He’s the musician from the end of the world: in “Mad Max: Fury Road”, the Doof Warrior and his flaming guitar stole the show from everyone!
Remember that blind mutant, wearing a red jumpsuit, who played the electric guitar while swinging very precariously, hanging from wires attached to a truck in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)… A member of Immortan Joe’s “War Boys”, he was called The Doof Warrior and he was part of this horde which tirelessly pursued Max (played by Tom Hardy) and his new ally, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron).
During the many breathtaking chase sequences that made George Miller’s film famous, The Doof Warrior, clinging to his Doof Wagon, stole the show in every scene he appeared in, without ever uttering a word. only word.
In the era of blockbusters shot on a green screen, the metallic chaos that we saw in Fury Road, he was very true. As the film’s production designer, Colin Gibson, explained to MTV, no CGI was used for The Doof Warrior’s performance.
“The goal was basically to try to create a vehicle and something that could be heard over the roar of a few hundred amps”, he explained. “And the only way to do that was to build the biggest and final stack [d’amplificateurs] Marshall from the end of the world.”
And behind the character hides the man: the flamboyant guitarist was in fact played by Australian musician Sean Hape, better known under the pseudonym iOTA.
“They told me the character was somewhere between Keith Richards and a scarecrow”, the latter told Buzzfeed about his audition. “So I kind of put on my best Mad Max 2 outfit: feathers and leather and stuff. I blackened my teeth and went in looking pretty disgusting. I played guitar and that was it. I got the job.”
A guitar as heavy as you… or almost!
It was later that he learned that he would be suspended from wires during his scenes. “I was hanging on top of this truck going through the desert and wondering, ‘How did I get here?’” According to Gibson, the guitar weighed approximately 132 pounds (or almost 60 kilos!) and at the insistence of the director George Miller, it was very functional, made from waste by an entire production team led by Michael Ulman. It also spewed real gas-powered flames, which the musician controlled using the instrument’s vibrato rod (or “Whammy bar”).
“You know the guitar wasn’t great”, admitted iota. “She spent a lot of time in the sun, on the sand and in the cold. So it was quite difficult to get a good melody out of it. But it was a lot of fun. I was just jamming. I was on top of an amplifier, which you can’t see. But he was lying on his back. I was standing above it, so the guitar was screaming in my ears. I just went for it. I pulled out every rock lick I could think of.”
And for the record, know that the concept around the guitar, as well as the Doof Wagon and the Doof Warrior, was developed by the Australian screenwriter Peter Pound in the late 1990s, George Miller having come up with the idea for the film about 10 years before: it had to have two handles, throw flames 45 feet (a little over 13 meters) and look like the craziest weapon – the bet was won.
Mad Max: Fury Road can be seen again on VOD. Its prequel, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, the trailer for which can be seen below, will be showing in your nearest cinema from May 22.