International Arrow Video Press Release: DUNE (1984) (4K UHD) (1 Viewer)

[JoshZ]

I think one problem is that DUNE should not be an overshot improvised experimental film since it's based on a hugely successful novel. That's why Lynch was always the wrong choice, same with Jodorowsky though I would have loved to see his version. I think it's unfilmable.

I don't disagree with this. But it's the fact that Lynch was such a perversely ill-fitting choice that makes the film fascinating for me. Universal wanted the next Star Wars, but De Laurentiis hired the guy who did Eraserhead to make it. How does something like that happen? Lynch had only made two movies at that point, one a micro-budget art film and the other a stately black-and-white historical drama. Neither even remotely suggested that Lynch would be the right guy to make a big-budget sci-fi epic. Yet there he was, trying to bring his idiosyncratic vision to a project way out of his depth.

Dune is still one of the strangest big-budget tentpole movies ever made, and that's why it has endured with a cult following. Had a more conventional director been assigned to it, the movie would have turned out very differently. Perhaps it might have made a modest profit, but it also probably would have been mostly forgotten by now, like so many other attempts to ride the coattails of Star Wars at the time.

 

[JoshZ]

In the documentary “Impressions of DUNE” (which will be on the Arrow set), editor Anthony Gibbs confirms ”David wanted a 3-hour movie, and Dino wanted a 2-hour movie, and Dino won”. So it was Dino that had Lynch bring it down to the 137 min., which reluctantly the latter director approved.

Yes, but all of that was decided early in production. There was no moment where Lynch delivered a 3-hour cut and said, "Here it is, Dino. Let's release this," and De Laurentiis said, "No, David, you must make it shorter." The 2.5-hour limit was imposed long before editing got that far. The suits at Universal were very clear that they would not release a movie longer than that, and De Laurentiis had agreed to keep to that limit. No 3-hour cut was ever prepared.

Remember, this was just a few years after the debacle of Heaven's Gate sank United Artists. The Hollywood studios no longer had any tolerance for auteur directors making movies with bloated run times. Every minute over 2 hours was a battle.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

I don't disagree with this. But it's the fact that Lynch was such a perversely ill-fitting choice that makes the film fascinating for me. Universal wanted the next Star Wars, but De Laurentiis hired the guy who did Eraserhead to make it. How does something like that happen? Lynch had only made two movies at that point, one a micro-budget art film and the other a stately black-and-white historical drama. Neither even remotely suggested that Lynch would be the right guy to make a big-budget sci-fi epic. Yet there he was, trying to bring his idiosyncratic vision to a project way out of his depth.

Dune is still one of the strangest big-budget tentpole movies ever made, and that's why it has endured with a cult following. Had a more conventional director been assigned to it, the movie would have turned out very differently. Perhaps it might have made a modest profit, but it also probably would have been mostly forgotten by now, like so many other attempts to ride the coattails of Star Wars at the time.

Today, it would be like hiring Nicholas Winding Refn, Leos Carax or Jeremy Saulnier to direct a Marvel movie.

 

[JoshZ]

The most substantial narrative cut in creating the theatrical cut was Paul Atreides' killing of Jamis and dealing with the fallout from that event, and was specifically referenced in Ed Naha's Making of Dune book, which I owned as a teenager [have no idea where it is now] which was a very detailed analysis of the filmmaking process, including stories about how the test shots with the sandworm miniature puppets left the crew with "a very large inferiority complex." I suspect this entire narrative element took the film over 2.5 hrs and thus the easiest surgery to perform on the film was to cut it.

Paul's duel with Jamis was filmed and is in the TV cut. The rest of that storyline, which includes Paul taking responsibility for Jamis' widow Harrah and their two children, was scripted and cast, but most of those scenes never went before cameras because the production was over schedule and budget, and Rafaella De Laurentiis ordered Lynch to stand down and not film them.

As it is, you can still see the actors as background extras in the movie (which explains the two random Fremen kids getting trained to become fighters with the adults), but they are never identified and have no dialogue. Sadly, there is no way to restore that storyline to the movie, as the footage never existed.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

Paul's duel with Jamis was filmed and is in the TV cut. The rest of that storyline, which includes Paul taking responsibility for Jamis' widow Harrah and their two children, was scripted and cast, but most of those scenes never went before cameras because the production was over schedule and budget, and Rafaella De Laurentiis ordered Lynch to stand down and not film them.

As it is, you can still see the actors as background extras in the movie (which explains the two random Fremen kids getting trained to become fighters with the adults), but they are never identified and have no dialogue. Sadly, there is no way to restore that storyline to the movie, as the footage never existed.

Correct. Naha's book talks about the excision of this subplot, which had shot some scenes, before it was cut. It also talks about the various ideas for making the Fremen eyes appear blue, one of which involved Molly Wrynn, the actress who played Harrah. They tried scleral contact lenses with Wrynn, who experienced considerable discomfort for obvious reasons. Oh, how I wish I could find that book!

 

[JoshZ]

Today, it would be like hiring Nicholas Winding Refn, Leos Carax or Jeremy Saulnier to direct a Marvel movie.

Marvel has actually made some very offbeat choices to helm its superhero movies, but the studio keeps its directors on a very tight leash. I doubt there will be much of anything in The Eternals identifiable as "A Film by Chloe Zhao" other than the title credit.

The thinking these days behind studios hiring indie directors to make big tentpole movies is that they want someone with enough experience to get a movie made, but not enough clout to fight back against orders from the studio machine.

 

[B-ROLL]

It will be interesting to see what Denis Villeneuve does with it, but it doesn't seem like something that's suited to a feature film format. It probably would have been better to do it as a Game of Thrones-style series.

Been there, done that, bought the T-Shirt DVD (Region B blu-ray has been released)... !

 

[JoshZ]

Correct. Naha's book talks about the excision of this subplot, which had shot some scenes, before it was cut. It also talks about the various ideas for making the Fremen eyes appear blue, one of which involved Molly Wrynn, the actress who played Harrah. They tried scleral contact lenses with Wrynn, who experienced considerable discomfort for obvious reasons. Oh, how I wish I could find that book!

Yeah, as it turns out, wearing contact lenses while filming in the desert with sand being blown into your face by powerful wind generator fans wasn't such a great idea.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

Yeah, as it turns out, wearing contact lenses while filming in the desert with sand being blown into your face by powerful wind generator fans wasn't such a great idea.

View attachment 99811

That's the one, second from left. I got it for Christmas in 1984, just before going to see Dune in theatres.

 

[Worth]

I don't disagree with this. But it's the fact that Lynch was such a perversely ill-fitting choice that makes the film fascinating for me. Universal wanted the next Star Wars, but De Laurentiis hired the guy who did Eraserhead to make it. How does something like that happen?

Makes about as much sense as hiring Mike Hodges to direct Flash Gordon.

 

[B-ROLL]

Makes about as much sense as hiring Mike Hodges to direct Flash Gordon.

!

 

[JoshZ]

Makes about as much sense as hiring Mike Hodges to direct Flash Gordon.

I don't think that's exactly comparable. I mean, Get Carter was a fairly mainstream-accessible piece of entertainment, and he'd done one prior (though smaller scale) sci-fi film with The Terminal Man. I'm sure he probably seemed like a reasonable choice who could make a popular movie.

Lynch, meanwhile, had literally only made Eraserhead and The Elephant Man when he was tossed into the deep end with Dune.

 

[JoshZ]

The only reason Lynch was ever on Dino De Laurentiis' radar at all is that George Lucas had considered him for "Revenge of the Jedi," at the suggestion of Mel Brooks, who had produced The Elephant Man and was a big advocate for Lynch. Those talks didn't get very far, as Lynch didn't want to work on a sequel to someone else's project . When De Laurentiis heard about that, he figured that anybody good enough for Star Wars must be good enough for Dune, and started aggressively wooing Lynch.

$40 million later... well, the rest is history.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

Marvel has actually made some very offbeat choices to helm its superhero movies, but the studio keeps its directors on a very tight leash. I doubt there will be much of anything in The Eternals identifiable as "A Film by Chloe Zhao" other than the title credit.

The thinking these days behind studios hiring indie directors to make big tentpole movies is that they want someone with enough experience to get a movie made, but not enough clout to fight back against orders from the studio machine.

Yes and no. When Marvel has broken publicly with directors, it usually had something to do with breaking with what Marvel perceives audience expectations to be. I doubt they had many issues with Chloe Zhao, simply because her known modus operandi thus far apart from visual style has been working with non-professional actors. That wasn't going to be a problem with The Eternals because the likelihood of non-professional actors being used in The Eternals was slim to none.

Contrast this with the public exits of Edgar Wright and Scott Derrickson. Both are known for particular kinds of movies that were unlikely to mesh with the Marvel "brand". Wright's only PG-13 film up to that point was Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which in many ways pushed the PG-13 as far as it would stretch; Derrickson's best known for horror, and when he and co-writer C. Robert Cargill really leant into the horror elements with early drafts for Doctor Stange in the Multiverse of Madness, it was a bridge too far.

 

[Malcolm R]

Contrast this with the public exits of Edgar Wright and Scott Derrickson. Both are known for particular kinds of movies that were unlikely to mesh with the Marvel "brand". Wright's only PG-13 film up to that point was Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which in many ways pushed the PG-13 as far as it would stretch; Derrickson's best known for horror, and when he and co-writer C. Robert Cargill really leant into the horror elements with early drafts for Doctor Stange in the Multiverse of Madness, it was a bridge too far.

One would think studios would realize this before they were even hired. Same with those directors first hired for Solo. Directors are NOT like a box of chocolates. If you pay attention, you should know exactly what you're likely to get.

 

[Worth]

One would think studios would realize this before they were even hired. Same with those directors first hired for Solo. Directors are NOT like a box of chocolates. If you pay attention, you should know exactly what you're likely to get.

They get hired precisely because they are different but then the executives get scared and decide they want something more conventional, after all.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I don’t think Marvel, Edgar Wright or Scott Derrickson are great examples of an evil studio not being willing to work with the directors they hired.

Edgar Wright is an interesting case. He started developing Ant-Man for Marvel before there was a fully fledged MCU. The problem developed because making Ant-Man was never Wright’s top priority, and in between when he first got involved and when it was finally time to begin shooting, there had sprung up a whole world of interconnected movies, and Wright wanted his film to be a stand-alone that had no connection to any other Marvel films - and I’m sorry, but that’s just not a reasonable stance for the director of the twelfth film in a series to take. Up until I think two weeks before shooting was to begin, Kevin Feige was asking Wright when he was going to put the required scene into the script, and Wright apparently kept dismissing Feige’s rather clear and unambiguous instruction as a joke. When Feige made it clear he wasn’t joking, and Wright made it clear he wasn’t making the script changes Feige wanted, there wasn’t a path forward. Incidentally, the scene in question was one of the best received moments in the film.

As for Scott Derrickson, he successfully co-wrote and directed the first Doctor Strange film, produced the two massively successful Avengers films that featured the Strange character. That sounds like a pretty successful relationship to me. He stepped back from directing the Doctor Strange sequel after disagreements about the new film’s tone, but those things happen, and again, when it’s like the 25th film in a long running interconnected series that owes much of its success to the audience investment curated by connecting the films, well, those are just the parameters that those films are made within.

You could look at Lynch with Dune in a similar way. He was given a budget, a timetable on which to shoot, and a requirement on length. The film wasn’t taken away from him. But unlike the vast majority of his other projects, Lynch wasn’t the final authority on this film - but those were the conditions he signed on for in the first place.

 

[JoshZ]

You could look at Lynch with Dune in a similar way. He was given a budget, a timetable on which to shoot, and a requirement on length. The film wasn’t taken away from him. But unlike the vast majority of his other projects, Lynch wasn’t the final authority on this film - but those were the conditions he signed on for in the first place.

It's precisely because of his experience on Dune that Lynch has demanded right of Final Cut on every project he's done since. He won't make a movie without that guarantee. It's because of the failure of Dune that we have Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive.

In some ways, that makes Lynch a bit of a prima donna. Lots of other directors have bounced back from failure and learned to work within the studio system, while he stubbornly refuses to compromise. But he can get away with it given that the type of movie he wants to make are mostly low-budget art films. He has no interest in doing anything on the scale of Dune again.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

In some ways, that makes Lynch a bit of a prima donna. Lots of other directors have bounced back from failure and learned to work within the studio system, while he stubbornly refuses to compromise. But he can get away with it given that the type of movie he wants to make are mostly low-budget art films. He has no interest in doing anything on the scale of Dune again.

Lets not forget his refusal to have chapter stops on DVDs or Blu-rays.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

In some ways, that makes Lynch a bit of a prima donna.

I never interpreted his choices that way, though I understand where you’re coming from.

I think that he’s more of an all around artist than just a filmmaker, and that he’s more interested in following his muse than doing any one particular thing. For him, there’s no point to making a film he doesn’t have control over when he can be just as satisfied sculpting something in his backyard or doodling stuff in France. I’m not sure he really differentiates between different art forms the way most do.

I admire that about his work. There are plenty of directors who just want to be working directors (not that there’s anything wrong with that ether). There aren’t many people who will say, “If I can’t get the money I need to do the film the way I want to do it, I’m perfectly content to talk about the weather on YouTube”.