Director: Frank Pavich
Year Released: 2013
Rating: 3.0
In the mid 1970's, Chilean surrealist/provocateur Alejandro Jodorowsky - maker of El Topo and The Holy Mountain - nabbed the rights to Frank Herbert's sci-fi epic Dune and decided to assemble a dream team of talent - ranging from H.R. Giger to Dan O'Bannon to Jean Girard to Mick Jagger to Orson Welles to freaking Salvador Dalí - to work on the project ... except due to financial restrictions (and a host of other problems), the film never got made (by him, at least). Widely regarded as one of the best films never made, hearing the super-eccentric, high-energy octogenarian describe the process he undertook to assemble his team and his interpretation of the Herbert work is immensely fun and illuminating (keeping in mind Jodorowsky is fond of myth-making and gross exaggerations) and, though it was a doomed venture, provided inspiration for a host of other influential films to follow (including Star Wars). I may be alone in this, but I'm almost glad Jodorowsky never made Dune, since I don't think the finished product would have lived up to the story of his planning to make it - it could have ended up as terrible as the version David Lynch eventually made in 1984. Fortunately for Lynch, he survived the debacle and had a better cinematic career than Jodorowsky, who, aside from dabbling in a few movie ventures (Santa Sangre being the most notable), focused mostly on comic books (working with the late Girard).
