Jodorowsky's Dune (2013) Movie Script
1
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? Dali...
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 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.
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.
Modern adaptations of Shakespeare,
I do.
One day I will make a picture.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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...
Is a long shot.
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."
He was a very honored,
very important person.
He receive me. He was interesting.
Was a business.
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?
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.
For me, the art was before,
later the technique.
And that was O'Bannon.
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."
I prepare my son, to do the role exactly...
as the Duke Leto prepare his son.
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.
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.
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.
You are excrement.
You can change yourself into gold.
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.
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.
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."
In that time,
I was seducing Dali...
because I wanted Dali
as the mad emperor of the galaxy.
Dali, 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 Dali because
myself, never understand my work.
Never Dali understand
one painting of Dali...
because Dali only create enigmas.
Dali 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 Dali
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.
Dali told me, "I like it here because
there is a 6-meter painting..."
dedicated to a fart."
Dali told me,
"We are going to see each other in Paris.
I am going to think about it."
In Paris, on the Champs Elyses,
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. Dali?"
"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."
"Okay!" And then,
"I wait you in Barcelona!"
It was a game.
Also, Jodorowsky was part
of the surrealist movement...
and Dali 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.
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.
She treated me very well...
and she became an ally...
because I promised her the role
of Princess irulan.
She said,
"Be careful because Dali is destructive.
If he says 'yes', he is going to do
everything to destroy the film."
Dali 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 Dali 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 Dali 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 Dali said, "Yes, if you give me
the sculpture for my museum."
"Okay." And then like this, I have Dali.
And Dali, 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 afterwards.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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 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.
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?
Very disappointed. Very disappointed
because we all believed in it.
I believed in it.
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!
Is a failure!
Well, it's a human reaction, no?
Is not beautiful,
but I have that reaction.
I say, "Is not possible. Is not David Lynch
because he is a big artist."
Is the producer who did that.
I've never seen the movie and I never will.
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?
And then so what?
Dune is in the world like a dream,
but dreams change the world also.
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.
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.
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 Dune we 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.
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? Dali...
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 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.
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.
Modern adaptations of Shakespeare,
I do.
One day I will make a picture.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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...
Is a long shot.
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."
He was a very honored,
very important person.
He receive me. He was interesting.
Was a business.
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?
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.
For me, the art was before,
later the technique.
And that was O'Bannon.
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."
I prepare my son, to do the role exactly...
as the Duke Leto prepare his son.
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.
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.
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.
You are excrement.
You can change yourself into gold.
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.
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.
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."
In that time,
I was seducing Dali...
because I wanted Dali
as the mad emperor of the galaxy.
Dali, 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 Dali because
myself, never understand my work.
Never Dali understand
one painting of Dali...
because Dali only create enigmas.
Dali 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 Dali
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.
Dali told me, "I like it here because
there is a 6-meter painting..."
dedicated to a fart."
Dali told me,
"We are going to see each other in Paris.
I am going to think about it."
In Paris, on the Champs Elyses,
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. Dali?"
"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."
"Okay!" And then,
"I wait you in Barcelona!"
It was a game.
Also, Jodorowsky was part
of the surrealist movement...
and Dali 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.
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.
She treated me very well...
and she became an ally...
because I promised her the role
of Princess irulan.
She said,
"Be careful because Dali is destructive.
If he says 'yes', he is going to do
everything to destroy the film."
Dali 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 Dali 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 Dali 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 Dali said, "Yes, if you give me
the sculpture for my museum."
"Okay." And then like this, I have Dali.
And Dali, 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 afterwards.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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 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.
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?
Very disappointed. Very disappointed
because we all believed in it.
I believed in it.
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!
Is a failure!
Well, it's a human reaction, no?
Is not beautiful,
but I have that reaction.
I say, "Is not possible. Is not David Lynch
because he is a big artist."
Is the producer who did that.
I've never seen the movie and I never will.
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?
And then so what?
Dune is in the world like a dream,
but dreams change the world also.
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.
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.
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 Dune we 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.