ISSUE #62
BEAM FROM THE BOOTH | GRAND RAPIDS FILM SOCIETY
[EDITED BY: GRIFFIN SHERIDAN & SPENCER EVERHART]
Hello and welcome back to an all-new installment of BEAM FROM THE BOOTH brought to you by GRAND RAPIDS FILM SOCIETY!
Now that we are firmly on the other side of the stomach-churning, blood-soaked, barbaric glory of She Is Conann, that means we’re less than a week away from the kick-off of our SUMMER OF SEQUELS series!
(We put together an extensive preview of this series in ISSUE #60, which we suggest you check out if you haven’t already.)
Yes, believe it or not, this monumental series is now upon us, and we cannot wait to get underway. But before we do, we have an exiting offer to the committed souls who think they can conquer all seven screenings we have planned for the series…
THE SUMMER OF SEQUELS LOYALTY CARD!
We’ll be offering these special punch cards to attendees at the first of our seven Summer of Sequels screenings!
Those interested can bring their punch card back to each consecutive screening, leading to our final Summer of Sequels event, THE COLOR OF MONEY on SEPTEMBER 6th. It is at this climactic final screening that we will collect any and all punch cards with seven punches and enter them into a drawing for our grand prize: ONE YEAR OF FREE ADMISSION TO GRAND RAPIDS FILM SOCIETY EVENTS!
Sound fun? That’s because it will be. Remember, tickets for every screening in the series are already available on our website! (They’re cheaper than buying them at the door, too.)
It all begins THIS MONDAY NIGHT (6/24), when we screen George Miller’s MAD MAX 2: THE ROAD WARRIOR!
Here’s Kyle Macciomei — the unofficial History Man to the GRFS and aficionado of all things Wasteland at this point — with all the context you need before you watch the film…
HOW MAX WENT MAD: A REFLECTION ON THE FIRST MAD MAX FILM
[BY: KYLE MACCIOMEI]
GRFS’s Summer of Sequels is kicking off next week with George Miller’s Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981), the second installment in the original Mad Max trilogy. Now, you may be wondering if you need to watch the 1979 original Mad Max in order to see Mad Max 2 on the big screen. The simple answer to this question is not really, but it’d be a lot cooler if you did. The first Mad Max is sparse on the post-apocalyptic imagery, Thunderdome-set battles, and high-octane road warfare that this series would become known for, but it serves as an impressive starting point for an action-oriented director who is laying the straightforward groundwork of a fantastical world to come.
Mad Max is currently available to watch on both Peacock and (in this case, ironically named) Max streaming service. But if you’d rather jump straight into Road Warrior without watching the lower budget and slower original, then I will happily fill you in on what you’re missing out. I consider myself a connoisseur of context, and I think there are three things you should know about the first Mad Max film that will greatly enhance your experience watching The Road Warrior. So without further ado, let’s step into Kyle’s Context Corner (KCC), and talk about all things George Miller, Mel Gibson, and guzzolene.
THE AUSTRALIAN NEW WAVE AND EXPLOITATION
The first Mad Max came out of a period of Australian filmmaking known as the Australian New Wave. Essentially, the Australian governments of the 1970’s and 80’s decided to provide subsidies and incentives for filmmakers in order to revitalize their now dead industry, and it worked! This lead to a large wave of Australian produced films becoming popular to worldwide audiences. Massive names like Nicole Kidman (Eyes Wide Shut, Moulin Rouge!, the AMC Theatres intro), Mel Gibson (Lethal Weapon, Braveheart, What Women Want), George Miller (Mad Max, Babe, Happy Feet), and Peter Weir (Gallipoli , Dead Poets Society, The Truman Show) all came from this reinvigorated landscape of Australian cinema.
This was great for the young George Miller, who benefited from these investments by participating in a number of filmmaking classes and workshops that were available to him as he was studying to become a medical doctor. The first Mad Max did not initially qualify for public funds due to its taboo subject matter and violence, meaning Miller had to turn towards private investments from his medical colleagues to self-fund the film himself. This freedom of financing allowed Mad Max to transgress cultural norms , and is a major contributing factor to the film’s financial success.
While the film went on to become one of the most profitable films of all time (grossing over $100 million on a $350,000 budget), it wasn’t without some level of interference when it came to a U.S. release. Studio heads were worried that Americans couldn’t connect with or understand the authentic Aussie dialect, so they had the entire film dubbed over with American performances. Luckily, most versions you can find now of the film will feature the original voicework, as intended.
THE MAX WITH A THOUSAND FACES
There isn’t really a clear Mad Max canon or chronology that should be followed in the series. Instead, the first Mad Max serves as the origin story of how our titular Max went Mad as the world falls apart around him, and each sequel is trying to continue the thematic question of “can Max find redemption through vengeance?”. But in all of this storytelling, you don’t get the sense that Miller and company have a real reverence for consistency. Actors will sometimes appear in different entries but performing different characters, such as Bruce Spence who plays the gyrocopter in Road Warrior but then returns as an entirely different airborne pilot named Jedediah in Beyond the Thunderdome. It’s reminiscent of Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy, where Lee Van Cleef acts as good-guy ally Colonel Douglas Mortimer in the second film but then re-appears in the third as Angel Eyes, a ruthless mercenary.
Miller views his films often as epic myths and grand stories of heroic adversities, and isn’t too concerned with minute details such as a timeline for the series. Ultimately, our director is more interested in the real world cultural anxieties of an energy crisis and potential thermonuclear annihilation. The 70s and 80s were a period of time where there was fear that the world was about to run out of oil (jokes on them and us, as it’s 2024 and we still have decades left of reserves to drill), matched with the latent threat of nuclear war between the US and USSR. As fears of the apocalypse drew larger, it was only natural that Miller would give vision to those worst case scenarios.
The first film takes place right before society’s total collapse. There are still restaurants, a semi-functioning court system, and even a local police force. But it’s becoming clear to the characters that the line between violent anarchy and liberal democracy is becoming blurred. Max is one of the apocalypse’s early victims as he loses both his wife and child to a roving gang of wild bikers, led by their fearsome leader Toecutter. In the end Max gets his revenge, but at the cost of his sanity. The Road Warrior will pick up with an already broken Max, just trying to survive another day in the wasteland.
GEORGE MILLER AS THE MAD DOCTOR
Finally, you can’t talk about Mad Max without George Miller. Very few cinematic franchises can survive five decades with a single auteur at the helm of each entry. But Mad Max is an intellectual property that is exclusively owned by Miller and his Australian based production company. This is a company formed by Miller and his best friend Byron Kennedy in the 1970s in order to produce their very first feature film, the original Mad Max. Miller had never actually been on a professional film set before his directorial debut, instead only working on experimental films with friends.
Miller did not initially start out his career path as a filmmaker, but instead as a medical doctor. As he began working professionally in medicine in his late 20s, he felt a calling to abandon his secure profession and pursue cinema full-time. He began raising funds for his idea of a lone police officer facing down a savage gang of wackos as society fell apart around all of them. As mentioned before, the film was privately financed by friends of Kenney and Miller. In addition to that were the extra hours Miller picked up as a paramedic performing roadside surgery on car crash victims. With Kennedy behind the wheel and Miller in the back, the two serviced hundreds of patients in their makeshift ambulance, putting all of that money towards their first feature film. The traumatic experience of witnessing these horribly maimed patients had an intense affect on Miller emotionally, which he translated to the violent car crashes we see him put on screen.
In all, the first Mad Max serves as a prime testing ground for Miller to practice on before he’s ready to level up for his epic sequel. The Road Warrior deserves its place as one of the great action films in cinematic history, but Miller’s directorial debut still harbors an intuitive understanding of visual language and action filmmaking that allows audiences to peek in on a master in the making.
IN SUMMATION…
While the first film in this post-apocalyptic saga is certainly the wasteland at its most tame, it’s an excellent beginning to the hellish world our hero Max is about to inhabit. GRFS will be screening Mad Max 2: Road Warrior on Tuesday, June 24th at 8:00pm. Now that you’ve got all the context you need, you have no excuse not to buy your ticket for this high-octane and thrilling community experience.
UPCOMING EVENTS
MAD MAX: THE ROAD WARRIOR (Miller, 1981)
WHAT: THE KICK-OFF TO OUR SUMMER OF SEQUELS SERIES! The first sequel in George Miller’s now legendary MAD MAX franchise finds Max driving the post-apocalyptic highways of the Australian outback, fending off attacks from nomadic tribes that prey on outsiders.
WHEN: Monday, June 24th, 8:00pm
WHERE: Wealthy Theatre
WHAT: Our returning program of curated short films from independent filmmakers with a MI connection!
WHEN: Wednesday, June 26th, 7:00 pm.
WHERE: The Wealthy Theatre
THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK (Spielberg, 1997)
WHAT: THE SUMMER OF SEQUELS SERIES CONTINUES! While nearly everything at Jurassic Park was destroyed, John Hammond’s engineers had a secret second site, where other dinosaurs were kept in hiding. It seems the dinosaurs on the second island are alive and well and even breeding; and Hammond wants Ian Malcolm to observe and document the reptiles before Hammond's financiers can get to them…
WHEN: Monday, July 1st, 8:00pm
WHERE: Wealthy Theatre
And so we’ve arrived at the end of another BEAM FROM THE BOOTH! We appreciate you taking the time to read it and truly hope you’ll continue to do so. Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to get each issue in your inbox every MONDAY (usually), and stay up-to-date on all things GRFS.
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Until then, friends...
Cannot wait for the summer of sequels to begin!