Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind, this is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 1: We have a vacation week here for the show, so
Speaker 1: this is the perfect time to roll out a Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema two parter. This is going to be part
Speaker 1: one of our episode on the late David Lynch's Dune
Speaker 1: from nineteen eighty four. This episode originally published three eight,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, so we put this out before the
Speaker 1: passing of the great David Lynch. So keep that in
Speaker 1: mind as you roll into it and appreciate this weird
Speaker 1: and wonderful picture.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick, and oh boy, have we
Speaker 3: got a movie to talk about today. We're pretty sure
Speaker 3: this is going to be our first and perhaps only
Speaker 3: ever two part episode of Weird House Cinema. And you
Speaker 3: might be thinking what movie could possibly cause them to
Speaker 3: split Weird House Cinema into two parts. It's David Lynch's
Speaker 3: Dune from nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, we normally try and keep Weird House,
Speaker 1: as you know, a single episode installment situation. But the
Speaker 1: cast is too rich here, the weirdness is too deep.
Speaker 1: And with release of Dnis Villeneuve's Dune Part two, obviously
Speaker 1: Dune is in the air once more. Everybody's going crazy
Speaker 1: for this film, and rightfully so, and that gives us
Speaker 1: the excuse. All right, everybody's digging Dune right now. We
Speaker 1: can do a two parter on Weird House Cinema about
Speaker 1: David Lynch's.
Speaker 3: Adaptation, Wait did you see the new one? Yes?
Speaker 1: Over the weekend just slammed the Dune. My son had
Speaker 1: never seen Dune Part one, so we rewatched that with him,
Speaker 1: and then we all went up to the movie theater
Speaker 1: for you know, three hours and Dune Part two with
Speaker 1: a full cinematic experience. We didn't get the popcorn bucket,
Speaker 1: but we still had a great time. It's definitely a
Speaker 1: 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 the 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: is like a It is a wonderful novel, but it
Speaker 3: almost feels like it was written to be specifically difficult
Speaker 3: to adapt to the movie format.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a It's a complex novel, full of
Speaker 1: interstellar feudalism, like psychotropic drugs, sandworms, lots of plots within plots,
Speaker 1: lots of conversations, and then when the action does take place,
Speaker 1: when there are big action spectacles, they generally happen off
Speaker 1: the page and are referred to after the fact, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's not one of these things where you can
Speaker 1: just like PLoP it on the table and like this
Speaker 1: is what we're filming today.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It's it's it has a reputation for being a difficult adaptation,
Speaker 1: and yeah, credit where credits due Denny v nailed it.
Speaker 1: I think he nailed it in part one and then
Speaker 1: part two he really seals the deal and it's it's
Speaker 1: a true spectacle with the caveat. I have to say, like,
Speaker 1: I've always been a Doom Book first fan, and I
Speaker 1: don't mean that in a snobby way, and I mean
Speaker 1: that in like that's how I read it for the
Speaker 1: first time, That's how I explored the world for the
Speaker 1: first time, and therefore, like that's always my starting point.
Speaker 1: And given the difficul culties of adapting it, you know,
Speaker 1: you have to go into it with the expectation that
Speaker 1: any filmmaker, regardless of what they're working with, they're going
Speaker 1: to have to pick and choose, as with most adaptations,
Speaker 1: to varying degrees, but you know, you're going to have
Speaker 1: to pick and choose, like what aspects of Doon you're
Speaker 1: going to realize on the screen, what aspects of the
Speaker 1: characters you're going to realize, and what you're going to
Speaker 1: 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 Doune 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 liies 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 characters' 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 1: Yeah, especially. We ended up watching it when I rewatched
Speaker 1: this with my wife, who was who's I was surprised
Speaker 1: she was game for it. Monday night, the day after
Speaker 1: watching Dune Part two, we watched David Lynch's Dune and
Speaker 1: we watched it with the subtitles because I'd read somewhere
Speaker 1: someone advised like, this is a good choice because you
Speaker 1: can keep a little better track of who's saying what.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of internal voice colon once being said,
Speaker 1: which makes it a little little more hilarious at times
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: Thinking, Yeah, it's a hard one to pull off. But
Speaker 1: that being said, you know, if you're gonna do it,
Speaker 1: commit to it fully, don't do it just in a
Speaker 1: couple of places where it's like, oh, they lost track
Speaker 1: of what they were doing. This scene wasn't working, so
Speaker 1: they're going to do a little bit of this. No, No,
Speaker 1: it's throughout the film, so it's in a way it's
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, I mean, is it the most faithful adaptation?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Is it? Is it the best? Well, it's hard, hard
Speaker 1: to make an argument for that, perhaps, But is it
Speaker 1: absolutely weird? Is it? Is it consistently entertaining? Absolutely?
Speaker 3: Yes, Yes, it's also shorter.
Speaker 1: In caveat here we are going to be only dealing
Speaker 1: with the theatrical cut of the film, the only cut
Speaker 1: that that David Lynch ever, you know, acknowledged and approved,
Speaker 1: and we'll get back into that later on. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's it's a reasonable, reasonably linked film. That's
Speaker 1: also part of the problem we'll discuss. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's shorter 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 run time.
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 1: Yeah. Yeah, I imagine we had the same experience on this,
Speaker 1: but because I think you have something that notes to
Speaker 1: this effect. But a lot of the reviews for this
Speaker 1: film make a point of saying it's incomprehensible. You have
Speaker 1: no idea what's going on at any given point. I
Speaker 1: did not have that experience rewatching the film, and I
Speaker 1: don't think you did either, obviously, because we know the
Speaker 1: major beats we know what's going to happen. We know
Speaker 1: who everyone is supposed.
Speaker 3: To be, right, so we can't really come at the
Speaker 3: movie cold. Like I'd read the novel before I saw
Speaker 3: this movie, so I already knew the story. So it's
Speaker 3: kind of hard for me to imagine what it would
Speaker 3: be like not being familiar going in. Though. When I
Speaker 3: try to imagine that, I can say like, yeah, I
Speaker 3: think this opening narration would be a little would be
Speaker 3: a little hard to get past. You'd be like, wait,
Speaker 3: I can't keep track of everything. You're saying, what's the
Speaker 3: spacing guild? Huh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And people have these issues too, even with the
Speaker 1: more recent adaptations, Like I remember seeing stuff online where
Speaker 1: people with the first film were confused and thought that
Speaker 1: perhaps the Baron was also the Emperor.
Speaker 3: They were a little.
Speaker 1: Unclear on that. And I know that my wife initially
Speaker 1: had some confusion over two different blonde characters in part two.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to reveal who they are, but she
Speaker 1: was like at least moment, like, wait, are these the
Speaker 1: same character? No, these are two different characters, And so yeah,
Speaker 1: this stuff's going to happen anytime you're adapting something so complex. Now,
Speaker 1: speaking of fitting a lot into a limited runtime. I
Speaker 1: also just want to quickly note that you know, this
Speaker 1: movie has been out for a while. It has a
Speaker 1: cult following. It is a David Lynch movie. There have
Speaker 1: been multiple great documentaries, books, papers, etc. On this production,
Speaker 1: on previous attempts at producing Dune for the screen, subsequent productions.
Speaker 1: We can't possibly get into all of that, but we'll
Speaker 1: reference a little of it as we go.
Speaker 3: Have you watched the documentary about Yodorowski's Dune.
Speaker 1: No. I had read about it plenty before it came out,
Speaker 1: and I've just never gotten around to watching it. But
Speaker 1: that is, of course a fascinating slash infamous example of
Speaker 1: you know, what if? What if jo Darowski had actually
Speaker 1: made this stupendous semi adaptation of Dune with this just
Speaker 1: colossally Bonker's cast. I'm glad he didn't end, and not
Speaker 1: just because I'm protective of Dune to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: but also because you see the influence of Doune in
Speaker 1: his later works with Mobius in the Metabaron series. These
Speaker 1: are graphic novels that Jodowski wrote, and those are tremendously
Speaker 1: fun and trippy, and they have elements of that kind
Speaker 1: of like doone feudal psychedelic world, but it's removed from
Speaker 1: Herbert's novels and it can be its own thing. So
Speaker 1: I think like ultimately, everything landed for the best.
Speaker 3: On that regard, that makes sense. So you're saying you'd
Speaker 3: rather instead of seeing Yodowski like impose his vision upon
Speaker 3: an adaptation of Dune, you'd rather see him take a
Speaker 3: bunch of influence from Dune and make his own thing.
Speaker 1: It's exactly yeah, I think it worked out for the best.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: On that note, let's go ahead and listen to some
Speaker 1: trailer audio. Specifically, I believe this is a radio spot.
Speaker 1: I love it when we can feature a radio spot
Speaker 1: since it is ideally tuned for the listening audience. Here
Speaker 1: this one. I found this one online. This was apparently
Speaker 1: something that aired in Salt Lake City. So let's have
Speaker 1: a listen.
Speaker 4: No, the most widely brand talked about and cherished masterpiece
Speaker 4: of a generation comes to the screen. You I see
Speaker 4: two great houses.
Speaker 3: You need.
Speaker 4: A world that holds creation's greatest treasure.
Speaker 1: You controls the Spice, controls the universe top.
Speaker 3: And greatest terrorsts.
Speaker 4: A world with a mighty the mad all I can
Speaker 4: see is an attradees that I want to kill and
Speaker 4: the magical the Sleepers, O my god, we'll have their
Speaker 4: final battle. A world called doom long lived bit eyes, we.
Speaker 1: Will kill until no hard conean breezed arocane air.
Speaker 3: Duel.
Speaker 4: A world beyond your experience, beyond your imagination.
Speaker 1: Details about the Dune Adventure in Washington.
Speaker 4: D C.
Speaker 1: Are coming soon from Heughter Brussel Pictures Eastern Airlines at
Speaker 1: one L six A FM 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 1: 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 Laoh from la You know, I've
Speaker 3: never had the courage to watch Escape from la Oh.
Speaker 1: Love Carpenter Love Love the cast for a Skate from
Speaker 1: la and I remember it had a fun soundtrack that
Speaker 1: came out at the time, but yeah.
Speaker 3: Not anybody's best work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we know, speaking of Max, that is also where
Speaker 1: I ended up rewatching it. But anyone out there, if
Speaker 1: you want to go watch nineteen eighty four is Dune
Speaker 1: in full before continuing with these episodes. Yeah, it's also
Speaker 1: widely available in digital and physical formats anywhere you might
Speaker 1: want to watch it. Unlike the Sci Fi Mini series,
Speaker 1: which is a little hard to get your hands on
Speaker 1: right now, you can definitely get the nineteen eighty four
Speaker 1: adaptation any way you want to get it. Aero Video
Speaker 1: put out a very nice Blu ray package of the
Speaker 1: film in twenty twenty one if you're a collector and
Speaker 1: or want that physical media.
Speaker 3: Speaking of I've never seen the Sci Fi mini series,
Speaker 3: have you?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I watched, well, I watched the first one, and
Speaker 1: I've only seen bits and pieces of the follow up
Speaker 1: where they adapted Doune Messiah and Children of Dune, and
Speaker 1: I remember it being lavish. You know, it has some
Speaker 1: very great costumes, It has a lot of good casting
Speaker 1: and and some great casting in places. So as we proceed,
Speaker 1: I'll at times refer to alternate castings for some of
Speaker 1: these characters and which ones I like, which ones I didn't,
Speaker 1: And they did nail it at least on a couple
Speaker 1: of the castings. So it's it's I don't know how
Speaker 1: the effects hold up, but the costumes are great and
Speaker 1: some 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 1: Yeah yeah, or almost kind of like a film stage
Speaker 1: production sort of a thing. Yeah yeah. One more thing
Speaker 1: I want to quickly add about this version of the
Speaker 1: film that we're watching today. Again, I was kind of
Speaker 1: a book first fan, and I remember the first time
Speaker 1: that I bought a copy of Doom at the I
Speaker 1: think it was a books a million, you know, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't like a nice cozy local bookstore is one
Speaker 1: of the wearehouse bookstores. But the cashier was so excited
Speaker 1: when I brought up the book and she was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you were going to love this. This is a great novel.
Speaker 1: This is one of the best. And she explained to
Speaker 1: me that she and her husband were huge fans of Doone,
Speaker 1: and they were such huge fans that they would watch
Speaker 1: David Lynch's Doune and at that time it was just
Speaker 1: the movie. It was the only movie version out. They
Speaker 1: would watch the movie version every night as they went
Speaker 1: to sleep, every night, this film. And so I think
Speaker 1: from an early age, despite the criticisms and rejections of
Speaker 1: this film that were already out there, it's like I knew.
Speaker 1: It's like this lady and her husband loved this film
Speaker 1: and they love the book, so it can't be too
Speaker 1: far off base. And therefore I think I've always been
Speaker 1: been more than a little willing to invite aspects of
Speaker 1: this film and its look and it sound into my
Speaker 1: head version of Doom.
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 Harconin's doctor singing
Speaker 3: love songs to his boils as he's poking them with
Speaker 3: a needle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or Baron Harkonen like just laughing maniacally and floating
Speaker 1: around the room.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's their lullaby. I hope they're still doing it.
Speaker 1: They're still together and they're still watching David Lynch's Doom
Speaker 1: every night.
Speaker 3: Why, Baron, I love your precious diseases.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's start getting into the connections here.
Speaker 1: We're going to tackle everything a little differently here, so
Speaker 1: you know, first of all, on some of these we're
Speaker 1: going to try and maybe spend a little less time
Speaker 1: with them, just because we have such a huge cast
Speaker 1: to go through. And additionally, we're not going to just
Speaker 1: divide the episode like normal. We're not going to do
Speaker 1: like just connections, just cast and crew in this episode
Speaker 1: and then plot in the next. We're gonna run through
Speaker 1: like a few key behind the scenes individuals and then
Speaker 1: we're gonna get into the plot and then talk about
Speaker 1: the key actors 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 1: Yeah. Yeah, we labored over this a little bit and
Speaker 1: this is this is what we came up with. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, let's start at the top.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The director also the writer the adapted screenplay on this
Speaker 1: one is, of course, David Lynch born nineteen forty six. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to defer to you, Joe on some
Speaker 1: of the details of David Lynch's filmography and certainly about
Speaker 1: like the texture of what a Lynchian film is. Because
Speaker 1: I haven't seen as many David Lynch films. I've basically
Speaker 1: just seen his Dune. I've seen eraser Head, and I've
Speaker 1: seen Moholland Drive, but that leaves out a number of
Speaker 1: like huge films that are highly influential in his sort
Speaker 1: of like neo noir weird aesthetic.
Speaker 3: I think if you've seen eraser Head, Mulholland Drive, you
Speaker 3: have a pretty good idea of what some of his
Speaker 3: dominant themes are. But we'll come back to.
Speaker 1: That all right now. At this point in his career,
Speaker 1: this was only Lynch. This was Lynch's third full length
Speaker 1: motion picture, following the ultra weird eraser Head in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven, and this was more in keeping with a
Speaker 1: lot of his previous short film films and nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: The Elephant Man. You know, I think I also have
Speaker 1: seen The Elephant Man, but I'm not sure if I've
Speaker 1: seen The Elephant Man in full. I've at least seen
Speaker 1: enough of it to know what it's about. That at
Speaker 1: least was a box office and 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 eraser Head. Eraser
Speaker 3: Head is It's funny to contrast that with Dune because
Speaker 3: eraser Head is only barely a narrative film. It is
Speaker 3: much more like, well, it's sort of an art horror film.
Speaker 3: I would almost say it is a film about images
Speaker 3: and feelings and the I would say the main emotion
Speaker 3: that it conveys is fear and desperation.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a feel good hit for sure. So at
Speaker 1: this point in David Lynch's career, he was like a
Speaker 1: hot up and comer. You know, at the time, he
Speaker 1: was even discussed as a potential director for Return the Jedi.
Speaker 1: So a lot of big producers were eyeing this guy
Speaker 1: as you know, as they still do today, you know,
Speaker 1: hot new director. And then incomes a producer in this
Speaker 1: case like Dino di Laurentez, who we've has come up
Speaker 1: on the show multiple times before, you know, major producer
Speaker 1: of the time period, putting together such epics as Flash Gordon,
Speaker 1: which we recently talked about on the show. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he and he was like, definitely the kind of guy
Speaker 1: who want who was attracted to talent, Like he wanted
Speaker 1: to bring in someone that that had vision, but would
Speaker 1: also of 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 1: Yeah, it ended up not to be the case.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have this film which is such a
Speaker 1: joy to watch and discuss, and like, this is the
Speaker 1: trajectory we're on. We can't go back and change it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, while this vision of Done eventually earned a
Speaker 1: cult following, it was a commercial and critical disaster at
Speaker 1: the time. Consider it again by many to be just
Speaker 1: an incomprehensible mess. You look back at like what Ebert
Speaker 1: 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 huge, you know, and you can see
Speaker 3: it in some of the like gorgeous, lavishly realized sets
Speaker 3: and costumes and all that. Yeah, people did single out
Speaker 3: that there were parts of it that looked cheap, and
Speaker 3: I actually do kind of agree there, Like most of
Speaker 3: the design in it does look amazing, but there are
Speaker 3: some weird shots that look kind of slapped together in there,
Speaker 3: and don't know where that comes from. Just generally, critics
Speaker 3: were very very harsh about it. It made a lot
Speaker 3: of like worst movie of the year lists and things
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and again, we can't heep all of this
Speaker 1: on Lynch. The novel is a lot to tackle. There
Speaker 1: were a lot of cooks he had to deal with here.
Speaker 1: His initial initial cut of the film apparently came in
Speaker 1: in over three hours and was eventually cut down. But
Speaker 1: the producers, and because the producers in the studio wanted
Speaker 1: more of like a two hour cut. You know, they're like,
Speaker 1: people need to be able to go to the bathroom again.
Speaker 1: You know, this is good. We want it to be successful,
Speaker 1: 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 get to the action.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now for context, Denny Vee is combined doing adaptation.
Speaker 1: The recent adaptations come in at more than five hours
Speaker 1: in a length total. That sci fi mini series adaptation
Speaker 1: is more than four hours in length if you're just
Speaker 1: dealing 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 1: Yeah. Yeah, some numerous cuts were made, new scenes were
Speaker 1: apparently filmed, Whole scenes were just cut entirely, or there
Speaker 1: there are plenty. There are various points in the film
Speaker 1: where they're clearly you're having a character briefly remember a
Speaker 1: scene that clearly had to be cut, or they're just
Speaker 1: shoehorning just a clip of that scene in so you
Speaker 1: see you see the scenes in this final theatrical cut
Speaker 1: of David Lynch's Dune. He has long considered the film
Speaker 1: a failure, and he generally opts not to discuss it
Speaker 1: in interviews. He disowned the extended TV mirror of the
Speaker 1: film and has long dismissed the idea of doing a
Speaker 1: director's cut, at least i've read until very recently.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he just happened to be in
Speaker 1: a really good mood in some of these interviews, but
Speaker 1: I've read that he was like, you know, maybe it's
Speaker 1: been enough time. Maybe I could look back at it
Speaker 1: and see if there's anything that I could piece back together.
Speaker 3: But I don't know.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like we should necessarily get our hopes up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd be interested to see that. But I remember
Speaker 3: reading that David Lynch not only considered the movie of failure,
Speaker 3: he was extremely upset by the process of making this
Speaker 3: film and the way the producers tampered with in his view,
Speaker 3: I think sabotaged his vision for it. And he believed
Speaker 3: this to the extent that he said he wished he
Speaker 3: had never taken the project at all. Like speaking to
Speaker 3: an interviewer years later, he said, quote, the experience has
Speaker 3: taught me a valuable lesson. I learned I would rather
Speaker 3: not make a film than make one where I don't
Speaker 3: have final cut.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I think it might have ultimately been
Speaker 1: the terrible purpose that he had to face, right because
Speaker 1: if he had not directed this film, what if someone
Speaker 1: had made a far worse version of Doune Because you
Speaker 1: read the reviews and it's like, oh, it couldn't have
Speaker 1: been worse. Oh it could have been worse. Oh yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: there were undoubtedly worse options out there. So yeah, we
Speaker 1: would just been on an entirely different trajectory with science
Speaker 1: 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 it is. There is a lot to love about it,
Speaker 3: and a lot of what there is to love about
Speaker 3: it is just like the way it is realized as
Speaker 3: a 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 1: Absolutely, Yeah, It's it's really difficult to imagine where David
Speaker 1: Lynch's career would have gone had he not taken Doune,
Speaker 1: you know, like outside of of where Dune and science
Speaker 1: fiction would have gone, Like what would his career have
Speaker 1: consisted of? What would have what would his next project
Speaker 1: have been? And or what like if he had not
Speaker 1: taken Dune on as the big I don't know, arguably
Speaker 1: sell out project before moving on with the rest of
Speaker 1: his career. What what what would it have been? You know,
Speaker 1: what were some of the other what have you taken
Speaker 1: Return of the Jedi instead? What kind of world would
Speaker 1: we live in today? Uh, as far as Star Wars
Speaker 1: and as far as David Lynch are concerned.
Speaker 3: That's I'm not saying Return of the Jedi would have
Speaker 3: been better under his direction. And I don't know, but
Speaker 3: I would like to see that movie man Ewoks?
Speaker 1: How weird? Would those eoks have.
Speaker 3: Been talking backwards e woks? Walking backwards e woks? So anyway,
Speaker 3: so you asked me to, yeah, kind of fill in
Speaker 3: more thoughts about the texture of David lynch movies, And
Speaker 3: I wanted to start off by characterizing my relationship with
Speaker 3: David Lynch's work by contrast. So there are a lot
Speaker 3: of movies, you know, big example, that comes to mind today,
Speaker 3: or like the superhero movies that I watch on airplanes
Speaker 3: that feel designed to me to be as frictionless and
Speaker 3: entertainment experience as possible, so they are pleasant and enjoyable
Speaker 3: for the time I'm watching them. I don't hate them,
Speaker 3: you know, O. They're fun. There's nothing to really jar
Speaker 3: or unsettle the viewer, nothing to cause doubts or reflection
Speaker 3: or make you wonder why am I seeing this? It
Speaker 3: all just kind of it all flows, it makes sense,
Speaker 3: it goes down smooth, and then I forget about it
Speaker 3: and possibly never think about it again. My history of
Speaker 3: experiences with David Lynch movies are exactly the opposite. Frequently
Speaker 3: I have had the experience of watching a movie by
Speaker 3: David Lynch finding something full of strange and disturbing imagery
Speaker 3: that made me feel uneasy and, to quote the Reverend Mother,
Speaker 3: profoundly stirred, initially deciding after the movie's over that I
Speaker 3: did not like it, but then thinking about elements of
Speaker 3: it over and over in the months or years that followed,
Speaker 3: until I felt like I had to go back and
Speaker 3: see it again, and then when I did, finally deciding
Speaker 3: that I loved it. So David Lynch movies are full
Speaker 3: of scenes and images that do not go down smooth.
Speaker 3: They do not flow with the logic of standard entertainment storytelling.
Speaker 3: To use like a musical analogy, there are a lot
Speaker 3: of motifs that use notes from out of the song's key,
Speaker 3: and yet they end up producing something that is very
Speaker 3: memorable and feels very true and revealing, almost kind of ancient.
Speaker 3: A metaphor I've thought of before for is that I
Speaker 3: feel like when I'm watching a David Lynch movie, it's
Speaker 3: like somebody is showing me a film of a bad
Speaker 3: dream I had twenty years ago and completely forgot about,
Speaker 3: and now it is only vaguely familiar in a way
Speaker 3: that makes me uncomfortable, because, like I realize, somebody put
Speaker 3: a movie camera in my subconscious. It's a really powerful
Speaker 3: artistic sensibility that can create a feeling like that that
Speaker 3: like I'm seeing something that is at the same time
Speaker 3: very strange and disturbing, but also very familiar in a
Speaker 3: way that's hard to identify.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good way of putting it.
Speaker 1: There's a particular scene in Mulhall and Drive like this,
Speaker 1: and I'm not gonna spoil it, but anyone who's seen
Speaker 1: it probably knows, like which kind of like terrifying moment
Speaker 1: 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 conversations people have that almost kind of
Speaker 3: like remind you of something. It's like, what are they
Speaker 3: talking about? This connects to something, but it's hard to
Speaker 3: put it together. Yeah, So I wanted to run through
Speaker 3: some themes that come up a lot in David Lynch movies,
Speaker 3: because specifically in the context of Dune. Dune is often
Speaker 3: considered an outlier in Lynch's filmography. It's not like the
Speaker 3: rest of his work, and of course he didn't write
Speaker 3: the original underlying story. But I was trying to think
Speaker 3: if any of these favorite themes of his are in
Speaker 3: any way hinted at in Dune through his interpretation of
Speaker 3: the narrative. I'm not sure if any of them are,
Speaker 3: but we'll see. So things that come up in a
Speaker 3: lot of Lynch movies. People in places that seem wholesome
Speaker 3: and clean on the surface but hide horrible secrets.
Speaker 1: 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 1: No, No, most the unwholesome characters are unwholesome on the
Speaker 1: 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 happened to them, or something important
Speaker 3: they know and they can't put it together.
Speaker 1: I guess we see some kind of shades of that
Speaker 1: 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 themself. 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 1: Well, you know, not so much of that in this film,
Speaker 1: but it's this is a case where it's a shame
Speaker 1: he didn't get to make a sequel.
Speaker 3: Oh man, Yeah, wait, which which plot element from the
Speaker 3: sequels are you calling out? There.
Speaker 1: I mean there are a couple. I mean you have
Speaker 1: the Gulas, the essentially clones specifically of Dunk and Idaho,
Speaker 1: and then you also have the face dancers. So you
Speaker 1: have a few different possibilities there where he could have
Speaker 1: leaned into it, and certainly, given his how he weirds
Speaker 1: up some of the already weird elements in this film,
Speaker 1: you could imagine him having some fun with these concepts.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And from what I recall, I think I
Speaker 3: read that David Lynch did love the source material, like
Speaker 3: you read the novel or possibly multiple novels and was like, yes,
Speaker 3: I'm on board, I love this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've never seen anything where he was he like
Speaker 1: even retroactively trashed the novel and said like I didn't
Speaker 1: like it and I didn't want to adapt it. Like
Speaker 1: you know, he says that he loved it. He found
Speaker 1: things in it that exhilarated him, and I think that
Speaker 1: shines through in his script, even if it occurs at
Speaker 1: times in a way that are perhaps detrimental to the film,
Speaker 1: Like you know, it inspired him. It was not something
Speaker 1: where he's like, Okay, I just need to I need
Speaker 1: to hit this because it's in the novel it's like, no,
Speaker 1: it gave him ideas.
Speaker 3: Okay, other Lynchian themes kind of reversals of reality. This
Speaker 3: would be the kind of setting equivalent of the Doppelganger principle,
Speaker 3: where there will be kind of a mirror world or
Speaker 3: a world above in a world below.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe not so much that. I guess you could
Speaker 1: make an argument for Kalad and Aracus being kind of
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, maybe not so much here, but there could have
Speaker 1: been room for it. Would have been room for it
Speaker 1: 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 you
Speaker 3: know get shot in movie often look a certain way.
Speaker 3: Lynch seems to go out of his way to make
Speaker 3: violence look strange, kind of alien to everyday life, almost
Speaker 3: bordering on comedic sometimes, but in a way that makes
Speaker 3: it even more shocking and unpleasant, like showing people's bodies
Speaker 3: reacting to violence in unexpected ways. I just think of
Speaker 3: one example of from the movie Blue Velvet, there is
Speaker 3: a bizarre and haunting image of a man who has
Speaker 3: been shot in the head and apparently killed, but remains
Speaker 3: standing up, kind of swaying in a daze between life
Speaker 3: and death.
Speaker 1: I think we definitely see elements of this and don 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 1: Well obviously not this one really, but that, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: 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 uh, some of
Speaker 3: the 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: and we can get to the music in Dune in
Speaker 3: a minute, which I think has has highs and lows,
Speaker 3: but the highs are great. Lynch specifically uses ambient sound
Speaker 3: in a way that is that has a powerful effect
Speaker 3: on the feelings of the viewer, specifically sound missing from
Speaker 3: scenes where it should be, or strange sounds in scenes
Speaker 3: where they should not be. So it is an example
Speaker 3: of each. Like imagine a scene at a party which
Speaker 3: is silent and there's no background noise in the chatter
Speaker 3: and the music and everything is removed and it's unsettlingly silent.
Speaker 3: Or maybe imagine a bedroom with inappropriate sounds of machinery
Speaker 3: and steam venting and things like that. There's a scene
Speaker 3: I shared with you Rob from the movie Lost Highway
Speaker 3: where Bill Pullman's at a party. It's a famously creepy scene.
Speaker 3: Bill Pullman's at a party and a guy, a mysterious stranger,
Speaker 3: comes up to him and starts telling him that he
Speaker 3: actually a double of him that he's in two places
Speaker 3: at once, and that he is in Bill Pullman's house
Speaker 3: at that moment. And the way sound is manipulated in
Speaker 3: the scene, like the sound of the party drops out
Speaker 3: as the two of them start talking, and it creates
Speaker 3: a really focused, dreamlike effect that heightens the horror.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I had never I haven't seen this film in
Speaker 1: full before, and I had not seen this this sequence,
Speaker 1: but this is great. Yeah, where we have this uncle
Speaker 1: festerized Robert Blake character with no eyebrows come up to
Speaker 1: Bill Pullman and just start talking like the craziest stuff
Speaker 1: to him, and and and and daring it. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: sounds dropped out and become this it's become this ambient
Speaker 1: drone that is just so creepy and creates this sense
Speaker 1: of unreality, you know, like this is like a cross
Speaker 1: dimensional stranger that has that is like freezing time as
Speaker 1: they talk to you, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: That's a great way of putting it. And and I
Speaker 3: think does Lynch use any of that kind of sound
Speaker 3: design technique in Dune? I think a little bit. It's
Speaker 3: not as overt as it is like in Lost Highway,
Speaker 3: but there is a little bit of it.
Speaker 1: It reminds me a little bit of how like you
Speaker 1: have to be sort of even handed perhaps too when
Speaker 1: you're dealing with overtly sci fi elements and then the
Speaker 1: potentially using sci fi design or illusions. I don't know,
Speaker 1: Like I think about like how many times current McCarthy
Speaker 1: and his books will compare something mundane or western to
Speaker 1: something arcane and mythical and you know, and bloody and
Speaker 1: hellish and in a way that you couldn't really get
Speaker 1: away with if you were, say, writing about something that
Speaker 1: was overtly bloody, hellish or mythic and occult.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's like the contextual inappropriateness that makes it
Speaker 3: striking and profound. Yeah. So, anyway, I guess we can
Speaker 3: think more as we go along about to what extent
Speaker 3: Dune feels like a David Lynch movie or does feel,
Speaker 3: as some reviewers have said, like an outlier that's just
Speaker 3: not like the rest of his work.
Speaker 1: All Right, We have to of course mention the source
Speaker 1: material here. It is, of course, the novel by Frank Herbert,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen twenty through nineteen eighty six, legendary Americans
Speaker 1: fi author whose earliest short stories date back to the
Speaker 1: mid forties and his first sci fi stories to the
Speaker 1: early fifties. I believe his first novel nineteen fifty six
Speaker 1: is The Dragon and the Sea is a near future
Speaker 1: submarine tale. He began research on Dune in nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: and following serial publication and analog magazine, it published in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five after numerous rejections. This is another one
Speaker 1: of those films. One another one of those books rather
Speaker 1: that is often held up as like, oh, look at
Speaker 1: all the rejections, at God, and then you know, it
Speaker 1: became the most successful and influential sci fi novel of
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, yeah, it's because it's not going to be the
Speaker 1: next whatever it's going to be done. And we see
Speaker 1: that reflecting some of the films too.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like even with this one, they're like, we need
Speaker 1: the next star Wars. Bring up the Dune. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: Dune may have inspired partially inspired Star Wars, but it's
Speaker 1: not Star Wars. It's not going to hit the same m.
Speaker 1: So Herbert followed Dune up with Numero standalone novels two
Speaker 1: other series, but the Dune Saga remains his most well
Speaker 1: known work. Dune Messiah followed in sixty nine, Children of
Speaker 1: Doune in seventy six, God Emperor of Doune in eighty one,
Speaker 1: Heretics of Dune in eighty four, and Chapter House Dune
Speaker 1: in eighty five. Herbert died in eighty six before he
Speaker 1: could write the seventh and what was supposed to be
Speaker 1: the final book in the series. His son, Brian Herbert
Speaker 1: and author Kevin J. Anderson would eventually continue writing stories
Speaker 1: set in the Dune universe, including Beare version of an
Speaker 1: ending to the original saga. And like we said, there
Speaker 1: have been various attempts to adapt these books, especially the
Speaker 1: first book, to the screen. There was Jodroowski attempt in
Speaker 1: the mid seventies. There was even an earlier early seventies
Speaker 1: attempt that may have even had David Lean attached at
Speaker 1: one point to direct, but I don't think that went anywhere.
Speaker 1: And then when Dino de Larentez got the rights, he
Speaker 1: was working with Ridley Scott initially and like that was
Speaker 1: like in pre production for a little bit before Scott
Speaker 1: had to sign off. I think for like personal reasons.
Speaker 1: I think there'd been a death in his family, but
Speaker 1: also they were perhaps butting heads a little bit more
Speaker 1: like getting to where they thought they needed to creatively
Speaker 1: on the project.
Speaker 3: Mm you know, I had some notes here about what
Speaker 3: we already talked about earlier about just the difficulty, the
Speaker 3: inherent difficulty of adapting Dune to the screen, because it's
Speaker 3: just not written in a way that naturally translates to
Speaker 3: the screen. I mean, some scenes, do you know, scenes
Speaker 3: with the sandworms and all that is very cinematic, But
Speaker 3: as we talked about earlier, so much of the book
Speaker 3: is either contextual about the broader setting in the world
Speaker 3: in a way that's like hard to fit into a
Speaker 3: movie without a lot of heavy exposition, or it's internal
Speaker 3: people's internal monologues and struggles in a way that's difficult
Speaker 3: to do without, you know, having these internal voice narrations
Speaker 3: which don't work great in this movie. And in a
Speaker 3: way I think that really should be like that difficulty
Speaker 3: should be to the credit of what these filmmakers have
Speaker 3: done with it. That I think Lynch did a better
Speaker 3: job than should have been expected. And then the new
Speaker 3: movies are the one I've seen at least, and I
Speaker 3: from what I've heard that the new one as well.
Speaker 3: Dannis ville Neuve's adaptation really exceeded all my expectations in
Speaker 3: adapting this, that they found clever ways to illustrate the
Speaker 3: world and fill in a lot of this internal and
Speaker 3: contextual detail without it just feeling like you're getting tons
Speaker 3: of narrative exposition all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and finding smart ways to sort of narrow in
Speaker 1: and focus on particular things. Like you know, the plotting
Speaker 1: behind the fall of House Atreds has a number of
Speaker 1: players in it, and Denny Vee's adaptations tend to lean
Speaker 1: more on the Benajes Ritz while Lynch's adaptation leans more
Speaker 1: on the Spacing Guild. You know, they're both players in
Speaker 1: what happens. But ultimately you have to make some choices
Speaker 1: on the screen and what are you going to fote 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 1: Oh God, there's so much world create. Like he goes
Speaker 1: ahead and mentions IX. Yeah, he's mentioning planets and factions
Speaker 1: that are not going to really become important until later
Speaker 1: on in the series, and you know, and sequels that
Speaker 1: did not come to fruition.
Speaker 3: Oh that's true. Also, I mean explains everything about the
Speaker 3: conspiracy against how Is It just like leaves nothing to
Speaker 3: be to be revealed or discovered, essentially, except the only
Speaker 3: thing I think is like who the trader in how
Speaker 3: Strades is? Everything else is like told right up top,
Speaker 3: here's the conspiracy, here's what they're gonna do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not just to the viewer, but like the characters know,
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah. I think that's correct. But then again, it's been
Speaker 1: a couple of years since I reread done, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's not all the details stick with me. But again,
Speaker 1: that's the joy of rereading books. You get to forget
Speaker 1: a little bit, you come back in slightly new experience
Speaker 1: each time. That is nice. Now we're going to hit
Speaker 1: a few more behind the scenes individuals here. As we
Speaker 1: often mention, especially on Big Lavish productions like this, we
Speaker 1: can't possibly mention everybody that had a role in making
Speaker 1: this film what it was, even major players. As with
Speaker 1: the adaptation of Doing you have to look at the
Speaker 1: conspirators and just focus on a few, and so I
Speaker 1: do want to call out that cinematographer Freddie Francis worked
Speaker 1: on this. He lived nineteen seventeen through two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: British director and cinematographer, with extensive credits in the horror
Speaker 1: and sci fi genre, including sixty three's The Day of
Speaker 1: the Triffids, sixty four's The Evil of Frankenstein, the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two Tales from the Crypt movie in. One of
Speaker 1: his later works was nineteen eighty seven's Dark Tower, replacing
Speaker 1: Shockwave director Ken Widerhorn during production.
Speaker 3: Dark Tower That's not Stephen King is no connection.
Speaker 1: To Stephen King, but it does have a connection to Shockwaves,
Speaker 1: which we covered on the show in the past. As
Speaker 1: a cinematographer, Francis had worked with Lynch on The Elephant
Speaker 1: Man and worked with him again later in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: nine on The Straight Story. Other credits include Return to Oz,
Speaker 1: which we've talked about on the show, and two films
Speaker 1: for which he won an Academy Award nineteen sixty one
Speaker 1: 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 Doune. 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 1: Yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean, kind of like
Speaker 1: this sort of baroque weirdness.
Speaker 3: I don't know, a lot of kind of gold and
Speaker 3: jade things. Yeah, very baroque. Like you say, there is
Speaker 3: a mix of things that look scary and things that
Speaker 3: look funny, all jumbled together.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's a good connection. Now, again, a
Speaker 1: lot of people went into the visuals on this film
Speaker 1: and the effects and so forth. But I do have
Speaker 1: to call out Carlo Rumbaldi sometimes credited just as Rumbaldi.
Speaker 1: He has creature creator credits on this, and I bet
Speaker 1: everyone knows what creature we're talking about. We're talking about
Speaker 1: the Guild Navigator.
Speaker 3: Oh. I thought you were going to say the sandworm,
Speaker 3: but here we go.
Speaker 1: Well, you know that's right, there is the Sandworm. I
Speaker 1: bet he worked on both of them. I believe. I've
Speaker 1: read he worked on The Guild Navigator, but I bet
Speaker 1: he was in on the Sandworm as well. Okay, so yeah,
Speaker 1: he lived nineteen twenty five through twenty twelve. Legendary effects
Speaker 1: master who worked on films such as Planet of the Vampires,
Speaker 1: et Alien, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Barborella.
Speaker 1: Oh Man. And finally we have to talk about off.
Speaker 1: The music for David Lynch's Down. The score is by Toto. Yep,
Speaker 1: the American rock jazz fusion band best known for such
Speaker 1: late seventies and early eighties hits as Africa, Hold the
Speaker 1: Line and Rosanna Joe. Is rock jazz fusion the correct
Speaker 1: descriptor for Toto genre.
Speaker 3: I've really struggled with this. I don't know that much
Speaker 3: about Toto other than like their singles and the role
Speaker 3: in the movie here. I don't know how much jazz
Speaker 3: I hear, But like I don't really know their whole discography.
Speaker 3: I would say that their hit songs sound to me
Speaker 3: just more like a rock band.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've heard people make a case for prog rock
Speaker 1: with Toto, and but then also I have to say,
Speaker 1: like their biggest hit, Africa, which I did a deep,
Speaker 1: semi deep dive. I waited in a little bit into
Speaker 1: the Toto filmography yesterday, and most of it is not
Speaker 1: for me. However, Africa is an all time great like that.
Speaker 1: Africa is a great track, and I think you could
Speaker 1: make a case for looping Africa in with the kind
Speaker 1: 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 a but it's a catchy song and it
Speaker 3: has you know, people, I think people would call it
Speaker 3: out for being cheesy, but it does have some transcendent melodies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great track. It is a cheesy track,
Speaker 1: but it's a great track. I have it saved to
Speaker 1: my phone in one of my playlists. So Toto formed
Speaker 1: out of a collect in ob sessions musicians, and at
Speaker 1: the time of the recording of this score, the band
Speaker 1: consisted of Steve Lucather, David Posh, Steve Porco, Mike Porcio,
Speaker 1: and Jeff Porcio. Bobby Kimball, the vocalist, had I believe
Speaker 1: just left the band and I'm not sure on the
Speaker 1: full story there, but it at this point Toto had
Speaker 1: achieved some of their biggest hits, and they had never
Speaker 1: scored a motion picture before, and they have not scored
Speaker 1: 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 stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they were very technically proficient and also obviously
Speaker 1: commercially proficient. They were a big deal at the time.
Speaker 1: They're not just coming out of nowhere to score Dune.
Speaker 1: And yet this is a choice that has long confused me.
Speaker 1: You know, you can understand the desire Ondido Dealer inis
Speaker 1: his part, Okay, we're going to take this mid sixties
Speaker 1: sci fi tale, but we want, we want to hit,
Speaker 1: we want we want to connect with modern film viewers.
Speaker 1: We wanted to be a mainstream crossover. And so you
Speaker 1: can understand why he might want something similar to what
Speaker 1: he did with Flash Gordon in nineteen eighty bringing in Queen.
Speaker 1: Even though that, of course is the tone of that
Speaker 1: fel Is totally different from what they're going after in Dinn.
Speaker 3: I mean, Queen was perfect for Flash Gordon. It is
Speaker 3: a perfect fit. As we were saying that, like that
Speaker 3: harmonized guitar sound that Brian May makes and the kind
Speaker 3: of campy theatricality that Queen was already doing on their
Speaker 3: studio albums just is Flash Gordon. It's that perfect embodiment
Speaker 3: of the feeling of the film. And so yeah, it
Speaker 3: couldn't be a better fit Toto in this movie. I
Speaker 3: don't want to knock it again because there are elements
Speaker 3: 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 1: Yeah. Yeah, Like Dino even apparently wanted Conan the Barbarian
Speaker 1: to have a rock and roll score, but Don Milios
Speaker 1: was like, like, no, we're not doing that. This is
Speaker 1: what we're doing. And you know, I think that was
Speaker 1: the correct choice owned in.
Speaker 3: The Barbarian score by the Scorpions.
Speaker 1: So I always kind of like assumed that, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: Dino must have forced his hand here. It's like bring
Speaker 1: in Toto. Toto's popular, let's have Toto score it. But
Speaker 1: I was reading in an article published on The Thin
Speaker 1: Air by Stephen Rainey titled what Happens when You Add
Speaker 1: Toto to David Lynch, that Dino actually wanted Georgio Moroder
Speaker 1: for the gig Rover is tremendous. He did the score
Speaker 1: for The Never Ending Story, for example. According to Rainey,
Speaker 1: it was Lynch that pushed for Toto. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: exactly why, and you know, Lynch doesn't talk about Doom
Speaker 1: much at all in any interviews. I've seen some members
Speaker 1: of Toto discussed in some interviews, but it tends to
Speaker 1: just sound like, well, things just sort of came together,
Speaker 1: you know, we met and he thought we were right
Speaker 1: for it, and that's how it came to be.
Speaker 3: Okay, I would not have expected that.
Speaker 1: We should have also point out that there is one
Speaker 1: track on the score, Prophecy Theme, in which Brian Eno
Speaker 1: and Daniel Lenois also contribute, and that of course is
Speaker 1: 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 bads 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 1: Yeah, yeah, obviously I love that track well love you know.
Speaker 1: It's anything you know touches. It's hard to find fault with,
Speaker 1: but I do want to stress like the whole score
Speaker 1: is pretty solid on the whole and at times great.
Speaker 1: It is a legitimate film score that sometimes sounds very
Speaker 1: Toto Slash Africa, but otherwise it commits to tones and
Speaker 1: tempos that are cinematically informed and cinematically appropriate. For instance,
Speaker 1: Dune desert theme. That track feels very Toto and Africa
Speaker 1: is great in that sense. While the main title you
Speaker 1: know this is the Boom Boom Boom Boom, it is
Speaker 1: more brooding and cinematic. It's a great track, totally fits
Speaker 1: the film. My personal favorite, aside from that is Robot Fight.
Speaker 1: This is when when Paul is training early in the film.
Speaker 1: It's chonky, it's scynthy, it's pulsing. The box is also nice,
Speaker 1: and the Floating Fat Man that's the title of the
Speaker 1: track in parentheses. The Baron is a high energy synth
Speaker 1: organ number that I think would feel perfectly at home
Speaker 1: in virtually any Italian horror movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of great stuff in this 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. Yeah. But there
Speaker 3: are some parts of the score that I think don't
Speaker 3: work quite as well. And the part that I think
Speaker 3: don't really work as well are the ones, the parts
Speaker 3: that sound more rock. It's it's not a great fit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's at least one point late in the film
Speaker 1: where Fremen are writing sandworms and you get like a
Speaker 1: guitar lick and like it giggled a little bit. It
Speaker 1: was amazing, though, I'm glad. I wouldn't want it any
Speaker 1: other way. All in all, I'd say an effective and
Speaker 1: interesting score, you know, comparing it to the other films,
Speaker 1: you know, I have to say I'm a huge fan
Speaker 1: of Hans Zimmer's Dune scores. I think this is probably
Speaker 1: his best work now that I've listened to all of
Speaker 1: Hans Zimmer's scores, because he scored some really uninteresting and
Speaker 1: awful movies at times. But you know, I mean, but
Speaker 1: we have to acknowledge his approach is altogether different. It's
Speaker 1: from a different era, so you can't really compare. You
Speaker 1: can't compare a total score to a Zimmer score. They're
Speaker 1: both great in their own way.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I'm just looking at what Hans Zimmer has scored. Now,
Speaker 3: Oh he did Twister.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's it's just a lot of stuff in there.
Speaker 1: It's like, I don't even want to check, Like, I
Speaker 1: doubt Twister has a great score. I'm sure it's effective.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's fine, but I'm just not gonna go
Speaker 1: listen to it. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: It's not even that Twister. It's a different Twister that
Speaker 3: is also a movie about tornadoes.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, they didn't adapt the board game or the
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yes, let us attempt to do this.
Speaker 3: Bear with us.
Speaker 1: We have not really done it this way before, but
Speaker 1: I think this is our best path forward, So say
Speaker 1: 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 a 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 1: Yeah, so she is part of House Corrino. For modern
Speaker 1: fans of the more recent adaptations, she was not introduced
Speaker 1: as a character until Dune Part two. Virginia Madson born
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty one. Oscar nominated actress for two thousand
Speaker 1: and five Sideways, and this is I believe her second
Speaker 1: or third credit. Dune is no Sideways. She was in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighty three Comedy Class as well as nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four as Electric Dreams. Her subsequent credits include ninety
Speaker 1: one's Highlander two The Quickening, There You Go, ninety two
Speaker 1: is Candy Man, nineteen ninety five's The Prophecy, The Christopher
Speaker 1: Walken Angel one that we might get to at some
Speaker 1: point in various other TV projects.
Speaker 3: Robert, are we going to do Highlander two The Quickening
Speaker 3: this year?
Speaker 1: We should? You know? We have that older stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind episode about Highland to the quickening, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't the weird house approach, right, so you know,
Speaker 1: 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 1: That's true. You know, last time we watched it, we
Speaker 1: had to watch a rip of the VHS or something
Speaker 1: like that. So that's what we need to find out.
Speaker 1: We need to find out if we have a good
Speaker 1: 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 1: Anyway, Virginia Madson, who by the way, is the sister
Speaker 1: of Michael Madson, perfectly fine performance here, though she doesn't
Speaker 1: get to do all that much. I should know that
Speaker 1: Julie Cox and Florence Pugh have also played the role,
Speaker 1: and certainly in the more recent adaptation, this character gets
Speaker 1: to do a little bit more and will be even
Speaker 1: 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 Irulan'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 1: Yeah, she lays it on us, and she's looking right
Speaker 1: at us, and she's like weirdly conversational. She's like, oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, I totally forgot to mention this other thing,
Speaker 1: 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 sense
Speaker 3: of it, because I feel like you can feel everything
Speaker 3: just a raining down on you. So she says, a
Speaker 3: beginning is a very delicate time. Know then that it
Speaker 3: is the year ten one hundred and ninety one. The
Speaker 3: known universe is ruled by the Padishat Emperor Shadam the fourth,
Speaker 3: my father in this time. The most precious substance in
Speaker 3: the universe is the spice millange. The spice extends life,
Speaker 3: The spice expands consciousness. The spice is vital to space travel.
Speaker 3: The Spacing Guild and its navigators, who the spice has
Speaker 3: mutated over four thousand years, use the orange spice gas,
Speaker 3: which gives them the ability to fold space, that is,
Speaker 3: travel 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 Doune.
Speaker 3: Now this should bring us back to what we were
Speaker 3: talking about earlier, that audiences at the time quite famously
Speaker 3: complained that this movie was incomprehensible, that they could not
Speaker 3: follow the plot. I'm at a point where I'm so
Speaker 3: familiar with the world and the story that I don't
Speaker 3: really trust myself to assess what this movie would be
Speaker 3: like to someone who came in cold. But just like
Speaker 3: trying to be objective and look at this opening narration
Speaker 3: in Isolation. Despite it being fairly straightforward, like everything is
Speaker 3: phrased in a very clear to understand way, I think
Speaker 3: it could still even newcomer feeling kind of overwhelmed because
Speaker 3: it's just piling so much on you before any of
Speaker 3: it means anything. I think a better way to develop
Speaker 3: this sort of thing is to give you a little
Speaker 3: bit of exposition and then show you some story to
Speaker 3: allow that exposition to kind of like materialize and be
Speaker 3: connected to characters that you care about. And then once
Speaker 3: you have characters that you care about, you can start
Speaker 3: learning more about the premise and the setting and all that,
Speaker 3: and at that point it'll feel like it's meaningful. With
Speaker 3: just all this opening narration, we haven't even met anybody else.
Speaker 3: It just kind of washes over you, and I think
Speaker 3: you would probably forget a lot of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's it's also fascinating everything you know, springing
Speaker 1: off of everything you just said, like the intro itself
Speaker 1: begins with a beginning, is a very delicate time, and
Speaker 1: you know, you can't help but think about that in
Speaker 1: terms of the storytelling, Like this is a delicate point
Speaker 1: in the movie. We are easing you into a complex,
Speaker 1: rich universe, and we have to give you some information,
Speaker 1: but we don't want to give you too much information,
Speaker 1: and therefore, yeah, it is very delicate. It's a very
Speaker 1: delicate point. I mean, it makes sense that Princess Iroline
Speaker 1: would be the one telling us this because she's it's
Speaker 1: her historical writings that often preface various doune chapters in
Speaker 1: the novel, And you know, it's probably the better choice
Speaker 1: as opposed to the extended prologue that I imagine was cut,
Speaker 1: and it then ends up reappearing on those disavowed extended
Speaker 1: TV versions where you have a bunch of like production
Speaker 1: stills of various factions and characters and then a lot
Speaker 1: of additional narration about the different factions. But that prologue
Speaker 1: is still pretty fun. You can find it on YouTube
Speaker 1: and stuff, and also I'm sure in DBD 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 1: 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 that's straight into more of an unknown voice
Speaker 3: talking to you. I think this is a member of
Speaker 3: the Spacing Guild.
Speaker 1: We see the Spacing Guild logo, I think in this sequence,
Speaker 1: which which is great. Yeah, it's like the three planetary
Speaker 1: spheres connected by a line, like a horizontal line. It's great.
Speaker 1: I don't think I'd ever really paid it much attention before,
Speaker 1: 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 Housitreades, Planet gide Prime, home of
Speaker 3: House Harconan, Planet Caton, home of the Emperor of the
Speaker 3: Known Universe. Send a third stage gild 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.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, we see a giant ship landing on the surface
Speaker 3: of Katon in front of a kind of industrial palace
Speaker 3: in the night. Katon appears to be a very urbanized
Speaker 3: planet with brightly lit city skylines in the background. This
Speaker 3: I guess is sort of the Imperial capital planet, and
Speaker 3: strange figures are seen disembarking from the ship. We see
Speaker 3: pale skin, bald heads, some people in full environment suits,
Speaker 3: all in shiny black clothing that seems somewhere between a
Speaker 3: monk's robe and like a hazmat barrier.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, everything is very industrial slash regal in a
Speaker 1: very fitting way, you know. And and the members of
Speaker 1: the Guild that even we've seen so far have a
Speaker 1: very sickly pallor you know, and they're kind of like
Speaker 1: oozing in places and so forth. This idea that you know,
Speaker 1: they're you know, rightfully spice junkies to some extent, and
Speaker 1: or the rigors of spice use and or interplanetary interstellar
Speaker 1: 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 appear 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 they're dressed and their
Speaker 3: environments look like a cross between, you know, like monks
Speaker 3: and priests and cathedrals of the Middle Ages, and also
Speaker 3: people work in a factory that produces hazardous chemicals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is an esthetic that fans of Warhammer forty
Speaker 1: thousand are very familiar with. And I think you can
Speaker 1: rightfully wonder to what extent that aesthetic would be present
Speaker 1: in Warhammer forty thousand without this adaptation with Dune, And
Speaker 1: I think you can rightfully wonder if Warhammer forty thousand
Speaker 1: would exist at all in any recognizable form if it
Speaker 1: 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 this
Speaker 3: texture that looks like perforated wasp nest. You know, it
Speaker 3: has these tubes and columns, And so we see courtiers
Speaker 3: milling about everywhere, also dressed in black. So the women
Speaker 3: in the palace are dressed like mourners and black dresses
Speaker 3: and black veils, old men in black military uniforms, Imperial
Speaker 3: dog walkers leading packs of bold around. Most of the
Speaker 3: courtiers leave the throne room as the Guild Navigator approaches,
Speaker 3: and we see the Emperor conferring anxiously with an adviser,
Speaker 3: a woman named Reverend Mother Gaias Helen Moheum, and he
Speaker 3: tells her that he wishes her to read the Guild
Speaker 3: Navigator's mind and present a report after she leaves. Then
Speaker 3: she professes loyalty to the Emperor and says that she
Speaker 3: is his truth sayer. Now this will be the first
Speaker 3: of many characters introduced to have some level of psychic power.
Speaker 3: Some characters in Dune have psychic clairvoyance, like a kind
Speaker 3: of foreknowledge and ability to engage in remote viewing and
Speaker 3: see what's happening elsewhere or to see into the future.
Speaker 3: Other characters have the ability to read people's minds, and
Speaker 3: it's kind of like this to some extent in the
Speaker 3: book 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 1: Yeah, yeah, like this is this adaptation is very concerned
Speaker 1: with you knowing what breeds of dogs are important to
Speaker 1: which houses. Maybe it's a little shakier on who has
Speaker 1: what form of psychic power.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but anyway, so she's there the job.
Speaker 1: We should talk about these two actors though.
Speaker 3: Oh oh wait, I'm sorry. Yes, the Emperor and the
Speaker 3: Reverend Mother both both I think great performances in both cases.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so as the Padishah Emperor Shadam the Fourth.
Speaker 1: We have Jose Ferrara, who lived nineteen twelve through nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety two, Puerto Rican actor and film director, best known
Speaker 1: for such films as nineteen fifty cir Noo de Bergeract,
Speaker 1: a film for which he was the first Hispanic actor
Speaker 1: to win an Academy Award. He was also in fifty
Speaker 1: fours The Cane Mutiny, but his filmography, like a lot
Speaker 1: of folks, ultimately includes everything you know across the spectrum,
Speaker 1: from nineteen sixty two to Lawrence of Arabia to nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven's The Sentinel and Zoltan Hound of Dracula aka
Speaker 1: Dracula's Dog.
Speaker 3: Oh boy. I'd like Jose Ferrera's approach to this role,
Speaker 3: which is kind of unassuming, Like he he plays this
Speaker 3: character in a different way than you might expect. You
Speaker 3: might expect the Emperor to have a more imposing presence
Speaker 3: and to be more to be more dominant and commanding,
Speaker 3: but instead he plays this character like a careful politician,
Speaker 3: someone who is who is clever and circumspect and trying
Speaker 3: to carefully manage his his relationships and allegiances.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's a good read. There are a
Speaker 1: few scenes where I feel like he comes up a
Speaker 1: little bit befuddled. Yeah, I'm not sure to what extent
Speaker 1: that was intended, or if it's like I don't know
Speaker 1: what these lines mean, you know, but I would imagine
Speaker 1: it's more on the intended scale, because, yeah, Farrer was
Speaker 1: a great actor. We've talked about his son, Miguel Ferrera before,
Speaker 1: because he was of course in RoboCop and he was
Speaker 1: the uncle of George Clooney.
Speaker 3: M Miguel Ferrera was great in a lot of eighties movies,
Speaker 3: just like playing Jerks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now, real quick, I will mention that this is
Speaker 1: a character that has also been played by John Carlo Janini,
Speaker 1: that was in the mini series, and more recently by
Speaker 1: Christopher Walkin in Denny Vee's adaptations. I need to see
Speaker 1: doing part two once more before I fully make up
Speaker 1: my mind on Christopher Walkin's performance.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right.
Speaker 1: In the other character, Reverend mother Guy is Helen Mohayam
Speaker 1: is played by Sean Phillips born nineteen thirty three. So
Speaker 1: again not a member of House Krino, but she is
Speaker 1: the Emperor's truth sayer. She is a member of the
Speaker 1: Benijestrit order. We've talked about Phillips before because she played
Speaker 1: Cassiopeia in nineteen eighty one's Clash of the Titans, and
Speaker 1: she played the Knight Witch Chau in Ewok's The Battle
Speaker 1: for Indoor.
Speaker 3: Oh, I forgot about those connections, but she is wonderful
Speaker 3: in this role. This is this is another character who
Speaker 3: you know, kind of liked the Emperor in both cases.
Speaker 3: At first is shown to be a you know, just
Speaker 3: a character of kind of mystery and power. You're wondering
Speaker 3: like what is their power and what are they trying
Speaker 3: to do, but ultimately is revealed to kind of be
Speaker 3: a politician, like she's managing relationships between different factions. She's
Speaker 3: trying to keep the balance of power and keep her
Speaker 3: plans on track. And I think she does a great
Speaker 3: job with this role.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Benigesters are masterful politicians and masterful manipulators,
Speaker 1: and I think that comes out more in the recent
Speaker 1: adaptations than it does here, perhaps, but because again, you know,
Speaker 1: one film focuses more on the on the Guild and
Speaker 1: the other films focus more on the benagestrates. But I
Speaker 1: have to say, as far as Sean Phillip's presence and
Speaker 1: her and interact and go, I always loved her in
Speaker 1: this role. Her costuming and hairstyling is just absolutely on point,
Speaker 1: and she brings just wonderful energy to the role. I'm
Speaker 1: hard pressed to pick a favorite Reverend Mother here across
Speaker 1: the various adaptations, because Charlotte Rampling is also great in
Speaker 1: recent films. Oh yes, yes, all right, well let's let's
Speaker 1: dive back into the scene. Okay, So we have here
Speaker 1: the Emperor and the Reverend Mother, and then the giant
Speaker 1: golden doors to the Emperor's throne room peel apart into recesses,
Speaker 1: and here comes the Guild Navigator. But at first we
Speaker 1: do not see the Guild Navigator in bodily form. We
Speaker 1: just see a giant black cylinder venting out these blasts
Speaker 1: of steam. It looks like a solid iron locomotive rolling
Speaker 1: along the floor, approaching the throne, flanked by all these
Speaker 1: weird monks in black. And I love this approach. It's
Speaker 1: just like, what is this object? Yeah? The absolute weirdness
Speaker 1: and grandeur of this sequence cannot be overstated. While we
Speaker 1: never meet a guild navigator or a guild steersman in
Speaker 1: the first done novel, they do become important later on
Speaker 1: and become There's an important character that is a Guild
Speaker 1: navigator in Dune Messiah. But this sequence in this film
Speaker 1: does a great job of just setting the bizarre tone
Speaker 1: for the rest of the film, you know, intrigue, baroque splendor, grotesqueness,
Speaker 1: and a lingering sense of confusion. So I absolutely love it.
Speaker 3: So, as you say, this scene is not in the
Speaker 3: first novel, when we never meet this weird character in
Speaker 3: the first novel, we're about to explain how weird he looks.
Speaker 3: So this is like purely a I guess. I don't
Speaker 3: know for sure whose choice it was, but it seems
Speaker 3: like a David Lynch choice to just make this movie
Speaker 3: much weirder than it had to be. Right at the beginning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because to be clear, the new adaptations have no
Speaker 1: guild navigators, and then we briefly see the space and
Speaker 1: guild in Dune Part one, but we certainly never see
Speaker 1: 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 starts speaking into it
Speaker 3: with this inhuman language, and it translates to the Benny
Speaker 3: jeser At 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 are unlocking, and then the dark panels on the
Speaker 3: front of this huge object spread apart, and they reveal
Speaker 3: inside a giant tank, almost like a fish tank, but
Speaker 3: it is filled with orange smoke, occupied by a gigantic
Speaker 3: octopus like creature. And this is the Guild Navigator. It's
Speaker 3: someone who I think the 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 1: Yeah, essentially, And in the novels they're kind of described
Speaker 1: more as like taking the form ultimately like a fish
Speaker 1: man like that. That's that's the form that they have
Speaker 1: mutated into. In this they go in a more almost
Speaker 1: kind of like embryonic direction. The creature is stranger, even
Speaker 1: stranger to behold, and it is, it is glorious. It
Speaker 1: is it is an unforgettable visual aspect of the poet
Speaker 1: motion picture and it's just again brilliantly weird and sets
Speaker 1: the tone for the 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 A Triades and how Harkonen,
Speaker 3: and it asks if this is according to a plan
Speaker 3: of the Emperor's doing, and the Emperor admits that it
Speaker 3: is so. The Emperor says, the Atriades house is building
Speaker 3: a secret army using a technique unknown to us, a
Speaker 3: technique involving sound. The Duke is becoming more popular in
Speaker 3: the lands Rod. He could threaten me. I think the
Speaker 3: lands Rod is the like the Parliament of this this universe. Essentially,
Speaker 3: he could threaten me. I have ordered House Atreadees to
Speaker 3: occupy a Wrais to mine the spice, thus replacing their
Speaker 3: enemies the Harconans. House Atraades will not refuse because of
Speaker 3: the tremendous power they think they will gain. Then, at
Speaker 3: an appointed time, Baron Harconin will return to Iracus and
Speaker 3: launch a sneak attack on how Satraides. I have promised
Speaker 3: the Baron five legions of my Sardecar terror troops. So
Speaker 3: once again we alluded to this earlier, but they just
Speaker 3: lay out the whole plot right there. I don't know
Speaker 3: what I think about that choice. On one hand, it
Speaker 3: might make the story easier to follow if you're not
Speaker 3: already familiar with it. On the other hand, it does
Speaker 3: kind of like spoil some of the surprise because this
Speaker 3: is exactly what happens. It just lays it all out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, the Guild Navigator seems okay with this, but it
Speaker 3: says that through its clairvoyance, it perceives that this plan
Speaker 3: may be complicated by Paul Atriades, the son of Duke
Speaker 3: Leto Atredees, and the Guild Navigator says, I want Paul
Speaker 3: Atredes killed. I did not say this. I was not here.
Speaker 1: 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 1: Was were they I'm not I'm unsure on exactly what's
Speaker 1: happening here either, but did they like slide the Guild
Speaker 1: Navigator enclosure out on like a thin layer of oil
Speaker 1: or slime, I don't know, and then retreat on it
Speaker 1: and they've got to like clean it a little bit.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's wondrous. It's wondrous. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Emperor shaddam Is is left wondering what the Spacing Guild.
Speaker 3: Why would the Spacing Guild be so afraid of Duke
Speaker 3: Leto'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 Beni jessa At sisters and
Speaker 3: says they must examine Paul Treadees. 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 into David Lynch's filmography
Speaker 3: and things like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we'll wrap it up in the next episode
Speaker 1: of Weird House Cinema. And who knows in the future,
Speaker 1: if we do a Weird House rewind of this episode,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll cobble it all together into one big director's cut.
Speaker 3: We'll see just an unmanageable chunk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, just drop directly onto your phone. Yeah, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to continue to continuing the discussion, continuing
Speaker 1: our journey through David Lynch's Dune. In the meantime, will
Speaker 1: remind you that here unstuck to blow your mind and
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind feed We're primarily a science
Speaker 1: podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That doesn't
Speaker 1: mean we haven't done core episodes about Dune. If you
Speaker 1: go into our back catalog, you will find we did
Speaker 1: some episodes on the science of Dune, on the philosophy
Speaker 1: of Dune. Have a few short form episodes here and
Speaker 1: there that deal with things from Dune. I did one monster. Fact.
Speaker 1: These are on Wednesdays about donkeys of Dune because nobody
Speaker 1: ever adapts the donkeys of the planet Oracus. But in
Speaker 1: the books it is clear that the that there are
Speaker 1: donkeys on this planet and they are used, and they
Speaker 1: do wear a modified still suit.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, yeah, the books, the book books have so
Speaker 3: much weirdness of them suited one of your donkeys.
Speaker 1: Let's see Mondays we do listener mails, and yes, indeed
Speaker 1: on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns talk about
Speaker 1: a weird film on Weird House Cinema. If you want
Speaker 1: to see a list of all the movies we've covered
Speaker 1: thus far in Weird House Cinema and sometimes get a
Speaker 1: glimpse at what's coming next, go to letterbox dot com
Speaker 1: is L E T T E R bo x d
Speaker 1: dot com. It's a fun side overall for you know,
Speaker 1: chronicling movies, seeing you know what the different different connections
Speaker 1: are between different productions. But we are on there as
Speaker 1: weird House that's our username, and we have a list
Speaker 1: and you can look at all the things we've covered
Speaker 1: thus far. You can throw on different filters to see, like, okay,
Speaker 1: which movies f in the fifties did we do? Which?
Speaker 1: Which sci fi movies did we do? Which fantasy movies?
Speaker 1: And so forth. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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