One of the great things that happened to me, probably THE best moment of my life was...umm...I was very obsessed with the Mad Max films when I was younger, and was completely obsessed with Mad Max 2, and I used to write...I mean, I had my geek loony moments...and I used to write these letters to George Miller, the guy who wrote and directed Mad Max, about Mad Max. I'd send them off to him. Never heard anything, of course. He's thinking, "nut".
Fast forward 20 years later and...ahh...I designed a TV series called 'ReBoot', which was the very first long form computer animated thing. Before Pixar's 'Toy Story', 'ReBoot' came out. In it, we did an episode where we pastiched The Road Warrior, and I took all the characters of The Road Warrior and I did these silly versions of them. They're quite funny if you know Road Warrior. And I sent it to him [Miller], and I wrote "Whatever happened to Mad Max?". Then two weeks later I get a phone call, "Hi, this is George Miller from Sydney." He basically said, "Hey, what is this? What are you doing?", and I said "well, it's computer animation...blah, blah, blah...it's a new thing. It's going to be huge." He said, "would you be interested in doing a Mad Max TV series with us?", and I said yes.
So, I met him. At the time I was working in Vancouver on this TV show 'ReBoot', which was being made in Canada. He said, "I'll be in Los Angeles next week" and I said, "That's cool. I live in Los Angeles. I'll see ya." So, I flew down to LA, pretended I lived in LA, and ambled up to the Beverly Hills...whatever it was. And...ahh...quite nervous about meeting him, 'cause he was probably THE director out of all of them...Spielberg...of all of them that I really was most interested in. So he said, "Anyway, we're thinking of doing a kind of 'Zena: Warrior Princess' version of Mad Max.", and I went, "meh". I just went...you could obviously see that I was completely bored. He went, "What's wrong?", and I said, "Why don't you do Mad Max 4, for God's sake! I mean, whatever happened to Mad Max? Well, he's still out there somewhere in the Wasteland, you know?" I said, "If you ever do it, the story should be about...", and off I go, and he's probably thinking "I've got a live one here." But, we just clicked, and we got on really well, and he said to me, "Would you be interested in writing Mad Max 4 with me?" I said, "No, get out of my face."
Of course, obviously, I said yes, and then I ended up going to Australia for 2 years, working on...writing and designing Mad Max 4. To me, that was the one...you know, where you think...it's really weird, isn't it. You know the people that give those terrible Oscar speeches where they say, "When you're a kid and you have a dream, believe it, because this is why I'm here." It's actually kind of true. I was so obsessed with Mad Max...for most everyone else it was Star Wars, for me it was Mad Max...to actually then end up sitting there writing it, and then when you've done it, and then in through the door walks Mel Gibson, you're going, "Here's Mad Max himself!" You think, "God almighty, this is weird." It's quite a weird thing to come from being born in Lambeth...comics...Mad Max...and then you're sitting there actually writing Mad Max and saying, "No, you wouldn't do that."
McCarthy said in another interview earlier this year that he hasn't been in contact with Miller since the previous attempt at making this movie was stopped, so I'm hoping that Miller is still making the movie he and McCarthy originally conceived. I mean, to have the movie originate from the mind of a comic book writer who's been obsessed with Mad Max 2 his whole life could only be a good thing, right?
http://www.archive.org/details/PanelBor ... anMccarthy
