The most comprehensive look yet into the franchise’s crowning achievement ... A candid, sometimes contradictory, always compelling examination of the most unlikely big-budget cinematic triumph since Titanic ... Assembled from more than 130 interviews with “Fury Road’s” makers and notable admirers, Buchanan’s book is a chronicle of near-miraculous creative, diplomatic and financial perseverance on the part of co-writer/producer/director George Miller ... Buchanan’s vivid account of the project reads like an auteur filmmaker’s version of the Book of Job ... Buchanan’s book will give even Fury Road’s most ardent admirers new reasons to celebrate Miller & Co.’s singular achievement.
We don’t have to imagine what happened out there amid the sandstorms [on set], thanks to Blood, Sweat & Chrome, Kyle Buchanan’s deft and rollicking assembly of recollections by cast, crew, studio suits, and more ... Oral history is perfect for chronicling a film where the extreme is the norm ... Buchanan rounds up more curiosities and what-ifs.
Blood, Sweat & Chrome pulls away from clichés by tossing the keys to the filmmakers themselves. The pop culture reporter for The New York Times assembles scores of voices that rev up a narrative that will excite Mad Max fans specifically, and entertain film buffs generally, on how ideas are realized as epics ... Buchanan’s Blood, Sweat & Chrome succeeds largely at the level you choose.
...the New York Times journalist expands his oral history of the acclaimed 2015 action movie to a similarly detailed extreme that the ambitious, cut-no-corners Miller would find kinship with ... Buchanan tracked everyone down and got everyone to talk—something difficult to do in modern Hollywood ... The results are gripping, candid and charmingly still flabbergasted that they were able to pull the whole thing off. Let alone pull it off without many, many casualties ... But Buchanan doesn’t milk the unlikely success story that’s ironically often at the heart of most making-of books ... There are earthier, more relatable ways into the production, which raised its scrap-metal, fire-spouting middle fingers at The Man at every opportunity. Even if you’re not immersed in the film world or bristling against the flood of studio unoriginality, the palpable, nearly oblivion-seeking excitement of the below-the-line crew draws you in ... At its best, Blood, Sweat & Chrome engrosses as a collaborative production diary—you’ll be shaking Namibian sand from your shoes each time you set the book down.
Throughout the book, Miller's vision is brought to life ... An insider's guide to Fury Road that will inspire fans to rewatch and leave them eager for the next installment on Furiosa.
[A] must-have oral history ... It’s as if the entire cast and crew were in a big room, sharing their stories. The book is so good that, even though we know how the story turned out (the movie did eventually get made), we are somehow in a near-constant state of suspense, wondering if Miller and his team will ever get this celluloid beast off the ground. Filled with surprises and illuminating behind-the-scenes stories, this is the book Mad Max fans crave.
