MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (George Miller 2015)

[Johann]

Back to Mad Max: the IMDB reviews are hilarious.
The first three pages of user comments are people venting anger: "Awful!" "Horrible" "Juvenile" "Disgrace" "Travesty".

Huh? What planet are these people on? It ain't earth. Either that or they just don't know the difference between a bad film and a great one. Let's Be Clear: Mad Max: Fury Road is a masterpiece. Only one guy on the imdb called it that from what I could tell.

[Chris Knipp]

I think you will be able to see the new Apu Trilogy at least on DVD or Blu-ray.

Maybe you your trilogy to include the editor. A movie is a collective effort, even though some directors do everything, sometimes.

[Johann]

Yes, if you combine the writer and director (if they are REAL filmmakers) then the editor can take his place in the "Holy Trinity".
The only reason I did not include the editor is because he's ultimately not needed. How so?
See the Masterpiece Russian Ark and you'll know why.

I'm currently reading Williams s. Burroughs' The Place of Dead Roads (1983) and what a wild read it is. Here's some snippets:

To what extent did he succeed? Even to envisage success on this scale is a victory. A victory from which others may envision further.

There is not a breathing of the common wind
that will forget thee;
Thy friends are exaltations, agonies and love,
and man's inconquerable mind.


"Ka, Egyptians called it...soul, whatever. Well I got news for Ka.
It isn't invulnerable and it isn't immortal." Bickford draws his gun and fondles it.
"It's a magnetic field...it can be dispersed. POOF, no more Billy."

[Johann]

A sequel to Fury Road has been announced, with Tom Hardy reprising his role as Max.
It will be called THE WASTELAND. Hell yeah. Strike while the iron is hot Mr. Miller!

[Johann]

You know what sucks? There are no action figures for Mad Max: Fury Road due to its' R rating.
All I see is killer toys with this movie, Mang.
I want an amazeballs action figure of Max, King Joe and the Doof Warrior! Fanboy want toy! Pronto! lol
Vehicles would be bitchin' too...I mean come on, this flick is a kids wet dream for action figures...

[Chris Knipp]

Your argument for the irrelevancy of editors falls down because Russian Ark is not a masterpiece. It's interesting, like everything he's done, but sorely needs some editing. Greatly overrated here. AlloCine press rating 3.4 -- fair enough maybe. But a masterpiece would be 4+.

I'm not a fanboy and am very glad not to be. I'm happy for you that Mr. Mad Max Director is doing another Mad Max. He seems to have made these films his career. T.S. Eliot killed it with the title The Waste Land. It can never feel original after his great poem (published in 1923!).

I'm a big fan of William Burroughs myself, but don't think the Place of Dead Roads is one of his best. What are the lines from Wordsworth doing in there? They ain't his accomplishment. Your pen must have slipped, because of course the word is "unconquerable."

Have you listened to Burroughs' lectures and readings on YouTube? Classic. The composition of Naked Lunch has been compared to that of The Waste Land, by the way, because Ginzberg played as big a part in honing it down and shaping it into a masterpiece as Ezrad Pound did with Eliot's poem. Cronenberg need an editor for his Naked Lunch version, Ronald Sanders.

[Johann]

I'm gobsmacked by The Place of Dead Roads. Just his wordplay..and his ideas...I love that man. Homosexual hero here, so prudes and homophobes stay away...Bill writes better than 1000 straight writers combined.
The Wordsworth quote is not credited in my book. It's dropped in between the narrative, along with other quotes. It's written here as IN-conquerable. Not sure why.


Here's some more great lines from it:

Identify yourself with your gun. Take it apart and finger every piece of it. Think of the muzzle as a steel eye feeling for your opponent's vitals with a searching movement. Move forward in time and see the bullet hitting the target as an ACCOMPLISHED FACT.



The Christian God, and that goes for Allah, is a self-seeking asshole planning to cross us all up. Like all colonists he despises those he exploits. Who but an asshole wants to see people grovelling in front of him?

[Johann]

Hunter S. Thompson loved a quote from T.S. Eliot's THE HOLLOW MEN:
Between the idea
And the reality
Falls the shadow

I haven't read much Eliot myself. I can't comment of The Waste Land, but you sound right on that one, Chris.
I haven't heard Burroughs'lectures but I will check them out. His voice is cool to me. He also read a Jim Morrison poem on the STONED IMMACULATE tribute CD, where he also speaks about Jim's death, saying he never believed for a minute that Jim died in a bathtub.

This Burroughs book "The Place of Dead Roads" could be a movie, it's that good. It's the wild west and outer space in one tome!
Naked Lunch was good as a movie, I actually like it, but I think it could've been done better.

[Chris Knipp]

Burroughs read/lectured/performed for college audiences for money a lot after he became a youth culture icon, and he could descend into self-characature. But he was always unique and funny. His lectures at the Nairopa Institute show his intelligence and range of knowledge. His is a voice of clarity. Some, no many, of his ideas seem totally nutty to me, as his radical and perverse sexual fantasies do to straights; yet they come in the vehicle of smarts and wisdom. Let's just say he can get away with them.

It has been a long time since I read The Place of Dead Roads and I did not read it carefully. Opinions differ but I think after the first great book Naked Lunch and the followups of Nova Express and The Ticket that Exploded and even then, he was recycling material, and the stlistic and imaginative wonderment of the beginning became increasingly watered down despite the strong pose and interesting ideas and endless wit and humor. He turned into a great personality. It would be wise to listen to his warnings about what's happened or happening to the world.

Pasting in the quote (slightly altered) from Wordsworth borrows from Eliot, whom you would do well to check out, especially The Waste Land. The Hollow Men is easy stuff; The Waste Land would take a year of study to grasp. It's central to the early modernist literary understanding of the decline of the West.

[Johann]

Fair enough. I'm aware of Eliot and his importance, but I haven't dived into his stuff.

Hunter Thompson called Burroughs "A Shootist", a man who uses words like a gun.
He seemed to have a strong grasp of what ails mankind, and he turned it into art, like Kubrick did, post-Spartacus.
Burroughs and Jim Morrison have one thing in common: they both knew that it will all end badly.
The Place of Dead Roads does have nutty ideas, that's for sure, but I'll take it (especially Burroughs' style of nutty).
He can indeed get away with it. A select few can. ;)