Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Dune (1984), part 1

In this classic two-part episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe return to the planet of Arrakis in their discussion of David Lynch’s wild 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s legendary novel “Dune.” The sleeper must awaken. (originally published 03/08/24)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind, this is Rob Lamb.
We have a vacation week here for the show, so
this is the perfect time to roll out a Weird
House Cinema two parter. This is going to be part
one of our episode on the late David Lynch's Dune
from nineteen eighty four. This episode originally published three eight,

(00:25):
twenty twenty four, so we put this out before the
passing of the great David Lynch. So keep that in
mind as you roll into it and appreciate this weird
and wonderful picture.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
And this is Joe McCormick, and oh boy, have we
got a movie to talk about today. We're pretty sure
this is going to be our first and perhaps only
ever two part episode of Weird House Cinema. And you
might be thinking what movie could possibly cause them to
split Weird House Cinema into two parts. It's David Lynch's
Dune from nineteen eighty four.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
That's right. Yeah, we normally try and keep Weird House,
as you know, a single episode installment situation. But the
cast is too rich here, the weirdness is too deep.
And with release of Dnis Villeneuve's Dune Part two, obviously
Dune is in the air once more. Everybody's going crazy
for this film, and rightfully so, and that gives us

(01:37):
the excuse. All right, everybody's digging Dune right now. We
can do a two parter on Weird House Cinema about
David Lynch's.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Adaptation, Wait did you see the new one? Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Over the weekend just slammed the Dune. My son had
never seen Dune Part one, so we rewatched that with him,
and then we all went up to the movie theater
for you know, three hours and Dune Part two with
a full cinematic experience. We didn't get the popcorn bucket,
but we still had a great time. It's definitely a

(02:08):
film worth seeing on a big screen.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
Well, I'm very jealous of that experience because I am
so excited to see it. I haven't been able to
make it out yet because we you know, we got
a seventeen month old. We don't get out to movies
these days. But as soon as it hits streaming, I'm
going to be there and I'm very excited about that
because I really did love the twenty twenty one Dune,
and that one really surpassed my expectations in so many ways.

(02:34):
Because Robert, you know, we've long been fans of the
book and talked about it on the show all the time,
and have been in certain ways fans of the movie
we're talking about in this episode today. But it is
not a book that lends itself to the screen, you know,
is like a It is a wonderful novel, but it
almost feels like it was written to be specifically difficult

(02:57):
to adapt to the movie format.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yeah, it is a It's a complex novel, full of
interstellar feudalism, like psychotropic drugs, sandworms, lots of plots within plots,
lots of conversations, and then when the action does take place,
when there are big action spectacles, they generally happen off
the page and are referred to after the fact, you know.

(03:21):
So it's not one of these things where you can
just like PLoP it on the table and like this
is what we're filming today.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
You know.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
It's it's it has a reputation for being a difficult adaptation,
and yeah, credit where credits due Denny v nailed it.
I think he nailed it in part one and then
part two he really seals the deal and it's it's
a true spectacle with the caveat. I have to say, like,
I've always been a Doom Book first fan, and I

(03:48):
don't mean that in a snobby way, and I mean
that in like that's how I read it for the
first time, That's how I explored the world for the
first time, and therefore, like that's always my starting point.
And given the difficul culties of adapting it, you know,
you have to go into it with the expectation that
any filmmaker, regardless of what they're working with, they're going

(04:08):
to have to pick and choose, as with most adaptations,
to varying degrees, but you know, you're going to have
to pick and choose, like what aspects of Doon you're
going to realize on the screen, what aspects of the
characters you're going to realize, and what you're going to
condense and what you're going to leave out.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
Yeah, well, I mean, I think some stories do just
naturally translate to the screen more easily if they're I
don't know, you know, if the story is written more
like a play, like if it's very dialogue driven already,
if you know, if a lot of the story is
contained already in the exchanges between the characters, and so

(04:43):
if it's already kind of an external story Doune I
think is really difficult for at least a couple of
reasons I can think of. One is that understanding the
story relies so heavily on like this deep understanding of
the setting and the world, which liies on a glossary actually,
like there's you know, an encyclopedia. So it's very fun

(05:05):
to explore in written format and to like learn all
the politics and the technology and you know, the strange
world that Frank Herbert created. But it's hard to get
all of that into a movie format without having just
big dumps of exposition, which unfortunately the Lynch movie does have.
There are scenes where there's just characters sitting around explaining

(05:28):
or even voiceover narrating lots of stuff about politics and
technology and what happens in the Dune universe, and it
does get kind of overwhelming at times. Another thing I
would say, though, is that in addition to the importance
of the setting, there's also just a lot of internal
stuff in Dune, like characters having visions, thinking through things.

(05:49):
A lot of the drama is within characters' minds, and
so that's also kind of difficult to externalize in a
way that the viewer can participate in without just having
people again doing like voiceover of their internal monologue, which
Lynch's adaptation also does and is occasionally funny.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
Yeah, especially. We ended up watching it when I rewatched
this with my wife, who was who's I was surprised
she was game for it. Monday night, the day after
watching Dune Part two, we watched David Lynch's Dune and
we watched it with the subtitles because I'd read somewhere
someone advised like, this is a good choice because you
can keep a little better track of who's saying what.

(06:29):
But there's a lot of internal voice colon once being said,
which makes it a little little more hilarious at times
when this occurs.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
Yes, especially well, actually, one of the funniest parts of
it is that you will often get a close up
of the actor making like a serious face while we
see them.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
Thinking, Yeah, it's a hard one to pull off. But
that being said, you know, if you're gonna do it,
commit to it fully, don't do it just in a
couple of places where it's like, oh, they lost track
of what they were doing. This scene wasn't working, so
they're going to do a little bit of this. No, No,
it's throughout the film, so it's in a way it's
more forgivable since it's ubiquitous.

Speaker 3 (07:08):
But hey, we're not here to knock the nineteen eighty
four Dune because I would say that I'm going to
be forthright and acknowledged this movie has a lot of shortcomings.
There are many things about it that don't work. But
also I love it. I love David Lynch's Dune.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
Yeah, I mean, is it the most faithful adaptation?

Speaker 2 (07:27):
No?

Speaker 1 (07:27):
Is it? Is it the best? Well, it's hard, hard
to make an argument for that, perhaps, But is it
absolutely weird? Is it? Is it consistently entertaining? Absolutely?

Speaker 3 (07:38):
Yes, Yes, it's also shorter.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
In caveat here we are going to be only dealing
with the theatrical cut of the film, the only cut
that that David Lynch ever, you know, acknowledged and approved,
and we'll get back into that later on. But yeah,
it's like it's it's a reasonable, reasonably linked film. That's
also part of the problem we'll discuss. But yeah, it's

(08:03):
it's shorter than some of your other options, right.

Speaker 3 (08:06):
So on the downside, that does mean, especially in the
first half of the movie, you do get a lot
of scenes of incredibly just heavy deposits of exposition, where
there's like a narrator just telling you a lot of
stuff really fast, and I think, especially if you were
not already familiar with the story, you'd just be like,
what what what? All the like, it just comes thick

(08:26):
and fast when you're not really ready for it. Often,
I think, so that is a problem with trying to
cram this much story into this short of a run time.
On the other hand, given how much they fit into
this short of a runtime, I am shocked how well
it works.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
Yeah. Yeah, I imagine we had the same experience on this,
but because I think you have something that notes to
this effect. But a lot of the reviews for this
film make a point of saying it's incomprehensible. You have
no idea what's going on at any given point. I
did not have that experience rewatching the film, and I
don't think you did either, obviously, because we know the

(09:03):
major beats we know what's going to happen. We know
who everyone is supposed.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
To be, right, so we can't really come at the
movie cold. Like I'd read the novel before I saw
this movie, so I already knew the story. So it's
kind of hard for me to imagine what it would
be like not being familiar going in. Though. When I
try to imagine that, I can say like, yeah, I
think this opening narration would be a little would be

(09:27):
a little hard to get past. You'd be like, wait,
I can't keep track of everything. You're saying, what's the
spacing guild? Huh?

Speaker 1 (09:34):
Yeah, And people have these issues too, even with the
more recent adaptations, Like I remember seeing stuff online where
people with the first film were confused and thought that
perhaps the Baron was also the Emperor.

Speaker 3 (09:46):
They were a little.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
Unclear on that. And I know that my wife initially
had some confusion over two different blonde characters in part two.
I'm not going to reveal who they are, but she
was like at least moment, like, wait, are these the
same character? No, these are two different characters, And so yeah,
this stuff's going to happen anytime you're adapting something so complex. Now,

(10:08):
speaking of fitting a lot into a limited runtime. I
also just want to quickly note that you know, this
movie has been out for a while. It has a
cult following. It is a David Lynch movie. There have
been multiple great documentaries, books, papers, etc. On this production,
on previous attempts at producing Dune for the screen, subsequent productions.
We can't possibly get into all of that, but we'll

(10:30):
reference a little of it as we go.

Speaker 3 (10:32):
Have you watched the documentary about Yodorowski's Dune.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
No. I had read about it plenty before it came out,
and I've just never gotten around to watching it. But
that is, of course a fascinating slash infamous example of
you know, what if? What if jo Darowski had actually
made this stupendous semi adaptation of Dune with this just
colossally Bonker's cast. I'm glad he didn't end, and not

(11:01):
just because I'm protective of Dune to a certain extent,
but also because you see the influence of Doune in
his later works with Mobius in the Metabaron series. These
are graphic novels that Jodowski wrote, and those are tremendously
fun and trippy, and they have elements of that kind
of like doone feudal psychedelic world, but it's removed from

(11:27):
Herbert's novels and it can be its own thing. So
I think like ultimately, everything landed for the best.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
On that regard, that makes sense. So you're saying you'd
rather instead of seeing Yodowski like impose his vision upon
an adaptation of Dune, you'd rather see him take a
bunch of influence from Dune and make his own thing.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
It's exactly yeah, I think it worked out for the best.

Speaker 3 (11:47):
Well.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
On that note, let's go ahead and listen to some
trailer audio. Specifically, I believe this is a radio spot.
I love it when we can feature a radio spot
since it is ideally tuned for the listening audience. Here
this one. I found this one online. This was apparently
something that aired in Salt Lake City. So let's have

(12:07):
a listen.

Speaker 4 (12:11):
No, the most widely brand talked about and cherished masterpiece
of a generation comes to the screen. You I see
two great houses.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
You need.

Speaker 4 (12:23):
A world that holds creation's greatest treasure.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
You controls the Spice, controls the universe top.

Speaker 3 (12:30):
And greatest terrorsts.

Speaker 4 (12:34):
A world with a mighty the mad all I can
see is an attradees that I want to kill and
the magical the Sleepers, O my god, we'll have their
final battle. A world called doom long lived bit eyes, we.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
Will kill until no hard conean breezed arocane air.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
Duel.

Speaker 4 (13:02):
A world beyond your experience, beyond your imagination.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
Details about the Dune Adventure in Washington.

Speaker 4 (13:09):
D C.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
Are coming soon from Heughter Brussel Pictures Eastern Airlines at
one L six A FM KCGL.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
You know, Rob, I went to rewatch this movie on
Max HBO Max, I guess formerly. And Max has a
great little thing where it's like, you know, if some
of these streaming services do this, they say, Hey, if
you liked this movie, you might also like do you
want to know what the fan of Dune nineteen eighty
four might also like?

Speaker 1 (13:37):
Let's have it.

Speaker 3 (13:38):
Okay, it's Dune twenty twenty one. I guess that's not surprising.
Leviathan nineteen eighty nine, one of our faves. Yeah, war
games and Escape from Laoh from la You know, I've
never had the courage to watch Escape from la Oh.

Speaker 1 (13:57):
Love Carpenter Love Love the cast for a Skate from
la and I remember it had a fun soundtrack that
came out at the time, but yeah.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
Not anybody's best work.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah, we know, speaking of Max, that is also where
I ended up rewatching it. But anyone out there, if
you want to go watch nineteen eighty four is Dune
in full before continuing with these episodes. Yeah, it's also
widely available in digital and physical formats anywhere you might
want to watch it. Unlike the Sci Fi Mini series,

(14:29):
which is a little hard to get your hands on
right now, you can definitely get the nineteen eighty four
adaptation any way you want to get it. Aero Video
put out a very nice Blu ray package of the
film in twenty twenty one if you're a collector and
or want that physical media.

Speaker 3 (14:43):
Speaking of I've never seen the Sci Fi mini series,
have you?

Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yeah? I watched, well, I watched the first one, and
I've only seen bits and pieces of the follow up
where they adapted Doune Messiah and Children of Dune, and
I remember it being lavish. You know, it has some
very great costumes, It has a lot of good casting
and and some great casting in places. So as we proceed,

(15:08):
I'll at times refer to alternate castings for some of
these characters and which ones I like, which ones I didn't,
And they did nail it at least on a couple
of the castings. So it's it's I don't know how
the effects hold up, but the costumes are great and
some of the performances are nice.

Speaker 3 (15:24):
I've never seen it, and in saying this, I don't
want to malign it, so maybe it's better than it looks.
But in some screenshots or stills I've seen from it,
it does kind of have that made for TV look.

Speaker 1 (15:36):
Yeah yeah, or almost kind of like a film stage
production sort of a thing. Yeah yeah. One more thing
I want to quickly add about this version of the
film that we're watching today. Again, I was kind of
a book first fan, and I remember the first time
that I bought a copy of Doom at the I
think it was a books a million, you know, so

(15:57):
it wasn't like a nice cozy local bookstore is one
of the wearehouse bookstores. But the cashier was so excited
when I brought up the book and she was like, oh,
you were going to love this. This is a great novel.
This is one of the best. And she explained to
me that she and her husband were huge fans of Doone,
and they were such huge fans that they would watch

(16:18):
David Lynch's Doune and at that time it was just
the movie. It was the only movie version out. They
would watch the movie version every night as they went
to sleep, every night, this film. And so I think
from an early age, despite the criticisms and rejections of
this film that were already out there, it's like I knew.
It's like this lady and her husband loved this film

(16:41):
and they love the book, so it can't be too
far off base. And therefore I think I've always been
been more than a little willing to invite aspects of
this film and its look and it sound into my
head version of Doom.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
That is fascinating. So literally, as you said, as they
go to sleep, so they're like, yeah, drifting off to
the to the sounds of like Baron Harconin's doctor singing
love songs to his boils as he's poking them with
a needle.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
Yeah, or Baron Harkonen like just laughing maniacally and floating
around the room.

Speaker 3 (17:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
Yeah, it's their lullaby. I hope they're still doing it.
They're still together and they're still watching David Lynch's Doom
every night.

Speaker 3 (17:23):
Why, Baron, I love your precious diseases.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
All right, well, let's start getting into the connections here.
We're going to tackle everything a little differently here, so
you know, first of all, on some of these we're
going to try and maybe spend a little less time
with them, just because we have such a huge cast
to go through. And additionally, we're not going to just
divide the episode like normal. We're not going to do
like just connections, just cast and crew in this episode

(17:58):
and then plot in the next. We're gonna run through
like a few key behind the scenes individuals and then
we're gonna get into the plot and then talk about
the key actors as they appear in the narrative.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
Okay, I think that is a good approach for a
two part Weird House episode.

Speaker 1 (18:15):
Yeah. Yeah, we labored over this a little bit and
this is this is what we came up with. Okay,
all right, let's start at the top.

Speaker 3 (18:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:22):
The director also the writer the adapted screenplay on this
one is, of course, David Lynch born nineteen forty six. Now,
I'm gonna have to defer to you, Joe on some
of the details of David Lynch's filmography and certainly about
like the texture of what a Lynchian film is. Because

(18:42):
I haven't seen as many David Lynch films. I've basically
just seen his Dune. I've seen eraser Head, and I've
seen Moholland Drive, but that leaves out a number of
like huge films that are highly influential in his sort
of like neo noir weird aesthetic.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
I think if you've seen eraser Head, Mulholland Drive, you
have a pretty good idea of what some of his
dominant themes are. But we'll come back to.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
That all right now. At this point in his career,
this was only Lynch. This was Lynch's third full length
motion picture, following the ultra weird eraser Head in nineteen
seventy seven, and this was more in keeping with a
lot of his previous short film films and nineteen eighties
The Elephant Man. You know, I think I also have

(19:26):
seen The Elephant Man, but I'm not sure if I've
seen The Elephant Man in full. I've at least seen
enough of it to know what it's about. That at
least was a box office and critical hit.

Speaker 3 (19:34):
Yeah, I actually haven't seen The Elephant, Man. I've meant
too for years. I know it's a widely revered movie.
People say it's great. I have seen eraser Head. Eraser
Head is It's funny to contrast that with Dune because
eraser Head is only barely a narrative film. It is
much more like, well, it's sort of an art horror film.

(19:59):
I would almost say it is a film about images
and feelings and the I would say the main emotion
that it conveys is fear and desperation.

Speaker 4 (20:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:12):
Yeah, it's a feel good hit for sure. So at
this point in David Lynch's career, he was like a
hot up and comer. You know, at the time, he
was even discussed as a potential director for Return the Jedi.
So a lot of big producers were eyeing this guy
as you know, as they still do today, you know,
hot new director. And then incomes a producer in this
case like Dino di Laurentez, who we've has come up

(20:34):
on the show multiple times before, you know, major producer
of the time period, putting together such epics as Flash Gordon,
which we recently talked about on the show. Yeah, and
he and he was like, definitely the kind of guy
who want who was attracted to talent, Like he wanted
to bring in someone that that had vision, but would
also of course fall in line and play the studio game.

Speaker 3 (20:55):
Yes, so I think this was not a match made
in heaven with David Lynch.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
Yeah, it ended up not to be the case.

Speaker 3 (21:04):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
I mean, we have this film which is such a
joy to watch and discuss, and like, this is the
trajectory we're on. We can't go back and change it.
But yeah, while this vision of Done eventually earned a
cult following, it was a commercial and critical disaster at
the time. Consider it again by many to be just
an incomprehensible mess. You look back at like what Ebert

(21:25):
said about it, Like everyone was just like this is awful.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
Yeah. Tons of critics at the time said it was
impossible to follow the plot, that it was super confusing,
they didn't know what was going on. People thought it
was like weird and unpleasant. People thought that it looked
that despite the fact that it was an incredibly big
budget production, like huge, you know, and you can see
it in some of the like gorgeous, lavishly realized sets

(21:52):
and costumes and all that. Yeah, people did single out
that there were parts of it that looked cheap, and
I actually do kind of agree there, Like most of
the design in it does look amazing, but there are
some weird shots that look kind of slapped together in there,
and don't know where that comes from. Just generally, critics
were very very harsh about it. It made a lot

(22:14):
of like worst movie of the year lists and things
like that.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
Yeah. Yeah, and again, we can't heep all of this
on Lynch. The novel is a lot to tackle. There
were a lot of cooks he had to deal with here.
His initial initial cut of the film apparently came in
in over three hours and was eventually cut down. But
the producers, and because the producers in the studio wanted
more of like a two hour cut. You know, they're like,
people need to be able to go to the bathroom again.

(22:39):
You know, this is good. We want it to be successful,
and this is what you need to have for success.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
Yeah, they wanted a big commercial hit. They wanted something
like Star Wars and something that would be a big
sci fi movie that made a lot of money. And
if you know, you make a three hour movie at
the time. The thinking was, nobody's gonna want to see that.
They don't want to sit there that long. That's it's
a bunch of artsy fartsy stuff. Just you know, cut
it down, just get get get to the action.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yeah. Now for context, Denny Vee is combined doing adaptation.
The recent adaptations come in at more than five hours
in a length total. That sci fi mini series adaptation
is more than four hours in length if you're just
dealing with the initial cut.

Speaker 3 (23:16):
Yeah, so there's a lot of story to cram in,
and it's it's amazing what this movie does with in
the end, what it's like two and a half hours
or so.

Speaker 1 (23:25):
Yeah. Yeah, some numerous cuts were made, new scenes were
apparently filmed, Whole scenes were just cut entirely, or there
there are plenty. There are various points in the film
where they're clearly you're having a character briefly remember a
scene that clearly had to be cut, or they're just
shoehorning just a clip of that scene in so you
see you see the scenes in this final theatrical cut

(23:47):
of David Lynch's Dune. He has long considered the film
a failure, and he generally opts not to discuss it
in interviews. He disowned the extended TV mirror of the
film and has long dismissed the idea of doing a
director's cut, at least i've read until very recently.

Speaker 3 (24:06):
Now.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
I don't know if he just happened to be in
a really good mood in some of these interviews, but
I've read that he was like, you know, maybe it's
been enough time. Maybe I could look back at it
and see if there's anything that I could piece back together.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
But I don't know.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
It doesn't sound like we should necessarily get our hopes up.

Speaker 3 (24:22):
Yeah, I'd be interested to see that. But I remember
reading that David Lynch not only considered the movie of failure,
he was extremely upset by the process of making this
film and the way the producers tampered with in his view,
I think sabotaged his vision for it. And he believed
this to the extent that he said he wished he

(24:44):
had never taken the project at all. Like speaking to
an interviewer years later, he said, quote, the experience has
taught me a valuable lesson. I learned I would rather
not make a film than make one where I don't
have final cut.

Speaker 1 (24:57):
Well, you know, I think it might have ultimately been
the terrible purpose that he had to face, right because
if he had not directed this film, what if someone
had made a far worse version of Doune Because you
read the reviews and it's like, oh, it couldn't have
been worse. Oh it could have been worse. Oh yeah, oh,
there were undoubtedly worse options out there. So yeah, we

(25:20):
would just been on an entirely different trajectory with science
fiction and with adaptations of Doom.

Speaker 3 (25:26):
Well yeah, I mean I think I would have a
hard time disagreeing with somebody who said that this movie
in a sense fails to be a great adaptation of
the novel Dune, that there's a lot of things about
the book that it kind of misses, other things that
it does get in there, but it just kind of
like crams in in a way that doesn't really work.

(25:48):
But it is. There is a lot to love about it,
and a lot of what there is to love about
it is just like the way it is realized as
a kind of David Lynch vision. There's so much like weirdness,
even things that are not in the books at all
that are just brought in that make it a very
enjoyable movie experience, at least for me, maybe not so
much for critics at the time. But one of the

(26:09):
other things I wanted to mention about Lynch's terrible experience
with the version of this movie that was released. Despite
his extreme dissatisfaction with how Dune turned out, doing this movie,
from what I've read, sort of set Lynch up to
be able to make the kinds of movies and TV
that he would go on to create later, the kinds

(26:30):
of things that he's celebrated for now. And I think
he is also personally more proud of things like Twin
Peaks and Mulholland Drive and all that. So I think
it's very interesting, Like I strongly sympathize with Lynch's point
of view about Dune. It is terrible to in one sense,
be like a primary creator of a collaborative piece of

(26:50):
art and have it come out in a way that
you feel is fundamentally not your vision and something you
are not proud of. But also going through that experience
of artistic disaster did perhaps make these other later projects
possible for him.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
Absolutely, Yeah, It's it's really difficult to imagine where David
Lynch's career would have gone had he not taken Doune,
you know, like outside of of where Dune and science
fiction would have gone, Like what would his career have
consisted of? What would have what would his next project
have been? And or what like if he had not
taken Dune on as the big I don't know, arguably

(27:28):
sell out project before moving on with the rest of
his career. What what what would it have been? You know,
what were some of the other what have you taken
Return of the Jedi instead? What kind of world would
we live in today? Uh, as far as Star Wars
and as far as David Lynch are concerned.

Speaker 3 (27:44):
That's I'm not saying Return of the Jedi would have
been better under his direction. And I don't know, but
I would like to see that movie man Ewoks?

Speaker 1 (27:53):
How weird? Would those eoks have.

Speaker 3 (27:54):
Been talking backwards e woks? Walking backwards e woks? So anyway,
so you asked me to, yeah, kind of fill in
more thoughts about the texture of David lynch movies, And
I wanted to start off by characterizing my relationship with
David Lynch's work by contrast. So there are a lot
of movies, you know, big example, that comes to mind today,

(28:18):
or like the superhero movies that I watch on airplanes
that feel designed to me to be as frictionless and
entertainment experience as possible, so they are pleasant and enjoyable
for the time I'm watching them. I don't hate them,
you know, O. They're fun. There's nothing to really jar
or unsettle the viewer, nothing to cause doubts or reflection

(28:41):
or make you wonder why am I seeing this? It
all just kind of it all flows, it makes sense,
it goes down smooth, and then I forget about it
and possibly never think about it again. My history of
experiences with David Lynch movies are exactly the opposite. Frequently
I have had the experience of watching a movie by
David Lynch finding something full of strange and disturbing imagery

(29:06):
that made me feel uneasy and, to quote the Reverend Mother,
profoundly stirred, initially deciding after the movie's over that I
did not like it, but then thinking about elements of
it over and over in the months or years that followed,
until I felt like I had to go back and
see it again, and then when I did, finally deciding

(29:29):
that I loved it. So David Lynch movies are full
of scenes and images that do not go down smooth.
They do not flow with the logic of standard entertainment storytelling.
To use like a musical analogy, there are a lot
of motifs that use notes from out of the song's key,
and yet they end up producing something that is very

(29:53):
memorable and feels very true and revealing, almost kind of ancient.
A metaphor I've thought of before for is that I
feel like when I'm watching a David Lynch movie, it's
like somebody is showing me a film of a bad
dream I had twenty years ago and completely forgot about,
and now it is only vaguely familiar in a way

(30:15):
that makes me uncomfortable, because, like I realize, somebody put
a movie camera in my subconscious. It's a really powerful
artistic sensibility that can create a feeling like that that
like I'm seeing something that is at the same time
very strange and disturbing, but also very familiar in a
way that's hard to identify.

Speaker 1 (30:35):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good way of putting it.
There's a particular scene in Mulhall and Drive like this,
and I'm not gonna spoil it, but anyone who's seen
it probably knows, like which kind of like terrifying moment
I'm talking about.

Speaker 3 (30:47):
Oh yeah, yeah, I think I know. Well, there's like
one sudden, absolutely terrifying moment in the movie, but there's
a lot in the movie. In that movie that's just
very meaningfully ominous conversations people have that almost kind of
like remind you of something. It's like, what are they
talking about? This connects to something, but it's hard to

(31:09):
put it together. Yeah, So I wanted to run through
some themes that come up a lot in David Lynch movies,
because specifically in the context of Dune. Dune is often
considered an outlier in Lynch's filmography. It's not like the
rest of his work, and of course he didn't write
the original underlying story. But I was trying to think

(31:30):
if any of these favorite themes of his are in
any way hinted at in Dune through his interpretation of
the narrative. I'm not sure if any of them are,
but we'll see. So things that come up in a
lot of Lynch movies. People in places that seem wholesome
and clean on the surface but hide horrible secrets.

Speaker 1 (31:50):
Hmmm, well, maybe not so much with this film.

Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah, it doesn't really seem all that wholesome on the surface, doesn't.

Speaker 1 (31:56):
No, No, most the unwholesome characters are unwholesome on the
surface by definition, like intensely so, as we'll discuss.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
Another thing is people who can't remember something important. There's
something important that happened happened to them, or something important
they know and they can't put it together.

Speaker 1 (32:14):
I guess we see some kind of shades of that
in this however distantly echoed m hm.

Speaker 3 (32:20):
The big one for David Lynch movies is people with
doubles or doppelgangers. In some cases, like a character having
a sort of mysterious twin who is an altered reflection
of themself. Sometimes this will be a character with a
split personality, other times a character literally changing bodily into

(32:42):
another person or not knowing which person they are. Lynch
is really obsessed with doubles.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
Well, you know, not so much of that in this film,
but it's this is a case where it's a shame
he didn't get to make a sequel.

Speaker 3 (32:56):
Oh man, Yeah, wait, which which plot element from the
sequels are you calling out? There.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
I mean there are a couple. I mean you have
the Gulas, the essentially clones specifically of Dunk and Idaho,
and then you also have the face dancers. So you
have a few different possibilities there where he could have
leaned into it, and certainly, given his how he weirds
up some of the already weird elements in this film,
you could imagine him having some fun with these concepts.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
Yeah. Yeah, And from what I recall, I think I
read that David Lynch did love the source material, like
you read the novel or possibly multiple novels and was like, yes,
I'm on board, I love this.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah, I've never seen anything where he was he like
even retroactively trashed the novel and said like I didn't
like it and I didn't want to adapt it. Like
you know, he says that he loved it. He found
things in it that exhilarated him, and I think that
shines through in his script, even if it occurs at
times in a way that are perhaps detrimental to the film,
Like you know, it inspired him. It was not something

(33:57):
where he's like, Okay, I just need to I need
to hit this because it's in the novel it's like, no,
it gave him ideas.

Speaker 3 (34:03):
Okay, other Lynchian themes kind of reversals of reality. This
would be the kind of setting equivalent of the Doppelganger principle,
where there will be kind of a mirror world or
a world above in a world below.

Speaker 1 (34:19):
Yeah, maybe not so much that. I guess you could
make an argument for Kalad and Aracus being kind of
mirror worlds in a way.

Speaker 3 (34:26):
I can see that characters who like suddenly realize they
are responsible for something bad happening and had been oblivious
to their responsibility.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
Yeah, maybe not so much here, but there could have
been room for it. Would have been room for it
had the series continued right.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
A way that David Lynch approaches violence I think is interesting.
He uses violence that is in its physical form, running
against the grain of cinematic conventions, so people who you
know get shot in movie often look a certain way.
Lynch seems to go out of his way to make
violence look strange, kind of alien to everyday life, almost

(35:10):
bordering on comedic sometimes, but in a way that makes
it even more shocking and unpleasant, like showing people's bodies
reacting to violence in unexpected ways. I just think of
one example of from the movie Blue Velvet, there is
a bizarre and haunting image of a man who has
been shot in the head and apparently killed, but remains

(35:31):
standing up, kind of swaying in a daze between life
and death.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
I think we definitely see elements of this and don Yeah.

Speaker 3 (35:39):
Another thing is a kind of esthetic affinity for the
nineteen fifties running through his work. There's like a rockabillity,
leave it to beaver g Golly sensibility, which of course
is always put in startling contrast to like the Warlock logic,
nightmare imagery and the violence.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
Well obviously not this one really, but that, Yeah, I
guess that is the theme of his work.

Speaker 3 (36:01):
Oh, I don't know. I wonder if I see a
little bit of Elvis I see a little bit of
elvisiness in doing here. They're like the pompadour hair we
see some of that, Like Lady Jessica's haircut feels kind
of at Elvissey. I don't know, there's uh, some of
the outfits feel and I think I'm reaching here. I'm trying.

(36:24):
There's a peculiar technical thing that David Lynch does that
I think does come through in Dune. I wanted to
call this out. This is Lynch's use of sound design
to create a mood, and I specifically I mean not music,
though he does use music well in his movies, and
and we can get to the music in Dune in

(36:45):
a minute, which I think has has highs and lows,
but the highs are great. Lynch specifically uses ambient sound
in a way that is that has a powerful effect
on the feelings of the viewer, specifically sound missing from
scenes where it should be, or strange sounds in scenes

(37:06):
where they should not be. So it is an example
of each. Like imagine a scene at a party which
is silent and there's no background noise in the chatter
and the music and everything is removed and it's unsettlingly silent.
Or maybe imagine a bedroom with inappropriate sounds of machinery
and steam venting and things like that. There's a scene

(37:28):
I shared with you Rob from the movie Lost Highway
where Bill Pullman's at a party. It's a famously creepy scene.
Bill Pullman's at a party and a guy, a mysterious stranger,
comes up to him and starts telling him that he
actually a double of him that he's in two places
at once, and that he is in Bill Pullman's house
at that moment. And the way sound is manipulated in

(37:50):
the scene, like the sound of the party drops out
as the two of them start talking, and it creates
a really focused, dreamlike effect that heightens the horror.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
Yeah. I had never I haven't seen this film in
full before, and I had not seen this this sequence,
but this is great. Yeah, where we have this uncle
festerized Robert Blake character with no eyebrows come up to
Bill Pullman and just start talking like the craziest stuff
to him, and and and and daring it. Yeah, the
sounds dropped out and become this it's become this ambient

(38:22):
drone that is just so creepy and creates this sense
of unreality, you know, like this is like a cross
dimensional stranger that has that is like freezing time as
they talk to you, that sort of thing.

Speaker 3 (38:35):
That's a great way of putting it. And and I
think does Lynch use any of that kind of sound
design technique in Dune? I think a little bit. It's
not as overt as it is like in Lost Highway,
but there is a little bit of it.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
It reminds me a little bit of how like you
have to be sort of even handed perhaps too when
you're dealing with overtly sci fi elements and then the
potentially using sci fi design or illusions. I don't know,
Like I think about like how many times current McCarthy
and his books will compare something mundane or western to
something arcane and mythical and you know, and bloody and

(39:11):
hellish and in a way that you couldn't really get
away with if you were, say, writing about something that
was overtly bloody, hellish or mythic and occult.

Speaker 3 (39:20):
Yeah. Yeah, it's like the contextual inappropriateness that makes it
striking and profound. Yeah. So, anyway, I guess we can
think more as we go along about to what extent
Dune feels like a David Lynch movie or does feel,
as some reviewers have said, like an outlier that's just
not like the rest of his work.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
All Right, We have to of course mention the source
material here. It is, of course, the novel by Frank Herbert,
who lived nineteen twenty through nineteen eighty six, legendary Americans
fi author whose earliest short stories date back to the
mid forties and his first sci fi stories to the
early fifties. I believe his first novel nineteen fifty six
is The Dragon and the Sea is a near future

(40:10):
submarine tale. He began research on Dune in nineteen fifty nine,
and following serial publication and analog magazine, it published in
nineteen sixty five after numerous rejections. This is another one
of those films. One another one of those books rather
that is often held up as like, oh, look at
all the rejections, at God, and then you know, it
became the most successful and influential sci fi novel of

(40:32):
all time.

Speaker 3 (40:33):
Pretty much seems like almost every really great novel, people
initially have the reaction of, I don't know how to
market this.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
Yeah, yeah, it's because it's not going to be the
next whatever it's going to be done. And we see
that reflecting some of the films too.

Speaker 3 (40:46):
You know.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
It's like even with this one, they're like, we need
the next star Wars. Bring up the Dune. Well, you know,
Dune may have inspired partially inspired Star Wars, but it's
not Star Wars. It's not going to hit the same m.
So Herbert followed Dune up with Numero standalone novels two
other series, but the Dune Saga remains his most well
known work. Dune Messiah followed in sixty nine, Children of

(41:08):
Doune in seventy six, God Emperor of Doune in eighty one,
Heretics of Dune in eighty four, and Chapter House Dune
in eighty five. Herbert died in eighty six before he
could write the seventh and what was supposed to be
the final book in the series. His son, Brian Herbert
and author Kevin J. Anderson would eventually continue writing stories
set in the Dune universe, including Beare version of an

(41:30):
ending to the original saga. And like we said, there
have been various attempts to adapt these books, especially the
first book, to the screen. There was Jodroowski attempt in
the mid seventies. There was even an earlier early seventies
attempt that may have even had David Lean attached at
one point to direct, but I don't think that went anywhere.

(41:51):
And then when Dino de Larentez got the rights, he
was working with Ridley Scott initially and like that was
like in pre production for a little bit before Scott
had to sign off. I think for like personal reasons.
I think there'd been a death in his family, but
also they were perhaps butting heads a little bit more
like getting to where they thought they needed to creatively

(42:12):
on the project.

Speaker 3 (42:13):
Mm you know, I had some notes here about what
we already talked about earlier about just the difficulty, the
inherent difficulty of adapting Dune to the screen, because it's
just not written in a way that naturally translates to
the screen. I mean, some scenes, do you know, scenes
with the sandworms and all that is very cinematic, But
as we talked about earlier, so much of the book

(42:34):
is either contextual about the broader setting in the world
in a way that's like hard to fit into a
movie without a lot of heavy exposition, or it's internal
people's internal monologues and struggles in a way that's difficult
to do without, you know, having these internal voice narrations
which don't work great in this movie. And in a

(42:56):
way I think that really should be like that difficulty
should be to the credit of what these filmmakers have
done with it. That I think Lynch did a better
job than should have been expected. And then the new
movies are the one I've seen at least, and I
from what I've heard that the new one as well.
Dannis ville Neuve's adaptation really exceeded all my expectations in

(43:19):
adapting this, that they found clever ways to illustrate the
world and fill in a lot of this internal and
contextual detail without it just feeling like you're getting tons
of narrative exposition all the time.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
Yeah, and finding smart ways to sort of narrow in
and focus on particular things. Like you know, the plotting
behind the fall of House Atreds has a number of
players in it, and Denny Vee's adaptations tend to lean
more on the Benajes Ritz while Lynch's adaptation leans more
on the Spacing Guild. You know, they're both players in

(43:55):
what happens. But ultimately you have to make some choices
on the screen and what are you going to fote this?

Speaker 3 (44:01):
Actually, well, I'll save this for the uh for when
we get into the plot. But I am curious what
you think of the way Lynch's movie really explains everything
right at the top.

Speaker 1 (44:12):
Oh God, there's so much world create. Like he goes
ahead and mentions IX. Yeah, he's mentioning planets and factions
that are not going to really become important until later
on in the series, and you know, and sequels that
did not come to fruition.

Speaker 3 (44:28):
Oh that's true. Also, I mean explains everything about the
conspiracy against how Is It just like leaves nothing to
be to be revealed or discovered, essentially, except the only
thing I think is like who the trader in how
Strades is? Everything else is like told right up top,
here's the conspiracy, here's what they're gonna do.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
Yeah, not just to the viewer, but like the characters know,
like Paul knows, He's like I figured it out.

Speaker 3 (44:50):
Yeah, it's been a while since I've read the book,
but I don't remember all of that being revealed up front.
I remember that being a thing that you discover as
you go through the story.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Yeah. I think that's correct. But then again, it's been
a couple of years since I reread done, and you know,
it's not all the details stick with me. But again,
that's the joy of rereading books. You get to forget
a little bit, you come back in slightly new experience
each time. That is nice. Now we're going to hit
a few more behind the scenes individuals here. As we
often mention, especially on Big Lavish productions like this, we

(45:22):
can't possibly mention everybody that had a role in making
this film what it was, even major players. As with
the adaptation of Doing you have to look at the
conspirators and just focus on a few, and so I
do want to call out that cinematographer Freddie Francis worked
on this. He lived nineteen seventeen through two thousand and seven,

(45:42):
British director and cinematographer, with extensive credits in the horror
and sci fi genre, including sixty three's The Day of
the Triffids, sixty four's The Evil of Frankenstein, the nineteen
seventy two Tales from the Crypt movie in. One of
his later works was nineteen eighty seven's Dark Tower, replacing
Shockwave director Ken Widerhorn during production.

Speaker 3 (46:03):
Dark Tower That's not Stephen King is no connection.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
To Stephen King, but it does have a connection to Shockwaves,
which we covered on the show in the past. As
a cinematographer, Francis had worked with Lynch on The Elephant
Man and worked with him again later in nineteen ninety
nine on The Straight Story. Other credits include Return to Oz,
which we've talked about on the show, and two films
for which he won an Academy Award nineteen sixty one

(46:28):
Sons and Lovers and nineteen nineties Glory.

Speaker 3 (46:31):
Let me tell you something. I didn't put this together
until just now, but I think there is a lot
of shared visual genetic material between Returned to Oz and
David Lynch's Doune. Do you see that with the sets?
And there's something about the sets and the costumes and
the way the film looks that there's a great similarity there.

Speaker 1 (46:55):
Yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean, kind of like
this sort of baroque weirdness.

Speaker 3 (46:59):
I don't know, a lot of kind of gold and
jade things. Yeah, very baroque. Like you say, there is
a mix of things that look scary and things that
look funny, all jumbled together.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
Yeah. I think that's a good connection. Now, again, a
lot of people went into the visuals on this film
and the effects and so forth. But I do have
to call out Carlo Rumbaldi sometimes credited just as Rumbaldi.
He has creature creator credits on this, and I bet
everyone knows what creature we're talking about. We're talking about
the Guild Navigator.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
Oh. I thought you were going to say the sandworm,
but here we go.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
Well, you know that's right, there is the Sandworm. I
bet he worked on both of them. I believe. I've
read he worked on The Guild Navigator, but I bet
he was in on the Sandworm as well. Okay, so yeah,
he lived nineteen twenty five through twenty twelve. Legendary effects
master who worked on films such as Planet of the Vampires,
et Alien, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Barborella.

(47:57):
Oh Man. And finally we have to talk about off.
The music for David Lynch's Down. The score is by Toto. Yep,
the American rock jazz fusion band best known for such
late seventies and early eighties hits as Africa, Hold the
Line and Rosanna Joe. Is rock jazz fusion the correct

(48:21):
descriptor for Toto genre.

Speaker 3 (48:23):
I've really struggled with this. I don't know that much
about Toto other than like their singles and the role
in the movie here. I don't know how much jazz
I hear, But like I don't really know their whole discography.
I would say that their hit songs sound to me
just more like a rock band.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
Yeah, I've heard people make a case for prog rock
with Toto, and but then also I have to say,
like their biggest hit, Africa, which I did a deep,
semi deep dive. I waited in a little bit into
the Toto filmography yesterday, and most of it is not
for me. However, Africa is an all time great like that.

(49:07):
Africa is a great track, and I think you could
make a case for looping Africa in with the kind
of like yacht rock kind of sound.

Speaker 3 (49:15):
Oh yes, yeah, it's I mean, it's very very smooth,
but it's a but it's a catchy song and it
has you know, people, I think people would call it
out for being cheesy, but it does have some transcendent melodies.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
Yeah, it's a great track. It is a cheesy track,
but it's a great track. I have it saved to
my phone in one of my playlists. So Toto formed
out of a collect in ob sessions musicians, and at
the time of the recording of this score, the band
consisted of Steve Lucather, David Posh, Steve Porco, Mike Porcio,

(49:52):
and Jeff Porcio. Bobby Kimball, the vocalist, had I believe
just left the band and I'm not sure on the
full story there, but it at this point Toto had
achieved some of their biggest hits, and they had never
scored a motion picture before, and they have not scored
a motion picture since.

Speaker 3 (50:10):
You mentioned they were session musicians. I know Steve, however
you say his last name Lucather or Lukeather, whatever that is.
I know he worked on like a bunch of other
big songs from artists he would recognize, like he played
the guitar on beat It and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (50:28):
Yeah, so they were very technically proficient and also obviously
commercially proficient. They were a big deal at the time.
They're not just coming out of nowhere to score Dune.
And yet this is a choice that has long confused me.
You know, you can understand the desire Ondido Dealer inis
his part, Okay, we're going to take this mid sixties
sci fi tale, but we want, we want to hit,

(50:50):
we want we want to connect with modern film viewers.
We wanted to be a mainstream crossover. And so you
can understand why he might want something similar to what
he did with Flash Gordon in nineteen eighty bringing in Queen.
Even though that, of course is the tone of that
fel Is totally different from what they're going after in Dinn.

Speaker 3 (51:12):
I mean, Queen was perfect for Flash Gordon. It is
a perfect fit. As we were saying that, like that
harmonized guitar sound that Brian May makes and the kind
of campy theatricality that Queen was already doing on their
studio albums just is Flash Gordon. It's that perfect embodiment

(51:32):
of the feeling of the film. And so yeah, it
couldn't be a better fit Toto in this movie. I
don't want to knock it again because there are elements
of the soundtrack that I think do really work well,
but I don't know if it fits quite the same way.

Speaker 1 (51:46):
Yeah. Yeah, Like Dino even apparently wanted Conan the Barbarian
to have a rock and roll score, but Don Milios
was like, like, no, we're not doing that. This is
what we're doing. And you know, I think that was
the correct choice owned in.

Speaker 3 (52:00):
The Barbarian score by the Scorpions.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
So I always kind of like assumed that, like, Okay,
Dino must have forced his hand here. It's like bring
in Toto. Toto's popular, let's have Toto score it. But
I was reading in an article published on The Thin
Air by Stephen Rainey titled what Happens when You Add
Toto to David Lynch, that Dino actually wanted Georgio Moroder

(52:26):
for the gig Rover is tremendous. He did the score
for The Never Ending Story, for example. According to Rainey,
it was Lynch that pushed for Toto. I'm not sure
exactly why, and you know, Lynch doesn't talk about Doom
much at all in any interviews. I've seen some members
of Toto discussed in some interviews, but it tends to
just sound like, well, things just sort of came together,

(52:48):
you know, we met and he thought we were right
for it, and that's how it came to be.

Speaker 3 (52:53):
Okay, I would not have expected that.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
We should have also point out that there is one
track on the score, Prophecy Theme, in which Brian Eno
and Daniel Lenois also contribute, and that of course is
a great track as well.

Speaker 3 (53:09):
Okay, folks, I just had to like pause recording here
to go figure out which track that was and listen
to it, and then it was like playing all these
YouTube bads at me. But anyway, great theme, Yes, I agree,
this is the one with the swelling synthesizer chords, and
it's sort of the music from the hearts of space
of this film.

Speaker 1 (53:29):
Yeah, yeah, obviously I love that track well love you know.
It's anything you know touches. It's hard to find fault with,
but I do want to stress like the whole score
is pretty solid on the whole and at times great.
It is a legitimate film score that sometimes sounds very
Toto Slash Africa, but otherwise it commits to tones and

(53:50):
tempos that are cinematically informed and cinematically appropriate. For instance,
Dune desert theme. That track feels very Toto and Africa
is great in that sense. While the main title you
know this is the Boom Boom Boom Boom, it is
more brooding and cinematic. It's a great track, totally fits

(54:10):
the film. My personal favorite, aside from that is Robot Fight.
This is when when Paul is training early in the film.
It's chonky, it's scynthy, it's pulsing. The box is also nice,
and the Floating Fat Man that's the title of the
track in parentheses. The Baron is a high energy synth

(54:31):
organ number that I think would feel perfectly at home
in virtually any Italian horror movie.

Speaker 3 (54:36):
Yeah, there's a lot of great stuff in this score,
a lot that I really like. I also really like
the robot fight number that's just got some It's got
some kind of percussion and it sounds sort of like
woodblocks or something. Yeah, and that's a great one, the
scene where Paul fights the stabbing robot. Yeah. But there
are some parts of the score that I think don't

(54:58):
work quite as well. And the part that I think
don't really work as well are the ones, the parts
that sound more rock. It's it's not a great fit.

Speaker 1 (55:06):
Yeah, there's at least one point late in the film
where Fremen are writing sandworms and you get like a
guitar lick and like it giggled a little bit. It
was amazing, though, I'm glad. I wouldn't want it any
other way. All in all, I'd say an effective and
interesting score, you know, comparing it to the other films,

(55:27):
you know, I have to say I'm a huge fan
of Hans Zimmer's Dune scores. I think this is probably
his best work now that I've listened to all of
Hans Zimmer's scores, because he scored some really uninteresting and
awful movies at times. But you know, I mean, but
we have to acknowledge his approach is altogether different. It's
from a different era, so you can't really compare. You

(55:48):
can't compare a total score to a Zimmer score. They're
both great in their own way.

Speaker 3 (55:52):
Sorry, I'm just looking at what Hans Zimmer has scored. Now,
Oh he did Twister.

Speaker 1 (55:59):
Yeah, there's it's just a lot of stuff in there.
It's like, I don't even want to check, Like, I
doubt Twister has a great score. I'm sure it's effective.
I'm sure it's fine, but I'm just not gonna go
listen to it. I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (56:10):
It's not even that Twister. It's a different Twister that
is also a movie about tornadoes.

Speaker 1 (56:16):
Oh okay, they didn't adapt the board game or the
floor game Twister the motion picture.

Speaker 3 (56:33):
Okay, what are we doing now? Are we gonna go
start talking about the plot and introduce some actors as
we go along?

Speaker 1 (56:41):
Yes, let us attempt to do this.

Speaker 3 (56:42):
Bear with us.

Speaker 1 (56:43):
We have not really done it this way before, but
I think this is our best path forward, So say
it the guild navigators.

Speaker 3 (56:50):
Okay, well, the movie starts with what do you want
to guess it's a sci fi movie from the eighties.
What do we open with? It's a star field kind
of a overused convention, but we start looking at the
stars and then we come in on the eyes. Extreme
close up of the eyes of Virginia Madsen playing Princess Irulan.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
Yeah, so she is part of House Corrino. For modern
fans of the more recent adaptations, she was not introduced
as a character until Dune Part two. Virginia Madson born
in nineteen sixty one. Oscar nominated actress for two thousand
and five Sideways, and this is I believe her second
or third credit. Dune is no Sideways. She was in

(57:34):
the nineteen eighty three Comedy Class as well as nineteen
eighty four as Electric Dreams. Her subsequent credits include ninety
one's Highlander two The Quickening, There You Go, ninety two
is Candy Man, nineteen ninety five's The Prophecy, The Christopher
Walken Angel one that we might get to at some
point in various other TV projects.

Speaker 3 (57:53):
Robert, are we going to do Highlander two The Quickening
this year?

Speaker 1 (57:56):
We should? You know? We have that older stuff to
blow your mind episode about Highland to the quickening, but
it wasn't the weird house approach, right, so you know,
it doesn't really count. We could come back and do it.

Speaker 3 (58:07):
I think the question for that would be, is there
a way now to get our hands on a copy
of the superior bad cut of the film as opposed
to the inferior improved cut of the film?

Speaker 1 (58:19):
That's true. You know, last time we watched it, we
had to watch a rip of the VHS or something
like that. So that's what we need to find out.
We need to find out if we have a good
source material here.

Speaker 3 (58:31):
They're trying to only make accessible the versions that take
out all the good stuff and don't have you know,
Sean Connery waving the sword with the flashlight on him
and stuff.

Speaker 1 (58:42):
Anyway, Virginia Madson, who by the way, is the sister
of Michael Madson, perfectly fine performance here, though she doesn't
get to do all that much. I should know that
Julie Cox and Florence Pugh have also played the role,
and certainly in the more recent adaptation, this character gets
to do a little bit more and will be even

(59:03):
more important in the next Dune film.

Speaker 3 (59:05):
Yeah, so in this movie, because it's just an adaptation
of the first novel. Princess Irulan's role is not huge
within the plot, but it is huge within the film,
just because she does so much voiceover narration, Like she
explains everything about the world to us.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
Yeah, she lays it on us, and she's looking right
at us, and she's like weirdly conversational. She's like, oh,
by the way, I totally forgot to mention this other thing,
Like she gets into something to an important plot point.

Speaker 3 (59:34):
Well, wait, so I feel like I should just actually
read her opening narration so you can get a sense
of it, because I feel like you can feel everything
just a raining down on you. So she says, a
beginning is a very delicate time. Know then that it
is the year ten one hundred and ninety one. The
known universe is ruled by the Padishat Emperor Shadam the fourth,

(59:57):
my father in this time. The most precious substance in
the universe is the spice millange. The spice extends life,
The spice expands consciousness. The spice is vital to space travel.
The Spacing Guild and its navigators, who the spice has
mutated over four thousand years, use the orange spice gas,

(01:00:18):
which gives them the ability to fold space, that is,
travel to any part of the universe without moving. Oh yes,
I forgotten to tell you. She does say that the
Spice exists on only one planet in the entire universe,
a desolate, dry planet with vast deserts. Hidden away within
the rocks of these deserts are a people known as

(01:00:40):
the Fremen, who have long held a prophecy that a
man would come, a messiah who would lead them to
true freedom. The planet is a Racus, also known as Doune.
Now this should bring us back to what we were
talking about earlier, that audiences at the time quite famously
complained that this movie was incomprehensible, that they could not

(01:01:02):
follow the plot. I'm at a point where I'm so
familiar with the world and the story that I don't
really trust myself to assess what this movie would be
like to someone who came in cold. But just like
trying to be objective and look at this opening narration
in Isolation. Despite it being fairly straightforward, like everything is

(01:01:22):
phrased in a very clear to understand way, I think
it could still even newcomer feeling kind of overwhelmed because
it's just piling so much on you before any of
it means anything. I think a better way to develop
this sort of thing is to give you a little
bit of exposition and then show you some story to
allow that exposition to kind of like materialize and be

(01:01:45):
connected to characters that you care about. And then once
you have characters that you care about, you can start
learning more about the premise and the setting and all that,
and at that point it'll feel like it's meaningful. With
just all this opening narration, we haven't even met anybody else.
It just kind of washes over you, and I think
you would probably forget a lot of it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
Yeah, Yeah, it's it's also fascinating everything you know, springing
off of everything you just said, like the intro itself
begins with a beginning, is a very delicate time, and
you know, you can't help but think about that in
terms of the storytelling, Like this is a delicate point
in the movie. We are easing you into a complex,
rich universe, and we have to give you some information,

(01:02:28):
but we don't want to give you too much information,
and therefore, yeah, it is very delicate. It's a very
delicate point. I mean, it makes sense that Princess Iroline
would be the one telling us this because she's it's
her historical writings that often preface various doune chapters in
the novel, And you know, it's probably the better choice

(01:02:52):
as opposed to the extended prologue that I imagine was cut,
and it then ends up reappearing on those disavowed extended
TV versions where you have a bunch of like production
stills of various factions and characters and then a lot
of additional narration about the different factions. But that prologue

(01:03:13):
is still pretty fun. You can find it on YouTube
and stuff, and also I'm sure in DBD extras it's amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
Yeah, I haven't seen that. I would like to. I'd
like to see what they could have done with it.
Another thing you pointed out is that she gets conversational
in this, but I think there is a strange mix
of tones. So like one sentence in this opening narration
is know then that it is the year ten thousand

(01:03:41):
and one ninety one. That's almost like a biblical kind
of phrasing, know then that it is. But then she
also says, oh, yes, I forgot to tell you. It's
like the voice doesn't feel very consistent.

Speaker 1 (01:03:53):
Yeah, it's ultimately a weird start to a weird film.

Speaker 3 (01:03:56):
So the title and credits play out over images of
wind sweeping sand from the dunes of the Lifeless Desert.
We get that heavy, brooding dune theme, bomb bomb, b bomb.
You know, it's very it's very dark, and you know
it feels like bad things are coming. Then we get
more narration that's straight into more of an unknown voice

(01:04:18):
talking to you. I think this is a member of
the Spacing Guild.

Speaker 1 (01:04:21):
We see the Spacing Guild logo, I think in this sequence,
which which is great. Yeah, it's like the three planetary
spheres connected by a line, like a horizontal line. It's great.
I don't think I'd ever really paid it much attention before,
but now I love it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:35):
So this narrator says a secret report within the Guild,
four planets have come to our attention regarding a plot
which could jeopardize Spice production. Planet Aracus, source of the Spice.
Planet Calidan, home of Housitreades, Planet gide Prime, home of

(01:04:55):
House Harconan, Planet Caton, home of the Emperor of the
Known Universe. Send a third stage gild navigator to Katon
to demand details from the Emperor the spice must flow,
so hitting you again with like a lot of factions
and stuff before we've met a single person.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:17):
Anyway, we see a giant ship landing on the surface
of Katon in front of a kind of industrial palace
in the night. Katon appears to be a very urbanized
planet with brightly lit city skylines in the background. This
I guess is sort of the Imperial capital planet, and
strange figures are seen disembarking from the ship. We see

(01:05:41):
pale skin, bald heads, some people in full environment suits,
all in shiny black clothing that seems somewhere between a
monk's robe and like a hazmat barrier.

Speaker 1 (01:05:53):
Yeah. Yeah, everything is very industrial slash regal in a
very fitting way, you know. And and the members of
the Guild that even we've seen so far have a
very sickly pallor you know, and they're kind of like
oozing in places and so forth. This idea that you know,
they're you know, rightfully spice junkies to some extent, and

(01:06:18):
or the rigors of spice use and or interplanetary interstellar
travel have taken a toll on their bodies.

Speaker 3 (01:06:26):
One thing I really like about the design of this movie,
and I think to some extent this is carried over
even into Dnevilneuve's adaptation is the like the costume designs
and stuff that appear to mix influences of industrial technology
and influences of like high church and religion. A lot

(01:06:47):
of characters and the ways they're they're dressed and their
environments look like a cross between, you know, like monks
and priests and cathedrals of the Middle Ages, and also
people work in a factory that produces hazardous chemicals.

Speaker 1 (01:07:04):
Yeah, this is an esthetic that fans of Warhammer forty
thousand are very familiar with. And I think you can
rightfully wonder to what extent that aesthetic would be present
in Warhammer forty thousand without this adaptation with Dune, And
I think you can rightfully wonder if Warhammer forty thousand
would exist at all in any recognizable form if it
had not been for the influence of Dune itself.

Speaker 3 (01:07:27):
So we see inside the Emperor's Palace next, where everything
is green and gold, with these pale, milky jade floors
and gold walls with columns bearing a kind of this
texture that looks like perforated wasp nest. You know, it
has these tubes and columns, And so we see courtiers
milling about everywhere, also dressed in black. So the women

(01:07:50):
in the palace are dressed like mourners and black dresses
and black veils, old men in black military uniforms, Imperial
dog walkers leading packs of bold around. Most of the
courtiers leave the throne room as the Guild Navigator approaches,
and we see the Emperor conferring anxiously with an adviser,

(01:08:11):
a woman named Reverend Mother Gaias Helen Moheum, and he
tells her that he wishes her to read the Guild
Navigator's mind and present a report after she leaves. Then
she professes loyalty to the Emperor and says that she
is his truth sayer. Now this will be the first
of many characters introduced to have some level of psychic power.

(01:08:35):
Some characters in Dune have psychic clairvoyance, like a kind
of foreknowledge and ability to engage in remote viewing and
see what's happening elsewhere or to see into the future.
Other characters have the ability to read people's minds, and
it's kind of like this to some extent in the
book as well. These various types of psychic powers are present,

(01:08:56):
though I do kind of sympathize with some critics at
the time when this came out said, like, a lot
of characters in this movie are psychic. I wish we
were psychic so we could understand the plot. You know,
that's kind of an maybe an unfair job, but I
do see a point they're making that, like who has
what psychic powers and why is not exactly clear, and

(01:09:17):
so you don't know what kinds of knowledge different characters
have access to, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
Yeah, yeah, like this is this adaptation is very concerned
with you knowing what breeds of dogs are important to
which houses. Maybe it's a little shakier on who has
what form of psychic power.

Speaker 3 (01:09:37):
Yeah, but anyway, so she's there the job.

Speaker 1 (01:09:40):
We should talk about these two actors though.

Speaker 3 (01:09:42):
Oh oh wait, I'm sorry. Yes, the Emperor and the
Reverend Mother both both I think great performances in both cases.

Speaker 1 (01:09:49):
Yeah. Yeah, so as the Padishah Emperor Shadam the Fourth.
We have Jose Ferrara, who lived nineteen twelve through nineteen
ninety two, Puerto Rican actor and film director, best known
for such films as nineteen fifty cir Noo de Bergeract,
a film for which he was the first Hispanic actor
to win an Academy Award. He was also in fifty
fours The Cane Mutiny, but his filmography, like a lot

(01:10:10):
of folks, ultimately includes everything you know across the spectrum,
from nineteen sixty two to Lawrence of Arabia to nineteen
seventy seven's The Sentinel and Zoltan Hound of Dracula aka
Dracula's Dog.

Speaker 3 (01:10:25):
Oh boy. I'd like Jose Ferrera's approach to this role,
which is kind of unassuming, Like he he plays this
character in a different way than you might expect. You
might expect the Emperor to have a more imposing presence
and to be more to be more dominant and commanding,
but instead he plays this character like a careful politician,

(01:10:49):
someone who is who is clever and circumspect and trying
to carefully manage his his relationships and allegiances.

Speaker 1 (01:11:00):
Yeah. I think that's a good read. There are a
few scenes where I feel like he comes up a
little bit befuddled. Yeah, I'm not sure to what extent
that was intended, or if it's like I don't know
what these lines mean, you know, but I would imagine
it's more on the intended scale, because, yeah, Farrer was
a great actor. We've talked about his son, Miguel Ferrera before,

(01:11:20):
because he was of course in RoboCop and he was
the uncle of George Clooney.

Speaker 3 (01:11:24):
M Miguel Ferrera was great in a lot of eighties movies,
just like playing Jerks.

Speaker 1 (01:11:31):
Yeah, now, real quick, I will mention that this is
a character that has also been played by John Carlo Janini,
that was in the mini series, and more recently by
Christopher Walkin in Denny Vee's adaptations. I need to see
doing part two once more before I fully make up

(01:11:52):
my mind on Christopher Walkin's performance.

Speaker 3 (01:11:54):
Okay, all right.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
In the other character, Reverend mother Guy is Helen Mohayam
is played by Sean Phillips born nineteen thirty three. So
again not a member of House Krino, but she is
the Emperor's truth sayer. She is a member of the
Benijestrit order. We've talked about Phillips before because she played
Cassiopeia in nineteen eighty one's Clash of the Titans, and
she played the Knight Witch Chau in Ewok's The Battle

(01:12:18):
for Indoor.

Speaker 3 (01:12:20):
Oh, I forgot about those connections, but she is wonderful
in this role. This is this is another character who
you know, kind of liked the Emperor in both cases.
At first is shown to be a you know, just
a character of kind of mystery and power. You're wondering
like what is their power and what are they trying
to do, but ultimately is revealed to kind of be

(01:12:43):
a politician, like she's managing relationships between different factions. She's
trying to keep the balance of power and keep her
plans on track. And I think she does a great
job with this role.

Speaker 1 (01:12:56):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Benigesters are masterful politicians and masterful manipulators,
and I think that comes out more in the recent
adaptations than it does here, perhaps, but because again, you know,
one film focuses more on the on the Guild and
the other films focus more on the benagestrates. But I
have to say, as far as Sean Phillip's presence and

(01:13:19):
her and interact and go, I always loved her in
this role. Her costuming and hairstyling is just absolutely on point,
and she brings just wonderful energy to the role. I'm
hard pressed to pick a favorite Reverend Mother here across
the various adaptations, because Charlotte Rampling is also great in
recent films. Oh yes, yes, all right, well let's let's

(01:13:41):
dive back into the scene. Okay, So we have here
the Emperor and the Reverend Mother, and then the giant
golden doors to the Emperor's throne room peel apart into recesses,
and here comes the Guild Navigator. But at first we
do not see the Guild Navigator in bodily form. We
just see a giant black cylinder venting out these blasts

(01:14:07):
of steam. It looks like a solid iron locomotive rolling
along the floor, approaching the throne, flanked by all these
weird monks in black. And I love this approach. It's
just like, what is this object? Yeah? The absolute weirdness
and grandeur of this sequence cannot be overstated. While we

(01:14:28):
never meet a guild navigator or a guild steersman in
the first done novel, they do become important later on
and become There's an important character that is a Guild
navigator in Dune Messiah. But this sequence in this film
does a great job of just setting the bizarre tone
for the rest of the film, you know, intrigue, baroque splendor, grotesqueness,

(01:14:49):
and a lingering sense of confusion. So I absolutely love it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:54):
So, as you say, this scene is not in the
first novel, when we never meet this weird character in
the first novel, we're about to explain how weird he looks.
So this is like purely a I guess. I don't
know for sure whose choice it was, but it seems
like a David Lynch choice to just make this movie
much weirder than it had to be. Right at the beginning.

Speaker 1 (01:15:18):
Yeah, because to be clear, the new adaptations have no
guild navigators, and then we briefly see the space and
guild in Dune Part one, but we certainly never see
a guild navigator.

Speaker 3 (01:15:30):
So so yeah, these monks approach like one with this
giant black you know train. Essentially, one of the monks
picks up a weird looking microphone starts speaking into it
with this inhuman language, and it translates to the Benny
jeser At Witch must leave, so the Emperor bids her leave.

(01:15:51):
The Reverend Mother has to go to the other room.
She does when they are alone with the Emperor. Wheels
begin to turn on the front of the locomotive and
metal are unlocking, and then the dark panels on the
front of this huge object spread apart, and they reveal
inside a giant tank, almost like a fish tank, but
it is filled with orange smoke, occupied by a gigantic

(01:16:14):
octopus like creature. And this is the Guild Navigator. It's
someone who I think the the lore is that this
is somebody who is once human in form but was
mutated through it through their extreme use of the spice millage.

Speaker 1 (01:16:31):
Yeah, essentially, And in the novels they're kind of described
more as like taking the form ultimately like a fish
man like that. That's that's the form that they have
mutated into. In this they go in a more almost
kind of like embryonic direction. The creature is stranger, even
stranger to behold, and it is, it is glorious. It

(01:16:53):
is it is an unforgettable visual aspect of the poet
motion picture and it's just again brilliantly weird and sets
the tone for the whole picture.

Speaker 3 (01:17:03):
So, speaking to the Emperor, the Guild Navigator says, we
have just folded space from IX, and the Emperor says yes,
and the guild Navigator explains that it has psychically sensed
a plan unfolding, in fact, not just a plan, but
plans within plans. It suggests that it foresees a war

(01:17:25):
between two great houses, house A Triades and how Harkonen,
and it asks if this is according to a plan
of the Emperor's doing, and the Emperor admits that it
is so. The Emperor says, the Atriades house is building
a secret army using a technique unknown to us, a
technique involving sound. The Duke is becoming more popular in

(01:17:48):
the lands Rod. He could threaten me. I think the
lands Rod is the like the Parliament of this this universe. Essentially,
he could threaten me. I have ordered House Atreadees to
occupy a Wrais to mine the spice, thus replacing their
enemies the Harconans. House Atraades will not refuse because of
the tremendous power they think they will gain. Then, at

(01:18:11):
an appointed time, Baron Harconin will return to Iracus and
launch a sneak attack on how Satraides. I have promised
the Baron five legions of my Sardecar terror troops. So
once again we alluded to this earlier, but they just
lay out the whole plot right there. I don't know
what I think about that choice. On one hand, it

(01:18:32):
might make the story easier to follow if you're not
already familiar with it. On the other hand, it does
kind of like spoil some of the surprise because this
is exactly what happens. It just lays it all out there.

Speaker 1 (01:18:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:18:43):
Anyway, the Guild Navigator seems okay with this, but it
says that through its clairvoyance, it perceives that this plan
may be complicated by Paul Atriades, the son of Duke
Leto Atredees, and the Guild Navigator says, I want Paul
Atredes killed. I did not say this. I was not here.

Speaker 1 (01:19:04):
I love this moment.

Speaker 3 (01:19:05):
Yeah, and then the Guild Navigator like retreats and the
space monks scurry along with it, like running vacuum cleaners
over the floor, which is a laugh out loud moment,
but it's I'd love that detail. I don't know what
it means, but it's really good.

Speaker 1 (01:19:20):
Was were they I'm not I'm unsure on exactly what's
happening here either, but did they like slide the Guild
Navigator enclosure out on like a thin layer of oil
or slime, I don't know, and then retreat on it
and they've got to like clean it a little bit.
It's it's it's wondrous. It's wondrous. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:19:38):
So Emperor shaddam Is is left wondering what the Spacing Guild.
Why would the Spacing Guild be so afraid of Duke
Leto's son, He's just a boy. Meanwhile, in the other room,
the Reverend Mother has been conducting psychic surveillance on the meeting.
She knows what has been asked, and she goes back
to a group of her Beni jessa At sisters and

(01:19:58):
says they must examine Paul Treadees. They must understand his significance.
And you know what we're looking at time here. And
as we predicted at the beginning, if we tried to
do this all in one episode, it would be like
a three to four hour episode of Weird House. So
I think what we're going to have to do is
divide it. Here. We'll leave you hanging with this prologue

(01:20:19):
that is mostly not from the novel Dune itself, and
then next time we're going to come back and discuss
more of the rest of the plot of Dune nineteen
eighty four, more of the cast, and maybe have some
retrospective thoughts once we get to the end of the
plot about I don't know how the movie relates to
the source material, how it fits into David Lynch's filmography

(01:20:41):
and things like that.

Speaker 1 (01:20:42):
Yeah, yeah, we'll wrap it up in the next episode
of Weird House Cinema. And who knows in the future,
if we do a Weird House rewind of this episode,
maybe we'll cobble it all together into one big director's cut.

Speaker 3 (01:20:53):
We'll see just an unmanageable chunk.

Speaker 1 (01:20:56):
Yeah, yeah, just drop directly onto your phone. Yeah, all right, Well,
I'm looking forward to continue to continuing the discussion, continuing
our journey through David Lynch's Dune. In the meantime, will
remind you that here unstuck to blow your mind and
stuff to blow your mind feed We're primarily a science
podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That doesn't

(01:21:18):
mean we haven't done core episodes about Dune. If you
go into our back catalog, you will find we did
some episodes on the science of Dune, on the philosophy
of Dune. Have a few short form episodes here and
there that deal with things from Dune. I did one monster. Fact.
These are on Wednesdays about donkeys of Dune because nobody
ever adapts the donkeys of the planet Oracus. But in

(01:21:41):
the books it is clear that the that there are
donkeys on this planet and they are used, and they
do wear a modified still suit.

Speaker 3 (01:21:47):
Oh boy, yeah, the books, the book books have so
much weirdness of them suited one of your donkeys.

Speaker 1 (01:21:55):
Let's see Mondays we do listener mails, and yes, indeed
on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns talk about
a weird film on Weird House Cinema. If you want
to see a list of all the movies we've covered
thus far in Weird House Cinema and sometimes get a
glimpse at what's coming next, go to letterbox dot com
is L E T T E R bo x d
dot com. It's a fun side overall for you know,
chronicling movies, seeing you know what the different different connections

(01:22:18):
are between different productions. But we are on there as
weird House that's our username, and we have a list
and you can look at all the things we've covered
thus far. You can throw on different filters to see, like, okay,
which movies f in the fifties did we do? Which?
Which sci fi movies did we do? Which fantasy movies?
And so forth. It's a lot of fun.

Speaker 3 (01:22:36):
Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:22:58):
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