Byron Kennedy, producer of Mad Max and Mad Max II

...and the other half of Kennedy Miller, pictured in 1981, two years before his tragic death in a helicopter crash.

George Miller's relationship with Byron Kennedy...makes Byron a true Philokytherian...

From an article by....

Brook Turner

The Australian Financial Review Magazine May 2007
Front cover, pp. 26-38.

Curious George

.......

Miller’s has always been a familial, often fraternal, enterprise. His first one-minute short was made with brother Chris. And it was at the Noyce workshop, after he and his twin John’s paths had diverged in their clinical years at medical school, that Miller met his MM partner fellow film fanatic Byron Kennedy, who became “like a brother”. Brother Bill, a lawyer by training, has co-produced everything from the Babe films to HF (a title he came up with). George Miller’s HF co-writers and co-directors included long-term collaborators John Collee, Judy Morris and Warren Coleman.

Miller’s wife of 12 years, Margaret Sixel is also his film-editing partner. The couple have two sons. (Miller also has a daughter, Augusta, currently studying at NIDA, with his former wife, actress Sandy Gore). A tall, natural beauty, as un-Hollywood as her husband, the South African-born Sixel is “very influential in a low-key way”, says one friend of the couple. In fact, her husband credits Sixel with turning Babe around, declaring an early cut too episodic and lacking in narrative tension, and suggesting the linking devices of chapter headings and singing mice. Doug Mitchell, an accountant by training who came to KM 24 years ago as Kennedy’s protégée, has been so central to its fortunes since Kennedy’s death that Miller plans to change the company name to Kennedy Miller Mitchell.

As Miller says: “You can’t run a country, you can’t run a business, you can’t run anything alone ... I’m very at ease collaborating; I think it’s because I had a twin brother with whom I spent every day for 24 years, so I’m very used to that dance that happens between individuals.” Others say the intense personal and professional bond Miller enjoyed with Kennedy — they founded KM together in 1983, just months before Kennedy’s tragic death in a helicopter accident — has been harder to replicate. After all, Miller has left the company name unchanged, until now. “Byron was his perfect partner,” Noyce says. “George has been the ultimate right brain, intuitive thinker, and Byron was left and right brain, and together they were the perfect filmmaking combination.”

“Knowing George and loving George you get to hear wonderful stories about Byron Kennedy, and how perfect it was when their partnership began,” says Lynda Obst, who collaborated intensively with Miller on Contact, flying in for three months at a time she calls “the most fascinating 18 months of my life”. “I think there was a half missing for a really long time that [Margaret] has filled to some extent, but that is still unfilled to another extent.”


Entire Australian Financial Review Magazine article

George Miller. Notable Kytherian


George Miller’s Filmography

2006
Happy Feet
producer/director/writer

1998
Babe: Pig in the City
producer/director/writer
Fragments of War: The Story of Damien Parer (TV)
producer
The Clean Machine (TV)
producer

1997
White Fellas Dreaming
producer/director/writer

1995
Babe
producer/writer
Video Fool for Love
producer

1992
Lorenzo’s Oil
producer/director/writer

1991
Flirting
producer

1989
Bangkok Hilton (TV)
miniseries, producer
Dead Calm
producer/second unit director

1988
The Dirtwater Dynasty (TV)
miniseries, producer

1987
The Year My Voice Broke
producer Vietnam (TV)
miniseries, producer
The Riddle of the Stinson (TV)
producer
The Witches of Eastwick
director
Tausend Augen
(Thousand Eyes)
actor

1985
Mad Max Beyond
Thunderdome
producer/director/writer

1984
Bodyline (TV)
miniseries, producer
The Cowra Breakout (TV)
miniseries, producer

1983
Twilight Zone: The Movie
(segment four)
director
The Dismissal (TV)
miniseries, executive producer/
director/writer

1981
Mad Max 2
director/writer/additional
editor

1980
The Chain Reaction
associate producer
1979
Mad Max
director/writer

1971
Violence in the Cinema, Part 1
director/writer