Episode 405: Furiosa! Our 2024 Cannes Film Festival Dispatch. Part 3

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[00:01:17] Another installment of my 2024 Cannes Dispatches today was a long day that ended with Francis Ford Coppola's much-awaited megalopolis, which I just got out of seeing. At the time of recording there's still an embargo on the movie so we'll get back to that one

[00:01:38] with some more detail another day. Today was mainly about Furiosa here at Cannes, George Miller's epic new movie. I have to say I thought the movie was an utterly entertaining apocalyptic saga, high voltage over-the-top action, everything you want from a big action movie.

[00:01:59] Tanya Taylor Joy is fantastic as the younger version of Furiosa played by Charlize Theron in 2015's Fury Road. Chris Hemsworth is cartoonishly evil as Dementis and I want to shout out Alilah Brown, the little girl who plays the even younger Furiosa who's really dehumanized and traumatized

[00:02:20] at the beginning of the film and does a really powerful performance. Furiosa premiered last night at Cannes to a seven-minute standing ovation. This is the fifth installment in visionary director George Miller's long-running Mad Max franchise which debuted in 1979, that means he spent 45 years with this franchise.

[00:02:44] At the press conference he told us that he had just finished the film less than two and a half weeks ago. Winters Ania Taylor Joy and Chris Hemsworth talked about how they felt after last night's premiere.

[00:02:58] And please excuse the other sounds coming from the press conference flashing cameras and things like that. It's really quite extraordinary to experience something through the eyes of an audience. I think all of us are so in love with film, but that naturally kind of means that

[00:03:15] you always have a moment where you know too much, you know too much of the tricks behind the camera, like you can't really distance yourself. And yesterday for the first time I really felt like I could watch it like an audience and very nice.

[00:03:28] So blown away by it, blown away by the pacing, the sound design, just absolutely every single element that our incredible team brought to it. And that's really a testament to George because you know there are people that

[00:03:42] have worked on this movie that were retired and they come out of retirement for George Miller. So I just felt really proud of our team. I came out of retirement. Yeah it's incredible this is my first time to the festival and to be here with George

[00:04:04] at this past production, the Mad Max franchise on World of the Brewery special place in my life in Australia. So it was vivid and had a wonderful sort of nostalgia about my childhood and the

[00:04:22] response at the end, it just rained a bell of gratitude in my heart for the opportunity and you know to do thanks to George for bringing me to this place and also to the audience

[00:04:35] who have such a passion for these films and it kept them alive for so many years. So it was a real honour. And here's George Miller on how his childhood influenced his filmmaking and the Mad Max franchise.

[00:04:49] Well you know I grew up in a rural town where at the time there was no television, there was no internet, there was just school, comics, school books and the Saturday Mad Max franchise.

[00:05:04] And it was a little bit like the movie theatre in town, it was like a secular cathedral, a church and we'd go there and we'd see a cartoon, newsreel, a serial and two features.

[00:05:20] And the rest of the time we were lucky enough with my mother's and I to play. We played and played actively making things based on what we saw in the movies, acting

[00:05:34] out what we saw in our horses, we were taking up garbage can lids to look like knights and things like that. And I think I'm doing a very very simple thing all these decades later. It was a big influence on me. I'm a grown up. Me too.

[00:05:56] Yep me too but you know these days being a grown up can really suck. Luckily we're grown ups who grew up in the coolest generation. We had video arcades. And also some of the best TV movies ever made.

[00:06:05] We lived the origin of awesome consumer electronics, the list goes on and on. Yep, Generation X. Exactly. And we're Gen X grown up. Every week the Gen X grown up podcast explores media, tech, toys, games and more from both yesterday and today.

[00:06:20] Through the eyes of Generation Xers who absolutely love that stuff. You can find us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Or find us on our website, genxgrownup.com. Alright, do you think that was good enough? I hope so man. I'm tired.

[00:06:36] Who listens to a promo on a podcast and then goes and listens to a different podcast. Right. I've never done it. No right. Here's Furiosa, a Mad Max Saga producer, Doug Mitchell. I think one observation, just in the context of the 45 years George has been making Mad Max.

[00:06:54] Chris summarized it beautifully when he said, America's have their Batman's and Superman's. England has its Harry Potter and Australia. Finally has a Mad Max. After 45 years and five installments will there be more Mad Max? Here's George Miller. Well, there's certainly other stories there.

[00:07:16] Mainly because we wrote, in order to tell the story of Fury Road, we had to know the backstory of Furiosa as a Max in the year before. And that was a tool for the cast and crew. And so we know the Max story in the year before.

[00:07:35] But I'll definitely wait to see how this goes before we even think about it. And that was it for this installment of our Cannes 2024 Dispatches. Join me again later in the week. Please subscribe to Pop Culture Confidential wherever you get your podcasts

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