David Lynch’s DUNE Explained: Strangely Beautiful Disaster

…, stormed into the very insular world of Hollywood filmmakers. Although the story of John Merrick did not win Lynch an Oscar, it gave him something far more valuable — recognition. Dune

Positive reviews from all over the world ensured that Lynch was no longer treated as an eccentric curiosity, known only for one of the most disturbing films circulating among cinemas hosting wild, late-night screenings. The Elephant Man proved that the strange, young man who had once dedicated several years to creating a hypnotic madman’s dream could make a film that appealed to a much broader audience.

What’s more, he could do it in such a way that people would reach for tissues and shyly cover their tear-filled eyes. After the final scene of David Lynch’s second feature film, tears were streaming down the cheeks of people who claimed they rarely got emotional during a cinema screening. One of them was Raffaella De Laurentiis, the daughter of the famous Hollywood film producer, Dino De Laurentiis. The 26-year-old woman, after watching The Elephant Man, knocked on her influential father’s door and, with tears in her eyes, declared that she had found the director for the film that had haunted not only Dino De Laurentiis but also several other highly recognizable artists for years. Two months after the Oscar ceremony, during which Lynch walked the red carpet for the first time, the American was chosen as the director of Dune, a film that, in the early 1980s, had one of the largest production budgets in cinema history.

David Lynch on the set of Dune

Before deciding to collaborate with Dino De Laurentiis and his daughter, Lynch tried to raise the funds needed to produce a film that had been conceived in his mind even before directing The Elephant Man. Ronnie Rocket, a crazy story about a small man who, after an electrical discharge, becomes part superhero and part international rock music star, was waiting to be made but kept scaring away successive producers. The vision of a neon-lit, nocturnal city, the surreal script, and the accumulation of many strange, not fully understandable events and symbols definitely did not align with the calculations of a group of Hollywood bankers.

The person closest to getting involved with Ronnie Rocket was someone who had been rooting for Lynch since his Eraserhead days. Francis Ford Coppola used to show Lynch’s debut film to actors gathered on the set of Apocalypse Now to put them in a paranoid mood, to make them understand how the psyche of a terrified person works. After the premiere of The Elephant Man, Coppola invited Lynch to his estate.

He flipped through the Ronnie Rocket script several times and then asked Lynch to read it aloud in his presence. After long hours of conversations, the Godfather director expressed his desire to involve American Zoetrope, the studio he co-founded with George Lucas, in the project. Unfortunately, it quickly turned out that Coppola would not be able to help Lynch, as he had fallen into serious financial trouble himself. The shooting of his musical, One from the Heart, began consuming more and more money. Ultimately, the film cost $26 million, which did not translate at all to box office success. After its 1981 release, the musical earned only $636,000 in the United States. This failure prevented the studio from engaging in Lynch’s project, which, due to his imagination, would not have been among the cheapest either.

Ronnie Rocket was shelved once again. However, during his visit to Coppola’s, Lynch met a guest of his — the popular singer and budding actor Sting, who would soon don the Harkonnen family suit and fight for control of the sandy Arrakis.

From the beginning, Lynch was apprehensive about large budgets and producers considered to be big shots in the industry. He was also not particularly interested in directing a film created from another writer’s imagination. That’s why he turned down a lucrative offer from George Lucas, who had offered him the job of directing Return of the Jedi. The lack of freedom to alter the script, characters, and look of the Star Wars universe led Lynch to pass on the project, which went to Richard Marquand instead. When Dino De Laurentiis called him, Lynch was visibly surprised and thought there would never be a meeting of minds between him and one of the most influential producers in Hollywood at the time. In interviews, Lynch often mentioned that he decided to visit Laurentiis’s office out of sheer curiosity.

What’s more, although Frank Herbert’s Dune was a literary phenomenon and the story of its film adaptation was already becoming one of the greatest modern cinematic legends, Lynch had no idea what the producer was talking about during their phone conversation. For a large part of the conversation, he was convinced that Laurentiis wanted him to direct a film called June, not Dune. However, before meeting face-to-face, the director caught up and decided that Frank Herbert’s vision was remarkably close to his own. A brief conversation with the producer went in a way Lynch never would have expected. He felt that Laurentiis loved movies and that Dune was his pet project.

The genuine enthusiasm from the Hollywood mogul made Lynch excited about the project, and he ultimately agreed to collaborate. That’s how another American dream could begin. However, in the history of cinema, Dune will probably forever be associated not so much with a dream but with a creative nightmare.

The Curse of Dune

The enormous publishing success of Frank Herbert’s novel led to Hollywood’s quick interest in acquiring film rights. Dune debuted on bookshelves in 1965.

In the late 1960s, Arthur P. Jacobs, the producer behind the 1968 Planet of the Apes, was preparing to make a film adaptation. Unfortunately, a heart attack prevented Jacobs from embarking on a journey to the sandy planet filled with valuable spice. After his death in 1973, Dune resurfaced in the film market. It was then that Alejandro Jodorowsky and Michel Seydoux appeared on the scene, beginning efforts to create a multi-hour version of Dune, which they initially planned to release as a single film, screened without any breaks or division into parts. A unique mix of talents and personalities gathered around the project. The creation of the cinematic world was to be overseen by Jean “Moebius” Giraud (a renowned French artist) and H.

R. Giger (the painter who designed the Xenomorph for Alien). They were to be assisted by Salvador Dalí, who agreed to help create visuals depicting the Dune universe and even act in the film.

Other potential cast members included Orson Welles, Gloria Swanson, and Mick Jagger. The music for the film was promised by Pink Floyd, who agreed to collaborate after meeting Jodorowsky in a restaurant. The Chilean criticized them, saying they were more interested in eating burgers than participating in a great artistic endeavor. The argument must have struck a chord with the Brits. Despite Dune making it past the conceptual phase, leaving behind a legacy of magnificent storyboards and visuals depicting the smallest details of the Arrakis universe, the costs exceeded what the market could bear at that time.

Jodorowsky fought to the end, but ultimately failed to secure funding, which meant the film rights reverted to the market. That’s when a massive fan of Herbert’s novel, Dino De Laurentiis, stepped into the fray.

JODOROWSKY’S DUNE, by H.R. Giger

De Laurentiis acquired the rights to Dune in 1978. Out of respect for the author, he visited Herbert’s ranch right after purchasing them, offering to let Herbert prepare the screenplay.

The creator of the literary universe was eager to work on the adaptation, given complete freedom by De Laurentiis. However, it quickly became apparent that Herbert’s attachment to his book was too personal. He couldn’t remove any subplot, resulting in a 175-page typescript that would be impossible to translate into a film likely to captivate a global audience. Yet Herbert didn’t take offense at being distanced from the project. De Laurentiis changed his strategy, deciding to find a director before hiring a screenwriter, hoping that a filmmaker would impose a clear vision of what they wanted to achieve during production. The choice fell on Ridley Scott, who had just celebrated triumphs after the excellent reception of Alien — a film that would likely have looked very different without H.

R. Giger’s work on Jodorowsky’s unmade Dune. After hiring Scott, De Laurentiis tasked Rudolph Wurlitzer with writing the screenplay, a writer known for Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid and the somewhat forgotten Two-Lane Blacktop. However, Wurlitzer quickly made a mess, introducing an incestuous relationship between Paul Atreides and Lady Jessica. Herbert’s outrage was so great that despite swift editing actions, the screenplay was essentially discarded. When it turned out that Ridley Scott’s vision was spiraling out of financial control as quickly as Jodorowsky’s insane project, the undertaking was hanging by a thread. In 1980, Ridley’s older brother Frank died unexpectedly of skin cancer.

In mourning, Scott stated that he didn’t have the strength to devote two or three years to Dune. His departure ultimately ended another attempt to adapt Frank Herbert’s prose. Shortly afterward, Raffaella knocked on Dino De Laurentiis’s door, and David Lynch joined the ship headed towards Arrakis.

Dino De Laurentiis, Raffaella De Laurentiis, David Lynch

Among the Sands of Arrakis

Immediately after signing the contract with the producer, Lynch set off for Tacoma, the home of Frank Herbert.

The two men spent several weeks together, during which they got to know and like each other. Years later, Lynch would recall that the only issue they couldn’t agree on was the choice of a diner or restaurant for dinner. But that was a trivial detail. In the early 1980s, what mattered was that Herbert and Lynch communicated well regarding the adaptation of Dune. The filmmaker’s ideas pleased the author, who treated his most important novel like a child. This is not surprising since Dune is full of elements that resonate with Lynch’s fascinations. All kinds of dreamlike and hypnotic visions, rich descriptions of worlds with unusual textures, legends of the eternal battle between good and evil, the clash of the urban nightmare represented by the Harkonnen planet with the surreal harshness of the desert Arrakis — all of this certainly spoke to the American director’s imagination.

While Lynch was in Tacoma, the script for the film was being worked on by his friends, Christian De Vore and Eric Bergren (co-authors of The Elephant Man). However, their cinematic vision of Dune turned out to be so different from what Lynch had imagined that he decided to remove them from the project. With the scriptwriting position vacant again, the American knocked on De Laurentiis’s door and offered to take on the challenge himself. Initially, the producer wasn’t thrilled with the idea, but after receiving the first dozen pages of the script, he declared it the best Dune script he had read so far. Lynch was given the green light.

Around the same time, the team was being assembled, and locations were being scouted that could imitate the world created by Frank Herbert. Raffaella De Laurentiis, despite her young age, was appointed by her father as the coordinator of the entire undertaking. The choice eventually fell on the Churubusco studio in Mexico, located near the sand fields of Samalayuca, which once served as the backdrop for the gunslinger’s journey in Jodorowsky’s famous El Topo. It could be said that the spirit of the Chilean continually haunted the world populated by Atreides, Harkonnens, and Fremen. Churubusco was nothing like Hollywood studio complexes.

The Mexican production halls were large, but the services provided by their owners left much to be desired. Frequent problems with power supply and malfunctions often disrupted work on the premises. Communication was also poor, making it difficult for actors and crew members to contact their families and agents. To make matters worse, the harsh climate, exacerbated by the studio’s altitude (over 2,000 meters above sea level), took its toll. A significant portion of the crew suffered from unpleasant ailments that frequently paralyzed film production.

Lynch coped well with the difficulties of the set. From the early stages of the project, however, he was troubled by Raffaella’s insistence that the film’s length not exceed two hours. Given the complexity of Herbert’s vision, Lynch knew that containing the action within that time frame would be extremely challenging. To help manage the creative chaos, he relied on a carefully assembled team. Many of Lynch’s friends were involved in the Dune adaptation. The cinematographer was Freddie Francis, the director of photography for The Elephant Man. Sound effects were handled by Alan Splet, one of Lynch’s most loyal collaborators, who had assisted him during the creation of the short films The Grandmother and Eraserhead.

Speaking of Eraserhead, Henry Spencer, aka Jack Nance, another close friend of the director, was also part of the film’s cast. Additionally, Tony Masters, the set designer for Lawrence of Arabia and 2001: A Space Odyssey, joined the project — interestingly, he had been rejected during the search for a set designer for Jodorowsky’s Dune. Carlo Rambaldi, responsible for designing and creating E.T. for Spielberg’s family hit, and Kit West, an Oscar winner for special effects in Raiders of the Lost Ark, were also on board. Even with actors like Sting, whom Lynch had met at Coppola’s villa, Max von Sydow, and Patrick Stewart (who would gain fame a few years later thanks to Star Trek), Lynch still lacked a lead actor to play Paul Atreides.

Time was running out.

Tacoma – Yakima – Spokane

David Lynch, Dean Stockwell, Francesca Annis on the set of Dune

Frank Herbert’s ranch is in Tacoma. Several hundred kilometers to the east, practically a short distance by American standards, lies the city of Spokane, once home to David Lynch. Roughly halfway between Tacoma and Spokane is Yakima, the birthplace and childhood home of Kyle MacLachlan.

The actor read Dune at the age of 14, and it became a favorite book of his. In Herbert’s vision, he saw a bit of himself. The desert inhabitants of Arrakis dreamed of one day turning their planet into an oasis suitable for growing plants and collecting water. Yakima, reclaimed by Americans from the desert lands of southern Washington, could evoke the environment born in Frank Herbert’s mind, making it easier for MacLachlan to identify with the novel’s main character. Dune was not the only thing that inspired MacLachlan. During his studies in Seattle, he became seriously interested in acting. Completing the prestigious Professional Actor Training Program opened the doors of theaters to him.

While performing in Molière’s Tartuffe, he was noticed by a Hollywood talent scout working for Dino De Laurentiis. She knew that casting for Paul Atreides was underway in Los Angeles. After the performance, she informed MacLachlan about it, assuring him she could arrange a meeting with the director of Dune.

Shortly thereafter, MacLachlan was sitting face-to-face with Lynch, talking about their shared experiences growing up in Washington. They also discovered they were both wine enthusiasts. During the first meeting, the director hardly mentioned Dune to MacLachlan. At the end of the encounter, he handed him the script, asking him to prepare for a presentation of his vision of the role. The next audition took place in Mexico, where MacLachlan performed in Paul Atreides’s costume. After delivering a few lines, he returned to his hotel room, finding a bottle of Lynch’s favorite red wine on the table. A phone call confirming his employment was, of course, a mere formality. Being cast in the lead role of a major Hollywood production was like winning the lottery for the young, unknown stage actor.

The success was even greater because many young men were said to have auditioned for the role, including a young Brad Pitt, who failed to capture the attention of the casting organizers and had to wait for his breakthrough, which would come several years after Dune’s release, with Thelma & Louise (1991).

After MacLachlan joined the cast, Dean Stockwell was also hired, who had found success as a child actor but had abandoned show business in the 1960s. His turbulent time spent in hippie communes had caused Stockwell to be forgotten by the general public. His roles in the 1970s were mostly unremarkable, which affected his financial situation. To support his family, he had to work as a real estate agent. When Lynch began filming Dune, Stockwell was on a family vacation in Mexico. He decided to seize the opportunity and visited the Churubusco studio. Upon entering the office, the actor was surprised to find Lynch staring at him, saying he had been almost certain Stockwell was dead. Shortly afterward, he was cast in the significant role of Dr.

Wellington Yueh. This performance, along with his appearance that same year in Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas, brought Stockwell back into Hollywood’s good graces.

Under the Fire of Criticism

As work on Dune was nearing completion, a massive marketing machine was set in motion. Before advertising efforts began, the film had cost about $50 million; after the campaign, the budget rose to a then-astronomical $68 million. For comparison, the production and promotion costs of Return of the Jedi were around $43 million.

America was going wild. Store shelves were filled with toys related to Herbert’s universe, and the media competed to provide updates on the upcoming hit. Many in the industry predicted that Dune had a chance to break box office records. No one expected that the blockbuster, which took four years to make, would become a financial flop.

Because Herbert’s story had literary sequels, it was assumed even before the release of the first part that more installments would follow. Lynch was in favor of the idea. Kyle MacLachlan even changed his phone number to 547-DUNE. However, the wave of enthusiasm quickly began to wane. Frank Price, one of Universal’s executives, watched the film and felt that audiences would struggle to understand it, which would impact the financial results. Similar opinions, though expressed in a much more blunt manner, came from distributors attending private screenings. Many harsh words were directed at De Laurentiis. Negative opinions about the film began to leak to the media. The marketing machine turned against Dune.

The fact that the film had been in the spotlight for months due to the efforts of advertising specialists meant that the media and the potential audience eagerly absorbed every rumor from private screenings. Despite its desert character, Dune began to sink even before the official premiere. When the first reviews from the most influential critics appeared in the press and on television, audiences got the clear message that something was wrong with Dune. Even the usually measured Roger Ebert trashed the film, placing it on his list of the worst productions he had seen in 1984. At that point, the biggest winner was probably Alejandro Jodorowsky, who said he nearly fainted before going to the cinema.

The Chilean had seen Eraserhead and believed that Lynch was the only director who could adapt Herbert’s vision better than he could. After leaving the cinema, Jodorowsky reportedly burst out laughing, joyfully repeating that Dune was terrible. Lynch’s failed vision undoubtedly contributed to the mythologizing of the unmade film by the creator of El Topo and The Holy Mountain. If the 1984 production had gone down in history as a genre masterpiece, the crazy idea of the South American surrealist would probably be known to only a few.

Dune officially debuted on December 14, 1984, and was financially and attendance-wise crushed by Beverly Hills Cop. During the first five weeks of its release, the film with Eddie Murphy grossed $122 million in the U.S., while the much more expensive Dune earned only $27 million. Ultimately, in the United States, Lynch’s film barely crossed the $30 million mark. Even when adding the money that came from international distribution, one conclusion is clear: The film was a massive financial failure that significantly weakened the director’s position in the industry.

Lynch never tried to justify his failure, but he still dislikes discussing Dune. It is the only film in his career where he did not retain the right to the final cut. After shooting, the director had over four hours of completed material. Knowing that not all scenes could make it into the film, he wanted to reduce it to three hours. The producers firmly refused. The theatrical version of Dune is two hours and seventeen minutes long, meaning that almost half of the shot footage remains under Universal’s lock and key. Some scenes not included in the theatrical release are available in the 1988 TV edition of Dune. However, it should be noted that Lynch distanced himself sharply from this version and had nothing to do with its editing.

The credits replaced his real name with the usual “Alan Smithee” (a pseudonym used by directors who don’t want to be associated with a film). He was also allowed to invent a fictional pseudonym for the scriptwriter, as he was the original author. Lynch took the opportunity to mock the studio executives. The scriptwriter for the TV version of Dune became the fictitious Judas Booth. The figure of Judas needs no introduction, and Booth is the surname of Abraham Lincoln’s assassin.

Lynch has responded to questions about the four-hour version of Dune several times, emphasizing that even if he received the material and could create his version, he doesn’t believe that the story of desert Arrakis would become a better film. He notes that, years later, he realized that Raffaella’s pressure and constant worry over the film’s final length affected the entire production process, distorting the vision at the heart of the script. Lynch’s extrafilmic artistic activity bears witness to how stressful this period was for him. Starting in 1983, Lynch published short comic strips titled The Angriest Dog in the World in LA Reader. The title of the series probably speaks for itself.

A Strangely Beautiful Disaster

Lynch’s Dune is certainly not a typical blockbuster. It’s a much heavier film. The side plots are not always adequately developed. Many elements of the script mysteriously disappear under the weight of subsequent scenes. Viewers demand a return to them, wanting to understand the paths the creator follows, trying to piece together the scattered fragments of the story amid the sands of Arrakis. This isn’t easy and, more often than not, it may be impossible without reading the book. The cause of this lies in the film’s runtime, which constrained the director’s vision from the start. Due to time limitations, Lynch decided to explain many things through a narrator’s voice.

Although Herbert employed a similar technique, he had hundreds of pages to craft his intricate puzzle, and paper is undoubtedly more patient than Dino De Laurentiis and the American audience. Looking at Dune in hindsight, it’s the excess of information that constitutes its biggest flaw. The labyrinths present in almost every Lynch film are usually based on the emotions of the characters. Their corridors do not meander through complex plots amidst intricate mythologies. This is the strength of most of Lynch’s movies. Despite their surreal aura, as well as their mystery, cruelty, or absurdity, they always remain very close to the human experience. The world of Dune often distances itself from its characters, drifting toward a realm of ideas too complex to be conveyed in a two-hour screening.

The question remains whether, at the time of its release, the film truly deserved such devastatingly poor reviews. It’s impossible to predict how Dune’s fate would have unfolded if the most prominent names in American film criticism hadn’t buried it before its official premiere. With a film made at such a significant financial expense, every slip can be the beginning of the final downfall. In the case of Dune, the marketing machine unleashed by advertising specialists got out of control, ultimately leading to the premature death of its precious child. With the passage of time, many criticisms of the film seem highly debatable. Richard Corliss from TIME Magazine criticized it for not providing the simple entertainment found in other high-budget science fiction films (remember that Return of the Jedi premiered in 1983).

Roger Ebert complained about the film’s general gloominess and odd color scheme, believing that Lynch should have taken inspiration from Lawrence of Arabia and used a color palette more pleasing to the eye for the desert shots (he overlooked the fact that the set designer for both Dune and Lawrence was the same person). But within Frank Herbert’s vision, is there really room for carefree fun and swashbuckling adventure à la David Lean?

The screenplay of Dune was a mess. There’s no denying that. Yet within the narrative chaos lie many intriguing elements that ensure Lynch’s film remains one of the most unique high-budget science fiction movies in cinema history. The universe created by Frank Herbert was unlike the cosmos familiar to Star Wars viewers. His vision of the universe was much darker, less comprehensible, entangled in religious and political struggles between warring factions. The atmosphere Lynch created perfectly captures the essence of the Dune universe. Herbert often, despite media backlash, repeated that conceptually and visually, Lynch’s film reflected his ideas about a world obsessed with the power of a mysterious spice.

The rawness of the desert Arrakis, the urban nightmare of Giedi Prime, the extensive use of ornamentation inspired by Egyptian, Arabic, and Venetian art (Lynch drew inspiration from Venetian Renaissance when creating the film’s set design) immerse the viewer in a peculiar, almost hypnotic atmosphere. Because of this, Dune is a very strange and unforgettable experience. On the one hand, its weaknesses are apparent at first glance. On the other, watching the film leaves the impression of something profoundly original and inspiring in its complete uniqueness. That’s why this film, like its literary predecessor, is a kind of challenge. A quick viewing or casual skimming won’t suffice to appreciate Dune. To navigate the dunes haunted by majestic sandworms, you need time. It’s a strangely beautiful disaster.