Jodorowsky's early films were very experimental and ridiculous. Lots of nudity, crapping gold feces and drugs. It's important to note that Jodorowsky was probably the first person to do anything like this on film, which (I guess) makes it important.
I bought the entire collection of his films, because I wanted to study what his films were like just to get a sense how he might have filmed
Dune. Surprisingly... His films are up my alley, though I haven't been able to finish them. I've watch the first parts of
El Topo and
Holy Mountain. The idea behind
El Topo is awesome: a mystic gunslinger and his naked son wander a surreal Mexican rendition of an Old West setting, who does battle with fetishistic bandits, and undergoes a symbolical metamorphosis during their journeys. I last left it after the main character freed a monk village from the deviant desperados and castrates the self-centered and fat commander who's too fat to pull himself up. I left Holy Mountain at the part when the main character is horrified that his image is replicated into countless Jesus on the crucifix replicas, and destroys them. I got to give Jodorowsky credit: he makes use of variety of people you don't see in mainstream films, from dwarves, giants, amputees, and makes them integral to his films.
How the different creatives and actors came onto the project is discussed with an interesting and often hilarious story for each.
I always wondered how David Carradine was approached. I think he would've made a good choice for Liet Kynes, despite his various faults. I'm a fan of his work in both
Kung Fu shows and
Circle of Iron, though at the same time annoyed with how he played Kwai Chang Caine and how awkward his martial arts choreography was. Despite his shortcomings, he pulled off the wise mystic character well. I could imagine him applying the personality of his Blind Seer character from
Circle of Iron for Kynes: wise, yet a hardass.
Though he also might have played Duke Leto. In that case, he would probably apply more of a Kwai Chang Caine styled performance to it.
They met with Douglas Trumbull of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but Jodorowsky felt that he was too technical to realize the spirituality of the effects. He was also too vain in regards to his own work. Dan O'Bannon of Dark Star replaced him.
In his essay about the attempt to do Dune, Jodorowsky more or less claimed it was because Trumball was a self-satisfied dick.
For the special effects, thanks to the capacity which Michel Seydoux gave me, I was able to refuse Douglas Trumbull... I was unable to swallow his vanity, his airs of business leader and his exorbitant prices. Like a good American, he played to scorn the project and tried to complex us while making us wait while speaking with us at the same time as with ten people on the telephone and finally by showing us superb machines which he tried to improve. Tired of all this comedy, I left to research a young talent. It is said to me that in L.A. it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. I saw in a modest festival of cinema by science fiction amateurs, a film made without means that I found marvellous: Dark Star.
I think it was admirable of Jodorowsky to approach Dan O'Bannon for the special effects a film others probably didn't respect at the time. It encouraged him to go onto Alien, and the effects in that film were a grand leap beyond
Dark Star's.
Pink Floyd was set to score Duke Leto's them while French band Magma would score the Harkonnen theme. Jodorowsky described Magma's music as "violent," "military" and "terrible."
Just checked Magma out. Jodorowsky has quite the musical taste. It actually might have worked as Harkonnen music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Avbp4LaPazM
Of course, Pink Floyd just had to be the top choice for Dune's soundtrack. From songs like "Echoes," "Shine on You Crazy Diamond," and "Welcome to the Machine," you totally get a Dune vibe from those songs. Any of you guys ever saw Pink Floyd's concert film Live at Pompeii? Their rendition of "Echoes" is freaking sweet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGwPSPIhohk
Though it makes you wonder if they were allowed to do lyrics, what kind of lyrics Roger Waters would have used. (He pretty much made himself intellectual-poet master of the band ever since Syd Barret left).
I don't think The Wall was released by then, but I totally see Pink's Hammer Fascist Party-themed songs like "In the Flesh?," "Run Like Hell," and "Waiting for the Worms" to be very Harkonnen-like.
The film would have opened with a long shot inspired by Orson Welle's opening to Touch of Evil. The shot would begin at the furthest reaches of the universe before pulling closer and closer to Arrakis. Epic space battles would be shown between the Empire and "spice pirates." This shot is recreated using the original storyboards.
Another favorite film of mine. I got to respected Jodorowsky for wanting to expand Dune into some far out psychedelic space opera to 11. Even though we know that space pirates wouldn't be much of a threat, because everyone travels by Guild Heighliners, and those ships are the only way people can travel around planets anyway. (Unless the space pirates just cause damage around the individual planets they live in rather than in the middle of space). Maybe Jodorowsky was planning to give his space pirates space folding technology as well, which would allow them to turn up on any installation they wanted to destroy instantly. That would be insane.
The ending of Lynch's version certainly demands criticism for betraying the core themes and infrastructure of Frank's universe, but once you realize that Jodorowsky planned to do the same thing it's more easy to forgive. To be fair, Jodorowsky wanted to go even further.
I'm guessing his insane ending had to do with these snippets from his script summary.
the Galaxy itself is encircled by
an insuperable Magnetic Wall.
No one could cross it.
Not having anything more
to discover,
to conquer,
Man delivers himself completely
to the pleasure,
give his capacity to machines
and degenerates in the luxury.
Paul, while mixing political and religion, becomes the
Divine Chief of the Fremen.
At their head, he destroys the galactic armies.
He discovers that the Spice cannot grow,
without the Giant Worms.
He invents a method to eliminate the Worms.
Having the capacity to control Spice,
he becomes Master of Spice.
Being a Master of Spice,
He becomes Master of the Galaxy.
Paul, New Emperor,
leaves in a Galactic Crusade
to change, once more, Civilization.
He succeeds, with all the human ones, to form
a Collective Being
and releases Man
of the prison, Space and Time.
I remember that Frank said in his introduction to short story collection
Eye that his criticism of the movie is that "Paul is a man playing god, not a man that could make it rain." Of course Jodorowsky would lean more into making Dune into the realization of the messianic myth while missing the criticism of manipulative heroism. It seems that not only does Paul make it rain in Jodorowsky's vision: Paul is potentially going to destroy the Worms and the Spice forever, and thus somehow destroys the Magnetic Barrier which surrounds the Known Universe in the process, right? That's so heavy, man.
Almost no one on the production, Jodorowsky included, had read the novel. None of them have even now. The exception was Amanda Lear. She was Dali's muse and confidant. She was a huge fan of both Dune and Frank's work in general.
Even if he still hasn't read it, he still gets the core essentials of Dune's story well enough according to his summary, and was planning to use what seems to be ALL the characters of the novel including the Fenrings. He may being changing the contexts of the characters actions and motivations, but that's pretty impressive for a guy who didn't read the book to want to include characters which other directors cut out from the book.
Jodorowsky's own son, Brontis, was to play Paul. Brontis trained for six hours a day for two weeks in various martial arts and weaponry to portray Paul. Jodorowsky wanted Brontis to "become" Paul. He suggests that he wanted to forcefully evolve his son's spirituality.
I remember Jodorowsky planned to play Duke Leto himself. From reading this, it sounds like Jodorowksy wanted to guide his son into becoming a real life Kwisatz Handerach and Mua'dib.
Those interviewed list films that were supposedly inspired by Jodorowsky's Dune. Some of those mentioned are a stretch while others, like Alien, Prometheus and (to some extent) Blade Runner are very clear.
They didn't by any chance try to include Star Wars as one of them, did they?
Me, I liked to fight for Dune. Almost all the battles were won, but the war was lost. The project was sabotaged in Hollywood. It was French and not American. Its message was not "enough Hollywood". There were intrigues, plundering. The story-board circulated among all the large studios. Later, the visual aspect of Star Wars resembled our style.
I don't know where Jodorowsky thought they looked similar. Star Wars' style looks nothing like the concept art for Jodorowsky's Dune. Star Wars has got more of a Flash Gordon/Kurosawa/WWII movie vibe to it. Jodorowsky's Dune, on the other hand, is a Mexican/Eastern European psychedelic fusion of Flash Gordon, Conan the Barbarian, Tarot Cards, drug-induced imagery, and whole lots of other things. As much he'd like to think it, Star Wars does not at all resemble the combined styles of Foss, Moebius, or Giger.
Jodorowsky hopes that this documentary will spark interest in his vision for Dune and that it will be adapted into an animated film.
That would probably be the best format for it. It's just me, but I kind of like to see it be done as a CG interactive movie computer game. If only because an interactive movie was recently done by the guys behind MST3K called Darkstar. The Dark Star film guys were to do the effects for the original film, perhaps the Darkstar developer could do the effects for Jodo's vision? Nah. I'm just being non-sequitur as usual.
And thanks very much Redstar for sharing this with us. I envy the opportunity you got to see this film, and I hope it does get made into DVD. Thanks again for considering the questions I asked before.
DuneFishUK wrote:
Jodorowsky's Acolyte wrote:Would he have used Giger's freaky worm painting
Assume you mean the willy worm? That was for Ridley Scott in 1979.
It was also the result from Giger's concept art for a film project that ended up not using his stuff called
Killer Condom, based upon a graphic novel around that time. Hence, the worm acting as a condom for the giant obsidian penis. (Suggesting perhaps that they were living cinnamon condoms from another life, supposedly?) Although I wish the concept art for the worms Jodorowsky intended to used were shown to the public, I think that Giger's worm would have been freaking awesome to use in the film.
inhuien wrote:YUMMY
Still one of my favorite concepts of Shai-Hulud.
