As an avid reader (at least before becoming a parent where the reading style and content changed) I don't remember what got me to read Frank Herbert's Dune. It may have been the eventual logical progression from a kid falling more in love with Science Fiction after Star Wars to seeking out other forms of it and as a teen hearing of a new movie eventually coming out based on a classic Science Fiction book I hadn't read. Whatever it was I tried to devour that book. It was thick, it was dense, but it was oh so yummy at the end. If there could be a literary classic like Moby Dick or A Tale of Two Cities that was set in the Science Fiction genre, then it was Dune. And reading Dune begat reading Dune Messiah which at less than half the length of the original seemed four times as dense. Admittedly it took me DECADES to finally finish it and move on to the third book...which I am technically still in the middle of reading several years later...luckily, there was a miniseries that combined the 2nd and 3rd books...so I kind of get the story and should probably move on to the later books since I bought them as a teen with the intention of getting through the whole series...but I digress.
As a film buff I don't remember when or the circumstances of seeing my first Alejandro Jodorowsky film. I know it was El Topo and it was a bizarre and surreal experience. So was The Holy Mountain and so was Santa Sangre and so was Fando and Liz (his first film which I saw much later than the others). And I also can't tell you when I first found out that Jodorowsky had at one point been attached to make a film version of Dune in the 70s. But if was certainly after David Lynch's version was out. A more surreal version of Dune was potentially on the table? That blew my mind.
Over the years, via magazines and eventually that repository of all info known as the internet, I learned some of the details of what Jodorowsky was planning...and now we finally have a documentary that examines this film that was never made and most likely never will be at this point. But director Frank Pavitch puts forth a strong argument that this nonexistent surrealist masterpiece that never got made in the mid 70s was actually an inspiration for all the major Science Fiction films made from Star Wars to Alien to Blade Runner to The Matrix. And it is hard to argue with this theory once you see the madness that would have been Jodorowsky's Dune.
Chilean-French film director Alejandro Jodorowsky takes us on a journey from the first inkling of his idea to make Dune into a movie (he had never read the book...only heard it was a masterpiece and when offered a chance to do whatever he wanted after The Holy Mountain by producer Michel Seydoux that is what poured out of his mouth). We get incredibly crazy stories of how he assembled the rest of his team of "warriors" (as he calls them since he really thought he was making the most important and epic film ever)...some were people he desperately wanted at the start (Salvador Dali had to play the Emperor), some were people he didn't know he wanted and found them almost by accident or happenstance (he spotted a comic book with art by Jean Giroud, better known as Moebius, and decided right there they needed to meet and they happened to be staying at the same hotel at the time) and some were people he may have dragged in kicking and screaming (he cast his 12 year old son Brontis in the lead role of Paul and had him vigorously trained in various martial arts). Others that eventually got on board were Dan O'Bannon and H.R. Giger behind the scenes and Orson Welles, David Carradine and Mick Jagger in front of the camera.
Pavitch lets the various interviewees tell their stories and each and every one is fascinating. Jodorowsky holds court and is so charismatic and engaging and insane at times (you probably had to be to match the demands of Dali to appear in the film...he wanted to be the highest paid actor ever and demanded $100,000 per hour, so Jodorowsky & Seydoux realized they only needed him for what would amount to 3 or so minutes of screen time and agreed to pay him $100,000 per minute instead). The excitement and energy that everyone had for this film to be made is infectious...and when they get to why it never happened you feel the disappointment. No...you will be disappointed.
All of the work that was put into the film by all the talent involved in the pre-production process eventually would up in a giant book that was used to sell the project to the studios. If this book was seen by many at the various studios it wouldn't be a hard leap to imagine Pavitch's thesis that the unmade Dune influenced so many other films to come after/instead of it. Some of Ralph McQuarrie's designs for Star Wars feel like Moebius' designs. O'Bannon and Giger wound up working together on Alien and it's a bit obvious that Giger repurposed some of his own work. Even Dino DeLaurentis, who wound up with the rights to Dune after Jodorowsky's version imploded, obviously got designer Danilo Donati to model some of the work on 1980's Flash Gordon after Jodorowsky's Dune.
It's sad this never got made, but it probably could not have been made at the time. The technology didn't exist to truly realize Jodorowsky's dream (heck...that's why Lucas has been continually tinkering with his Star Wars films). Jodorowsky tells of how he did go to see David Lynch's film. I won't spoil his reaction here, but it is honest and heartfelt, rude and priceless...it is a very human response.
Films about film making are almost always fascinating. Jodorowsky's Dune is no exception. The film shows us the excitement, hubris, madness, creativity and kinship that goes into making a movie as well as the hardship, disappointment and sadness when the dream is ultimately not realized. Now someone needs to at least publish the damn book that made the rounds to the studios. It would make a great coffee table book.
Until next time.
Be seeing you...
No comments:
Post a Comment