Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior with Jon Gabrus

in the future cities will become deserts roads will become battlefields and the hope of mankind will appear as a podcast there you go stranger stranger stranger just one podcast can make a difference yeah i like the longer one yeah this film has four taglines and zero quotes on the page yeah because this movie has very little here's another tagline when all that's left is one last chance play pray that he's still out there podcasting how about this is a tagline uh ruthless savage spectacular i mean that fucking rules yeah it's pretty good every movie poster should just be one word ellipses one word ellipses i wish i could read this german one because it looks very intense it's kind of crazy how every poster for this movie rules uh yeah that's true like there's a painted australian one that's the mad max 2 one there's a sort of just like him on the road that's the american road warrior one right mad max 2 their false knacker this japanese one's pretty cool too that's what i'm wrong with that well here's here's an idea maybe if every single piece of imagery in your movie is fucking awesome it's almost impossible to make a bad poster for it right right whether you're just compositing images or shooting something particularly for the poster or painting it everything in this movie looks so goddamn cool hello everybody my name is who are you i don't know who you are i'm david sims oh this is life check with griffin and david it's a podcast about filmography directors with massive success early on in their career and giving a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want and sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby yes and this is me series on the films of george miller it is called mad pod theory cast well done well done lay a plus and today oh thank you everybody today you can play golf in the mad max world no question okay no question i mean essentially the world has become one giant sandpit yeah sure right it's a little sand trap yeah sand trap is that the right term yes i know a lot about golf uh today we're talking about mad max 2 aka the road warrior hell fucking yeah bro just one podcast can make a difference just one podcast can make a difference one man can make a podcast that's not true you need two friends you need two friends and and sometimes you need ben hosley that's right hey it's me the word friend not being used there pretty pointed yeah it's always kind of been a thing that i feel like fans talk about they're like are you a friend i'm a friend to the two friends but you are also a ben hosley i'm just a very specific honor that's true it's an honor that my parents bestowed upon you're a poet laureate and a typewriter and a meat lover and a heart detective and i love a dusty boy you love it that was your big takeaway from this movie yeah you love a dusty boy and and they rarely have they come dustier oh there are just covered in sand and grit but in the best kind of way yeah dirty i would even venture to say this much because i've been on the record saying i love wet stuff right we all know this is no wet there's no but all the sand all that dry ass sand i like sand too i like it dry on occasion well like what is sand but dry water you know like it's like how the moon you know has like a sea of tranquility no water but it's like you know it does see i i don't know record show david put moon in quotes i'm ready to put sea in quotes and i just did for moon well we've let the government tell us but the moon is right they couldn't have faked it because the moon doesn't exist so right exactly i like the idea that you're the world's first anti-moon truth there is no moon it's just cheese hung from a tree hey we love cheese um ben i don't know if i'm exposing you here but you in conversation and if this is too hot rachel dare you to cut this out okay i'm not trying to out you here oh in private conversation yeah you had told me at the end of 2019 that you were thinking of rebranding that you felt like oh that he was gonna go off wet he was gonna get dry yeah yeah i had been thinking about it it's a bit that's been going on for near four years me you're joking one time that you like a wet thing yeah anytime anything has water in it which is by the way a lot of stuff has water in it people like hey hey did you see this episode of this random show you see this random movie there's some wet stuff you should watch it also like we're in a post aquaman world we sort of hit the apex yeah aquaman is kind of right right well and we're not coming too though well that's the question i mean maybe that's the comeback but i feel like ben you and i were at a bar a couple weeks ago and we had a long conversation about the dry subsection of the nintendo character sphere yes dry bowser dry bones oh dry bones is one of my favorite characters of all time that there's now all these driver aisles yes of mario villains so i think when you're like i think i want to be a dry guy i think i'm done with what i think i want to be a dry guy it's like think about it there's a wet level in mario i'm now i've beaten the level and i've now transitioned to the desert level yeah i mean we're talking about pyramids now i love a tomb this is seismic we are actually embracing that ben is now anti-wet pro-dry i'm not anti-wet but i'm now more pro-dry because there's this japanese movie weathering with you that's out this week as we record okay um it's set in a tokyo where it's always raining but now you're now you're out on that damn it well yeah we've been there we've got dune to look forward to which is going to be a dry atmosphere you know in dune everyone's obsessed with water you know when he cries in dune they're all like he uses his water to express his grief they're all like it might be the element venn diagram about loving water about the value of water coming together all right great well we figured it out now i know why you got him his bouquet of flowers because he's coming out as a dragon it just felt like i'm not trying to force you out of the dry closet and it is all cactus by the way we should mention it it's kind of dangerous but i do appreciate what a nightmare he must have been on the train carrying this ben's hugging it like a prom queen and his whole left side is bleeding uh no but it felt like if we're going to be talking about the mad max movies for the next couple months what better time to sort of embrace the dry guy 2020 persona yep dry guy 2020 sure to say all right like shy guy another mario character yeah dry guy or dry guy i'm telling you i mean i was drunk but we went on to the nintendo wiki and there were like 20 different dry veritals there's like a dry like toad and a dry everything yeah yeah what about the makes them dry they're just skeleton versions of the regular villain so it's like oh this is like a skeleton paratrooper this is a skeleton this is a dry bone okay dude right rather than calling him like bone bowser skeleton bowser his name is dry bowser which fucking rules yeah that is cool it's cool i don't know why it's cooler you do not have to say that this is cool no it's cool no i don't think it's cool i think it's cool to have learned that yes you're proud of me that's cool thanks for sharing yeah our guest today of course he's cool he's cool cool guy cooler than dry bowser wish i was dry but unfortunately developing quite a bit of moisture already uh this uh this studio is kind of like a coffin it's like some ancient egyptian uh mummification room where we just uh have all of the moisture sucked out of our body over the course of recording long episodes and then we're sitting here with the man who currently holds the record for longest main feed episode still if i'm not mistaken i believe you're right sansa lance came close great episode and we've had a fight but i believe you still have her beat by a minute or two is that right i think so we'll check this i think it might be i have an unfair advantage of that movie he is the longest movie yes and this is a short movie but similarly dense in terms of things we could talk about john gaber's back on the show from the high mighty podcast thank you for having me fam i'm so excited to be here i rarely reach out to someone to ask them to do their thing no it was like perfect we were recording an episode we were getting ready we were like had just finished them getting ready to start george miller and it's crazy how george miller just like hits the ground running with two mad maxes and we hadn't found someone for this one yet and i was like you fell into it it was like this is such an important canonical action movie that i was like we need to have a guest who's like representing the action movie sphere oh a ton of tropes are created in this yeah a ton of action movie tropes are launched on the back this is one of those movies that is like formative for the next 40 years of genre cinema arguably kicked like chose the path of that cinematic dystopia which you like created like becomes the almost four good stories are just available no matter what the country the world is at least the used sporting goods store is always open it's one of those crazy things like people talk about the first mad max being one of the most influential movies right of the last 40 or 50 years i suppose but it's one of those things where it's like oh the elements within that are influential well but it's like it's it's so weird because it's like mad max if there were never any sequels would sort of have like a velvet underground reputation as like oh it inspired these people to like do the things that mad max one is like a hyper indie actually which is just with such an unusual idea but then mad max inspires other people to take the elements of what he's done and also inspires george miller to be like i think i can perfect this much like evil dead and evil dead too in the horror they're very similar things where it's like the first one's both made on a shoestring surprise hips yeah and the director being like no give me like 10 times the budget and i can give you something that's even cooler right and it's kind of a sequel like i'm much different yeah same basic plots right just choose a bigger canvas and sort of like focus in a way like strip it down right to its basic elements and then take it to the extreme but also both will weirdly acknowledge the first movie like a brief prologue and then be like we are a sequel but it's also kind of a remake yeah and enjoy a lot of both and i'm so glad you said evil dead two things it's really like opened it up to seeing it's like roadway and evil dead two were like both look at their first movie and be like we now know what people dug about those like evil dead if people didn't find the irony or the fun in the first one yeah it wouldn't be a part of the second one so the audience kind of helps clear out to make those tones so then the directors are like fuck now i know you like that kind of tone like wait you see my second wait you see another one then uh george miller's like oh you guys like the violent part the car chase parts well you're gonna love this one you're also dealing with like first films with largely like first time crew and cast yeah who going into the second movie are like we figured it out we've all done this job one time and we've done it with each other and now we can hit the ground right here's the other thing they also both have a third sequel that's kind of like really like grand right and fans dig but it's definitely a harder one to deal with like army of darkness and thunderdome are also weirdly similar and weirdly and this is so specific to me but i think it's just because of my age those were the two i was most familiar with yeah was evil dead 2 and thunderdome were the two that i was like army of darkness thunderdome thunderdome was on tnt i think every weekend that i was how often were you grounded but grounded you were still allowed to watch it yes yes well grounded but no one's home because my parents would have to work with you so it's a very complicated form of grounding right where i'm like okay i can't go to a friend's house technically it was just your media education but every time you were grounded little did i know i would eventually weaponize that to podcast hundreds of dollars well that's well yeah and then i said hi you but also action boys you have a podcast that is like specifically going over your favorite sort of action movies yeah from what we deem the classic action movies yeah and we uh a couple months ago did road warrior you did so yeah i'm so pumped i was so pumped to rewatch it yeah it's so fucking watchable the other thing i realized watching this is like the other i don't think i've ever seen like all the way straight through but i've seen so much of it on tv uh fury road i've seen too many times already uh the original mad max i saw like they screamed at midnight at ifc right when um fury road was coming out okay road warrior i think i saw in high school haven't seen since i haven't seen i haven't seen this in uh since i was a teenager yeah i've only seen mad max once and it was after i've seen everything yeah i guess when i was a kid i thought road warrior and thunderdome were the two mad max right i thought it was weird that road warrior was mad max too i couldn't really figure out what that meant when i finally watched the original mad max i'm like wow this is nothing like i see like it's very weird it's very fun to watch it last when you're like i know what uh this i know what everything's supposed to be and then you watch a movie like oh this is not at all what i thought it was especially when you watch it after fury road yes right right right right i think i've actually seen it after before i saw that i've seen either right before or right after i don't remember what you said but um i saw i did see one and two when i was a teenager as a sort of just me being a movie nerd and being like watch it watch that yeah and then i years later we were trivia and they played mad max and that was the first time i seen it oh really yeah i forgot this is like a cop drama basically like you know like i remember being shocked by how lo-fi it was but and then it has like emotional dialogue scenes like all these things there's like an interlude where he's with his kids but you know we talked about it but it's the same sort of thing where like your cultural understanding of who mad max is it's like even before you see these movies it's so much a part of pop culture right they're coming in like right fortunately or fortunately pre-informed so then when you're watching mad max and you're like there are still diners and stuff right right it's like australia is having a bad crime year is what's going on in mad max and then mad max 2 there's like there's no government there's no towns but i remember like when i saw the first evil dead i was like why he doesn't have the chainsaw like why is it taking this long for him to make jokes right you know like i didn't get that movie is so fucked up so i'm really messing up that's the thing like it's the which we will do on spot we will definitely do at some point um but the other thing that struck me watching this having seen it for the first time since fury road is that like as much as road warrior is to mad max what evil dead 2 is to evil dead 1 fury road is also evil dead 2 to road warriors evil dead 1 right right it ignores thunderdome and it's like let's pop back to what we like about road warrior oh you like the part where the truck is driving i bet you i could do 120 minutes of it it's basically just an updated version of this which is pretty crazy one scene from this movie it's like can i make the whole thing that one scene can i deepen all the themes can i figure out a way to do more the villains play by the villain from mx1 like it gets so it's so crazy weird how he has reused bits and pieces of these movies his whole life it's also crazy that he is an extremely respected art director art house director in a way you know his first three movies were these insane car movies yeah and like he's never really made an art house movie he's a one studio drama but i think that he has always been highly respected by critics it's not like he was a raimi was a schlock guy yeah you know what i mean like miller it was like oh well you know he's from australia and even like like cameron and bigelow you feel like there's a little bit of a bell for people getting them where it's like right you watch like siskel and ebert reviewing the first terminator and they're like this is fucking garbage they're not even giving it any consideration it's a trap years later they're like oh i guess i recognize there's a film like that movie right right but they're just like there's nothing going on here whereas george miller it feels like it's interesting you read like the reviews from the first mad max when i was looking up a bunch of shit last night because i watched i re-watched uh first mad max and then did road warrior this morning and then was reading a bunch of stuff accompanying both and the reviews in australia for the first mad max are really bad well because they were scandalized it was just like this is a scandalous film it's a very conservative country especially what's back then whereas it didn't make much of an impact here of course there are many non-conservative australians i'm sure some listen to this podcast it didn't make much of an impact when it came out here so i think it was a little better because the scene is more of a curio for the people who wanted to seek it out was it our cherry pop to ausploitation like was it like the america 100% so i think that also gives it that juice where it's like oh this is you know like remember when we were like this is a japanese horror movie yes so whether it was very well sought after in australia the fact that it was do you guys know that the aussies are making some crazy ass car action movies or whatever and so we get we get that and tell us that's like that's iconic because i don't think it's like the cars today paris like those are early ausploitation right really made it to no no no and weird doesn't hit until it becomes kind of respectable yeah you know um oh the other example of it i think that's kind of the meat pie western that's a type of australian exploitation movie which i just like the name meat pie western that's okay it's such a weird country i don't want to generalize about australia but anytime i think about it i go down a rabbit hole about it or anything it's such a strange place americans have been obsessed with australia uh i mean i know that's different for you yeah John, what are you talking about? Are you accusing my co-host and friend of un-American behavior? What are you saying here? You think he's like a Rusky?

I believe he's an expat. From where? What country are you trying to attack? He's doing a double salute?

I don't know why. He's got one of those tall, like, boom microphone hats that the fucking Westminster Guard wear or whatever their name is. If I was a boom operator, that's what I would do to be fun. I'm not moving.

I'm wearing that hat and have someone else told me. No, I feel like there was a similar phenomenon with, like, Luke Fasson, where people were really excited by Luke Fasson, where people were really excited by Luke Fasson, and then he was like, we're trying to get him to the side. I mean, Jung Woo, I think, is more respected within his own name, but it was the same thing where I came here, people were like, what the fuck? And it gets momentum coming to America, because we're dying, and, like, for, like, American movie audiences, you're like, now I'm cultured, here comes a movie from, like, a far movie, and it's just, we make it the representation of that country, you know what I mean?

Where we're like, yes, that's what I think of Luke Fasson, and I think of Paris, you know what I mean? This more than the first Mad Max, right? People watching are like, right, Australia's like some desert that's just filled with criminals that shoot you and drive cars over you, right? That's what it is, right?

Well, like, Americans have always been like, Australia is, like, a place where there are animals that can kill you, there are people that are gorgeous, there are people that turn into a country. Yeah, it's serving. It's hot, baked shrimp, we're just going to be serious about it. Put it on a barbie, that's a knife.

Yeah. But, like, and there was something, like, it was magical to us. I feel like Americans look at Australia the way we look at, like, when we learned about martial arts. When we were like, it's magic.

Like, Asian people became magic in our movies for a while, where they were like, they're like, they're not supposed to stop bullets, Aussies can, like, talk to bears, and walk on water. Weird mystical, you know, outback folk. Well, like, within the 80s, you have Crocodile Dundee, and Mad Max. And, yeah, Einstein.

Well, yeah. You have these two franchises that are both, like, you know, different genres, but are both creating these insane archetypes of what an Australian man is. What was the actor's name? And young Einstein?

Yahoo Serious. Yes. One of the greatest names of all time. Yeah, he was like the proto-Jamie Kennedy.

Yes, he does have a Jamie Kennedy run. Yahoo Serious walk so Jamie Kennedy can run. It's one of those things I always find fascinating, where you look at, like, Yahoo Serious or Jamie Kennedy, and you're like, we really had the confidence that this guy was going to work in movies. Like, I don't care how funny we found him on TV, we really thought we were going to watch 90 minutes of this guy carrying the emotional weight of the film, the narrative film.

Griffin, you're forgetting, we all did get X'd. We did get X'd. I've been X'd. Have you actually been X'd?

No, not yet. What a dream. The nice puppy. But the crazy thing is that, you're saying that, and at the same time, George Miller made a no-budget fucking action movie in Australia, and just, like, in auditions under Mel Gibson.

I know, it's crazy. Who was born in New York? That's true. The story of him is that his dad was so insane that he was like, we're moving to Australia.

The real story, the other story I've heard is that his dad won Jeopardy. I've used that money to take them to move to Australia. Because my wife is from Westchester, and he's actually, was born in the town of... Hutton Gibson is Mel Gibson's father.

Yes, and Mel was born in Peekskill. So crazy. So they have that pride of, like, well, everyone thinks Mel Gibson's Australian, but he was actually born here in Peekskill. Which is not for being like a pride to being like, we want to make it very clear.

Ah, you'd be surprised. Peekskill might agree with some of the things. He's still alive. He's 11 years old.

Hutton Gibson. He's 101 years old. Jesus. In my head, I have no idea what this man looks like.

He, like, sits on, like, a throne of bones in, like, some Australian desert. I feel like he looks five years older than Mel Gibson. Sure. He has a beard that makes Mel Gibson look sane.

When the Simpsons would show a photo of Matt Groening... Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, that's what I imagine Hutton Gibson looks like. I mean, that's incredible.

Just 101 years old and still hating Jews with as much energy as ever. If you think Mel Gibson's bad, anytime he's ever given an interview, it is incredible. Right, right. Yes.

It is, right. He's one of those guys who's like, you know how the Catholic Church kind of slightly chilled out in the 60s? I think that's when I jumped there. That's when I was like, go screw.

And the Catholic Church got too liberal for me. But you're right. And it's like Mel Gibson becomes this definitive Australian action star, but it's such random happenstance that George Miller found him, that it became a career, and he isn't actually even technically Australian. Well, it's funny because he went full sex symbol in America, but he is so attractive despite what this movie does.

What these movies do. I mean, this is peak him as hot as Max. He's as hot as Max in this one. In the first one, he's a little soft.

In the first one, he's a little delicate. In this one, they just know how to, like, grind him up just right. He's a little dangerous in the first one. He clearly cut his own hair haircut.

And it's so perfect. And also, we see Mel Gibson with a dog, which we know means, like, at least in most movies, means the character's got humanity today. It's the first layer of humanity given to Max or Mel Gibson. And it's funny because I just recently rewatched Lethal Weapon and Lethal Weapon 2, and he's got the dog that he loves.

The dog that is very weird. He's classicated. He's like, you're right. I mean, yeah.

They're like, how crazy could he be? There's like this fetishization of, like, the loner dude who, like, the stereotype, the cliche is really hammered in Lethal Weapon, but it's gone on forever where it's like, in Cobra, you come home and you cut your pizza, you put your gun in the fridge, you do this, but there's a dog or a cat that demonstrates that, like, oh, I'm going to root for this guy at home. Or there's a blonde with, you know, visible breath. But it speaks to the efficiency and economy of this movie that George Miller's just like, the opening, the first thing you see is this guy is him with a dog.

I don't need to show you anything more. I need to show you finding the dog. The fact that they're close is just a short hand. There's something about the one-sleeve-down, one-sleeve-cut look, too.

I got it. You know, the reason behind that is because he breaks his arm in the first movie. So if you were there, there's all those little hints about the first movie. So they connected to that in that, and that's why he has a leg brace, too, because he gets shot in the leg.

So in the first movie, he gets his arm broke, so you would assume that EMT's cut the... It's just, it's a really fun, simple little, like, set-up callback situation, but it also explains that, like, the end of the first movie happened, and Max was unable to find clothing or anything else. But if you remember the first movie, it didn't, like, end with, like, the oil's gone. And this movie is so great.

The costume design, especially of, like, the white clan, like, the hero clan. All the mesh. I really love it. And I also think that this is so 80s with that, and that it's punk-adjacent.

It's got the, like, spikes and the, like, leather jackets. Everybody in this movie could be in the decline of Western civilization. The bad guys have, like, four different, like, aesthetics amongst them, which I really appreciate. And they're all, sort of, each one of their aesthetics has sort of been co-opted or created in the gay community.

There's, like, the S&M look. Then there's also, like, the biker cop look, which is sort of, like, the motorcycle policeman of the village people type situation. The T-1000 sort of cue ball phallic helmet. Yeah, and then, like, Unseeing Eyes, like, aviators.

And then there's, like, the golden boy type guy, like, Wes's, like, sidekick, which is, like, the effeminate, like, style. Like, it just, they hit all of them. Oh, and then Lord Humongous, which was, like, I'd like you guys to call me for the That might actually be a good title for myself. The way it's spelled, too, it's, like, hummus and humongous.

I mean, that's the vibe he continues from now on, right? I mean, that's the Fury Road where everyone's called Post the Knowing and Cheeto and all that shit. It's just kind of amazing. It's so fun.

It's so great. Where he's, like, I don't know, it's the future. They're all idiots now. They don't read.

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Yeah, I think you're gonna agree with me on this, that, you know, you go to a garden center and you just find it so overwhelming and convenient. You took the personal statement out of my mouth, Ben. That is how I feel. And then, here's the other thing.

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I've got an intentional air about you today. Well, I'm more intentional about what I wear day to day. Oh. I'm going to leave it into pieces that feel easy, comfortable, and put together.

I'm sure you can get those from anywhere, right? Oh, Quince. Look, he's showing tag on me. It's been my go-to because very clean fits.

Very nice fabrics. They don't feel like cheap fabrics. I hate dirty fits. I hate cheap fabrics.

I am at Miriam. You know, if the weather's getting warmer, I really rely on my Quince polo shirts for the kind of like, exactly like a formal enough piece of clothing that I can go to the office, but it's comfy. Yes, because we do have a dress code here. So, they got those 100% Pima cotton tees with a softness.

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That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash check for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash check. This franchise is second only to Star Wars, and on certain days I would consider... Wait, you just said that to you it's just the number two franchise.

No, no, no, what I'm about to say. I think it's a phenomenal franchise. But I think it's second only to Star Wars and maybe surpasses it in terms of how cool every fucking character looks. Like how you can pluck some tiny background character into a school and the names are great.

And you just go like, who is this person? Who is she? Who is she? Who is she?

Who is she? Who is she? Yeah, it's some fucking mechanic who lived, I don't know, in the town over there and he put a hockey mask on. But that feeling of...

And he's like, oh, it was a good time. If you asked, they would have an answer for everything. But they have the confidence to not tell you. You just can tell the confidence of a backstory.

In every performance, in every design, in every character name. I think we haven't seen that. And this is a softer version of what you're saying. But I think John Wick had that feeling when you watch it.

You're like, I feel like there's a series of books about Lance Reddick's character. Because I always use Star Wars and Tales from the Cantina where the bounty hunter is like those books that fleshed out the five characters you see once in the movie. I feel like you can have that about, this is how the origin story of these freaks end up here in the post-apocalyptic Australia. John Wick has the added level of also the bureaucracy, the way they world build a bureaucracy.

The moment in the third one when Asa K. Dillon first enters and throws down a bigger coin as the adjudicator, I probably laughed for three minutes straight. I lost my shit and then they mentioned that. Well, we'll have to bring this to the higher table.

There's another fucking table. The best thing in John Wick 3 is like, oh, we're international, there's Europeans we have to think about. But I feel like almost, like, I've got to re-watch all three of those. They're the best.

But any time, any franchise outside of, I feel like basically, Mad Max, John Wick, and Star Wars tries to do that, it feels too forced. Yeah, certainly there are other franchises. But they're the ones I think about where I feel like they consistently work. And in other franchises, it sometimes feels to me like peacocking, where they're like mystery at the bar wearing something stupid so you ask them a question.

I get that. But it feels like two points of, like, we want to write a comic book about this. The consistency through which, throughout the films, throughout the universe, every element feels bad. Oh, I would love to try to think of what other franchises come close.

It's a mystery. It's the fact that they're able to sell the mystery, but make it seem enticing and like it's not just random. Yeah, like, I think the Mad Max trilogy, the Star Wars trilogy, and the John Wick trilogy would have people, like, modern people asking, is this based on anything? Totally.

Because it's just so rich and so specific that you'd be like, oh, there has to be a graphic novel that John Wick is based on, or, like, there has to be something that Star Wars You're telling me someone just sat down and made all this up? Right, but the way that people, like, you know, big fans of the Harry Potter books, the Lord of the Rings books, or the Song of Ice and Fire books, will be like, oh, that character who's like, in the background for two lines is actually, like, a big part of this other thing. I mean, which is right. I mean, Game of Thrones, I like the show a lot, but, right, the books are, have that quality, which I adore, where he's like, anyway, let me talk to you for five minutes about it, let me know this person's name.

And Mad Max is like, there's something to the fact that Mad Max is like, my favorite new show. You watching The Witcher, Gabriel? Of course, I watched it. It's so fucking good.

Of course, first of all, The Witcher is high fantasy featuring my gay for a day number one, Henry K. There was a recent, I have, like, one episode to go, there's a recent foreground shot of just his arm, where it looks like, I don't know, a snake, I mean, a dragon snake, I don't know, it's so big. Yeah, and I, the movie, I mean, that means the show is, like, right over the plate for me, so excited for it, and I just didn't love it. Wow.

Oh, that's insane. You're a sick boy. I know, I know, and I'm kind of bummed, and I was, what the fuck is the timeline in that show? Okay, it's like Dunkirk, one's two weeks, one's, like, ten years, one's eight years.

It's fucking insane. It rules. Can I ask, I know you guys are watching The Witcher, are any of you a witch in The Watcher? Oh, I've witch in The Watcher.

Who witch is The Watchman? I bought a full-screen DVD of the Keanu Reeves The Watcher, and I did passing Wiccan spells on it. I just did an impression of the poster of The Watcher. Of course.

He's holding, like, a, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is a thing, though, where, like, George Mullen has also retained such control over Mad Max, and there's so little... One of those rare, like, it is only mine.

Yeah, and there's so little appendix media. And there's no need to, like, delete some canon? Right. You know, anywhere, it's like, oh, ignore the Lord Humongous web series that came out five years ago, or whatever.

They did a couple, like, comics when Fury Road was coming out that I think were pretty poorly received, but they, if I'm not mistaken, were, like, four one-shots that gave you a little bit of runway into the movie. Not, like, all the backstory, but here's, like, what would have happened in the 30 minutes before? And that's, like, from what I know, the only real additional stuff he's done. But, like, the video game isn't, like, a canon thing.

Well, sure, but you're right that it never, like, stumbled into that Terminator problem, where there have been so many failed sequels that now any time they do a sequel, they have to specify which sequels they are ignoring. Like, you know, they're like, this one is one, two, three is implied. Like, you know, this one's just one and two. Because it's fascinating that Star Wars is even doing that.

Star Wars is going to ignore the last one. Star Wars is like, no, it definitely doesn't matter. Abrams comes in, he's like, he does matter, and he doesn't matter if the Emperor created him. It's that battle, too, of, like, half-shit-talking the other parent, but then also trying to be lenient on other things to make the kid like you more than the other parent?

Yes, yes. Like, if Dad's an asshole, that shit's not going to fly, but also you're allowed to watch R-rated movies. Like, he's doing things in Rise of Skywalker that he thinks are going to make us feel better about the fact. Oh, I got chicks kissing him once again.

Like, all right, JJ, relax. It's integral. an exclusively gay moment finally finally you know it's kind of crazy that there's like no other thing that all four movies are kind of standalone in a certain way you know they go on each other if you've watched all four but the real connection is just George and the style but the fact that like the fourth one is a new Mad Max who is younger than the guy was in the third one and it doesn't care at all whether it's where it is in the timeline if it's chronologically the last if it's in the middle why he's younger if it's a new thing yeah there's no like moment where he takes dice off the mirror of the truck and he's like these are my dice from the first movie no no it's just a fucking straight name another franchise that takes what 20 years off and comes back with a fucking banger I mean you know we'll talk about this when we get to it but the night that we figured out what this podcast was was the night that David and I were going to see Fury Road yes of course because you look at this guy's filmography and it's I mean the story behind when he was coming out with Fury Road us film nerds were like do you know what I remember saying to my wife I was like I want to see your face when I tell you this guy's other movies when you just listen to his other movies it is the wildest but the thing that's crazy is the version of that story that would make sense is David and I walk out of Fury Road and go that's the podcast we've been doing Star Wars for a year the through line is a director who has that sort of success now that we've seen Fury Road it makes sense what's crazy is we had that idea 30 minutes before the movie started we were sitting in the theater waiting to watch it we did not know it was going to be that good we did not realize that we were about to see one of the greatest examples of a blend check ever you know and a movie that in terms of what we've discussed in our five years doing that show by all accounts should be a fucking disaster like every time anyone's done something like that it's been 20 years trying to make one thing go back to their old franchise change that many elements it's like a fucking train wreck but there's something incredible to how much this and Fury Road are of a piece just like being decades apart at different budget levels with radically different technology and different I mean even though Fury Road has a lot of the aesthetic of this obviously also has this whole updated angle of like it's about female liberation and Charlize Theron with a robot arm and overcoming patriarchy which this does not have obviously no I mean so he Mad Max comes out costs $400,000 and ends up making $100 million worldwide it is a massive worldwide success almost everywhere except for the United States where it does not do well and the studios got really scared I'm not going to just call bullshit on the $100 million thing it's made up it's sad that they like to share it's made up it's made up it's a stat where they're taking like every single home rental it's a made up stat inarguably it was one of the most profitable movies of all time it's sort of like when I say people ask me about High and Mighty and I'm like oh yeah 3 million downloads and they're like what that looks 280 episodes let's not get into the details I was going to tell you 3 million downloads 10 people have re-listened to every episode 20 times exactly it's mostly a core element of freaks around America fuckboys number one fuckboys what was this insanely profitable movie that doesn't do well in the States they re-dub the film with all American accents because they think it was so little dialogue well it has more than this it has more than this it still is not a very dialectic and English language it's just like all the accents are going to throw them off it's insane and they have that as an option on the Blu-ray and it's astounding how bad it is because it is one of those things it's not astounding how bad it is it sounds bad what is particularly weird about it is when you're watching a bad dub of a movie it is usually like the way people parody bad dubs of martial arts films where it's like the energy doesn't match but it's also like the mouth is so out of sync with it and in this it's like they're saying the exact same words but they're just coming from a disembodied voice that is a bad performance so that's one of the things that sort of sabotages the movie it doesn't do crazy well here but within the industry people go like oh look at what this guy made out of nothing so it becomes a con card film and he gets offered like fucking everything and he gets offered first blood he gets offered like all these big 80s studio action films it's kind of the John Woo thing where they're like oh yeah let's hook you up with the Sylvester Stalloneers who do you want to work with because Bill's first American movie is hard target it's hard target with Bandana it's that kind of thing of like any big star is going to go like this is a guy I should get in my corner any big action star he comes to LA he takes all the meetings and goes you know what no I'm going to fucking go back to Australia double down and make the like four times as big Mad Max sequel does that and then that becomes huge in the States but as a creative you can imagine George Miller watching Mad Max watching its success and like you know having to see it in theaters having conversations about it and just the whole time going fuck let me get another swing of this oh man now if I had money we would do this oh man I wish we could do this oh fuck it the fucked up bad guys is the most favorite part of Mad Max what if I extrapolate that out and like you could just see and then he's like forget it let me go back to Australia wait don't just stay right here let me come back with a movie I think I'd really like but it's a ballsy move because if this had fucked up then all those Hollywood authors would have been rescinded right right that's probably true he's conducted his career with so much like integrity and gone against the grain of how anyone else would like go about making a career at this budget level and it's always sort of benefited him where he's just like consistently played by his own rules a big thing that helped him is that he was with like Roadshow Pictures which later becomes Village Roadshow which becomes one of like the biggest film financing companies and later does like The Matrix and a ton of things with Warner Brothers but the fact that he was a local boy that he was with them from the beginning that he had this good relationship which meant that he always had like good funding he sets up the Kennedy Miller company from the get-go he has a strong crew he works with he's built somewhat of a little industry around himself with all of his like key team but he just makes this crazy big bet on himself and in the same way that you watch like Fury Road and you go oh this is probably what Road Warrior looked like in his head and he couldn't until this point execute it you watch this this is what Mad Max looked like in his head yeah and it doesn't feel small to you like what's crazy is even though the budget is like minuscule compared to Fury Road and the difference in technology and the scale I watch this movie and I'm like it still feels so fucking big like you watch this this feels like the biggest movie ever that anamorphic photography stretch it out the way fucking Road Warrior uses the sky is insane because you're just like oh right I've never seen movies where there are no man-made structures anywhere on the horizon and it's just like one little fucking you know water tower there's like a little crane yeah sea of sand if you will it just feels endless like you track every shot is like this you've just been googling that phrase for like 40 minutes but like almost every shot in this movie is just this insane vanishing horizon of just like yellow and blue also upon watching it this time around I kept jumping back for a little like he does a great job of shooting these five second sequences that are small things like the dude's hand coming back in or like you know these minor little looking things that are you're like oh this dude has such an eye that you know he's like give him millions of dollars and you can still know he's going to shrink it down to this cool ass five second just like oh when Max crawls it's got to look like the choices he makes you're like oh and that's Fury Road is like the best movie of the last several years and it was so long after all the Mad Max movies that you're kind of like yeah I remember liking the Mad Max movies this is cool it's true where you're like yeah you know one of those are fine I remember when it was announced I was like why is he doing that why don't you do another Mad Max right it felt desperate in a weird way yeah and then the trailer we'll talk about it anyway I also want to note that he was trying to make a rock and roll movie called Roxanne which you know never happened but would love to know what that was I forgot that was a step in between when he turns down all the when he turns down all the LA jobs he works on Roxanne he's like I'm making Roxanne it's a rock and roll movie right and when he couldn't get that together then he said it was a Mad Max yes and he brings aboard the guy who wrote the novelization of Mad Max this guy Terry Hayes who becomes a collaborator for him to write the script and Dean Stemmler who becomes like a really big part because the first film is well shot but very scrappy and then this film just like takes it to the next level Dean Stemmler who's like less than a decade away from winning the Oscar for Dances with Wolves becomes like this very prestigy Hollywood cinematographer oh yeah also shot Apocalypse speaking of the movie yes and they went out to New South Wales to the sort of blasted deserts of Australia to a place called Broken Hill which sounds you know the thing I feel like I've always heard about Miller and his reputation is that like his movies he always squeezes maximum value of the budget he's given even when his films are expensive he somehow makes every movie look four times more expensive than it actually is and the main thing that he like bathes in is time that's like the main thing he wants is the time to do everything correctly and I think that comes across in what you were saying John about like all those little shots where it's just the kind of stuff that would often be relegated to a B unit where you're just like let's just do it again from a different camera setup but he understands like the energy with which you crawl in this one setup has to be different than how you're crawling from other angles because in this shot yeah and he feels like he knows he's like the tone I want when your hand is coming back into the car he's like you're destroyed or defeat you're slinking back when it becomes maximalist when the performance has sort of become like kabuki theater there's a story I kept on thinking about watching this movie that when Peter Bogdanovich was doing Last Picture Show and it was like his second movie ever and his first movie was they gave him a bunch of scraps of footage of Boris Harloff and they were like can you shoot 20 minutes around this and make it a narrative but this was his first time writing a script and shooting it and Bob Rafelson was producing it and he shoots the scene where Timothy Bottoms and Shepard just get in a fistfight over Sybil Shepard at the end of the movie and the people at Columbia Pictures see the dailies and call up Bob Rafelson and they're like this kid's a moron he doesn't know how to shoot an action scene this is incomprehensible we're screwed you have to go over and take a production and he was like let me see the dailies and this is one of my favorite terms ever but Bob Rafelson says he called up Columbia and he was like are you stupid this thing's gonna cut like butter isn't that gorgeous that's pretty sexy I will say if you didn't give me the setup of like and I love this term and I still am I'm just injecting that directly into my vocabulary I'm like oh I gotta remember that but this is a movie that cuts like butter and the reason why and it's the same thing that worked with Last Picture Show is he was like it was Bogdanovich's naivete being such a film critic and a film student is just when I say action bridges your fist goes from here to here like he was just he knew what it was gonna be he knew what the end piece was he knew what the end piece was and so he did it in a totally disoriented way where they never did the full fight as actors straight through but he got every piece he needed and when you watch that fight it has the same kind of energy that the Mad Max movies do where every little piece has so much force in it because it is just focused on just that one piece making that thing play the best it can from that angle and it's tough to do that and also make the performances feel cohesive and continuous because you're doing it so piecemeal but somehow Miller just always has that like throttle of like you know and so much this movie is someone looking at something establishing the next sort of danger the next conflict by someone clocking oh who's at the window next to me what's the spatial relation which is like life in an apocalypse where there's no settlements like that is what it is where it's like something down the road but what would it be oh there's smoke over there that's weird that's not supposed to happen but I think it's kind of like there's a person there weird there's never people there usually not a lot of people around I don't know if you're a bad sign I'm out here right but like to do this at high speeds like to do it in motion above all else and like a lot of times the cars are going like 60 miles per hour and they're speeding up the footage you know and I am the first person to like dislike visible effects but the fact that it's practical with just a little bit of speed and it's not used the whole time but it's used at certain times it really hits you extra hard where you're like this doesn't bother me at all it doesn't bother me at all when it's like weirdly takes off when the car takes off you're like this is kind of cool actually but it's like weirdly he's getting the performances out of his actors that also will play well at that speed if that makes sense you know like everyone's got a certain energy yeah I mean I don't this is not a performance movie for me really apart from Mel Bruce Spence is pretty fun thank you yeah he's pretty good back in the Star Wars days I kept on bringing up that he is Tia Amidon in Revenge of the Sith and every time I brought it up you went who cares so here was the situation he's in Revenge of the Sith he plays the he's like I mean I'll show you he's got lines on his face pointy and right Griffin was like do you know who that is it's the gyrocopter and I was like alright Jesus who cares here he is he's got a good vibe it's Bruce Spencey long face tall long face he's also in Thunderdome yes and then Gathard was on the podcast he tried it on him and he was like what but he is of course also a performance of Nigel Lattamie the evil train man in the Matrix Revolutions and in Return of the King of those then that would be a fifth trilogy in 2003 he was the highest grossing actor right right because he had the man was in some high earners the man was in like 1.8 billion dollars worth of movies he was in like 2% of them but it was this crazy his performance is really great because he's the only person in this universe who is having fun who still seems sort of like a human right yeah 100% and I feel like there's something to the fact that he is the only person that's ever in the air so that makes it seem like it seems like such an insane advantage but it also gives him a different perspective than every single other person that exists in this world like the tragedy is so dire in this movie but it makes it seem like oh that would be why he's got some positive some hope to him because he sees more than everyone else he sees so he's got like a weird perspective also do you think that Stephen Merchant saw this guy and was like alright when he was like zero I'm going to grow to be just like this dude I mean he looks like George Miller designed him his proportions in the size of his hands and the skin of his legs he makes Jack Skellington look like Danny DeVito it is insane that this is his real body it is and he is really fun in this movie also his head is 4 feet tall it's the length of the head he had been in The Cars That A Pair he'd been in some of these sort of small budget Australian auspultation what do you want to call a movie but I will say this you're saying it's not a movie called Stork which was like a breakout hit for some comedy you were saying this is not really a performance movie but watching the first and the second back to back pretty much it does make you realize that as opposed to a lot of genre cinema especially genre cinema coming out of these sort of humble beginnings the performances are often so wackadoo people who cannot act or people who overact so much because they don't have respect for the material and in this even though it's a cranked up movie it does feel like everyone is actually invested in the world people who have two lines people are just in the background even if people aren't making a big impression there's like an integrity to all the actors in this there's something to like if you're in a movie and you only have two lines you're like who gives a fuck but if the lead only has ten lines you're like well I guess I'm the fucking weird captain who has the 80s blonde daughter the mechanics assistants the mechanics are the fucking statler and walkthrough of this movie they're my comic relief they're the Rosencrantz but it's also one of those things where it's like probably the 14th killed person in this movie still worked 35 days and mostly just like on a dirt bike with a mask on in the back but has like a dozen close ups like because it is such a physical movie all the supporting actors in this are so much more invested by the nature of what they have to do yes I agree with that I think one of my beefs is with and I hate to to say something mean about the Lord Humongous I don't love the Lord Humongous he's my least favorite Mad Max villain I don't think it's even really a debate Cole Cutter's so good those are the best two and then Tina Turner also kicks the Lord Humongous is like okay you're big you're a big guy which is cool the hockey mask I mean you're not the first to do that but okay maybe he is the first Jason might still have a sack he might still have a sack it's like a hockey mask Jason might be a kid if I'm on the lake the hockey mask is fine the opposite the fact that Lord Humongous is this huge bodybuilder who uses a pistol with a scope it's like get in the fucking he's a lot of bark he's a lot of like Lord Humongous is back you have two more chances to disobey me to disobey me you can't you can't I'm learning on leaving soon. He's scary.

One of my big beefs with most action movies is they always get a big actor to play the villain. Just a big guy. An overqualified best man. So by the time Steven Seagal is swearing off against a bad guy, you're like, Steven Seagal is going to kick this 60-year-old guy's ass.

Tommy Lee Jones is supposed to be scary. He just fought 100 Navy SEALs. Now he's going to fight Tommy Lee Jones? Who cares?

The ultimate example of that for me is... The one I can remember when this movie should end right now is Quantum of Solace, where the film expects you to feel any tension in a final fight that is Daniel Craig by the catwalk with Matthew Ulmerich. It's like, I'm an eco-terrorist. Bond has had a few of those problems, like Jonathan Pryce in Tomorrow Never Die.

I mean, often when you have the ineffectual, they'll have a heavy... And then they get the order wrong, where you fight the badass martial artist who's your sidekick. He's feeding them. It's like, now you have to fight...

Jonathan Pryce in a Nehru collar. He kills that guy, fights that guy, and then he's like, now you have to fight me, the old, fat, South African man that's Robocop. Robocop is like, Robocop, yes! Well, I mean, Haywire makes the very strange decision of having Ewan McGregor be the final boss.

Like, no offense to him. But she's already dispatched Channing Tatum, like, bigger eyes, like, it's weird. Haywire also makes the weird decision to be totally incumprehensible. Yeah, but that I love.

But so then you see this movie, and you're like, oh, finally, a fucking bad guy worthy of a head. He's dead. And you're like, sort of never... Oh, he's a man or a bodybuilder if everything you fight is in a fucking weird, what do they call it, fan boat-turned car.

But the first one has that thing, too. He's got those Mississippi roots, he can't let them go. What if that's the backstory? He used to be a fan boat captain.

The first one has that thing, too, where Toe Cutter gets killed. Yeah, he gets killed in the ultimate. Yeah, it's true. And the same happens in Fury Road.

He doesn't care about the hierarchy. You might get hit by a truck, and that's... And the point is different, because this movie, and Fury Road, it's about needing to defeat or banish the band. It's about chasing the finish line.

And it's also about, these are the guys who open the gates of hell. So ultimately, it's not that stopping on the problem. The problem is, everything that they've only found. Right, right.

And then also, you have an end point you've got to get to. You've got to do a delivery. I do like his prosthetic pulsating things on the back of his head. Well, so do you know the original plan for him was that he would be Goose?

He would be Max's old buddy from MX1, who gets all burned up. I love the fact that you don't know who any of these guys are really... You don't even know their motives at all. Except that gas is important, and you want it, and they have it, they need it.

In the Mad Max world, all you need to do is find gas or water or something, and then be like, okay, I am Lord, fuck you, and I'm the boss. You all answer to me now, and that's it. It's futile, you know? I think one of the reasons why I love the Mad Max franchise so much is it's the only piece of media that seems to find cars as terrifying as I do.

As someone who will never get a driver's license, it's not like being in a vehicle. The idea stresses me out. Watching this movie is how I feel every time I'm in a Uber. I'm just like, someone's gonna fucking ram into us.

It's too much, you know? No one should have this much power in their hands. No one should control this much fucking muscle. Dom Dierkes used to have this stand-up bit that was really funny.

He was like, in like 40 years, kids are gonna be like, so you were just in these 5,000-pound death machines going 80 miles an hour next to each other? That's how I feel. I mean, it's the old joke, but right, anything you're driving in a car, you're like, oh, well, thank God, I have a fully working cerebral cortex, and I'm not gonna do that. For example, well, I do not have a fully working cerebral cortex and do not have a driver's license.

Smart! I have a sense of compassion for the human race. But this movie, the way they just, in the prologue, set up so beautifully, because the first one, you're watching it, and society hasn't fully collapsed, but you're like, there is a weird dominance of vehicles. You know?

It's like a pre-Pixar Cars thing where it's like, the scales are starting to unbalance between the natural and the mechanical. And then the second one just sets up this whole thing of just like, we got all into machines. Like, everything was all about machines, and we went into war and then realized, oh, fuck, we blew our machines trying to win the machine war. And now, society has crumbled, and the only thing we care about is how to keep the machines running.

It's just such a beautiful table setting. And to just have some old man over like, South Footage World War II explain this, you're like, I get it, it's the type of self-destructive thing that humanity does. The movie is so oddly pointed. Now you're like, this is crazy.

You're like almost crying just in the opening narration, which is like their version of the Star Wars crawl, but the guy is really imbuing it with a sense of real sort of pathos about like, of course we did what humans do. You know? And this idea where it's just like, it's just, it's all about fucking guzzling. Like, let's hammer the point, let's underline this movie about one thing, everyone's got to get guzzling.

Guzzling? Guzzling. I'm sure we talked about it in the last episode, but there have been all these gas crises in Australia and things like that. You know, that was what inspired him.

Feral Child, by the way, we haven't shouted him out yet, you know, with the boomerang. Yeah, yeah, cool guy. You're looking at me confused. No, clarify which character is Feral Child.

No, I was going to say, you must have learned to speak quite eloquently, very eloquently. I love that movie. How am I, there's no surprises left in movies anymore for me. And then when it's just something small like, and I am the narrator, you're like, oh, that's fucking cool.

I don't know why I liked it so much. This is a classic, Chris, are you remembering that that is the final twist of Taruk, the last flight, the first flight, the Avatar Cirque du Soleil show that we saw. We're like, you're watching the Cirque du Soleil, they have a whole Avatar adventure, there's a narrator, and at the end of it, he's like, and by the way, that guy is me, I am, later. That's a hard blackout, waiting for people to go like, whirr!

Lights back up, people slowly walking out. Anyway, yeah, Feral Child, a bit of a Ben vibe from Feral Child, right? Did you ever have a boomerang? I did.

Yeah, actually one time, it hit my friend in the head, he had to go to the hospital. Oh, come on, Ben. It wasn't like, I was doing it on purpose. We were doing American Gladiators, and I lined up, he was next to me, and I was going to throw the boomerang, and I guess I kind of, kind of let go, and it went right into his head.

Blake Grange? What's that injury we're talking about here? Not a metal boomerang, I'm hoping. No, it wasn't good, he had to get stitches.

I felt bad. But yes, I've had a boomerang, and I've thrown them many a time. Ben, what was your American Gladiator name? Oh, wow.

I don't know. I mean, I think it was, who was my favorite guy? Was he a Nitro, a laser, or a towel? I had two cultures, and I wanted the Belmore Street Fair that were named Nitro and laser.

I think mine was Nitro. Those were the two coolest guys, I thought. American Gladiator feels in bed at the Mad Max, too. But it is wild, Britain had its own gladiators, but there was a character called Wolf, who had long hair, and he was the bad guy.

So everyone else was really nice, which is sort of weird to think about, that's what Gladiator was. They would joust, and maybe one wins, and they'd be like, how do you feel about that, Hunter? And he'd be like, oh, he's a great competitor, but Wolf would eat the microphone, and be like, I'll get you. It was great.

I love Gladiators. They did try to bring it back. It was one of those things, where they brought it back, I feel like, during the writer's strike, when they needed a lot of bananas. But Ninja Warrior eats its lunches so hard, because it's a little more hardcore.

He's got his own Wikipedia page, I wish I could remember his name, but he was the guy who like, oh, Russell Crowe. Yes, yes, that's the guy who threw a phone. No, this dude showed up on Gladiators, on American Gladiators, and was such a fucking stud. He could, like, no one could beat him in anything.

And he was like, and Gary wins again, or whatever, this tiny little black dude, just smoking everyone in every event. They just never dealt with this. They were like, it was like Ken Jennings. We need a robot to fight him in the joust.

You could just beat everybody in everything. It was very fun. Did you guys have The Travelator? Did you guys have that?

No. I grew up in Britain. I haven't heard that in 30 episodes. I watched the British Gladiators with Wolf and Hunter and Jett and Nightshade and all the other ones.

Nightshade, Tom Brady's worst nightmare. Nightshade, unfortunately, was the black woman. And guess what they called the black man? No.

Shadow. No. So bad. Oh my God.

It's just like when I was a kid, I'm like, right, yeah, Black Ranger and Yellow Ranger, the black guy, the Asian woman. Makes sense, right? I'm a child, I have a very impressionable brain right now, this is what I should be watching. Can I move backwards in conversation and make a joke that's not worth it?

Yeah, please. I thought Tom Brady's worst nightmare was an air pump. Ooh. The one thing Griffin knows about football.

Thank you. Griffin giving his toe into sports humor for the first time. I know one other thing about football. Anyway.

Tell the truth. Tell the truth. Tell the truth. In the end of the big Gladiator, they did like a big gauntlet run at the end of every show.

The last thing, they had to climb a thing and do a thing, but the last thing was they just had to walk up a backwards escalator, essentially. Yeah, they had to run up a treadmill that was going down. That's the Travelator. That was called the Travelator.

It was so hard. And I always appreciate it. It's so simple, but so fucking difficult. Also, American Gladiators, I don't know if Gladiator is with a U.

I don't know if you guys had this, but it was all the going through the paper door where there's sometimes a guy there and sometimes someone not there. That's just like, if you choose one guy, you lose. It had the breakaway paper. Yes, it was a good show.

I enjoyed it. Tennis ball, air guns. The assault as a kid was the best one. Did you guys have what they called atlas spheres where you were in a giant mouse ball?

That one was cool. And the power ball was the one I always thought I would be the best at, which was kind of like rugby, but with like a slam dunk. Oh yeah, right. Bring it back.

Why not? I don't know. I feel like they did that revival. American Ninja Warrior right there.

The CrossFit games like eat the lunch of all. I also feel like... I also think, no offense to the Gladiators, there's probably like a steroids situation happening over there. They all looked very large.

I also feel like the American Gladiators reboot came in a slight lull period for the WWE, which has since swung back really hard and is just so dominated. I would get out for WWE to even go say professional wrestling because there's so many other shows. I think no one wants that. Do you know the thought I had watching this movie?

It is insane that this is almost 40 years old and there is still not a stunt category at the Oscars. I know it's a thing that gets discussed a lot, but this is the fucking point where they should probably go, oh, this is a thing we need to acknowledge. This is the birth of a modern type of stunt movie. This is the birth of a type of movie where you have like 80 people doing insane things that defy a lot of it.

And real people doing real stunts with real fire and real cars. It's just like... I don't know if it's because I've watched all these classic action movies for Action Boys or because of just modern movies. I'm so tired of CG and the disinification of everything that watching this movie is like a fucking antidote.

Dude, when that one biker who I think according to IMDb actually breaks his leg because he's not supposed to hit the car and he's doing like those raggles. And I'm like, you watch it and you're like, holy shit. Now that's insane someone actually got hurt. Apologies.

But if he didn't get hurt, that's still a dude soaring 30 feet through the air. And that's crazy. That was the intention. He wasn't supposed to hit the car but he was supposed to definitely fly 30 feet as a person.

And that's fucking awesome. That person made that choice to do that. I respect it. I'm not a director but as a director that would frighten me so much like the days you have that shit to do.

But here's what's crazy. He's made four of these movies and I believe and I was trying to do my research on this it seems like the worst injuries that anyone's gotten on any of them is like that. It's like a broken bone. You know?

Like a badly harmed limb but nothing that you couldn't recover from. I was reading an article two days ago about the amount of people who have died making Resident Evil movies. You know? Because they got like that Bulgarian loophole or whatever that they're shooting outside of them.

And almost took down a fucking Harlem apartment or Brooklyn apartment. I mean like two firemen got killed. I mean it's one of these things that sort of speaks to George Miller where it's like even the first where he's like in retrospect we were like playing with like death a lot. You know?

We got really lucky that no one got more hertz. But from then on he becomes very aware of like I'm going to ask people to do this we have to plan out so deliberately I have to be very specific on what I'm asking them to do. I'm not going to ask them to do what I'm not going to use. Here comes that time shit again.

It's all about the time. So if he uses money for days that's what you're talking about when you say time right? It just takes days. And it's like That's a dream.

And especially when you're like traversing large, large patches of land the reset time for this stuff is crazy the stunts are complicated enough they're not moving pieces they're explosions and stuff that like I was reading this article about this woman lost her arm making the last Resident Evil movie because they didn't like the way the shot looked on playback and they decided hey camera guy let's change the timing of your move by two seconds and didn't communicate to her. And as someone who's been on set I'm sure you can relate to this as well John I read that and I go holy shit I know that moment I know that moment I've never been in that moment where the stakes are that great I've done it where I'm like I'm set up to fail here but not die and to fail is I'm not going to land this joke Right because they leave you out of one piece of conversation or you're not even being considered There was a time when we were filming Tick but it was one of those things where it was like that was just a product we don't have time just speed it up speed it up and a movie like this where you have so many complicated shots so many cranes things in the air things on the ground things mounted to vehicles things being held moving at high speeds with people jumping explosions and all of that the fact that their track record for injuries is so great that it is so low I think it's something you've got to give them credit for But here's my question What? Are they just lying? Well possibly That does seem to be something that happens all the time where it's like much later they're like yeah actually like 16 people fell off a cliff but they're okay now You're saying a stunt Oscar but would we measure a stunt Oscar by like most people put in death's way who didn't die like would it be a stat thing how do you measure I'm supportive of a stunt Oscar how do you measure the sort of like artistic you know I think you'd treat it like best choreography I assume you'd have stunt members be part of the Academy but like the way the Oscars work like the peers for sound design I love to think about those guys being like oh yeah people are always just like well what movie has a lot of cuts that's the one movie has a lot of sound that's why we throw it to the general button The sound Oscar almost always goes to a movie with a lot of vehicles or a movie with a lot of cars or war sometimes music helicopters though if you got helicopters then you could win a stunt but you're like in what universe did Roma not win best sounds but in the universe everyone's fucking watching on Netflix and not hearing that there's like waves over there what's up Ben oh I feel the way about quiet place yes it's a credible sound and that's the whole oh attack sound attack sound he refused to move to the waterfall just fucking pick up your shit and move there the thing we always joke about because it's the best part is when they show Krasinski's like a layer where he's planning everything on the whiteboard it says like they dislike sound but like a circle around it's like we got it attack sound can you imagine how good he felt the day he figured that out oh it's not the smell thing it's the sound thing we can call off the three months of smell experiment every morning I wake up and shit on my baby here we go creature blind attack sound armor how many in area what is the weakness he's a good father he's not particularly good at whiteboards that's really funny to me The reason why this movie doesn't feel like a dry run for Fury Road, it doesn't feel like it's just outmodeled by Fury Road, is that you cannot believe that they did all of this in this time period without any digital effects.

And Fury Road is still more practical than most movies, which is embellishing everything. And this, you're just like, on the budget they have, the time you have, when there's no model for this, when people really haven't done a movie like this before, where essentially the movie is pretty much one long action sequence. It's kind of two. There's stuff at the beginning.

There's kind of a pause as we meet Papa John. It's like Papa Goppa, the leader of the community. He's like, here's who everybody is. And he's like, I want to help you.

But Fury Road is like two chases, too. Yes, it is. The thing that's wild about Fury Road is that the pause in the middle is just in the middle of nowhere. It's not like he gets to a city and meets new people.

Right, the breath is just like... He is so good, though, at structurally knowing when to slow things down. I was literally just about to say, but when you watch Fury Road on IMAX in the theater, when it stops in the middle of the theater, you are like, oh, okay, all right, like, stretch my... Oh, my God, I just realized I've been crunching my shoulders for one hour.

Griffin was at the press screening of me, if you remember. It's literally at minute 30, there's a shot of the flare. They're going like a tornado. It's a storm, the flare goes to black, and it's a plaque for one second.

And the whole audience burst into applause. And it was an incredible moment. And then you heard the press audience sigh. Yes, 100%.

And then you have the small scale, really cool. It was one of the best audiences I've ever seen. It was also incredible because we were seeing it at a press screening. We were like, I've heard it.

It's traditionally not so much vocal. Well, yes, A, that. And B, people were like, I've heard it's good. You've been at Cannes.

And I'm almost like, it's great. But you can never trust Cannes because they've been watching all these movies about Moldovan lepers. And then they see Solo and they're like, it's like a laser gun. People forget how good the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull reviews were.

I always think of like Port in the Storm at Cannes, right? Because it's just like, I just watched eight black and white, and then you're like, that was actually pretty good. If you saw that movie last, you'd be like, that's what's stuck in your head with. George Miller's a functional filmmaker.

It's probably going to be a better action movie than most. But you don't know if Cannes liked it that much. But that's really going to translate. Well, no, his last credit was Happy Feet 2.

It just wasn't something where you're like, this is guaranteed. Yeah, but this is like, he's kind of creating everything. I mean, the only real forebearer he has for what he's trying to do is the previous movie he made. And like, in terms of the larger storytelling themes, he's pulling from like, westerns and samurai films, and he's doing like a very compelling thing.

He does credit like Joseph Campbell and all that stuff. But it's amazing how he just, it's like, it is so lean, it is so focused always. He hits those beats so efficiently, the movie doesn't tell you anything that you don't need to know. It has nothing extraneous, but it also feels like there's so much going on around it.

Like, he's this one filmmaker who I feel like is able to be completely maximalist and minimalist. Mad maximalist? And mad minimalist at the same time. You know who's the person, the people who are really influenced by this, and I saw them say this in an interview, and I'm watching it today, I really, really saw it?

The Coen Brothers. Oh, that makes sense. They talk about how this and the first Mad Max were like the two films they studied obsessively going into. Gyro Captain is like, just so close to like a random Coen Brothers character.

The moment when Gyro Copter's having the extended conversation with the dog about snake recipes, it's a moment that you feel like, this would be in so many modern movies, and this is the most unbroken dialogue in the movie. Raising Arizona is like comedy Mad Max. It has that sort of like anarchic energy and like the nonstop movement and all of that. And then even though like they're serious films, like even something like Blood Simple feels like they're the byproduct of like Howard Hawks and Miller.

No, you're right. Blood Simple's very like, again, lean and economical. Whether they're doing like a drama or a crime film or a comedy, it always has that like Miller crank. And a lot of the visual like notes I feel like come from, there's something about, his movies just look so expressive, you know?

Those little flourishes he'll put in. The famous one is obviously the eyes bulging out in like the first Mad Max. Oh, we get a little bit of that when the guy falls out of the truck. Yes.

In this one, when Max opens the passenger side door of the truck. Yeah. Yeah, it's like that's one moment. I know I mentioned the hand before, the dog holding the bone in his teeth with the string attached to the shotgun and the gyro captain back.

That is three seconds of the movie. It must have taken forever to set up to get to work with a fucking shelter dog like that. But that's like, you choose that your priority is time. And you get a movie that feels this deliberate where it feels like, I mean, he's talked about how he wants the Mad Max movies to feel like a literal fever dream.

Like they come out of the dreams he has when he has like the flu. Yeah. And it does feel like when you wake up and you're like in cold sweats. Is that guy shirtless with a hockey nest screaming a Dutch poem into a microphone?

You wake up and you try to break down what the dream was, but while you're dreaming it, it all makes perfect sense, you know? And it is, right, which I love, not a movie that wants you to think about and break it down and be like, why would they be, you know, John Papsidara, his name is Papagallo. Papagallo. Nick Papagiorgio, got it.

When he has that sort of scene with him where he's like, you've fully succumbed to the madness of this world. You're telling us that you're the same as us, but we've done what we need to survive but to maintain an absurity and a sense of hope. You are gone. Yeah, you're more like those people.

And Max knows that because by the end he's like, all right, I'll see you later. It is one of the longest continuous dialogue scenes in the movie and it is still pretty short and pretty sparse. But it is basic statement of like, here's me, here's you, that's what's going on here. But it's like, he uses dialogue when it's something that you cannot communicate other than through dialogue.

And it feels like he's using it so sparingly. I mean, he always said that his goal for the first Mad Max, I feel like every movie since then he's just intensified this as the goal is to make a silent movie with sound. But the things he studies the most going into each one are like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Well, that makes sense for like elaborate stunts and elaborate visuals.

It makes total sense. Like Chaplin, it was like, these guys were like the original stuntmen. And most of the movies are like chase movies. There's usually some fucking cop with a nightstick like Jason Ather.

Yeah. My favorite stunt is when the house falls down but they land like in the window. Yeah, so good. I was reading, I was going through reviews of Blu-ray releases for these films because weirdly for how much he controls the rights of these films, they haven't gotten the kind of treatment in a lot of areas that most films that are creative and protected do.

Like the home video releases have never really been up to the level of how beloved these films are. Right, right. They haven't gotten like the criteria on adjacent. Right.

And he's like never really done much merchandise which is both good and bad. Good in terms of purchasing integrity, bad in terms of my apartment. Right. The Lord knows the boxes Mad Max shit I would own if he made it.

But this Blu-ray review I was reading that was just talking about the transfer, the guy just mentions in the middle of the review, like I remember watching this as a child and going, what is this? These aren't even sons. Right. This is just really happening.

This feeling that you're watching or just the amount of damage being like caused to vehicles when they go to a wide shot of the desert and you just see 40 vehicles moving fast in the endless sand. Caravan of destruction. You're like this feels like the largest movie ever made. There's five or ten scenes where someone is just looking at something.

The thing that they're looking at is 12 independent vehicles moving in some way. Sometimes it's like Max is just looking at the camp and two motorcycles are jumping off of ramps. Sometimes it's like three dune buggies chasing one person. Like they just constantly show you.

That's just scary enough. It's not even cell phones. It's not like, as Griffin said, just driving a car is pretty scary. Terrifying.

To get like 40 people to do it like in coordination with each other and a camera. Or driving a car with two people chained to the front of it chasing another car. Like being on the roof of a speeding fucking truck. This is all shit that those people were objectively doing.

When I see the shots like that, I go, where's the crew? You know, like there's one guy behind the camera operating it. It's the magic of Fury Road. Yeah, you're right.

It's crazy. Are there some chairs set up somewhere? Because they're moving full speed down the road. Well, there is something behind the scenes saying to shoot Max driving, they had to build a rig on the outside of the car and shoot in.

And that's where the cameraman and the camera set up was. And they thought they had it all set up and then they went over like one hill and that thing bottom down said sparks flying everywhere. And they were like, I guess this is just what the conditions are and continue to shoot like that. That's so awesome.

I have not been able to get over Dominic's bit about how it's crazy that we all drive cars. I'm having like a slightly existential crisis about just driving cars. You've been reeling into yourself the last 20 minutes. This is how I feel all the fucking time.

And yeah, I love driving a car. I moved to Los Angeles and I've adjusted to being in my car big time. The thing about New York driving me out is that you're in your car like hours a day. That is wild.

But yes, I do have a car in New York. I'm the rearing of New York. He likes driving people. I love driving people.

I love driving places. I hate flying. So I've like doubled down on roads, you know. I'm totally cool with flying.

So weird that you're cool with flying. Totally cool with flying. Mad Max for me is like, that's my existential horror movie is like this world, it's all cars. Has anyone ever attempted like a planes Mad Max?

Like an aerial Mad Max? I mean, I feel like not. Are you saying like a Kevin Costner in a sequel to Waterworld? Exactly, Airworld.

I mean, that kind of rules. Whip it at your head. Like Star Wars. When will there be Star Wars?

I don't know. If you care about Star Wars gamers, I forget. Like you're not really going to shit about Star Wars, right? I used to really, I played, I did all the Star Wars shit, customizable card game, all the video games.

Loved it growing up. Fell off during the, I was really fucked up by Phantom Menace. And then you were just like, I'll leave it to the side of the road. Yeah, I didn't watch anything.

I mean, I watched every movie, of course, in the theater. It was like in when you were out there. Yeah, I've now reached that level with Marvel. Do you know what I mean?

Like I'm at that point now where I find myself, I've never been really vocal online about the stuff I like despite being a podcast host because I'm just like, whatever. But now I have to take it, well, I'm definitely less vocal about what I dislike. But now I take the time to be like, anytime someone makes a movie, like anytime the Safdie brothers come out with Fury, anything that comes out, it's like not Disney and not, you just want to be like, God, let's put this on a pedestal. 1917, watch this fucking movie.

There's not one superhero. But like, that's the thing. Like the Mad Max movies, it could only be the result of one person having a very specific, well thought out and well planned vision. Like that's the other part of it.

It's not just like, oh, someone had an idea and then it got fucked up in the editor or whatever. It's like he's making a movie that can only be constructed one way. It's so fully in dialogue with itself that you couldn't even fuck it up if you took the footage away from him to an extent. You could make it worse, but you probably- Definitely make it worse.

But you couldn't make it- I know what you're- I get your context. There's a fun game to play where you're like, oh, I would love to see so-and-so direct a Marvel movie. I would love to see so-and-so direct a Star Wars movie. I don't think you should say that about Mad Max.

Right. I don't think anyone- that's his pure authorship. It's true. And Eden, as you're saying, the fact that unlike all these other franchises, he never goes like, I'm going to let you write a novel.

Right. He keeps it tight. He doesn't want to do a Peacock original series or something like that. Well, you know what action probably he will.

Little Max. Mad Max Babies? HBO Mad Max? I feel like it's in another little cartoon.

That was funny. He's got to sell it to HBO Max. I guarantee they're out to it. I guarantee they're out to George Willis.

There's at least been an email. Yeah. We got to get you. George Willis.

Let's run through some fucking great sequences in this movie. Well, the first big feral kid sequence is so great when it's taken so much effort to get to the compound. Yes. You know, he finds this guy.

He saves this guy. He's willing to bring him back and go through the trouble because he knows there'll be some gasoline in it for him. He gets back to the compound. What's his name?