Weirdhouse Cinema: Dune (1984), Part 1

In this special 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. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
This is Rob Lamb 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

(00:35):
David Lynch's Dune from nineteen eighty four.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
That's right. Yeah. We normally try and keep Weird House
as 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 the excuse. All right, everybody,

(01:00):
he's digging Dune. Right now, we can do a two
parter on Weird House Cinema about David Lynch's adaptation.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
Wait did you see the new one?

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yes? 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 out to the
movie theater for you know, three hours and watched Dune
Part two with a full cinematic experience. We didn't get
the popcorn bucket, but we still had a great time.

(01:27):
It's definitely a film worth seeing on a big screen.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
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.

(01:55):
Because Robert, you know, we've long been fans of the
book and talked about it on the show all 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.
It is like a It is a wonderful novel, but
it almost feels like it was written to be specifically

(02:17):
difficult to adapt to the movie format.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yeah it is. It's a complex novel, full of interstellar feudalism,
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. So

(02:43):
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. You know, it has a reputation
for being a difficult adaptation. And yeah, credit where credits due.
Danny v nailed it. I think he nailed it in
part one, and then part two really seals the deal.
And it's a true spectacle with the caveat. I have

(03:05):
to say, like I've always been a Doom Book first fan,
and I don't mean that in a snobby way, and
I mean that and 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 difficulties of that of adapting it,
you know, you have to go into it with the
expectation that any filmmaker, regardless of what they're working with,

(03:28):
they're they're going 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 Doom 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 (03:43):
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

(04:04):
if it's already kind of an external story, Dune 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 relies on a glossary actually,
like there's you know, an encyclopedia, So it's very fun

(04:26):
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

(04:49):
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.

(05:10):
A lot of the drama is within character's 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 2 (05:28):
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 Doom 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.

(05:50):
But there's a lot of internal voice colon what's being said,
which makes it a little little more hilarious at times
when this occurs.

Speaker 3 (05:59):
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 thinking.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
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 (06:29):
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 2 (06:45):
Yeah, I mean, is it the most faithful adaptation? No,
it is it the best? Well, it's hard to make
an argument for that, perhaps, but is it absolutely weird?
Is it? Is it consistently entertaining? Absolutely?

Speaker 3 (06:58):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yes, it's also shorter. Uh. 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. Uh, that's also part of the problem here,

(07:21):
we'll discuss. But uh, yeah, it's uh, it's it's shorter
than some of your other options. Right.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
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

(07:47):
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 runtime.
On the other hand, given how much they fit into
this short of a runtime, I am shocked how well
it works.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
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 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 major beats,

(08:24):
we know what's going to happen, we know who everyone
is supposed to.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
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 a little

(08:48):
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 2 (08:54):
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. They were a
little unclear on that. And I know that my wife
initially had some confusion over two different blonde characters in

(09:17):
part two. I'm not going to reveal who they are,
but she was like, at least momentarily, 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, speaking of fitting a lot
into a limited runtime, I also just want to quickly
note that this movie has been out for a while,
It has a cult following. It is a David Lynch movie.

(09:39):
There have been multiple great documentaries, books, papers, etc. On
this production, on previous attempts at producing done for the screen,
subsequent productions. We can't possibly get into all of that,
but we'll reference a little of it as we go.

Speaker 3 (09:53):
Have you watched the documentary about Yodorowski's Done.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
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 Jodorowski had actually made
this stupendous semi adaptation of Dune with this just colossally

(10:17):
Bonker's cast, I'm glad he didn't, and not 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 Jodorowski wrote, and those are tremendously fun and trippy,

(10:39):
and they have elements of that kind of like Dune
feudal psychedelic world, but it's it's removed from Herbert's novels
and it can be its own thing. So I think
like ultimately everything landed for the best. 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,

(11:01):
you'd rather see him take a bunch of influence from
Dune and make his own thing. It's exactly yeah, I
think it worked out for the best.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
Well.

Speaker 2 (11:08):
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

(11:28):
a listen. No, the most widely read, talked about, and
cherished masterpiece of the generation comes to the screen.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
Su I see doing great houses.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
A world that holds creation's greatest treasure. You controls the
snice controls the universe comp.

Speaker 3 (11:51):
And greatest terrorst A world with a mighty.

Speaker 2 (11:59):
All I can see is it a Treadees that I
wanted to kill and the magical the Sleeper. Oh my god,
we'll have their final battle.

Speaker 3 (12:09):
A world called Dune.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Long live the fight us. We will kill until no
har Conan breeze, aercane air duel. A world beyond your experience,
beyond your imagination. Details about the Dune Adventure in Washington,
d C. Are coming soon from Uni Brussel Pictures Eastern

(12:34):
Airlines at one L six afm KCGL.

Speaker 3 (12:40):
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 2 (12:58):
Let's have it.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
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 La from La.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
You know, I've never had the courage to watch Escape
from La. Oh love Carpenter, love love the cast for
Escape from La And I remember it had a fun
soundtrack that came out at the time.

Speaker 3 (13:25):
But yeah, not anybody's best work.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
Yeah, we know, speaking of Max. That is also where
I ended up rewatching it. But if 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,

(13:50):
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 (14:04):
Speaking of I've never seen the sci fi mini series,
have you?

Speaker 2 (14:08):
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 Doune, and
I remember it being lavish. You know, it has some
very great costumes, It has a lot of good casting
and in some great casting in places. So as we proceed,

(14:29):
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'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 (14:45):
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 2 (14:56):
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 Doone at the I
think it was a books a million, you know, so

(15:18):
it wasn't like a nice cozy local bookstore. Is one
of the big warehouse 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 Doune,
and they were such huge fans that they would watch

(15:39):
David Lynch's Dune, 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. This lady and her husband loved

(16:01):
this film 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.

Speaker 3 (16:16):
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 Harkonen's doctor singing
love songs to his boils as he's poking them with
a needle.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah, or Baron Harkonen like just laughing maniacally and floating
around the room. Yeah. 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 (16:44):
Why, Baron, I love your precious diseases.

Speaker 2 (16:56):
All right, well, let's start getting into the connections here.
We're gonna tackle every thing a little differently here, so
you know, first of all, on some of these we're
gonna 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 gonna just divide the
episode like normal. We're not gonna do like just connections,

(17:17):
just cast and crew in this episode 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 (17:31):
Okay, I think that is a good approach for a
two part Weird House episode.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
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. Yeah. 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 on some
of the details of David Lynch's filmography, and certainly about

(17:59):
like the texture of what a Lynchian film is, because
I haven't seen as many David Lynch films. I've basically
just seen his Dune. I've seen Eraserhead, and I've seen
Mulholland 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 (18:18):
I think if you've seen eraser Head and Mulholland Drive,
you have a pretty good idea of what some of
his dominant themes are. But we'll come back to that
all right.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
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 seen The Elephant Man, but
I'm not sure if I've seen The Elephant Man in full.

(18:50):
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 (18:55):
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 a raser 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

(19:19):
horror film. 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 2 (19:33):
Yeah. 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

(19:55):
come up 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.
And he was like definitely the kind of guy who
want who was attracted to talent, like he wanted to
bring in someone that had vision, but would also of
course fall in line and play the studio game.

Speaker 3 (20:16):
Yes, so I think this was not a match made
in heaven with David Lynch.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
Yeah, it ended up not to be the case. I
don't know. 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 Doune eventually
earned a cult following, it was a commercial and critical disaster.
At the time considered again by many to be just

(20:43):
an incomprehensible mess. You look back at like what Ebert
said about it, like everyone was just like, this is awful.

Speaker 3 (20:50):
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 it huge, you know, and you can
see it in some of the like gorgeous, lavishly realized

(21:12):
sets 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 are, like
most of the the design in it does look amazing,
but there are some weird shots that look kind of
slapped together in there, and I don't know where that
comes from. Just generally, critics were very very harsh about it.

(21:34):
It made a lot of like worst movie of the
Year lists and things like that.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
Yeah. Yeah, And again, we can't heap 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.

(22:00):
You know, this is good. We want it to be successful,
and this is what you need to have for success.

Speaker 3 (22:04):
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 to get to the action.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah. Now, for context, Denny Ve's 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 (22:37):
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 2 (22:46):
Yeah. Yeah, So numerous cuts were made, new scenes were
apparently filmed, whole scenes were just cut entirely, or there
there are plenty different 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
the seams in this final theatrical cut of David Lynch's Dune.

(23:11):
He has long considered the film a failure, and he
generally opts not to discuss it in interviews. He disowned
the extended TV premiere 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 (23:27):
Now.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
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.
But I don't know. It doesn't sound like we should
necessarily get our hopes up.

Speaker 3 (23:43):
Yeah, i'd be interested to see that. But yeah, 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 producer is tampered with,
in his view, I think sabotage his vision for it.
And he believed this to the extent that he said

(24:04):
he wished he 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 2 (24:18):
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

(24:41):
would just been on an entirely different trajectory with science
fiction and with adaptations of Doom.

Speaker 3 (24:47):
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.

(25:09):
But 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

(25:30):
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

(25:51):
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

(26:11):
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 2 (26:27):
Absolutely? Yeah, It's really difficult to imagine where David Lynch's
career would have gone had he not taken Doune, you know,
like outside 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 it
is the big I don't know, arguably sell out project

(26:51):
before moving on with the rest of his career. 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 will we live in the day out?
As far as Star Wars and as far as David
Lynch are concerned.

Speaker 3 (27:05):
That's I'm not saying Return of the Jedi would have
been better under his direction. I don't know, but I
would like to see that movie man Ewoks.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
How weird were those eoks?

Speaker 3 (27:15):
If then 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

(27:38):
mind today, or like the superhero movies that I watch
on airplanes, that field 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. They're you know, O, They're fun. There's nothing
to really jar or unsettle the viewer, nothing to cause

(28:00):
doubts or reflection 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

(28:21):
a movie by David Lynch finding something full of strange
and disturbing imagery 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

(28:43):
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 that I loved it. So
David Lynch movies are full of scenes, scenes and images
that do not go down smooth. They do not flow
with the logic of standard entertainment storytelling. To use like

(29:04):
a musical analogy, there are a lot of motifs that
use notes from out of the song's key, and yet
they they end up producing something that is very memorable
and feels very true and revealing almost kind of ancient.
A metaphor I've thought of before is that I feel
like when I'm watching a David Lynch movie, it's like

(29:25):
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 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

(29:47):
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 2 (29:56):
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 going to spoil it, but anyone who's
seen it probably knows, like which kind of like terrifying
moment I'm talking about.

Speaker 3 (30:08):
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, you know, conversations people have that almost
kind of like remind you of something. It's like, what
are they talking about? This? This connects to something, but

(30:29):
it's hard to 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 Doune,
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

(30:51):
trying to think 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 2 (31:11):
Hmmm, well, maybe not so much with this film.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
Yeah, it doesn't really seem all that wholesome on the surface, doesn't.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
No, No, most the unwholesome characters are unwholesome on the
surface by definition, like intensely so, as we'll discuss.

Speaker 3 (31:25):
Another thing is people who can't remember something important. There's
something important that happened to them, or something important they
know and they can't put it together.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
I guess we see some kind of shades of that
in this, however, distantly echoed m hm.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
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 themselves. Sometimes this will be a character with a
split personality. Other times a character literally changing bodily into

(32:03):
another person or not knowing which person they are. Lynch
is really obsessed with doubles.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
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 (32:17):
Oh man, Yeah, wait, which plot element from the sequels
are you calling out there?

Speaker 2 (32:21):
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. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:44):
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 2 (32:56):
Yeah, I've never seen anything where he was he like
even retroactively trash the novel and said like I didn't
like it and I didn't want to adapt it. Like
you know, he says that they 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

(33:18):
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 (33:23):
M 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 2 (33:40):
Yeah, maybe not so much so. I guess you could
make an argument for Kalad and Aracus being kind of
mirror worlds in a way.

Speaker 3 (33:47):
I can see that characters who like suddenly realize they
are responsible for something bad happening and had been oblivious
to their responsibility.

Speaker 2 (33:58):
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 (34:07):
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 get
shot in a 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 bordering

(34:31):
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 standing up,

(34:52):
kind of swaying in a daze between life and death.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
I think we definitely see elements of this and doom. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
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 2 (35:17):
Well obviously not just one really, but but that Yeah,
I guess that is the theme of his work.

Speaker 3 (35:22):
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 some of the
outfits feel and I think I'm reaching here. I'm trying.

(35:45):
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
we can get to the music and Dune in a minute,

(36:07):
which I think has highs and lows, but the highs
are great. Lynch specifically uses ambient sound in a way
that has a powerful effect on the feelings of the viewer,
a specifically sound missing from scenes where it should be,
or strange sounds in scenes where they should not be.

(36:28):
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 I shared with you

(36:51):
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 the scene, like

(37:11):
the sound of the party drops out as the two
of them start talking, and it it creates a really
uh focused, dreamlike effect that heightens the horror.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
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 daring it Yeah, the sound
is dropped out and become this It's become this ambient

(37:43):
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 (37:55):
That's a great way of putting it. And uh, and
I think does Lynch you 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 2 (38:09):
It reminds me a little bit of how 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 hellish

(38:33):
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. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:41):
Yeah, it's like the contextual inappropriateness that makes it striking
and profound.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:48):
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 2 (39:09):
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 American
sci 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 in the Sea, is a near

(39:31):
future submarine tale he began research on, done 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 it
became the most successful and influential sci fi novel of

(39:53):
all time.

Speaker 3 (39:54):
Pretty much seems like almost every really great novel, people
initially have the reaction of, I don't know how to
market this.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
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, you know, 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. So
Herbert followed Dune up with numerous standalone novels two other series,

(40:23):
but the Dune Saga remains his most well known work.
Dune Messiah followed in sixty nine, Children of Dune 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

(40:45):
author Kevin J. Anderson would eventually continue writing stories set
in the Dune universe, including bear version of an 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 Joe Droowski attempt in the
mid seventies. There was even an earlier early seventies attempt

(41:06):
that may have even had David Lean attached at one
point to direct, but I don't think that went anywhere.
And then when Dino de Larente's got the rights, he
was working with Ridley Scott initially and like that 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

(41:27):
also they were perhaps butting heads a little bit, weren't
like getting to where they thought they needed to creatively
on the project. Mmm.

Speaker 3 (41:35):
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, it was very cinematic, But as
we talked about earlier, so much of the book is

(41:55):
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 way,

(42:17):
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 adapting this,

(42:41):
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 2 (42:54):
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 of Trades is 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

(43:15):
players in what happens, but ultimately you have to make
some choices on the screen, And what are you going
to focus on this?

Speaker 3 (43:21):
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 2 (43:33):
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 (43:49):
Oh that's true. Also, I mean explains everything about the
conspiracy against how uh it just like leaves nothing to
be to be revealed or discovered, essentially except the old
thing I think is like who the trader in house?
The trades is? Everything else is like told right up top,
here's the conspiracy, here's what they're gonna do.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
Yeah, not just to the viewer, but like the characters know,
like Paul knows, He's like I figured it out.

Speaker 3 (44:11):
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 2 (44:21):
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

(44:42):
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,

(45:03):
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
Shockwaves director Ken Whiderhorn during production.

Speaker 3 (45:24):
Dark Tower That's not Stephen King is no connection.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
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

(45:49):
Sons and Lovers and nineteen nineties Glory.

Speaker 3 (45:52):
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 Doone. 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 2 (46:16):
Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean, kind of like
this sort of baroque weirdness. I don't know, a.

Speaker 3 (46:21):
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 2 (46:34):
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 Guilt Navigator. Oh.

Speaker 3 (46:53):
I thought you were going to say the Sandworm, but
here we go.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
Well, you know that's right, there is the sandword. 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 Barberella.

(47:18):
Oh Man. And finally we have to talk about the
music for David Lynch's DOUN. 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

(47:42):
descriptor for Toto genre. I've really struggled with this.

Speaker 3 (47:47):
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 2 (48:05):
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,

(48:28):
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 (48:36):
Oh yes, yeah, it's I mean, it's very very smooth,
but it's 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 2 (48:51):
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 and of sessions musicians, and at
the time of the recording of this score, the band
consisted of Steve Lucather, David Posh, Steve Porco, Mike Porcio,

(49:13):
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 at any rate, 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 (49:31):
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.

Speaker 2 (49:47):
Stuff like that. Yeah, So they did 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 on Dido Dealer inis his part, Okay, we're gonna
take this mid sixties sci fi tale, but we want,

(50:10):
we want to hit, we want we want to connect
with modern film viewers. We want it 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 film is totally different from

(50:31):
what they're going after in Din.

Speaker 3 (50:33):
I mean, Queen was perfect for Flash Gordon. It's like
it is a perfect fit. As we were saying that,
like the 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 of the feeling of the film. And so yeah,

(50:55):
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 2 (51:06):
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.

Speaker 3 (51:20):
Conan the Barbarian score by the Scorpions.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
So I always kind of like assume 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 Giorgio Moroder

(51:47):
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,

(52:09):
you know, we met and he thought we were right
for it, and that's how it came to be.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
Okay, I would not have expected that.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
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 (52:30):
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 ads 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 2 (52:50):
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

(53:11):
tempos that are cinematically informed and cinematically appropriate. For instance,
Dune Desert Theme, that track feels very Toto in Africa
and is great in that sense. While the main title
you know, this is the Boom Boom Boom Boom is
more brooding and cinematic. It's a great track, totally fits

(53:31):
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

(53:52):
organ number that I think would feel perfectly at home
in virtually any Italian horror movie.

Speaker 3 (53:57):
Yeah, there's a lot of great stuff in the 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.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
Ye.

Speaker 3 (54:16):
But there are some parts of the score that I
think don't work quite as well. And the parts 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 2 (54:27):
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.

(54:48):
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
all 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.

(55:09):
You can't compare a total score to a Zimmer score.
They're both great in their own way.

Speaker 3 (55:13):
Sorry, I'm just looking at what Hans Zimmer has scored now.
Oh he he did Twister. Yeah, there'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.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
I'm sorry, it's not.

Speaker 3 (55:31):
Even that Twister. It's a different Twister that is also
a movie about tornadoes.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
Oh okay, they didn't adapt the board game or the
floor game Twister the motion picture.

Speaker 3 (55:54):
Okay, what are we doing now? Are we gonna go
start talking about the plot and introduce some actors as
we go along?

Speaker 2 (56:02):
Yes, let us attempt to do this. Bear with us.
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 (56:11):
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 an 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 2 (56:33):
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 Sideways She was in the

(56:55):
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's Candy Man,
nineteen ninety five's The Prophecy, The Christopher Walken Angel one
that we might get to at some point, and various
other TV projects.

Speaker 3 (57:14):
Robert, are we going to do Highlander two The Quickening
this year?

Speaker 2 (57:17):
We should? You know, we have that older stuff to
blow your mind episode about Highlander 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 (57:28):
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 2 (57:40):
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 (57:52):
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 2 (58:03):
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

(58:23):
more important in the next Dune film.

Speaker 3 (58:26):
Yeah. So in this movie, because it's just an adaptation
of the first novel, Princess Irelan'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 2 (58:44):
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 (58:55):
Well wait, so I feel like I should just actually
read her opening narration so you can get a sin
because I feel like you can feel everything just 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 Shaddam the Fourth, my father

(59:19):
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, which

(59:39):
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

(01:00:01):
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 Done. 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 follow

(01:00:23):
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 phrased in

(01:00:44):
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

(01:01:04):
to kind of like materialize and be 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 2 (01:01:26):
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,

(01:01:49):
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 Dune chapters in
the novel. And you know, it's probably the better choice

(01:02:13):
as opposed to the extended prologue that I imagine was cut
and 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 is

(01:02:34):
still pretty fun. You can find it on YouTube and stuff,
and also I'm sure in DVD extras it's amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:02:40):
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

(01:03:01):
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 2 (01:03:13):
Yeah, it's ultimately a weird start to a weird film.

Speaker 3 (01:03:17):
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's straight into more of an unknown voice talking

(01:03:39):
to you. I think this is a member of the
Spacing Guild.

Speaker 2 (01:03:42):
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 much attention before,
but now I love it.

Speaker 3 (01:03:55):
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 Housitreides, Planet gide Prime, home of

(01:04:16):
House Harkonen. Planet Katon, home of the Emperor of the
known Universe. Send a third stage Guild 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. Yeah, anyway,

(01:04:39):
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 very urbanized planet, with
brightly lit city skylines in the background. This, I guess
is sort of the Imperial capital planet, and strange figures

(01:04:59):
are seen disembarking from the ship. We see 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 2 (01:05:14):
Yeah, Yeah, everything is very industrial slash regal, you know,
in a very fitting way, you know, and in 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

(01:05:37):
some extent, and or the rigors of spice use and
or interplanetary interstellar travel have taken a toll on their bodies.

Speaker 3 (01:05:47):
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 peer to mix influences of industrial technology
and influences of like high church and religion. A lot

(01:06:08):
of characters and the ways 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
working in a factory that produces hazardous chemicals.

Speaker 2 (01:06:25):
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 (01:06:48):
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 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 in

(01:07:11):
the palace are dressed like mourners, and black dresses and
black veils, old men in black military uniforms, Imperial dog
walkers leading packs of bulldogs around. Most of the courtiers
leave the throne room as the Guild Navigator approaches, and
we see the Emperor conferring anxiously with an adviser, a

(01:07:32):
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.

(01:07:55):
Some characters in Dune have psychic clairvoyance, like 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,

(01:08:17):
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

(01:08:37):
so you don't know what kinds of knowledge different characters
have access to. If that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
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 (01:08:58):
Yeah, but anyway, so she's there the job.

Speaker 2 (01:09:01):
We should talk about these two actors though, Oh oh.

Speaker 3 (01:09:04):
Wait, I'm sorry. Yes, the Emperor and the Reverend Mother
both both I think great performances in both cases.

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):
Yeah. Yeah, so as the Patashah Emperor Shaddam. The fourth
we have Jose Ferrer, who lived nineteen twelve through nineteen
ninety two, Puerto Rican actor and film director, best known
for such films as nineteen fifty Cirino de Bergeract, a
film for which he was the first Hispanic actor to
win an Academy Award. He was also in fifty fours
The Kinge Mutiny. But his filmography, like a lot of folks,

(01:09:31):
ultimately includes everything you know across the spectrum, from nineteen
sixty two's Lawrence of Arabia to nineteen seventy seven's The
Sentinel and Zoltan Hound of Dracula aka Dracula's Dog.

Speaker 3 (01:09:46):
Oh boy, I'd like Jose Ferrer's approach to this role,
which is kind of unassuming, like 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

(01:10:06):
instead he plays this character like a careful politician, someone
who is who is clever and circumspect and trying to
carefully manage his relationships and allegiances.

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
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, but I would imagine it's it's
more on the intended scale. Because, Yeah, this Farrer was
a great actor. We've talked about his son, Miguel Ferrera
before because he was of course in RoboCop and he

(01:10:44):
was the uncle of George Cliney.

Speaker 3 (01:10:45):
M Miguel Ferrera was great at in a lot of
eighties movies, just like playing jerks.

Speaker 2 (01:10:52):
Yeah, now, real quick, I will mention that this is
a character that has also been played by John Carlo
Janini that was the mini series, and more recently by
Christopher Walkin in Denny Vee's adaptations. I need to see
doing part two and once more before I fully make

(01:11:13):
up my mind on Christopher Walkin's performance.

Speaker 3 (01:11:15):
Okay, all right.

Speaker 2 (01:11:17):
In the other character, Reverend Mother Guy 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 benigestri
At 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 Chaal in Ewok's The Battle

(01:11:39):
for indoor Ah.

Speaker 3 (01:11:41):
I forgot about those connections, but she is wonderful in
this role. 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

(01:12:02):
ultimately is revealed to kind of be 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 2 (01:12:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The benages Rates 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 benagest rates.
But I have to say, as far as just Sean

(01:12:38):
Phillips's presence and 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,

(01:13:02):
let's 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

(01:13:27):
blasts 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

(01:13:49):
we never meet a guild navigator or a guild steersman
in the first Doune 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, and a lingering sense of confusion. So

(01:14:14):
I absolutely love it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:15):
So as you say this scene is not in the
first novel, I mean, 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.

Speaker 2 (01:14:37):
Right at the beginning, Yeah, because to be clear, the
new adaptations have no guild navigators. And then we briefly
see the spacing guild in Dune part one, but we
certainly never see a Guild Navigator.

Speaker 3 (01:14:51):
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 that starts speaking into
it with this inhuman language and it translates to the
Beni Jesert. Witch must leave, so the Emperor bids her leave.

(01:15:11):
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 doors 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

(01:15:34):
gigantic octopus like creature. And this is the Guild Navigator.
It's someone who I think 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 2 (01:15:52):
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 the form that they have mutated into.
In this they go into more almost kind of like
embryonic direction. The creature is stranger, even stranger to behold,

(01:16:12):
and it is it is glorious. Is it is an
unforgettable visual aspect of the pope motion picture. And it's
just again brilliantly weird and sets the tone for the
whole picture.

Speaker 3 (01:16:24):
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

(01:16:46):
between two great houses house Atriades and how Sarconin, 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 Atriodes House is building a secret
army using a technique unknown to us, a technique involving sound.

(01:17:07):
The Duke is becoming more popular in the lands Rod.
He could threaten me. I think the LANs Rod is
the the parliament of this universe. Essentially, he could threaten me.
I have ordered Hou Satrades to occupy Aracus to mine
the spice, thus replacing their enemies. The Harconans house Atrides
will not refuse because of the tremendous power they think

(01:17:30):
they will gain. Then, at an appointed time, Baron Harconan
will return to Iracus and launch a sneak attack on
hou Satraides. I have promised the Baron five legions of
my Sardekar 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.

(01:17:52):
On one hand, it 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. Yeah, 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 Atreadees,

(01:18:14):
the son of Duke Leto Atradees, and the Guild Navigator says,
I want paul A Trades killed. I did not say this,
I was not here.

Speaker 2 (01:18:25):
I love this moment.

Speaker 3 (01:18:26):
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 2 (01:18:41):
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 (01:18:59):
So Emperor Shadam is left wondering what the Spacing Guild.
Why would the Spacing Guild be so afraid of Duke
Letto'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 benijesa At sisters and says

(01:19:19):
they must examine paul Atreides, 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

(01:19:40):
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 in to David Lynch's

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

Speaker 2 (01:20:03):
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 (01:20:14):
We'll see just an unmanageable chunk.

Speaker 2 (01:20:17):
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 un stuff 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

(01:20:38):
doesn't 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

(01:20:59):
or but in 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. Oh boy, yeah,
the books, the book books have so much weirdness in them.
It's suited one of your donkeys. Let's see Mondays we
do listener mails, and yes, indeed, on Fridays we set
aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird

(01:21:21):
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. It's l
E T T E R B O x D dot com.
It's a fun side overall for you know, chronicling movies,
seeing you know what the different different connections are between
different productions. But we are on there as weird House,

(01:21:42):
that's our user name, and we have a list and
you can look at all the things we've covered thus far,
and you can throw on different filters to see, like, Okay,
which movies from the fifties did we do? Which movies? Uh,
which sci fi movies did we do? Which fantasy movies?
And so forth. It's a lot of fun.

Speaker 3 (01:21:57):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audi your producer
JJ Posway. 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 1 (01:22:19):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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