Copyright (2007) Photograph: James Cant. Article: AFR

Foot forward George...Opa...

From the May 2007, Australian Financial Review Magazine article.

To Graham Burke, Mumble is Miller, from his “engaging freshness” to his “lovely innocent naïve quality”. Miller jokes that the HF crew thought he was more like the penguin nation’s shameless shaman Lovelace, the Arctic’s very own wizard of Oz. As for himself, “I like to think I’m Mad Max,” he laughs, quickly adding: “Not really.”

There is quite a bit of Max in George Miller though. “You need to be a creative warrior to make films,” he says at one point, and his career, from student filmmaker to the pinnacle of Hollywood, has been its own kind of hero’s journey. In person, he is surprisingly boyish, genial, unassuming, albeit with that ease particular to very successful individuals. He throws himself into the lengthy portrait shoot for this magazine, patiently taking direction to dance, to re-enact Oscar night, bend down to talk to an invisible penguin who’ll be superimposed later — “Oh God, I feel like an actor,” he moans — even giving a second lengthy interview on the hop.

He’s quite without ‘side’, as the English say. Perhaps as a result, he can also be hard to read. There’s a reticence, almost a Cheshire Cat quality, that may just be that childlike quality on which all who know him agree. “He seems to still have an innocence about him,” actress Nicole Kidman says, echoing Obst and Burke. Miller himself speaks of being “like a mirror . “Behind the camera, you’re an observer,” he says by way of explaining why it makes him self-conscious to talk about himself. “For the actor, I have to be a coach and provide an objective response to their work ... be a true mirror, as it were."

Entire Australian Financial Review Magazine article

George Miller. Notable Kytherian


George Miller’s Filmography

2006
Happy Feet
producer/director/writer

1998
Babe: Pig in the City
producer/director/writer
Fragments of War: The Story of Damien Parer (TV)
producer
The Clean Machine (TV)
producer

1997
White Fellas Dreaming
producer/director/writer

1995
Babe
producer/writer
Video Fool for Love
producer

1992
Lorenzo’s Oil
producer/director/writer

1991
Flirting
producer

1989
Bangkok Hilton (TV)
miniseries, producer
Dead Calm
producer/second unit director

1988
The Dirtwater Dynasty (TV)
miniseries, producer

1987
The Year My Voice Broke
producer Vietnam (TV)
miniseries, producer
The Riddle of the Stinson (TV)
producer
The Witches of Eastwick
director
Tausend Augen
(Thousand Eyes)
actor

1985
Mad Max Beyond
Thunderdome
producer/director/writer

1984
Bodyline (TV)
miniseries, producer
The Cowra Breakout (TV)
miniseries, producer

1983
Twilight Zone: The Movie
(segment four)
director
The Dismissal (TV)
miniseries, executive producer/
director/writer

1981
Mad Max 2
director/writer/additional
editor

1980
The Chain Reaction
associate producer
1979
Mad Max
director/writer

1971
Violence in the Cinema, Part 1
director/writer