Ep. 111: Kyle Buchanan on Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw. I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. One of the greatest action movies of all time is also one of the most beautiful: Mad Max: Fury Road. It was on the top ten lists of 2015 and more than a few best of the decade lists. But making the movie was no walk in the park, and a new oral history by Kyle Buchanan is full of well-researched and entertaining detail about the movie’s sometimes insane production process, which involved stops and starts dating back to the 1990s. Buchanan is a pop-culture reporter at The NeW York Times, writing its Projectionist column and interviewing a daunting array of Hollywood talent. The new book is called Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road, and it draws on over 125 new interviews, including stars Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy, director George Miller, and a fascinating and wide-ranging selection of other cast and crew. It’s a multilayered look at making movies in a changing Hollywood, with all its delays and demands, and of course all the challenges of shooting an apocalyptic action film in the desert. I spoke with Buchanan a few weeks ago about the book, which is published by William Morrow and is available now. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Music: “Tomorrow’s Forecast” by The Minarets, courtesy of The Minarets Photo by Steve Snodgrass