The Road Warrior’s Feral Child Had To Be Tricked Into Acting Terrified

Many actors can “turn it on and off” when working. They can be palling around with their co-star, and then once “action” gets called, they can scream at them as if the other person murdered their family. It’s much easier for adults to flip that switch than it is for children, but during “The Road Warrior,” Emil Minty needed to do that for a big scene and couldn’t. Speaking to the It Came From blog, actor Vernon Wells, who plays the red-mohawked Wez in the film, recalled how he and the child actor got along famously off-camera, which complicated their big confrontation scene:

“George [Miller] used to say to me, ‘Don’t become good friends.’ And I couldn’t help myself. Every time I’d get on set and see him I’d say, ‘It’s not a snack, it’s EMIL!’ And he hated it. … When we came to the scene at the end of the film where I come over the bonnet and grab his hand, he’s supposed to freak out. Well, the first time we did it, he just looked at me and laughed. He was 10 years old — to him it was a game, like hide and go seek. And George came up to me and said, ‘I told you.'”

In order to get Minty to give the proper reaction, Miller and Wells went to the makeup department and soaked a small piece of foam in syrup that he concealed in his hand, so when he grabbed the kid’s hand, it looked like blood went everywhere. You could probably use that trick on an adult and get a similar freaked reaction. Wells “felt so bad” about doing it, but sometimes you just need to harness the strange artificiality of moviemaking to get the result you need.