As some of you may know, I worked in Hollywood for a bit. I’m not famous or anything, but I did spend quite a bit of time doing what they call “Production.” Briefly, that’s the nuts and bolts, day to day part of the filmmaking (or TV or commercials) process where you pull all the elements (lights, cameras, locations, vehicles, crew, etc., etc.) together and then push, drag, bribe, cajole, beg, borrow or steal and finally get the whole thing kicking and screaming into the light.
It’s an extremely rewarding experience helping bring something that only exists on paper to life on the big or small screen. It’s also a huge amount of work (I’m talking 15-hour days, seven days a week sometimes) and, on many occasions, a monumental pain in the ass.
The truth is in showbiz sometimes shit just doesn’t go right and often a person in my (former) position is one of the few people who can fix whatever the problems are and get the whole thing working again. But sometimes things just can’t be fixed and you have to cut your losses and move on. Sadly, that happens more often then it should.
That brings me to the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune. In case you’re not familiar, someone tried to make a movie version of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune before we ended up with the one David Lynch (or Alan Smithee depending on the version) ended up making.
That person was cult filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsk. And this documentary is the story of a monumental failure that ended up changing modern sci-fi movies forever. I have no trouble believing almost (if not) all of what the movie says happened, happened. Hollywood is a crazy bitch sometimes.
Check out the trailer below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WWu1kclNDA?rel=0&w=560&h=315]
