Jodorowsky's Dune

If you love movies and/or eccentric characters, you simply must see "Jodorowsky's Dune." It's one of the best documentaries about the (un)making of a film I've ever seen. It's a terrific documentary and a thoroughly fascinating character study. It covers the story of a feature film that Alejandro Jodorowsky never made. He came close to making an adaptation of Frank Herbert's sci-fi novel, Dune, before David Lynch did it in the 1980s. Jodorowsky was a very successful cult film director during the '70s and made films like El Topo, The Holy Mountain, and Santa Sangre. When you listen to Jodorowsky talk for this length of time, you come to understand how he got his films made: he simply hypnotized people! ;-) Although it was never actually made, Jodorowsky's sci-fi film went on to influence later sci-fi movies like "Alien," "Blade Runner," and even "Star Wars." And it also opened the door for the film careers of people like Dan O'Bannon, Jean Giraud, and H.R. Giger, who later worked on Ridley Scott's "Alien." "Jodorowsky's Dune" gets a big thumbs up from me! I highly recommend this documentary!

This film feels like they had enough material for 15 minutes, and so they filmed some other random guys and crammed in as much insulting filler as possible to waste the viewer's time. The first red flag is the film's opening. Most documentaries start right off with footage of the subject you're here to see, or with thought-provoking voiceover to get the ball rolling. But this one starts with a slow, SLOW, boring credits sequence that's just names on screen intercut with some nondescript folders on a bookshelf. No voiceover, just cheesy "dramatic" music. The first thing this film does is waste your time, and sadly that continues to be its main purpose. The interviews with Jodorowsky himself are the meatiest part of the documentary, and he basically just fawns over himself and tells you that this movie would've been cool. He doesn't go into detail about the technical aspects or the nuances, he just praises himself and occasionally gives an extremely vague description of a gimmicky scene that he had in mind. He doesn't say anything about the craft of filmmaking or the process of how he would have actually made this movie. The amount of information this documentary tells you could be summed up in a single-page article. This film is, plain and simple, for easily impressed people who don't know anything about filmmaking or Jodorowsky. One of its interminable filler segments is an incredibly lazy and superficial summary of Jodorowsky's filmography; this sequences would only be useful to someone who's never even heard of the man before. The filmmakers assume you are a complete know-nothing who will be impressed by the barest minimum of work, research and effort on their part. The most inane time-waster was an absolutely eye-rolling sequence where some guy tells a pathetically dull story about how Jodorowsky gave him some pot laced with hallucinagens. It's the same story every sheltered white guy tells about the first time he took drugs, where he pathetically talks about this entry-level experience like it was something magically unique that never happened to anyone else. And this loser's story is set to a sequence where they just animated his words (like a first-year animation student's project whipped up in one night) because they had absolutely no worthwhile footage to show you. If you're skeptical about my theory that this film was intended for easily-impressed people who know nothing about the field, a quick glance at the positive reviews validates my assertion. It speaks volumes when reviewers on IMDB call the film "spiritual enlightenment" while admitting they've never seen any of Jodorowsky's other films. If the only movies you ever watch are daytime TV and anything creative or interesting is foreign to you, then you will be impressed by this lazy documentary.

What an inspirational and meaningful story. When I first started watching this film, I thought it was a story about a director but, it is completely different, unexpected and unique. It is the marvelous story about Jodorowsky's Dune journey. This documentary has tons to offer if you are a sci-fi fan or simply interested in inspirational stories. It is thrilling, funny and interesting, especially for cinema enthusiasts like me. I also believe that anyone who loves classics will enjoy it as well. The documentary is unique and different, in its own way. The story is about a "French Steven Spielberg" named Alejandro Jodorowsky who made famous and mind-blowing films that always had a deeper meaning behind them. He had a dream of making a movie based on the famous book "Dune" by Frank Herbert. We join this extremely inspiring adventure where he tries to make this film but sadly fails after two years of hard work. Fortunately, his work is not wasted as it became the basis for many sci-fi movies that followed thus making Jodorowsky's dream become bigger than he could have ever imagined. I absolute loved this documentary. The angles of the camera are very different, never fixed on one person or one place, which makes it look like you are there in the same room with the people that are talking. It includes narration by people that helped make the film which fits really nicely. The director also includes clips from some of the films that used some of Jodorowsky's ideas to support what the narrator is discussing. That made me want to watch those films. The layout is unique and clean because it shows the passing of time. Since the film was never made, they animated the drawings to give you an idea of how it would have look had it been finished. That, in turn, made me want to watch it over and over again. The story inspired me and will inspire others. My favorite part is when they talk about the very opening scene. The scene opens in a galaxy than zooms in on a specific area. For the 70s, this was very advanced and hard to do. Since they drew it, the animators made it come to life in the documentary. Also, at the end, the film shows how this work inspired other producers to create similar shots. There is a secret meaning, which I love, and that is advanced and was never before done. This movie has a lot of adult content and terminology so I recommend it for ages 13 to 18 and give it 5 out of 5 stars. Reviewed by Gerry O., KIDS FIRST! Film Critic. For more film reviews, go to kidsfirst dot org.

This documentary chronicles the exceptional history of the 70s movie version of Frank Hebert's Dune by Alejandro Jodorwosky, a film that was never actually made. It gives you a short filmography of Jodorowsky and then leads you through his vision of the movie he was going to make. However, Jodorowsky's Dune would not have been a movie version of Frank Herbert's novel, but rather a re-imagination of the basics of the book in the mind of an avantgarde director who himself said that he wanted to make movies for people who wanted to experience LSD, but didn't want to take the actual drug, and Jodorowsky acknowledges the former fact with the words: "I was raping Frank Herbert... but with love." People in this documentary keep saying that the film would have been ahead of its time. This may be true in some way. However, I am more confident in saying the following: It would have been one of the worst movies ever made. They show you Jodorowsky's finished costume designs and storyboards, and it looks intriguingly weird at best, and boastfully horrible at worst. The colors you will see are truly like an LSD trip. Some of Jodorowsky's crew went on to make Alien, and his costume design and color scheme (i.e. use all the colors there are) can be seen in Flash Gordon. Jodorowsky says that when he saw David Lynch's 1984 version of Dune, he was glad because the movie was so much more terrible than what he would have produced, even though he felt sorry for Lynch. Yet I believe that there is no way on earth that Lynch's movie could ever be worse than Jodorowsky's vision. Jodorowsky's film would have been a bastardization of Herbert's work for the sake of an attempt to, for lack of better words, "enlighten the world" according to Jodorowsky's own understanding. However, his casting choices were, admittedly, inspired: Mick Jagger as Feyd Rautha? Udo Kier as Piter De Vries? Hell yeah. His own son as Paul? Well, I don't know him, but Jodorowsky made him undergo rigorous physical training for 2 years before the movie was to go into production, and then it never did! The best scene in "Jodorowsky's Dune" is when the Chilean-French director rants about Hollywood film making and how money controls everything. Amazingly honest and true.

Jordorowsky has been my favorite director for a long time although I knew little about him as a person. This movie made me really like him. Really inspiring movie. Back in the pre internet days when you wanted to find someone you had to go out and find them via an agent of just word of mouth. The people Jordorowsky enlists are insane: Salvador Dali, Mick Jagger, Pink Floyd, Orson Wells. I did not realize this project involved Dan O'bannon (RIP), his window gives a nice interview. Eventually he and HR Giger (RIP) go on to do Alien so everything works out for them. Moebius (RIP) is still one of the most under rated artists. Also a nice rant about money ruining the art of film by Jordo who sounds like he could have gotten green lighted if shortened it to 1.5 hours. Greatest film never made. Fantastic documentary, made me want to go out and direct. Such a positive and life affirming doc, if it had been me I would have been crushed, good to see he still has the fight in him. I highly recommend Dune.

. . . or the biggest theft of intellectual property in world history? I'm sure the producers of JODOROWSKY'S DUNE and the 17 "talking heads" interviewed here had a legion of lawyers telling them what NOT to say about the crime committed against ripped-off movie writer\director\star Alejandro Jodorowsky, who SHOULD be as rich and famous as George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg put together. In 1975 he entrusted meticulously complete storyboards, costume, and art direction full-color mock-ups to all the major Tinsel Town studios. It's not hard to read between the lines of DUNE and know that each studio made lots of photo copies BEFORE returning this enormous Pre-production book to Alejandro with polite rejection memos. While Jodorowsky's proposed film adaptation of novelist Frank Herbert's first DUNE book starring Mick Jagger, Salvador Dali, Orson Welles, and David Carradine was scuttled by Hollywood, shot-for-shot scenes, costumes, spaceships, and robots were stolen wholesale and incorporated into STAR WARS, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, ALIEN, TERMINATOR, PREDATOR, THE MATRIX, BLADE RUNNER, CONTACT, FLASH GORDON, MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, PROMETHEUS, and scores of other flicks by these same hypocritical conglomerates suing the pants off poor people for "illegally" copying, downloading, or otherwise "pirating" the government-bribing pirates themselves. Ironically, in addition to appropriating the life work of a naive foreign visionary, film historians have voted the David Lynch-directed misbegotten on-the-cheap version of DUNE released in 1984 as "the film most likely to make the Angels weep in Heaven."

We saw this last week (April 2014). I wanted to go because I'd read Dune (many years ago); because I knew that the De Laurentiis version was pretty bad; and because I had no idea who this Jodorowsky is. The documentary starts by reviewing AJ's earlier films. To say that he was then a surrealist would not be an exaggeration. Then it takes up his plan to film Dune; it follows his efforts - successful - to get the best artists, technicians and actors to work on the film. On the list: Dan O'Bannon, H. R. Giger, Chris Foss, Mick Jagger, Pink Floyd, .... He wanted Orson Welles to play the Emperor. He tracked Welles down in Paris - eating at his favorite restaurant - and though he wasn't interested in doing any more movies, AJ promised him that if he took the job, AJ would hire the restaurant's chef and OW could eat as he wished. OW accepted. He wanted Salvador Dali for another role. SD wanted $100,000 an hour - so he could be the highest paid actor. AJ asked the script writer how long SD would be on screen - about 4 or 5 minutes, total. So AJ went back to SD and offered him $100,000 a minute. AJ is a fascinating, interesting, engaging, complex man - the kind that the world could use more of. The interviews with Giger, Foss, Dali, O'Bannon (we only hear audio clips - he died before the film was made) are fascinating (Giger is a bit older than the last time I saw his picture). In terms of a single-minded effort to realize a dream, it reminds me of another documentary, "Tim's Vermeer" (check IMDb). Tim Jenison takes 3 or 4 years of his life to show - by doing it himself - that Vermeer might have painted "The Music Lesson" using a form of optical projection. He goes as far as building a perfect replica of Vermeer's room - in his warehouse in Texas, learning to read Dutch, going to see the original in Buckingham Palace).

If you've ever dreamed of making a movie, this story is the dream. Except, despite Chilean-French filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky's epic drive and commitment to make "Dune", the sci-fi novel by Frank Herbert, a reality, Hollywood could not bend to allow the film to go ahead. It's truly unbelievable that any of Jodo's dream becomes a reality in every way. Until, unfortunately, he dreams too big. And he blows it. But his legacy continues. Not only does Hollywood use his amazing team of artists, they use shot after shot from the bible he created. With interviews with director Nicolas Winding Refn and basically everyone involved in the project, the world of Jodo is laid bare - and it's a breathtaking sight. Director Frank Pavich simply lets Jodo talk - and that is what makes the documentary such a success. The piece also features amazing animations of Jodo's storyboards, that bring his version of "Dune" to the big screen at last - proving that his vision was indeed epic and beautiful. There is a sense of campaign here, in that "wouldn't it be great if someone would fund this movie now?" and Jodo quips how ripe it is for a feature-length animation. Let's hope this happens, because if it does, it would change the way we see art on the big screen forever. A stunning film about passion, obsession and life itself that has to be watched by anyone involved or with a love of filmmaking.

I watched this last night. As documentaries go about a doomed project, it was okay. Interesting in places with interesting characters and a decent story. As for failed projects, I am sure there are many. but why did this failure merit a documentary, the reason of course it was connected to Dune. In literature there are few SciFi books that invoke depth of feelings and reverence that Dune does, when Scifi fans first read this book, it becomes an event and a book you never forget. It's epochal in scale, it not only creates a universe but a world which even now seems possible and could actually exist. Although that book and its follow ups have great set pieces of a desert planet, giant worms, guild highliners, great characters, battles, spirituality, and other ideas that make your head zing. Ultimately the book is about human beings and their loyalties, their loves, hates, but ultimately the books are about power and power is the crux of it. If an adaptation focuses to much on the world Herbert created and forget that,the project wont work. I first read the books when I was 15. again when I was 30 and recently I listened to the audiobooks. Each time I noticed something new in the tales and it was like visiting the saga for the first time. I didn't mind the David Lynch effort. But it was to compressed, camp and lacked story in favour of spectacle. The TV series was better but ham in places, too cheap and it omitted too much detail, it lacked a gravitas and balance. If they are going to successfully put the saga to screen a HBO series like Game of thrones is the only way to go. As to what I think Jodorowsky's Dune would have been like. I believe us Dune fans were saved from Jodorowky's "rape" of the story. From his creation of Duke Leto being castrated and Paul conceived by a drop of the dukes blood in some act of magic, to the end of "his" story, where the universe achieves cosmic consciousness from Paul's death. Then using his own son to star as Paul, which to me is more evidence of self indulgence. To spite the reverence some of the contributors say about what could have been, I shout "The emperor has no clothes" this film would have been complete and utter incomprehensible, unwatchable shyte. LSD or self indulgence do NOT make good films, so thank you Hollywood in your wisdom for not supporting this abortion of the original novel as it would have been absolute dribble. I give it a 7/10 for the way it provoked me.

If you loved El Topo and The Holy Mountain in the 1970s, even if you think that you've now grown up and put such mystical mumbo-jumbo behind you, you've still got to see this documentary about a movie that was never made. How, you may ask, can a film be made about another film that never existed? Well, in the tale spun by Alejandro (and his tale- telling, even in his broken English, is as fine as that of Spalding Gray), someone told him about the book Dune, by Frank Herbert, and, at a time when producers were willing to shower Alejandro with money, Alejandro said, "That will be my next movie." He had not read the book. It's not clear from the movie that he EVER read the book. But he went about hiring the best illustrators to create the most fantastic storyboard ever made, a huge volume the size of an artbook merged with the Unabridged Oxford, that illustrated the complete film, beginning to end. It only roughly corresponded to the novel, but to Alejandro, that did not matter. He told the story that he wanted to tell, about how one messianic figure, Paul (who would be depicted by Alejandro's son), would liberate, not just the planet Arrakus, but the entire universe. And all of this would have been depicted visually with special effects, in 1974. In Alejandro's tale, this film was $5 million away from being made. And it would have starred David Carradine, Orson Welles, and Salvador Dali, Mick Jagger among others. Alejandro's tales of finding these various stars and offering the roles are fantastical in themselves, and highly dubious, but for my to retell the tales here would spoil some of the best parts of the movie. I attended the movie with someone who had not seen Alejandro's movies, nor had he read Dune (although it's on his must-read list), but he loved the movie because (1) it's a great tale, and (2) the comic book artists and special effects people that Alejandro employed, and who were working on the film when they pulled the plug, have gone on to great fame in other films and in comic art. And my friend was mostly nonexistent in the 1970s. I remember Alejandro coming to speak at my college in 1971, and he was spellbinding, and he is still spellbinding in this film.