Jodorowsky's Dune

So I finally got to see Jodorowsky's Dune and here's what I think, in no real order.

• I've read some of Jodorowsky's comics, but I haven't seen any of his movies. The impression I get of his movies is that they're really crazy and get crazier. The impression I get of Dune is that despite the craziness, it would have been made with such incredible craft and technical skill that in some ways the story would have been very believable.
  
  
• I honestly don't know if Jodorowsky's Dune would be any less goofy than the Lynch Dune. Dune is a lousy movie and I completely love it for being a fun ride. I do know that the staggering goofiness of Jodorowsky's version would have been an even more ridiculously fun ride.
  
  
• One of the things that killed Dune was that the American studios wanted it to run 90 minutes. The Lynch Dune at 2+ hours is stripped down to the point of losing a lot of characterization and plot, and I cannot imagine anything working at that length but a story always envisioned for that run time.
  
  Oddly this connects with something I was reading earlier this week, in an archived Dragon on-line; there was this article about how Ralph Bakshi was finally adapting Lord of the Rings to film and the trilogy was so ponderous they were going to have to break it into two movies. Evidently Dune wasn't the only place where this thinking happened.
  
  The impression I get is that Hollywood at the time was more open than the view presented in the documentary - but they wanted outsider cinema to be safe to some extent, and a (I'm going to assume it would have been) 3 hour adult themed science fiction movie by an outside director stacked too many elements which weren't a sure "sell." I'd be willing to bet they got the 90 minute answer multiple times because editing the movie down would probably limit some of the trippiness and make it more like 2001, where it's fairly solidly safe fare except for one sequence at the end which is deep if you're a Baby Boomer suddenly discovering concepts like spirituality or weed.
  
  
• Speaking of Ralph, the funniest part of Wizards last time I saw it was actually an interview on the DVD, where Bakshi's got a giant tuft of chest plumage sticking out of his shirt while he's going on about how great Wizards was. He talks about how it's a film with heart. Thus, when Jodorowsky's talking about how movies have heart, with a big tuft of chest hair sticking out of his shirt, I started giggling. This was supposed to be at the most serious part of the documentary by the way.
  
  
• If there's an inspiring take-away from Jodorowsky's Dune, it's that comic books are ridiculously awesome. Jodorowsky never got to make Dune and instead he wrote fantastic comics which did the same things - but cheaper and with less distribution. A page of sequential art is unlikely to hit the budget limitations of movies even though it can do 'way more. You can have special effects beyond your imagination, elaborate plot and character motivation explained by words as well as through action, any actor you might possibly want to hire, and you can spend hours analyzing a panel which might be a few seconds of screen time. Comics are just that good.
  
  
• It's hilarious how the big artists on the project were national stereotypes. You've got Moebius, who had this incredible aspect of craft and technical proficiency under all the exuberant enthusiasm; Chris Foss works the opposite direction, where he has the classic British thing going on - underneath talking about what sort of jam would be really lovely with tea this afternoon is someone who dreams of things like giant spacecraft spanning the rift between stars; Giger appears deep and brooding but once you get past the technical polish he's like any other high schooler obsessed with drawing skulls and twats; I guess Dan O'Bannon might be a fairly complimentary American stereotype, the sort of guy who would go off to Paris just like that.
  
  
• Paris is magical in ways I can't even explain. I don't think all of those ways are necessarily positive either. Every time I see especially film footage of the place, I can understand why my family in France went right back there as soon as the war was over. I want to go there before I die.