The Greatest Film Never Made: Jodorowsky's Dune
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Imagine a sci-fi epic starring Salvador Dali, Orson Welles and Mick Jagger. A soundtrack involving the likes of Pink Floyd. Designed by H.R. Giger, Mœbius and special effects by Dan O'Bannon. All orchestrated by one of the most infamous surrealist cult film directors of all time, Alejandro Jodorowsky. Imagine Jodorowsky's Dune, his attempt to bring the epic sci-fi novel of Frank Herbert to the screen. Before David Lynch tried and failed to do justice to the scale of novel, Jodorowsky had the insane vision of bringing together some of the most imaginative and creative people of the 1970s to create a master piece of cinema, that never was. A movie that despite never getting further than design and storyboard, has influenced many movies for the decades since. Without Jodorosky's Dune, there may never have been Alien, or Blade Runner, or many other movies that followed.
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Jodorowsky the avant-garde mad genius behind cult classics like El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973), began to work on his surreal adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune in 1975. He wanted to create a movie that was the equivalent of taking an LSD trip. Possibly a 20 hour LSD trip, as not even Jodorowsky himself can tell how truly massively epically long the movie would have been if it had been made. The monstrous book he had made of the storyboards he and Mœbius produced is legendary. An intricate shot-by-shot epic in itself, many movies that followed lifted elements from it directly. The light-saber scenes from Star Wars are in there, the POV of the Terminator is there too. As are scenes from Raiders Of the Lost Ark, and others. You could spend years searching subsequent movies for influences and direct copies of shots from Dune. the opening to the movie Contact, is much too similar to the proposed opening to Dune to be a coincidence for example. The creative people that Jodorowsky brought together went on to take their experiences of working on Dune, to weave their way through cinematic history in ways that could never have happened if it wasn't for the process of attempting to bring Dune to the screen.
The Creative Minds Behind Visualising Dune.
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Alejandro Jodorowsky - Chilean filmmaker, actor, writer, musician and avant-garde artist. His work first came to prominence in the early 70s, when his cult classic El Topo (1970) became one of the first ever midnight movies. A surreal acid trip of a western, starring Jodorowsky in the lead role. He followed it with the equally bizarre Holy Mountain in 1973. The underground success in the United States and commercial success in Europe set the stage for Jodorowsky to be able to make any movie he wanted. He chose to adapt the Frank Hebert novel, even though he had never read it. It was his vision and enthusiasm for the project that inspired some of the most creative people from around the world to come together to work on the production of the movie.
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Jean Giraud (Mœbius) - French artist, cartoonist, and writer who illustrated the storyboard for Dune, and designed the costumes along with Jodorowsky. Moebius went on to develop storyboards and concept designs to numerous sci-fi movies, including Alien (1979) by Ridley Scott, Tron (1982) by Disney, The Fifth Element (1997) by Luc Besson, and The Empire Strikes Back (1980). While working on Dune in 1975, he worked on a short story comic written by Dan O'Bannon called "The Long Tomorrow". The comic has been hailed as the pre-cursor to cyberpunk, and was a direct influence of the look of Blade Runner (1982).
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Dan O'Bannon - Director, Screenwriter and actor, O'Bannon was brought on-board Dune because of his special effects work on the cult sci-fi film Dark Star (1974), which he worked on with his film-school friend John Carpenter. After the failure of Dune to make it to the screen, O'Bannon was left broke and homeless. That was until he came up with the idea for Alien (1979), which the making of brought back many of the Dune team, including Moebius and most famously H.R. Giger. O'Bannon continued to write, in 1990 he collaborated with Ronald Shusett who he'd work with on Alien, to make re-teamed to make Total Recall (1990) based on a Phillip K. Dick short story. O'Bannon also wrote and directed the 1985 zombie cult classic Return Of The Living Dead.
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H. R. Giger - Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor and set designer, most well known for his design work on the movie Alien (1979). Giger did design work on Dune, especially for the Harkonnen castle, which was referenced in the shape of a mountain in the 2012 sci-fi movie Prometheus directed by Ridley Scott. Also the designs he did for Dune were a major influence in a Japanese commercial for Pioneer. If it wasn't for the development of Dune, Giger would have never met O'Bannon, and we wouldn't have the cultural icon that is the Alien from the movie franchise. Giger's darkly gothic biomechanical designs have gone on the influence generations of artists and filmmakers. He too is held up as an influence on what became known as cyberpunk by the writer William Gibson.
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Chris Foss - British artist and sci-fi illustrator. He is best known for his sci-fi book covers and the black and white illustrations for the original editions of The Joy of Sex. Foss's iconic book cover artwork, has adorned the covers of some of the greatest sci-fi novelists in history. He was brought on-board to design the many spaceships for the movie Dune. He later worked on the unrealised spaceship design for Ridley Scott's Alien (1979), and a year earlier set design for 1978's Superman. Foss has also done set design and imaginings of spaceships for movies like Flash Gordon (1980), AI: Artificial Intelligence (2000) before Kubrick's death and most recently Guardians Of The Galaxy (2014).
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The Fantastically Surreal World Of Roland Topor - French surrealist writer and artist, more well known outside of France for his visual design of the cult animation Fantastic Planet (1973).
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