The casual movie fan has likely never heard of Alejandro Jodorowsky. The Chilean-French director is well known to students of film for his surreal and bizarre films FANDO Y LIS, EL TOPO, SANTA SANGRE, and HOLY MOUNTAIN. With fans like John Lennon, Jodorowsky’s unique style has been a favorite of cult cinema for the last forty years. But, it could be the film he never made that is his most famous project.
Back in 1974, Jodorowsky began an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s DUNE that was to involve Orson Welles, Salvador Dali, H.R. Giger, Mick Jagger, David Carradine, Jean Giraud, and Pink Floyd. The project became a massive undertaking that collapsed under it’s own budget and scope before the film went on to be made by David Lynch. In the years since it was in pre-production, Jodorowsky’s DUNE has become the movie everyone wishes had been made.
Documentary director Frank Pavich has put together a chronicle of the movie called JODOROWSKY’S DUNE featuring interviews with the 84-year-old filmmaker, whose latest movie, THE DANCE OF REALITY, will also be hitting screens this year. Just watching the trailer makes me sad that this movie never happened. We all know that Lynch’s version was a bastardization of the beloved novel and there have been numerous failed attempts to make a studio version since. But, there is always hope that someday we will see DUNE the way it was meant to be seen. I have to agree with Jodorowsky that maybe that means a hallicinatory hellscape version.
JODOROWSKY’S DUNE opens March 21st. Check out the trailer below as well as the clip for THE DANCE OF REALITY.