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Hiatus over! When Mad Max: Fury Road came out in 2015, a 30-year gap since Beyond Thunderdome, its breathless and near-universal reception as — already — one of the greatest movies of the decade and — already — one of the greatest action movies of all-time, automatically erased the two-decade lead-up to the film’s execution and completion, erasing previous versions and false starts. Yet, once the final studio greenlight came, that only began the film’s arduous production. On this episode, Kyle Buchanan talks the oral history book he’s written about that epic production, thusly untold and way more epic than previously thought — all leading towards the triumph as one of the best action movies of all time. We discuss:

• the silent-movie, low-dialogue inspiration for whole production;

• the extremely thorough pre-production, where even cameramen were given extensive audition processes;

• what would Mel Gibson in Fury Road really have felt like?

• or the in-sequence shooting schedule which focused the million-dollar production on, ostensibly, seconds-long inserts.

Also:

• how the shoot was bolstered by a crew-member and long-time Max fan named “Toast”;

• the intensive storyboarding/writing process,

• Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy’s (pre-known, pre-excerpted) on-set tension,

• and how the next Mad Max film, Furiosa, was implanted and planned from this film, starring Chris Hemsworth as a previous-revealed villain.

Kyle Buchanan is a pop culture reporter and serves as the Projectionist, the awards season columnist for the New York Times. Prior, he was a senior editor at Vulture, New York Magazine's entertainment website, where he covered the movie industry. A native of Southern California, he lives in Los Angeles. Blood, Sweat & Chrome is his first book.

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