Jodorowsky On His Unmade "Dune"

The idea that 1984's sci-fi epic/cash-sucking black hole Dune starred Sting and was scored by Toto when it could have involved Alejandro Jodorowsky (Santa Sangre, El Topo, Holy Mountain), Salvador Dali, H.R. Giger, and scoring by Magma is one of the best reasons for cinephiles to thud their heads repeatedly against hard surfaces and curse the Hollywood machine. Arthur Magazine's blog just put up a few postings on this, including an interview with Jod on the prep work he did before getting booted from the project, why he felt it was important for Dali to get $100,000 an hour to play the lead in Dune, Giger's work, and some of the fantastic spaceship designs Chris Foss worked on:

“Dune had to be made. But what kind of spaceships to use? Certainly not the degenerate and cold offspring of present day American automobiles and submarines, the very antithesis of art, usually seen in science fiction films, including 2001. No! I wanted magical entities, vibrating vehicles, like fish that swim and have their being in the mythological deeps of the surrounding ocean. The ‘galactic’ ships of North American technocracy are a mouse-gray insult to the divine, therefore delirious, chaos of the universe. I wanted jewels, machine-animals, soul-mechanisms. Sublime as snow crystals, myriad-faceted fly eyes, butterfly pinions. Not giant refrigerators, transistorised and riveted hulks; bloated with imperialism, pillage, arrogance and eunuchoid science."

More on this Dune Info page as well, and here's some Real Audio (played on WFMU) of an excerpted segment from one of Jodorowsky's most incredible films, 1973's the Holy Mountain.

Comments

[bruce]

After finally reading Dune this past summer, I went t olook about the lost footage in David Lynch's version and came across all the Alejandro Jodorowsky info. What really makes me laugh is that he never read the book and did not ever plan on looking at the source material at all

[Simon A.]

Sorry, no. Should have been John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon, with a decent budget.

[Bill W]

It's been over 20 years, but I still wish *I* had never read the book...

[Walkathon]

If you think Jodorowsky's "Dune" was a pipe dream, you still can't get legit/decent DVD copies of "El Topo" and "Holy Mountain" in the States. End grumble.

[ferro]

Excuse me!! Carpenter and O'bannon???
errrr!! I've just bought it here in Mexico on DVD.
... the book is ok, but not sublime, and Lynch's version... well, Ill just keep on dreaming that Jodorowsky film the version, or give us a comic. ANYTHING.