Introduction

How about this for a true story. In 2007 my husband Jonathan and I caught a plane to Australia with Academy-Award winning director George Miller. George Miller, if you don’t know, is the man who made the Mad Max movies. And I say “Academy Award winner” deliberately, because George Miller had, quite literally just won an Academy Award, not five days before, for directing the movie Happy Feet.

Jonathan and I were in the non-priority entry queue at Sydney airport, and suddenly Jonathan starts yelling to this poor, tired man in the line, “You’re George Miller! You’re George Miller! You just won an Oscar! Congratulations, George! Congratulations!” The news began to spread through the whole crowd: “It’s George Miller! It’s George Miller! Congratulations! Congratulations!” All of us were crowding around him, patting him on the back.

Can you guess what George Miller did next? He turned to Jonathan and said, “You know what? I’ve got it! I’ve got my award right here, right now, in this backpack! Do you wanna see?” And right then and there George Miller flipped his bag off of his shoulders, unzipped the zip, and there it was: not wrapped or anything, just dumped in the bottom of his bag, a 24-karat gold plated Academy Award. Can you believe it? A 24-karat gold plated Academy Award in a backpack, in the non-priority entry queue, in Terminal D, Sydney Airport, Australia. And George Miller reached in, and lifted it up out of that bag, and everyone began to crowd around, taking turns touching the thing. It was the most exciting entry to Australia I have ever had.

As I think about that story now, I do wonder, what on earth was George Miller ...