“Without Grant Page, there would be no Mad Max”: George Miller’s tribute to the saga’s original stuntman

While the fifth part, Furiosa, was recently released, its director returns to a key character in the making of the legendary saga.

In a more or less near desert-like future, society is collapsing and sinking into chaos where crime is spreading, cars are racing for the resources essential to life – and oil is one of them. Directed by George Miller and released in 1979, Mad Max has become an unconditional pop culture object, with its universe, its imagery, its myth recognizable at first glance and “that face” still almost unknown to the general public, Mel Gibson. Reflecting on the oil shock of 73, we mainly remember Mad Max its chases, its explosions, its crashing cars and its crazy stunts that we owe to a legendary Australian stuntman: Grant Page.

Interviewed by IndieWire on the occasion of the release of Furiosa, fifth part of the saga, the creator looks back on his collaboration with Grant Page and pays tribute to him.

“Without Grant Page, there would be no Mad Max. He taught me some things about this work and how to approach it, things I still remembered when I was filming Furiosa.“

It is with the commandos that Page learns the basics of security above all. If for him, “the essence of stunts is to make them as dangerous as possible and to make sure that this is not the case”as he declared to The Movie Show (SBS) in 2002, for George Miller, he was not just a daredevil:

“He had a very scientific approach to things. He did stunts that no one else was doing at that time. When he was asked to do Mad Max, We didn’t have a lot of money and no experience in the field.”

On screen, we see him perform one of the most impressive stunts in the saga, where he crashes the iconic Pursuit Special V8 Interceptor car through a caravan.

Off-camera, on his way to the set on the first day, Page was involved in a car accident and broke his leg. After a few days in the hospital, he returns with a bandage on his nose and a cast on his leg which he removes to perform his stunts. Love of risk!

A bit like the engine of the machine Mad MaxGrant Page is the one who gave George Miller a blow again when the latter had the feeling of losing control of both his film and his team:

“He told me : 'George, have you ever heard the story of the courageous Native American who, every full moon, shoots an arrow towards the moon? Everyone thought he was crazy. He never managed to reach the moon, but at least he shot an arrow further than the others.' And that had a huge impact on me. He has had a great influence on my work and my life and has been a source of inspiration in general on how to continue.”

Together, they were able to work on Mad Max (for which Grant Page was the stunt coordinator), Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), Three thousand years waiting for you And Furiosa. The stuntman also collaborated with Brian Trenchard-Smith on The Man from Hong Kong And Deadly deviation by Richard Franklin with Jamie Lee Curtis – an inspirational film for Quentin Tarantino.

George Miller: “I made Mad Max to rediscover the essence of cinema”

Unfortunately, Grant died in a car accident on March 15, 2024 and therefore will never see the film screening at the Cannes Film Festival. The director talks about their last exchange: “I saw him a month before he died. He said to me: 'We don't get old, we get lazy. We're stuck in our own orthodox doctrines.' (…) It was Grant.”

This praise is not the first that the director has given to his collaborator and friend. In 2016, George Miller presented him with his first Screen NSW Award and said:

“Working in fierce and extraordinary circumstances on the set of the first Mad Max, I was able to measure the caliber of Grant Page. A masterful and creative stuntman, he possesses a deep and elegant intelligence. He taught me a lot about directing and even more about life. Inspirations that have supported me ever since. Grant is heroic in every sense of the word.”

Furiosa stalls at the US box office