MILLER, George

(1948-)

   Australian film-maker. After a satirical short film, A History of Violence in the Cinema, Part One (1975), GM made an international impact with MAD MAX (1979), a NEAR FUTURE cop/vigilante car-chase movie that introduced Mel Gibson to stardom as a leather-clad highway patrolman in an anarchic post- HOLOCAUST Australia. It success was great enough to fund a more elaborate, more effective sequel, MAD MAX 2 (1981, vt The Road Warrior). Influential enough to generate an infestation of Italian andFilippino imitations, including I nuovi barbari (1983; vt The New Barbarians; vt Warriors of the Wasteland) and Stryker (1983), Mad Max 2 led to a sequel of its own, which GM codirected with George Ogilvie: MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME (1985). This was a more expensive, less grittyretread of the earlier film, with themes imported from Russell HOBAN's RIDDLEY WALKER (1980). GM's only feature film since the Mad Max trilogyhas been The Witches of Eastwick (1987), a successful adaptation of John UPDIKE's 1984 novel, although he remade Richard MATHESON's TWILIGHT ZONEepisode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" as a segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) and produced Philip Noyce's thriller Dead Calm (1988). GMshould not be confused with the other Australian director of the same name, who made The Man from Snowy River (1982) and The Neverending Story: Part 2 (1990).

   KN

   See also: MUSIC.