The Dune that Never Was

Plenty of people like David Lynch’s DUNE but for me the world’s greatest movie is one that was never shot, Alejandro Jodorowsky‘s DUNE. You can read Jodorowsky’s own account of the complete and total flame-out of his project-that-never-was, but allow me to summarize.

Worship DUNE! Worshiiiip!!!!!

So, the psychedelic director of EL TOPO and THE HOLY MOUNTAIN was asleep one night when:

“The Divinity agreed to say to me in a lucid dream: ‘Your next film must be Dune.’ I had not read the novel. I lifted myself to a height of six o’clock in the morning and as an alcoholic who awaits the opening of the bar, I waited until someone opens the bookshop to buy the book. I read it of a feature without me stopping for drinking or eating. At midnight exactly, the very same day, I finish the reading. At one minute pass midnight I called from New York, Michel Seydoux in Paris… He would be the first of the seven samurai that it was necessary for me to have for the immense project.”

Jodorowsky’s other big movies:
EL TOPO and THE HOLY MOUNTAIN.

Who were some of the other samurai recruited to work on his project?

Jean Giraud (aka Moebius) – France’s greatest comic book artist who wrote the “script” which consisted of 3000 drawings.

Chris Foss – British illustrator and the man behind the illustrations in The Joy of Sex to do spaceship designs.

HR Giger – who wound up designing the titular alien in ALIEN doing the Harkonnen designs.

DUNE sandworm by Giger.

Dan O’Bannon – doing special effects. O’Bannon would write ALIEN, direct RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD and write TOTAL RECALL as well as doing the effects on John Carpenter’s first film, DARK STAR.

Pink Floyd – on music.

Jodorowsky’s story is best summarized by Jodorowsky himself, but here it is in a highly condensed version:

“I did not want to respect the novel, I wanted to recreate it…in film, the Duke Leto (father of Paul) would be a man castrated in a ritual combat in the arenas during a bullfight…Jessica is inseminated by a drop of blood of this sterile man… The camera followed (in script) the red drop through the ovaries of the woman and sees its meeting with the ovule where, by a miraculous explosion, it fertilises it…at the end of film, the wife of the Count Fenring leaps towards Paul and she slices his throat. Paul while dying says: ‘Too late, one cannot kill me because…’ Jessica with the voice of Paul continues, ‘To kill the Kwisatz Haderach, you would have to also have killed me’…and each Fremen, each Atreides speaks now with the voice of Paul: ‘I am the collective man. He who shows the way,’…Reality changes quickly. Three columns of light spout out of the planet. They mix. Plunge in the sand of planet: ‘I am the Earth which awaits the seed!’…Silver filaments emerge from spice. Create a rainbow…Dune becomes green…Dune is now a world illuminated, which crosses the galaxy, which leaves it, which gives it light – which is Consciousness – to all the universe.”

Far out.

Even better, was the cast:

Duke Leto – David Carradine.

The Insane Emperor – Salvador Dali (who said of his part, “It is completely necessary to see the Emperor making wee and excrement.” Although he insisted on using an anus double.)

Baron Harkonnen – Orson Welles.

Paul Atreides – Brontis Jodorowsky, the son of Jodorowsky. Jodorowsky writes that his son is perfect for the role because he:

“…was initiated at nine years of age by a legendary bodyguard – Jean-Pierre Vigneau – to the combat with the knife (of real engagements), karate, the art of archery… He received lessons from an almost true mentat – Michel de Roisin – who had an encyclopaedic brain… I remember to have seen him give to Brontis a lesson on the fable the Cicada and the Ant which lasted more than fifteen days…”

If Jodorowsky’s son can take a tutoring session that lasts 15 days and not jump out a window, then surely he could have handled the part of Paul Atreides.

The Benne Geserit Reverend Mother – the star of SUNSET BLVD, Gloria Swanson.

Feyd Rautha – the part of this feral killer would have gone to Mick Jagger. In Lynch’s version Feyd is played by Sting. This is like hiring Hootie of Hootie and the Blowfish to perform in a role previously written for Jimi Hendrix. Yes, both men are black but one is whiskey and the other is weak tea.

Lady Jessica – played by the daughter of Charlie Chaplin, Geraldine Chaplin, who was most recently seen in THE ORPHANAGE. At the time she looked like this:

Duncan Idaho – would be played by Alain Delon, the sexiest man in France. There were also rumors that another French pop icon, Johnny Hallyday, star of Johnnie To’s recent VENGEANCE, was involved with the production.

A page from Marvel’s trippy Dune comic.

The project ultimately fell apart because pretty much everyone working on it was insane (Jodorowsky would claim that all the big studios stole his DUNE ideas and recycled them in STAR WARS and ALIEN; Jodorowsky was also a bit paranoid) but Jodorowsky’s account of the near-making of the movie is more fun than anything in Lynch’s version.

More of the Dune comic.

Too often, science fiction in movies is all thrusting rocket phalluses and celebrations of the techno-military complex penetrating distant planets and blowing away their inhabitants. Meaning is reduced to a degraded, Manichaean infantilism where good and evil, light and dark, us and them are the only two options: you’re either with us and safe, or with them and dangerous. It’s like the way an infant sees the world: you’re either self, or you are the other. With a notable exception made for boobs full of milk.

Sci fi movies are all based on a fear of the other (PREDATOR, INDEPENDENCE DAY), a terror of sex and biological reproduction (ALIEN, INVASION OF THE BODYSNATCHERS) or celebrations of fascism (it’s no mistake that the most memorable character from STAR WARS is Darth Vader or that Lucas spent hundreds of millions of dollars giving us Vader’s backstory in three of his movies – let’s face it, the fascist Empire is far more shiny and seductive than anything the Rebel Alliance with its terrible hairdos and vague agenda has to offer). When movies deviate from these themes it’s only to celebrate the triumph of technology (ARMAGEDDON) or to fear it (THE MATRIX). Even worse, motion picture science fiction only speaks the language of colonialism: ships explore new worlds to bring back riches and fight hostile natives. Aliens are turned into racial avatars (every alien in ALIEN is interchangeable, as is every PREDATOR and so is every Stormtrooper in STAR WARS). Genocide becomes heroism and racism (assigning traits based solely on racial characteristics) becomes the norm. Even a supposedly “good” series like STAR TREK posits that all Klingons are warlike, all Ferengi are greedy and all Vulcans are logical. There are exceptions, but these large races are almost always given less diversity than humans, and the “good” Vulcans/Ferengi/Klingons are the ones who can reject their racial characteristics in order to be more “human” (read: compassionate, peaceful, emotional).

Jodorowsky’s DUNE would probably have been a giant mess, a massive farrago, a monumental boondoggle, but it also would have been a pro-sex, anti-militaristic, anti-imperialist hippie space opera. And that would have been very different than 90% of the sci fi that appears on the silver screen.

I leave you with Jodorowsky’s instructions for the look of the space ships he wanted in DUNE:

“I do not want that the man conquers space
In the ships of NASA
These concentration camps of the spirit
These gigantic freezers vomiting the imperialism
These slaughters of plundering and plunder
This arrogance of bronze and thirst
This eunuchoid science
Not the dribble of transistorised and riveted hulks
The divine one
The delirious one
The superb one
CHAOS
UNIVERSAL
I want magical entities, vibrating vehicles
To prolong to be to it abyss
Like fish of a timeless ocean. I want
Jewels, mechanics as perfect as the heart
Womb-ships anterooms
Rebirth into other dimensions
I want whore-ships driven
By the sperm of passionate ejaculations
In an engine of flesh
I want rockets complex and secret,
Humming-bird ornithopters,
Sipping the thousand-year-old nectar of dwarf stars… “

Whore-ships driven by the sperm of passionate ejaculations?

I would have bought a ticket.

(Read all of Jodorowsky’s account here)

You can see the entire Dune comic
over at this website. It’s worth it.