The Wild and True Story of Fury Road

A complete oral history of one of my all time top ten favorite films? Yes please. I gobbled this up immediately. Not to mention I love behind the scenes Hollywood stuff.

And this included everyone and everything!

First off I should say this is a oral history told in the style of Daisy Jones and the Six overwhelmingly 95% like…

Charlize: ….

George: …..

Tom: …..

True to form there is not a lot of Tom Hardy in this 🙂

You get the idea so if it was something that bugged you about Daisy Jones or just the style in general you may want to keep that in mind.

I also knew a lot of this stuff going in like- how long it had been in development, how long the shoot was the dangerous and ultimately awesome use of practical effects and of course the big thing people were talking about again when the book came out Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron just generally hating on each other.

It was interesting to read from their perspective true and I think very true to their personalities as she talks about it in depth and what she thinks went wrong and what she’d do different. Tom basically says yeah she deserved a better co-star and looking back he understood and that’s about it.

Also I mean most of the stories told it seems like it was on him. Charlize refusing to get out of the rig when he didn’t show up for three hours after he had previously been asked to be on time sounded like something I would have done honestly and I could understand when she exploded on him. I mean lateness is something that drives me crazy and dude was in the middle of a fucking desert no traffic or anything. Jeez.

But the other impressive thing about Fury Road, other than the fact it was all off storyboards- which is one of the things the actors had problems with, was how much work went into the story. The kind of work that isn’t pointed out or too on-screen but the fact that it comes across just shows how important it is. I mean while the characters barely spoke they all had detailed back stories. The wives worked with Eve Ensler to understand their characters better. The War Boys, almost all of them stunt workers, had bonding sessions and all of them seemed to really appreciate it.

Not too mention as Zoe Kravitz points out it was one of the hardest things she ever shoot and you can tell but it works. It came together spectacularly and despite everything you can actually feel how proud every single person that worked on it is and rightfully in my opinion.

My opinion on movies these days almost every problem in a film (including more often than not the unnecessary length) falls on a weak and lazy script so the fact that Mad Max Fury Road spent so much time on character and story without any script to speak of… Something Hollywood might want to keep in mind.

They obviously won’t. But they should.

Recommend: Yes.

Probably more so if you are a fan of the movie or if you enjoy behind the scenes stories.