On today’s episode of Modern Notion Daily, director Frank Pavich joins us to talk about his 2013 documentary, Jodorowsky’s Dune. Alejandro Jodorowsky is an avant-garde filmmaker who planned to make a movie adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novel, Dune, in the early 1970s. He enlisted the likes of Orson Welles and Salvador Dalí to be in his movie. But Jodorowsky’s Dune was never made.
Pavich wasn’t the only filmmaker who approached Jodorowsky about making a documentary on this subject, but by a few strokes of luck, he was the only one given the green light to do it. In the process he got to know the man behind this epic movie that never came to be. He found a generous, talented, and eccentric man who was obsessed by the supernatural, including tarot cards.
The story raises many what-if questions about the history of filmmaking. Jodorowsky was working on Dune before George Lucas created Star Wars. Could Jodorowsky’s Dune have changed the trajectory of sci-fi movies? Did it influence Lucas? Pavich’s documentary explores the story from soup to nuts, and in the process he brings Jodorowsky’s Dune storyboards to “life” on film.
Music this hour:
- “Soldiertype (militarised)” by Ketsa, from the album What’s Without’s Within
- “wherever” by Jahzzar, from the album Sketches
