Jodorowsky’s Dune
Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “Dune” is the greatest movie you’ll never see. Coming off the success of his cult-film “El Topo” — which launched the midnight film genre in 1970 — and his follow-up “The Holy Mountain” (1973) — which was well-received around the world — visionary director Jodorowsky decided to take on an incredible ambitious project: a feature film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s futuristic best-seller “Dune.” Jodorowsky saw the film not so much as a sci-fi epic but as a spiritual journey that would awaken a higher consciousness in audiences and change the role of cinema forever. To that end in 1975 he marshalled a support group of some of the most imposing icons of the era: Orson Welles, Mick Jagger, Salvador Dali, Pink Floyd, Dan O’Bannon, and visual artists H.R. Giger, Jean “Moebius” Giraud and Chris Foss. After two years of pre-production in which Jodorowsky and his crew created a hard-bound book of meticulous story boards, the project fell apart: none of the Hollywood studios — scared of the director’s reputation as a maverick — wanted to bankroll the production. Jodorowsky turned to writing comic books, making only a handful of films in the ensuing decades — but his ideas and concepts lived on in such films as “Star Wars,” “Alien,” “The Terminator” and even David Lynch’s awful version of “Dune.” Director Frank Pavich had unprecedented access to Jodorowsky, Giger, Gary Kurtz (producer, “Star Wars: Episodes IV and V”), Nicholas Winding Refn (director, “Drive”), Diane O’Bannon (Dan’s widow) and a host of others to tell the full saga of this amazing project.Extras: Deleted scenes. Vitals: Director: Frank Pavich. 2014, CC, MPAA rating: PG-13, 90 min., Documentary, Box office gross: $.523 million, Sony. 
