"Dune" spaceship concept by British artist Chris Foss
- In exchange for a daily gourmet meal, Orson Welles was going to play Baron Harkonnen.
- Mick Jagger agreed to play Feyd.
- Salvador Dali signed on to play the mad Emperor Shaddam IV.
- Pink Floyd, over a meal of hamburgers, was convinced to contribute to the soundtrack.
- Moebius drew the storyboards.
- H.R. Giger designed the Harkonnen Castle.
- Alejandro Jodorowsky, the director of El Topo and The Holy Mountain, was going to direct.
And it almost, almost,
happened.
Premiering last month at the Telluride Film Festival, Jodorowsky’s
Dune tells the unbelievable story of how Dune was almost made in the early 70s.
In 1974 a French consortium obtained the film rights to the
novel, and asked Alejandro Jodorowsky to direct.
Jodorowsky (left) with Sardaukar (middle)
Jodorowsky being Jodorowsky, he didn’t see this as a mere
directing project. This was a spiritual quest, and he needed Holy Warriors to
help him make "the most important picture in the history of humanity." (Jodorowsky never thinks small.) Although now in his early 80s, Jodorowsky comes through in the
interviews as an intelligent, cheerful, charismatic (and somewhat twisted)
personality large enough to charm and seduce the best talent of the day to join
his crusade.
Jodorowsky and the French backers spent an enormous amount of time and money in preproduction coming up with the look and feel of the movie. They hired British artist Chris Foss to work on spaceship and hardware design (he'd painted a number of science fiction book covers), and French illustrator/comic book artist Jean Giraud (AKA Moebius, one of the creators of Métal Hurlant, known in this country as Heavy Metal) to draw character sketches and the storyboards. H.R. Giger began working on the Harkonnen Castle (based on Moebius' storyboards). It was all compiled into an immense, full-color book of conceptual art and the complete storyboards that was bigger than a phone book. Copies of this book were given to all the major studios. Sadly, only two copies remain--and Jodorowsky owns one of them.
Jodorowsky and the French backers spent an enormous amount of time and money in preproduction coming up with the look and feel of the movie. They hired British artist Chris Foss to work on spaceship and hardware design (he'd painted a number of science fiction book covers), and French illustrator/comic book artist Jean Giraud (AKA Moebius, one of the creators of Métal Hurlant, known in this country as Heavy Metal) to draw character sketches and the storyboards. H.R. Giger began working on the Harkonnen Castle (based on Moebius' storyboards). It was all compiled into an immense, full-color book of conceptual art and the complete storyboards that was bigger than a phone book. Copies of this book were given to all the major studios. Sadly, only two copies remain--and Jodorowsky owns one of them.
Character sketches by Moebius
I’m not a big fan of the modern push in documentaries to use CGI to sex up still images, but Jodorowsky’s Dune uses this technology well by animating Moebius’ storyboards—not a lot, but just a bit—to give you a sense of how the film would have played out. And the effect is riveting. You walk out of the documentary feeling pleased, entertained, exhilarated, and sad—sad that such an amazing vision never got made into a movie.
I’ll not spoil the surprise as to why that incarnation of the movie never made it into production, but it is heartening to see that the effort wasn’t a total waste. Some of the proto-Dune alumni (Giger, artist Chris Foss, writer Dan O’Bannon) were later reunited in the late 70s to work on another science fiction film—Alien.
This documentary is a fun ride, and I heartily recommend it. It looks like it's still making the festival rounds, but keep an eye out for it.
