Turning his focus from the post-apocalyptic wasteland of the Australian deserts to the post-consumerist dregs of the American Midwest, George Miller’s latest epic focuses on the rise and fall of Ponderosa steakhouse and buffet from its Bonanza tie-in inception in the 1960s through the boom of the 1980s and of course its slow acquisition and consolidation-fueled decline through the 2000s.
Miller has often said that some of the funkier denizens of his Mad Max universe were inspired if not directly lifted from actual patrons of the restaurant chain he observed there back in the 1980s.
“Nicholson was obsessed with the place in the mid-80s” he narrates toward the start of the film, referring to his time in the States filming The Witches of Eastwick, “every time he had notes on the picture he insisted we discuss them over food there…” he continues with an involuntary shudder of recollection. “The creatures I saw in that establishment…the culinary monstrosities they assembled on their plates-certainly the genesis of the cobbled-together vehicles in the later Mad Max pictures came from the “meals” I unfortunately took there at that time. The story and scripts for Furiosa and Fury Road poured out of me at that time, it just took decades to secure the funding to make them because every executive that read them back then thought they were too horrific and batshit to produce!”
Look forward to reliving either your nostalgia from eating there with your grandparents in the 80s or George Miller’s traumatic experiences there- or both!- later this year.