I love good documentaries and this is one of them but one thing to keep in mind about most of them is their need to steer and corral you into a point of view. The point of view of this one is that Jodorowsky's Dune wasn't made because of inflexibility and lack of vision by the Hollywood studio machine.
The film ended with me thinking that was an unfair judgment. Two key factors would kill this film even today: One was the demand by Jodorowsky that the film be 15 hours. Imagine if the original Star Wars trilogy was made all at once into a 6 hour film. We'd certainly enjoy it but would many 13 year olds who fell in love with the first film be able to handle sitting for 6 hours straight even with an intermission? Also, three movies made 3 times more money than one.
This film COULD have gotten made! If Jodorowsky started out from the Planet Caladan and ended on Arrakis just after the Baron had killed Duke Leto and Paul had escaped, for instance. The budget would have been reduced and even if Hollywood had rejected it, he could have filmed from a private investor (no doubt Salvador Dali and Orson Welles could have made some phone calls) In the end, ironically, the studio execs were right: Jodorowsky simply wasn't practical enough of a director to get the film cut. He was ingenious in negotiating and compromising with the biggest egos of all time including literally Orson Welles and Dali but couldn't figure out a way to make this project viable to a simple minded Hollywood exec? His genius could have manipulated such a simple mind if he had allowed himself to.
So it's thoughts like that which make this documentary into one of the best thoughtful experiences ever. Even if you disagree with my conclusion, the vision of what this film could have been, and why it wasn't, is as engaging as any of the three Star Wars "prequel" films. What I think the film could have been like is a 100 times better than what Lynch's Dune turned out to be.
The film ended with me thinking that was an unfair judgment. Two key factors would kill this film even today: One was the demand by Jodorowsky that the film be 15 hours. Imagine if the original Star Wars trilogy was made all at once into a 6 hour film. We'd certainly enjoy it but would many 13 year olds who fell in love with the first film be able to handle sitting for 6 hours straight even with an intermission? Also, three movies made 3 times more money than one.
This film COULD have gotten made! If Jodorowsky started out from the Planet Caladan and ended on Arrakis just after the Baron had killed Duke Leto and Paul had escaped, for instance. The budget would have been reduced and even if Hollywood had rejected it, he could have filmed from a private investor (no doubt Salvador Dali and Orson Welles could have made some phone calls) In the end, ironically, the studio execs were right: Jodorowsky simply wasn't practical enough of a director to get the film cut. He was ingenious in negotiating and compromising with the biggest egos of all time including literally Orson Welles and Dali but couldn't figure out a way to make this project viable to a simple minded Hollywood exec? His genius could have manipulated such a simple mind if he had allowed himself to.
So it's thoughts like that which make this documentary into one of the best thoughtful experiences ever. Even if you disagree with my conclusion, the vision of what this film could have been, and why it wasn't, is as engaging as any of the three Star Wars "prequel" films. What I think the film could have been like is a 100 times better than what Lynch's Dune turned out to be.