cinema history class: jodorowsky's dune

Session: Documentaries, Week 4
Movie: Jodorowsky's Dune (2013)
Directed by Frank Pavich

In 1974, a French consortium optioned the film rights to Frank Herbert's novel, Dune. The plan was for noted filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky to direct. Jodorowsky and his team spent several years working on the project -- raising funds, approaching big name celebrities (e.g., Pink Floyd, Mick Jagger, Orson Welles) to secure their involvement, and designing -- before it was ultimately scrapped. A film adaptation was eventually made by others, including director David Lynch.

I should note that I am neither a fan of Dune nor of Jodorowsky. I kind of remember that Dune was a big deal when it came out, but I never had any interest in seeing it. The mixed reports that I heard at the time did little to interest me in seeing it. As for Jodorowsky, I've had limited exposure to his work. I saw El Topo (which I wrote about here). and found it to be a largely unwatchable incoherent mess. I also have a graphic novel that he wrote. I bought it because it looked interesting and the shop-owner (whom I have come to trust after many years of patronage) said that it felt like a spaghetti western. He was right, and I did enjoy it. But it wasn't really memorable.

Based on that alone, I don't think I would have been really interested in the Dune that Jodorowsky would have created. And there really wasn't anything in this movie to change my mind. Still and all, it was interesting to watch the documentary, and see Jodorowsky talk about his vision, and what he would have done with the material. Of course, it also made clear why the film wouldn't have worked -- while studio folk wanted a movie of no more than two hours -- which seems reasonable considering that two hours is now considered a long feature -- while Jodo wanted to make a movie lasting more than ten hours. It was also interesting to hear him talk about the big names he approached to be in (or make music for) the movie, and the odd deals he cut to make it happen. For example, Salvador Dali wanted to be the highest paid actor, and so asked for $100,000 per hour. Jodorowsky offered $100,000 per minute, but cut the part to under five minutes.

The documentary has extensive interviews with plenty of other players who were heavily involved in the project. Notable was the artist H.R. Giger, who spent a lot of time and energy developing the visual look that the film would have. Interestingly, a lot of the designs that Giger created for this film found their way into subsequent film projects that he worked on. So this film that was never made turned out to be a huge influence on the science fiction genre.

As much as the subject matter -- a movie that was never made (and wouldn;t have interested me if it had been made) and a director whom I'm not particularly interested in -- doesn't interest me, I found the documentary itself to be fascinating. A good part of it is that a lot of the principal players are still alive and were available for interviews. This served to bring the subject to life in a way that didn;t happen with, say the Weng Weng documentary that we watched earlier. I'll note that it also helped to humanize Jodorowsky in my mind -- something which is a good thing considering how porrly I think of El Topo.