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George Miller is the king of this year’s Vulture Stunt Awards. His action epic Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga might not have been the most financially successful of blockbusters, but it was (rightfully) one of the most acclaimed films of 2024, not least because of its spectacularly choreographed action scenes. The movie took Best Action Film at our awards, and the Stowaway sequence, specifically the part in which the Octoboss and his soldiers attack the War Rig, won in three separate categories. (Additionally, Hayley Wright, winner of our Best Achievement in Stunts Overall award, was Anya Taylor-Joy’s stunt double in the film.)
Miller, of course, has been orchestrating vehicular mayhem since his debut feature, the first Mad Max, was released in 1979. As a result, he’s seen how action design and stunt work have transformed over the past 45-plus years. Indeed, he’s had a hand in helping these traditions evolve. But if you ask him, the basics of filmmaking are still rooted in the kineticism and artistry of the silent era.
You started off as an action filmmaker, and while you’ve worked in all sorts of genres, you’ve also continued in that vein. How has your relationship with the genre developed?
For me, from the get-go, film was kinetic. It’s intrinsic to film. I think I learned more from silent film about the syntax of film language than any other form of filmmaking. It’s not me just saying this. I’m sure you know of the book by Kevin Brownlow written in the ’60s, The Parade’s Gone By …, when he said that everything we know in this new universal language was defined before sound. Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd and all of those people were, for me, pure cinema.
The analogy to music is very close. It’s rhythmic, it’s in time, it’s got shape, and so on. This is one reason why it’s so great to hear about these stunt awards. I know only too well just how significant their work is at every level. At a creative level, at a performance level, at a logistical level, at a purely almost scientific level, and all of it, it’s a real exemplar of any filmmaking process. I know there have been from time to time moves to get the stunts recognized at the Academy Awards, but the fact that you’re acknowledging it is fantastic. Stunt people are very impressive — how they do their work, the athleticism, the collaboration, the precision. They’re true filmmakers.
I like to say that they’re the first filmmakers. The world had stuntpeople before it had movie stars. It took years for cinema to come up with a close-up and to create stars. Before that, we had people riding horses and jumping off trains and jumping off wagons. They’re the ones who created cinema, in a way.
Yes, yes! That’s exactly right. Buster Keaton certainly had a great screen presence, but you know how he got his name. He was “Buster” on the stage in vaudeville as a 3-year-old. He was being kicked around by his father on the stage. God, you could argue that there’s nobody who has eclipsed his acrobatic and athletic skills. As well as his film language.
You’ve worked with stunts for a long time, since your very first films. How have your interactions with your stunt teams changed over the years?
Like everything else in the film industry and indeed just about any aspect of life, it’s always shifting and changing and evolving. Mad Max 1, we shot in 1977. We planned it very well. We couldn’t have done it if it wasn’t for one man, Grant Page, who died a year ago in his 80s. He made a huge difference to that film. You look back and say, “Boy, if that person didn’t guide me through that or advise me through that, I wouldn’t be doing this or have the understanding I have.” Grant was very effective on Mad Max 1.
On Mad Max 2, there was a young stuntman, 21, who was basically from a group of cowboy stuntmen, meaning it was really the Wild West of stunts. There wasn’t much regard to safety. It was pretty crazy, daredevil stuff. Looking back, it’s a wonder that there weren’t more deaths and severe injuries. I became very, very, very, very interested in safety because of that. That young stuntman was Guy Norris. He was the youngest stuntman, but he ended up doing a lot of stunts, including some key ones. We’ve now been working together for over four decades, one way or another. He’s evolved with the stunt industry, with stunt work.
When we did Fury Road out in Namibia in the desert, there’d be a huge white tent, almost like a circus tent. We’d sit around a big table and everyone would have a little toy avatar of whatever they’re doing: the camera, and a little toy edge arm, and every motorbike, every stuntman, they’d all be like little toy soldiers. We’d sit around and talk about, “Okay, we’re doing this shot here. This guy goes here, the car goes here.” Literally like kids playing in the sandbox. We’d figure out the choreography of the camera. Everyone would play it out in real time in the toy box.
Now, Guy has two sons who are stuntmen. One of them is very tech-savvy. They’ve developed a system called PROXi. It’s basically pre-visualization, but it’s iterative. In other words, you could do it pre-production, or you can do it post-vis, as they call it, preparing for the visual effects, post-production. This is using all the technology of motion capture and very, very precise rendering of the sequences, including cameras, lenses and where the camera moves. The stunts are not, if you like, improvised like they were back in the day. They’re very, very carefully rehearsed and very, very carefully executed. So you can make sure you’re driving the dynamics of the story through the characters. You can actually look at it and discuss how every piece of the jigsaw basically contributes to the whole, and how every note of the music plays, and its effect. That’s what we did on Furiosa, using this PROXi system.
I imagine this level of preparation is also a huge help when it comes to safety.
Oh, the biggest stress of making the movie is safety, not just in stunts, but at every level. I think it’s partly because I have a medical background, but I became very interested in the statistics of stunts and trying to understand when it goes wrong and why it goes wrong. I remember being a junior doctor. I was lucky to observe and assist with some very impressive surgeons and also some not-so-impressive surgeons. The best of them were very, very meticulous in their planning, and they were incredibly collaborative. It wasn’t dictatorial in any way, unlike those who stood on their status and insisted it be done their way. No, the best surgeons would get the whole team together, including the cleaners — because you can imagine how important the cleaners are in on a surgical unit — and say, “This is what we’re doing. This is how it’s going to happen. This particular patient has this particular problem.” I think some of that crept into my work.
Was there a particular part of the Stowaway sequence, in which the Octoboss and his Mortiflyers attack the War Rig, that was the biggest challenge for you?
I would say the biggest challenge was basically making sure that the whole of the piece was privileged over the parts. There’s a lot of dynamics that need to be satisfied there. The whole sequence has to be very character-based and very story-based, with the interaction of the characters. If you look at what happens in that story, that’s basically Furiosa doing a crash course, so to speak, in becoming a road warrior. She starts off as a stowaway trying to get away and turns out not only to be one of the two survivors of this event, but also the one that ultimately has to prevail on behalf of her and Praetorian Jack. In that one event, she becomes the Road Warrior that we meet at the beginning of Fury Road. That was the most important thing.
How do you even begin to plan a sequence like the Octoboss versus the War Rig?
The interesting thing about working in this PROXi system was that we could adjust and modify and evolve every element of the story, including the design of the War Rig. There’s a part that happens under the War Rig, there’s a part that’s in the little space inside the cabin, then on top of the War Rig, at the back of the War Rig, on the front of the War Rig, and indeed in the airspace up and around the road by the War Rig. To get all those moving parts, we could evolve it with precision rather than just in the imagination or by just putting it down in words, or even just with rehearsals. If you’re doing it with practical rehearsal, of course you could get there, but you can’t design the War Rig exactly right — to have two excavator claws as part of the War Rig, say, or to have that thing at the back we call the Bommyknocker. All of that, you could render digitally in a way that you had a fair idea.
Now, there are two big benefits of that: First of all, everyone knows what’s happening. Not just a couple or people, but everyone has that information — even the cleaners! That’s huge in terms of safety. We can now erase harnesses. We can put the actors in the scene and do stuff. They’re not fine wires like they used to use in the kung fu days that are basically lost in the grain of the celluloid. They are big, thick things, easy for the visual effects artists to erase. And you always have redundancy: If one cable breaks down, you have another. Then, as I say, everyone who’s on set that day knows exactly what everyone else is doing, which is key, because whenever things go wrong, it’s usually a miscommunication.
I learned that way back in the first Mad Max. I’m one of those people who mixes up left and right. Ever since I was a kid, if I meant to say right, I’d point left. You can see how bad that would be if you’re talking about stunts! So I learned very early to say, “You go this way, you go that way” and point. Then I’d always say, “What do you think I said?” They have to repeat it back to me. Because I’m surprised by how often things can go wrong because of miscommunication.
With so much preparation, are you able to improvise at all?
People say, “If you over-prepare, do you take the life of the spontaneity out of it? Is it too clinical?” I say, “Impossible. You can’t over-prepare a film just like you can’t over-prepare a basketball game.” It’s the preparation that basically earns you the right to improvise and respond to any inspiration that comes along. Otherwise, it’s all just flying by the seat of your pants. Everything is inspiration, but it is not necessarily cohesive. You’ll do a take, then someone will say, “Oh, we might try this.” You say, “Oh, that’s better,” and so on. It’s only by meticulous planning that happens.
I know that you try to make sure all the characters in these films have backstories. So, who was the Octoboss? What’s his story?
It’s really important to do that, even though it’s not always on the screen. Everything in this world of the wasteland is made from found objects repurposed. Nothing is invented or brand new. Humankind, wherever we are, no matter how impoverished, we still make beautiful things. In South Africa, I remember going to townships and seeing people making the most beautiful toys out of fence wire, or chickens out of plastic, or roses out of Coke cans and barbed wire. That’s what happens with the Octoboss.
With Goran Kleut, who played him, we talked about the character being somebody who came across a cache of parachutes, probably found it in a shipping container somewhere, and thought, This is what I’m going to be. This is going to give me the competitive advantage in the wasteland. I’m going to be able to not only attack from the ground, but I’m going to be able to fly in through the top. Even the way he dresses: One of the important things in war always is the pageantry of war. So, if you can find the right look, it’s half the battle, as it were. And the big octopus kite was inspired by a kite festival on Bondi Beach they had every year where we lived in Sydney. I remember quite a few years ago, there was this massive octopus in the sky. It stuck in my mind. So, for Furiosa, I said, “We’ve got hang gliders. We’ve got parasailers. What about the octopus?”
The film has had critical success, and it’s also had an awards life. But when it came out, it didn’t do as well financially as some had hoped. Are you planning to make more Mad Max films?
We’ve got another script. But having been doing this long enough where I’m habituated to storytelling, I find myself with way too many stories — not only in my head, but in the form of screenplays or at least very detailed notes that are within reach of screenplays. I’m a professional daydreamer, really. This was seen as my big deficit as a kid: “George would do better at school if he didn’t daydream so much” was on my report card.
So, there’s lots of stories. Indeed, one of them is a Mad Max. It is not something I would do next, because there’s two things I’m keen to do next. But if for whatever reason the planets align, you can never tell. Too often, you’re lining up to do a movie and then something happens. Some things fall into place and some don’t, so all I can say is we’ll see.
