Do we like George T. Miller?
Our score: 6 out of 10. A decent, well-liked working director with no harmful words or acts found, but the public record is too thin to score him higher.
First, the mix-up. This is George T. Miller, the Scottish-born director of The Man From Snowy River, not the Mad Max George Miller. Obituaries kept calling him “the other George Miller”, and the Mad Max one said Miller was “very kind to me” when mail got crossed over the years.
He started in the mailroom at Crawford Productions in Melbourne, moved up to camera work and then directing. His telly credits include Division 4, Matlock Police, The Box and The Sullivans. That's the classic Aussie TV apprenticeship, and it set him up for a big swing.
The swing was The Man From Snowy River (1982), Banjo Paterson's poem on the big screen, with Kirk Douglas, Tom Burlinson and Sigrid Thornton. It grossed more than $17 million locally, which still puts it in the top 20 Australian films at the box office. It briefly held the title of Australia's highest-grossing film until E.T. overtook it.
Hollywood followed, with The NeverEnding Story II, Zeus and Roxanne and the Christmas telemovie In the Nick of Time. His personal favourite was reportedly Les Patterson Saves the World, the Barry Humphries comedy that flopped and later became a cult classic. That's family-friendly stuff, nothing with an agenda attached.
On the harm check, the searches found no statements of his on LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants, vaccines or the climate, and no pattern of working with people who push harm. That's an absence of evidence, not a glowing reference, and it's why the score stops where it does. His output, mostly Australian stories and family films, doesn't point the wrong way.
The one blemish is his last feature, the 2009 thriller Prey. After a dispute with the producers he asked for his name to be taken off it, so it's credited to “Oscar D'Roccster”. That's a director walking away from a project, not a scandal, and no court case or accusation against him turned up.