Mad Max is an Australian science fiction film starring Mel Gibson as Max Rockatansky. Released in 1979, it was directed by George Miller, and written by James McCausland with Miller and producer Byron Kennedy .

Contents

1 Plot summary 2 Conception 3 Success 4 Vehicles 5 The Characters 6 References 7 External links

Plot summary

The film is set in a post-apocalyptic Australian outback. The beginning of the film only hints that the story takes place "a few years from now", and the reasons behind the state of the society are never fully explained, although the sequel, Mad Max 2, (known in the U.S. as The Road Warrior), more fully explains this film's backstory.

The overriding theme of this story is revenge. A police officer, Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson), is tasked with controlling the increasingly bold and lawless gangs on the desolate highways of the outback. He inadvertantly kills a gangmember during a pursuit, the brother of the gang's leader. When his partner is hunted down and brutally tortured by the gang, Max becomes disillusioned, and quits the police force to settles down with his family. The gang leader still thirsts to get revenge against Max. With their motorcycles, they run over the wife and son, crushing them to death as Max watches helplessly. After this, he returns to the police force, with the sole intent to seek murderous vigilante justice against his family's killers. By the end of the picture he claims his revenge, and continues racing the highways alone.

Conception

Whilst in residency at a Melbourne hospital, Dr. George Miller meet amateur film maker Byron Kennedy at a summer film school in 1971. The duo went on produce the short film Violence in the Cinema, Part 1, which was screened at number of film festivals and won several awards.

Eight years later the duo created Mad Max, with the assistance of first time screen writer James McGausland. George Miller was an M.D. in Australia who worked in the Emergency Room of a hospital, who had seen many of the injuries and deaths of the type depicted in the movie, and felt that the audience would not believe such things were happening today, so he decided to write the story instead as a post-nuclear holocaust.

The film was shot over a period of twelve weeks, between December 1978 and February 1979, just outside Melbourne. Many of the car chase scenes for the original Mad Max were filmed near the town of Lara, just north of Geelong (Victoria, Australia). It was shot with a widescreen anamorphic lens, making it the first Australian film to do so.

Due to the film's low budget, the post-production was done in Miller's house, with George editing the film in the kitchen and Byron Kennedy editing the sound in the lounge room.

Success

The film achieved incredible success, holding a record in Guinness Book of Records as the highest profit-to-cost ratio of a motion picture, and only losing the record in 2000 to the The Blair Witch Project. The film was totally financed independently and had a reported budget of $300,000 AUD - of which $15000 was paid to Mel Gibson for his performance - and went on to earn $100 million world wide. The film was awarded four Australian Film Institute Awards in 1979.

When the film was first released in America, all the voices, including that of Mel Gibson's character, were dubbed with US accents at the behest of the distributor, American International Pictures, for fear that audiences would not take warmly to actors speaking entirely with Australian accents. The only exception was the singer in the Sugartown Cabaret, played by Robina Chaffey. The original Australian dialogue track was finally released in the U.S. in 2000 in a limited theatrical reissue by MGM, the film's current rights holders (it has since been released domestically on video).

Two sequels followed, Mad Max 2, and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, while a fourth movie, Mad Max 4: Fury Road, is in hiatus. Some consider Mad Max 2 to be a retreatment of the original premise, using similar themes, characters and images, rather than a true sequel.

Vehicles

Due to the film's low budget, all the vehicles in the film were just existing vehicles of that era modified. The yellow pursuit cars were originally used as police cars.

Max's yellow Interceptor, is a 1973 Ford Falcon GT Coupe with a 300bhp 351C V-8 engine, customised with the front end of a Ford Fairmont and other modifications. Likewise the black Interceptor was a standard production Ford XB Falcon Hardtop, sold in Australia from December 1973 to August 1976, modified by the film's art director Jon Dowding.

Of the motor cycles that appear in the film 14 were donated by Kawasaki, and a local Victorian motor cycle gang, The Vigilantes, appear as members of Toecutter's Gang. By the end of filming, 14 vehicles had been destroyed as a result of all the stunts.

The Characters

The Good Guys:

the Rockatansky family:

Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson): MFP officer, very adept, self-controlled, the main character, the only good guy that gets to kill any bad guys

Jessie Rockatansky: Max's wife, gets maimed and nearly killed by the Toecutter, who runs her and Sprog over with his motorcycle

Sprog Rockatansky: Max and Jessie's child, gets killed by the Toecutter when he runs him over

May Swaisey: old woman that is related to Max or Jessie, choleric shotgun wielder

other MFP officers and associates:

Fifi McCaffee: MFP captain and boss, wants to bring heros back to the world

LaBatouche: Fifi's boss, doesn't work in the field, good-for-nothing, cares more about saving money and obeying impractical laws than serving the public

Jim Goose: MFP officer, max's personal friend, relatively adept but wild and somewhat irresponsible, gets burned nearly to death by the Toecutter

Roop: MFP officer, somewhat inept and argumentative

Charlie: MFP officer, somewhat inept and argumentative, gets his vocal cords cut by a large shard of window glass in a car accident that was caused by the Nightrider

The Bad Guys (the biker gang members):

the leadership (all of them die in the movie):

[the] Toecutter (Hugh Keyes-Byrne): the leader of the biker gang, fearless, self-controlled, has a nasty dry sarcastic sense of humor, has no empathy, dies at the end of the movie by getting crushed under the wheels of a semi-truck due to Max chasing him into it in his black interceptor vehicle; wears dark brown leather, black helmet, and rides a black motorcycle

[the] Nightrider: dies near the beginning of the movie, personal friend of the Toecutter, very wild, dies in an inferno caused by a gas tank explosion, caused by a car wreck which was caused by Max Rockatansky's skilled pursuit; never shown riding a motorcycle due to having escaped from prison in an MFP vehicle at the beginning of the movie and dying in said vehicle during the pursuit

Bubba Zanetti (Goeff Parry): the Toecutter's committed lieutenent, self-controlled, has a dry sarcastic sense of humor, the only one of the biker gang members that lacks vulgarity, does legwork for the Toecutter and fights MFP officers when called upon, dies at the end of the movie when Max shoots him in the chest with his sawed-off shotgun; wears black leather, silver helmet, and rides a black-and-silver motorcycle

Johnny The Boy: enlisted by the Toecutter as a replacement for the Nightrider, petty thief, erratic, crazed and smiles a lot, gives the impression of a cocaine addict, has more empathy than the other biker gang members, enjoys the novelty of being in the biker gang, dies at the end of the movie when Max chains his ankle to a vehicle and detonates the vehicle's gas tank; wears brown leather jacket, off-white pants, off-white helmet, and rides a red motorcycle

the followers (none of them die in the movie):

Diabando: independent and practical but stupid, has shaggy blond hair, has a knife, wears a yellow-orange helmet

Starbuck: has shaggy black hair and a beard, definitely practices homosexuality when deprived of women, wears a red helmet with black stars on it

Cundalini: wears maroon leather, gets his hand ripped off by a chain that he flailed that latched onto Jessie's car, vulgar, very amorous and most likely practices homosexuality when deprived of women

Mudguts: has curly black hair, rides without a helmet, the most vulgar biker gang member, very amorous and most likely practices homosexuality when deprived of women

Clunk: fat guy that wears a reddish-brown biker suit

References

• To the Max - Behind the Scenes of a Cult Classic, Mad Max DVD (Village Roadshow)

External links

• Mad Max http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079501/ at the Internet Movie Database
• Mad Max Movies FAQ http://www.madmaxmovies.com

Mad Max Movies Mad Max - Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior - Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome - Mad Max 4: Fury Road