What is the goal of the life?
It's to create yourself a soul.
For me, movies are an art...
...more than an industry.
And it's the search of the human soul...
...as painting, as literature, as poetry.
Movies are that for me.
I wanted to make a film...
...that would give the people who took LSD at that time...
...the hallucinations that you get with that drug, but without hallucinating.
I did not want LSD to be taken, I wanted to fabricate the drug's effects.
This film was going to change the public's perceptions.
My ambition with Dune was tremendous.
So, what I wanted was to create a prophet.
I want to create a prophet...
...to change the young minds of all the world.
For me, Dune will be the coming of a god.
Artistical, cinematographical god.
For me, it was not to make a picture.
It was something deeper.
I wanted to make something sacred...
...free, with new perspective.
Open the mind!
Because I feel, in that time, myself, inside a prison.
My ego, my intellect, I want to open!
And I start the fight to make Dune.
You needed a touch of madness to do it.
You can't have a masterpiece without madness.
Pink Floyd? Dalí...
...or Orson Welles or others!
Maybe Dune had too much madness?
But a movie that doesn't have a bit of madness...
...is not going to conquer the whole world.
I was in Paris with my wife at Jodorowsky's house...
...and having dinner...
...and very late into the evening...
...he goes if I wanted to see Dune.
And I was like:
"I didn't know you made it."
And he goes, well, he did.
And he pulls out, you know, the famous Dune book...
...that apparently only exists-- Two copies left in the universe.
And I then sat with him in front of me...
...for a very long time and just went through the book...
...and he would explain his thoughts and his ideas.
And, you know, when I heard about the team...
...that he had assembled to make this movie...
...sitting there at night, 2 a.m. at his house...
...seeing the book, looking at the images...
...and hearing Jodorowsky telling me...
...what was gonna happen in every scene.
So, in a way...
...I'm the only guy who actually ever saw Jodorowsky's Dune.
I am the only spectator...
...that has seen the movie.
And I'm gonna tell you something.
It's awesome.
Dune is probably the greatest movie never made.
It continues to influence us...
...and will go on influencing generations to come...
...despite the fact that it doesn't exist, we cannot rent it, we cannot watch it.
What if the first film of that nature...
...had been Dune and not Star Wars?
Would the whole...
...mega-bucks blockbuster structure...
...have been altered?
I think there's this cliche phrase about movies being ahead of their time.
I think Jodorowsky's Dune might've been the most ahead-of-its-time movie ever.
I don't think that in the history of cinema...
...there was ever a film that was taken that far, only to end up not being made.
To become a different film, since a film was made...
...that had nothing to do with those two and a half years of work.
If Alejandro's Dune could've been made...
...it would've been bigger than 2001.
It was built up...
...to be the greatest achievement in science fiction...
...and it just evaporated...
...into a billion small, black pieces of space.
In the beginning, I was making theater.
In Mexico, I make 100 theater plays.
In 10 years, I make the avant garde theater.
Ionesco, Beckett, Strindberg.
Adaptation--
Modern adaptations of Shakespeare, I do.
One day I will make a picture.
From the beginning of his film career...
...what he was doing was driving people crazy.
His first film, Fando y Lis...
...it premiered in Acapulco at a film festival...
...and there was an actual full-scale riot. People went crazy.
It was so nuts that Mexico banned the film.
When I came to pictures...
...I came like a virgin.
Without to know technical movement.
I didn't know lens, the number. I didn't know.
We shoot Fando y Lis, hiding of unions.
In Mexico, a young director cannot make picture...
...without the permission of the old director unions.
I say, "What I need to take the permission to make art?"
Artists need to be free! I do my picture!
Then was a great scandal later, eh?
Because I broke all the unions, I did it!
I was opening the mind of the industry.
Be prepared to live the most wonderful experience of your life.
El Topo is miraculous...
...and terrible.
It's violent.
El Topo is more than spectacle.
It is an experience for all of your life.
El Topo really was the original midnight movie, the original cult film...
...the first movie that played exclusively at midnight screenings...
...and drew a loyal cult audience.
What I find extraordinary about El Topo...
...is it's his first major movie, and Jodorowsky's producing...
...writing and directing and playing the lead...
...and he gives himself that immortal line, "I am God."
I was exposed to it in the underground cinema in New York.
And after that, we had the courage to attempt to distribute it in France...
...and it was an incredible success for this movie that was quite revolutionary...
...and a natural friendship was born between Alejandro and me.
Thanks to the success of El Topo...
...I got one million dollars to make The Holy Mountain.
I did whatever I wanted.
I didn't have a producer...
...no critic, no one to mess with me.
I did what I wanted and it was The How Mountain.
Holy Mountain really is an extraordinary film.
It feels like a work of art that's come from a parallel world.
A totally different version of the film industry...
...where there really are no limits.
I gave the movie to Michel Seydoux in France.
And, oh, surprise, in Europe it attracted a great number of people...
...it was playing openly.
In Italy that year, it was the number two movie behind James Bond.
The Holy Mountain was incredible.
So my ambition grew.
Michel Seydoux called me from Paris and say to me:
"Holy Mountain is a success. I want to make a new picture with you.
Do whatever you want!"
I have never made movies or transactions...
...unless there was something more to them.
A relationship between human beings is what makes the difference.
He said, "I want to produce you anything.
What do you want to do?"
I say, "Dune!"
And he say, "Yes."
Why?
Because the book was the most beautiful science-fiction book.
It was the bible of science fiction for all the big devotees.
Because the book had been a worldwide publishing success...
...that you could find in every country.
I didn't read Dune. But I have a friend who say me it was fantastic.
I don't know why I say Dune. I can say Don Quixote...
...or I can said Hamlet. I don't know anything.
I say Dune.
Dune is this sprawling space epic...
...that focuses on the planet Arrakis. ..
...a desert planet, where this spice, melange, is found.
This consciousness-expanding drug...
...which is one of the most important commodities in the universe.
This makes Dune into a planet...
...of extraordinary strategic importance.
Almost, I guess, the galactic version of Afghanistan.
Paul Atreides is a young noble. Paul gets cast out of his house...
...and leads a revolution of the Fremen...
...the local natives on Arrakis, to take over the planet...
...from the evil, colonial Harkonnens, who are controlling it...
...and to sort of return power of the spice to the people.
So, of course, the idea of imbibing a spice...
...that opens time and space to you:
That couldn't have been more right for that moment.
And so that's why it's a-- it's a weird Hollywood film.
Like, it's a weird idea for Hollywood to ever tangle with Dune.
Hollywood sold us the rights for nothing...
...mockingly on the inside, I believe...
...thinking that we would never be able to carry out such a thing.
It was a great undertaking to do the script.
Michel Seydoux brought me to France.
He rented a castle, a huge castle...
...and I was in that castle dedicated solely to Dune.
Frank Herbert created a world in Dune...
...but he never said exactly what it was.
And you have a hundred pages of literature...
...where you go on to discover, with great difficulty...
...what the book is about.
It's very-- It's like-- I compare it to Proust in French literature.
It's literary, it's great literature.
The first 100 pages...
...you understand almost nothing.
It's insinuations.
To bring literature to image is completely difficult.
You need to create another world, the optical world.
It's not the literary, auditive world.
All the time, even in the... In the little details...
...I was trying to find the spiritual meaning of that picture.
Now I have my script.
I need to find the warriors.
The warriors to do it.
Every person who will work in this picture will be a spiritual warrior.
The best I will find.
He had the genius to make...
...a storyboard with Moebius.
I find a comic book. The comic book was...
...Blueberry.
Cowboy book, drawing by Giraud.
I start to see, but that guy is my camera!
Who is this?
Giraud was the most fantastic figure artist.
He could draw anything. Giraud was probably...
...France's most famous and most talented art--
Bandes dessinées artist.
This is the person I need.
Where I will find this person? Where?
In that time was not Internet to find any person.
I need to find this person.
I went to see my agent, publicity agent...
...and there he was. By chance.
He was there.
He say, "I am Moebius."
"When I drawing science fiction, I am not Giraud, I am Moebius."
And I say to him, "You are the person! Come with me!"
Drawing by drawing, I shoot the picture.
I need 3000 drawings.
Point of view. Movement of the camera.
Dialogue. The relation between the actors.
I use Moebius like a camera.
I take Moebius, I say, "Now you advance." "Now you travel."
"Now you make a close-up."
I have Moebius, who was a genius. Moebius was a genius.
Because he was not only an artist with an incredible capacity...
...but he was very quick.
Was superhuman. He was...
...quickly, rapido, incredible.
And then I could shoot.
Every day, we start to shoot...
At 8:00, we come, we prepare everything. I think at 9:30 we start to shoot.
I made the picture with drawings.
And then in the costume, I say to him-- I describe what I wanted.
He immediately:
Quick, more than a computer. He was incredible.
Everything became magic when we was doing this picture.
Everything, everything.
Dune, my Dune, start with a long shot.
I admire the long shot of Orson Welles' Touch of Evil.
The camera go, go, go, traverse the street, go.
It's a fantastic big, long shot.
And then I wanted to start Dune with a long shot...
...better than the long shot of Orson Welles.
I wanted to go farthest.
And then all the shot is traversing the whole universe.
You go there and you traverse all the galaxy, all the galaxy...
...and in traversal of the galaxy, you see a pirate...
...robbing a convoy of spice, by example. Battles. And you go, you go...
ls a long shot.
Having looked at some of the storyboards...
...and being aware of what he was trying to accomplish...
...I don't know how he could've done it in '75.
His vision was so huge...
...so beyond what anybody else was doing at that time...
...you look back at what George Lucas struggled to accomplish...
...in '77 with Star Wars...
...and here's Jodorowsky a couple years before that...
...going with things that Lucas wasn't even gonna try in the prequel films.
I mean, it's just-- It's enormous.
We need to find the person who will make the special effects.
I say, "Moebius, we fly to California, to Los Angeles...
...to the appointment of Douglas Trumbull."
At that time, in the early '70s...
...why, Doug Trumbull was probably the premier visual-effects guy around...
...and everyone had known his work on 2001.
He was a very honored, very important person.
He receive me. He was interesting.
Was a business.
My gosh. Hey.
Hey-
Yeah.
We went to see Trumbull...
...but he gives himself so big importance.
We was speaking, he answered...
...40 times the telephone. Forty times.
He was speaking with so big vanity of himself.
He was a big technician. But for me, was not a spiritual person.
He have nothing to do in the creation of a film who was a prophet.
He will make a technical film, no?
Trumbull, had a very specific way he wanted to work...
...and Kubrick had given him pretty much carte blanche...
...to do what he wanted to do within certain bounds...
...so some filmmakers who wanted to control more...
...what the visual style was...
...were a bit put off by that.
And then I say, "I cannot work with you."
And we went out.
Moebius was astonished, say, "How you can say no to the biggest...
...technician of Hollywood?"
I say, "it is like that."
I cannot use him. He is not my spiritual warrior.
And then we was walking in the street, Hollywood...
...there was a little cinema, a little theater. And there was a science-fiction picture...
...Dark Star.
And when I see the picture, "That is the guy!"
O'Bannon.
We will search for this person. This person will be the person.
Dan was from rural Missouri...
...the Ozarks, and he didn't even have a phone until he was, like, 10.
The first time he talked on the phone.
He read Mark Twain stories and didn't realize they were old.
He thought they were, like, contemporary stories.
So he's kind of a guy out of time, in a very strange way.
But he was always attracted to science fiction and whatnot.
For me, the art was before, later the technique.
And that was O'Bannon.
I thought I was pretty well prepared for him.
I thought I had a very clear image of him as this very erudite lunatic.
And I was steeling myself for the interview.
In El Topo, he had this long hair...
...down to his shoulders and a big beard and he was a raving lunatic.
He acted in his own films. And I was greeted at the door...
...by this charming, continental gentleman.
Clean shaven, with styled hair.
He goes back and he gets out of his suitcase...
...comes outwith this little piece of folded-up newspaper, and says:
"This is special marijuana."
I said, "Oh, boy!"
All I remember is, I was getting incredibly relaxed...
...and then I was looking straight into his eyes...
...when all of a sudden...
...at the conclusion of a sentence, he said, "Like this!"
And, Wham, out from his face...
...shot these radiating lines of patterns...
...which proceeded to produce around his head...
...a circular, shimmering mandala or kaleidoscope-like pattern...
...with his face in the center and his eyes fixed on mine...
...and the rest of the room vanishing into oblivion.
And then his whole-- He relaxed all of his features.
The eyes, which had been staring into mine...
...like something supernatural, all of a sudden relaxed.
Lids came down and the face smiled and it changed back.
The 20 years came back onto his face.
And the hallucinogenic visual effect and the mental effect...
...dispersed immediately. Just:
And I was completely dazzled. I was dazed at the experience.
He said, "All right, I want you to do the special effects."
And I said, "All right." I said, "Well, hell, yes!"
He said, "Good." I'll never forget his words.
He says, "Now sell everything you own and come to Paris.
Prepare to have your life changed."
And then he came to Paris.
And that was-- I have two warriors: Moebius and O'Bannon.
I need to find the others.
The first actor is the father, the Duke Leto.
David Carradine had starred in a very popular television series...
...in which he was a warrior...
...who was taught by masters from the Orient.
It was influenced by El Topo.
Then, when Carradine knew that I wanted him, he came...
...he came running.
I waited for him in Los Angeles, in a hotel room.
I had bought vitamin E.
Like, this E vitamin. Half a kilo.
In order to take one pill every day to have the strength.
Carradine came to my room, the first thing he saw...
...was the pot of E vitamin.
He say, "Oh, E vitamin!"
And he drink all my pills of vitamin E!
Like is a monstrosity! Sixty dollars was!
Well, was a big beginning.
And then I say, "We need to work together!
You are the person I am searching!"
I wanted a musical group for every planet.
Pink Floyd. They will make the music of Leto.
Pink Floyd have a record, Dark Side of the Moon.
For me, that is the human being, like the moon.
One side is brilliant, light.
And the other side who is black, the unconscious...
...what is mysterious, what is deep.
It happened during a meeting.
"Pink Floyd?" Gibon said, "Okay, I'll go!"
He called Pink Floyd's agent. He said, "Could I meet with you?"
So one day we went to London.
They were in the middle of finishing the mixing...
...of Dark Side of the Moon, at Abbey Road, the famous studio.
And I remember, we got there...
...and they were very standoffish...
...pop stars, very distant.
They was eating. They was eating...
...hamburgers. Four guys eating hamburgers.
"Hello," they say, "Hello!"
And nothing, I could not speak, they was eating.
All of a sudden, Jodo-- We called him Jodo.
Jodo said, "No. They're pissing me off. Let's go!"
I start to insulted them.
"How you don't understand I offer to you...
...the most important picture in the history of the humanity!
We will change the world!
And you are eating...
Eating Big Macs. How?"
And then they stop and they speak with me.
And after that, it went very, very well.
Very, very well, yeah.
And we was speaking to make a big album with the music of Dune.
Could be fantastic, no?
In my version, the Duke Leto...
...he is castrated.
And then how he will do a son?
And then his wife...
...a marvelous woman, a wise woman...
...and the guy have a love, a cosmic love when he see this woman.
And how he will make a child?
And she take a drop of his blood...
...and she change the blood into semen...
...and then we see the drop of blood going inside the vagina, the uterus...
...and we will follow the blood...
...the blood coming and go inside the ovum and explodes there.
She get pregnant with a drop of blood.
That's What I did.
What will have if you are not the son of a sexual pleasure...
...but of a spiritual pleasure?
And from this spiritual love, he will create Paul.
Paul was a young boy...
...but is not a normal boy. Was a mutant.
With a big soul and strength.
Where I will find that boy?
My son.
Today you are 7 years old.
Now you are a man.
Bury your first toy and your mother's picture.
I work with him in El Topo, now he have 12 year old.
I say, "You will make Paul, but you need to prepare as a warrior."
He said, "We're gonna make Dune and I want you to play...
...the part of Paul, and you're gonna have to prepare."
I prepare my son, to do the role exactly...
...as the Duke Leto prepare his son.
"So, yes, you're gonna have to learn karate and make acrobatics...
...and your mind has to develop a lot," you know.
"You have to be a genius." He wanted me to be the character.
I find teacher for him.
I have a very strong person...
...Jean-Pierre Vignau.
When we started, he was 12.
There I trained him in karate, karate jujitsu, Japanese style.
That's all the fist-foot techniques...
...joint locks, floor pins, standing pins...
...a combination of karate, judo, aikido and atemi-jitsu.
He learned how to fight with his hands, with knife, with swords.
He learn all that.
And he was ready to do Paul as a real "Paul."
I trained Brontis six hours a day, seven days a week for two years.
That was painful. That was-- And Jean-Pierre, he has no mercy.
No, really. He was-- No, he was, you know--
We worked together. He had no mercy.
And all the person say to me, "But what you did?
But why you are trying to change the mind...
...of child and to make a superior person?"
I say, "No, I was only awakening the creativity."
I opened his mind.
That's what I was doing.
I don't know if I changed his life.
Now I am thinking, "Why I did that?"
Sacrifice my son.
But in that time, I say, if I need to out my arms in order to make that picture...
...I will cut my arms. I will do it.
I was believing that to make a picture...
...who will give a mutation to the young minds...
...was sacred. You need to sacrifice yourself.
I was even ready to die doing that.
Well, Jodo's a bit like a dictator or a cult leader...
...in assembling his army around him.
Part of Jodo's genius was in picking those people...
...and finding, absolutely, the right people...
...for designing the spaceships, the clothes...
...for designing the whole look of his world.
I think he sees the potential of science fiction.
For me, science fiction was like a huge theater...
...like a huge work of art.
Every spaceship was a being...
...like an insect, like a fabulous bird.
That was the spaceship I wanted.
Foss, I knew him in the covers of science-fiction books.
They were ships with souls, like beings.
It had to be Chris Foss.
This company called Camera One...
...made contact with me.
They said, "We're doing a film here in France...
...and we've seen your work in a science-fiction bookshop here in Paris.
And would you like to come over, have a chat with us...
...and see if we could do something?"
And on that basis, I went to Paris.
So I'm there. All I know is I'm staying the night...
...and then, finally, I was introduced to Alejandro.
Here is this slightly strange man.
First thing he does, he goes through my bags...
...starts pulling the bits out. And then he realizes that it's my bag.
He thought it was his girlfriend's. That's not the best beginning.
Then they say to me, "You're gonna see a film that Alejandro made."
I'm on my own, watching the strangest film in the world...
...and right in the middle of it, here's this bloke crapping a golden turd.
You are excrement.
You can change yourself into gold.
And this is my introduction to this whole environment.
And I suppose already...
...Alejandro had some sort of pull, some sort of enigma.
I'd obviously found it quite strange.
And they said, "We want you to come back.
We want you to live here. You will be part of us."
And basically, I was then installed in Paris...
...and shoehorned into Parisian life...
...and it was an absolute eye-opener.
Dan loved Paris.
When he first got there, he thought it was very cramped...
...and tiny and didn't understand it, and he was very tall for France.
But he loved it.
Well, he wrote me love letters...
...and he wrote me his impression letters.
Here's one from September 10th of '75.
He says, "I'm sending along photocopies...
...of some preliminary sketches of vehicles for the film.
We've got two artists working, a Frenchman named Jean Giraud...
...and an Englishman named Christopher Foss.
The former did comic books...
...and the latter book covers before coming on Dune.
Both are young. As I've mentioned, the whole staff of this picture is young.
Jodorowsky, at 46, is the oldest."
In that time, I was like a prophet, I was enlightened.
And I gave to them the feeling they are not only making a picture.
They are making something important for humanity.
They have a mission. They was warriors.
Alejandro was the guru. He completely motivated you, you know.
And I still say yes to this day...
...I did some of my most unusual paintings...
...and I'm very proud of them. He was very supportive.
Very supportive.
Alejandro motivated me to such an extent...
...I used to go in at weekends just to finish paintings.
I've got this memory of coming up with the pirate spaceship...
...over a weekend. It's been mortally wounded...
...and all this spice is spilling out of it.
And it's got a camouflage which matches the asteroid.
It was just like a fish.
If it stayed very still, no one could see it.
And then, this was the whole--
I remember seeing that very clearly in my head...
you think you're looking at a rock, as if you were under the sea...
...and then suddenly something moves, and you realize that it's an object.
Still haven't read the book, no. I have no idea what the actual story is.
None whatsoever.
It all came via Alejandro and the script. Yeah, yeah.
So, as far as I'm concerned...
...the story of Dune is what Alejandro told me it was.
In an ideal world, he wouldn't have needed a script.
You could've sat Alejandro down...
...and he would've talked the story, you know?
He would've said the words, he would've said:
"Now we're in this landscape."
We've got these scenes in the desert.
The heat would be so intense, but the sky would be blue...
...a blistering blue.
And Jesus, you were transported.
Alejandro always had quite clear ideas.
He'd do his little piece of theater. He'd say, "These are the Sardaukar.
This is what they're like." He would play you music, and then--
But it was wonderful, because he sort of left you--
He motivated you, but then he left you to interpret it.
I was searching for... For the light of genius in every person...
...with an enormous respect, an enormous respect.
And then, every day I was feeding them in order to...
To be free, to do the best of them.
On other films, they just leave you to your own devices.
Sometimes, you think they're not even interested in what you're doing.
And here was Alejandro...
...who was passionate about the whole project.
Every morning, I give a big speech...
...like the person who make football or rugby...
...a speech with the players:
Every morning, I make my speech.
In order to say, "Do it, what you need to do...
...really, because this will be important."
I actually started life-- I was going to be an architect.
And that's what you see in the palace...
...you know, which is, it's-- You could physically build it.
Because the story of my life is, anything I design...
...it's entirely buildable. And if you look, there's a detail.
Look, you've got the walls with weeping water, all very stylized.
I designed it knowing exactly how they would build the set.
I probably said, "Oh, yes, Alejandro.
We will do this in fiberglass, we will cast it like this."
So I knew exactly how to do it and how to get the effect.
In that time, I was seducing Dalí...
...because I wanted Dalí as the mad emperor of the galaxy.
Dalí, to us, he seemed to be the only emperor of the world...
...with that extraordinary talent, with his speech and his wording.
Can nobody understand Dalí because myself, never understand my work.
Never Dalí understand one painting of Dalí...
...because Dalí only create enigmas.
Dalí was something, eh?
The first time we went to New York was with Michel Seydoux.
We went to the St. Regis because Michel Seydoux liked the St. Regis Hotel.
And we discovered that Dalí was also at the St. Regis Hotel!
By chance.
I was reading a book about the Tarot.
And then I take a page where the Hanged Man...
I write, "I want to see you because I will make a picture with you."
He like it. To have this kind of invitation. He say, "I will see you.
I wait you in the bar."
The bar had a 6-meter long painting...
...pre-Rafaelite, where there was a king...
...and the nobles had a face like they were hiding something.
Dalí told me, "I like it here because there is a 6-meter painting...
...dedicated to a fart."
Dalí told me, "We are going to see each other in Paris.
I am going to think about it."
In Paris, on the Champs Elysées, there was a very fancy restaurant...
...and he was there with his court.
He had 12-- Twelve persons at the table and him.
"Sit down. I want to ask something to you."
"What, Mr. Dalí?"
"When we was young, myself and Picasso, we went to the beach.
And we open the door of the car...
...always in the sand, we find a clock."
Clock, no?
"Do you find, in your life, a clock in the sand?"
And I say, "What I can answer?"
It was very quick, like this, because...
...all the 12 person are awaiting my question.
Because if I say I find, all the time, clocks...
...I will be a vanity person. Ridiculous.
If I say I never find a clock, I will be a poor guy.
And suddenly came to me, I say:
"I never find a clock.
But I lost a lot."
Really?
"Okay!" And then, "I wait you in Barcelona!"
It was a game.
Also, Jodorowsky was part of the surrealist movement...
...and Dalí liked that.
So it was a game between them.
Who would win the game?
He was going through his first adventure with Amanda Lear...
...this sort of extraordinarily sexy person.
Nobody ever knew if it was a man or a woman...
...a completely incredible character.
A sort of muse, a poet's muse.
Whenever someone like Jodorowsky or...
Would come to see him, it was a bit ambiguous.
There was a sort of respect.
Yes, of course, you have success with your work...
...but there was also a little jealousy, I think.
He was a bit jealous.
And you had to meet him, you had to tame him...
...and he needed to tame you.
So he would make you go through these initiations each time.
Of course, Dalí had absolutely no idea what Dune was about.
He had never read the book. He didn't know who Frank Herbert was.
He didn't know what Dune was talking about.
So I had to clue him a little bit, because I liked Frank Herbert and I liked Dune.
And I said to him, "You know, this is a great thing.
It's not just a science fiction. There's a whole philosophy."
He wasn't interested in all that, I realized that.
She treated me very well...
...and she became an ally...
...because I promised her the role of Princess Irulan.
Yes, I think that was hysterical.
Because Dalí said, "Yeah, and Amanda must play the princess."
So they all look at me, "Well, is she an actress?"
"Oh, yes, of course. she'll play the princess."
She said, "Be careful because Dalí is destructive.
If he says 'yes', he is going to do everything to destroy the film."
Dalí said, "Can I have a helicopter?"
To him, to have a helicopter was the maximum of, you know...
"Yeah, yeah, you can have many helicopters."
"Can I have a burning giraffe?"
"Well, what about...?" "Burning. I want burning."
"All right, we'll have burning giraffe.
We'll have elephants, whatever you want."
And slowly, you know, the budget of the movie was going up and up and up.
We're talking hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars.
Dalí say to me, "I will work with you...
...but I want to be the actor...
Best paid actor in Hollywood.
I want $100,000 per hour."
I went back and told Alejandro, "We're never going to make it!"
But I couldn't pay him "the most in the world."
That would be impossible.
Then step by step...
...because we were stubborn and because Alejandro would tell me...
...that Dalí was the only one who could play the emperor...
...the totalitarian emperor...
...we had the idea of paying him...
...by the minutes used.
I go to see Alejandro...
...and ask, "How many minutes is he going to be filmed?
How many minutes will he be in the movie?"
Alejandro says, "Maximum five, probably three."
So I said, "That's the idea!"
I go back to see Dalí and I say, "I will pay you $100,000 per minute!"
He says, "That's brilliant! I will be the $100,000 a minute actor!"
I said, "I will take a mold of you, hyper-realistic...
...and I will make the emperor of the galaxy...
...he is so afraid to be killed, he have a robot. And the robot will act."
And Dalí said, "Yes, if you give me the sculpture for my museum."
"Okay." And then like this, I have Dalí.
And Dalí, in our conversation, show me a catalog of Giger.
And he say to me, "I think this person have a talent."
I see that, I see-- But is incredible!
Is what I am searching for the Harkonnen, for the bad guys.
The gothic planet, gothic characters.
And then I went to search Giger.
Paris was where Jodorowsky and Dan O'Bannon saw my work displayed...
...and they wanted me to join them.
Giger had never done movies.
I said, "You have to make movies."
It was completely new to me and incredibly fascinating.
I say to Giger, "I need you as you are.
You are searching in the deepest darkness of the soul.
And that is good. That is your art.
Your art is-- For me, is an ill art.
Marvelous, ill art, necessary for the Baron Harkonnen."
I met Jodorowsky for the first time in Paris.
This was the evening when he attended...
...a Magma concert.
For the Harkonnen planet, I chose here in Paris...
...a very famous group in that time, is Magma.
Magma was gothic, military...
...terrible.
I knew nothing about the project, or the idea...
...or the book for that matter. I learned about all of that afterward.
Alejandro Jodorowsky didn't give us any direction on the music.
I believe he trusted us.
Now, I had an idea because he had described the planet, the Harkonnen.
I knew that they were not really the good guys...
...that they were more like the bad guys.
So it was rather easy to imagine because...
...Magma made music that was rather violent...
...typically hard, things like that.
I was just amazed by the quality...
...and I told them I felt just like Christ when he was on the cross.
I was fulfilled, it was fascinating, the music.
I was using the best musicians of this time, from rock.
I wanted Mick Jagger to play Feyd-Rautha, a character.
How am I going to contact this person...
...who is not going to be impressed that I have the great power to make a movie?
He is in the peak of his fame, of his glory. How?
And I was invited to an event in Paris.
It was a big gathering of the Parisian bourgeoisie...
...and at the other side of the room, a big room...
...I don't know, maybe 150 square meters...
...was Mick Jagger.
I saw him from a distance and I think he saw me...
...and I saw him walking, he started walking--
He started walking between the people...
...and then I realized that he was coming to me.
He crossed the room and he stood in front of me.
And I told him, "I want you for my movie."
And he said only one word, "Yes."
I was often invited to Andy Warhol's Factory...
...Candy Darling, and all those people.
There I met Udo Kier, who was Andy Warhol's great actor.
He had played great roles, and he said that he would act for me.
Baron Harkonnen is a big, big monster...
...who have anti-gravitational implants...
...and he is in the air all the time because he is too heavy.
Orson Welles.
Orson Welles had a bad reputation...
...because they said that he liked to drink and eat...
...so much that he ate at the movies.
He ate a lot, and then he did not finish the movies, he was moody.
But I said, "No, Orson Welles is a genius, he is the one."
And since he liked to eat, they say he goes to the gastronomic restaurants in Paris.
Therefore, I sent a secretary to ask...
...in all the gastronomic restaurants in Paris:
"Where does Orson Welles eat?"
And we discover a restaurant and then he was eating.
Six bottles of wine. He was eating.
And then I asked to the chef, "What is the best wine he want?"
He say, "That." Then, "Send him a bottle."
And then, he drink the bottle and he want to speak with me.
And then, I speak with all the respect, because was for me was an idol.
He say, "I don't want to do it. I don't want any more."
I say to him, "I will propose something.
If you do the picture, even if we pay what you want as an actor...
...I will hire the chef of this restaurant and you will eat, as here, every day."
And he say, "I do it."
I had the artworks from the movie...
...which I got from Moebius, who drew the storyboard, where one can see...
...the Harkonnen Castle.
The castle was the big Baron Harkonnen, no? The big sculpture.
That was where Baron Harkonnen lived.
In himself! The big ego, no?
The castle open the mouth, a tongue go there, out...
...and the spaceship came in the tongue.
And then he say:
I was fascinated by the creation of the Harkonnen people...
...and when I airbrushed five paintings...
...I gave my best to create these designs.
In order to go to the castle, there is a way with tubes.
Enormous tubes. Come out knife.
And then in order to go to the Baron Harkonnen, you need to walk this way...
"escaping of the big knife who want to destroy you.
If attacked, then the spears would be set in motion and impale the people...
...who stood in the way on the pathway up the castle.
And in fact this Harkonnen fortress was never in the novel.
So this was somehow in Alejandro Jodorowsky's translation...
...his interpretation of the story.
When Paul get killed, he doesn't die because...
...the Messiah is all the humanity can get enlightened.
In the end, his mind is the mind of every person. He's a plural being.
I am the others. The others are me.
By killing the hero near the end...
...you also open this way of identifying yourself.
So you're not identifying yourself with a hero...
...a character, but you start identifying yourself also...
...with a universal consciousness.
He dies, really physically, but he becomes everyone.
And then, if the whole humanity get enlightened...
...the Earth changed.
The planet of sand...
...start to grow plant, animals, be like a paradise.
Dune is a Messiah of the planets because is a planet with consciousness.
With the same consciousness of Paul.
And the planet go to the universe...
...to illuminate the other planets.
I changed the end of the book, evidently!
In the book, it's a continuation.
The planet never changed.
Is not awake, with a cosmic consciousness.
It's not a Messiah, the planet. I did that.
It's different. It was my Dune.
When you make a picture, you must not respect the novel.
It's like you get married, no?
You go with the wife, white, the woman is white...
...you take the woman, if you respect the woman, you will never have child.
You need to open the costume and to...
To rape the bride.
And then you will have your picture.
I was raping Frank Herbert, raping, like this!
But with love, with love.
And then I came with that.
It was such a beautiful object.
So well done and at the time, there were no photocopies.
It was just photos of each drawing.
In color...
...so well done...
...with so much detail about the costumes, about the techniques used.
Every studio have one book like this. Every studio.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Universal, everything, all them...
...Michel Seydoux give a book like that.
This approach was chosen precisely because...
...I was thinking they might have a certain distrust of Jodorowsky.
But since we were showing the camera angles, since we explained each scene...
...the way we wanted to film it...
...they should have been relieved.
But they weren't. It wasn't enough.
In Los Angeles, I wasn't optimistic.
The thing is that sometimes the French and the Americans...
...have difficult relationships, you know.
Well, we have had.
We were almost at the finish line, but we had to find the last $5 million.
The film cost $15 million. Well, we estimated it as $15...
We had been invited to Walt Disney studios by the chairman of the board.
He looked through the project and said:
"This is a wonderful project...
...but it is like the Concorde.
It's an exceptional plane, but over here, never!"
And there I said to myself that we were going to face a lot of problems.
Hollywood prefers ideas which they can relate to...
...things which sound like two other current movies.
If you can tell them it's like Jurassic Park...
...crossed with Twilight or, you know...
...The Hobbit crossed with The Killing Fields, it makes more sense.
To come in with something which is more complex...
...which has adult themes and a degree of ambiguity...
...and especially a film which has spiritual and metaphysical ideas...
...is something which has most studios running scared.
They always received us in a very friendly way...
...but it was always the same answer.
When we would give them the book, they were very impressed.
They had never seen anything like it.
Each time, they would tell us, "it's superb. It's very well constructed.
You've solved the technical problems of those special effects.
It's economically reasonable.
But we don't get your director."
They are not qualified to judge this material.
They are not designers or artists themselves.
Most of those guys are accountants. They want to know the bottom line.
Hollywood did not visualize science fiction that way.
It was in 2001: A Space Odyssey...
...or in small B movies.
But a huge movie, that would cost millions of dollars with all the effects.
They did not conceive of that.
Maybe it was a bit long as well.
Maybe the film was a bit too long.
They asked me to make a picture one hour and a half, for the theaters.
And myself, "No, why the time?" I will make a picture...
...of 12 hours! Or 20 hours!
The worry was that it would go way over budget...
...and it wouldn't have an audience...
...because no one would want to sit through that long a film.
So those things should have been at least talked through...
...I think, before a presentation was made...
...because someone should have known...
...that the studio people would be...
There would be a red ﬂag all the time...
...about how bizarre it was.
The totally outrageous side of Jodorowsky...
...especially after The Holy Mountain and El Topo...
...did not give them faith that he could lead this very ambitious project.
Because $15 million in the middle of the '70s was a lot of money.
And that was their answer, even though they found everything else to be perfect.
Everything was great, except the director.
You have to be like a poet.
Your movie must be just as you think of it and just as you want it.
Do not take comments to change this or that from this person or the other. No!
The movie has to be just like I dream it.
The picture need to be exactly as I am dreaming the picture.
Is a dream. Don't change my dream.
I believe deep down...
...that people did not do this film in America...
...because they were afraid of him.
They were afraid of his imagination, his mind...
...they were afraid what it was gonna do to them.
I think that is the real reason why it never got made...
...because people were scared.
This system make of us slaves.
Without dignity. Without depth.
With a devil in our pocket.
This incredible money are in the pocket.
This money. This shit.
This nothing. This paper who have nothing inside.
Movies have heart.
Have mind.
Have power.
Have ambition.
I wanted to do something like that. Why not?
It was canceled at the point where all of the planning...
...that could be done on paper had been done...
...and we were ready to start constructing sets.
They were taking a hiatus before they went to Algeria to shoot.
And he was sent back here to do some research on film stock...
...and then he got the call, said it's over.
No money.
And he went crazy. Everything was in Paris.
Everything he owned was in Paris. He'd sold his car.
So he was crashed on our couch, and he stayed there...
...for about two weeks until he drove everybody nuts.
Complete disaster that was never made, complete disaster.
It would have been quite extraordinary.
I was disappointed. Sure I was disappointed, you know.
Because if the film was made-- There was like--
You know, it's like you have a...
A dreamed life.
My life could have been this and that. Right?
Very disappointed. Very disappointed because we all believed in it.
I believed in it.
Alejandro was very, I think-- I think...
...very, very, very hurt, very disappointed.
It's a big failure for him.
Now, this is my take on it...
...but I think he didn't feel like...
...doing something else after such a project...
...which was the project of his life, I believe. That's my feeling.
I think that the humiliation...
...that Alejandro Jodorowsky suffered, in not having been chosen...
...in having been eliminated for being too original, being too surrealistic...
...that is a permanent injury.
I think that Jodorowsky carries that in his heart for life.
I was convinced that it would be something great.
But then Dino De Laurentiis' daughter...
...came along and took the project away from us...
...and gave it to David Lynch.
And when I heard that David Lynch will direct that...
...I have a pain because I admire David Lynch. He can do it!
He is the only one in this moment who can do it that and he will do it!
I suffer because was my dream. Another person will do that...
...maybe better than me.
And then when the picture, they will show the picture here...
...I say I will not go to see that because I will die.
And my sons say, "No, we are warriors. You need to come and to see that."
And then they take me, like an ill person I came to the theater.
Even I think I will cry. And I start to see the picture...
...and step by step, step by step, step by step...
...I became happy because the picture was awful!
We come for you!
Is a failure!
Well, it's a human reaction, no?
Is not beautiful, but I have that reaction.
I say, "ls not possible. ls not David Lynch because he is a big artist."
ls the producer who did that.
I've never seen the movie and I never will.
Jodorowsky was ahead of his time.
The big problem was that he was bringing in...
...a lot of ideas which take people decades to process.
When you want to change the consciousness of the audience...
...you want to change the consciousness of the Hollywood executives...
...and alter the whole ecology...
...you have to be extremely patient, like Kynes the planetologist.
These things take thousands of years.
And very slowly these ideas might permeate the system.
But Jodo was try-- Was hoping it would happen...
...within his lifetime, that it would happen now...
...and the truth of the matter is that it may take generations...
...before movies actually aspire to the level that Jodo is wishing for.
From this supposed failure, come a lot of creation.
In the life, thing come, you say "yes."
Thing go away, you say "yes."
We don't do Dune? Yes!
That is, yes, we don't do it!
And then so what?
Dune is in the world like a dream, but dreams change the world also.
Dune is like Paul, so Dune was--
Its throat was cut, of the film.
The film wasn't made, the film was killed.
But, you know, you can hear in some films:
"I am Dune, I am Dune, I am Dune.
I think it was a guide.
A guide for some.
In any case, I am convinced that our storyboard...
...made the rounds in the halls of Hollywood.
I can't imagine that isn't the case. It pleases me to imagine that.
You always have to see the positive.
The original Star Wars, the '77 film...
...there's a lot of visual reference from what Jodorowsky laid out on paper.
Just the way his sword fights were designed.
There's a huge amount of influence.
There's a scene of Paul dueling with a robot and doing training...
...and it's a lot like Luke dueling with the ball...
...in the Millennium Falcon.
What I found interesting...
...is there's shots from the robot's P.O.V...
...where the robot has a heads-up display...
...where he's analyzing the environment around him.
And I was thinking about it, and I can't think of an earlier iteration of this scene...
...which we've all seen now a thousand times.
The Terminator looking at somebody and analyzing their face.
It's one of these things where this is a movie that never got made...
...but it has its fingerprints all over so many other movies that came afterwards.
Giger. He make the monster of Alien.
Why he make the monster of Alien?
Because Dan O'Bannon.
O'Bannon create Alien.
They take Moebius, they take Giger, Foss.
And Hollywood start to use my group.
Was very fantastic.
Dune is this massive asteroid...
...that has a near miss with Earth...
...but it still manages to seed the Earth...
...with all these amazing spores.
In a world where Jodorowsky's Dune doesn't happen...
...maybe Alien doesn't happen, and when Alien doesn't happen...
...Blade Runner doesn't happen.
There's no Blade Runner, there's no William Gibson.
There's no Matrix, there's no-- All these other things...
...that sort of come organically down this line.
A lot of people took images and ideas with them...
...and incorporated them into other projects...
...so it always leads back to Jodorowsky.
When you get involved in the process of bringing a beast like this to life...
...and when you don't get the chance to realize that...
...to put the thing on screen, it goes on living inside your head.
You never get a chance to exorcise it.
And a story like that can stick around and stick around...
...and goes on haunting your dreams...
...for the rest of your life unless you can get it out.
And then Moebius say to me, "What you will do? You will die?"
No, I will not die.
For me to fail is only to change the way.
If we don't do that...
...the Dunewe was doing is...
The roots are the Dune of Herbert. But this Dune is us.
Is the optical. ls a creation.
And then, I will use everything I put in Dune to make comics.
I say to Moebius, "Why we don't do a comic?"
And I start to dictate The Inca/.
A lot of images that are in here are in here.
And then I find an Argentine, a Spanish, Juan Gimenez.
And there I make all the spaceship I design for Dune are in The Metabarons.
Even the Duke Leto. I made him castrated by a bull...
...and we find the sorcerer who will take a drop of his blood...
...in order to make the child.
I did it here, is here, like I was shooting! I did it.
I start with Dune, but I go farther, no? Farther.
I continue and I did it, my work.
I think Dune will be fantastic if somebody take this script...
...even if I am not alive...
...and do a picture in animation.
Now is possible.
I can die, they can do my picture.
I have 84 years, but I am still creating.
I am not:
All my life I create, and is more and more and more.
The mind is like a universe.
It's constantly expanding.
Like the universe, exactly like the universe, open the mind.
The opening of the mind is every day, is open.
That was this picture. Open the mind of all the persons who worked there.
From the producer to the artists. From the workers...
...for every one was an opening of the mind, this work.
Was ambitious, but not too. Was ambitious.
Myself, I have the ambition to live 300 years.
I will not live 300 years. Maybe I will live one year more.
But I have the ambition.
Why you will not have ambition?
Why?
Have the greatest ambition possible.
You want to be immortal? Fight to be immortal.
Do it.
You want to make the most fantastic art of movie? Try.
If you fail, is not important.
We need to try.