Was Jodorowsky’s ‘Dune’ the Great Unmade Sci-Fi Epic of the 1970s?
Books and films about filmmaking too often let the business part of show business (which producer did what, when did they lose/gain funding) get in the way of a good story. This isn’t a problem that Frank Pavich’s inexplicably riveting 2014 documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune suffers from.
This never-dull if not always believable bull session lets cult filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky describe at length his absolutely mad idea for an early adaptation of Dune which never happened. Pavich couldn’t be bothered less with how the money came and went; only the creative vision matters. Given what a gonzo undertaking it all appears to have been (Apocalypse Now looks simple in comparison), that’s probably the right approach for one of film history’s great Could Have Been stories.
Pavich, showing an impressively tight sensibility here with his first directing credit since 1995’s N.Y.H.C., lets Jodorowsky do what directors love most: Talk about the one that got away. That the film doesn’t completely get away from Pavich is a credit to his skills. That it can’t back up a fraction of the claims made by various interviewees speaks more to the mad vision of his hypnotic subject: He is the type of artist people drives themselves to the edge for. At least one interviewee refers to Jodorowsky as a cult leader; but you know, in a positive way.
In 1974, Jodorowsky had come off a double-whammy of underground cinematic smashes. His midnight classics El Topo and The Holy Mountain slurried together religious, mythical, and genre iconography with a healthy lashing of sex, violence, and the absurd. They bridged the more pointed surrealism of Bunuel and the soon-to-follow postmodern deadpan of David Lynch. Without even having read Frank Herbert’s epic 1965 science-fiction novel Dune, Jodorowsky agreed to his producer Michel Seydoux’s suggestion that it be his next project.
Two-and-a-half years later, they had failed to convince anybody in Hollywood or anywhere to put up the millions needed to make their film. What happened in between is the guts of Pavich’s and Jodorowsky’s tale. The result is either a mythical origin story for modern science-fiction cinema or a big smoky puff of high-grade blowhardism.
As Jodorowsky — with the follow-me eyes of either a prophet or very happy madman — tells it from his sun-filled Parisian apartment, he immediately put together his band of creative “warriors.” The visual team reads like a dream team of 1970s’ science-fiction visionaries: French comic book visionary Moebius (Heavy Metal), screenwriter Dan O’Bannon (Dark Star), dark-sex-gothic fantasist H.R. Giger, and spaceship-specializing pulp-novel cover artist Chris Foss. Jodorowsky also claims to have roped in Pink Floyd for the soundtrack. His cast would have included Mick Jagger, Orson Welles, and his fellow trickster surrealist Salvador Dali. Jodorowsky’s own son Brontis (the child riding naked on a horse in El Topo) was going to play the film’s hero, Paul Atreides, and trained in martial arts nearly every day, for two years.
Not all the people briefly yoked together by Jodorowsky’s mad vision knew what was really going on. According to the direct, his film wasn’t going to be just another sci-fi epic; it was going to change the course of human history itself.
Did Jodorowsky actually believe that? It’s hard to take this claim entirely seriously. There is just too much of the carnival tout to Jodorowsky. But in Pavich’s film, he acts the part of the committed artist so utterly that it seems mean-spirited to assume he doesn’t mean anything he is saying.
The energy Jodorowsky brought to Dune is astounding. This is particularly impressive given that he didn’t even stop with adapting Herbert’s book. Instead, he wanted to use the novel as a launching pad for his own obsessions. The novel was a far-future dynastic saga set against the backdrop of a decaying, Ottoman Empire-like galaxy and the battle over a mind-altering substance called spice that made interstellar travel possible. But Jodorowsky’s version looks to have been less of a politically-minded space opera and more about castrations, ultraviolence, messiah figures, and his stated desire to make a film that replicated taking LSD. Much like Terry Gilliam’s decades-in-the-making Don Quixote film, it remains unclear how much or any of the source material the filmmaker ever bothered to read.
Strangely, for how much Pavich lets Jodorowsky go on about his project, few details are revealed about the adaptation’s plot; except for the ending, which would have sent Herbert fans into fits. Jodorowsky is vehement that his film would have changed the consciousness of all who saw it. The “warriors” he brought on board for the adaptation might not ascribe such spiritual import to their work. But the ones interviewed here and elsewhere appear to fully believe they were working on something revolutionary and of a never-before-seen scope. Of course, it is just as possible that Jodorowsky’s plans were nothing more than manias piled on top of inexplicable manias and for about a minute, people believed him.
As for why this version of Dune never happened, no simple answer is given. The somewhat unconvincing argument is made that Jodorowsky’s ideas leaked after the massive illustrated screenplay was sent out to the studios. This lavish package laid out the whole epic shot by shot. Given the wobbly financial positions of most Hollywood studios at the time and the limited appetite for anything boundary-pushing or expensive — by the time Jodorowsky was shopping Dune, the Bert Schneider renegade era was on the wane — that obsessively over-designed package of psychedelic overkill screamed “expensive flop.”
Whatever the case, Jodorowsky did unintentionally serve as something of a sounding board for Ridley Scott. His Alien used much of the Dune creative team in 1979. It is difficult to imagine that Scott would not have done so without Jodorowsky. But still, an alternate history intrigues. If Jodorowsky’s Dune was made, possibly tying that team up for years, Alien might never have been made. Without Alien, all of modern science fiction cinema changes. Whereas if Jodorowsky’s Dune had ever made it to the screen, it would likely have ended up the most expensive midnight movie ever made. To this day, people would still be passing around clips, asking their film nerd friends, “have you seen this?”, and writing hot-takes about how Jodorowsky’s Dune is better than the Denis Villeneuve films.
Failure aside, Pavich does give his indefatigable star the last laugh: Initially nervous to see David Lynch’s 1984 version of Dune, Jodorowsky finally goes to see it. He almost immediately lightens up in the theater once he has his realization: It was awful. Maybe so. But the moment still feels uncharitable. One would have hoped the director of El Topo could have had some kinship and sympathy for how the maker of Eraserhead wrangled the studio system into making his admittedly very uneven but still highly idiosyncratic and memorably strange film in a decade where Hollywood was not exactly valuing artistry or strangeness.
Jodorowsky can talk all he wants about his fantasy Dune. But Lynch actually made his. Which should count for something.
A version of this article was originally published in Film Journal International.
Title: Jodorowsky’s Dune
Director: Frank Pavich
Studio: Sony Picture Classics
Year: 2014
Website
