/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/FJEPEOVO3ZESVFQZX2PIXVHRDE.jpg)
In November 2021, Christie's broke records by auctioning the most expensive
storyboard
in history: that of the adaptation of
Dune,
the film that was never filmed by Alejandro Jodorowsky.
It reached 2,660,000 euros, almost 110 times its opening figure, also becoming the second highest-priced book sold by the Parisian house.
More than 3,000 drawings spread over thirteen kilos of paper that serve as a fetish complement for the best cosmic epic of all time.
Published by the writer Frank Herbert in 1965, the novel introduced us to debates about ecology, colonialism and extractivism, taking us to the desert planet Arrakis, coveted for the spice melange, a drug with which to transcend space and time, key to the economic system of the universe.
It is estimated that there are about 10 reproductions of the original 'storybook' with 3,000 illustrations that Jodorowsky conceived together with the cartoonist Moebius for his frustrated film adaptation of 'Dune'.
This one broke records, being auctioned at Christie's for 2,660,000 euros, 110 times its starting price. ALAIN JOCARD (AFP via Getty Images)
While fans count the hours until the premiere, this March 1, of the second part of Dennis Villeneuve's version with Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet, many nostalgists continue to demand attention for what is considered the most influential science fiction film of the story... even though not a single frame was ever filmed.
In his excessive ambition, the multifaceted Jodorowsky saw a project that aspired to have Pink Floyd for the soundtrack and a casting with Orson Welles, Salvador Dalí, Mick Jagger or Gloria Swanson, among others, fall apart.
And from which a creative
dream team
would emerge led by the artist Moebius, the visual artist HR Giger and the scriptwriter and special effects supervisor Dan O'Bannon, at that time still unknown.
The three together would take the lessons learned in this failed
Dune
to later pour them into the creation of Ridley Scott's
Alien
(1979).
From those embers remains a documentary,
Jodorowsky's Dune
(2013), by Frank Pavich, which contributes to enhancing the legend.
Original poster for 'Dune', by Jodorowsky, produced by Michel Seydoux.
By the time
Dune
came into his life, Jodorowsky had already accumulated a certain cult following.
El topo
(1970), a lysergic delirium where he directed and acted as an illuminated cowboy, would serve as the founding film of the
acid western
.
Furthermore, it would become the first
midnight movie:
a clever New York distributor decided to show it only at midnight because it was, as its poster proclaimed, “too strong to show at any other time.”
The lines went around the block, of course.
The night John Lennon went to see her with Yoko Ono, he was fascinated by her.
He repeated it up to three times.
He bought the rights to show it throughout the United States and asked his manager, Apple Records boss Allen Klein, to give Jodorowsky a million dollars for his next film,
The Holy Mountain
(1973).
Klein later wanted to convince him to adapt the novel
The Story of O,
but by then the father of psychomagic was eroticized with more mystical matters.
French distributor Michel Seydoux had brought
The Topo
to Europe and gave Jodorowsky carte blanche to produce whatever he wanted.
According to what the Chilean confessed at the time, a deity appeared to him in a dream revealing that
Dune
would be his next film.
“I got up at six in the morning and, like an alcoholic waiting for the bar to open, I stood at the door of a bookstore where I could buy the book.
I read it in one sitting, without stopping to eat or drink.
As soon as I finished it, one minute after midnight, I called Seydoux to say, 'Let's do
Dune!'
It would be a free version.
His commitment: that it would cause the effects of LSD, but without having to take it.
They bought the rights, almost for free, in 1974. And the recruitment of what he called his “spiritual warriors” began.
The characters designed by illustrator Moebius for the never-before-seen version of 'Dune'.
Nobody like Jodorowsky himself to add an extra texture of fiction to his own anecdote.
He found Moebius when he was still just Jean Giraud, creator of
Lieutenant Blueberry,
and his pseudonym for the galactic comics was about to take off.
He passionately dictated the script to her, shot by shot, while Moebius outlined sequences and characters.
With that billet they planted themselves together in Los Angeles.
Specifically, in the office of Douglas Trumbull, creator of the special effects for
2001: A Space Odyssey
(1968), by Stanley Kubrick.
“He didn't stop giving himself importance, he answered the phone about 40 times during our conversation.
He would be a very good technician, but he was not my spiritual warrior,” Jodorowsky laments in the documentary.
Walking through Hollywood, they went to the movies.
They were playing
Dark Star
(1974), by John Carpenter.
In it, a certain Dan O'Bannon did everything: screenwriter, protagonist, editor, special effects supervisor.
A spiritual warrior.
He received the call from Jodorowsky, they smoked a joint, nothing more was said: “Sell everything you have and come to Paris.
Your life is going to change.”
(Indeed, it would change... but years later, after signing the script for
Alien).
The basic technical team was completed with Chris Foss, illustrator of science fiction book covers, who was asked to design ships in the form of “jewels, machine animals, soul mechanisms, uterus ships, antechambers for rebirth in others.” dimensions".
Foss would end up serving as an aesthetic consultant for
Superman
(1978),
Alien
and
Flash Gordon
(1980).
A smuggling ship loses its cargo of spice from Arrakis, according to the brush of illustrator Chris Foss, creator of the spaceships in Jodorowsky's 'Dune'.
In the enlistment of the interpreters, the fantasy that lives in the memory of the writer, tarot reader and filmmaker is completely unleashed.
He had his 12-year-old son Brontis train in martial arts to play Paul, the protagonist messiah.
David Carradine, very popular at the time for his
Kung-fu series,
was wanted as Duke Leto, leader of House Atreides.
Gloria Swanson would be one of the reverend mothers of the Bene Gesserit Brotherhood.
Mick Jagger, the villainous warrior Feyd-Rautha;
role that he would later play in David Lynch's version of another rock star, Sting.
For Baron Harkonnen, that morbid monster who floats thanks to antigravity implants, he looked for someone who had the character's stature, literally: Orson Welles.
Jodorowsky boasts of having searched Paris restaurants until he found him drunk.
He bought her a bottle of wine.
If he came out of retirement to take on this role, he promised, he would bring his favorite chef to cook for him on set every day.
Emperor Padishah, "a man who has driven logic from the galaxy", was to be played by Dalí.
The painter would charge $100,000 for every minute he appeared in the film.
Dalí had to be considered more to embody the evil Emperor Padishah.
He finally agreed with one condition: to be the highest paid actor in the world.
They offered him $100,000 per minute on screen.
He had a trick: he would only appear three, the rest of the time he would be embodied by a robotic double due to the Emperor's panic about being killed.
The painter gave in with one last requirement: that the android end up in his museum in Figueres.
Along the way, he added extravagant requests: he wanted a throne in the shape of a toilet with two crossed dolphins, for his friends to act as extras like courtiers, to go out surrounded by helicopters and with a burning giraffe.
He had already warned Jodorowsky by the singer Amanda Lear, then the official companion of the surrealist genius: “Dalí can be very destructive.
If he participates, he will do everything possible to kill the film.”
Through her complicity, Lear won the role of Princess Irulan.
It was Dalí who showed the Chilean for the first time a catalog of an unknown Swiss artist: HR Giger.
His work distilled all the darkness that claimed the planet of the evil Harkonnens.
It is easy to identify in the airbrush drawings he made at Jodorowsky's request the biomechanical morphology of the eighth passenger that he would create four years later for
Alien.
The influence of Jodorowsky's
Dune
appears in some blockbusters in the years immediately after its cancellation in 1976. The space epic had gotten out of hand.
Its author wanted it to last between 10 and 14 hours.
Five of the planned $15 million had already been spent on pre-production alone (
Star Wars,
released a year later, cost $11 million).
They knocked on the doors of Hollywood in search of financing and distribution guarantees.
They sent a copy of the
storybook
to MGM, Universal, Warner... It is estimated that there are about 10 copies distributed by the major studios.
They all said no.
A Disney executive defined it as the Concorde: “An exceptional plane that will never fly over these lands.”
Of course, Hollywood would immediately exploit many of his ideas.
Artist HR Giger, in his studio, with some of his designs for the dark planet Harkonnen in Jodorowsky's 'Dune'.
Years later he would develop these ideas for 'Alien.' © Sony Pictures / Everett Collection / Everett Collection / Cordon Press
In the documentary with which Jodorowsky compensated himself, clear cases are pointed out, comparing the vignettes with specific plans.
In
Star Wars,
his sword fights or Luke Skywalker's training session with a floating robot are recognized.
In
Flash Gordon,
the staging and characters of the galactic palaces.
In
Terminator
(1984), the subjective camera of the man-machine processing data from what he finds in his path.
Its rebellious aesthetic and galactic junk, in clear contrast to the ultra-polished vision of
2001: A Space Odyssey,
not only caught on in
Star Wars,
but extends to
Guardians of the Galaxy
(where, by the way, Chris Foss designed several ships ).
The filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn
(Drive, Too old to die young),
a true stylist of contemporary hallucination, maintains a close relationship with Jodorowsky.
After a dinner at his home in Paris, he attended a private
screening
with the Chilean explaining it to him page by page.
He agrees with hot-headed critics who say that “if you follow the trail, it often leads to Jodorowsky.
Everything is part of a chain: without
Alien,
there would be no
Blade Runner,
and without that there would be no William Gibson, nor
The Matrix.
"It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if the first
space opera
of its kind had been
Dune
instead of
Star Wars."
The truth is that we will never know if Jodorowsky's
Dune
would have resulted in that genius that his fans claim or in a pompous
camp delirium.
An invisible thread connects his failed project to Villeneuve's
Dune: Part Two
: the presence of actress Léa Seydoux, great-niece of Michel Seydoux, Jodorowsky's producer.
Of course, if you ask the versatile creator, he will tell you that he hates both adaptations.
His children were dragged to David Lynch's house.
He himself confesses that he was about to start crying when he took his seat and, as the footage progressed, he broke down because it seemed like “bullshit.”
The film produced by Dino and Raffaella De Laurentiis took a hit with critics and the box office, although over the years it has acquired an inevitable cult halo.
For Villeneuve's film, he complained to
IndieWire
that no one had called him, not even as a consultant: “When they released the 1984 film, they used my name as part of the promotional campaign: 'The film Jodorowsky couldn't make,' they said.
This time that was not the case.
They don't call me because they think I'm going to get all the publicity.
But secretly what they are saying with that attitude is: 'Now we will make the mammoth movie that Jodorowsky didn't make!'
It's going to be amazing!
The director is a genius!'
Well no, no one can be a genius in Hollywood.
Nobody.
Because it is pure business.”
What would a version of 'Tron' directed by Jodorowsky have been like in 1976?
A fan posed the question to an artificial intelligence app and fake frames as mind-blowing as these are the result.
Jodorowsky turned recycling into an art when he reunited with Moebius to conceive what would be his magnum opus in comics,
El Incal,
published between 1980 and 1988, where he directly rescued many Dune cartoons
.
His editors accused Luc Besson of plagiarism for
The Fifth Element
(1997), but lost the lawsuit because Moebius had served as production designer.
In any case, the comic's imprint on that film is indisputable.
At 95 years old, Jodorowsky seems to have made peace with the film industry.
Today he calmly contemplates how Hollywood is going to bring
The Incal
to the big screen under the command of Taika Waititi
(What We Do in the Shadows),
aware that it no longer belongs to him.
Does not matter.
With his cultivated aura of a guru he has made of himself an entire subgenre of science fiction.
So much so that he has even seen what an imaginary
Tron
movie (1982) would be like under his lens courtesy of artificial intelligence.
In 2022, visual creator Johnny Darrell generated frames from the Disney classic on the Midjourney platform, evoking that it had been directed by Jodorowsky in 1976, the same year in which his dream of making Dune faded
.
The result makes us wish that, while he waits to turn 120, Jodorowsky dedicates himself to sending instructions to Sora to see the fantasies that seemed impossible to film come true on screen.
You can follow ICON on
,
X
,
, or subscribe to the
Newsletter here
.