Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road

by Kyle Buchanan, Fred Berman (Read by), Aspen Vincent (Read by), Dan Bittner (Read by), Derek Perkins (Read by)

Overview

A full-speed-ahead oral history of the nearly two-decade making of the cultural phenomenon Mad Max: Fury Road—with more than 130 new interviews with key members of the cast and crew, including Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy, and director George Miller, from the pop culture reporter for The New York Times, Kyle Buchanan.

It won six Oscars and has been hailed as the greatest action film ever, but it is a miracle Mad Max: Fury Road ever made it to the screen… or that anybody survived the production. The story of this modern classic spanned nearly two decades of wild obstacles as visionary director George Miller tried to mount one of the most difficult shoots in Hollywood history.

Production stalled several times, stars Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron clashed repeatedly in the brutal Namib Desert, and Miller’s crew engineered death-defying action scenes that were among the most dangerous ever committed to film. Even accomplished Hollywood figures are flummoxed by the accomplishment: As the director Steven Soderbergh has said, “I don’t understand how they’re not still shooting that film, and I don’t understand how hundreds of people aren’t dead.”

Kyle Buchanan takes readers through every step of that moviemaking experience in vivid detail, from Fury Road’s unexpected origins through its outlandish casting process to the big-studio battles that nearly mutilated a masterpiece. But he takes the deepest dive in reporting the astonishing facts behind a shoot so unconventional that the film’s fantasy world began to bleed into the real lives of its cast and crew. As they fought and endured in a wasteland of their own, the only way forward was to have faith in their director’s mad vision. But how could Miller persevere when almost everything seemed to be stacked against him?

With hundreds of exclusive interviews and details about the making of Fury Road, readers will be left with one undeniable conclusion: There has never been a movie so drenched in sweat, so forged by fire, and so epic in scope.

Read by Fred Berman, Aspen Vincent, Dan Bittner, Derek Perkins, Eva Kaminsky, Fiona Hardingham, Gary Furlong, George Newbern, Ione Butler, Jason Culp, Jeff Gurner, Katherine Littrell, Leon Nixon, Lisa Flanagan, Malk Williams, Michael Crouch, Polly Lee, Ralph Lister, Robin Miles, Samuel Roukin, and Will M. Watt

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798200852666
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	02/22/2022
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 5.80(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Fred Berman has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. He is an actor of theater, film, and television whose credits include Broadway’s The Lion King, Law & Order, and Directing Eddie, among others. He was featured in Entertainment Weekly for his work on the Walking Dead audiobook series.

Dan Bittner is an actor and voice talent and winner of several AudioFile Earphones Awards for audio narration. He has starred on stage and on the screen, in movies such as Men in Black, Adventureland, and the Producers: The Movie Musical. He has also appeared onstage as Macbeth and Sherlock Holmes in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Derek Perkins is a professional narrator and voice actor. He has earned numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration, as well as numerous Society of Voice Arts nominations. AudioFile magazine named him a Best Voice consecutively in 2014, 2015, and 2016. Augmented by a knowledge of three foreign languages and a facility with accents, he has narrated numerous titles in a wide range of fiction and nonfiction genres.

Eva Kaminsky is a New York–based actor and audiobook narrator with over 150 titles to her credit. She trained at Boston University and has acted in numerous productions on television and film, including Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Happyish, Ugly Betty, ER, Numbers, Law & Order, and others.

Fiona Hardingham is a British-born actress, singer, voice-over artist, and AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. On stage, she appeared at the Edinburgh Festival in her comedic one-woman show The Dark Show. She has also starred in the dark-comedy short film The Ballerino. She earned a BA honors degree in performing arts from Middlesex University, London, and also studied at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.

Gary Furlong grew up in Wexford, Ireland. Throughout his life he has worn many hats working as a teacher, puppeteer, improv artist, actor, and singer. He can perform in general British, general American, and an Irish accent to a native level and can speak Japanese fluently. He now works full time as an audiobook narrator and voice actor from his home in Ireland.

Actor George Newbern has appeared in Father of the Bride, Father of the Bride II, Evening Star, Adventures in Babysitting, and many other films. On television, he has had roles on Friends, Nip/Tuck, Hot in Cleveland, CSI, and more. George is also known for providing the voice of Superman in Justice League.

Dannion Brinkley is the author of the New York Times and international bestsellers Saved by the Light and At Peace in the Light. His books, tours, and lectures, with his wife, Kathryn, have transformed the consciousness of people across the world. Their nonprofit organization, The Twilight Brigade/Compassion in Action, trains volunteers to be at the bedside of our nation's veterans. It was nominated for the Heart of Hospice award in 2008. Dannion and Kathryn share their lives with six children between their homes in Nevada and South Carolina.

Jason Culp, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, has been acting since the age of ten, and his credits include a variety of television, theater, and film roles. He is best known for his role as Julian Jerome on General Hospital. In addition to audiobooks and voice-over work in national commercials, he has also narrated documentaries for National Geographic and the History Channel.

Jeff Gurner is a voice, stage and screen actor. He has recorded hundreds of radio and television commercials, video games, and is an award winning audiobook narrator. He is best known for his narration of Patrick Lee and to Karen Miller’s The Star Wars Clone Wars series and works by Mark Sullivan and Terry Francona. AudioFile magazine praised Jeff''s "deep, compelling voice and well-acted presentation" and awarded him a 2006 AudioFile Earphones Award for Jennifer Egan’s The Keep.

Gurner’s theater credits include The Lion King on Broadway, Guys and Dolls, Harold and Maude: The Musical, and A Christmas Story. Television credits include The Good Wife, Mercy, and Law & Order.

Katherine Littrell is a Sydney-based audiobook narrator who studied English literature at Bryn Mawr College. She has lived in the United States and the UK, but is glad to be back home in Australia, where she enjoys knitting, making furniture, and talking out loud to herself in small spaces.

Leon Nixon is a professional actor, playwright, and filmmaker. A Los Angeles native, he has performed in short films, web series, and on stage in dramatic and comedic roles. He is also an improviser and part of the group that appears in the Guinness Book of World Records for Longest Continuous Improv Show.

Lisa Flanagan is a classically trained soprano, comedian, voice-over artist, and Earphones Award–winning narrator.

Malk Williams is a voice talent and Earphones Award–winning audiobook narrator.

Michael Crouch is an actor based in New York City. His audiobook narration has won the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration, numerous Earphones Awards from AudioFile magazine, and Best of the Year accolades from Booklist, School Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly. He can also be heard on national commercials, cartoons, video games, and the animé series Pokémon XY and Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V.

Polly Lee, an Earphones Award–winning narrtor, is an actress from London who has appeared in the off-Broadway shows Lenin’s Embalmer’s, Close Ties, Slag Heap, The October Crisis, and others. She received her BA degree in theater studies from London University and an MFA from the New School in New York.

Ralph Lister is an actor, voice actor, and AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. He spent fifteen years in London theater before moving to the United States to focus on film and television. He has held numerous roles in Shakespeare and modern dramas, as well as starring roles in independent films. His voice and character work can be heard in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearland 13 Going On 30. He lives in Los Angeles.

Robin Miles is a veteran of Broadway, classical plays, television, and film. She is an AudioFile Golden Voice, having won numerous Earphones Awards, ALA awards, and Audie Award nominations.

Samuel Roukin, Earphones Award–winning narrator, is a British film and stage actor who is best known for his role as Snatcher in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. He has also appeared in Bright Star and Miss Austin Regrets.

Will Watt is an in-demand narrator with a background in film and stage acting.

Coming soon...

Table of Contents

Author's Note XI

Cast of Characters XIII

Part I Building a World Gone Mad

Introduction 3

Chapter 1 Eyewitness Accounts of those who Survived 7

Chapter 2 The Mad Mastermind 10

Chapter 3 Everyone in the old World has a show 25

Chapter 4 The History Men 34

Chapter 5 Who Killed the World? 46

Chapter 6 I Live, I Die, I Live Again 56

Chapter 7 Where are you, Max? 68

Chapter 8 Pick up What you can and Run 84

Chapter 9 Witness me 93

Chapter 10 "We were basically defeated" 103

Part II Shoot to Thrill

Chapter 11 Preparing for War 119

Chapter 12 Oh, What a Lovely Day 126

Chapter 13 My Name is Max 137

Chapter 14 "It was all in George's Head" 148

Chapter 15 Figuring out Furiosa 153

Chapter 16 Out Here, Everything Hurts 163

Chapter 17 All Hail the Immortan 171

Chapter 18 "The Last Great Action Film" 179

Chapter 19 The War Party 191

Chapter 20 Shiny and Chrome 200

Chapter 21 We are not Things 208

Chapter 22 The Many Mothers 216

Chapter 23 "Dudes were coming in through the Roof" 223

Chapter 24 Fire and Blood 230

Chapter 25 Some Furious Vexation 241

Chapter 26 "Spent and Enriched" 251

Part III End of the Road

Chapter 27 If You Can't Fix What's Broken 261

Chapter 28 "That's Not a Mad Max Ending" 272

Chapter 29 The Final Battle 278

Chapter 30 What was Lost 292

Chapter 31 Some Kind of Redemption 298

Chapter 32 Awaited in Valhalla 309

Chapter 33 "Nothing Good Comes Easy" 323

Acknowledgments 337

Sources 341

Index 350

Editorial Reviews

"New York Times journalist Kyle Buchanan details the bonkers construction of director George Miller's long-awaited and often seemingly-doomed fourth Mad Max movie via testimony from the filmmaker, Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy, and a host of others. The result is an epic and – when it comes to the Theron-Hardy on-set relationship – acrimonious tale no less jaw-dropping than the movie itself." — Entertainment Weekly

“[A] must-have oral history… it’s as if the entire cast and crew were in a big room, sharing their stories. The book is so good that, even though we know how the story turned out… we are somehow in a near-constant state of suspense… Filled with surprises and illuminating behind-the-scenes stories, this is the book Mad Max fans crave.” — Booklist (starred review)

“An insider’s guide to Fury Road that will inspire fans to rewatch and leave them eager for the next installment on Furiosa.” — Library Journal

“The pop culture reporter for The New York Times assembles scores of voices that rev up a narrative that will excite Mad Max fans specifically, and entertain film buffs generally, on how ideas are realized as epics…. Not unlike “Fury Road,” Buchanan’s “Blood, Sweat & Chrome” succeeds largely at the level you choose, summed up best by War Boy Ben Smith-Peterson: ‘Sometimes you don’t need to know the backstory of a character that doesn’t have any lines... but I don’t know. I’m a stunt guy. I let people set me on fire.’" — Associated Press

“Crazy, riveting.” — New York

“Deft and rollicking.”  — Air Mail News

"This in-depth oral history [is] as awe-inspiring as the film itself. This is as much a story of persistence as of filmmaking genius. Boasting well over 100 interviewees, the level of New York Times journalist Kyle Buchanan’s access is impressive....A book that doesn’t shy away from candid revelations; this entertaining tome is fitting testament to a film that played by its own rules." — SFX

From the Publisher

The pop culture reporter for The New York Times assembles scores of voices that rev up a narrative that will excite Mad Max fans specifically, and entertain film buffs generally, on how ideas are realized as epics…. Not unlike “Fury Road,” Buchanan’s “Blood, Sweat & Chrome” succeeds largely at the level you choose, summed up best by War Boy Ben Smith-Peterson: ‘Sometimes you don’t need to know the backstory of a character that doesn’t have any lines... but I don’t know. I’m a stunt guy. I let people set me on fire.’"

Associated Press

[A] must-have oral history… it’s as if the entire cast and crew were in a big room, sharing their stories. The book is so good that, even though we know how the story turned out… we are somehow in a near-constant state of suspense… Filled with surprises and illuminating behind-the-scenes stories, this is the book Mad Max fans crave.

Booklist (starred review)

Deft and rollicking.” 

Air Mail News

Crazy, riveting.

New York

"This in-depth oral history [is] as awe-inspiring as the film itself. This is as much a story of persistence as of filmmaking genius. Boasting well over 100 interviewees, the level of New York Times journalist Kyle Buchanan’s access is impressive....A book that doesn’t shy away from candid revelations; this entertaining tome is fitting testament to a film that played by its own rules."

SFX

02/01/2022

In 2020, New York Times reporter Buchanan wrote an oral history of Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) to coincide with the film's fifth anniversary. That viral article was the basis for this full-length treatment of how a film that almost didn't get made (one movie studio even walked away) turned into an unexpected success, winning six Oscars and becoming a feminist classic. Buchanan interviewed more than 130 members of the cast and crew in order to present this oral history of the decade-long process of developing the film, the fourth in a franchise. Director George Miller shares his vision for focusing the film on one long car race and discusses the decision to center Furiosa (Charlize Theron) alongside Max (Tom Hardy). Fans of Mad Max's car chases will enjoy behind-the-scenes insight on filming the stunts in the Namibian desert. Buchanan's interviews hear the crew expressing frustrations about the lengthy casting process and the film's tendency to run over budget and behind schedule. Throughout the book, Miller's vision is brought to life. VERDICT An insider's guide to Fury Road that will inspire fans to rewatch and leave them eager for the next installment on Furiosa.—Stephanie Sendaula

Library Journal