These days, my primary love is comic books – well, it always has been, but in the life of an adult, one chooses one or two passions and then lets others slide to make sure there’s enough time to go to the day job to pay for those passions, and then sleep and maybe refine the revenge list.
But when I was younger, I was a rabid reader of science fiction. And not the normal young adult pabulum that passes for the science fiction kids read these days – I didn’t read Ender’s Game until I was 34, and when I was finished, I put it on the shelf and said, “Yeah, I saw it when it was called The Last Starfighter,” – but the big stuff. I was a huge Issac Asimov fan, snapped up William Gibson and John Steakley, and read Frank Herbert’s The White Plague back when Y: The Last Man was just a twinkle in Brian K. Vaughan’s eye.
But I found Herbert the way everyone else did: through Dune. Dune was one of my first science fiction obsessions, to the point where I am the proud owner of a first edition copy of The Dune Encyclopedia. Not because of years of hunting down a copy, but because I saved my allowance and bought a copy off the shelf when I was 14 years old. About a decade ago, I took part in a Boston geek-themed comedy show called The Grand High Council of All Things True, and one of the concluding questions was, “Who controls the spice?” I am told on went on a long a detailed rant about Paul Atreides, sandworms, the Kwisatz Haderach and the effect of water on the Little Makers that ended with me shrieking, “Eat shit and die!” at an audience of about 100 people. I say, “I am told this,” because I remember nothing about the evening, as I was ripped to the tits on melange. Or perhaps Sam Adams. There’s very little difference between the two in Boston. But I digress.
The point is that I love Dune but I hate the Dune movie. Why? Well, I’d start with the phrase “nipple plugs,” but no one needs me to go off on another rant.
The reality is that, back in 1974, Alejandro Jodorowsky, the guy who directed fucked-up midnight movie western El Topo, signed on to do an adaptation of Dune. These were the days of Logan’s Run and Silent Running, which means that the state of the art of special effects at the time could be surpassed by a child with a Google Chromebook and a Go Pro camera today.
The thing is, nobody told Jodorowsky that. The guy hired H. R. Giger to consult on designs (this was well before Alien came around to make Giger a geek design icon), he made a deal with Salvadore Dali to play the Emperor (provided Dali could show the Emperor taking a dump on camera), and basically designed a movie that was so huge in scope it probably couldn’t be filmed even today, since even the highest-end Makerbot can’t 3D-print mescaline.
It would have been a glorious thing to see, if he had somehow managed to put the thing together, even though it would have borne as much of a resemblance to Herbert’s original novel as the Denver Broncos bear to an actual football team. Alas, not a single frame was ever filmed, I’m guessing because investors weren’t convinced about the merchandise rights to make toys of Salvador Dali dropping a drug-fueled deuce into a toilet that looked like a dolphin.
However, all is not lost of the film. Director Frank Pavich has produced a documentary about the aborted flick (That might be a pun, as it’s entirely possible that Jodorowsky planned an abortion in the middle of the movie. If you’re gonna commission a golden dolphin toilet, you’re not gonna just use it in one scene, am I right?). Jodorowsky’s Dune is getting a theatrical release on March 21st, and the first trailer has been released. And if you’re a Dune fan, or just someone curious about how a science fiction film featuring “whore-ships driven By the sperm of passionate ejaculations In an engine of flesh,” might look, you can check it out after the jump.
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