Jorodowsky's Dune

The doco of how Alejandro Jodorowsky's vision of adapting Frank Herbert's sci-fi epic Dune was shattered. The film would have been spectacular and amazing had it been made, Jodorowsky and his artists created an elaborate and detailed storyboard for every frame in this hypothetical film to pitch to studios in Hollywood. They said their visual motifs and ideas can be seen as the influence on many sci-fi and fantasy films to this day (ie Prometheus). It was ambitious, it would have required a massive budget and creating new technology to accommodate the demands of the story (it was the 70s after all), but eventually the project had to be abandoned. The film wasn't funded because studios were a) reluctant to invest in a director without much of a track record and b) the story was a little too bizarre for Hollywood and c) it cost a lot. 

It's just unfortunate the way the industry works - it runs on money. Jodorowsky wanted to make a 14-hour film that brought in various contemporary musical artists and cast the likes of Salvador Dali, Orsen Wells and Mick Jagger for exorbitant amounts of money. Now I highly doubt a great story would ever need to be told with 14 hours, and occasionally during the doco Jodorowsky gave the impression of the scariest kind of auteur: an uncompromising madman. (There's a horrifying comment in there somewhere about making a baby film, he had to rape Frank Herbert like you rape your bride, but with love...ha something non-so-eloquently lost in translation) But he wanted to make the film from passion and not for an audience, so sadly without the financial backing it couldn't happen. Perhaps this film is some consolation, sequences of the film are visualised in a rough sketch sort of style.

You can see Jodorowsky is clearly still heartbroken, the film exists in his mind and on paper...he even created a whole series of comics set in the universe. But somehow it's not the same as bringing it to life in a film. I would have felt the same. It took him 23 years to make another film, which is a point that keeps being brought up when talking about The Dance of Reality, looks like it can actually hold its own...