here, sir, very famous name.
I said, I think you're
thinking of Roger Moore.
Oh no, no, no, Roger
Moore, he was a saint.
He was James Bond, no,
no, you were Fifi in Mad Max!
Oh my God.
You know, you get
that all around the world.
Just people identify
with that and with you
as if we're all one.
That's ridiculous, I
know, but I love it.
- If you're not moved by that
then I think you're a
bit of a cynical bastard
who should have a long,
hard look at themselves.
- Jim Goose.
Fifi.
And Johnny the Boy.
- Donuts, donuts.
- No donuts.
Here are the donuts.
Bit more, maybe here.
Yeah, maybe here.
- Yoshi bought a bike off
eBay from South Australia.
He paid good money for
it and it got to my place,
it was a piece of,
won't say any more.
The rims were rusted out,
spokes were broken and missing.
Broken piston, wheel
bearings were shot,
all the brakes had seized.
The thing was the
biggest pile of crap
I've ever had in my shed.
So that's what we started
with, and away we went.
- I've built
many, many Kawasaki's,
I can't tell you how
many I've done.
Hundreds of them,
it's been an addiction.
I've owned well over a 1,000.
I'm nuts on Kwakas, that's it.
I'm quackers over Kwakas.
It was successfully completed
and soon after they
found Dale's original bike.
They're both here
today, they look fabulous.
- Well, this one belongs
to Yoshi from Japan
and he leaves this in Australia.
- What?
- The bike.
- Oh, yeah, yeah.
- Yeah.
- This is the original
bike that I owned,
I was the first owner.
Whoa, clutch is not real good.
There've been five
owners of it now.
I sold it in about '79,
but in 1994 for its class
it established the
land speed record.
142 point something
miles per hour.
So that's another little piece
of very interesting
history of this bike.
- He always comes up to my place
because now his
spare bike is kept there
and he collects
it and off he goes.
And only found
out last week that
he's got another
burnout bike in Japan.
That was a surprise to me.
- Beautiful.
So when did you build
this, how long ago?
- 15 years.
But it's old now, it over
heats and sucks a lot of petrol.
- You tell me, my
Trans Am is just as bad.
- Hey, Clunk!
- Yeah!
Long life to Clunk!
What a ride.
- Thanks, cobber.
- Yeah, sure, I'd be happy to.
- Thank you so much.
- Thank you for coming,
I really appreciate it.
How are you doing?
How was your night last night?
- Is this the most fans
you've ever seen in one place?
- Yes.
- The vehicle is a mid 70s
F100 I built from ground up,
built it on pictures,
the original pictures
from the movie vehicle.
And it's probably
one of the most
reliable vehicle I've
built, it goes and stops.
The special features are
really the flame throwers.
If we all did the same thing,
life's pretty boring
sometimes, isn't it, you know?
- My name is Bill Hatzigiannis,
I run a small
business on Facebook,
Steel Edge Constructions,
where I create model cars.
I'd never seen a coupe with
that sort of body structure,
I'd never seen any of
the vehicles, motorbikes,
looking as tough as they were
on the actual Mad Max movie.
My son loves vehicles,
he's a motorhead,
no influence of mine whatsoever.
But yeah, like I'm hoping
that he'll be able to carry
the Mad Max tradition on.
Just awesome that there's
other people out there
that really enjoy it as much
as I do and my family does.
- Seeing all these
replica vehicles
and the guys that like
spend their last dime
to put these vehicles together,
I understand that passion,
if I had more dimes to spend
I'd be doing the
same damn thing.
- Gidday, welcome
to the Mad Max event.
This is the biggest
convention of Mad Max actors
since 1979 movie release
and they're here in one
spot and they're here,
and this won't happen again.
Make the most of
it, it's a one-off day
and we're gonna bloody enjoy it.
Let's talk to the actors,
we'll go through one by one.
Vince Gill, the Nightrider!
- Thank you, ladies
and gentlemen.
- It just overwhelms me,
this movie and the
love you all have for it.
Thank you so much.
And to think that we're all
still here like 40 years later
and once we were young too.
- Who would've thought
40 years down the road,
thought everyone
had forgotten about us.
But apparently not.
- You couldn't do
this in America,
they would arrest every
one of you folks, seriously.
- Who thought the stupid Swede,
body builder could come
here and do something like this
and still here.
- Remember the crowbar man?
- Yeah!
- I am the crowbar man!
- Just remember who was the guy
they nearly hit with a crowbar
and they nearly hit with the axe
and they nearly
dropped the bike on.
As you know it
wasn't a huge budget
so none of us got
paid very much.
But we were young, we
were inventive, we were keen,
and I think we
contributed to the world
as far as how to make
movies and action movies.
- I can tell a bunch of stories,
but I just want to say something
about this film and
what it means, you know.
I grew up in the Southern
Tablelands and when you were 13
all you want to do is get on
the road and get out of there
and there was garages
around with lots of uncles,
boring out V8s and
trying to find a way
to create a sense of
freedom and the road
and what was possible.
But what this story also said
was that this story's
about the road,
it's about freedom,
and it's about death.
And how we all, all you
people understand that tension
and what that means.
And this is a great
Australian story
because you
understand that this film
was about the soul
of part of Australia
that you guys and
women, you all grew up in.
It's a bit tongue in
cheek, it's a bit different,
and the audience for
this film around the world
understand that very well.
And nobody
understands that better
than the people
standing in this crowd
and I just want to say,
I'm proud to meet ya,
I hope to shake all your
hands and thank you so much
and don't forget
your part in creating
this great myth and
narrative, thanks very much.
- When I was first
starting out to ride
I'd be watching Terry Gibson
riding fast on the
Goose bike thinking,
that's how you sit
when you ride fast.
I've always been into stunt
riders and stuff like that,
I was amazed by the stunts
that were done in Mad Max.
There's that style,
it's raw, it's real.
- I'm old school, I'm
one of the very last.
Actually someone
introduced me the other day
as being the oldest
stuntman in Australia.
My goal is to be the oldest
stuntman in the world.
- We had this car lying around
and we decided we'd
build it for the anniversary.
We were contacted
by the organisers,
as they heard we
may have a vehicle
that could be sacrificed
to go through the caravan.
- So the caravan stunt,
I was asked to sort of
come up with the concept
and I wanted to keep it to
the original scale, low budget.
But my idea was to
make it bigger and better.
So I decided, well,
two's better than one.
- It's intended life
was as a race car,
which it's still going to do
after it's finished
its job here today.
It just fast-tracked
our build a little quicker
than what we expected.
It was very stressful,
the paint's still wet,
we were still putting it together
at00 AM this morning.
- The biggest problem is
basically the cupboard hardwood
and cabinets, hinges,
sinks and things like that.
You will get stabbed more
than likely from debris like that.
I once had a splinter that
was three metres long.
But that's fine, I
just pulled it out.
- Do you want
to jump in and give it a rev?
- I'm hoping it'll start, I
think the battery's nearly flat.
- I'm old school, no smoke
and mirrors, no cameras.
You can't cheat.
We're not going high-tech.
We're keeping it grassroots
so even the ramps are
just pretty ramshackle.
My gear is not
megabucks safety here.
I've been alive 65 years,
so I can't be too damn bad.
I really hope you enjoyed it!
- Yes, excellent job, Rob.
- I've just made history, that
has never been done before!
And I never practiced.
If anybody's interested
in some of the shrapnel,
if you wanna collectible,
it'll be available over there
in about a half an hour.
- How much
for a piece of caravan?
- You've
done it, you've done it!
You came out all right!
- Haven't lost me touch.
- All right, everyone,
this car's the one
that you were all
asking about before.
It's been signed by the actors.
I'm gonna put Bertrand on,
he's gonna tell you
a little bit of a story.
- All right, good evening.
I'm sort of okay,
this is why I'm here
and you can see me
with the walking stick.
And the reason why
I have a walking stick
is because I've been
diagnosed with leukaemia.
It is fatal and it
can't be cured.
So I decided to come here
with you guys as I am myself,
as you can imagine,
a Mad Max fan,
and I would like to give
some proceed of this auction
to the Leukaemia Foundation.
As much as it is okay
for me to go at 70,
I don't think it is okay, I'm
going to become emotional,
I don't think it is okay
for a young person of 25
to die of leukaemia, you know,
and if we could help
them, there you go.
- I will start the
auction at 200 bucks,
so who is going to
go over 200 bucks?
- Come on!
- 250!
- We got 250, 250,
we got a three, we got
a three, we got a three?
We got a three over there,
we got a three, we got a
320, we got a 320, 320?
We got a 320 over
there, we got a 350, 350,
350 over there, 400 over here!
500 over there, 600 over there,
can we get 650, 650, 650?
- 1,000 - 1,000 over here!
$1,500!
Going, going and, sold!
- I think I'm going
to cry, so thank you.
Thank you very much.
- We're up here at
Maryborough, at the racing track,
and the shows over, folks,
and she's 100% snafu.
But we're still here
chipping away, packing up,
and still enjoying it.
That's what we come for.
- So we got some amazing
memorabilia from the show,
which was sensational.
But my two brothers here
got pieces of the caravan
with the tire marks on it,
and I think that's
the greatest thing
these blokes can drag out
and show somebody one day.
- The first film is
the balls to the wall,
skinflint explosion of energy
that is only created when you
kind of have nothing to lose.
- I was not
particularly excited to see the film
because I thought, my God,
with what we went through,
you know, it's
going to be a flop.
- Even the film crew, I
remember them all mumbling
and cursing and saying,
oh God, it'll never work.
I could hear it, and I'm
sure George could hear it.
- Australia didn't have much
in the way of action cinema,
so no one really could
have possibly anticipated
the hell that broke loose when
Mad Max arrived in cinemas.
- A lot of people did question
some of the
violence in the film.
- One ABC journalist
actually threw up
during one of the screenings.
- The most famous kind
of voice against the film
was Phillip Adams.
- He condemned Mad
Max, saying that it had,
quote, all the emotional
uplift of Mein Kampf.
- The film would be
great for future sadists
and psychopaths and
pedophiles, which is, you know,
a lot more than a thumbs down.
- The main thing about
Mad Max was word of mouth.
Everyone that saw Mad Max
had never seen anything like it,
not just as an Australian film.
- Holy shit.
It was an exciting
film to watch.
- Standing with George
at the back of the cinema
when the film finished
and the lights came up,
the response was just amazing.
Bill Collins wrote that
George Miller has made
the most exciting
film of the decade.
- But still, if somebody
then had said
that I was going to
be flown to Japan
and treated like a rock star,
I would have
said, you are crazy.
- It really blew everyone away.
What was this
story really about?
Why are people
connecting with it?
And so in order to answer
some of those
questions for himself,
George Miller started investigating
Joseph Campbell's work.
- We finally found Joseph
Campbell or his writings,
do you know who
Joseph Campbell is?
- Campbell's work goes back to
pictures on the side of caves.
So while we look at
Mad Max and we say,
this is an astonishing film,
we've never seen
this film before,
it didn't just come
from nowhere.
It came from recurring
patterns of narratives
that began 40,000 years ago.
- The person who alerted
everyone to Campbell
more than anyone
else was George Lucas.
From A Hero with
a Thousand Faces,
he based the Star Wars sagas.
They all dressed
in different clothes
but the essential themes
and the essential
experiences come through.
- When the mythology is alive
you don't have to tell
anybody what it means.
It's like looking at a picture
that's really talking
to you, it gets to you.
- The success of
Mad Max in Japan,
prompted Warner
Brothers in the States
to take another look at it
and give it a bit more backing.
And that's what enabled
it to get off the ground.
- It was
really a turning point
for modern Australian cinema.
- In Road Warrior
we attempted to be
much more consciously
mythological.
- Every year, hundreds,
if not thousands,
I'm not sure of the
figures, of Mad Max
dedicated true blue fans
come from all over the world
to Broken Hill and Silverton.
This was the best
possible location
for the filming of Mad Max 2.
Silverton is a place a
Mad Max fan must attend,
he must attend that, and
so this is where we're going.
- A friend of mine told
me, oh, Broken Hill,
it's the gate of the desert.
But when I get there, I said,
this is not the
gate of the desert,
this is the fucking desert.
I was overwhelmed.
I found it was really,
really beautiful.
If you go there, you
understand right away
why you want to shoot there
because it's like an
Australian Monument Valley.
In France and Europe,
everything is tiny and dense
and I suddenly discovered
empty spaces and a remote place.
- It's a cult following now for
Mad Max and Bertrand Cadart
is the man that played
Clunk in Mad Max 1,
he joins me this morning,
Bertrand good morning.
- Mad Max 2 is really
the decay of society
and all its props is now
well and truly on the way
to nothingness.
- I came to Silverton in
1973 and bought the pub
and shortly after
that various film crews
started rolling into town.
- It was still dirt roads
coming into the place.
You always saw people
broken down with the bonnets up.
- When they were
filming Razorback,
they made the pub look
absolutely disgusting,
the outside of it.
When cars would drive
past they wouldn't pull up.
- Probably up until then
we'd never ever seen a
drag queen in Broken Hill.
We've had some famous
people through here.
- I had copies of
them all on videos,
but they've been
damaged with heat
and they don't work anymore.
- A lot of movies have
come here for the outback.
Though Mad Max is the main one.
- I think everybody got
paid 20 bucks a day more
if they had a mohawk,
more than the other extras.
People were a bit shy about
having a mohawk to start with
but it wasn't long before
there were a lot of
mohawks around town.
- And we thought, gee, what's
going on here, you know?
- I can remember waking
up early one morning
and I looked out
through the side window
and there's this
bloke walking around
in all this leather gear
and feathers hanging off
and the cheeks of
his arse hanging out
and I just couldn't believe it.
I thought, oh
God, this is weird.
I got quite a shock
when I looked out the
window and saw that.
- In behind Yoshi there a bit.
For decades in
my group of friends,
I was like the only person
who loved Mad Max.
Come up a bit more
behind Nick here.
Nobody else got it,
nobody else was into it.
And then to discover there
is an international community
of cosplayers and vehicle
enthusiasts and Mad Max freaks.
It's like, holy shit!
- And I couldn't believe it
when they started coming
here for these reunions.
- The Silverton Collective
started many, many years ago.
Being a collective
everyone's just basically
doing their own thing,
having their own
particular fun way
of looking at everything.
- Coming to Silverton, for
me it's like sacred ground.
Just knowing that the
movie was made here.
- Yoshi comes over here,
Tank comes over from America.
And Melvin comes from
France, it's a universal movie.
- You are 14 years old
and you discover the movie
for the first time in your
life in a movie theatre
full with strange guys in
leather and crazy haircuts.
That was like, awesome.
Three, two, one.
- The people that are around
that come and see them
and they think, oh
geez, what are we doing,
filming another Mad Max?
- Little children sometimes
are a little bit scared of it.
I have to walk up to
them and go really gently,
look I'm a nice
person, it's okay.
- I guess you could say
I'm a little intimidating
just due to my size.
I'm a nice guy, but
people don't get that
until they get to know me.
- I'm trying to calm them
down and the parents are like,
yeah, yeah, scare them
more, scare them more.
- I feel like I'm at home
with all the other crazies.
It's like coming to Mecca.
- I'm Michael, Stacie,
my daughter, Josh, Cody.
Family trip.
- Well, it's been
the trip of a lifetime really.
Like traveling back to
Silverton from Maryborough
in a big convoy
of about 12 cars,
that was one of the best
experiences I've ever had.
- I'm like my
father in many ways,
just looking at the
old cars and stuff
and helping out
and all that so yeah.
- 'Cause I needed all
the drivers too, hang on.
So yeah, so I needed
a back up vehicle.
Joshua brought the Griffin car,
and he's our little navigator.
And it's just awesome, you
can go out to the scenes out here
and it's exactly
like in the movie.
When I hit the
Mundi Mundi plains,
go on over the hill and down,
you know, it's just awesome.
Just like on the movie.
- I've always been more
a loner you might say,
rather than big groups,
I don't know what drives
people to get together like that.
Really.
- Hundreds tonight,
I've never seen the lookout
as busy as it is tonight.
It's just phenomenal,
the crowds, the cars.
- You can stand
on the spot and go,
shit, that rock looks like
it was still in the movie.
- I think it just captures
a bit of a dreamtime
for a lot of Australians
how they would like to
play and live their life.
Anything to do with
wheels and motors
is always a popular
thing with guys.
- Off the road.
Get off the road!
- Back in the day, those
cars were on the road for us.
We'd like to catch
the bus to school
and be looking out the window
and you see all these cars
that could have been in Mad Max
and yeah, we just
loved those cars.
- Mid-seventies, petrol
had been hugely cheap.
- And my car
needed so much of it
that I was continually
running out of petrol.
- Young men could
quite simply go out
and buy themselves a ridiculously
overpowered automobile.
And the sense of freedom
you get from that was massive.
And then there
was the oil crisis.
- This may be the worst
weekend they've ever faced
for finding gasoline to give
them the automobile freedom
they take as their due.
- You had these
incredible automobiles
that sucked a huge
amount of juice
and all of a sudden petrol
wasn't cheap anymore.
- Big V8s and the like were
just cut up and got rid of
because it looked
as though the fuel
was going to keep on
getting more expensive.
- I remember being
told things like,
fuel is going to run out
in two, maybe three years.
- When we had fuel rationing
we saw what started to happen
after about three or four days.
- I will not take the
blame for this thing,
I will not take the crap
and the harassment
from these customers.
- Why didn't they come out
and tell us there was no gas?
- Lives were
disrupted by something as simple
as not having enough
fuel to run their cars.
- When Mad Max came
out it kind of crystallised,
oh this is what
it could look like.
We'd see a breakdown in
order and chaos would ensue.
Gangs would take
over the highway.
- Timing of Max and
the timing of that whole
car culture, power
high-octane thing
was right in the sweet spot
to create even more reverence
to these beautifully illogical
overpowered vehicles.
- I remember when
I first arrived here
for the first time in 2004,
we came over the brow of
the hill and just parked up here.
I got goosebumps, the hairs
went up on the back of my neck,
it was just
absolutely incredible.
It just felt, well for me,
it felt like I'd come home.
I was so familiar with
seeing this place in the movie.
Just absolutely incredible.
- We actually call
Adrian Mad Max
because he thinks he's Mad Max.
He dresses like Mad Max,
got a dog like Mad Max,
he does everything Mad Max.
I think he eats dog
food and all that.
- I remember sitting
at the kitchen table,
I had my head in my
hands, I was like this,
and my mum came and she said,
is everything all right, you
know, is everything okay?
And I said, Mum, you
know, I've just been to see
two of the most extraordinary
films that I've ever seen.
And that was the start
that set me on this quest
to find out more and more
about these incredible movies.
To me, Mad Max 2 was film
perfection, it was flawless.
The first thing I wanted to
do was see if I can find a car,
which I did, I found an
Aussie coupe in Texas,
funnily enough,
and I bought the car
and over the next 18 months
turned into the Interceptor.
I think at the time I was
the only person in Europe
that had one of these
replicas and I was happy.
But I knew that there was
something more I needed to do,
something else I wanted to do.
My future plans including
the family and the car,
is moving to Australia to live.
I actually said to
my wife, Linda, I said,
do you think you
could live there?
Well thinking it would never
happen, she actually said yes,
you know, just to
kind of pacify me.
I've been with Linda
now for 35 years
and our first date was
actually taking her to the cinema
to see Mad Max 1 and 2.
But I don't really think
she ever expected me
to do all this.
Thinking back now, I got
away with things that maybe
a normal husband
wouldn't have got away with.
At the time it was just a
dream but I thought to myself,
if I'm ever lucky enough
to ever live in Australia,
and certainly live out here,
I would love to do
some kind of display.
- We all thought it
was going to be bullshit
and you know, no one's going
to go to the Mad Max Museum.
But it's the most
popular thing out here.
Everyone that comes here
and they don't know where it is,
well, where's Mad Max Museum?
Up the hill.
- This being known as the
Hollywood of the Outback,
I just found it odd that
there was really nothing
to show that films
are shot here.
Especially with a
film like Mad Max 2
which of course is one of
the biggest films ever made.
The majority of photographs here
were given to me by
cast and crew members,
extras as well from Broken Hill.
There's a lot more to the film
than the 90 minutes
you see on the screen.
For instance, we have
just this photograph here
that shows one of the bad guys
eating a chocolate
bar, having a laugh.
And I think that's important,
just to let people
know, and show people,
exactly what went
on at the same time.
These are just a few of
the people that I've ever met
or people that have called
in to see us at the museum,
which is a real honour
for me, a real big honour.
Oh, actually we were
doing some work at the back
and a chap came round the back
and he just said, oh,
are you the owner?
I said, yes, he said,
my wife would love a
photograph with you.
And I said, yeah, that's no
problem, I'll come around.
And he said, oh, I
should let you know,
it's Mel Gibson's sister.
So you can imagine that
I was a little bit nervous.
You never know who's
gonna walk through the door.
- Go up there and
growl at the camera.
Right down the
lens, run up to it.
- Mel came into the bar one day
and he had all this gravel rash
and it was all weeping
and it looked terrible.
And I said, ugh, I'll go and get
someone to do
something about that
and he just laughed
because it was just makeup
and here's stupid me
thinking that was the real thing.
- Well, this display here
features parts from the
Interceptor double car,
which is the one that
they rolled and wrecked.
If you're lucky enough
when you're fossicking around
you can find little bits and
pieces that are still around.
To some people
it looks like bits
of broken glass
and things like that,
but for me, finding something
like these pieces here,
the bits off the car,
must be like a
prospector finding gold.
- Oh, that's rock.
God dammit.
- Oh, I found it, I found
what you were picking up.
Mad Max first entered
my life on June 8th, 2016.
That's the day I met Tank.
I was working for
a television station
at Eternal Con on Long Island
and I'm interviewing an Iron Man
when out of the corner of my eye
I see this hulking,
naked figure.
I think my first
question to Tank was,
who the hell are you
and why are you naked?
I said, can I just come up
to your house for a weekend
and do a little three minute
video for my news station?
- Ham and Swiss
or spinach and feta?
- I'll go ham and
swish, swish, swish.
- Two days later,
we start filming.
He calls me up a couple
of days later and he goes,
by the way, this is
what I do all year long.
- And some cake to
chase that coffee down.
Just the plain one.
- And he said, do you want
to come to Australia with me?
I said, hell yeah I do.
We traveled the world
together many times over.
And eventually we fell in love.
Some days I want to kill him,
but he feels like my
best friend, you know?
- I have lipstick on now?
- No.
- Okay.
- I think that he has a very
rigid view on masculinity
and I challenge that a lot.
Men can have feelings,
men can open up.
- I don't know what it is.
- It's a piece of car.
- He hides behind
a lot of walls.
He gets to hide behind the mask.
- Oh!
- Oh, yes!
- Yeah!
- Holy shit!
Oh my god!
- It's a piece of
potentially Toadie's badge!
- Yep.
- Wow.
We got to compare it
to some screenshots.
- Well done, Tank,
that's gold, mate.
Suck it, King Tutankhamen.
- I like to visit
the movie location
and after a while I
started this rock museum.
I went quite everywhere
where they shot the movies
so I have quite a lot.
Obviously rocks
were really important
for me at the beginning.
Now I succeed to pick
up a little piece of the road,
of the bitumen.
I mean they shot the
movie on that bitumen
so it's like, you
know, interesting.
Actually I don't
really care about
how beautiful the rocks are,
it's just they were
picked at the right place
and now it's a beautiful
collection of stuff.
- Gradually I realised
that whilst I was
from a completely
different background,
I had through this film
extraordinary unforeseen affinities
with those people.
I would like to really
congratulate you
on keeping this cinema open.
I'm now very fond of
them and strangely enough,
they seem to be very fond of me.
- We all rub
shoulder to shoulder.
We're all stars
in our own right.
Being a fan of Mad
Max, it grows on you.
It grows on you.
- Hey, for a 38 year old
movie that's not bad, huh?
- It's a story of survival,
and I thought about myself.
In 1998, they said, you've
got a tumor in your spinal cord.
The doctor got all the
tumor out of the spinal cord
but it left all this damage.
It took me months, but I
finally got the big toe moving.
Nine months later I
walked out of there.
It's up to each
and every one of us
to have that determination
to push ourselves through.
- I've got that fighting
spirit, I won't give up.
I've been through a
hell of a lot of trauma
and this one's been
through it with me.
Still fighting the
fight of cancer now,
and I'm not going to give
up, I won't stop smiling
and keep the fight.
Every day is worth living
and you've got to fight it.
- And that's Mad Max,
daily battle to survive.
We'll get there,
yeah, we'll make it.
- First thing I done,
when I got back
I asked the person with
me to get a handful of soil
and put it in my hands.
I rubbed it through my
fingers and I said, I'm home.
- Now you'll
be able to walk.
- I can die happy now,
it's all good.
- Last of the V8 Interceptors.
It fills people's lives,
makes 'em happy.
If it makes 'em happy
then it's good to do.
- The mateship, the
comradery, it's infectious.
It's Australian and I love it.
- And it only lasts a few days.
And then it's time to
go back to the real world
and that's hard.
That's a bit of a let down,
I mean, you're not only
going back to your day job
and taking the costume off
but you're leaving
family behind.
This is not just a Comic
Convention or something.
This is a family reunion.
- And it's incredible
'cause 10 days maybe total
have been spent
together and they feel like
I've known them my whole life.
- There's been so
many great things
that have come out of all this,
people that have
come into my life.
That have changed my life,
and hopefully they'll stick
around for the rest of my life.
- You're a special one.
- Am I now?
- Mister Tank.
How'd we do?
- We did great.
- There was always
individuals inspired to create
and over time if you
love it, you just stay with it
and it doesn't matter if
you don't know anyone else
who's involved in it.
Certainly, you want
to be executed?
But the beauty of it is there
is a big community out there
of people who
are all like-minded,
who have the same roaring
desire for this franchise.
Nothing can prepare
for that moment
when you drive towards
the Wasteland city
for the first time.
And you're seeing it
rise out of the desert
and it's on.
- We started Wasteland
Weekend in 2010.
We wanted to have a
gathering of Mad Max fans
and do it out in our own
little piece of the wasteland
and we thought some
people might show up.
- It's a crazy
event, it is massive.
I think last year they
had probably around
4,000 people attend.
It takes hours to get
in, it's just, it's insane.
- We go in, we kill,
we capture them!
Being Wez at Wasteland Weekend
is nothing short of being
an epic rock star for a week.
Wez, you missed your cue.
Valley of Death?
- This is the Valley of Death!
- Tank's tribe
is really the tribe for
screen accurate Mad Max 2 stuff.
- We kill, we capture!
- Wez, no!
- I don't think anybody's
living a better life
than Steve Scholz when
he's dressed up as Wez.
It's incredible to watch.
- I understand your pain.
- And now it's Lord
Humungus and Lady Faye
of the Dogs of War.
- People ask me all the time,
with all this cosplay
stuff that I do
do you make any money doing it?
And I say, believe it or not,
the one thing that actually
makes money is the DJing thing.
DJ Humungus is very
heavy, unforgivingly heavy.
Still very danceable.
It started out as just
a silly idea, who knew.
- My dogs, we're
gathered here today.
- So good.
- You must not be selfish.
You must not hoard your
gasoline from one another.
You must listen to each
other's reason, especially hers.
- So many people showed up.
There's people like
ringed three and four deep
outside the dome.
I'm looking up, there's
people climbing the dome,
local Cal City Police
Department was there
working the event,
they were on the dome
to see what was going on.
- Local sheriff's department
was on the dome.
- Oh man.
- We have multiple
wedding requests every year,
but okay, if you
want to do that.
I mean, it's, it's your wedding
if you want us to ruin it.
- With the power assumed by me.
And once I did
one, everybody else
just wanted to follow
suit at Wasteland,
said, I've got
to get in on this,
I need the Lord
Humungus to marry me.
- If any Wastelander has
an objection to this union.
- Tank doesn't become
Tank until he puts that mask on
and then he just gets
to become this funny,
lighthearted guy, everybody
eats it up, everybody loves it.
Tank's only just started doing
that without the mask with me
in the last couple of months.
Gently over time, he's
changed into something
a little softer and a
little more open-minded.
- A lot of people give me
strange looks when they ask me,
oh, where did you
meet your husband?
I always hesitate.
They might think, well,
why do you want to go
and celebrate the apocalypse?
You know, isn't that
kind of depressing?
But it's quite the
opposite for us.
Sometimes when you
face the potential end
you face the ability
to celebrate life itself.
- The whole
post-apocalyptic genre
is I think a positive thing,
because it means there
is a post-apocalypse.
There is something after.
- You can be more
your own person.
Like everyday you get
up and you go to work
and you're, you know, you're
Joe Schmo in your cubicle job
being told what
to do by your boss
and you feel like you have
no autonomy in your life.
The end of the world,
you're in charge.
It's easier to feel like you're
more important in the waste.
- Wasteland is very inclusive
and people may think,
oh, only certain
people can come here.
Let me tell you,
everybody is beautiful
and passionate about what
they do as far as Wasteland goes.
- The real world I work
for the Port of Los Angeles.
- I'm a middle school
science teacher.
- Anybody could belong.
It doesn't matter how old you
are or what your background is
or what country you're from
or what language you speak.
It doesn't matter, I
think everybody fits in.
I think everybody's
trying to fit in somehow.
- I had no idea that
there was other people
as weird as I am, but
like I found my family.
It's like my home
away from home.
We've got people
in Japan, Australia,
Holland, Italy, Ireland.
- Canada, Mexico.
- Scotland.
- We know there's other groups
out there, there's Germans.
- Oh yeah, the Germans!
- Our group consists
of more than 300 people.
Prop makers, models, dancers.
In this rotten and rusty world
the Cult of Chrome's the cult
to achieve something bigger.
- We all understand
the language of survival.
We all understand
the apocalypse.
- Everybody
somehow can relate to Mad Max.
- There's always a new
fan base that rediscovers it.
And that's where it
keeps on growing.
- When Fury Road came out
it gave a real shot in the arm.
Now we have a new set
of inspirational visual things
that we can play with.
- Fury Road changed how
I look at the whole series.
- It was at the
festival of Cannes,
so Mad Max gained
cultural prestige.
- Having Furiosa as a
strong female character
that's also disabled,
it's just really great to see
that representation in film.
- Women can kick arse
just as much as men can.
- When I saw the
movie, made me free.
More Japanese women
watched that movie.
- Max and Furiosa
stand their own ground.
I really liked that
balance, that equality.
- None of us would
ever know each other
if it wasn't for the
Mad Max movies,
if it wasn't for Mad
Max and then Wasteland
we all wouldn't
be here right now.
- Dressing up didn't seem like
it was ever going to
be a thing that I did.
Now that I'm
comfortable doing it
and I don't feel like
a complete doofus
it is transformative.
Meeting Tank brought
out the doer in me.
- I think he is a
very lucky individual
to have found something that
he is that passionate about.
Even if people do not understand
how somebody can be so
passionate about a movie.
- It opened up a
world of adventure
that I otherwise would
not have encountered.
And of friendships and of
understanding of other people.
- A lot of people say, it
took me a lot to get out here
and to be around people
'cause they're not a people person
or they're an introvert.
But you know what,
they have this passion,
like I want to do this.
- There are people that
live Wasteland all the time.
They bought land
out near the site.
- My life has always been,
if a door opens
I'll run through it.
I've done a lot of really
dumb stuff in my life
because of it.
But on my death bed, I
would lay there and go,
yeah, I've lived.
- We can open her up a bit.
- Whoa, whoa!
Woo hoo!
- My general formula
for my students is,
follow your bliss. I
mean, find where it is
and don't be
afraid to follow it.
The influence of a
vital person vitalises.
The world is a wasteland.
People have the notion
of saving the world
by shifting it around and
changing the rules and so forth.
Any world is a living
world if it's alive.
And the thing is
to bring it to life
and the way to bring it to
life is defined in your own case
where your life is and be
alive yourself it seems to me.
- There was a moment I
had climbing up the mountain
overlooking the Pinnacles
where a friend of mine was worried
and he's like, you
know, be careful,
watch your foot
here, let me help you.
I said, don't worry, this
is where I want to die.
And I mean that, this is, can
you imagine a better place
to call the home for the
rest of your existence?
- One of the requests
that I've made
when my time is eventually
up is I've asked my wife, Linda,
to come out here on a windy
day and scatter my ashes
and make sure they
blow all across the plains
and that would make
me a happy man.
- All the Mad Max fans,
they are fans forever,
until their last day and
some of them are going to be
buried in their car or
in some sacred land
in the wasteland somewhere.
Me, when my
book will be finished
I will turn the page and
move onto something else.
Now my next dream is to
maybe write a book about
Crocodile Dundee's movie.
I have a lot of ideas on
what maybe the next dreams
I will fulfill in 20
years, who knows?
I mean, I don't know.
- Life is very
short in the scale of things.
And so bite on it, make every
day, every hour, every minute
as intense as can be.
I never thought one day
that I would go
back to the wasteland
as maybe the last thing I do.