The Greatest Movie Never Made: Jodorowsky’s Dune
By Bird Wanruyi
Hans Ulrich Obrist, the renowned curator, once initiated a project called AUP: Agency of Unrealized Projects. This initiative was dedicated to collecting and exhibiting artworks that artists, for various reasons, were unable to complete. Obrist observed that while architects’ unbuilt projects were frequently showcased, artists’ “unfinished works” rarely saw the light of day.
The reasons for a project’s abandonment are diverse. A common cause is running out of funds mid-production, a predicament that affects both architectural endeavors and artistic creations. In our current era, there’s a prevalent admiration for execution, often celebrating creators who compromise to “get things done.” However, the art world’s graveyard holds treasures that silently resist the supremacy of utility.
The Unlikely Visionary Behind Dune
You might be familiar with David Lynch’s Dune, but this adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel wasn’t initially Lynch’s vision.
David Lynch’s Dune
Had Dune been filmed according to the original plan, it would have been a star-studded masterpiece featuring surrealist painter Salvador Dalí, director Orson Welles, rock star Mick Jagger, and actor David Carradine. The soundtrack would have been composed by progressive rock bands Pink Floyd and Magma, with set designs by H.R. Giger (of Alien fame) and French comic artist Mœbius. The individual who brought this eclectic group together was Alejandro Jodorowsky, the Franco-Chilean director mentioned at the beginning of this article.
El Topo
Without Frank Pavich’s 2013 documentary, Jodorowsky’s Dune, our perception of Jodorowsky might have remained limited to his earlier works, El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973). Even those unfamiliar with these films have likely heard of their legendary status within the realm of cult cinema.
From Cult Classics to Unfulfilled Dreams
El Topo garnered the attention of John Lennon during its midnight screenings in New York. Lennon persuaded Allen Klein, the head of The Beatles’ Apple Records, to officially distribute the film in the United States and invest one million dollars in Jodorowsky’s next project, The Holy Mountain.
Subsequently, Klein requested that Jodorowsky adapt the sadomasochistic classic The Story of O into a film. Jodorowsky, a staunch feminist at the time, refused and even fled the United States to avoid the project. In retaliation, Klein shelved El Topo and The Holy Mountain for three decades.
The Holy Mountain
El Topo and The Holy Mountain, particularly the latter, are quintessential products of the American psychedelic culture of the 1960s and 70s, brimming with unconventional surreal imagery and raw, visceral textures. Like many cult films, they appeal to the senses rather than the intellect. It was an era when artists commonly used LSD, a culture predicated on the notion that “the human brain isn’t enough.”
While the fantastical nature of The Holy Mountain is remarkable, it feels like a product of its time. Jodorowsky’s Dune reveals that his ambitions extended far beyond. Had Dune been realized, El Topo and The Holy Mountain would likely be viewed as experimental works preceding the artist’s magnum opus.
Concept art for Dune
Jodorowsky approached the preparation of Dune with a religious fervor. He was capable of berating Pink Floyd members for their perceived lack of vision, accusing them of failing to recognize the opportunity to create “the most important film score in human history.” He chased Dalí across three countries to persuade the eccentric surrealist to participate. Like Steve Jobs, he possessed his own “reality distortion field.” Unlike Jobs, however, Jodorowsky’s envisioned masterpiece ultimately fell apart.
If you were a Hollywood studio executive, would you greenlight a 14-hour sci-fi film by a Chilean director whose previous film had a budget of only $1 million? In the 1970s, no one dared to take that risk.
Concept art for Dune
A Glimpse into What Could Have Been
I watched Jodorowsky’s Dune at the Film Forum, a historic art-house cinema in New York, this past March. The documentary primarily consists of interviews with the octogenarian Jodorowsky and members of the Dune production team, supplemented by a wealth of sketches and materials from the film’s preparation.
Jodorowsky’s thick accent necessitated subtitles, but it also complemented his unreserved and passionate mode of expression. Recounting the censorship of his early film, Fando y Lis, in Mexico, he stated:
“In Mexico at the time, young directors had to obtain approval from the old directors’ union to make a film. I said, ‘What? You need approval to make art? Artists must be free! I’m going to make my film!’”
Concept art for Dune
Statements like this, and the one quoted at the beginning of this article, elicited laughter from the audience throughout the film. Whether you were a longtime fan of Jodorowsky or had simply Googled him before the screening, you likely wouldn’t have anticipated such an enjoyable viewing experience. After all, this is a director who once used forced perspective to depict pigs being pulled from an actress’s vagina (Fando y Lis). Blood, violence, pornography, blasphemy, and parody are all to be expected.
Dune, however, is different. Although the film was never made, Jodorowsky’s Dune reveals a clear shift in Jodorowsky’s approach. He remains a control freak, but he has learned to delegate and trust.
If you possess enough of a reality distortion field to bring together Dalí, Orson Welles, Mick Jagger, Pink Floyd, Magma, Giger, and Mœbius, you must allow them sufficient freedom.
Jodorowsky’s management of these masters during the Dune preparations resembled Miles Davis’s approach to his band of jazz virtuosos in the 1970s. Just as Keith Jarrett, John McLaughlin, and Chick Corea eventually established their own careers, the members of the Dune team and its materials blossomed in various directions after the project’s dissolution.
Concept art for Dune
The Legacy of an Unfinished Vision
This is the central message of the documentary: Jodorowsky’s Dune is the greatest “unfinished film” in history. Pavich compares Mœbius’s sketches for Dune and Giger’s set designs to the visual elements of later classics, including Star Wars, Alien, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and even Prometheus.
According to Pavich and Jodorowsky, Dune, though stillborn, has had its spirit disseminated throughout cinema. (In Jodorowsky’s words, “Hollywood is using my team!”) What if Jodorowsky’s Dune had been made in the 1970s? According to the interviewees in Pavich’s film, it might have defined late 1970s sci-fi pop culture instead of Star Wars, and the history of cinema might have unfolded differently.
Concept art for Dune
History cannot be rewritten. No matter how remarkable we imagine Jodorowsky’s Dune to be, in the real world, he remains a “cult director” defined by El Topo and The Holy Mountain. While it’s tempting to mock Hollywood’s commercial conservatism, it’s difficult to argue that the current state of affairs is entirely negative.
Although Dune was never filmed (Jodorowsky has expressed his dislike for David Lynch’s version), Jodorowsky and Mœbius transformed their ideas and concepts into the exceptional comic book The Incal. For those unwilling to accept limitations, comics may be a more suitable medium than film.
Concept art for Dune
A Relic of the Psychedelic Age
As a relic of the psychedelic age, Jodorowsky might be considered a charlatanistic madman today. He has an interest in alchemy, tarot, Zen Buddhism, and shamanism. He has written books, released vinyl records, staged plays, engaged in performance art, made films, and created comics, making him a genuine “interdisciplinary” artist.
This intellectual promiscuity must be understood within the context of 1960s and 70s America. If we view the American counterculture movement as a volcanic eruption, its lava and debris have slowly and steadily spread across the globe in the decades that followed. Since the 1960s, American musicians have traveled to India, Indonesia, and Japan for inspiration.
Alejandro Jodorowsky
The Whole Earth Catalog emerged, treating art, technology, and science without discrimination. Subsequently, we experienced the personal computer revolution, the internet revolution, globalization, and the complete disintegration of various old orders. In Jodorowsky’s era, absorbing knowledge from different disciplines and fields was a means of expanding the brain. More than four decades after Stewart Brand proclaimed “access to tools,” we live in a society saturated with tools.
Accompanying this tool saturation is the resurgence of instrumental rationality’s dominance over society. For Jodorowsky, nothing is more important than transcending all techniques and boundaries through the power of the human spirit. As he said of the renowned special effects artist Douglas Trumbull: “He is a technical master, but for me, not a spiritual person.” This may be the greatest lesson Jodorowsky can offer us today.