The Greatest Film Never Made
The story of Dune, a 1965 Sci-Fi novel which releases this year, and its wild history as the Greatest Film Never Made
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One of the most eagerly anticipated films of 2021, based on American author Frank Herbert’s 1965 Sci-Fi novel Dune, is set to be released on streaming platform HBO Max, later this year, months after being delayed because of Covid. Its trailer, featuring a background track of Eclipse by Pink Floyd and the movie scored by the legendary Hans Zimmer, has made fans and critics alike smack their lips at the prospect of its release. Check out the trailer here, it’s pretty awesome 👇🏻
However, few people know that Dune was actually almost made in 1975, by crazed Chilean-French filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, and the story of it is so mind-boggling, many critics term it as “The Greatest Film Never Made”.
Jodorowsky was already a cult figure of sorts, having made El Topo, which was a tale of a wandering Mexcian bandit played by Jodorowsky himself, in search of spiritual enlightenment, wherein he is killed by his confronters only to be resurrected to live in a cave with deformed people. The film ran for several weeks in New York’s midnight theatres, drawing the attention of John Lennon, who thought very highly of it and convinced the president of The Beatles’ parent company Apple Corps to distribute it in the United States.
Buoyed by the critical success of El Topo, Jodorowsky carved a niche for himself by creating a sub-genre known as Acid Westerns and went on to make Holy Mountain, another complex story that featured a man credited as "The Thief" and equated with Jesus Christ, a mystical alchemist played by Jodorowsky, seven powerful businesspeople representing seven planets, a religious training regimen of spiritual rebirth, and a quest to the top of a holy mountain for the secret of immortality.
A dispute between the President of Apple Corps and Jodorowsky meant that El Topo and Holy Mountain were pulled from being made available to the public in the United States for 30 years, a move slammed publicly by Jodorowsky.
He began looking for his next creative project, and in his own words, Jodorowsky said,
“ I wanted to create a picture that altered the minds of young people and gave them the hallucinogenic feeling of taking LSD, without actually taking it.”
Jodorowsky stumbled upon Dune, the novel by Frank Herbert, which was a story of a distant future in which Planets will be controlled by a bureaucratic system and computers are not allowed to exist. It revolved around a young boy, Paul Atreides, whose family is given the stewardship of the planet of Arrakis- an inhospitable and desert wasteland, but with a precious spice called ‘Melange’, which extends life and enhances mental abilities.
Without even reading it, he convinced French producer Michel Seydoux to make it, and Seydoux who loved Jodorowsky’s Acid Westerns, immediately said yes, without perhaps comprehending the complexity of what Jodorowsky had in mind.
Jodorowsky fell in love with the idea of creating this visual masterpiece of Dune, and began drawing storyboards and writing a script around Herbert’s novel, and drew roughly 3000 storyboards, which depicted, shot by shot of how he envisioned Dune on the silver screen.
However, this was just on paper, and to make his vision a reality, Jodorowsky embarked on a journey to recruit what he described as, “Spiritual Warriors”, to be a part of his visual fantasy, unlike anything that the World had ever seen.
They started with Special Effects and approached possibly the biggest special effects person in Hollywood at the time, Douglas Trumbull, who was behind movies such as Star Trek, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Blade Runner among countless others. Jodorowsky just didn’t get along with Trumbull claiming he was too technical and not spiritual enough to embark on this journey of Dune, also claiming that apparently, Trumbull took 40 phone calls in between their meeting. They moved on and finalized Dan O’Bannon, who worked briefly in special effects on Star Wars.
Now armed with his special effects “Warrior”, Jorodowsky shifted focus onto casting and finalized David Carradine to play Leto, Paul’s father. Carradine later in his career went onto play Bill in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Volume 1 and 2, and apparently gulped 40 Vitamin A pills the first time he met Jodorowsky. The eccentricity was a perfect match and Jodorowsky had found his Spiritual Warrior.
Pink Floyd was chosen to provide the music for Dune, with Jodorowsky in love with their recent album, Dark Side of the Moon, and its symbolic meaning. Soon, the other parts of the film were cast with Jodorowsky’s own son Brontis cast to play Paul Atreides, Legendary Spanish artist Salvador Dali playing Emperor Shaddam IV, Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones roped in for Feyd Rautha- the nephew of Baron Harkonnen, and famed filmmaker Orson Welles who co-wrote and directed the all time classic “Citizen Kane” for Baron Harkonnen.
Starstudded was an understatement for this cast, and soon enough, the budget for the film started going overboard. With the project still in pre-production, it had already blown $2 million and Dali alone being paid $100,000 per hour, the highest salary at the time in Hollywood, along with bringing his own vision of having Burning Giraffes and Elephants on set, meant that there was no end to sight for the estimated $15 million films. In comparison, George Lucas’ Star Wars was made for $11 million.
Red flags were flying high for all the major studios that were pitched the project by Jodorowsky and Seydoux, with the executives wanting a 1.5-hour film for the theatres and Jodorowsky demanding it to be made into an epic 20-hour saga. Creative differences meant that the Studios wanted to change aspects of Dune, that Jodorowsky was not willing to give up. They were afraid of the length of imagination of Jodorowsky and were simply not willing to take the risk of working with this genius madman that the media at the time portrayed him to be.
Eventually, just before the cast was set to fly to Algeria to begin production, they got the call that it was canceled. Jodorowsky’s dream was over and Dune was not going to be made as no studio was willing to finance the project.
It came as a shock to everyone and Jodorowsky himself went into a shell, holing up in O’ Banon’s apartment for weeks. Eventually, the copy rights to Dune expired and were snapped up by Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis and David Lynch was roped in to direct it.
The 1984 film bombed at the Box Office, grossing $30 million out of a $40 million budget, with negative reviews from critics, including Jodorowsky, who claimed he could not bear to watch his dream being made by someone else but after seeing it, became happy as it was so awful.
The truth is, Jodorowsky’s Dune found its place in almost all Sci-Fi films that came out after his failed attempt. The storyboards made by him were converted into a comic book called The Incal and some of the shot selections featured in legendary Sci-Fi films such as the sword fight in Star Wars, a Robot scanning his surroundings in The Terminator, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Alien, and The Matrix among countless others were inspired by the 3000 odd storyboards that Jodorowsky had created.
In 2013, a documentary was released called, “Jodorowsky’s Dune” which goes through the entire story of how it was probably the “Greatest Film Never Made” and yet the legend of Jodorowsky’s Dune finds itself in almost all Sci-Fi films after that. Check out the trailer to the documentary here 👇🏻
It is honestly one of the most inspiring documentaries I have ever seen. Jodorowsky was truly ahead of his times, and some of the concepts that he wanted to cover in his version of the Dune, such as interplanetary travel and mind-altering consciousness have been made popular by countless Sci-Fi films thereon. Even the fact that he was ridiculed for making 20 hour-long films, is now a norm as most TV Shows on streaming platforms are created in this format to be binge-watched at a stretch.
Will the latest version of Dune live up to Jodorwosky’s vision? There’s only one way to find out, catch it in theatres near you and HBO Max in October 2021. So long!
P.S- If you want to watch the full version of the Documentary, catch it here: http://www.documentarymania.com/player.php?title=Jodorowsky%20Dune
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