A riotous look behind the scenes of the greatest movie never made: Alejandro Jodorowsky’s proposed super-production of Frank Herbert’s cult sci-fi novel Dune, which was to star Orson Welles, Salvador Dali and Mick Jagger.
I don’t hope to see a movie all year long that’s as inspiring as Frank Pavich’s documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, the story of an enormously influential film that was never made.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2014
Jodorowsky’s Dune 2013
Cinema history is littered with dream projects abandoned due to a clash of egos, hubris and ballooning budgets – and sanity prevailing over vanity. All pale in comparison to the greatest film never made – Alejandro Jodorowsky’s production of Dune. Jodorowsky was the Chilean enfant terrible whose hallucinogenic El Topo and The Holy Mountain created a sensation on the midnight movie circuit in the 70s. His follow-up, and admission to the mainstream, was to adapt Frank Herbert’s best-selling epic eco-science fiction novel for the big screen. He had the chops – all that he needed next was to hire a team of fellow ‘spiritual warriors’ to help him pull off what he described as ‘the most important picture in the history of humanity’. Director Frank Pavich lays the facts bare in his terrific doco. Joining forces with Swiss surrealist H.R. Giger and visionary French illustrator Jean ‘Moebius’ Giraud to bring his vision to life, he convinced Orson Welles, Salvador Dali and Mick Jagger to appear onscreen. Jodorowsky, now a spry octogenarian, brims with boundless brio and burns with unbridled passion recounting the pre-production of his ill-fated filmic masterpiece-de-resistance.