Dune Movie

"We spent six years developing Dune. I didn't want to rush this one and make a silly film."
-Dino De Laurentiis, pre-production comment prior to the filming of Dune.1

On January 31, 2006 Dune Extended Edition will be released on DVD by Universal Studios here in the U.S., but to many fans disappointment and dismay- this 2 disc DVD version will not include a certifiable extended "Director's cut" by the film's director, David Lynch. Earlier this year, rumors of Lynch's involvement with a newly restored Director's cut of the Dune film spurred interest around the globe. Those rumors turned out to be untrue.

Fans of the film were left scratching their heads. Many wondered why Universal's Dune is still languishing in film limbo- it's so called life between two edited versions. A more discerning question is: Does the rough cut of Dune have enough expository value for anyone, including Lynch, to re-edit this film to the point the story makes some type of cohesive narrative sense?

DUNE: THE FAILED EPIC

"In film, there is a fine line between disaster and triumph."
-Dino De Laurentiis, May 1984, 7 months before Dune opens in the U.S.

The story of just what went wrong with one of the most of the expensive and well-planned film productions in cinematic history has become as much the stuff of myth as it has reality. Dune's problems unfolded over many decades and involved hundreds of people: producers, writers, artists, designers, musicians and directors, who tried in vain to bring Herbert's classic science fiction novel to the screen. Inherently, there were many insurmountable problems with various studio projects that encumbered Dune's development as a film. We may never really know all of them.

In most cases, Dune projects failed because no one seemed capable enough of writing a script that was both comprehensive and good enough to be made into a movie. After numerous failed literary attempts to turn Frank Herbert's complex novel into a film, slowly, insidiously, a myth began spreading in Hollywood that perhaps Herbert had written the one book that could not be translated into a movie. By the end of 1984, many had started to wonder if the myth was true.

The Script from Hell

"That was the biggest challenge," Raffaella De Laurentiis said. "To turn that book into a movie and keep all that's in the book in the movie. Some writers tried to change it drastically. Others tried to keep some of the characters and eliminate other ones. David (Lynch) was really the first to keep the essence of the book in one, tight script. I think he's gotten the core of what's in the book onto the screen without changing the mood or hurting the characters."1.

"The script is a starting point... you can't be locked in when you make a movie... I like things under control, but I still realize, maybe now more than ever, that I cannot work being locked into a script or story." David Lynch, p. 232 The Making of Dune.

Frank Herbert and Producer, Dino De Laurentiis

One of the problems with adapting a screenplay from a literary work is; the structure of the story is already set. Dramatic license notwithstanding, it's sometimes difficult to supply a script with back stories or lengthy characterizations especially when they may conflict with basic plot elements of the story in subsequent chapters of the book. Producing a good script from a literary adaptation not only requires adept writing skills, the writer must also be so immersed in the author's original source material that he composes the screenplay in the same mindset as though he was penning one of the author's sequels.
Consequently, David Lynch had never heard of Dune prior to receiving a call from Raffaella De Laurentiis to direct the movie. This was not, in itself, a hurdle had this perhaps been any other novel- but Dune was anything but an ordinary novel. Dense, intricate and recondite, one could easily lose one's way in Dune's deeply complex literary narrative.
Unfamiliar with the Dune novel, even Lynch himself had serious doubts about the project's success. "I probably wouldn't like the book because I had never bothered to read it on my own," he said in an interview, prior to accepting the directorial job. 1.
Dune was alien terrain for Lynch, and despite the brilliant director's talents for showcasing the whimsical, no one could digest the intricacies of Frank Herbert's Dune in one sitting and then churn out a script. Lynch's seven script rewrites was living testament to that.
Dune was a novel of inordinate complexity. It had taken Frank Herbert 6 years of research and writing to transcribe the first Dune novel. No one fully understood the enormity of translating Frank Herbert's 500-plus-page novel into a comprehensible shooting script, especially in an era where the two hour studio movie and the 120 page script were the rule, not the exception.
Large budget epic films had all but disappeared in Hollywood by the 1960's, especially in wake of the auteur movement and the subsequent decline of the American studio system. The lavish production of Mankiewicz's Cleopatra, for example, in 1963, a four hour spectacle, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, had not only failed to recover its production cost at the box office; it officially hastened the demise of the so-called studio epic. Decades later, even a critically acclaimed literary work like Dune, with its so-called 'scope of epic proportions', would not be immune from the prospects of potential box-office failure. In the end, producing a screen adaptation from Frank Herbert's classic novel would prove more difficult than trying to survive a drink of the water of life. Ironically, it can be said: many tried and failed. Some died.

Perhaps there was a grain of truth to what Dino De Laurentiis said, "You have to be crazy to make a movie like Dune." 1.