Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 3: oh boy, have we got a movie to talk about today.
Speaker 3: We're pretty sure this is going to be our first
Speaker 3: and perhaps only ever two part episode of Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: And you might be thinking what movie could possibly cause
Speaker 3: them to split Weird House Cinema into two parts? It's
Speaker 3: David Lynch's Dune from nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah. We normally try and keep Weird House
Speaker 2: as a single episode installment situation, but the cast is
Speaker 2: too rich here, the weirdness is too deep. And with
Speaker 2: release of Dnis Villeneuve's Dune Part two, obviously Dune is
Speaker 2: in the air once more. Everybody's going crazy for this film,
Speaker 2: and rightfully so, and that gives us the excuse. All right, everybody,
Speaker 2: he's digging Dune. Right now, we can do a two
Speaker 2: parter on Weird House Cinema about David Lynch's adaptation.
Speaker 3: Wait did you see the new one?
Speaker 2: Yes? Over the weekend just slammed the Dune. My son
Speaker 2: had never seen Dune Part one, so we rewatched that
Speaker 2: with him, and then we all went out to the
Speaker 2: movie theater for you know, three hours and watched Dune
Speaker 2: Part two with a full cinematic experience. We didn't get
Speaker 2: the popcorn bucket, but we still had a great time.
Speaker 2: It's definitely a film worth seeing on a big screen.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm very jealous of that experience because I am
Speaker 3: so excited to see it. I haven't been able to
Speaker 3: make it out yet because we you know, we got
Speaker 3: a seventeen month old. We don't get out to movies
Speaker 3: these days. But as soon as it hits streaming, I'm
Speaker 3: going to be there. And I'm very excited about that
Speaker 3: because I really did love the twenty twenty one Dune,
Speaker 3: and that one really surpassed my expectations in so many ways.
Speaker 3: Because Robert, you know, we've long been fans of the
Speaker 3: book and talked about it on the show all time,
Speaker 3: and have been in certain ways fans of the movie
Speaker 3: we're talking about in this episode today. But it is
Speaker 3: not a book that lends itself to the screen. You know.
Speaker 3: It is like a It is a wonderful novel, but
Speaker 3: it almost feels like it was written to be specifically
Speaker 3: difficult to adapt to the movie format.
Speaker 2: Yeah it is. It's a complex novel, full of interstellar feudalism,
Speaker 2: psychotropic drugs, sandworms, lots of plots within plots, lots of conversations,
Speaker 2: and then when the action does take place, when there
Speaker 2: are big action spectacles, they generally happen off the page
Speaker 2: and are referred to after the fact, you know. So
Speaker 2: it's not one of these things where you can just
Speaker 2: like PLoP it on the table and like this is
Speaker 2: what we're filming today. You know, it has a reputation
Speaker 2: for being a difficult adaptation. And yeah, credit where credits due.
Speaker 2: Danny v nailed it. I think he nailed it in
Speaker 2: part one, and then part two really seals the deal.
Speaker 2: And it's a true spectacle with the caveat. I have
Speaker 2: to say, like I've always been a Doom Book first fan,
Speaker 2: and I don't mean that in a snobby way, and
Speaker 2: I mean that and like that's how I read it
Speaker 2: for the first time, That's how I explored the world
Speaker 2: for the first time, and therefore, like that's always my
Speaker 2: starting point. And given the difficulties of that of adapting it,
Speaker 2: you know, you have to go into it with the
Speaker 2: expectation that any filmmaker, regardless of what they're working with,
Speaker 2: they're they're going to have to pick and choose, as
Speaker 2: with most adaptations, to varying degrees, but you know, you're
Speaker 2: going to have to pick and choose, like what aspects
Speaker 2: of Doom you're going to realize on the screen, what
Speaker 2: aspects of the characters you're going to realize, and what
Speaker 2: you're going to condense and what you're going to leave out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean, I think some stories do just
Speaker 3: naturally translate to the screen more easily if they're I
Speaker 3: don't know, you know, if the story is written more
Speaker 3: like a play, like if it's very dialogue driven already,
Speaker 3: if you know, if a lot of the story is
Speaker 3: contained already in the exchanges between the characters, and so
Speaker 3: if it's already kind of an external story, Dune I
Speaker 3: think is really difficult for at least a couple of
Speaker 3: reasons I can think of. One is that understanding the
Speaker 3: story relies so heavily on like this deep understanding of
Speaker 3: the setting and the world, which relies on a glossary actually,
Speaker 3: like there's you know, an encyclopedia, So it's very fun
Speaker 3: to explore in written format and to like learn all
Speaker 3: the politics and the technology, and you know, the strange
Speaker 3: world that Frank Herbert created. But it's hard to get
Speaker 3: all of that into a movie format without having just
Speaker 3: big dumps of exposition, which unfortunately the Lynch movie does have.
Speaker 3: There are scenes where there's just characters sitting around explaining
Speaker 3: or even voiceover narrating lots of stuff about politics and
Speaker 3: technology and what happens in the Dune universe, and it
Speaker 3: does get kind of overwhelming at times. Another thing I
Speaker 3: would say, though, is that in addition to the importance
Speaker 3: of the setting, there's also just a lot of internal
Speaker 3: stuff in Dune, like characters having visions, thinking through things.
Speaker 3: A lot of the drama is within character's minds, and
Speaker 3: so that's also kind of difficult to externalize in a
Speaker 3: way that the viewer can participate in without just having
Speaker 3: people again doing like voiceover of their internal monologue, which
Speaker 3: Lynch's adaptation also does and is occasionally funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially we ended up watching it when I rewatched
Speaker 2: this with my wife, who was who's I was surprised
Speaker 2: she was game for it. Monday night, the day after
Speaker 2: watching Dune Part two, we watched David Lynch's Doom and
Speaker 2: we watched it with the subtitles because I'd read somewhere
Speaker 2: someone advised like, this is a good choice because you
Speaker 2: can keep a little better track of who's saying what.
Speaker 2: But there's a lot of internal voice colon what's being said,
Speaker 2: which makes it a little little more hilarious at times
Speaker 2: when this occurs.
Speaker 3: Yes, especially well. Actually, one of the funniest parts of
Speaker 3: it is that you will often get a close up
Speaker 3: of the actor making like a serious face while we
Speaker 3: see them thinking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a hard one to pull off. But that
Speaker 2: being said, you know, if you're gonna do it, commit
Speaker 2: to it fully, don't do it just in a couple
Speaker 2: of places where it's like, oh, they lost track of
Speaker 2: what they were doing. This scene wasn't working, so they're
Speaker 2: going to do a little bit of this. No, No,
Speaker 2: it's throughout the film, so it's in a way it's
Speaker 2: more forgivable since it's ubiquitous.
Speaker 3: But hey, we're not here to knock the nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: four Dune because I would say that I'm going to
Speaker 3: be forthright and acknowledged this movie has a lot of shortcomings.
Speaker 3: There are many things about it that don't work. But
Speaker 3: also I love it. I love David Lynch's Dune.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, is it the most faithful adaptation? No,
Speaker 2: it is it the best? Well, it's hard to make
Speaker 2: an argument for that, perhaps, but is it absolutely weird?
Speaker 2: Is it? Is it consistently entertaining? Absolutely?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: Yes, it's also shorter. Uh. In caveat here, we are
Speaker 2: going to be only dealing with the theatrical cut of
Speaker 2: the film, the only cut that that David Lynch ever,
Speaker 2: you know, acknowledged and approved, and we'll get back into
Speaker 2: that later on. But yeah, it's like, it's it's a reasonable,
Speaker 2: reasonably linked film. Uh, that's also part of the problem here,
Speaker 2: we'll discuss. But uh, yeah, it's uh, it's it's shorter
Speaker 2: than some of your other options. Right.
Speaker 3: So on the downside, that does mean, especially in the
Speaker 3: first half of the movie, you do get a lot
Speaker 3: of scenes of incredibly just heavy deposits of exposition, where
Speaker 3: there's like a narrator just telling you a lot of
Speaker 3: stuff really fast, and I think, especially if you were
Speaker 3: not already familiar with the story, you'd just be like
Speaker 3: what what what? All the like, it just comes thick
Speaker 3: and fast when you're not really ready for it. Often,
Speaker 3: I think, so that is a problem with trying to
Speaker 3: cram this much story into this short of a runtime.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, given how much they fit into
Speaker 3: this short of a runtime, I am shocked how well
Speaker 3: it works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I imagine we had the same experience on this,
Speaker 2: but because I think you have something that notes to
Speaker 2: this effect. But a lot of the reviews for this
Speaker 2: film make a point of saying it's incomprehensible. You have
Speaker 2: no idea what's going on any given point. I did
Speaker 2: not have that experience rewatching the film, and I don't
Speaker 2: think you did either, obviously, because we know the major beats,
Speaker 2: we know what's going to happen, we know who everyone
Speaker 2: is supposed to.
Speaker 3: Be, right, so we can't really come at the movie cold.
Speaker 3: Like I'd read the novel before I saw this movie,
Speaker 3: so I already knew the story. So it's kind of
Speaker 3: hard for me to imagine what it would be like
Speaker 3: not being familiar going in. Though when I try to
Speaker 3: imagine that, I can say, like, yeah, I think this
Speaker 3: opening narration would be a little would be a little
Speaker 3: hard to get past. You'd be like, wait, I can't
Speaker 3: keep track of everything you're saying, what's the spacing guild? Huh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and people have these issues too, even with the
Speaker 2: more recent adaptations, Like I remember seeing stuff online where
Speaker 2: people with the first film were confused and thought that
Speaker 2: perhaps the Baron was also the Emperor. They were a
Speaker 2: little unclear on that. And I know that my wife
Speaker 2: initially had some confusion over two different blonde characters in
Speaker 2: part two. I'm not going to reveal who they are,
Speaker 2: but she was like, at least momentarily, like, wait, are
Speaker 2: these the same character? No, these are two different characters.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, this stuff's going to happen anytime you're
Speaker 2: adapting something so complex. Now, speaking of fitting a lot
Speaker 2: into a limited runtime, I also just want to quickly
Speaker 2: note that this movie has been out for a while,
Speaker 2: It has a cult following. It is a David Lynch movie.
Speaker 2: There have been multiple great documentaries, books, papers, etc. On
Speaker 2: this production, on previous attempts at producing done for the screen,
Speaker 2: subsequent productions. We can't possibly get into all of that,
Speaker 2: but we'll reference a little of it as we go.
Speaker 3: Have you watched the documentary about Yodorowski's Done.
Speaker 2: No. I had read about it plenty before it came out,
Speaker 2: and I've just never gotten around to watching it. But
Speaker 2: that is of course, a fascinating slash infamous example of
Speaker 2: you know, what if what if Jodorowski had actually made
Speaker 2: this stupendous semi adaptation of Dune with this just colossally
Speaker 2: Bonker's cast, I'm glad he didn't, and not just because
Speaker 2: I'm protective of Dune to a certain extent, but also
Speaker 2: because you see the influence of Doune in his later
Speaker 2: works with Mobius in the Metabaron series. These are graphic
Speaker 2: novels that Jodorowski wrote, and those are tremendously fun and trippy,
Speaker 2: and they have elements of that kind of like Dune
Speaker 2: feudal psychedelic world, but it's it's removed from Herbert's novels
Speaker 2: and it can be its own thing. So I think
Speaker 2: like ultimately everything landed for the best. On that regard,
Speaker 2: that makes sense. So you're saying you'd rather instead of
Speaker 2: seeing Yodowski like impose his vision upon an adaptation of Dune,
Speaker 2: you'd rather see him take a bunch of influence from
Speaker 2: Dune and make his own thing. It's exactly yeah, I
Speaker 2: think it worked out for the best.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: On that note, let's go ahead and listen to some
Speaker 2: trailer audio. Specifically, I believe this is a radio spot.
Speaker 2: I love it when we can feature a radio spot
Speaker 2: since it is ideally tuned for the listening audience. Here
Speaker 2: this one. I found this one online. This was apparently
Speaker 2: something that aired in Salt Lake City, So let's have
Speaker 2: a listen. No, the most widely read, talked about, and
Speaker 2: cherished masterpiece of the generation comes to the screen.
Speaker 3: Su I see doing great houses.
Speaker 2: A world that holds creation's greatest treasure. You controls the
Speaker 2: snice controls the universe comp.
Speaker 3: And greatest terrorst A world with a mighty.
Speaker 2: All I can see is it a Treadees that I
Speaker 2: wanted to kill and the magical the Sleeper. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: we'll have their final battle.
Speaker 3: A world called Dune.
Speaker 2: Long live the fight us. We will kill until no
Speaker 2: har Conan breeze, aercane air duel. A world beyond your experience,
Speaker 2: beyond your imagination. Details about the Dune Adventure in Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. Are coming soon from Uni Brussel Pictures Eastern
Speaker 2: Airlines at one L six afm KCGL.
Speaker 3: You know, Rob, I went to rewatch this movie on
Speaker 3: Max HBO. Max, I guess formerly and Max has a
Speaker 3: great little thing where it's like you know, if some
Speaker 3: of these streaming services do this, they say, hey, if
Speaker 3: you liked this movie, you might also like do you
Speaker 3: want to know what the fan of Dune nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: four might also like?
Speaker 2: Let's have it.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's Dune twenty twenty one. I guess that's not surprising,
Speaker 3: Leviathan nineteen eighty nine one of our faves. Yeah, war
Speaker 3: games and Escape from La from La.
Speaker 2: You know, I've never had the courage to watch Escape
Speaker 2: from La. Oh love Carpenter, love love the cast for
Speaker 2: Escape from La And I remember it had a fun
Speaker 2: soundtrack that came out at the time.
Speaker 3: But yeah, not anybody's best work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we know, speaking of Max. That is also where
Speaker 2: I ended up rewatching it. But if anyone out there,
Speaker 2: if you want to go watch nineteen eighty four, is
Speaker 2: Dune in full before continuing with these episodes? Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: also widely available in digital and physical formats anywhere you
Speaker 2: might want to watch it. Unlike the sci fi mini series,
Speaker 2: which is a little hard to get your hands on
Speaker 2: right now, you can definitely get the nineteen eighty four
Speaker 2: adaptation any way you want to get it. Aero Video
Speaker 2: put out a very nice blu ray package of the
Speaker 2: film in twenty twenty one, if you're a collector and
Speaker 2: or want that physical media.
Speaker 3: Speaking of I've never seen the sci fi mini series,
Speaker 3: have you?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I watched, well, I watched the first one, and
Speaker 2: I've only seen bits and pieces of the follow up
Speaker 2: where they adapted Doune Messiah and Children of Doune, and
Speaker 2: I remember it being lavish. You know, it has some
Speaker 2: very great costumes, It has a lot of good casting
Speaker 2: and in some great casting in places. So as we proceed,
Speaker 2: I'll at times refer to alternate castings for some of
Speaker 2: these characters and which ones I like, which ones I didn't,
Speaker 2: And they did nail it at least on a couple
Speaker 2: of the castings. So's it's I don't know how the
Speaker 2: effects hold up, but the costumes are great and some
Speaker 2: of the performances are nice.
Speaker 3: I've never seen it, and in saying this, I don't
Speaker 3: want to malign it, so maybe it's better than it looks.
Speaker 3: But in some screenshots or stills I've seen from it,
Speaker 3: it does kind of have that made for TV look.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, or almost kind of like a film stage
Speaker 2: production sort of a thing. Yeah. Yeah. One more thing
Speaker 2: I want to quickly add about this version of the
Speaker 2: film that we're watching today. Again, I was kind of
Speaker 2: a book first fan, and I remember the first time
Speaker 2: that I bought a copy of Doone at the I
Speaker 2: think it was a books a million, you know, so
Speaker 2: it wasn't like a nice cozy local bookstore. Is one
Speaker 2: of the big warehouse bookstores. But the cashier was so
Speaker 2: excited when I brought up the book, and she was like, Oh,
Speaker 2: you were going to love this. This is a great novel.
Speaker 2: This is one of the best. And she explained to
Speaker 2: me that she and her husband were huge fans of Doune,
Speaker 2: and they were such huge fans that they would watch
Speaker 2: David Lynch's Dune, and at that time it was just
Speaker 2: the movie. It was the only movie version out. They
Speaker 2: would watch the movie version every night as they went
Speaker 2: to sleep, every night this film. And so I think
Speaker 2: from an early age, despite the criticisms and rejections of
Speaker 2: this film that were already out there, it's like I
Speaker 2: knew it's like this. This lady and her husband loved
Speaker 2: this film and they love the book, so it can't
Speaker 2: be too far off base. And therefore I think I've
Speaker 2: always been been more than a little willing to invite
Speaker 2: aspects of this film and its look and it sound
Speaker 2: into my head version of.
Speaker 3: That is fascinating. So literally, as you said, as they
Speaker 3: go to sleep, so they're like, yeah, drifting off to
Speaker 3: the to the sounds of like Baron Harkonen's doctor singing
Speaker 3: love songs to his boils as he's poking them with
Speaker 3: a needle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or Baron Harkonen like just laughing maniacally and floating
Speaker 2: around the room. Yeah. Yeah, it's their lullaby. I hope
Speaker 2: they're still doing it. They're still together, and they're still
Speaker 2: watching David Lynch's Doom every night.
Speaker 3: Why, Baron, I love your precious diseases.
Speaker 2: All right, well, let's start getting into the connections here.
Speaker 2: We're gonna tackle every thing a little differently here, so
Speaker 2: you know, first of all, on some of these we're
Speaker 2: gonna try and maybe spend a little less time with
Speaker 2: them just because we have such a huge cast to
Speaker 2: go through. And additionally, we're not gonna just divide the
Speaker 2: episode like normal. We're not gonna do like just connections,
Speaker 2: just cast and crew in this episode and then plot
Speaker 2: in the next. We're gonna run through like a few
Speaker 2: key behind the scenes individuals, and then we're gonna get
Speaker 2: into the plot and then talk about the key actors
Speaker 2: as they appear in the narrative.
Speaker 3: Okay, I think that is a good approach for a
Speaker 3: two part Weird House episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, we labored over this a little bit, and
Speaker 2: this is this is what we came up with. Okay,
Speaker 2: all right, let's start at the top. Yeah. The director
Speaker 2: also the writer the adapted screenplay on this one is,
Speaker 2: of course, David Lynch born nineteen forty six. Now, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna have to defer to you, Joe on on some
Speaker 2: of the details of David Lynch's filmography, and certainly about
Speaker 2: like the texture of what a Lynchian film is, because
Speaker 2: I haven't seen as many David Lynch films. I've basically
Speaker 2: just seen his Dune. I've seen Eraserhead, and I've seen
Speaker 2: Mulholland Drive. But that leaves out a number of like
Speaker 2: huge films that are highly influential in his sort of
Speaker 2: like neo noir weird aesthetic.
Speaker 3: I think if you've seen eraser Head and Mulholland Drive,
Speaker 3: you have a pretty good idea of what some of
Speaker 3: his dominant themes are. But we'll come back to that
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 2: Now, at this point in his career, this was only Lynch.
Speaker 2: This was Lynch's third full length motion picture, following the
Speaker 2: ultra weird eraser Head in nineteen seventy seven, and this
Speaker 2: was more in keeping with a lot of his previous
Speaker 2: short film films and nineteen eighties The Elephant Man. You know,
Speaker 2: I think I also have seen The Elephant Man, but
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if I've seen The Elephant Man in full.
Speaker 2: I've at least seen enough of it to know what
Speaker 2: it's about that at least was a box office and
Speaker 2: critical hit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I actually haven't seen The Elephant Man. I've meant
Speaker 3: too for years. I know it's a widely revered movie.
Speaker 3: People say it's great. I have seen a raser Head
Speaker 3: eraser Head is. It's funny to contrast that with Dune,
Speaker 3: because eraser Head is only barely a narrative film. It
Speaker 3: is much more like, well, it's sort of an art
Speaker 3: horror film. I would almost say it is a film
Speaker 3: about images and feelings and the I would say the
Speaker 3: main emotion that it conveys is fear and desperation.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's a feel good hit for sure. So
Speaker 2: at this point in David Lynch's career. He was like
Speaker 2: a hot up and comer, you know. At the time,
Speaker 2: he was even discussed as a potential director for Return
Speaker 2: the Jedi. So a lot of big producers were eyeing
Speaker 2: this guy as you know, as they still do today,
Speaker 2: you know, hot new director. And then incomes a producer
Speaker 2: in this case like Dino di Laurentez, who we've has
Speaker 2: come up on the show multiple times before, you know,
Speaker 2: major producer of the time period, putting together such epics
Speaker 2: as Flash Gordon, which we recently talked about on the show.
Speaker 2: And he was like definitely the kind of guy who
Speaker 2: want who was attracted to talent, like he wanted to
Speaker 2: bring in someone that had vision, but would also of
Speaker 2: course fall in line and play the studio game.
Speaker 3: Yes, so I think this was not a match made
Speaker 3: in heaven with David Lynch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it ended up not to be the case. I
Speaker 2: don't know. I mean, we have this film which is
Speaker 2: such a joy to watch and discuss, and like, this
Speaker 2: is the trajectory we're on. We can't go back and
Speaker 2: change it. But yeah, while this vision of Doune eventually
Speaker 2: earned a cult following, it was a commercial and critical disaster.
Speaker 2: At the time considered again by many to be just
Speaker 2: an incomprehensible mess. You look back at like what Ebert
Speaker 2: said about it, like everyone was just like, this is awful.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Tons of critics at the time said it was
Speaker 3: impossible to follow the plot, that it was super confusing,
Speaker 3: they didn't know what was going on. People thought it
Speaker 3: was like weird and unpleasant. People thought that it looked
Speaker 3: that despite the fact that it was an incredibly big
Speaker 3: budget production, like it huge, you know, and you can
Speaker 3: see it in some of the like gorgeous, lavishly realized
Speaker 3: sets and costumes and all that. Yeah, people did single
Speaker 3: out that there were parts of it that looked cheap,
Speaker 3: and I actually do kind of agree. There are, like
Speaker 3: most of the the design in it does look amazing,
Speaker 3: but there are some weird shots that look kind of
Speaker 3: slapped together in there, and I don't know where that
Speaker 3: comes from. Just generally, critics were very very harsh about it.
Speaker 3: It made a lot of like worst movie of the
Speaker 3: Year lists and things like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And again, we can't heap all of this
Speaker 2: on Lynch. The novel is a lot to tackle. There
Speaker 2: were a lot of cooks he had to deal with here.
Speaker 2: His initial initial cut of the film apparently came in
Speaker 2: in over three hours and was eventually cut down. But
Speaker 2: the producers and because the producers in the studio wanted
Speaker 2: more of like a two hour cut. You know, they're like,
Speaker 2: people need to be able to go to the bathroom again.
Speaker 2: You know, this is good. We want it to be successful,
Speaker 2: and this is what you need to have for success.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they wanted a big commercial hit. They wanted something
Speaker 3: like Star Wars and something that would be a big
Speaker 3: sci fi movie that made a lot of money. And
Speaker 3: if you know, you make a three hour movie. At
Speaker 3: the time, the thinking was, nobody's gonna want to see that.
Speaker 3: They don't want to sit there that long. That's it's
Speaker 3: a bunch of artsy fartsy stuff. Just you know, cut
Speaker 3: it down, just get get to get to the action.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, for context, Denny Ve's combined doing adaptation, the
Speaker 2: recent adaptations come in at more than five hours in
Speaker 2: a length. Total. That sci fi mini series adaptation is
Speaker 2: more than four hours in length if you're just dealing
Speaker 2: with the initial cut.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So there's a lot of story to cram in
Speaker 3: and it's it's amazing what this movie does with in
Speaker 3: the end, what it's like two and a half hours
Speaker 3: or so.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So numerous cuts were made, new scenes were
Speaker 2: apparently filmed, whole scenes were just cut entirely, or there
Speaker 2: there are plenty different various points in the film where
Speaker 2: they're clearly you're having a character briefly remember a scene
Speaker 2: that clearly had to be cut, or they're just shoehorning
Speaker 2: just a clip of that scene in so you see
Speaker 2: the seams in this final theatrical cut of David Lynch's Dune.
Speaker 2: He has long considered the film a failure, and he
Speaker 2: generally opts not to discuss it in interviews. He disowned
Speaker 2: the extended TV premiere of the film and has long
Speaker 2: dismissed the idea of doing a director's cut, at least
Speaker 2: i've read until very recently.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I don't know if he just happened to be in
Speaker 2: a really good mood in some of these interviews, but
Speaker 2: I've read that he was like, you know, maybe it's
Speaker 2: been enough time. Maybe I could look back at it
Speaker 2: and see if there's anything that I could piece back together.
Speaker 2: But I don't know. It doesn't sound like we should
Speaker 2: necessarily get our hopes up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, i'd be interested to see that. But yeah, I
Speaker 3: remember reading that David Lynch not only considered the movie
Speaker 3: of failure, he was extremely upset by the process of
Speaker 3: making this film and the way the producer is tampered with,
Speaker 3: in his view, I think sabotage his vision for it.
Speaker 3: And he believed this to the extent that he said
Speaker 3: he wished he had never taken the project at all.
Speaker 3: Like speaking to an interviewer years later, he said, quote,
Speaker 3: the experience has taught me a valuable lesson. I learned
Speaker 3: I would rather not make a film than make one
Speaker 3: where I don't have final cut.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think it might have ultimately been
Speaker 2: the terrible purpose that he had to face, right, because
Speaker 2: if he had not directed this film, what if someone
Speaker 2: had made a far worse version of Doune Because you
Speaker 2: read the reviews and it's like, oh, it couldn't have
Speaker 2: been worse. Oh it could have been worse. Oh yeah, oh,
Speaker 2: there were undoubtedly worse options out there. So yeah, we
Speaker 2: would just been on an entirely different trajectory with science
Speaker 2: fiction and with adaptations of Doom.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, I mean, I think I would have a
Speaker 3: hard time disagreeing with somebody who said that this movie
Speaker 3: in a sense fails to be a great adaptation of
Speaker 3: the novel Dune. That there's a lot of things about
Speaker 3: the book that it kind of misses, other things that
Speaker 3: it does get in there, but it just kind of
Speaker 3: like crams in in a way that doesn't really work.
Speaker 3: But there is a lot to love about it, and
Speaker 3: a lot of what there is to love about it
Speaker 3: is just like the way it is realized as a
Speaker 3: kind of David Lynch vision. There's so much like weirdness,
Speaker 3: even things that are not in the books at all
Speaker 3: that are just brought in that make it a very
Speaker 3: enjoyable movie experience, at least for me, maybe not so
Speaker 3: much for critics at the time. But one of the
Speaker 3: other things I wanted to mention about Lynch's terrible experience
Speaker 3: with the version of this movie that was released. Despite
Speaker 3: his extreme dissatisfaction with how Dune turned out, doing this movie,
Speaker 3: from what I've read, sort of set Lynch up to
Speaker 3: be able to make the kinds of movies and TV
Speaker 3: that he would go on to create later, the kinds
Speaker 3: of things that he's celebrated for now. And I think
Speaker 3: he is also personally more proud of things like Twin
Speaker 3: Peaks and Mulholland Drive and all that. So I think
Speaker 3: it's very interesting. Like I strongly sympathize with Lynch's point
Speaker 3: of view about Dune. It is terrible to in one sense,
Speaker 3: be like a primary creator of a collaborative piece of
Speaker 3: art and have it come out in a way that
Speaker 3: you feel is fundamentally not your vision and something you
Speaker 3: are not proud of. But also going through that experience
Speaker 3: of artistic disaster did perhaps make these other later projects
Speaker 3: possible for him?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Yeah, It's really difficult to imagine where David Lynch's
Speaker 2: career would have gone had he not taken Doune, you know,
Speaker 2: like outside of where Dune and science fiction would have gone,
Speaker 2: Like what would his career have consisted of, What would
Speaker 2: have what would his next project have been and or
Speaker 2: what like if he had not taken Dune on it
Speaker 2: is the big I don't know, arguably sell out project
Speaker 2: before moving on with the rest of his career. What
Speaker 2: would it have been? You know, what were some of
Speaker 2: the other what have you taken Return of the Jedi instead?
Speaker 2: What kind of world will we live in the day out?
Speaker 2: As far as Star Wars and as far as David
Speaker 2: Lynch are concerned.
Speaker 3: That's I'm not saying Return of the Jedi would have
Speaker 3: been better under his direction. I don't know, but I
Speaker 3: would like to see that movie man Ewoks.
Speaker 2: How weird were those eoks?
Speaker 3: If then talking backwards e woks walking backwards e woks.
Speaker 3: So anyway, so you asked me to, yeah, kind of
Speaker 3: fill in more thoughts about the texture of David lynch movies,
Speaker 3: And I wanted to start off by characterizing my relationship
Speaker 3: with David Lynch's work by contrast. So there are a
Speaker 3: lot of movies, you know, big example that comes to
Speaker 3: mind today, or like the superhero movies that I watch
Speaker 3: on airplanes, that field designed to me to be as
Speaker 3: frictionless and entertainment experience as possible. So they are pleasant
Speaker 3: and enjoyable for the time I'm watching them. I don't
Speaker 3: hate them. They're you know, O, They're fun. There's nothing
Speaker 3: to really jar or unsettle the viewer, nothing to cause
Speaker 3: doubts or reflection or make you wonder why am I
Speaker 3: seeing this? It all just kind of it all flows,
Speaker 3: it makes sense, It goes down smooth, and then I
Speaker 3: forget about it and possibly never think about it again.
Speaker 3: My history of experiences with David Lynch movies are exactly
Speaker 3: the opposite. Frequently I have had the experience of watching
Speaker 3: a movie by David Lynch finding something full of strange
Speaker 3: and disturbing imagery that made me feel uneasy and to
Speaker 3: quote the Reverend Mother, profoundly stirred. Initially deciding after the
Speaker 3: movie's over that I did not like it, but then
Speaker 3: thinking about elements of it over and over in the
Speaker 3: months or years that followed, until I felt like I
Speaker 3: had to go back and see it again, and then
Speaker 3: when I did, finally deciding that I loved it. So
Speaker 3: David Lynch movies are full of scenes, scenes and images
Speaker 3: that do not go down smooth. They do not flow
Speaker 3: with the logic of standard entertainment storytelling. To use like
Speaker 3: a musical analogy, there are a lot of motifs that
Speaker 3: use notes from out of the song's key, and yet
Speaker 3: they they end up producing something that is very memorable
Speaker 3: and feels very true and revealing almost kind of ancient.
Speaker 3: A metaphor I've thought of before is that I feel
Speaker 3: like when I'm watching a David Lynch movie, it's like
Speaker 3: somebody is showing me a film of a bad dream
Speaker 3: I had twenty years ago. And completely forgot about, and
Speaker 3: now it is only vaguely familiar in a way that
Speaker 3: makes me uncomfortable because, like I realize somebody put a
Speaker 3: movie camera in my subconscious. It's a really powerful artistic
Speaker 3: sensibility that can create a feeling like that that like
Speaker 3: I'm seeing something that is at the same time very
Speaker 3: strange and disturbing but also very familiar in a way
Speaker 3: that's hard to identify.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good way of putting it.
Speaker 2: There's a particular scene in Mulhall and Drive like this,
Speaker 2: and I'm not going to spoil it, but anyone who's
Speaker 2: seen it probably knows, like which kind of like terrifying
Speaker 2: moment I'm talking about.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, I think I know. Well, there's like
Speaker 3: one sudden, absolutely terrifying moment in the movie. But there's
Speaker 3: a lot in the movie. In that movie that's just
Speaker 3: very meaningfully ominous, you know, conversations people have that almost
Speaker 3: kind of like remind you of something. It's like, what
Speaker 3: are they talking about? This? This connects to something, but
Speaker 3: it's hard to put it together. Yeah, So I wanted
Speaker 3: to run through some themes that come up a lot
Speaker 3: in David Lynch movies. Because specifically in the context of Doune,
Speaker 3: Dune is often considered an outlier in Lynch's filmography. It's
Speaker 3: not like the rest of his work, and of course
Speaker 3: he didn't write the original underlying story. But I was
Speaker 3: trying to think if any of these favorite themes of
Speaker 3: his are in any way hinted at in Dune through
Speaker 3: his interpretation of the narrative. I'm not sure if any
Speaker 3: of them are, but we'll see. So things that come
Speaker 3: up in a lot of Lynch movies, people in places
Speaker 3: that seem wholesome and clean on the surface but hide
Speaker 3: horrible secrets.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, well, maybe not so much with this film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it doesn't really seem all that wholesome on the surface, doesn't.
Speaker 2: No, No, most the unwholesome characters are unwholesome on the
Speaker 2: surface by definition, like intensely so, as we'll discuss.
Speaker 3: Another thing is people who can't remember something important. There's
Speaker 3: something important that happened to them, or something important they
Speaker 3: know and they can't put it together.
Speaker 2: I guess we see some kind of shades of that
Speaker 2: in this, however, distantly echoed m hm.
Speaker 3: The big one for David Lynch movies is people with
Speaker 3: doubles or doppelgangers in some cases, like a character having
Speaker 3: a sort of mysterious twin who is an altered reflection
Speaker 3: of themselves. Sometimes this will be a character with a
Speaker 3: split personality. Other times a character literally changing bodily into
Speaker 3: another person or not knowing which person they are. Lynch
Speaker 3: is really obsessed with doubles.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, not so much of that in this film,
Speaker 2: but it's this is a case where it's a shame
Speaker 2: he didn't get to make a sequel.
Speaker 3: Oh man, Yeah, wait, which plot element from the sequels
Speaker 3: are you calling out there?
Speaker 2: I mean there are a couple. I mean you have
Speaker 2: the gulas, the essentially clones specifically of Dunk and Idaho,
Speaker 2: and then you also have the face dancers. So you
Speaker 2: have a few different possibilities there where he could have
Speaker 2: leaned into it, and certainly, given his how he weirds
Speaker 2: up some of the already weird elements in this film,
Speaker 2: you could imagine him having some fun with these concepts. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And from what I recall, I think I read
Speaker 3: that David Lynch did love the source material, like you
Speaker 3: read the novel or possibly multiple novels, and was like, yes,
Speaker 3: I'm on board. I love this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never seen anything where he was he like
Speaker 2: even retroactively trash the novel and said like I didn't
Speaker 2: like it and I didn't want to adapt it. Like
Speaker 2: you know, he says that they loved it. He found
Speaker 2: things in it that exhilarated him, and I think that
Speaker 2: shines through in his script, even if it occurs at
Speaker 2: times in a way that are perhaps detrimental to the film.
Speaker 2: Like you know, it inspired him. It was not something
Speaker 2: where he's like, Okay, I just need to I need
Speaker 2: to hit this because it's in the novel. It's like, No,
Speaker 2: it gave him ideas.
Speaker 3: M okay, other Lynchian themes, kind of reversals of reality.
Speaker 3: This would be the kind of setting equivalent of the
Speaker 3: doppelganger principle, where there will be kind of a mirror
Speaker 3: world or a world above in a world below.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe not so much so. I guess you could
Speaker 2: make an argument for Kalad and Aracus being kind of
Speaker 2: mirror worlds in a way.
Speaker 3: I can see that characters who like suddenly realize they
Speaker 3: are responsible for something bad happening and had been oblivious
Speaker 3: to their responsibility.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe not so much here, but there could have
Speaker 2: been room for it would have been room for it
Speaker 2: had the series continued right.
Speaker 3: A way that David Lynch approaches violence I think is interesting.
Speaker 3: He uses violence that is in its physical form, running
Speaker 3: against the grain of cinematic conventions, so people who get
Speaker 3: shot in a movie often look a certain way. Lynch
Speaker 3: seems to go out of his way to make violence
Speaker 3: look strange, kind of alien to everyday life, almost bordering
Speaker 3: on comedic sometimes, but in a way that makes it
Speaker 3: even more shocking and unpleasant, like showing people's bodies reacting
Speaker 3: to violence in unexpected ways. I just think of one
Speaker 3: example of from the movie Blue Velvet. There is a
Speaker 3: bizarre and haunting image of a man who has been
Speaker 3: shot in the head and apparently killed, but remains standing up,
Speaker 3: kind of swaying in a daze between life and death.
Speaker 2: I think we definitely see elements of this and doom. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Another thing is a kind of esthetic affinity for the
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties running through his work. There's like a rockabillity
Speaker 3: leave it to beaver g Golly sensibility, which of course
Speaker 3: is always put in startling contrast to like the Warlock logic,
Speaker 3: nightmare imagery, and the violence.
Speaker 2: Well obviously not just one really, but but that Yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess that is the theme of his work.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know. I wonder if I see a
Speaker 3: little bit of Elvis. I see a little bit of
Speaker 3: elvisiness in doing here. They're like the Pompadour hair. We
Speaker 3: see some of that, Like Lady Jessica's haircut feels kind
Speaker 3: of at Elvissey. I don't know, there's some of the
Speaker 3: outfits feel and I think I'm reaching here. I'm trying.
Speaker 3: There's a peculiar technical thing that David Lynch does that
Speaker 3: I think does come through in Dune. I wanted to
Speaker 3: call this out. This is Lynch's use of sound design
Speaker 3: to create a mood, and I specifically I mean not music,
Speaker 3: though he does use music well in his movies, and
Speaker 3: we can get to the music and Dune in a minute,
Speaker 3: which I think has highs and lows, but the highs
Speaker 3: are great. Lynch specifically uses ambient sound in a way
Speaker 3: that has a powerful effect on the feelings of the viewer,
Speaker 3: a specifically sound missing from scenes where it should be,
Speaker 3: or strange sounds in scenes where they should not be.
Speaker 3: So it is an example of each. Like imagine a
Speaker 3: scene at a party, which is silent and there's no
Speaker 3: background noise in the chatter and the music and everything
Speaker 3: is removed and it's unsettlingly silent. Or maybe imagine a
Speaker 3: bedroom with inappropriate sounds of machinery and steam venting and
Speaker 3: things like that. There's a scene I shared with you
Speaker 3: Rob from the movie Lost Highway where Bill Pullman's at
Speaker 3: a party. It's a famously creepy scene. Bill Pullman's at
Speaker 3: a party and a guy, a mysterious stranger, comes up
Speaker 3: to him and starts telling him that he actually a
Speaker 3: double of him, that he's in two places at once,
Speaker 3: and that he is in Bill Pullman's house at that moment.
Speaker 3: And the way sound is manipulated in the scene, like
Speaker 3: the sound of the party drops out as the two
Speaker 3: of them start talking, and it it creates a really
Speaker 3: uh focused, dreamlike effect that heightens the horror.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had never I haven't seen this film in
Speaker 2: full before, and I had not seen this this sequence,
Speaker 2: but this is great. Yeah, where we have this uncle
Speaker 2: festerized Robert Blake character with no eyebrows come up to
Speaker 2: Bill Pullman and just start talking like the craziest stuff
Speaker 2: to him, and and and daring it Yeah, the sound
Speaker 2: is dropped out and become this It's become this ambient
Speaker 2: drone that is just so creepy and creates this sense
Speaker 2: of unreality, you know, like this is like a cross
Speaker 2: dimensional stranger that has that is like freezing time as
Speaker 2: they talk to you. That sort of thing.
Speaker 3: That's a great way of putting it. And uh, and
Speaker 3: I think does Lynch you any of that kind of
Speaker 3: sound design technique in Dune? I think a little bit.
Speaker 3: It's not as overt as it is like in Lost Highway,
Speaker 3: but there is a little bit of it.
Speaker 2: It reminds me a little bit of how you have
Speaker 2: to be sort of even handed perhaps too when you're
Speaker 2: dealing with overtly sci fi elements and then the potentially
Speaker 2: using sci fi design or illusions. I don't know, Like
Speaker 2: I think about like how many times current McCarthy and
Speaker 2: his books will compare something mundane or western to something
Speaker 2: arcane and mythical and you know, and bloody and hellish
Speaker 2: and in a way that you couldn't really get away
Speaker 2: with if you were, say, writing about something that was
Speaker 2: overtly bloody, hellish or mythic and occult. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like the contextual inappropriateness that makes it striking
Speaker 3: and profound.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, anyway, I guess we can think more as we
Speaker 3: go along about to what extent Dune feels like a
Speaker 3: David Lynch movie, or does feel, as some reviewers have said,
Speaker 3: like an outlier that's just not like the rest of
Speaker 3: his work.
Speaker 2: All Right, We have to, of course mention the source
Speaker 2: material here. It is, of course, the novel by Frank Herbert,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen twenty through nineteen eighty six, legendary American
Speaker 2: sci fi author whose earliest short stories date back to
Speaker 2: the mid forties and his first sci fi stories to
Speaker 2: the early fifties. I believe his first novel nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: six is The Dragon in the Sea, is a near
Speaker 2: future submarine tale he began research on, done in nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty nine, and following serial publication and analog magazine, it
Speaker 2: published in nineteen sixty five after numerous rejections. This is
Speaker 2: another one of those films. One another one of those
Speaker 2: books rather that is often held up as like, oh,
Speaker 2: look at all the rejections at God, and then it
Speaker 2: became the most successful and influential sci fi novel of
Speaker 2: all time.
Speaker 3: Pretty much seems like almost every really great novel, people
Speaker 3: initially have the reaction of, I don't know how to
Speaker 3: market this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's because it's not going to be the
Speaker 2: next whatever it's going to be done. And we see
Speaker 2: that reflecting some of the films too, you know, like
Speaker 2: even with this one, they're like, we need the next
Speaker 2: Star Wars, bring up the Dune. Well, you know, Dune
Speaker 2: may have inspired partially inspired Star Wars, but it's not
Speaker 2: Star Wars. It's not going to hit the same. So
Speaker 2: Herbert followed Dune up with numerous standalone novels two other series,
Speaker 2: but the Dune Saga remains his most well known work.
Speaker 2: Dune Messiah followed in sixty nine, Children of Dune in
Speaker 2: seventy six, God Emperor of Doune in eighty one, Heretics
Speaker 2: of Dune in eighty four, and Chapter House Dune in
Speaker 2: eighty five. Herbert died in eighty six before he could
Speaker 2: write the seventh and what was supposed to be the
Speaker 2: final book in the series. His son, Brian Herbert and
Speaker 2: author Kevin J. Anderson would eventually continue writing stories set
Speaker 2: in the Dune universe, including bear version of an ending
Speaker 2: to the original saga, and Like we Said, There have
Speaker 2: been various attempts to adapt these books, especially the first book,
Speaker 2: to the screen. There was Joe Droowski attempt in the
Speaker 2: mid seventies. There was even an earlier early seventies attempt
Speaker 2: that may have even had David Lean attached at one
Speaker 2: point to direct, but I don't think that went anywhere.
Speaker 2: And then when Dino de Larente's got the rights, he
Speaker 2: was working with Ridley Scott initially and like that that
Speaker 2: was like in pre production for a little bit before
Speaker 2: Scott had to sign off. I think for like personal reasons.
Speaker 2: I think there'd been a death in his family, but
Speaker 2: also they were perhaps butting heads a little bit, weren't
Speaker 2: like getting to where they thought they needed to creatively
Speaker 2: on the project. Mmm.
Speaker 3: You know, I had some notes here about what we
Speaker 3: already talked about earlier about just the difficulty, the inherent
Speaker 3: difficulty of adapting Dune to the screen because it's just
Speaker 3: not written in a way that naturally translates to the screen.
Speaker 3: I mean, some scenes, do you know, scenes with the
Speaker 3: sandworms and all that, it was very cinematic, But as
Speaker 3: we talked about earlier, so much of the book is
Speaker 3: either contextual about the broader setting in the world in
Speaker 3: a way that's like hard to fit into a movie
Speaker 3: without a lot of heavy exposition or it's internal people's
Speaker 3: internal monologues and struggles in a way that's difficult to
Speaker 3: do without, you know, having these internal voice narrations which
Speaker 3: don't work great in this movie. And in a way,
Speaker 3: I think that really should be like that difficulty should
Speaker 3: be to the credit of what these filmmakers have done
Speaker 3: with it, that I think Lynch did a better job
Speaker 3: than should have been expected. And then the new movies
Speaker 3: are the one I've seen at least, and I from
Speaker 3: what I've heard that the new one as well. Dannis
Speaker 3: ville Neuve's adaptation really exceeded all my expectations in adapting this,
Speaker 3: that they found clever ways to illustrate the world and
Speaker 3: fill in a lot of this internal and contextual detail
Speaker 3: without it just feeling like you're getting tons of narrative
Speaker 3: exposition all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and finding smart ways to sort of narrow in
Speaker 2: and focus on particular things, like you know, the plotting
Speaker 2: behind the fall of House of Trades is has a
Speaker 2: number of players in it, and Denny Vee's adaptations tend
Speaker 2: to lean more on the Benajes Ritz, while Lynch's adaptation
Speaker 2: leans more on the Spacing Guild. You know, they're both
Speaker 2: players in what happens, but ultimately you have to make
Speaker 2: some choices on the screen, And what are you going
Speaker 2: to focus on this?
Speaker 3: Actually, well, I'll save this for the uh, for when
Speaker 3: we get into the plot. But I am curious what
Speaker 3: you think of the way Lynch's movie really explains everything
Speaker 3: right at the top.
Speaker 2: Oh God, there's so much world create. Like he goes
Speaker 2: ahead and mentions IX. Yeah, he's mentioning planets and factions
Speaker 2: that are not going to really become important until later
Speaker 2: on in the series, and you know, and sequels that
Speaker 2: did not come to fruition.
Speaker 3: Oh that's true. Also, I mean explains everything about the
Speaker 3: conspiracy against how uh it just like leaves nothing to
Speaker 3: be to be revealed or discovered, essentially except the old
Speaker 3: thing I think is like who the trader in house?
Speaker 3: The trades is? Everything else is like told right up top,
Speaker 3: here's the conspiracy, here's what they're gonna do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not just to the viewer, but like the characters know,
Speaker 2: like Paul knows, He's like I figured it out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's been a while since I've read the book.
Speaker 3: But I don't remember all of that being revealed up front.
Speaker 3: I remember that being a thing that you discover as
Speaker 3: you go through the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's correct. But then again, it's been
Speaker 2: a couple of years since I reread Done, and you know,
Speaker 2: it's not all the details stick with me. But again,
Speaker 2: that's the joy of rereading books. You get to forget
Speaker 2: a little bit, you come back in slightly new experience
Speaker 2: each time. That is nice. Now we're going to hit
Speaker 2: a few more behind the scenes individuals here. As we
Speaker 2: often mention, especially on big lavish productions like this, we
Speaker 2: can't possibly mention everybody that had a role in making
Speaker 2: this film what it was, even major players. As with
Speaker 2: the adaptation of Doing you have to look at the
Speaker 2: conspirators and just focus on a few. And so I
Speaker 2: do want to call out that cinematographer Freddie Francis worked
Speaker 2: on this. He lived nineteen seventeen through two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: British director and cinematographer, with extensive credits in the horror
Speaker 2: and sci fi genre, including sixty three's The Day of
Speaker 2: the Triffids, sixty four's The Evil of Frankenstein, the nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy two Tales from the Crypt movie in. One of
Speaker 2: his later works was nineteen eighty seven's Dark Tower, replacing
Speaker 2: Shockwaves director Ken Whiderhorn during production.
Speaker 3: Dark Tower That's not Stephen King is no connection.
Speaker 2: To Stephen King, but it does have a connection to Shockwaves,
Speaker 2: which we covered on the show in the past. As
Speaker 2: a cinematographer, Francis had worked with Lynch on The Elephant
Speaker 2: Man and worked with him again later in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: nine on The Straight Story. Other credits include Return to Oz,
Speaker 2: which we've talked about on the show, and two films
Speaker 2: for which he won an Academy Award, nineteen sixty one
Speaker 2: Sons and Lovers and nineteen nineties Glory.
Speaker 3: Let me tell you something. I didn't put this together
Speaker 3: until just now, but I think there is a lot
Speaker 3: of shared visual genetic material between Returned to Oz and
Speaker 3: David Lynch's Doone. Do you see that with the sets?
Speaker 3: And there's something about the sets and the costumes and
Speaker 3: the way the film looks that there's a great similarity there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean, kind of like
Speaker 2: this sort of baroque weirdness. I don't know, a.
Speaker 3: Lot of kind of gold and jade things. Yeah, very baroque.
Speaker 3: Like you say, there is a mix of things that
Speaker 3: look scary and things that look funny, all jumbled together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a good connection. Now, again, a
Speaker 2: lot of people went into the visuals on this film
Speaker 2: and the effects and so forth. But I do have
Speaker 2: to call out Carlo Rumbaldi sometimes credited just as Rumbaldi.
Speaker 2: He has creature creator credits on this and I bet
Speaker 2: everyone knows what creature we're talking about. We're talking about
Speaker 2: the Guilt Navigator. Oh.
Speaker 3: I thought you were going to say the Sandworm, but
Speaker 3: here we go.
Speaker 2: Well, you know that's right, there is the sandword. I
Speaker 2: bet he worked on both of them. I believe. I've
Speaker 2: read he worked on the Guild Navigator, but I bet
Speaker 2: he was in on the Sandworm as well. Okay, so yeah.
Speaker 2: He lived nineteen twenty five through twenty twelve, legendary effects
Speaker 2: master who worked on films such as Planet of the Vampires,
Speaker 2: et Alien, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Barberella.
Speaker 2: Oh Man. And finally we have to talk about the
Speaker 2: music for David Lynch's DOUN. The score is by Toto Yep,
Speaker 2: the American rock jazz fusion band best known for such
Speaker 2: late seventies and early eighties hits as Africa, Hold the
Speaker 2: Line and Rosanna Joe. Is rock jazz fusion the correct
Speaker 2: descriptor for Toto genre. I've really struggled with this.
Speaker 3: I don't know that much about Toto other than like
Speaker 3: their singles and the role in the movie here. I
Speaker 3: don't know how much jazz I hear. But like I
Speaker 3: don't really know their whole discography. I would say that
Speaker 3: their hit songs sound to me just more like a
Speaker 3: rock band.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've heard people make a case for prog rock
Speaker 2: with Toto, and but then also I have to say,
Speaker 2: like their biggest hit, Africa, which I did a deep,
Speaker 2: semi deep dive I waited in a little bit into
Speaker 2: the Toto filmography yesterday, and most of it is not
Speaker 2: for me. However, Africa is an all time great like that,
Speaker 2: Africa is a great track, and I think you could
Speaker 2: make a case for looping Africa in with the kind
Speaker 2: of like yacht rock kind of sound.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, yeah, it's I mean, it's very very smooth,
Speaker 3: but it's but it's a catchy song and it has
Speaker 3: you know people, I think people would call it out
Speaker 3: for being cheesy, but it does have some transcendent melodies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great track. It is a cheesy track,
Speaker 2: but it's a great track. I have it saved to
Speaker 2: my phone in one of my playlists. So Toto formed
Speaker 2: out of a collect and of sessions musicians, and at
Speaker 2: the time of the recording of this score, the band
Speaker 2: consisted of Steve Lucather, David Posh, Steve Porco, Mike Porcio,
Speaker 2: and Jeff Porcio. Bobby Kimball, the vocalist, had I believe,
Speaker 2: just left the band, and I'm not sure on the
Speaker 2: full story there, but at any rate, at this point
Speaker 2: Toto had achieved some of their biggest hits and they
Speaker 2: had never scored a motion picture before, and they have
Speaker 2: not scored a motion picture since.
Speaker 3: You mentioned they were session musicians. I know Steve, however
Speaker 3: you say his last name Lucather or Lukeather, whatever that is.
Speaker 3: I know he worked on like a bunch of other
Speaker 3: big songs from artists he would recognize, like he played
Speaker 3: the guitar on beat It and.
Speaker 2: Stuff like that. Yeah, So they did very technically proficient
Speaker 2: and also obviously commercially proficient. They were a big deal
Speaker 2: at the time. They're not just coming out of nowhere
Speaker 2: to score Dune. And yet this is a choice that
Speaker 2: has long confused me. You know, you can understand the
Speaker 2: desire on Dido Dealer inis his part, Okay, we're gonna
Speaker 2: take this mid sixties sci fi tale, but we want,
Speaker 2: we want to hit, we want we want to connect
Speaker 2: with modern film viewers. We want it to be a
Speaker 2: mainstream crossover. And so you can understand why he might
Speaker 2: want something similar to what he did with Flash Gordon
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty bringing in Queen, even though that, of course,
Speaker 2: is the tone of that film is totally different from
Speaker 2: what they're going after in Din.
Speaker 3: I mean, Queen was perfect for Flash Gordon. It's like
Speaker 3: it is a perfect fit. As we were saying that,
Speaker 3: like the harmonized guitar sound that Brian May makes and
Speaker 3: the kind of campy theatricality that Queen was already doing
Speaker 3: on their studio albums just is Flash Gordon. It's that
Speaker 3: perfect embodiment of the feeling of the film. And so yeah,
Speaker 3: it couldn't be a better fit Toto in this movie.
Speaker 3: I don't want to knock it again because there are
Speaker 3: elements of the soundtrack that I think do really work well.
Speaker 3: But I don't know if it fits quite the same way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like Dino even apparently wanted Conan the Barbarian to
Speaker 2: have a rock and roll score, but Don Milios was like, like, no,
Speaker 2: we're not doing that. This is what we're doing. And
Speaker 2: you know, I think that was the correct choice.
Speaker 3: Conan the Barbarian score by the Scorpions.
Speaker 2: So I always kind of like assume that, like, Okay,
Speaker 2: Dino must have forced his hand here. It's like, bring
Speaker 2: in Toto. Toto's popular, let's have Toto score it. But
Speaker 2: I was reading in an article published on The Thin
Speaker 2: Air by Stephen Rainey titled what Happens when You Add
Speaker 2: Toto to David Lynch that Dino actually wanted Giorgio Moroder
Speaker 2: for the gig Rover is tremendous. He did the score
Speaker 2: for The Never Ending Story, for example. According to Rainey,
Speaker 2: it was Lynch that pushed for Toto. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: exactly why. And you know, Lynch doesn't talk about Doom
Speaker 2: much at all in any interviews. I've seen some members
Speaker 2: of Toto discussed in some interviews, but it tends to
Speaker 2: just sound like, well, things just sort of came together,
Speaker 2: you know, we met and he thought we were right
Speaker 2: for it, and that's how it came to be.
Speaker 3: Okay, I would not have expected that.
Speaker 2: We should have also point out that there is one
Speaker 2: track on the score, Prophecy Theme, in which Brian Eno
Speaker 2: and Daniel Lenois also contribute, and that of course is
Speaker 2: a great track as well.
Speaker 3: Okay, folks, I just had to like pause recording here
Speaker 3: to go figure out which track that was and listen
Speaker 3: to it, and then it was like playing all these
Speaker 3: YouTube ads at me. But anyway, great theme. Yes, I agree,
Speaker 3: this is the one with the swelling synthesizer chords and
Speaker 3: it's sort of the music from the hearts of space
Speaker 3: of this film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, obviously I love that track, well love you know,
Speaker 2: it's anything you know touches. It's hard to find fault with,
Speaker 2: but I do want to stress like the whole score
Speaker 2: is pretty solid on the whole and at times great.
Speaker 2: It is a legitimate film score that sometimes sounds very
Speaker 2: Toto slash Africa, but otherwise it commits to tones and
Speaker 2: tempos that are cinematically informed and cinematically appropriate. For instance,
Speaker 2: Dune Desert Theme, that track feels very Toto in Africa
Speaker 2: and is great in that sense. While the main title
Speaker 2: you know, this is the Boom Boom Boom Boom is
Speaker 2: more brooding and cinematic. It's a great track, totally fits
Speaker 2: the film. My personal favorite, aside from that is Robot Fight.
Speaker 2: This is when when Paul is training early in the film.
Speaker 2: It's chonky, it's scynthy, it's pulsing. The box is also nice,
Speaker 2: and the Floating fat Man that's the title of the
Speaker 2: track in parentheses. The Baron is a high energy synth
Speaker 2: organ number that I think would feel perfectly at home
Speaker 2: in virtually any Italian horror movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of great stuff in the score,
Speaker 3: a lot that I really like. I also really like
Speaker 3: the robot fight number. That's just got some It's got
Speaker 3: some kind of percussion and it sounds sort of like
Speaker 3: woodblocks or something. Yeah, and that's a great one, the
Speaker 3: scene where Paul fights the stabbing robot.
Speaker 2: Ye.
Speaker 3: But there are some parts of the score that I
Speaker 3: think don't work quite as well. And the parts that
Speaker 3: I think don't really work as well are the ones
Speaker 3: the parts that sound more rock. It's it's not a
Speaker 3: great fit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's at least one point late in the film
Speaker 2: where Fremen are writing sandworms and you get like a
Speaker 2: guitar lick and like it giggled a little bit. It
Speaker 2: was amazing, though, I'm glad. I wouldn't want it any
Speaker 2: other way. All in all, I'd say an effective and
Speaker 2: interesting score, you know, comparing it to the other films.
Speaker 2: You know, I have to say, I'm a huge fan
Speaker 2: of Hans Zimmer's Dune scores. I think this is probably
Speaker 2: his best work now that I've listened to all of
Speaker 2: Hans Zimmer's scores, because he scored some really uninteresting and
Speaker 2: all awful movies at times. But you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: but we have to acknowledge his approach is altogether different.
Speaker 2: It's from a different era, so you can't really compare.
Speaker 2: You can't compare a total score to a Zimmer score.
Speaker 2: They're both great in their own way.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I'm just looking at what Hans Zimmer has scored now.
Speaker 3: Oh he he did Twister. Yeah, there's just a lot
Speaker 3: of stuff in there. It's like I don't even want
Speaker 3: to check, Like, I doubt Twister has a great score.
Speaker 3: I'm sure it's effective, I'm sure it's fine, but I'm
Speaker 3: just not gonna go listen to it.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, it's not.
Speaker 3: Even that Twister. It's a different Twister that is also
Speaker 3: a movie about tornadoes.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, they didn't adapt the board game or the
Speaker 2: floor game Twister the motion picture.
Speaker 3: Okay, what are we doing now? Are we gonna go
Speaker 3: start talking about the plot and introduce some actors as
Speaker 3: we go along?
Speaker 2: Yes, let us attempt to do this. Bear with us.
Speaker 2: We have not really done it this way before, but
Speaker 2: I think this is our best path forward. So say
Speaker 2: it the Guild navigators.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, the movie starts with what do you want
Speaker 3: to guess? It's a sci fi movie from the eighties?
Speaker 3: What do we open with? It's a star field? Kind
Speaker 3: of an overused convention, but we start looking at the
Speaker 3: stars and then we come in on the eyes. Extreme
Speaker 3: close up of the eyes of Virginia Madsen playing Princess Irulan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so she is part of House Corrino. For modern
Speaker 2: fans of the more recent adaptations, she was not introduced
Speaker 2: as a character until Dune Part two. Virginia Madson born
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty one. Oscar nominated actress for two thousand
Speaker 2: and five Sideways and this is I believe her second
Speaker 2: or third credit Dune is Sideways She was in the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty three Comedy Class as well as nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: four as Electric Dreams. Her subsequent credits include ninety one's
Speaker 2: Highlander two The Quickening, There You Go, ninety two's Candy Man,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five's The Prophecy, The Christopher Walken Angel one
Speaker 2: that we might get to at some point, and various
Speaker 2: other TV projects.
Speaker 3: Robert, are we going to do Highlander two The Quickening
Speaker 3: this year?
Speaker 2: We should? You know, we have that older stuff to
Speaker 2: blow your mind episode about Highlander to the Quickening, But
Speaker 2: it wasn't the weird house approach, right, so you know,
Speaker 2: it doesn't really count. We could come back and do it.
Speaker 3: I think the question for that would be, is there
Speaker 3: a way now to get our hands on a copy
Speaker 3: of the superior bad cut of the film as opposed
Speaker 3: to the inferior improved cut of the film.
Speaker 2: That's true. You know, last time we watched it, we
Speaker 2: had to watch a rip of the VHS or something
Speaker 2: like that. So that's what we need to find out.
Speaker 2: We need to find out if we have a good
Speaker 2: source material here.
Speaker 3: They're trying to only make accessible the versions that take
Speaker 3: out all the good stuff and don't have you know
Speaker 3: Sean Connery waving the sword with the flashlight on him
Speaker 3: and stuff.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Virginia Madson, who by the way, is the sister
Speaker 2: of Michael Madson, perfectly fine performance here, though she doesn't
Speaker 2: get to do all that much. I should know that
Speaker 2: Julie Cox and Florence Pugh have also played the role,
Speaker 2: and certainly in the more recent adaptation, this character gets
Speaker 2: to do a little bit more and will be even
Speaker 2: more important in the next Dune film.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So in this movie, because it's just an adaptation
Speaker 3: of the first novel, Princess Irelan's role is not huge
Speaker 3: within the plot, but it is huge within the film,
Speaker 3: just because she does so much voiceover narration, Like she
Speaker 3: explains everything about the world to us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she lays it on us, and she's looking right
Speaker 2: at us, and she's like weirdly conversational. She's like, oh,
Speaker 2: by the way, I totally forgot to mention this other thing,
Speaker 2: Like she gets into something to an important plot point.
Speaker 3: Well wait, so I feel like I should just actually
Speaker 3: read her opening narration so you can get a sin
Speaker 3: because I feel like you can feel everything just raining
Speaker 3: down on you. So she says, a beginning is a
Speaker 3: very delicate time. Know then that it is the year
Speaker 3: ten one hundred and ninety one. The known universe is
Speaker 3: ruled by the Padishat Emperor Shaddam the Fourth, my father
Speaker 3: in this time. The most precious substance in the universe
Speaker 3: is the spice millange. The spice extends life, The spice
Speaker 3: expands consciousness. The spice is vital to space travel. The
Speaker 3: Spacing Guild and its navigators, who the spice has mutated
Speaker 3: over four thousand years, use the orange spice gas, which
Speaker 3: gives them the ability to fold space, that is, travel
Speaker 3: to any part of the universe without moving. Oh, yes,
Speaker 3: I forgotten to tell you. She does say that the
Speaker 3: spice exists on only one planet in the entire universe,
Speaker 3: a desolate, dry planet with vast deserts. Hidden away within
Speaker 3: the rocks of these deserts are a people known as
Speaker 3: the Fremen, who have long held a prophecy that a
Speaker 3: man would come, a messiah who would lead them to
Speaker 3: true freedom. The planet is a Racus, also known as Done. Now,
Speaker 3: this should bring us back to what we were talking
Speaker 3: about earlier. That audiences at the time quite famously complained
Speaker 3: that this movie was incomprehensible that they could not follow
Speaker 3: the plot. I'm at a point where I'm so familiar
Speaker 3: with the world and the story that I don't really
Speaker 3: trust myself to assess what this movie would be like
Speaker 3: to someone who came in cold. But just like trying
Speaker 3: to be objective and look at this opening narration in isolation.
Speaker 3: Despite it being fairly straightforward, like everything is phrased in
Speaker 3: a very clear to understand way, I think it could
Speaker 3: still even newcomer feeling kind of overwhelmed because it's just
Speaker 3: piling so much on you before any of it means anything.
Speaker 3: I think a better way to develop this sort of
Speaker 3: thing is to give you a little bit of exposition
Speaker 3: and then show you some story to allow that exposition
Speaker 3: to kind of like materialize and be connected to characters
Speaker 3: that you care about. And then once you have characters
Speaker 3: that you care about, you can start learning more about
Speaker 3: the premise and the setting and all that, and at
Speaker 3: that point it'll feel like it's meaningful. With just all
Speaker 3: this opening narration, we haven't even met anybody else. It
Speaker 3: just kind of washes over you, and I think you
Speaker 3: would probably forget a lot of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it's it's also fascinating everything, you know, springing
Speaker 2: off of everything you just said, like the intro itself
Speaker 2: begins with a beginning, is a very delicate time, and
Speaker 2: you know, you can't help but think about that in
Speaker 2: terms of the storytelling, like this is a delicate point
Speaker 2: in the movie. We are easing you into a complex,
Speaker 2: rich universe, and we have to give you some information,
Speaker 2: but we don't want to give you too much information.
Speaker 2: And therefore, yeah, it is very delicate. It's a very
Speaker 2: delicate point. I mean, it makes sense that Princess Iroline
Speaker 2: would be the one telling us this because she's it's
Speaker 2: her historical writings that often preface various Dune chapters in
Speaker 2: the novel. And you know, it's probably the better choice
Speaker 2: as opposed to the extended prologue that I imagine was cut
Speaker 2: and then ends up reappearing on those disavowed extended TV
Speaker 2: versions where you have a bunch of like production stills
Speaker 2: of various factions and characters and then a lot of
Speaker 2: additional narration about the different factions. But that prologue is
Speaker 2: still pretty fun. You can find it on YouTube and stuff,
Speaker 2: and also I'm sure in DVD extras it's amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I haven't seen that. I would like to. I'd
Speaker 3: like to see what they could have done with it.
Speaker 3: Another thing you pointed out is that she gets conversational
Speaker 3: in this, but I think there is a strange mix
Speaker 3: of tones. So, like one sentence in this opening narration
Speaker 3: is know then that it is the year ten thousand
Speaker 3: and one ninety one. That's almost like a biblical kind
Speaker 3: of phrasing, know then that it is. But then she
Speaker 3: also says, oh, yes, I forgot to tell you. It's
Speaker 3: like the voice doesn't feel very consistent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's ultimately a weird start to a weird film.
Speaker 3: So the title and credits play out over images of
Speaker 3: wind sweeping sand from the dunes of the Lifeless Desert.
Speaker 3: We get that heavy brooding dune theme, bomb bomb, b bomb.
Speaker 3: You know, it's very it's very dark, and you know
Speaker 3: it feels like bad things are coming. Then we get
Speaker 3: more Narration's straight into more of an unknown voice talking
Speaker 3: to you. I think this is a member of the
Speaker 3: Spacing Guild.
Speaker 2: We see the Spacing Guild logo I think in this sequence,
Speaker 2: which which is great. Yeah, it's like the three planetary
Speaker 2: spheres connected by a line, like a horizontal line. It's great.
Speaker 2: I don't think I'd ever really paid much attention before,
Speaker 2: but now I love it.
Speaker 3: So this narrator says a secret report within the Guild.
Speaker 3: Four planets have come to our attention regarding a plot
Speaker 3: which could jeopardize spice production. Planet Aracus, source of the spice.
Speaker 3: Planet Calidan, home of Housitreides, Planet gide Prime, home of
Speaker 3: House Harkonen. Planet Katon, home of the Emperor of the
Speaker 3: known Universe. Send a third stage Guild navigator to Katon
Speaker 3: to demand details from the Emperor. The spice must flow.
Speaker 3: So hitting you again with like a lot of factions
Speaker 3: and stuff before we've met a single person. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 3: we see a giant ship landing on the surface of
Speaker 3: Katon in front of a kind of industrial palace in
Speaker 3: the night. Katon appears to be very urbanized planet, with
Speaker 3: brightly lit city skylines in the background. This, I guess
Speaker 3: is sort of the Imperial capital planet, and strange figures
Speaker 3: are seen disembarking from the ship. We see pale skin,
Speaker 3: bald heads, some people in full environment suits, all in
Speaker 3: shiny black clothing that seems somewhere between a monk's robe
Speaker 3: and like a hazmat barrier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, everything is very industrial slash regal, you know,
Speaker 2: in a very fitting way, you know, and in the
Speaker 2: members of the Guild that even we've seen so far
Speaker 2: have a very sickly pallor you know, and they're kind
Speaker 2: of like oozing in places and so forth. This idea
Speaker 2: that you know, they're you know, rightfully spice junkies to
Speaker 2: some extent, and or the rigors of spice use and
Speaker 2: or interplanetary interstellar travel have taken a toll on their bodies.
Speaker 3: One thing I really like about the design of this movie,
Speaker 3: and I think to some extent this is carried over
Speaker 3: even into Dnevilneuve's adaptation, is the like the costume designs
Speaker 3: and stuff that peer to mix influences of industrial technology
Speaker 3: and influences of like high church and religion. A lot
Speaker 3: of characters and the ways they're dressed and their environments
Speaker 3: look like a cross between you know, like monks and
Speaker 3: priests and cathedrals of the Middle Ages and also people
Speaker 3: working in a factory that produces hazardous chemicals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is an esthetic that fans of Warhammer forty
Speaker 2: thousand are very familiar with, and I think you can
Speaker 2: rightfully wonder to what extent that aesthetic would be present
Speaker 2: in Warhammer forty thousand without this adaptation with Dune, and
Speaker 2: I think you can rightfully wonder if Warhammer forty thousand
Speaker 2: would exist at all in any recognizable form if it
Speaker 2: had not been for the influence of Dune itself.
Speaker 3: So we see inside the Emperor's palace next, where everything
Speaker 3: is green and gold, with these pale, milky jade floors
Speaker 3: and gold walls with columns bearing a kind of texture
Speaker 3: that looks like perforated wasp nest. You know, it has
Speaker 3: these tubes and columns, And so we see courtiers milling
Speaker 3: about everywhere, also dressed in black. So the women in
Speaker 3: the palace are dressed like mourners, and black dresses and
Speaker 3: black veils, old men in black military uniforms, Imperial dog
Speaker 3: walkers leading packs of bulldogs around. Most of the courtiers
Speaker 3: leave the throne room as the Guild Navigator approaches, and
Speaker 3: we see the Emperor conferring anxiously with an adviser, a
Speaker 3: woman named Reverend Mother Gaias Helen Moheum, and he tells
Speaker 3: her that he wishes her to read the Guild Navigator's
Speaker 3: mind and present a report. After she leaves then she
Speaker 3: professes loyalty to the Emperor and says that she is
Speaker 3: his truth sayer. Now, this will be the first of
Speaker 3: many characters introduced to have some level of psychic power.
Speaker 3: Some characters in Dune have psychic clairvoyance, like kind of
Speaker 3: foreknowledge and ability to engage in remote viewing and see
Speaker 3: what's happening elsewhere or to see into the future. Other
Speaker 3: characters have the ability to read people's minds, and it's
Speaker 3: kind of like this to some extent in the book
Speaker 3: as well. These various types of psychic powers are present,
Speaker 3: though I do kind of sympathize with some critics at
Speaker 3: the time when this came out, said, like, a lot
Speaker 3: of characters in this movie are psychic. I wish we
Speaker 3: were psychic so we could understand the plot. You know,
Speaker 3: that's kind of an maybe an unfair job, But I
Speaker 3: do see a point they're making that, like who has
Speaker 3: what psychic powers and why is not exactly clear, and
Speaker 3: so you don't know what kinds of knowledge different characters
Speaker 3: have access to. If that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like this is this adaptation is very concerned
Speaker 2: with you knowing what breeds of dogs are important to
Speaker 2: which houses. Maybe it's a little shakier on who has
Speaker 2: what form of psychic power?
Speaker 3: Yeah, but anyway, so she's there the job.
Speaker 2: We should talk about these two actors though, Oh oh.
Speaker 3: Wait, I'm sorry. Yes, the Emperor and the Reverend Mother
Speaker 3: both both I think great performances in both cases.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so as the Patashah Emperor Shaddam. The fourth
Speaker 2: we have Jose Ferrer, who lived nineteen twelve through nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety two, Puerto Rican actor and film director, best known
Speaker 2: for such films as nineteen fifty Cirino de Bergeract, a
Speaker 2: film for which he was the first Hispanic actor to
Speaker 2: win an Academy Award. He was also in fifty fours
Speaker 2: The Kinge Mutiny. But his filmography, like a lot of folks,
Speaker 2: ultimately includes everything you know across the spectrum, from nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty two's Lawrence of Arabia to nineteen seventy seven's The
Speaker 2: Sentinel and Zoltan Hound of Dracula aka Dracula's Dog.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, I'd like Jose Ferrer's approach to this role,
Speaker 3: which is kind of unassuming, like he plays this character
Speaker 3: in a different way than you might expect. You might
Speaker 3: expect the Emperor to have a more imposing presence and
Speaker 3: to be more, to be more dominant and commanding. But
Speaker 3: instead he plays this character like a careful politician, someone
Speaker 3: who is who is clever and circumspect and trying to
Speaker 3: carefully manage his relationships and allegiances.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a good read. There are a
Speaker 2: few scenes where I feel like he comes up a
Speaker 2: little bit befuddled. Yeah, I'm not sure to what extent
Speaker 2: that was intended, or if it's like I don't know
Speaker 2: what these lines mean, but I would imagine it's it's
Speaker 2: more on the intended scale. Because, Yeah, this Farrer was
Speaker 2: a great actor. We've talked about his son, Miguel Ferrera
Speaker 2: before because he was of course in RoboCop and he
Speaker 2: was the uncle of George Cliney.
Speaker 3: M Miguel Ferrera was great at in a lot of
Speaker 3: eighties movies, just like playing jerks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now, real quick, I will mention that this is
Speaker 2: a character that has also been played by John Carlo
Speaker 2: Janini that was the mini series, and more recently by
Speaker 2: Christopher Walkin in Denny Vee's adaptations. I need to see
Speaker 2: doing part two and once more before I fully make
Speaker 2: up my mind on Christopher Walkin's performance.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right.
Speaker 2: In the other character, Reverend Mother Guy Helen Mohayam is
Speaker 2: played by Sean Phillips born nineteen thirty three. So again
Speaker 2: not a member of House Krino, but she is the
Speaker 2: Emperor's truth sayer. She is a member of the benigestri
Speaker 2: At order. We've talked about Phillips before because she played
Speaker 2: Cassiopeia in nineteen eighty one's Clash of the Titans and
Speaker 2: she played the Knight Witch Chaal in Ewok's The Battle
Speaker 2: for indoor Ah.
Speaker 3: I forgot about those connections, but she is wonderful in
Speaker 3: this role. This is another character who you know, kind
Speaker 3: of liked the emperor in both cases. At first is
Speaker 3: shown to be a you know, just a character of
Speaker 3: kind of mystery and power. You're wondering, like what is
Speaker 3: their power and what are they trying to do, but
Speaker 3: ultimately is revealed to kind of be a politician, like
Speaker 3: she's managing relationships between different factions. She's trying to keep
Speaker 3: the balance of power and keep her plans on track.
Speaker 3: And I think she does a great job with this role.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The benages Rates are masterful politicians and
Speaker 2: masterful manipulators, and I think that comes out more in
Speaker 2: the recent adaptations than it does here, perhaps, but because again,
Speaker 2: you know, one film focuses more on the on the
Speaker 2: Guild and the other films focus more on the benagest rates.
Speaker 2: But I have to say, as far as just Sean
Speaker 2: Phillips's presence and her and interact and go, I always
Speaker 2: loved her in this role. Her costuming and hairstyling is
Speaker 2: just absolutely on point, and she brings just wonderful energy
Speaker 2: to the role. I'm hard pressed to pick a favorite
Speaker 2: Reverend Mother here across the various adaptations, because Charlotte Rampling
Speaker 2: is also great in recent films. Oh yes, yes, all right,
Speaker 2: let's dive back into the scene. Okay, so we have
Speaker 2: here the Emperor and the Reverend Mother, and then the
Speaker 2: giant golden doors to the Emperor's throne room peel apart
Speaker 2: into recesses, and here comes the Guild Navigator. But at
Speaker 2: first we do not see the Guild Navigator in bodily form.
Speaker 2: We just see a giant black cylinder venting out these
Speaker 2: blasts of steam. It looks like a solid iron locomotive
Speaker 2: rolling along the floor, approaching the throne, flanked by all
Speaker 2: these weird monks in black, and I love this approach.
Speaker 2: It's just like, what is this object? Yeah, the absolute
Speaker 2: weirdness and grandeur of this sequence cannot be overstated. While
Speaker 2: we never meet a guild navigator or a guild steersman
Speaker 2: in the first Doune novel, they do become important later
Speaker 2: on and become There's an important character that is a
Speaker 2: guild navigator in Dune Messiah. But this sequence in this
Speaker 2: film does a great job of just setting the bizarre
Speaker 2: tone for the rest of the film, you know, intrigue,
Speaker 2: baroque splendor, grotesqueness, and a lingering sense of confusion. So
Speaker 2: I absolutely love it.
Speaker 3: So as you say this scene is not in the
Speaker 3: first novel, I mean, we never meet this weird character
Speaker 3: in the first novel. We're about to explain how weird
Speaker 3: he looks. So this is like purely a I guess
Speaker 3: I don't know for sure whose choice it was, but
Speaker 3: it seems like a David Lynch choice to just make
Speaker 3: this movie much weirder than it had to be.
Speaker 2: Right at the beginning, Yeah, because to be clear, the
Speaker 2: new adaptations have no guild navigators. And then we briefly
Speaker 2: see the spacing guild in Dune part one, but we
Speaker 2: certainly never see a Guild Navigator.
Speaker 3: So so, yeah, these monks approach like one with this
Speaker 3: giant black you know train. Essentially, one of the monks
Speaker 3: picks up a weird looking microphone that starts speaking into
Speaker 3: it with this inhuman language and it translates to the
Speaker 3: Beni Jesert. Witch must leave, so the Emperor bids her leave.
Speaker 3: The Reverend Mother has to go to the other room.
Speaker 3: She does. When they are alone with the Emperor, wheels
Speaker 3: begin to turn on the front of the locomotive and
Speaker 3: metal doors are unlocking, and then the dark panels on
Speaker 3: the front of this huge object spread apart, and they
Speaker 3: reveal inside a giant tank, almost like a fish tank,
Speaker 3: but it is filled with orange smoke, occupied by a
Speaker 3: gigantic octopus like creature. And this is the Guild Navigator.
Speaker 3: It's someone who I think the lore is that this
Speaker 3: is somebody who is once human in form but was
Speaker 3: mutated through it through their extreme use of the spice millage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, essentially, And in the novels they're kind of described
Speaker 2: more as like taking the form ultimately like a fish
Speaker 2: man like that. That's the form that they have mutated into.
Speaker 2: In this they go into more almost kind of like
Speaker 2: embryonic direction. The creature is stranger, even stranger to behold,
Speaker 2: and it is it is glorious. Is it is an
Speaker 2: unforgettable visual aspect of the pope motion picture. And it's
Speaker 2: just again brilliantly weird and sets the tone for the
Speaker 2: whole picture.
Speaker 3: So, speaking to the Emperor, the guild navigator says, we
Speaker 3: have just folded space from IX, and the Emperor says yes,
Speaker 3: And the guild Navigator explains that it has psychically sensed
Speaker 3: a plan unfolding in fact, not just a plan, but
Speaker 3: plans within plans. It suggests that it foresees a war
Speaker 3: between two great houses house Atriades and how Sarconin, and
Speaker 3: it asks if this is according to a plan of
Speaker 3: the Emperor's doing, and the Emperor admits that it is so.
Speaker 3: The Emperor says, the Atriodes House is building a secret
Speaker 3: army using a technique unknown to us, a technique involving sound.
Speaker 3: The Duke is becoming more popular in the lands Rod.
Speaker 3: He could threaten me. I think the LANs Rod is
Speaker 3: the the parliament of this universe. Essentially, he could threaten me.
Speaker 3: I have ordered Hou Satrades to occupy Aracus to mine
Speaker 3: the spice, thus replacing their enemies. The Harconans house Atrides
Speaker 3: will not refuse because of the tremendous power they think
Speaker 3: they will gain. Then, at an appointed time, Baron Harconan
Speaker 3: will return to Iracus and launch a sneak attack on
Speaker 3: hou Satraides. I have promised the Baron five legions of
Speaker 3: my Sardekar terror troops. So once again, we alluded to
Speaker 3: this earlier, but they just lay out the whole plot
Speaker 3: right there. I don't know what I think about that choice.
Speaker 3: On one hand, it might make the story easier to
Speaker 3: follow if you're not already familiar with it. On the
Speaker 3: other hand, it does kind of like spoil some of
Speaker 3: the surprise because this is exactly what happens. It just
Speaker 3: lays it all out there. Yeah, anyway, The Guild Navigator
Speaker 3: seems okay with this, but it says that through its clairvoyance,
Speaker 3: it perceives that this plan may be complicated by paul Atreadees,
Speaker 3: the son of Duke Leto Atradees, and the Guild Navigator says,
Speaker 3: I want paul A Trades killed. I did not say this,
Speaker 3: I was not here.
Speaker 2: I love this moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then the Guild Navigator like retreats and the
Speaker 3: space monks scurry along with it, like running vacuum cleaners
Speaker 3: over the floor, which is a laugh out loud moment,
Speaker 3: but it's I'd love that detail. I don't know what
Speaker 3: it means, but it's really good.
Speaker 2: Was were they I'm not I'm unsure on exactly what's
Speaker 2: happening here either, but did they like slide the guild
Speaker 2: navigator enclosure out on like a thin layer of oil
Speaker 2: or slime, I don't know, and then retreat on it
Speaker 2: and they've got to like clean it a little bit.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's wondrous. It's wondrous. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Emperor Shadam is left wondering what the Spacing Guild.
Speaker 3: Why would the Spacing Guild be so afraid of Duke
Speaker 3: Letto's son, He's just a boy. Meanwhile, in the other room,
Speaker 3: the Reverend Mother has been conducting psychic surveillance on the meeting.
Speaker 3: She knows what has been asked, and she goes back
Speaker 3: to a group of her benijesa At sisters and says
Speaker 3: they must examine paul Atreides, they must understand his significance,
Speaker 3: and you know, what we're looking at time here, And
Speaker 3: as we predicted at the beginning, if we tried to
Speaker 3: do this all in one episode, it would be like
Speaker 3: a three to four hour episode of Weird House. So
Speaker 3: I think what we're going to have to do is
Speaker 3: divide it here. We'll leave you hanging with this prologue
Speaker 3: that is mostly not from the novel Dune itself, and
Speaker 3: then next time we're going to come back and discuss
Speaker 3: more of the rest of the plot of Dune nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty four, more of the cast, and maybe have some
Speaker 3: retrospective thoughts once we get to the end of the
Speaker 3: plot about I don't know how the movie relates to
Speaker 3: the source material, how it fits in to David Lynch's
Speaker 3: filmography and things like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, we'll wrap it up in the next episode
Speaker 2: of Weird House Cinema. And who knows in the future,
Speaker 2: if we do a Weird House rewind of this episode,
Speaker 2: maybe we'll cobble it all together into one big director's cut.
Speaker 3: We'll see just an unmanageable chunk.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, just drop directly onto your phone. Yeah all right, Well,
Speaker 2: I'm looking forward to continue to continuing the discussion, continuing
Speaker 2: our journey through David Lynch's Dune in the meantime will
Speaker 2: remind you that here un stuff to blow your mind
Speaker 2: and stuff to blow your mind. Feed. We're primarily a
Speaker 2: science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That
Speaker 2: doesn't mean we haven't done core episodes about Dune. If
Speaker 2: you go into our back catalog, you will find we
Speaker 2: did some episodes on the science of Dune, on the
Speaker 2: philosophy of Dune. Have a few short form episodes here
Speaker 2: and there that deal with things from Dune. I did
Speaker 2: one monster fact. These are on Wednesdays about donkeys of
Speaker 2: Dune because nobody ever adapts the donkeys of the planet
Speaker 2: or but in the books it is clear that the
Speaker 2: that there are donkeys on this planet, and they are used,
Speaker 2: and they do wear a modified still suit. Oh boy, yeah,
Speaker 2: the books, the book books have so much weirdness in them.
Speaker 2: It's suited one of your donkeys. Let's see Mondays we
Speaker 2: do listener mails, and yes, indeed, on Fridays we set
Speaker 2: aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
Speaker 2: film on Weird House Cinema. If you want to see
Speaker 2: a list of all the movies we've covered thus far,
Speaker 2: in Weird House Cinema and sometimes get a glimpse at
Speaker 2: what's coming next. Go to letterbox dot com. It's l
Speaker 2: E T T E R B O x D dot com.
Speaker 2: It's a fun side overall for you know, chronicling movies,
Speaker 2: seeing you know what the different different connections are between
Speaker 2: different productions. But we are on there as weird House,
Speaker 2: that's our user name, and we have a list and
Speaker 2: you can look at all the things we've covered thus far,
Speaker 2: and you can throw on different filters to see, like, Okay,
Speaker 2: which movies from the fifties did we do? Which movies? Uh,
Speaker 2: which sci fi movies did we do? Which fantasy movies?
Speaker 2: And so forth. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audi your producer
Speaker 3: JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 3: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 3: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 3: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 3: to Blow your Mind dot com.
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