The Doof Warrior has no lines and no story on screen in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (2015) but became one of the most loved characters. Behind the scenes, he has one of the darkest backstories in the film… 👇👇 George Miller had one rule for his wasteland: “You have to be able to explain everything. Not only all the characters but every object, how it all found its way into this world and how it survived.” That included the man strapped to the front of a truck playing a guitar that shoots fire - The Coma-Doof Warrior. His name comes from “doof”, Australian slang for techno raves and their repetitive, thumping beat. His job in Immortan Joe’s army is the one Miller compared to “the drummer, the fife player or the bagpiper” in real ones, driving the troops into battle. Miller gave Doof a history. Blind from birth, he was left in a mining town with his mother as the world fell apart. The only place where being blind was an advantage was deep underground, so they survived down a mineshaft, and he took the most precious thing he owned: a guitar. Eventually, Immortan Joe’s men heard music echoing up from the shaft. They saw him as an asset. His mother, of no use to them, was killed. To play him, Miller wanted a real musician, and cast Australian singer-songwriter Sean Hape, known as iOTA. Desperate for the part, iOTA turned up to the audition already in character, with dirt rubbed into his teeth, tattered clothes and black make-up round his eyes. “I got in the cab and the guy gave me a funny look,” he said. The guitar had to be real too. Production designer Colin Gibson knew better than to build Miller a prop: “I have in the past built him props that I thought were just supposed to be props, and then he goes, ‘OK, plug it in now.’” Boston sculptor Michael Ulman made the body from a bedpan stuffed with brass instrument parts, to a brief with three conditions: “it has to have two necks, it has to look like the sickest weapon, and it has to throw flames 45 feet.” Australian propmaker Matt Boug made it playable. It weighed around 60kg and had to be held up with bungee ropes. The lower neck is a bass, the tuning pegs are spark plugs, and the flames are controlled by the whammy bar. For six months, iOTA stood on the Doof Wagon and jammed whatever came to mind, Led Zeppelin, Soundgarden, AC/DC, screaming his head off as the truck tore across the desert. None of that playing made the soundtrack. Every guitar riff in the score, the Doof Warrior’s included, was recorded by composer Tom Holkenborg (AKA Junkie XL). iOTA did add one thing of his own. Miller’s story stops with the boy being taken. In iOTA’s version, when Immortan Joe found him, he was clinging to his dead mother. As such, the mask the Doof Warrior wears into battle is made from her face, to honour her. What a lovely day.