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- We made the first film, Mad Max,

it was a low budget Australian film

which seemed to resonate somehow

with every film going territory in the world.

The obvious answer was that it was full of car action

and it was violent.

But it seemed to have something else there.

When I went to Japan, people would say,

oh, it's just like the samurai movies.

And then you'd go to France and they'd say,

it's very much like the spaghetti westerns.

They're stories that recur, we call them myths,

they recur in every time and in every culture.

That's why we recognise these stories almost anywhere.

It allows us to have experiences and to share them

with all people who have gone before

and those that may come after.

- All right, thanks everybody for being a part of this.

It's been a really interesting exercise putting it together

so I hope you get a real big kick out of it.

Now, if you have a look at your sheets,

primarily you're going from can to can to can.

They are your markers.

That's what you're looking for when you go to each location.

- I'll sit on somebody's lap, it's all right.

You can use any means to work out the quiz questions.

So you can get on your mobile phones,

you can pop the movie in and check the film

if you have the facility to do that.

- We got it. - All right, next clue.

- I love winning.

- Just behave yourselves.

We're not actual Road Warriors.

- No one was ready for a film like Mad Max.

- It felt new and exciting.

You couldn't help but talk about it.

- Does anybody have any questions?

- What no speeding?

- No speeding.

- It started out as a small, very low budget film,

very limited expectations that turned out to be huge.

A big enough film to create a sequel.

- Mad Max is back in town

and tackling Hollywood head-on.

- Which then became a phenomenon.

- Opening night at cinemas across the nation

was a sell out.

- Now 30 years later,

a fourth film is on the way.

- Those two words, Mad Max,

they're like the McDonald's or Star Trek or Star Wars.

You might not like Mad Max, but by God,

you know what's being talked about.

- Donald Trump was describing some Mad Max America.

- The world of Mad Max

might not be as far away as we think.

- Film can tell us a lot about who we are and where we live

and how we feel about things.

- Britain plunged into a Mad Max style world.

- Mad Max is so dystopian and so unpleasant that, yeah,

it's not the most obvious film to want to emulate.

- Saturday.

You can film the syringe, it's even worse.

So every morning a little .

It's not pleasant.

We'll start looking like a Frenchman, here we go.

Bonjour, I am Bertrand Cadart,

liberal candidate for the Seat of Lyons.

You may know me as the scooter riding French mayor

from the east coast

who appeared in the film Mad Max.

And this is my frog bathroom.

My frog shower mat, my frog shower curtain.

My frog bath bubbly stuff.

I lived on the east coast of Tasmania for 15 years.

I've been the mayor for seven years.

- You've been in Australia for about 40 years, I believe.

Is that seriously your best Aussie accent?

- Yeah, yeah, ha ha.

Right.

I don't think I will be able to ride anymore.

At least my doctor doesn't think so

and I am advised not to ride because if I do crash,

what is the normal gravel rash for a healthy person

would become a death trap for me.

The doctor, he said, it will take six months of chemo

to know if I can save your life.

Now, my leave was denied.

It is why I have no choice but to resign.

Thank you.

I'm 70 years of age.

I have terminal cancer.

Incurable, I know it.

I know I'm going to fight as best as I can.

I have a plan to last until at least January, 2019,

because there is a 40th anniversary of the Mad Max shoot.

And we have a big gathering in Clunes.

Here we go, that's it.

My doctor has allowed me to do it,

he even reckon it's probably good for me to fight my cancer.

He said that will motivate you to live and to survive,

as long as you want to live and survive.

And so far I do.

When the reunion started to be organised

I wanted to be there, and I went.

- Mad Max, the movie that catapulted Mel Gibson to fame,

is celebrating its 30th anniversary this weekend.

- And I went to one of the very first ones,

I think in Little River.

At the time it was not very popular

and I was one of the only actors there.

This film shot on a shoe string has developed a cult.

In Italy, in Germany and in Japan,

in America, I mean everywhere.

This is like a tribe, a sort of a world tribe.

All those people are extraordinary people.

They are all incredibly interesting.

Oh God.

- When I started All American Pool Service,

I dreamt of working that job until I was ready to retire

and then selling the company and retiring off of that.

I soon learned that that wasn't particularly realistic,

that's not really how it works anymore, unfortunately.

So I dissolved that, got rid of that stress out of my life.

And Jeff offered me a job here.

- He was very forthcoming with what he did

and if I did something like that

I probably wouldn't tell anybody.

And I don't.

- You have defied me.

You will know the vengeance of the Lord Humungus.

- He was totally comfortable with it and it's like,

yeah, he's having fun and good for him.

- Nobody gets out of here alive!

- I watched them all and he loves them,

that's all I can say is, you know, he loves them,

he was first doing the Mad Max character.

- I thought he was good looking enough, you know,

to be a lot better character than he picked,

but he thought Lord Humungus was neat.

- When we first got the house it came with a pool,

which I really didn't want, but it was there.

And I come out the door

and my wife's standing out there with three guys

and there's this hulking mass of a human.

He's like, here, here, I'm gonna give these to you,

these are something I think you'll enjoy.

And I'm looking, I'm like, who's Lord Humungus, right?

And I'm like, this you?

He's like, yeah.

I'm like, holy crap, right.

- About 1981 my dad bought me an issue of Starlog Magazine.

I don't think I ever read the article,

but I certainly looked at the pictures.

Immediately, this was it, this was all I wanted,

this was all I watched.

- He was in his room a lot.

- You could turn the volume off

and he could tell you every line in that movie.

He had it all memorised.

- I was a Road Warrior in my mind.

When I was like 15 years old I was so deeply into Mad Max,

that that was the world I wanted to live in.

The cars that I wanted to drive, the way I wanted to dress.

And you know, once I got out of high school

and got into the punk rock scene,

I did kind of dress that way a little bit.

- He just was crazy about the Misfits

when he was 14, 15 years old.

He had the guitar

and he would go out in the garage and sing and play.

And all the neighbours loved it.

I'm joking.

The Misfits offered him the job

to sell merchandise on the road

and then it went from merchandise to the road manager.

He had a ball, he got to see the whole world effectively,

from Alaska to Moscow.

Everybody got a nickname on the bus

and Jim was a big bodybuilder and they just called him Tank.

So he's Jim "The Tank" Dorsey.

- This is how the Humungus rolls.

Once you get started and you start to see

and you start to feel some results, it's very addictive.

You know, once the shoulders start coming in

and the triceps pop a little bit

and then you crank the bicep up and you're just like, oh.

You know, the waist is coming in tighter.

That's the inspiration right there,

that's where the obsession comes from

because it's like, oh, I like that, I want more.

- Sensei.

- Yes, sir.

Jim came in here, oh, good lord, probably eight years ago.

He's black belt, as you can see,

and doing quite a good job.

I do remember the first thing I said to him

when he came in here, first time he trained was,

Tank, you gotta get rid of the muscles,

they're just in your way.

But he didn't and he's doing fine.

When he's on the floor, he's very physical

and you know that if you can defend yourself

against somebody that's that big and that strong

then you're doing something right.

When I talk about my karate school,

I show 'em a picture of Tank with his massive muscles,

with some small person on the ground and they go, oh my God.

But yeah, Tank is a lot of fun.

- Too much is never enough.

I always have that feeling like there's more,

there's more that I can do, there's more that I can be.

Yeah, I could put the Humungus costume on

and throw the mask on,

but if I'm not in shape, you're not going to believe it.

- Your waist. - Yeah, yeah, right here.

Where the fat bit is.

The idea is not to do an exact replica,

but to do a, so people, the fan

who are die hard Mad Max fans, they will recognise Clunk.

I'm going to get another set of boots,

hopefully the same type.

And the red bit here,

because all this is what people remember.

My role in Mad Max was very small,

being one of the Toecutter gang members.

Now we all say the same thing,

I never thought that 40 years later I would be remembered,

let alone talked about.

Look at that.

Good for them, you know, like good for them.

As he said, it beats cleaning swimming pools.

- The first time I went over to his house

is kind of when I really started to appreciate his passion

when I saw his costumes

and just the stuff that was in there.

- Well, my wall of fame, if I had to venture to guess,

probably started about four years ago, maybe 2015.

The first guy I ever met was Garret Graham who played Beef

in Phantom of the Paradise.

Each one of these was really cool

to get the reaction from each actor

who played the characters that I cosplay.

But number one and the one

that I was the most nervous going in

was meeting Kjell Nilsson, the original Lord Humungus.

I was nervous about how he was going to take

my portrayal of the character,

whether he thought I did a good job of it.

'Cause this is, this is a world-class athlete bodybuilder

in his prime where this is just some middle-aged fan boy

trying to recreate something he sees on a screen.

I didn't want him to think

that I was trying to steal his thunder

or take over, replace him or anything like that,

I just wanted them to feel

that I did his character justice and he did,

he was proud of me.

He said, you are the next generation of this evil character.

And that really meant a lot.

How is it?

Chocolatey? - Good.

- Can you ever eat more than one?

- No. - Probably not.

- Probably not, well daddy makes some pretty thick pancakes.

I've often wondered if other dads, you know, my age,

mid forties, think of what I do

as being like immature or childish,

because it doesn't seem like something

a normal adult would do,

is make these costumes and dress up.

- Viola!

- Look at that.

That's magnifique, magnifique.

And you managed even to do the red bit.

- Well, we were saying the plastic would be too hard

for the driving and everything.

- Yeah, yeah, no, no, this is fine.

I am impressed.

- All right, let's try it on. - Yeah!

I know at my age and in my condition,

I will never, ever in my life, what's left of it,

I have an opportunity to have another trip like this.

- I've always been a daydreamer.

I've always wanted to live in another time or another place

being another character.

Getting the opportunity to be a different person.

But for so many years, decades,

I thought I was the only person who was into Mad Max.

- I thought it would be much smaller, but I don't know,

it's like I have nothing else to do.

I never worked a regular job in my entire life,

I just do illustrations or stuff like that

and sometimes I can earn money from the things I'm doing.

My Mad Max stuff cost me everything.

All my time and all the money I can make.

- He's just speaking about Mad Max every time

that I think, this is the Mad Melvin.

- I started to collect stuff about Mad Max when I was a kid,

after I saw the movie the first time.

10 years ago I had like a handful of stuff

and I thought that it was enough

to start to work on a small book.

But 10 years after my collection

went a little bit out of control.

I began to pick articles, magazines, records,

and every material I could find that was Mad Max related.

My idea is to collect every original item.

I have books and papers, and pictures,

press pictures and stuff like this.

I have a ton.

- Well, this is my Mad Max collection,

at least for the first movie.

I don't know what possesses me

to pick out a particular item that I look for on eBay.

I guess those were the things that I just

thought I could find and sure enough I tracked them down.

Alpine Stars high point motocross boots are not cheap,

especially to find them

with the proper heavy lug on the, on the sole.

- It never occurred to me

that somebody would go to all the trouble

to acquire some of the props that were used

or to build their own props.

- The first thing that I remember that he showed me

was he made the dog food, the food that Mad Max ate,

and then he replicated the labels

on a can of hash or something and he was so proud of that.

- Those are the most accurate ones ever made.

When I first got a copy of the Blu-ray of Road Warrior

I took it to my friend Tim's house with a 95 inch screen

and I took that scene frame by frame and dissected it.

And that was when I found out

that the circle that says 800 grams in it

is actually a starburst.

- And he goes, I want you to know,

everything in this room is screen accurate.

I'm like, I realize, okay, I'm gonna screw with him now.

So I'm looking at 'em like, well,

you know, I'm sorry to disagree with you,

I'm gonna call a little bullshit on this one, but this,

I distinctly remember the slight scratch near the,

you know, like the trigger here.

And he like leaps up out of his desk

and he's like, whoa, wait a minute, wait.

And he's like looking at it and he's like picking it up.

He's like, no, no, I'm pretty sure that's right.

I'm like, dude, I don't know.

And he's ready to like pop the DVD in.

- It's hard work finding the actual screen accurate

baseball face masks or the five draw telescope

as opposed to the standard four draw.

- Dude, I don't even know

what the hell half this shit is, okay.

- Anybody who's into it knows you nailed it.

- I spent 10 years in underwear behind my computer

searching for items on eBay,

searching for articles, searching for magazines.

- When he's working on something

he's working on it really hard

and speaking about it every time.

- In my Mad Max folder it's around 15,000 pictures,

scans of articles.

Mostly scans of articles.

The biggest task was to read them all and it took me years.

Actually really years.

I think the Holy Grail for me is a Mad Max 1 script.

And I got it from Bertrand Cadart.

- Have you heard of Mad Max before?

Yeah?

Don't tell me you watched it.

- Yeah, I have.

You're too bloody young!

What about you, young man?

You should not, you're only 14,

when it was released you had to be 16 to see it.

Let alone this little bloke.

- I was just about to turn 14 and this movie came out

and it's rated over 18 in France so I thought,

well, I've got to see this.

We just snuck in to the movie theatre

so we didn't get caught

and I remember being petrified watching the scenes.

We talked about it at school and,

mates would say, oh, you see that movie?

It's filmed in Australia.

I thought, wow, Australia.

I ended up on the Sunshine Coast because of Mad Max.

When I first met Bertrand he came here as a customer

and I didn't even know who he was, you know,

and then he said, oh, you've seen Mad Max?

And my wife is rolls her eyes, as usual,

don't get my husband getting to start about Mad Max

because he'll never stop.

And then he told me who we was.

- There is a big bloke that goes on the roof of the car

with a mighty crowbar.

You're looking at the crowbar man.

- You're the crowbar man?

- I am the crowbar man.

I am the crowbar man. - Bullshit.

- I say, you betcha I remember, the crowbar, yeah, wow.

I went and watched everything, all the scenes

where I can see him and then all my mates in France,

they're just gonna freak,

it's just like, I'm gonna be a rockstar now, you know.

- With Mad Max people would sit at the end of the screening

and just sit and try to recover

from the previous 100 minutes.

There were a lot of mild films around

so this Mad Max stood out.

We knew we had something that was going to

impact on audiences.

- For me, it was all about the cars,

the Aussie classic muscle cars.

And especially the black Interceptor.

Was always a favourite of mine,

you can never get sick of it.

- When they went to the drive in 1979,

we see on the screen were cars that they actually owned.

Monaros, Falcons, HJ panel vans.

- Everyone has a story about their car or their family car.

And it stays with them, it's something you'd never,

well I don't think I'll ever forget

'cause my dad loved his cars.

It had to be a V8 and we all loved it

being revved up after a drink at the pub

and driving home from the tennis club

and whose dad could outdo whose dad with the V8.

- Over 10 years ago I decided to build myself

a Mad Max black on black Interceptor.

It took me seven long years to find the parts,

figure out how it all bolts together,

and then finally I put the wheel flares

and the nose cone and the roof spoiler on

and molded it all in and gave her a shot of high fill

and then chiseled her back to her straight lines

and then hit her with some black and here it is today.

I use it to go down and get my lottery on a Sunday.

It's not something I just want to put away and stare at,

it's something that I want to use and enjoy.

And I do really enjoy it.

- When I first arrived in Australia on a motorcycle

I never thought in a million years

that I would live here.

I was bumming around the world on a motorcycle

trying to have a good time.

And waiting for life to give me opportunity.

And I discovered this immensity of land.

Roads with no end.

At the time was not many police and a lot less people,

it was in the early seventies.

You could open the throttle of your motorcycle,

go as fast as bloody thing would go for 200 kilometres

without seeing one single house.

That worked for me.

I decided to customise Japanese bikes,

which nobody was doing in Australia.

I did that with a couple of French friends

and we had to learn everything.

We had to buy a book, how to laminate fiberglass.

We knew nothing.

And no one wanted to buy our stuff,

it was just, come on, you know.

We are real bikers here, we want a crust of a dead fly

on our Belstaff jacket.

At the same time, George Miller

was trying to convince people to help him shoot his film.

Nobody believed in George

as much as they didn't believe in me.

So I had all those fairings dangling in the shops

and when George sort of approached those people to say,

look, I need someone to customise bikes

that we got from Kawasaki to look as futuristic as possible.

One of the dealer said, look,

there is one guy that might be able to help you.

Here is his number.

We made absolutely no money out of it.

The price was probably below cost.

Eventually George one day said to me,

would you like a part in the film?

I said to him, but what about my accent, you know?

He said, it's all right, you don't say anything.

- This here is my original script.

My wife read this and she was horrified.

And I said well, what's so crazy about it?

And because my English was not good enough

to understand what was written,

she said, you have no idea

what you're getting yourself into.

I never thought that 40 years later I still would have it.

We are doing these trips for me as a pilgrimage

back to where we shot the film.

It means a lot to me to do this after 40 years.

Who is there?

This is Clunk!

Every year in Japan you do Mad Max festival.

- Yes, yes, yes. - Yes?

Look, this is crazy.

- I felt like a pop singer, I felt like the Beatles.

- They were not afraid to show their emotions.

Some of them were almost in tears,

in fact, not almost, in tears.

- They were actually falling against me, crying on my chest.

Just falling on you, just sobbing, you know.

- Saying, I cannot believe you are here.

- You thought, oh my God, you know,

for God's sake, get off me!

But inwardly I loved it, you know.

I'll be walking down the street

and all of a sudden I'll hear somebody's voice in my ear.

"You and me, Max, we're gonna give 'em back their heroes."

What that hell, people are quoting my lines.

There are fans all around the world.

I went on my honeymoon to Sri Lanka, a young waiter come up.

He said, excuse me, sir, what is your good name?

I said, my name is Roger Ward.

Oh, very famous name here, sir, very famous name.

I said, I think you're thinking of Roger Moore.

Oh no, no, no, Roger Moore, he was a saint.

He was James Bond, no, no, you were Fifi in Mad Max!

Oh my God.

You know, you get that all around the world.

Just people identify with that and with you

as if we're all one.

That's ridiculous, I know, but I love it.

- If you're not moved by that

then I think you're a bit of a cynical bastard

who should have a long, hard look at themselves.

- Jim Goose.

Fifi.

And Johnny the Boy.

- Donuts, donuts. - No donuts.

Here are the donuts.

Bit more, maybe here.

Yeah, maybe here.

- Yoshi bought a bike off eBay from South Australia.

He paid good money for it and it got to my place,

it was a piece of, won't say any more.

The rims were rusted out, spokes were broken and missing.

Broken piston, wheel bearings were shot,

all the brakes had seized.

The thing was the biggest pile of crap

I've ever had in my shed.

So that's what we started with, and away we went.

- I've built many, many Kawasaki's,

I can't tell you how many I've done.

Hundreds of them, it's been an addiction.

I've owned well over a 1,000.

I'm nuts on Kwakas, that's it.

I'm quackers over Kwakas.

It was successfully completed

and soon after they found Dale's original bike.

They're both here today, they look fabulous.

- Well, this one belongs to Yoshi from Japan

and he leaves this in Australia.

- What?

- The bike.

- Oh, yeah, yeah. - Yeah.

- This is the original bike that I owned,

I was the first owner.

Whoa, clutch is not real good.

There've been five owners of it now.

I sold it in about '79, but in 1994 for its class

it established the land speed record.

142 point something miles per hour.

So that's another little piece

of very interesting history of this bike.

- He always comes up to my place

because now his spare bike is kept there

and he collects it and off he goes.

And only found out last week that

he's got another burnout bike in Japan.

That was a surprise to me.

- Beautiful.

So when did you build this, how long ago?

- 15 years.

But it's old now, it over heats and sucks a lot of petrol.

- You tell me, my Trans Am is just as bad.

- Hey, Clunk! - Yeah!

Long life to Clunk!

What a ride.

- Thanks, cobber.

- Yeah, sure, I'd be happy to. - Thank you so much.

- Thank you for coming, I really appreciate it.

How are you doing?

How was your night last night?

- Is this the most fans you've ever seen in one place?

- Yes.

- The vehicle is a mid 70s F100 I built from ground up,

built it on pictures,

the original pictures from the movie vehicle.

And it's probably one of the most

reliable vehicle I've built, it goes and stops.

The special features are really the flame throwers.

If we all did the same thing,

life's pretty boring sometimes, isn't it, you know?

- My name is Bill Hatzigiannis,

I run a small business on Facebook,

Steel Edge Constructions, where I create model cars.

I'd never seen a coupe with that sort of body structure,

I'd never seen any of the vehicles, motorbikes,

looking as tough as they were on the actual Mad Max movie.

My son loves vehicles, he's a motorhead,

no influence of mine whatsoever.

But yeah, like I'm hoping that he'll be able to carry

the Mad Max tradition on.

Just awesome that there's other people out there

that really enjoy it as much as I do and my family does.

- Seeing all these replica vehicles

and the guys that like spend their last dime

to put these vehicles together,

I understand that passion,

if I had more dimes to spend

I'd be doing the same damn thing.

- Gidday, welcome to the Mad Max event.

This is the biggest convention of Mad Max actors

since 1979 movie release

and they're here in one spot and they're here,

and this won't happen again.

Make the most of it, it's a one-off day

and we're gonna bloody enjoy it.

Let's talk to the actors, we'll go through one by one.

Vince Gill, the Nightrider!

- Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

- It just overwhelms me,

this movie and the love you all have for it.

Thank you so much.

And to think that we're all still here like 40 years later

and once we were young too.

- Who would've thought 40 years down the road,

thought everyone had forgotten about us.

But apparently not.

- You couldn't do this in America,

they would arrest every one of you folks, seriously.

- Who thought the stupid Swede,

body builder could come here and do something like this

and still here.

- Remember the crowbar man? - Yeah!

- I am the crowbar man!

- Just remember who was the guy

they nearly hit with a crowbar

and they nearly hit with the axe

and they nearly dropped the bike on.

As you know it wasn't a huge budget

so none of us got paid very much.

But we were young, we were inventive, we were keen,

and I think we contributed to the world

as far as how to make movies and action movies.

- I can tell a bunch of stories,

but I just want to say something

about this film and what it means, you know.

I grew up in the Southern Tablelands and when you were 13

all you want to do is get on the road and get out of there

and there was garages around with lots of uncles,

boring out V8s and trying to find a way

to create a sense of freedom and the road

and what was possible.

But what this story also said

was that this story's about the road,

it's about freedom, and it's about death.

And how we all, all you people understand that tension

and what that means.

And this is a great Australian story

because you understand that this film

was about the soul of part of Australia

that you guys and women, you all grew up in.

It's a bit tongue in cheek, it's a bit different,

and the audience for this film around the world

understand that very well.

And nobody understands that better

than the people standing in this crowd

and I just want to say, I'm proud to meet ya,

I hope to shake all your hands and thank you so much

and don't forget your part in creating

this great myth and narrative, thanks very much.

- When I was first starting out to ride

I'd be watching Terry Gibson

riding fast on the Goose bike thinking,

that's how you sit when you ride fast.

I've always been into stunt riders and stuff like that,

I was amazed by the stunts that were done in Mad Max.

There's that style, it's raw, it's real.

- I'm old school, I'm one of the very last.

Actually someone introduced me the other day

as being the oldest stuntman in Australia.

My goal is to be the oldest stuntman in the world.

- We had this car lying around

and we decided we'd build it for the anniversary.

We were contacted by the organisers,

as they heard we may have a vehicle

that could be sacrificed to go through the caravan.

- So the caravan stunt,

I was asked to sort of come up with the concept

and I wanted to keep it to the original scale, low budget.

But my idea was to make it bigger and better.

So I decided, well, two's better than one.

- It's intended life was as a race car,

which it's still going to do

after it's finished its job here today.

It just fast-tracked our build a little quicker

than what we expected.

It was very stressful, the paint's still wet,

we were still putting it together at00 AM this morning.

- The biggest problem is basically the cupboard hardwood

and cabinets, hinges, sinks and things like that.

You will get stabbed more than likely from debris like that.

I once had a splinter that was three metres long.

But that's fine, I just pulled it out.

- Do you want to jump in and give it a rev?

- I'm hoping it'll start, I think the battery's nearly flat.

- I'm old school, no smoke and mirrors, no cameras.

You can't cheat.

We're not going high-tech.

We're keeping it grassroots

so even the ramps are just pretty ramshackle.

My gear is not megabucks safety here.

I've been alive 65 years, so I can't be too damn bad.

I really hope you enjoyed it!

- Yes, excellent job, Rob.

- I've just made history, that has never been done before!

And I never practiced.

If anybody's interested in some of the shrapnel,

if you wanna collectible,

it'll be available over there in about a half an hour.

- How much for a piece of caravan?

- You've done it, you've done it!

You came out all right! - Haven't lost me touch.

- All right, everyone, this car's the one

that you were all asking about before.

It's been signed by the actors.

I'm gonna put Bertrand on,

he's gonna tell you a little bit of a story.

- All right, good evening.

I'm sort of okay, this is why I'm here

and you can see me with the walking stick.

And the reason why I have a walking stick

is because I've been diagnosed with leukaemia.

It is fatal and it can't be cured.

So I decided to come here with you guys as I am myself,

as you can imagine, a Mad Max fan,

and I would like to give some proceed of this auction

to the Leukaemia Foundation.

As much as it is okay for me to go at 70,

I don't think it is okay, I'm going to become emotional,

I don't think it is okay for a young person of 25

to die of leukaemia, you know,

and if we could help them, there you go.

- I will start the auction at 200 bucks,

so who is going to go over 200 bucks?

- Come on! - 250!

- We got 250, 250,

we got a three, we got a three, we got a three?

We got a three over there,

we got a three, we got a 320, we got a 320, 320?

We got a 320 over there, we got a 350, 350,

350 over there, 400 over here!

500 over there, 600 over there,

can we get 650, 650, 650?

- 1,000 - 1,000 over here!

$1,500!

Going, going and, sold!

- I think I'm going to cry, so thank you.

Thank you very much.

- We're up here at Maryborough, at the racing track,

and the shows over, folks, and she's 100% snafu.

But we're still here chipping away, packing up,

and still enjoying it.

That's what we come for.

- So we got some amazing memorabilia from the show,

which was sensational.

But my two brothers here got pieces of the caravan

with the tire marks on it,

and I think that's the greatest thing

these blokes can drag out and show somebody one day.

- The first film is the balls to the wall,

skinflint explosion of energy

that is only created when you kind of have nothing to lose.

- I was not particularly excited to see the film

because I thought, my God, with what we went through,

you know, it's going to be a flop.

- Even the film crew, I remember them all mumbling

and cursing and saying, oh God, it'll never work.

I could hear it, and I'm sure George could hear it.

- Australia didn't have much

in the way of action cinema,

so no one really could have possibly anticipated

the hell that broke loose when Mad Max arrived in cinemas.

- A lot of people did question

some of the violence in the film.

- One ABC journalist actually threw up

during one of the screenings.

- The most famous kind of voice against the film

was Phillip Adams.

- He condemned Mad Max, saying that it had,

quote, all the emotional uplift of Mein Kampf.

- The film would be great for future sadists

and psychopaths and pedophiles, which is, you know,

a lot more than a thumbs down.

- The main thing about Mad Max was word of mouth.

Everyone that saw Mad Max had never seen anything like it,

not just as an Australian film.

- Holy shit.

It was an exciting film to watch.

- Standing with George at the back of the cinema

when the film finished and the lights came up,

the response was just amazing.

Bill Collins wrote that George Miller has made

the most exciting film of the decade.

- But still, if somebody then had said

that I was going to be flown to Japan

and treated like a rock star,

I would have said, you are crazy.

- It really blew everyone away.

What was this story really about?

Why are people connecting with it?

And so in order to answer

some of those questions for himself,

George Miller started investigating Joseph Campbell's work.

- We finally found Joseph Campbell or his writings,

do you know who Joseph Campbell is?

- Campbell's work goes back to

pictures on the side of caves.

So while we look at Mad Max and we say,

this is an astonishing film,

we've never seen this film before,

it didn't just come from nowhere.

It came from recurring patterns of narratives

that began 40,000 years ago.

- The person who alerted everyone to Campbell

more than anyone else was George Lucas.

From A Hero with a Thousand Faces,

he based the Star Wars sagas.

They all dressed in different clothes

but the essential themes

and the essential experiences come through.

- When the mythology is alive

you don't have to tell anybody what it means.

It's like looking at a picture

that's really talking to you, it gets to you.

- The success of Mad Max in Japan,

prompted Warner Brothers in the States

to take another look at it and give it a bit more backing.

And that's what enabled it to get off the ground.

- It was really a turning point

for modern Australian cinema.

- In Road Warrior we attempted to be

much more consciously mythological.

- Every year, hundreds, if not thousands,

I'm not sure of the figures, of Mad Max

dedicated true blue fans come from all over the world

to Broken Hill and Silverton.

This was the best possible location

for the filming of Mad Max 2.

Silverton is a place a Mad Max fan must attend,

he must attend that, and so this is where we're going.

- A friend of mine told me, oh, Broken Hill,

it's the gate of the desert.

But when I get there, I said,

this is not the gate of the desert,

this is the fucking desert.

I was overwhelmed.

I found it was really, really beautiful.

If you go there, you understand right away

why you want to shoot there

because it's like an Australian Monument Valley.

In France and Europe, everything is tiny and dense

and I suddenly discovered empty spaces and a remote place.

- It's a cult following now for Mad Max and Bertrand Cadart

is the man that played Clunk in Mad Max 1,

he joins me this morning, Bertrand good morning.

- Mad Max 2 is really the decay of society

and all its props is now well and truly on the way

to nothingness.

- I came to Silverton in 1973 and bought the pub

and shortly after that various film crews

started rolling into town.

- It was still dirt roads coming into the place.

You always saw people broken down with the bonnets up.

- When they were filming Razorback,

they made the pub look absolutely disgusting,

the outside of it.

When cars would drive past they wouldn't pull up.

- Probably up until then

we'd never ever seen a drag queen in Broken Hill.

We've had some famous people through here.

- I had copies of them all on videos,

but they've been damaged with heat

and they don't work anymore.

- A lot of movies have come here for the outback.

Though Mad Max is the main one.

- I think everybody got paid 20 bucks a day more

if they had a mohawk, more than the other extras.

People were a bit shy about having a mohawk to start with

but it wasn't long before

there were a lot of mohawks around town.

- And we thought, gee, what's going on here, you know?

- I can remember waking up early one morning

and I looked out through the side window

and there's this bloke walking around

in all this leather gear and feathers hanging off

and the cheeks of his arse hanging out

and I just couldn't believe it.

I thought, oh God, this is weird.

I got quite a shock

when I looked out the window and saw that.

- In behind Yoshi there a bit.

For decades in my group of friends,

I was like the only person who loved Mad Max.

Come up a bit more behind Nick here.

Nobody else got it, nobody else was into it.

And then to discover there is an international community

of cosplayers and vehicle enthusiasts and Mad Max freaks.

It's like, holy shit!

- And I couldn't believe it

when they started coming here for these reunions.

- The Silverton Collective

started many, many years ago.

Being a collective

everyone's just basically doing their own thing,

having their own particular fun way

of looking at everything.

- Coming to Silverton, for me it's like sacred ground.

Just knowing that the movie was made here.

- Yoshi comes over here, Tank comes over from America.

And Melvin comes from France, it's a universal movie.

- You are 14 years old and you discover the movie

for the first time in your life in a movie theatre

full with strange guys in leather and crazy haircuts.

That was like, awesome.

Three, two, one.

- The people that are around that come and see them

and they think, oh geez, what are we doing,

filming another Mad Max?

- Little children sometimes are a little bit scared of it.

I have to walk up to them and go really gently,

look I'm a nice person, it's okay.

- I guess you could say I'm a little intimidating

just due to my size.

I'm a nice guy, but people don't get that

until they get to know me.

- I'm trying to calm them down and the parents are like,

yeah, yeah, scare them more, scare them more.

- I feel like I'm at home with all the other crazies.

It's like coming to Mecca.

- I'm Michael, Stacie, my daughter, Josh, Cody.

Family trip.

- Well, it's been the trip of a lifetime really.

Like traveling back to Silverton from Maryborough

in a big convoy of about 12 cars,

that was one of the best experiences I've ever had.

- I'm like my father in many ways,

just looking at the old cars and stuff

and helping out and all that so yeah.

- 'Cause I needed all the drivers too, hang on.

So yeah, so I needed a back up vehicle.

Joshua brought the Griffin car,

and he's our little navigator.

And it's just awesome, you can go out to the scenes out here

and it's exactly like in the movie.

When I hit the Mundi Mundi plains,

go on over the hill and down, you know, it's just awesome.

Just like on the movie.

- I've always been more a loner you might say,

rather than big groups,

I don't know what drives people to get together like that.

Really.

- Hundreds tonight,

I've never seen the lookout as busy as it is tonight.

It's just phenomenal, the crowds, the cars.

- You can stand on the spot and go,

shit, that rock looks like it was still in the movie.

- I think it just captures a bit of a dreamtime

for a lot of Australians

how they would like to play and live their life.

Anything to do with wheels and motors

is always a popular thing with guys.

- Off the road.

Get off the road!

- Back in the day, those cars were on the road for us.

We'd like to catch the bus to school

and be looking out the window

and you see all these cars that could have been in Mad Max

and yeah, we just loved those cars.

- Mid-seventies, petrol had been hugely cheap.

- And my car needed so much of it

that I was continually running out of petrol.

- Young men could quite simply go out

and buy themselves a ridiculously overpowered automobile.

And the sense of freedom you get from that was massive.

And then there was the oil crisis.

- This may be the worst weekend they've ever faced

for finding gasoline to give them the automobile freedom

they take as their due.

- You had these incredible automobiles

that sucked a huge amount of juice

and all of a sudden petrol wasn't cheap anymore.

- Big V8s and the like were just cut up and got rid of

because it looked as though the fuel

was going to keep on getting more expensive.

- I remember being told things like,

fuel is going to run out in two, maybe three years.

- When we had fuel rationing we saw what started to happen

after about three or four days.

- I will not take the blame for this thing,

I will not take the crap and the harassment

from these customers.

- Why didn't they come out and tell us there was no gas?

- Lives were disrupted by something as simple

as not having enough fuel to run their cars.

- When Mad Max came out it kind of crystallised,

oh this is what it could look like.

We'd see a breakdown in order and chaos would ensue.

Gangs would take over the highway.

- Timing of Max and the timing of that whole

car culture, power high-octane thing

was right in the sweet spot to create even more reverence

to these beautifully illogical overpowered vehicles.

- I remember when I first arrived here

for the first time in 2004,

we came over the brow of the hill and just parked up here.

I got goosebumps, the hairs went up on the back of my neck,

it was just absolutely incredible.

It just felt, well for me, it felt like I'd come home.

I was so familiar with seeing this place in the movie.

Just absolutely incredible.

- We actually call Adrian Mad Max

because he thinks he's Mad Max.

He dresses like Mad Max, got a dog like Mad Max,

he does everything Mad Max.

I think he eats dog food and all that.

- I remember sitting at the kitchen table,

I had my head in my hands, I was like this,

and my mum came and she said,

is everything all right, you know, is everything okay?

And I said, Mum, you know, I've just been to see

two of the most extraordinary films that I've ever seen.

And that was the start that set me on this quest

to find out more and more about these incredible movies.

To me, Mad Max 2 was film perfection, it was flawless.

The first thing I wanted to do was see if I can find a car,

which I did, I found an Aussie coupe in Texas,

funnily enough, and I bought the car

and over the next 18 months turned into the Interceptor.

I think at the time I was the only person in Europe

that had one of these replicas and I was happy.

But I knew that there was something more I needed to do,

something else I wanted to do.

My future plans including the family and the car,

is moving to Australia to live.

I actually said to my wife, Linda, I said,

do you think you could live there?

Well thinking it would never happen, she actually said yes,

you know, just to kind of pacify me.

I've been with Linda now for 35 years

and our first date was actually taking her to the cinema

to see Mad Max 1 and 2.

But I don't really think she ever expected me

to do all this.

Thinking back now, I got away with things that maybe

a normal husband wouldn't have got away with.

At the time it was just a dream but I thought to myself,

if I'm ever lucky enough to ever live in Australia,

and certainly live out here,

I would love to do some kind of display.

- We all thought it was going to be bullshit

and you know, no one's going to go to the Mad Max Museum.

But it's the most popular thing out here.

Everyone that comes here and they don't know where it is,

well, where's Mad Max Museum?

Up the hill.

- This being known as the Hollywood of the Outback,

I just found it odd that there was really nothing

to show that films are shot here.

Especially with a film like Mad Max 2

which of course is one of the biggest films ever made.

The majority of photographs here

were given to me by cast and crew members,

extras as well from Broken Hill.

There's a lot more to the film

than the 90 minutes you see on the screen.

For instance, we have just this photograph here

that shows one of the bad guys

eating a chocolate bar, having a laugh.

And I think that's important,

just to let people know, and show people,

exactly what went on at the same time.

These are just a few of the people that I've ever met

or people that have called in to see us at the museum,

which is a real honour for me, a real big honour.

Oh, actually we were doing some work at the back

and a chap came round the back

and he just said, oh, are you the owner?

I said, yes, he said,

my wife would love a photograph with you.

And I said, yeah, that's no problem, I'll come around.

And he said, oh, I should let you know,

it's Mel Gibson's sister.

So you can imagine that I was a little bit nervous.

You never know who's gonna walk through the door.

- Go up there and growl at the camera.

Right down the lens, run up to it.

- Mel came into the bar one day

and he had all this gravel rash

and it was all weeping and it looked terrible.

And I said, ugh, I'll go and get

someone to do something about that

and he just laughed because it was just makeup

and here's stupid me thinking that was the real thing.

- Well, this display here

features parts from the Interceptor double car,

which is the one that they rolled and wrecked.

If you're lucky enough when you're fossicking around

you can find little bits and pieces that are still around.

To some people it looks like bits

of broken glass and things like that,

but for me, finding something like these pieces here,

the bits off the car,

must be like a prospector finding gold.

- Oh, that's rock.

God dammit.

- Oh, I found it, I found what you were picking up.

Mad Max first entered my life on June 8th, 2016.

That's the day I met Tank.

I was working for a television station

at Eternal Con on Long Island

and I'm interviewing an Iron Man

when out of the corner of my eye

I see this hulking, naked figure.

I think my first question to Tank was,

who the hell are you and why are you naked?

I said, can I just come up to your house for a weekend

and do a little three minute video for my news station?

- Ham and Swiss or spinach and feta?

- I'll go ham and swish, swish, swish.

- Two days later, we start filming.

He calls me up a couple of days later and he goes,

by the way, this is what I do all year long.

- And some cake to chase that coffee down.

Just the plain one.

- And he said, do you want to come to Australia with me?

I said, hell yeah I do.

We traveled the world together many times over.

And eventually we fell in love.

Some days I want to kill him,

but he feels like my best friend, you know?

- I have lipstick on now?

- No. - Okay.

- I think that he has a very rigid view on masculinity

and I challenge that a lot.

Men can have feelings, men can open up.

- I don't know what it is. - It's a piece of car.

- He hides behind a lot of walls.

He gets to hide behind the mask.

- Oh! - Oh, yes!

- Yeah! - Holy shit!

Oh my god!

- It's a piece of potentially Toadie's badge!

- Yep. - Wow.

We got to compare it to some screenshots.

- Well done, Tank, that's gold, mate.

Suck it, King Tutankhamen.

- I like to visit the movie location

and after a while I started this rock museum.

I went quite everywhere where they shot the movies

so I have quite a lot.

Obviously rocks were really important

for me at the beginning.

Now I succeed to pick up a little piece of the road,

of the bitumen.

I mean they shot the movie on that bitumen

so it's like, you know, interesting.

Actually I don't really care about

how beautiful the rocks are,

it's just they were picked at the right place

and now it's a beautiful

collection of stuff.

- Gradually I realised that whilst I was

from a completely different background,

I had through this film extraordinary unforeseen affinities

with those people.

I would like to really congratulate you

on keeping this cinema open.

I'm now very fond of them and strangely enough,

they seem to be very fond of me.

- We all rub shoulder to shoulder.

We're all stars in our own right.

Being a fan of Mad Max, it grows on you.

It grows on you.

- Hey, for a 38 year old movie that's not bad, huh?

- It's a story of survival, and I thought about myself.

In 1998, they said, you've got a tumor in your spinal cord.

The doctor got all the tumor out of the spinal cord

but it left all this damage.

It took me months, but I finally got the big toe moving.

Nine months later I walked out of there.

It's up to each and every one of us

to have that determination to push ourselves through.

- I've got that fighting spirit, I won't give up.

I've been through a hell of a lot of trauma

and this one's been through it with me.

Still fighting the fight of cancer now,

and I'm not going to give up, I won't stop smiling

and keep the fight.

Every day is worth living and you've got to fight it.

- And that's Mad Max, daily battle to survive.

We'll get there, yeah, we'll make it.

- First thing I done, when I got back

I asked the person with me to get a handful of soil

and put it in my hands.

I rubbed it through my fingers and I said, I'm home.

- Now you'll be able to walk.

- I can die happy now, it's all good.

- Last of the V8 Interceptors.

It fills people's lives, makes 'em happy.

If it makes 'em happy then it's good to do.

- The mateship, the comradery, it's infectious.

It's Australian and I love it.

- And it only lasts a few days.

And then it's time to go back to the real world

and that's hard.

That's a bit of a let down, I mean, you're not only

going back to your day job and taking the costume off

but you're leaving family behind.

This is not just a Comic Convention or something.

This is a family reunion.

- And it's incredible 'cause 10 days maybe total

have been spent together and they feel like

I've known them my whole life.

- There's been so many great things

that have come out of all this,

people that have come into my life.

That have changed my life,

and hopefully they'll stick around for the rest of my life.

- You're a special one.

- Am I now? - Mister Tank.

How'd we do? - We did great.

- There was always individuals inspired to create

and over time if you love it, you just stay with it

and it doesn't matter if you don't know anyone else

who's involved in it.

Certainly, you want to be executed?

But the beauty of it is there is a big community out there

of people who are all like-minded,

who have the same roaring desire for this franchise.

Nothing can prepare for that moment

when you drive towards the Wasteland city

for the first time.

And you're seeing it rise out of the desert

and it's on.

- We started Wasteland Weekend in 2010.

We wanted to have a gathering of Mad Max fans

and do it out in our own little piece of the wasteland

and we thought some people might show up.

- It's a crazy event, it is massive.

I think last year they had probably around

4,000 people attend.

It takes hours to get in, it's just, it's insane.

- We go in, we kill, we capture them!

Being Wez at Wasteland Weekend

is nothing short of being an epic rock star for a week.

Wez, you missed your cue.

Valley of Death?

- This is the Valley of Death!

- Tank's tribe is really the tribe for

screen accurate Mad Max 2 stuff.

- We kill, we capture! - Wez, no!

- I don't think anybody's living a better life

than Steve Scholz when he's dressed up as Wez.

It's incredible to watch.

- I understand your pain.

- And now it's Lord Humungus and Lady Faye

of the Dogs of War.

- People ask me all the time,

with all this cosplay stuff that I do

do you make any money doing it?

And I say, believe it or not,

the one thing that actually makes money is the DJing thing.

DJ Humungus is very heavy, unforgivingly heavy.

Still very danceable.

It started out as just a silly idea, who knew.

- My dogs, we're gathered here today.

- So good.

- You must not be selfish.

You must not hoard your gasoline from one another.

You must listen to each other's reason, especially hers.

- So many people showed up.

There's people like ringed three and four deep

outside the dome.

I'm looking up, there's people climbing the dome,

local Cal City Police Department was there

working the event, they were on the dome

to see what was going on.

- Local sheriff's department was on the dome.

- Oh man.

- We have multiple wedding requests every year,

but okay, if you want to do that.

I mean, it's, it's your wedding if you want us to ruin it.

- With the power assumed by me.

And once I did one, everybody else

just wanted to follow suit at Wasteland,

said, I've got to get in on this,

I need the Lord Humungus to marry me.

- If any Wastelander has an objection to this union.

- Tank doesn't become Tank until he puts that mask on

and then he just gets to become this funny,

lighthearted guy, everybody eats it up, everybody loves it.

Tank's only just started doing that without the mask with me

in the last couple of months.

Gently over time, he's changed into something

a little softer and a little more open-minded.

- A lot of people give me strange looks when they ask me,

oh, where did you meet your husband?

I always hesitate.

They might think, well, why do you want to go

and celebrate the apocalypse?

You know, isn't that kind of depressing?

But it's quite the opposite for us.

Sometimes when you face the potential end

you face the ability to celebrate life itself.

- The whole post-apocalyptic genre

is I think a positive thing,

because it means there is a post-apocalypse.

There is something after.

- You can be more your own person.

Like everyday you get up and you go to work

and you're, you know, you're Joe Schmo in your cubicle job

being told what to do by your boss

and you feel like you have no autonomy in your life.

The end of the world, you're in charge.

It's easier to feel like you're more important in the waste.

- Wasteland is very inclusive and people may think,

oh, only certain people can come here.

Let me tell you, everybody is beautiful

and passionate about what they do as far as Wasteland goes.

- The real world I work for the Port of Los Angeles.

- I'm a middle school science teacher.

- Anybody could belong.

It doesn't matter how old you are or what your background is

or what country you're from or what language you speak.

It doesn't matter, I think everybody fits in.

I think everybody's trying to fit in somehow.

- I had no idea that there was other people

as weird as I am, but like I found my family.

It's like my home away from home.

We've got people in Japan, Australia,

Holland, Italy, Ireland.

- Canada, Mexico. - Scotland.

- We know there's other groups out there, there's Germans.

- Oh yeah, the Germans!

- Our group consists of more than 300 people.

Prop makers, models, dancers.

In this rotten and rusty world

the Cult of Chrome's the cult to achieve something bigger.

- We all understand the language of survival.

We all understand the apocalypse.

- Everybody somehow can relate to Mad Max.

- There's always a new fan base that rediscovers it.

And that's where it keeps on growing.

- When Fury Road came out it gave a real shot in the arm.

Now we have a new set of inspirational visual things

that we can play with.

- Fury Road changed how I look at the whole series.

- It was at the festival of Cannes,

so Mad Max gained cultural prestige.

- Having Furiosa as a strong female character

that's also disabled,

it's just really great to see that representation in film.

- Women can kick arse just as much as men can.

- When I saw the movie, made me free.

More Japanese women watched that movie.

- Max and Furiosa stand their own ground.

I really liked that balance, that equality.

- None of us would ever know each other

if it wasn't for the Mad Max movies,

if it wasn't for Mad Max and then Wasteland

we all wouldn't be here right now.

- Dressing up didn't seem like

it was ever going to be a thing that I did.

Now that I'm comfortable doing it

and I don't feel like a complete doofus

it is transformative.

Meeting Tank brought out the doer in me.

- I think he is a very lucky individual

to have found something that he is that passionate about.

Even if people do not understand

how somebody can be so passionate about a movie.

- It opened up a world of adventure

that I otherwise would not have encountered.

And of friendships and of understanding of other people.

- A lot of people say, it took me a lot to get out here

and to be around people 'cause they're not a people person

or they're an introvert.

But you know what, they have this passion,

like I want to do this.

- There are people that live Wasteland all the time.

They bought land out near the site.

- My life has always been,

if a door opens I'll run through it.

I've done a lot of really dumb stuff in my life

because of it.

But on my death bed, I would lay there and go,

yeah, I've lived.

- We can open her up a bit.

- Whoa, whoa!

Woo hoo!

- My general formula for my students is,

follow your bliss. I mean, find where it is

and don't be afraid to follow it.

The influence of a vital person vitalises.

The world is a wasteland.

People have the notion of saving the world

by shifting it around and changing the rules and so forth.

Any world is a living world if it's alive.

And the thing is to bring it to life

and the way to bring it to life is defined in your own case

where your life is and be alive yourself it seems to me.

- There was a moment I had climbing up the mountain

overlooking the Pinnacles where a friend of mine was worried

and he's like, you know, be careful,

watch your foot here, let me help you.

I said, don't worry, this is where I want to die.

And I mean that, this is, can you imagine a better place

to call the home for the rest of your existence?

- One of the requests that I've made

when my time is eventually up is I've asked my wife, Linda,

to come out here on a windy day and scatter my ashes

and make sure they blow all across the plains

and that would make me a happy man.

- All the Mad Max fans, they are fans forever,

until their last day and some of them are going to be

buried in their car or in some sacred land

in the wasteland somewhere.

Me, when my book will be finished

I will turn the page and move onto something else.

Now my next dream is to maybe write a book about

Crocodile Dundee's movie.

I have a lot of ideas on what maybe the next dreams

I will fulfill in 20 years, who knows?

I mean, I don't know.

- Life is very short in the scale of things.

And so bite on it, make every day, every hour, every minute

as intense as can be.

I never thought one day

that I would go back to the wasteland

as maybe the last thing I do.