A Masterpiece in Disarray

Max Evry

Description

Extensive promotional, social media, and advertising campaigns planned for 2023 and 2024. Interviews with author Max Evry, podcasts, signings, and additional on-line promotion. Dune buzz and demand for related books should be high as the film Dune: Part Two releases theatrically in November, 2023.

• First print run 10,000 copies.
• Marketing includes advance digital reader copies, features in film and sci-fi-related publications and websites, social media campaign, trade shows/comic cons, podcasts, giveaways/contests.
• In recent years Dune returned as a high-profile franchise; the original Frank Herbert book series is selling well again plus the Dune film reboot was well-received. Dune: Part Two is due in theaters November, 2023.
• Book will sell solidly during the 2023 holiday season, but also through 2024 with continued attention on the Dune film sequel.
• International sales opportunities. The 2021 Dune film was as successful internationally as it was in the US.

PROLOGUE

Years ago, while attending a press event for a hit film, I met its A-list director at an arranged dinner. This filmmaker had been briefly attached to a big-budget remake of Dune, so during a casual moment I waltzed up with my drink and asked him if he had seen the recent documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, a semi-hot item in the geek community. He had neither seen nor heard of it. Nor did he seem to be aware that Alejandro Jodorowsky had ever planned on making Dune . . . and potentially didn’t know who Jodorowsky was. He mentioned how challenging Dune would be to execute in a commercial way and particularly noted that he never wanted his (now-scrapped) Dune to be “campy like the David Lynch version.”

“Campy.” The Fremen warrior deep within me declared a kind of passive-aggressive holy war on this man, no matter how many billions his movies had made. Of course, not every successful filmmaker is a cineaste, and a few might barely enjoy movies at all. But still, this dismissive word bothered me: “CAMPY.”

Not that I couldn’t see his point. Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s vaunted novel is flawed. Very flawed. Some of the effects are sub-Asylum level by today’s standards, and the performances range from bizarre to laughably broad. That’s not even taking into account how fatally compressed much of the 412-page narrative is when filtered into a 2-hour-17-minute movie. Despite all this, I continue to take exception to blithely writing off Lynch’s vision as “camp.”

One element that director was right about is how challenging Herbert’s book is to adapt. Boy, oh boy, is it ever. Before Lynch came on board to make the picture for producer Dino De Laurentiis, it vexed both Jodorowsky and Ridley Scott. Tackling this film took three years of Lynch’s life and a crew of 1,700 building 80 sets on 8 sound stages. Upon release it bemused critics and befuddled audiences, resulting in a box office dud that even Lynch has worked to distance himself from.

Nevertheless, I firmly believe 1984’s Dune to be a landmark of science-fiction cinema. It’s the byproduct of a supremely avant-garde artist (Lynch) working in conjunction with Hollywood machinery (Universal Pictures) for huge financial stakes (a reported $40 million budget, over $100 million adjusted for inflation) to produce a deeply eccentric blockbuster. When seen through the lens of today’s tentpole films, whose four-quadrant aspirations render them hopelessly homogenous, Lynch’s Dune is a unique oddity, equal parts baroque and philistine.

There are incredible moments in the film adaptation of Dune that have stuck with me since I first saw it as a tween in pan-and-scan form on TV: the mutated Guild Navigator confronting the Emperor while floating in a murky terrarium, Paul with his hand in “the box,” Baron Harkonnen flying through the air while laughing maniacally, and Sting with a blade in his hand, wildly boasting “I will kill him!” Oh, and let’s not forget those sandworms, which through a blizzard of miniature sand particles manage to evoke a phallus and vagina dentata simultaneously. One could easily blow up, frame, and hang at least three dozen shots from this film in a museum, and have them mistaken for anything from a Rococo-era genre painting to a Francis Bacon nightmare.

Luckily, this book has allowed me to do a deep dive into a film that has obsessed me since childhood. Hopefully, it will give Dune the same thorough examination that more praised films from the same era like Blade Runner or Brazil have received in the past. While I’m equally in love with those films, they are complete and successful works that have stood the test of time (provided you watch the director cuts). Dune, on the other hand, draws me in more because it’s so blatantly imperfect. Missed cinematic opportunities are a dime a dozen, but rarely do they hew as close to pure brilliance as Lynch’s epic. So how did it come to be so botched? Was Lynch too inexperienced? Too unfamiliar with sci-fi terrain? Or was it studio meddling? Penny-pinching producers? Is Dune simply, to pull an old chestnut, “unfilmable?”

The word “unfilmable” is often a euphemism for “challenging,” “uncommercial,” or simply not viable within a two- to three-hour feature length. Over a decade after Lynch’s take, a 265-minute TV miniseries version, Frank Herbert’s Dune, was mounted for the Sci-Fi Channel to mixed results. As I write, we are in the midst of Denis Villeneuve’s mega-budget remake of Dune that will span two films, with the first already on home video earning Oscars and the second in post-production.

Until that new set of films proves it can stick the landing, we will always have the Lynch version to consider, or reconsider if you have already seen and dismissed it. This book will attempt to cast new light on a movie that has been misunderstood in almost every conceivable way, whether by audiences unfamiliar with the source material, or literature fans upset at the many changes and deletions. It will delve into some of the earlier attempted versions, the epic struggles ‘Lynch and Co.’ faced mounting such a largescale project in Mexico, the aftermath for all involved, the versions that came after, and finally some modern critical takes looking at the nearly four-decade-old Dune with fresh eyes.

Hopefully, you’ll come to see it with a new perspective as well, and the sleeper Dune fan within shall awaken. Even if you still can’t bring yourself to call Dune a great film, perhaps I can convert some of you from red-faced haters to faint-praising it as a “bold swing-and-a-miss” or “fascinating failure.” You might even start referring to it as a “secret masterpiece” awaiting discovery . . . just don’t call it “campy.”

—Max Evry

CHAPTERHOUSES

Prologue
Author’s Note

I.   Pre-Production
     Dune Origins
     Previous Dune Attempts
     The Man from Another Place: David Lynch
     Detour to a Galaxy Far, Far Away
     Romancing De Laurentiis
     Building Four Worlds: Designing and Scripting Dune
     Casting a Galaxy of Stars
     Oral History: Pre-Production

II.  Production
     Location, Location, Location
     Start of Production
     Common Threads: Costuming
     Actors’ Experiences
     Production Problems
     Things That Make You Go Boom: Special Effects
     Oral History: Production

III. Post-Production and Release
     Band-Aids and Chewing Gum: Visual Effects
     Slice and Dice: Editing
     Not in Kansas Anymore: Toto’s Music
     Knife Fights on Lunchboxes: Marketing
     Dune and Gloom: Classic Reviews from 1984
     The Infamous Glossary
     Box Office and Awards
     Filmbooks: Home Video Releases
     Plans Within Plans: Alternate Cuts
     The Book vs. The Film
     Oral History: Post-Production & Release

IV. Legacy
     Dune Aftermath
     Oral History: Legacy
     Dune in Pop Culture
     Pyrrhic Victory: Fan Tributes
     Gholas: The Remakes
     Modern Impressions of Dune
     Mysteries of Love: Dune Symbols
     Interview: David Lynch
     Final Thoughts

Acknowledgments
Image Credits
About the Author

Sujets

• Genres
• Película fotográfica
• Film
• 1984

Informations

• Publié par: 1984 Publishing
• Date de parution: 19 septembre 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781948221306
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 14 Mo

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