George Miller hired a real-life outlaw motorcycle club called the Vigilantes to play the villainous biker gang in the original Mad Max film, paying them mostly in cases of cheap beer.

A closer look

George Miller hired a real-life outlaw motorcycle club called the Vigilantes to play the villainous biker gang in the original Mad Max film, paying them mostly in cases of cheap beer. The production budget was so incredibly tight that the director had to bribe actual street toughs with alcohol just to make his post-apocalyptic Australian wasteland look suitably dangerous and authentic. Many of these bikers even rode their own heavily modified motorcycles to the set every day, which completely bypassed the need for an expensive prop department or stunt coordination budget. Filmmaking is often hailed as a glamorous and refined art form, but sometimes it just boils down to handing a dozen heavily tattooed outlaws a twelve-pack and asking them to ride very fast towards a camera