Jodorowsky's Dune

Alejandro Jodorowsky:
What is the goal of the life? It's to create yourself a soul. For me, movies are an art... more than an industry. And its the search of the human soul... as painting, as literature, as poetry. Movies are that for me.

Alejandro Jodorowsky:
I wanted to make a film that would give the people who took LSD at the time the hallucinations that you get with that drug, but without hallucinating. I did not want LSD to be taken, I wanted to fabricate the drug's effects. This film was going to change the public's perceptions.

Alejandro Jodorowsky:
My ambition with Dune was tremendous. So, what I wanted was to create a prophet. I want to create a prophet... to change the young minds of all the world. For me, Dune will be the coming of a god. Artistical, cinematographical god. For me, it was not to make a picture. It was something deeper. I wanted to make something sacred, free, with new perspective. Open the mind! Because I feel, in that time, myself, inside a prison. My ego, my intellect, I want to open! And I start the fight to make Dune.

Michel Seydoux, Producer - DUNE:
You needed a touch of madness to do it. You can't have a masterpiece without madness. Pink Floyd? Dali or Orson Welles or others! Maybe Dune had too much madness? But a movie that doesn't have a bit of madness is not going to conquer the whole world.

Alejandro Jodorowsky:
He said, "I want to produce you anything. What do you want to do?" I say, "Dune!" And he say, "Yes."

Michel Seydoux, Producer - DUNE:
Why? Because the book was the most beautiful science fiction book. It was the bible of science fiction for all the big devotees. Because the book had a worldwide publishing success that you could find in every country.

Alejandro Jodorowsky:
I didn't read Dune. But, I have a friend who say to me it was fantastic. I don't know why I say Dune. I can say Don Quixote or I can said Hamlet. I don't know any way, anything. I say Dune.

Alejandro Jodorowsky:
Frank Herbert created a world in Dune, but he never said exactly what it was. And you have a hundred pages of literature where you go on to discover, with great difficulty what the book is about. It's very - It's like - I compare it to Proust in French literature. It's literary, it's great literature. The first one hundred pages, you understand almost nothing. It's insinuations. And then, to bring literature to image is completely difficult. You need to create another world, the optical world. It's not the literary, auditive world. All the time, even in the, in the, little details, I was trying to find the spiritual meaning of that picture.

Alejandro Jodorowsky:
I wanted a musical group for every planet. Pink Floyd. They will make the music for Leto. Pink Floyd have a record, Dark Side of the Moon. For me, that is the human being, like the moon. One side is brilliant, light. And the other side, who is black, the unconscious, what is mysterious, what is deep.

Alejandro Jodorowsky:
For me, science fiction was like a huge theater, like a huge work of art. Every spaceship was a being, like an insect, like a fabulous bird. That was the spaceship I wanted.

Chris Foss, Artist - DUNE:
I still haven't read the book, No. I have no idea what the actual story is. None whatsoever. It all came through Alejandro and the script. Yeah. So, as far as I'm concerned, the story of Dune is what Alejandro told me it was.

Chris Foss, Artist - DUNE:
In an ideal world he wouldn't have needed a script. You could have set Alejandro down and he would have talked the story, you know. He would have said the words.

Alejandro Jodorowsky:
I was searching for... For the light of genius in every person, with an enormous respect, an enormous respect. And then, every day I was feeding them in order to... to be free, to do what, to do the best of them.

Salvador Dali:
Can nobody understand Dali because myself, never understand my work. Never Dali understand one painting of Dali because Dali only create enigmas.

Alejandro Jodorowsky:
I wanted Mick Jagger to play Feyd-Rautha, a character. How am I going to contact this person who is not going to be impressed that I have the great power to make a movie? He is in the peak of his fame, of his glory. How? And I was invited to an event in Paris. It was a big gathering of the Parisian bourgeoisie and at the other side of the room, a big room, I don't know, maybe 150 square meters, was Mick Jagger. I saw him from a distance and I think he saw me and I saw him walking, he started walking. He started walking between the people and I then realized that he was coming to me. He crossed the room and he stood in front of me. And I told him, "I want you for my movie." And he said only one word, "Yes."

Alejandro Jodorowsky:
Baron Harkonnen is a big, big monster who have anti-gravitational implants and he is in the air all the time because he is too, too heavy. Orson Welles. Orson Welles had a bad reputation because they said that he liked to drink and eat so much that he ate at the movies. He ate a lot, and then he did not finish the movies, he was moody. But I said, "No, Orson Welles is a genius, he is the one." And since he liked to eat they say he goes to the gastronomic restaurants in Paris. Therefore, I sent a secretary to ask in all the gastronomic restaurants in Paris: "Where does Orson Welles eat?" And we discovered a restaurant and then he was eating. Six bottles of wine. He was eating. And then I asked to the chef "What is the best wine he want?" He say, "That." Then, "Send him a bottle." And then, he drink the bottle and he want to speak to me. And then, I speak with all the respect, because was for me was an idol. He say, " I don't want to do it. I don't want any more." I say to him, "I will propose something. If you do the picture, even if we pay what you want as an actor, I will hire the chef of this restaurant and you will eat, as here, every day." And he say, "I do it."

Alejandro Jodorowsky:
This system make of us slaves. Without dignity. WIthout depth. With a devil in our pocket. This, this incredible money are in the pocket. This money. This sh*t. This nothing. This paper who have nothing inside. Movies have heart. Boom-boom-boom. Have mind. Have power. Have ambition. I wanted to do something like that. Why not?

Alejandro Jodorowsky:
All my life I create, and is more and more and more. The mind is like a universe. It's constantly expanding. Like the universe, exactly like the universe, open the mind. The opening of the mind is every day, is open. That was this picture.

Alejandro Jodorowsky:
You want to make the most fantastic art of movie? Try. If you fail, is not important. We need to try.