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God Emperor of SOHH
Was Jodorowsky's 'Dune' a Film Better Off Unmade?
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles...0001424052702304250204579433104251809202.html
Scenes From the Movie That Never Got Made
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Chris Foss, known for illustrating science-fiction book covers, designed several futuristic spaceships for the doomed mid-1970s film adaptation of the novel 'Dune.' Chris Foss/Sony Pictures Classics
"Jodorowsky's Dune" tells the story of a lost film masterpiece, or maybe just the weirdest unmade movie of all time. The documentary, which opens March 21, chronicles the failed mid-1970s effort by avant-garde director Alejandro Jodorowsky to create the first movie out of the science-fiction novel "Dune." Mr. Jodorowsky's version almost surely would have been more bizarre than the "Dune" movie that did get released (and flopped) in 1984, directed by David Lynch ("Eraserhead," "Blue Velvet"), starring Kyle MacLachlan and Sting, with music by Brian Eno and the band Toto. Mr. Jodorowsky's "Dune" was set to star Mick Jagger, Orson Welles, and Salvador Dalí.
Frank Pavich, who produced and directed the documentary, makes a case that even though Mr. Jodorowsky's project fell apart just before filming, its vivid design ideas and ambitious teaming of behind-the-camera talent—two years before "Star Wars"—influenced Hollywood science fiction that followed, from "Alien" to "Blade Runner" to "The Matrix."
Orson Welles Sony Pictures Classics
Alejandro Jodorowsky, born to Ukrainian-Jewish parents in Chile in 1929, got his start creating avant-garde theater in Mexico. His films "El Topo" (1970) and "The Holy Mountain" (1973) were trippy, perverse, and blasphemous. In one scene in "The Holy Mountain," a Jesus figure defecates a chunk of gold while a nude woman, covered with Hebrew-letter tattoos, plays the cello. The films, jabbing at religion and militarism, did well as midnight movies in art-house theaters (audience use of mind-altering substances may have been involved). They were successful enough that in 1974 French producer Michel Seydoux offered to finance the start of Mr. Jodorowsky's next project. The filmmaker chose "Dune" without having read the book.
"I wanted to make something sacred. A film that gives LSD hallucinations without taking LSD," Mr. Jodorowsky says in the documentary. Alive and well and living in Paris, he comes across in the film as passionate but not crazy.
Frank Herbert's "Dune," published in 1965, is one of history's best-selling science-fiction books but often reads more like a political tract than an action movie. Set about 20,000 years in the future, it involves a multi-planet conflict among quasi-royal families (Duke Leto, Baron Harkonnen ) and a quest to control a consciousness-expanding "spice" called melange found on the desert planet Arrakis. The book includes a 20-page glossary explaining its terminology.
Actor David Carradine and Mr. Jodorowsjy Sony Pictures Classics
Mr. Jodorowsky assembled an eclectic, X-Men-like dream team of collaborators—cast and crew members with unique traits whom he wanted to be fellow "spiritual warriors" on a "mission for humanity." He wanted Salvador Dalí to play the mad emperor of the galaxy. Mr. Dalí's demands supposedly included use of a helicopter and "a burning giraffe," a recurring motif in his paintings. Mr. Jodorowsky agreed to pay Mr. Dalí $100,000 a minute for his screen time, intending to use only three minutes or so. To secure Orson Welles, Mr. Jodorowsky offered to hire the chef of the prodigious actor's favorite Paris restaurant as his personal chef during the film shoot. Mick Jagger came in via a connection to Andy Warhol. David Carradine in his "Kung Fu" days was another cast member.
Mr. Jodorowsky recruited H.R. Giger, known for his nightmarish illustrations, to design characters and sets. Chris Foss, who illustrated classic sci-fi book covers, was brought in to imagine wild spacecraft. French cartoonist Jean "Moebius" Giraud helped create storyboards that presented Mr. Jodorowsky's script as a graphic novel with 3,000 illustrations. It was all bound in a giant hardcover book, of which multiple copies were made.
"It was the entire movie, every camera move, every costume, every bit of dialogue," says Mr. Pavich. Twenty copies of the art book were produced to show to potential backers. Only two are known to still exist. The documentary reveals many of the drawings from the book and animates some of them to dramatize would-be scenes.
After being snubbed by special-effects artist Douglas Trumbull, who had worked on Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," Mr. Jodorowsky enlisted Dan O'Bannon, who had done effects for the cheesier space film "Dark Star" as a film-school project with classmate John Carpenter.
With personnel in place, the planned $15 million "Dune" production ran out of money before shooting was to begin in Algeria. No Hollywood studio would kick in the final $5 million to film a movie that, if made true to its storyboards, would have run at least 12 hours.
"Studios said to Jodorowsky, 'We don't want to make this kind of movie, and we don't like the movies you make,' " Mr. Pavich says. "But then a year or two later comes 'Star Wars.' Everything is space, space, space. And when they do decide to make 'Dune,' who do they get but the Jodorowsky of the '80s, David Lynch?"
Mr. Lynch's "Dune" was one of the biggest-budget movies ever made at the time, at a reported $40 million. There were "Dune" action figures and Topps trading cards (and a glossary handed out in theaters). Critics and audiences didn't like it much. Mr. Jodorowsky, whose career faded after the "Dune" debacle, says in the documentary that he resisted watching someone else's realization of his dream, but when he did see it, he was gratified "because the picture was awful."
The documentary has a happy ending. Crew members whom Mr. Jodorowsky had brought together went on to bigger things. Mr. O'Bannon wrote "Alien," a film for which Mr. Giger won an Oscar for designing the monster. The documentary ends with a montage of other films—"Star Wars," "The Terminator," "Contact," "Prometheus," even "Raiders of the Lost Ark"—that could reflect the influence of the unmade "Dune" and its lavish storyboards, which had been circulated to every studio.
It's legitimate to guess that had it been made in 1975, Mr. Jodorowsky's "Dune" might be considered a campy relic today. By failing to come to life, it became legend.
