Blank Check with Griffin & David - Dune with John Hodgman

Episode Date: September 8, 2024

The sleeper must awaken. The filmography must contain a flop. We’ve arrived at the Planet Arrakis aka the Desert Planet aka DUNE (1984) - David Lynch’s attempt at wrangling Frank Herbert’s space epic into a single studio blockbuster. Did it work? Not really. Do we have fun talking about it? Hell yeah, we do! John Hodgman joins us to talk about all things “spice” - including the infamous glossary of Dune terms handed out in theaters, and a wild anecdote about Peter Berg reading Dune on an airplane.  We talk about Lynch’s decision to turn down directing Return of the Jedi, the differences between Lynch’s take on Dune and Denis Villeneuve’s more critically successful version, and David finally gets the chance to let his Fremen freak flag fly by going FULL NERD. This episode is sponsored by: MeUndies (MeUndies.com/check) MUBI (mubi.com/blankcheck) ExpressVPN (ExpressVPN.com/check) Join our Patreon at http://www.patreon.com/blankcheck  Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! 

I must not podcast. Podcast is the mind killer. Podcast is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my podcast. I will let it pass over me and through me. And when it is past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where it has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain. Very good.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's what you gotta do. It's what you have to do. I mean, you were running a couple lines before we started recording. Are you talking to me? Am I allowed to talk? I'm talking to you.

Well, please talk. Hi. Hi. I feel like you were doing a very good impression of a line reading from this film that you could also slot. You were doing Kenneth McMillan? Kenneth McMillan is Baron Harkonnen. Yes.

Well, in this movie, Baron Harkonnen. Sure. Not Harkonnen. In the new movies, it's Harkonnen. Which I think is correct. I don't know if there's a correct. Historically accurate. I guess, right. It's like, do we go by how did Frank Herbert say it?

Or do we go by like how linguistically should this be said, written out, right? These made up words. I don't know. I mean, it's thousands of years in the future. Oh. You can say whatever you want. Yeah, we don't know yet. Well, which do you prefer?

Uh, I think I, I think I default to Harkonnen just because that's what I grew up hearing, having seen David Lynch's 1984 Dune. The film Dune. The topic of this discussion today. Celebrating it's 40th anniversary. 40th anniversary. It's pretty wild for this movie to be hitting 40 in a year where a Dune movie is seen as the great triumph of the American commercial cinema. The savior of theatrical presentation.

It is still the highest grossing film of the year as of this moment. I mean, I guess. I think that, right, that record will soon fall. Inside Out 2 will surpass it. Without a doubt, but it is the number one film of 2024 in June, you know, in mid-June. Held onto it for six months.

Yeah, it made 282 million domestic, 711 worldwide. And all year people have been like, why can't we have more dunes? Yeah. If we had a couple more dunes this year... Well, people finally figured it out. Dunes got the spice. Dunes got the spice. And he who controls the spice, controls the universe.

Spit, spit, spit. I said you were gonna put a podcast in there, not trying to... No, but I mean, I was spacing out because I was enjoying the litany against fear, which you were referring to. Yes, absolutely. One of the many self-soothing recitations that the characters of Dune say to themselves, rather than move the plot along.

Here's another thing. I used to recite that to myself in high school before tests. The litany against fear. Absolutely. And I think it's still valuable to me when I'm combating anxiety or fear of ambiguity. Do you still do it? I do, but I can never remember it all the way through. Okay.

You used to have it verbatim. No, I never actually. I get hung up on the, I will turn, I let the fear pass through me and when it is gone, I will turn and where the fear went, only I will remain or something. That's where I get hung up. I will face my fear, I'll permit it to pass over me and through me. Right, over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

I really have a very distinct memory of trying to memorize that. The Harvard stop on the red line in Harvard Square, I was going to go visit a friend there or something. I will tell you, it's one of my favorite... When red line in Harvard Square. I was going to go visit a friend there or something. I will tell you, it's one of my favorite... When I was in high school. I will say this, non-hyperbolically. I want to say it's one of my favorite moments in podcasting, period. Is when you brought your dear friend, friend of the podcast, Passion Future guest, David

Reese. Oh yeah. On Doughboys. Very kind of you to welcome, you know, your connecting friends. We were promoting Dicktown at the time, which is still available on Hulu. Get your plugs in early. Depending on what subscription service you have, maybe watch while on Disney Plus. Always be plugging, I say, or in the spirit of David Lynch's Dune, always be heart plugging.

Very true. What's your favorite moment? You brought David Rees onto Doughboys. He did not know the show well. He did not know them. You. He did not know them. You were sort of making this connection. I forget how it happens, but at some point he makes some side swipe at how bored he was by Denis Villeneuve's Dune and said something to the effect of like, what is this?

None of this. I don't understand what any of this is. And you just went, I can tell you exactly what it is. And then just like Launched into what clearly was still the effects of you having memorized a bunch of stuff as a child Yeah, I know but you started like laying out the map of explaining how the world works the world's yes This is a multi planetary It's just the idea of someone being that close a friend of yours and someone you've worked with for so long, right, taking such a

fucking hit at a thing that you love so dearly and basically framed it as like this is impenetrable. No one could understand this. That's the Recian way though. Yes. Like I don't think you would have said that if you didn't know that I already loved it. Right, but this is- That's the Recian Jihad. Your deepest heart song is the Worlds of Dune in many ways. Is it? Is that kind of true?

I feel like... What's the podcast? Who's our guest? Wait a sec. It's Blank Check with Griffin and David. It's a podcast about filmography. Wait, which one of you is Griffin? I'm Griffin!

I'm David. It's a podcast about filmography. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks make whatever crazy passion products they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby. This is a mini series on the films of David Lynch. It is called Twin Pods Firecast with me. Today we are talking about his, I mean, his biggest bounce.

He has a couple bounces, but the scale of this is incomparable. No, no, no. There is absolutely no competition. What would possibly be the competition? There are other ones. I mean, the fucking Fire Walk with me. Yeah. I mean, I guess the other argument for the bounce, right, is like Twin Peaks getting

away from him. Yes. But no, no. Dune is obviously, that's the definition of a bounce for us because it's the moment where he's like, I cannot, I must reorient my career so this doesn't happen to me again. Fire Walk with me, he's like, I made the movie must reorient my career so this doesn't happen to me again. Fire walk with me, he's like, I made the movie I wanted to make, I'm sorry, nobody wants to.

And people came back to that. That's the thing about David Lynch in Dune, which is that this is the one that got away from him. This is the one that got away from him. This is the one of his movies that he hates. And he bears the pain for that, apparently, to this day. He's extremely sad about it. The week we are recording this episode,

there's a new news cycle of some quote he gave in a recent interview of like, I died on that movie and I don't think I've ever fully recovered. Yeah. Right. Although it was very, very painful for him to, I mean, it was an uncomfortable shoot. Yeah. Many weeks, you want to make a movie in the desert, it's going to suck. I have a theory that we can get into later.

That perhaps why, I mean he says it's because he didn't get final cut, which is understandable. But there's more to it than that. There's a very clear deep wound that he feels about this movie. Re-watching this again just this morning, right before record. Sure. Hadn't seen this film in 20 years. In these two hours and 17 minutes. Yeah.

I certainly watched it on TV, four by three, standard definition. Did you see the on? I'm trying to remember if it was the game version. Yeah, I was gonna say, which version did you see? That's my question. I think I might have seen the extended television version. Yes. Which is just nonsense, I think.

Right. I've never seen it. It's not like an extended version in any real sense. They just put shit in it I think it's quite odd right like we talked about this Waterworld episode behind the paywall, but this For a very long time, especially with like a big expensive movies like this Yeah, if your movie had an odd running time, it wasn't a clean half-hour

Endtime mm-hmm The studio would just without the permission the be like, here's all the deleted scenes we have that are finished that you can just put in a narrative order that makes this movie totally shapeless and formless, but allows you to have it. Now it's a three hour block instead of it being weirdly under two hour block. You either cut it down or you add a bunch. And Lynch hated them doing that so much that he demanded his name be taken off the TV version. He's right.

They should have done that. It was uncool of them. But I think that's what I had seen. Sure. Well, he had originally wanted the film to be like about three hours. We'll talk about that. Oh, I will get to that. But that's not his three hours.

But I was going to say, watching it today, knowing that he disowned it and felt like he didn't have final control, it is fascinating how much this movie still thoroughly has the editing rhythms of a David Lynch film. It's 100% a David Lynch movie. I think he overstates that. He wanted to make a sequel to this movie. He was not making this movie being like, oh God, what a disaster. Let me get me as far away from this as possible.

Right. Like, he didn't like how it turned out and he didn't like what they did to it. But like, you know, yes, this is a David Lynch movie. Through and through. The quote that we really should do is, the sleeper must awaken, which is like his most important quote in this movie,

because he made that up, right? Like, that's the thing where you, when you hear it, which is the line I associate with this movie. And I think I saw this movie first before I read Dune. It may or may not be true. Like when I was a teenager and then I read Dune and I was like, why does nobody say the sleeper must awaken? Then you realize like, no, no, no, that's Lynch. That's the transcendental meditative boy reading Dune. That's David Lynch TM, trademark and transcendental meditation. Exactly. He's like, that's what's going on with Paul.

That's how I'm relating to this as he reads this book. He cares about this material. It's just, you know, it's a weird result. We'll talk about it. There's a lot of stuff I love about it, but it's a weird result. Eventually we'll talk about it. You let me know weird result. We'll talk about it. It's a lot of stuff. I love about it, but it's a weird result Eventually, we'll talk about it Talk about I thought we were gonna go club random mode Ben has sunglasses on the doors right now

What am I supposed to do with this fat ass? He's got a fat ass. He's smoking It's a feds a sandworm pre-roll. Yeah, but it's like a stop-motion sandworm. It moves kind of slowly Our guest today Dear friend of the show. Yes. Okay our guest. Yes co-creator star Of Dicktown now streaming co-star and co-creator of Dicktown still, I like to say still streaming on Hulu. Still streaming on Hulu and also Disney Plus and also Disney Plus stars depending on where you live and what subscription you have. Yeah, and host of the Judge John Hodgman podcast every week on Maxman.com.

I want to say something else about, well, have you said his name? Obviously he just said his name as part of the show he hosts. That's right. Yeah, I should also mention, I know this is a great shame of yours, his book Vacation Lane is only available on Hardback. You can only get it in the firmest No, but that's not true factors John if it were available on the thickest largest book if it were a bit library edition only If it were available in paperback, I would have heard about it by now with all due respect You're a good friend and I do think I would have heard what?

We're available. That's what that's what that's what makes me so excited to announce right here What for the very first time vacation land is available in paperback wherever you get books as is my other book medallion status But can I get it with John Hodgman? General John Hodgman, can I get it with like plastic wrapping around the cover? I mean a real crinkly yeah crinkles Like a library edition? Exactly. I'll cook one up for you. Here's the other thing, Jon Hodgman.

This is your fifth episode. Oh. As a full-time guest on a main feed episode, you have sort of dropped in... A Coraline. A couple other times, such as on our Coraline episode. A couple of cameos. You had a couple of voicemails. Did they live? I've jack-nanced a couple of them. A couple of cameos. You had a couple of voicemails. Did they live?

I've jack-nanced a couple of them. You've nanced it. You've nanced it. You watched Avengers Infinity War with us once, which was funny because you had watched it the night before thinking we were just going to discuss it. I didn't realize it was a watch. I'm not really bad about that. I had a really good time.

Okay, wait a second. And by the way, when you say full-time guest, I only wish it were true. I wish this were my full-time job. You were here all the time. I wish this were my You know what in fact getting this gumbo David and I are taking a sabbatical We're gonna collect all the chance It's a pure licensing play I'm gonna pay you an honorarium. Oh, yes, of course I like it when they call it an honorarium and I mean like I'm like pay you an honorarium. Oh, yeah. Yes, of course. I like it when they call it an honorarium. And I mean like, I'm like, you mean money? They're like, yeah, money.

And I'm like, okay. Feels a little, feels a little sus. I'm honored. Ed Wood. Ed Wood. I'll buy the franchise. All right, go ahead. A master builder, which people often cite as maybe our best episode ever.

An incredible day. Come in. A major day. Evil Dead 2. Yes, that's true. This is five. What's the fourth one I'm forgetting? Foster Keaton.

College and Steamboat Bill Jr. Yeah. Double feature. Yeah. A big five. But you know what? Master Builder being the biggest. I'm thrilled to be here, but I've also never been more terrified. Why?

Well, so this is what I was going to say. This is such, I mean, you know. It's a big movie for you. This is the unrecordable. As much as Dune was the unfilmable novel. Yes. This is the unrecordable podcast as much as Dune was the unfilmable novel, this is the unrecordable podcast for me. It is too massive a topic. And I don't want to...

There's so much. If you just want to just go quiet, stop speaking. I'm not saying that there's too much to discuss. There's just enough to discuss. It's fine. You know what I mean? I just feel like this has always been in our friendship. Very big emotional topic for me

What one of the things I have heard you invoke the most often and I just sort of know this about you I think this one to you Frank Herbert's doom the world of yeah, and then Specifically largely within that also yeah the Lynch film how major both are for you Well, I have a I have only ever read Dune Okay I've never read any of the other books interesting because I have read some synopsis of those and they seem too weird even for me John John it's time for you to read the other books. I'm doing it right now. Really great. Really having an amazing time Where are you at? I'm in chapter house. I'm in the last

Herbert book I'll admit the last Herbert book. How many thousands of years does that take place in after Dune? Quite a few. Yes. I mean, the fact that, not to spoil things, but to speak in the broadest of terms, Dune Messiah is a direct sequel to Dune. Children of Dune is about the children of the people in Dune. So you're still basically like... Sure. It's like Dune babies. And then God Emperor of Dune is like, okay, 3000 years later.

And you're like, what? And then Heretics of Dune is like, okay, okay, more thousands of years after that. And you're like, well, who are the characters? And they'll be like, well, this guy, his name is like Blark, but he kind of looks like King Leto, you know, Duke Leto.

So kind of think of him as a Duke Leto chart. Like it starts doing that to you. And Duncan Idaho comes back in several cloned forms. Is in every single book. If there is a Dune book, Duncan Idaho is coming out of a clone tank being like, what is it now? And they're like, hello, welcome.

It's the year 8 billion. One of the top names in science fiction, right? Because like- Duncan Idaho is a great name. Truly sounds like he picked that out of like a, two names out of a bingo ball of potential names. I hope he like took a whole day by the pool after he wrote down Duncan Idaho. I'm like, I'm not topping that today.

Like Duncan Idaho, because Dune takes place 10,000 years, not in our future, 10,000 years after the forming of the spacing guild or something. So many thousand years into our future plus 10,000. And yet it's this whole incredible, I mean, this is what makes the book so addictive, spice-like addictive, is the world building that goes into this where it is this massive cultural mishmash of words. I like that word. It's a multri-mishmash of words, I like that word. It's a multural mishmash.

It's a multural criss-crash of words and concepts and religious concepts and sociological concepts. Which I think is daunting to some new readers or whatever. But when you get to the name, and so there's a guy named Paul, fine, you get it. Jessica. Jessica, these are all real names. But when you get Duncan, Idaho, you're like, how did we get here? To me, there is at least 20,000 years of future history and how we get to Duncan Idaho as a name.

I'd like to Duncan Idaho right now. Just sounds like a thing you could do. Sounds great. You'd like to dunk in Idaho? It feels like it's sort of like I'm dipping a cookie in something. Dunkin Donuts should do a spin-off. They should do a partnership. Like that you can dunk.

I was going to say, I mean, here's the thing. How did that not happen? I know, it's crazy. This is the only guy who's thinking money over here. Ben's always thinking money. He's got that grindset mindset. Hey, that's just how I am, baby. You were peeping the friendlies hat.

I always got the dollar signs on my mind. Yeah, when Ben walked in with his friendlies hat, I was like, can I, I'm gonna say a swear. I was like, Jesus cock, that's a hot hat. You said Jesus and I was like, you really don't have to pre-apologize for that. May I use that quote in my marketing materials? Please do. Duncan Idaho is a name, right?

You're just like, who could ever embody that? Right. Lynch tried. And he's not a guy I like all the time. But Jason Momoa, if he had any other name in the world, it wouldn't be Duncan Idaho. Yeah, Duncan Idaho. He just fits that so fucking perfectly. He made a lot of sense. Richard Jordan as Duncan Idaho doesn't make a huge impression. In 1984. One of my least, I like Richard Jordan as an actor.

He's amazing in what's it called, Friends of Eddie Coyle, which is a movie I love. And he's lots of stuff. Come for Red October. I was just gonna say. Are you telling me you lost another submarine? Logan's run, right? He's in that, like he's a guy, great guy.

There are several bits of casting in this movie that I'm kind of like fine with, but he's one of the ones where I'm like, there's no oomph to this, what's the matter? Isn't this guy supposed to be fun? Right, kind of like mega charismatic, and you know, everyone loves Duncan Idol, it's the whole point.

That's why they send him first. He looks like your Irish uncle who got sober about 15 years ago, and he's's really white-knuckling it. On paper, not telling me what project this is for, just listing the actors and being like, this is the cast of a David Lynch movie. I'm like, holy fucking shit. Perfect. I want to see him work with all of these people.

Sure. Some of these names, like Linda Hunt or whatever. Right. At least half of them are misapplied, or in the setup of the movie make no impact. Like who are you thinking of? I think Linda Hunt makes no impact when that should be a slam dunk. It's not a huge role. Right. Jordan's a perfect example one that just like doesn't fucking work at all.

I mean the ones that work are like, I feel, I mean, look, we'll be talking, we cannot do this episode. As David Sins would say, we're gonna talk about it. We're gonna talk about it. We can't do this episode without comparing this movie to the Villeneuve films, which are experiencing this fucking like victory lap of like, holy shit, this guy pulled off twice the thing

that everyone had said for decades. Was not possible. Right, and I think you look at the way he cast those movies and there's a lot of really smart strategic casting of like this is not literal, but A, I need to fill this movie with faces that are really comforting to audiences. People who are just kind of like pro-ven.

Short cut casting. Have your bread and walks in and people are like, I get what this is. Right, right. And the same way you're like, maybe the character as written isn't obviously a Jason Mamoa type But Jason Mamoa will give the energy that needs in a movie that doesn't have two hours to spend with this guy right as opposed to The David Lynch approach to casting which is let's find the weirdest looking character

I think we can and then put boils on them which usually works for his movies because very often those people just have to represent Energy sure this movie and I want to make it clear, I like this film a lot. Yeah. It played so much better for me on this watch. Unsurprisingly, for a number of reasons. Yeah. I do think there's something to like, this thing has been adapted well now. There is a pressure off of this movie.

Mm-hmm. And I also think watching it now, having seen the Villanova movies, not having read the books, I'm like, it's easier for me to track what's going on in the plot of this movie because I can keep relating it back to the movie that is more narratively functional. Sure, sure. Look. But it looks incredible, but like Sting is an example of like Lynch doing the smart kind of casting. Right. Everyone wants to see Sting walk out of that steam bath. Totally. With his winged codpiece.

Sting is great in this movie, but I always forget that he is in this movie for five minutes. Barely. Like, I think of him so, like... I think of him in an outsized way in this film, and it's really, like, two scenes. And especially when part two of the Villeneuve is all built around that character,

like this is what we've been saving. All right. So can I, I've only ever read Dune as I mentioned. Okay. But in terms of- Read it at what age? Well, here's the thing. In terms of my experience of David Lynch's Dune,

it is an epic story, encompassing multiple different books of my experience. Okay. Beginning with a prologue. encompassing multiple different books of my experience. Beginning with a prologue, I go to my mom's nursing school reunion at Yale. Humblebrack? And I had, that's right. Talk about Club Random.

I had a great mom who was a nurse. That's wonderful. She went to Yale nursing school. Must be nice. And we went one summer reunion, 1984, summer of 1984. I know this movie's coming out. I've got nothing to do at this nursing school reunion other than lie around in a dorm room and try to read Dune.

How old are you in 1984? What are we talking about here? I'm turning 13. Perfect age. And you know of Dune, it's a best-selling sci-fi work. You certainly have heard of Dune. Yes, and I know that the movie is coming out and that's why I feel like.

It's much hyped. Because I've always been a science fiction and fantasy Film and television nerd but in terms of books book learning it was never I was not as deep into it But here is a film being positioned as a major cultural event This movie is released with the energy of here you go Here's the new Star Wars right and not only that the messaging of this is one of the things that inspired Star Wars. This is the real shit. Yeah, and I'm also a pretentious only child.

So I was gonna ask. Lynch was on your radar already at this point. Of course, yeah, of course. Elephant Man was a big release. I don't think I had seen Eraserhead yet, but I definitely was aware, and maybe I've seen Elephant Man. And I knew that he was a really interesting director.

And Dune is this, you know, this long reputation as being a very thinky book. Which music to your ears, I assume. I got very thinky ears. So I'm trying to read this thing in my deep study, and I find it un-fucking-penetrable. Set it aside, and I'm like, Dad, take me to go see Ghostbusters, which came out that summer. And that's what I remember from that period of time. Look, this is kind of an infamous summer of just like pure pleasure blockbuster movies. Right, Rivalry Hills Cop.

We just covered that one. Gremlins. Like these movies that just like fucking hit and just go down easily for everyone. Right. Yes. And I put Dune aside having read maybe two chapters, barely being able to understand what was going on. I was- And very little, not knowing at all that this movie was going to entwine itself with my

life for decades. Dune the book, while largely readable, I would say, does not hold your hand at the start and instead is kind of just like, let's just plunge your head into the ice. It throws your hand into a box and causes pain immediately. Very true. That's the opening scene. And it throws a lot of words at you that are not English, essentially, such as Kwisatz Haderach, right? Where you're just like, what, Gomjabar? What is this? Bene Gesserit. And you're just kind of like, I think

I had the same experience of like, I need to put this down. I don't, I can't like read this in a relaxed way. I need to read this with a dictionary or something. Yeah. And may I plug once more? Heart plug once more? I'll allow it. All right. Thank you. I do have a Subst stack, hodgeman.substack.com. Wow. There is a post. Available on paperback?

No, available only in pixels. Okay. There is a post titled, A Secret Report to the Society. There is a paywall. It's like $5 a month. You can join and then delete it. Okay. It's like $5 a month. You can join and then delete it. Beyond the paywall, there is a 37-minute recording of me reading the first chapter of Dune out loud in a thick main accent. If that's your kind of thing, you can hear me talk about that gom-jabah quite a bit.

But that's just a little plug. I'm thinking about the money, Ben. You see what I'm saying? I'm trying to monetize this. I'm seeing you hustle and I love it.. Yeah, all right. Thank you very much. Well. All right. I threw us all off No, when I was nine I believe And and I'm gonna say this nine at the absolute oldest if not even eight yeah My best friend elementary school was a kid named cure kramlich Great take it back best science fiction name in the biz. Kind of incredible.

Sorry, I don't know. Nine years into this podcast, I never name dropped Kier Kramlich, who I saw a lot of movies with when I was a child. Can you say it slower? Sounds like a Dune character. Correct. Where it's like someone comes out of a ship and is like, I am Harold of the Change Kier Kramlich.

K-E-I-R. Yeah. That's a name. K-R-A-M-L-I-C-H. I mean, a lot of blasts. I will almost definitely get a message from him when this episode comes out saying, hey, a bunch of people told me you said my name on a podcast. I haven't spoken to him in a little bit.

But he was a voracious reader. Yeah. Loved sci-fi. Yeah. Would constantly be recommending things to me. Yeah. And I'd be like, this is a little bit tough. Yeah.

Like, for eight or nine, he was pretty precocious in terms of what he was reading. For sure. I remember him being like, I robot rules. Right. And I was reading and I was like, I can kind of go with this, but I also understand I'd probably be more into this if I waited five years. He got all in on Dune, which is insane to think about. At the age of eight or nine. Yes. Nine at the absolute oldest he was reading all of them. And was just like, this is the shit. And this is around the time when the Star Wars special editions have come out. Maybe the year or two after that. Maybe that was his bridge to it.

Maybe. But he was just sort of like, hey, you know, we had just both gotten so Star Wars-pilled. And was like, you have to read this. And I remember maybe making it through half a chapter. Which was just like, this is impossible. To what, your point? It's still, I mean, having just read it out loud yesterday and recorded it at hodgeman.subtech.com, I can tell you that it's still pretty opaque.

Yeah. Like I now understand it. It's so good. That's the best. But now I'm like, now I'm in, and you know, I did end up reading the book. The book. The book, probably, you know, 25 years ago now.

And I loved it when I finally was ready for it. But this, it's, you know, there's a, you know, there's a section in this opening chapter in which Paul describes his meditation practice and it just becomes simply drug language. This is the kind of non-sentence, non-complete sentence drug language. The exact kind of stuff that makes, made people think for a very long time that this book was fundamentally unadaptable. Like, are its key pleasures things that do not translate to a narrative in fixed time? Yeah.

Especially relative to the inherent costs of realizing this world. Right. When you watch this movie, David Lynch's Dune. 1984. 1984. And you have, yes, now seen the Denny Villeneuve films, which I wanna say run probably combined about five hours and 15 minutes, right?

First one was like maybe two and a half hours. Yeah, I think they're both like two and a half. Second one I think was a little longer. Yep, so five hours, 15 minutes. So I was watching David Lynch's Dune and I was like, I'm just gonna clock where Villeneuve cut it off, right? Where Villeneuve decided to split the story in half, which is basically at the end of book one in the book.

The book is three books. Which by the way, book one was a complete story before... Initially, he serialized in an analog magazine. Book one, and then it was a couple of years before he came back and wrote book two and three, also serialized before he put them back. I think also that some of the seagulls were serialized. It's how it was done back then. How it was done. It's an hour and a half into David Lynch's Dune

is the end of Villeneuve's Dune part one. Everything that he made the second film is contained within 45 minutes. Correct. Including credits. And my wife was watching it with me. My wife has seen the Villeneuve movies, has no other knowledge of Dune. And was chortling at the point that suddenly Virginia Madsen's like, and then this happened. And then she took the Water of life and he did too.

And let's keep it going, you know, like where you can just get this sense of like, oh, they just have to run through the rest of it. It has the most insane yada yada yada I have ever seen in a movie, which is, by the way, they fell deeply in love. They dated for two years. His sister was born. She grew to maturation. Yeah.

Things that Villeneuve was like, I think my audience can't handle at all. Yes. Right. The movie instead is like, anyway, she got born, then she grew up a little bit, she could talk, she's like a talking six year old, you got that? Okay, she's going to be very important. She'll have like five lines, but like hugely important to the plot, kills the villain. Anyway.

Respect to Alicia Witt, my fellow Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Have you seen the unedited footage of her? She has a little Boston accent that they dubbed over. It is adorable to see footage from June 84 of little Alicia Witt talking in like a mass hall, like high pitched girl. She's from Worcester originally. It's very cute. Sims's hall of fame all time crush?

I had a huge crush on Alicia Witt specifically in Sybil. Yes. Where she was of course, Sybil's rude daughter. Did you watch Sybil? I never did. Okay. Well, I guess I'll go fuck myself. I love to bring up 90s sitcoms that people largely don't remember, such as Becker and

Sybil is another one where obviously Sybil Shepherd was the, I'm Sybil, I'm basically Sybil Shepherd, right? I'm basically Sybil Shepherd, right? I'm this old messy actress. But then Baranski ran away with it. Baranski is her like martini swelling friend who's fun. And Alicia is like the uptight daughter who's like, mother, why do you have to be so crazy? I just wanna like play concert piano or whatever.

That sounds like my kind of thing. Child prodigy. Yes. Was speaking at the age or reading at the age of two, playing piano concertos for David Lynch at the age of three or whatever, got cast in this movie. I mean, she's a great actress. I agree. I mean, but I feel your affection for her.

I remember learning there was a young person from Massachusetts in this movie and it wasn't me. I was a little mad about it. Oh, sure. This is like me with a hidden panateria in the voice cast of Bugs Life Exactly, how dare they cast any child? That's right. Yes. Yeah, I was right here Yeah, I'm even if I'm the wrong gender for this role have no acting credits I want to go through more of your your journey to this becoming such a key text so

So that was the prologue among, you know, when you're talking about Dune, you gotta have a lot of prologues. But you do see it in theaters after abandoning the book, like a coward. Yeah, this film came out in December 1984. Now I'm all 13 in the dead center of my 13th year. And can I just read for comparison? A big budget film, you have to imagine and want to end up on this list.

Here's speed round is what the top 10 highest grossing films of 1984 were. Ghostbusters, Beverly Hills Cop, Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom, the exact amount of uncomfortable that was still tolerable for an audience. Controversial but not on this level, right? Then Gremlins the karate kid police academy

Footloose romancing the stone star trek 3 the search for Spock splash America's going straight down the middle That's an incredible. That's an incredible run and like good blockbusters Yeah, but like that's the temperature of the audience and we just ruined the box office game or no No, okay. Where do you think the box office game or no? No. What do you think Dune is on that list? I think Dune is number 23. 32. That is.

You had to just reverse it. Yup. Below teachers and cannonball run two. That's the kind of stuff that couldn't eclipse at the box office. Teachers with Nick Nolte, right? You're telling me. The classic poster. Is it the apple with the wick?

The dynamite wick. Oh yeah, dynamite wick. I know the poster. Also a great science fiction movie. Oh, my text book. There it is, three sets. Yeah. Bring me dynamite wick.

So December, Tim McGonigal, my old friend, and I decide we're gonna go see this movie. We're both really into it. My dad has known that I'm really into it. He has gotten me this book, The Making of Dune, which I handed. I still have a copy of it here. Maybe he gets that to me. Actually, he might've given that to me for Christmas after I saw the movie. Cause I remember receiving it going, this is no longer necessary for me to read.

Um, we no longer want to learn. We go to see it in Brookline Village At a movie theater that isn't there anymore. My dad's friend Fred Sabini had picked up some Moonlighting hours as a manager. He ripped our tickets and then he handed me and Tim the famous glossary Which was what Universal printed because they there was so we're anxious they were a little anxious about the confusion that people would feel hearing so many different oddball terms, Fremen, Arrakeen,

Kamjabar, Kamjabah. Because this movie has no exposition. Yeah, right. It's not like this movie tries to lay any of that down. If things were not laid out to you in a worksheet. In media race. Yes. Yeah.

And I remember as a... And you're probably like, God. Yes. And I remember as a glossary. And you're probably like, oh yeah. God, I wish someone would hand me a glossary before Blockbuster right now. You would think that for me, I would be hell yeah. But I'm one of those, and I remember sitting there as a 13 year old looking at this thing going, oh no. No, no.

I understand. This will never work. Right, yes. The general feeling of like, if you're handing out glossaries at the multiplex, you've lost your battle. I mean, I understand. This will never work. Right. Yes. The general feeling of like, if you're printing, if you're handing out glossaries at the multiplex, you've lost your battle. Like, yeah, yeah. No, no one had ever seen this.

This has never happened before as far as I'm concerned. I don't think it's ever happened again. And I'm like, this kind of speaks to me because I'm, I definitely am a reference book nerd and I love having to read this because there was why who doesn't want to go to the library while they see a movie? Yeah, precisely. But there, and I asked, I really needed something to look at too, because this whole moment was infused with this teenage romantic charge. Sure. Because there was a girl who was a little bit older than me sitting next to me with her mom.

Oh. was a girl who was a little bit older than me sitting next to me with her mom. And the girl and her mom, and I remember the girl was wearing a Canadian tuxedo, denim jacket denim jeans. Sort of the stillsuit of its day. Exactly so. And she and her mom were talking about the novel Dune and unlike me, they had both read it. Wow.

Talk about a girl of your dreams. A family you want to marry into. I'm getting, I'm getting goosebumps right now thinking about it. And she, and she and her mom were talking about it and they were talking about their favorite characters. And the mom said, I think my favorite character is the sand worms. And I'm like, what? This mom is so cool.

This girl's also got to be very cool. And she's like, I agree with you. And then she turns to me, the girl, and says, are you looking forward to the movie? And it is not an option for me to say any words to a girl. It was in fact not legal at that point. No, no, no, no. It was fatal to me. It was my gom jibar. Like if I, if I accidentally flinched and turned my head and said anything to her,

yeah, I would die. So this glossary gave me something to look at. It's like, yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Let me get back to what's... What's Gidey Prime exactly? What series is that in... I wish they had a map on here or whatever. And then the movie came on. The first 40 minutes, of course, our exposition. Yes. Like multiple exposition drops, starting with Virginia Madsen. Virginia Madsen's giant floating head talks for about four uninterrupted moments, fades

out and then goes, oh, also, I forgot to mention, comes back, literally comes back and starts a second. I mean, it's much mocked. I kind of love it. It's wild. When she said, and I've seen this movie multiple times, I always forget, but she goes on and on and on about the world. One more thing.

Yeah. And then she comes back and said, Oh, I forgot to tell you. Why? Who are you talking to? Yeah. Forgot to tell who. And that's before you even get into a secret report within the guild where they then show you pictures of the planets. It's like doing all this work to get you to understand what's happening and none of it is working. That's when I start stroking it. I mean, just like if there's just like some eighties optical

effect of like planets where they're like, here are the planets of Dune. I know they do it better than I just did it obviously, but it was good. You know, like, yeah. Key D prime. Can you tell it's the bad one? It's black. You know, like, and I am just so on board with that nonsense. I know, like you're saying, 99% of audiences are like, okay. You stroke out when you see the anus stroking it. It was a disgusting thing to say. He's slamming hands.

I got you. Do not do that in a movie theater. That's not cool. No, but the comfort of your own home, you have an Aero 4K. Or the Tiki Theater, what's it called? Tiki Theater, yeah. Yeah, Tiki Theater. The first time I tried to watch this on cable was, you know, my budding nerd cinephilia

that I'm trying to level up. And I think David, probably similar to this. Anytime like a magazine published like any sort of listicle, I was like, well, I got to go through it. Here's a watching guide. Here's like 30 things. Some magazine must have published some like the greatest box office disasters of all time.

Sure. It was always on those lists, right? Movies that got taken away. Some period where I'm trying to knock out all the flops, the mega flops. And I put on what I think was extended TV cut. And this shit starts, I'm immediately like, I am never getting through this. Right. I think I did watch it to the end,

probably spread out over a week. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I might've recorded it or saved it to a DVR or whatever the fuck it was. Sure. But yes, it's like at this point, now I love it. Sure. You love it? You love this movie?

I get a tremendous joy from this movie, but I'm saying I love the same thing you love, which is just them being like... Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But when you're 13, you're not really all for that. Right. I mean, even...

So the end of the screening, I... You know, this could be me writing memories, you know what I mean? But I feel like my memory was... And Tim... I'm still friends with feel like my memory was, and Tim, I'm still friends with Tim McGonigal, so we've talked about it. Congrats.

We both looked at each other like, what the hell? You know, like, it, obviously it did not work. Yeah. We were very confused. It ends very abruptly. Quite abruptly, yes. And then you're sent out into the lobby, and then this girl's probably gonna try to talk to you again

So you got to move very quickly and get out and try to injury Interference put on the blinders and you know as you say it's like it's it's not very parsable as a film It's hardly enjoyable. I mean some of it is Freaking repulsive. It almost feels by design Yeah, no, it's I mean,, no, it's not a fun watch. No. And then it's over. And then you're launched into the planet Earth again.

And yet, there are things that I remember remembering, like, how did this happen? Yes. And the thing, like, just starting with the costume design. Like, I was not a student of film particularly. Like I couldn't tell you exactly why none of it made sense or worked together as a film. Like I've thought a lot about it since then. But simply like, oh, you're going to have everybody in this sort of like Napoleonic Wars military costumes.

Very different from any science fiction film you'd ever seen. Yes. The set design obviously is incredible. It is. It's obviously building a world that is old-fashioned in a futuristic setting. Watching this on the 4K... Yeah. Lovely Arrow edition.

Beautifully restored. Yeah. I thought to myself early on and I went, let's see if this holds up, if this opinion holds up throughout the entire viewing. I think this film looks as good as any of the original Star Wars films. I think it is pretty immaculate looking, obviously from a design standpoint, but I also think save for like a noise, two or three shots. I think almost all of the effects hold up. Oh no.

Really? Definitely not. I love how this movie looks, but at the end when they're riding the worms and... I think that's the one sequence that doesn't look good to me. You kinda need that sequence to look good. I agree. That sequence is your hammer. You know how Star Wars ends with the Death Star trench run. That looks good You can what and you can go you know watch your decent like oh take all of George Lucas's shit away from it still Matt lines visible fucking incredible

Where's in the like? I mean my my forky was saying like I don't really know what's going on and obviously what's going on is they're writing the worms And blowing everyone up, but you still only Kind of just see the worms doing this not not really doing this. And I feel like I needed this. Everything else looks pretty good. And for the listener at home, just because what David did was just visual. At first he was doing this and then he started doing this. I would say it was more of a this, but yeah. You're right. No, no, that's a good correction.

I think the sets are tremendous. The sets are tremendous. I mean, the sets are better than, say, the first Star Wars, where the Lucas Star Wars looks incredible, but the janky, you know, not janky, that's not the word, but like the kind of flimsiness of it, dirty, is part of it, and it's covering up for any... Well, it's part of that world that he's built. Exactly. Any shortcomings.

Right. It's very... I mean, it's insane to say Star Wars has short built. Exactly. It's beyond this. Right. It's very, I don't want to say. I mean, it seemed to see Star Wars as shortcoming. It looks great. A lot of thrifty filmmaking. A word that came up a lot. Right. Thriftier.

But like smart. And contemporary reviews was Rococo. Sure. Yes. Incredibly elaborate. Yes. But in terms of like. Lush and decadent design that spoke to the feudal system that that this future world this future universe that I all works on

Yeah, you think about like Star Wars from 1977 and part of the great like filmmaking Magic of that movie is how strategic they are and reusing certain elements the first one especially right though They have the one hallway that they can replicate replicating or whatever. This film, I'm like, every 40 seconds someone walks into a new room that is an entirely custom built set. Right. They have incredible, yeah, halls of grandeur. But it's like, they keep establishing new locations and you're like, this isn't just they rearranged the furniture in that pre-existing room.

No. I'm calling out more, like like think about Return of the Jedi. Think about like the speeder scene through the farce. That's why I'm thinking about it. Sorry. It's, you know, it's something that, John, that we're going to talk about. We are going to talk about it. I understand.

I appreciate the tease. You know, this is not quite that. Uh, no. Like, like forgetting even Return of the Jedi, the space battles, which all look very nice and all that. But just like when I think of the speeder scene through the forest, that's really insane. Like, that they pulled that off in 1983. Right.

And the movement stuff is the stuff that he specifically fails on that is the thing that Lucas was so good at. Lucas is right at the front of it. It's beyond the fact that anything else, it's like, that's what Lucas is pioneering over and over again, right? Like some new thing in visual effects, which is great for him. Do I prefer this movie to Return of the Jedi? Oh, wow.

Probably not, I guess. But do I think this movie is more... challenging, perhaps? Or ambitious than Return of the Jedi? Maybe. Over the years, the side would revisit it. I don't know. It's a silly thing to compare. Except for their sci-fi films came around at the same time. David. This message I'm about to throw out, it's for the dudes.

Okay. I know this is our Dune app. Dune, dune, dude. It's for the dudes. Okay. I know this is our doon app. Doon, doon, doon. But this is a doodree. This is a message for my bros. Okay, what's up, bro? Hey, all guys out there, being your most comfortable self this fall

starts from the waist down. You know what I'm talking about? This is just guide talk. This is straight guide talk. You're talking about maybe sitting on the couch watching football. Yes, I'm talking. Getting back into your gym routine. This is my experience.

You need to upgrade your underwear drawer. My life is about two things in the fall. Waking out and watching games. This is a MeUndies ad. I gotta be honest. MeUndies are newer to BlankCheck. They've only been sponsoring us recently. Welcome BlankCheck. I've only been sponsoring us recently. Welcome blank check. I've largely been using other brands. They sent some stuff over and I was kinda like,

you know, there's all these underwear brands these days and like, you know, what's, this stuff is really good. I ordered more beyond like my free, I was just like, actually I want like 12 of these right now. They've got, they're very comfortable. Yeah. Very supportive. Apparently they have a ball caddy. Same here. It's a bit of a play on words.

I see. Yeah. I'll say this. You know, I was joking. People thought maybe I was doing a bit of a bit, beginning of this ad read, about how much I love watching sports and working out. Yeah. Yeah. That's the old me who used to hate that stuff. Then I put on a pair of me undies and suddenly I took to it like a duck to water Yeah, and that's great free and I realized I was wearing the wrong underwear all along I was sitting there watching sports games scratching itching and I put on me undies and I get it now

I know benchpress in 540 and also you love that they use sustainably sourced materials and work with partners They care for their workers, right? That's nice, too But I also feel like a dude for the first time, you know? If you don't like your first pair, it's on them. You can send it right back. Yeah, and if you do like the first pair, it's on you when you're wearing it. Look, you can be your most comfortable self

this fall with MeUndies. Get 20% off your first order, plus free shipping at meundies.com slash check. That's meundies.com slash check for 20% off, plus free shipping. Me undies come from the outside in Griffin. And you can be a dude bro guy like me. Yeah, because I'm wearing me undies.

Throwing footballs in my head. I think my fondness grew starting with the set design and the costume design already very being very challenging to what my understanding what a science fiction movie was and sort of changing the game. And having the courage of that conviction. I had to say that that was undeniable even as a young person. And over the years as I would watch it again and again, I would find new things to marvel at.

Like, look what for a guy who's got this mortal wound that he couldn't put what he wanted on screen, look what, for a guy who's got this mortal wound that he couldn't put what he wanted on screen, look what he got away with. And most notably, I mean, it's the essentially opening, after two different exponential monologues, expositional monologues, the first scene is Jose Ferrer plays host to a worm. Or not even that, not a worm. Or not even that.

Not a worm, because there are worms. A third stage guild navigator. Of course. Let's call it what it is. It's a third stage guild navigator. Yeah. And this is the scene that I return to all the time. Not just because it's the first movie.

It's an incredible looking scene. Yeah. Starting with the whole court, which you barely see. Like all of the costumes. Before they even bring a tank in. Yeah. And then there's, then he wheels in a tank that is like 20 feet high, that is full of this phallus with a vagina mouth and T-Rex arms, with blue eyes that's spitting out orange drugs.

And they have this conversation. Unbroken eye contact. I can't argue with what you're saying. And surrounding him are a bunch of guys who are gonna turn into him If you know if you know deep enough in the space and go lower. If they take enough spice, yeah Yeah, but you don't know that when you're seeing the movie. You just see a bunch of bald guys Smoking vape pipes wearing black leather suits, which is the look of the movie if you're not wearing Napoleonic dress uniforms wearing black leather suits even in the desert by the way great idea and

You're wearing dress uniforms, you're wearing black leather suits, even in the desert, by the way. Great idea. And a couple of them had these like mops and vacuum cleaners to clean up the effluvia that's coming out of this tank. It looks like they're doing, like they're the guys that the brooms are curling. Yeah. Where they're like creating, they're slipping up the space that the tank's going to roll in and out.

Yeah, sorry about the big guy. You got to smooth down the surface. Exactly. And then he, and then- They're mobile Zambonis, yes, what? Just when you think the story's getting going, then the emperor and the third stage guild navigator get into a third long conversation, which is all exposition. Yes. Ending with the third stage guild navigator saying, this conversation didn't happen, I

am not here. And then he disappears. And I'm like, what? That Carlo Rimbaldi design is so blatantly grotesque and sexual and unexpected and weird. And I like that to me is the, I would dare say, no, I'm not going to say lynchpin, sorry. No, do it. Say it. Do it.

No, I'm not going to. Ben just looked at me. What do you think about that, Ben? Yes or no on lynchpin? Ben's, oh, his thumb is going. Yeah, it's up. It, do it. Say it. No, I'm not gonna... Ben just looked at me. What do you think about that, Ben? Yes or no on linchpin? Ben's... Oh, his thumb is going... It's up! It's up! It's the linchpin moment where I began... I sort of... The whole thing began to unpack itself to me.

You lean forward a little bit. And I'm just like, every specific decision in terms of the look and feel of certain sets, certain costumes, certain props, certain moments in the film. They're so weird and so beautifully weird and he got away with it. And not just weird for weird sake, but there is the... It is an actual effective version of the Lynch magic where you're like, this is tapping into some weird subconscious nightmare thing. There is a potency to this that feels like it is speaking to some unspoken thing in the human condition.

Weirdly, even if the movie narratively isn't always in concert with it, as we've been doing these, and we've recorded some episodes that will come out long after this one, so we've been jumping around in some Lynch stuff. He is really not a plotty guy. Most of his films for how sort of like naughty they can be, if you actually break it down, you're like, there are a couple inciting incidents and then weird things happen in between, right? And his two most quote-unquote conventional sort of straightforward narrative films are The Straight

Story and Elephant Man, both of which will joke are like his two weirdest movies. But Elephant Man is just like a man's life, right? It plays out in sort of series of incidents. It does not have a plot that is pushing things forward. And Straight Story is the sort of like picaress journey where it's just like, gotta go from point A to point B. This is the first and only time in his career that he's just like this movie is making I'm signing up to a movie that is going to make promises to the audience that it needs to fulfill right like my clunky metaphor is it's the difference

between making a bracelet and making a watch yeah where you're like the only function of bracelet needs to serve is, you like the way it looks on your wrist. A watch, there's a fucking promise that it's gonna fulfill its end of the bargain. And this is a bracelet with a watch face that is almost mocking you. And there's like, the machinery inside is on fire.

Yeah, it's a melting dial in like a dolly. It's a dolly watch. I'm not going to compare this film to the Denny Villanueva movie the whole time because I do think at a certain point, you know, what's the point? But I think the opening is pivotal. The Lynch film opens with, yes, Virginia Madsen. Hey, can I tell you some stuff? Which is right from the books, of course, every chapter, you've got Princess Cerellon's

essentially what you're realizing, propagandistic diary, you know, diary that she's written post facto about the events of doom. And it's more than one, like she's writing, there's a Maud D breeder for children that she writes. There's a history of Maud D. I love it. And you know, you got, you got to love a beginning is a delicate time. All great.

That's a terrific line that is announcing we're going to have some problems with this film. And then we don't know where to start. And then as you say, there is it informing you of the planet. Here they are. And then there is a scene, which is not in the book. It is essentially making subtext text. Because in the book, we know this happened, but it's never shown that the emperor meets with the spacing guild and the spacing guild is like, do this.

But put, you know, like the Atreides, fine. We agree. Put them on the spice planet. Let's have the Harkonnens do our dirty work for us. Blah, blah, blah. Right. They're all talking about this. An audience, even with a glossary is like, who are you talking about?

What the fuck are you talking about? Right. Villeneuve starts with the Atreides family. Okay. He actually starts with like... Which rocks. Just so you know you're in for like weird times, but then it's like, here is a father, here is his son.

Yeah. Here is where they live. Here is the mom, she's teaching her son to be weird like her. Yeah, the weirding way. They live on a nice wet planet, they have to go to a dry planet. We're entering with people. We gotta move this bullhead. Like have to go to a dry planet. Like we're entering with people. We gotta move this bullhead. Like we're not that we're moving

because we're creating up the bullhead. Right, and like, and now meet Duncan and now meet, you know, Thurphier and all this stuff. And then yes, yes, yes, we're gonna eventually lay out some wider context for you through dialogue, you know, through some little film books that he reads, that's fine. Well, right.

Slowly. So you actually know who this is happening to. Showing not telling. I mean, that's a writing term that I just invented. But I mean, I think even as a 13 year old, I understood that this glossary announced we have no faith that we can convey the information. Right. And I think having people just be like,

so this is what's going to happen in the movie, like, you know, to kick it off. Absolutely, and information becomes the enemy, right? Because the more, I mean, you would think like, oh, let's show you the four major planets. But all of a sudden I got four names in my head. You got four names in your mind? Caladan, Arrakis, also known as Dune.

Now here's the thing. Like one of the great wounds of this film for David Lynch was that he didn't have final cut. And in the midst of the production, he started to have cut a whole bunch of stuff because they were running out of money. And one of the things you read about is that where he left his imprint isn't on the whole movie,

but it's in moments. Do you know what I mean? Like, the things that he fought for. Yeah, that he had to sneak a David Lynch movie into a David Lynch movie. Right, having been said, the movie opens and immediately you're like, he got them to let him do the fucking industrial ambient droning noise throughout the entire... How'd he win that argument?

This is cool! No, I agree. But you're like, it's so odd the things that they let him get away with versus what he says he feels like he failed on. What I would say is that David Lynch, you know, like, for all the studio interference, one thing that if I were the executive, or if an executive... Okay, so you're a large Italian man smoking a cigar. Right.

Well, I don't know if I'm Dino De Laurentiis or Raffaello De Laurentiis, whatever, but it's like, if I were one of these guys at Universal, I'm like, can we just call them planet Dune? Yeah, do we need to say Arrakis? Arrakis, like, and that's from the book, obviously, they're constantly saying Arrakis, Dune, desert planet. It's like there's three words for the same, three things for the same, for one thing. And the whole movie is indulgent and opulent in that way. It makes for wonderful world building in a book. But in a movie, it's like, I can't, just give it one name. Call it Arrakis or Dune.

Look, and the terminology, it says Arrakis is the desert planet known as Dune. Ben found the glossary. I know, that's the glossary. Yeah. Which they also directly say again in the film. And they're saying it all the time. And their idea is if we say this enough, and also if we do enough internal monologue voiceover, then people

will get it. When in fact, all that information just makes me turn off. There's an awful lot of like something is happening and Paul then thinks like, it would be bad if I did that. I'm going to have to do that. Where you're just like, anyway. This is the thing that's so wild about this movie. And I do, I now have gotten to a place where I love it as an object.

As its own weird thing and experience. Yeah, me too. It's very beautiful and weird and in a very David Lynchian way, a deformed object. It has perhaps the greatest percentage of dialogue that is expositional of anything I have ever seen. Which is especially crazy in a Lynch movie. Right. It is like 90% exposition.

There's almost nothing that happens that is said between two characters that has anything to do with them relating to each other as emotional creatures. Again, right. This is obviously what another film hit on is there needs to be a lot of emotion built into this. Right. Things like focusing on the Lady Jessica Paul relationship, the Paul Chani relationship, which like the whole second movie is built around Chani.

And in this film, once Paul and Chani actually meet, they have less time together on screen than in the first movie where the whole point is she's kind of just a cameo at the end. Now, to be fair, the book treats Chani as an object to, you know, she's not a particularly important character in the book either. But that's smart Villeneuve strategy shit. That's what I'm saying. But let's talk about Dune. I'm opening the dice. I just wanted to add the one thing to this. It is so wild when you're like starting with the multiple like prologue table setting things.

Then every character speaks exclusively in exposition and then like 12 minutes in they introduce also, we hear characters internal monologues. And their internal monologues are additional exposition. It's just too much to take in. And as you point out, the internal monologues usually double the information that the characters are giving using their, not only their voices, the voice. And the Lynch dream state thing is what's potent about this movie, what makes him a good fit for Dune in theory, but you feel something in the inexperience of,

and this leads directly into Dossier, it being insane that this is his third movie, that the arc is weirdo midnight movie, he basically self-produces over five years with film school friends, to surprising jump to prestige, critically beloved, but fairly arty, sober, highly emotional drama. Right. And like, arch period piece, right?

To then, Hollywood being like, well, obviously he needs to make a big sci-fi blockbuster next. Right. That it's not just that he makes Dune, but that he makes Dune after being like, Dune is the right choice for me over Return of the Jedi. And that you feel him going like, I don't know how to quite do this.

I don't trust myself to figure out other ways to convey this information. To me, trust is exactly what's lacking in this movie overall. Like, the studio didn't trust Lynch. He got entrusted initially by the dealer entities. Well, let me open the dossier. David, use the voice. Okay, I really should use the voice.

Use the voice. Okay. Be quiet and let me talk now. David Lynch made The Elephant Man. It was a hit. It was nominated for best picture. So obviously now he becomes a director that studios wish to hire. He wishes to make a film called Ronnie Rocket.

We've already talked about it. Every time. About a boy who is electricity. He wants to make Ronnie Rocket. He actually comes close now because he has real clout. Zoetrope, Francis Ford Coppola's, you know, House of Madness. I was gonna say great at actually getting movies made, especially in the 1980s.

Incredible at having an idea that seems crazy and executing Definitely people go to see all of them One of the only Studio slates. Yeah, you're like, I'll just see whatever they release because it's gonna be a hit Absolutely, it was a guarantee you're gonna go check out that new American zoetrope joint MCU of its day. Yeah. Yeah, so he's then offered Return of the Jedi. He tells his agent tells him you get this job you're gonna get three million dollars like and that's in 1980 whatever. 1983. Yeah. And like. And what's a big part of the promise of getting a job like Return of the Jedi? It's a double-edged sword. One

is they're not totally gonna let you sink or drown in this thing. Sure. Because Lucas has some quality control. There will be a lot of guard rails around you, sure. Right. But the flip side of that is, it's not ever gonna totally be your thing. 100%. So he, Lynch recalls basically, he goes to San Francisco,

he goes to a place called Egg Company, which is near the Warner Brothers lot, and is handed an envelope with a credit card, a key, and an airline ticket. And then, I'm sorry, no, he did that in Los Angeles. And then the airline takes him, of course, to San Francisco, and he's brought to George Lucas. And he says he was very flattered, you know, but I don't know why I went.

Star Wars is not my cup of tea. I have to say, I was very flattered to meet George Lucas. Unfortunately, Star Wars Wasn't my cup of tea. He wore a nice flannel shirt tucked into blue dungaree jeans. As he, this is the line. I remember. I've seen him say it. I think his neck was so fat. It wasn't that fat back then. Okay. Give him a break. Okay. It wasn't nineties Lucas, eighties Lucas, probably middle. He wasn't full bullfrog in it. Wasn't full bullfrog. But, but he's buttoning that top button. You can't stop it. It doesn't matter how big the neck is. Um, he started

talking to me and I started getting a headache that got steadily worse. George, can I give Java the hut of a giant amount? I feel like he always talks about the moment where George started explaining the Ewoks being the moment that broke him. Yeah. I mean, obviously, fundamentally, he says, I did feel pressure to say yes because I did respect him,

and this obviously was a big gig. Yeah. But I didn't want to do it. He says to his agent, I can't do it. I feel all this pressure, but I can't do it. And he says, you don't want to do it. He says to his agent, I can't do it. I feel all this pressure, but I can't do it. And he says, you don't have to do it. Calls George, says no, thank you. George is like, a hundred percent, don't worry about it.

Lucas in retrospect is like, I might've gone a bridge too far then. Like, you know, that might have been crazy as much. I have deep respect for the guy, but it is so hard to imagine. Lucas is saying, maybe I dodged a weird... When you look at Richard... A bullet full of weird there. Mark Honde and Return of the Jedi,

and everything you hear about that movie, Lucas is very, very hands-on the entire time. Much more than Empire. I cannot imagine how that would've worked with David Lynch. They would've been fought or... And I think probably Lynch sensed that he was gonna get a very, very strong

and empowered creative collaborator, which is not what he was looking for. Here's the other part of it. I think about him doing that movie in particular, right? A film I have great love for. The third Star Wars movie, not the second. Right. A film that in my adult years, I have now come to recognize some of the failings.

Sure. Right? The creakiness that does not exist in the first two films. Yeah. In my opinion. It's still a good movie though. I agree. It's got some shit in it that's like my favorite shit in all of Star Wars, if not some of my favorite shit in all of movies.

That stuff is the stuff that I could see Lynch totally nailing. But to be fair, Jabba's Palace. The whole Jabba stuff. The whole first 30 minutes you're like, Lynch would go fucking hog wild on that Yeah, I actually think he would probably do a good job with the final chunk with Luke and the Emperor and Vader right, I think he could kind of handle the sort of like a monstrous sort of Sort of broken man inside of Vader and all of that sort of reveal stuff. Maybe like there's stuff in it I think he would do an incredible job with.

But that is the stuff the movie already does excellently. And everything that I think is a failing in that movie, I think Lynch would have been completely confounded by. I don't think he would know how to handle anything in Endor. Yeah. You know, I don't think he would have known how to solve like Han Solo having nothing to do in that movie. Right. I would like to see an Ewok designed by David Lynch. I think he would have known how to solve like, Han Solo having nothing to do in that movie. Right.

I wouldn't like to see an Ewok designed by David Lynch. I think that would scare me. No, and if it was Lynch having to direct an Ewok designed by Lucas' team, you could see the movie having a feeling of disinterest whenever it was on screen. So, in the dossier, David, when he turns from ROTJ to DUNE. He does not yet. I would say he was offered a couple other projects that are interesting. Richard Roth approached him to direct Red Dragon, which of course eventually Michael

Mann makes as Mannhunter. Would have been interesting. That is when he pitches Roth on Blue Velvet. We talk more about that on our Blue Velvet episode, but that's sort of the germ of Blue Velvet where basically Lynch is like, keep thinking about hiding in a closet just spying on a woman. Roth's like, okay, don't worry. That's all I got. He's also offered Tender Mercies, the Robert Duvall movie,

which is a lovely, quiet drama that is, again, a little hard to see Lynch doing, but something like the straight story speaks to it. But it was a straight story. It is very similar here, I was going to say. I wasn't going to say. That's very much a matched sensibility. Lynch thinks, you know, not right for me.

It turned out to be a great movie in his opinion. He was also approached by Cameron Crowe to direct Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I have no idea what that meeting was really like or what that movie would be. Why is this happening? I don't know. It's so weird to think of this guy making- Crowe says very, very sweet about it, slightly perplexed that we thought of him,

got into a white VW bug and drove away, basically. David Lynch wasn't a brand at that point. I was gonna say, like, here's this guy who has established himself very quickly, and yet it feels like Hollywood doesn't have a handle on who he is. Right. Yeah, I mean, you know, what had come out was Eraserhead and Elephant Man. Yeah.

And Eraserhead is a weird student film. Doesn't count for a lot of people. I'm just saying like, and then the normies look at the Elephant Man and it's like, you know, weird makeup and everything else, but it is kind of a by the numbers. In a way, but also he's made two like movies about sensitive weirdos and the pain of existing in society that are shot in like very arch black and white. You're talking about Jeff Spicoli. Yes, of course.

With like top to bottom clanging. You know? Right. It's like those two movies are very similar in a lot of ways. Clang. Well, then you see Elephant Man as like Judy Garland. And Judy Garland too. Sure. And it's like, now what if we give this guy a real thing to make?

Yeah, it's just funny to think like, well, clearly this guy's a chameleon and could make any type of movie. I think that it was just like, he was the guy everyone was talking about. So he's going to get all these conversations, right? Yeah. Just be funny to bring in Judy Garland to a lunch movie. She could sing Clang, Clang, Clang, Ghost of the Shroud. HMMM.

Hold. Hold. Hold. Raffaella De Laurentiis meets with Dune in about 1981 or 2002, saying, my daddy, Dino, has acquired Dune. I think you can handle it. They met and she loved him right away. Dino loved him too. My father loved directors and he thought David was as good as Fellini, she says. Okay.

Okay. He might be. They're kind of in similar worlds. Yeah. They're kind of in similar worlds. Dino does, according to the dossier, love him so much, except he didn't like a racer head. He liked the Elephant Man. Okay, that's 50-50 at this point. I would say, right. But he's sort of saying like...

I want the Elephant Man Lynch, not a racer head Lynch. And I would say, if you're saying saying that you may have already misunderstood what you're getting with this guy. I would agree. Because I, you know, I don't really know how you're distinguishing it except that yes, one is a more abstract plot, one is not, but those movies have tons in common. It's just that one is a, you know, more straightforwardly sad story about a terrible, you know, situation that a person was in.

And the other one is eraser head, which is also honestly that as well. Lynch says Dino calls him and says, I want you to read this book, June. And Lynch is like, June? And he's like, no June. He goes on like this and Lynch had never read the book, reads the book. And this is the part that I don't understand, but I guess love the book. If I'm David Lynch reading Dune,

I would kind of be like, this is too much to handle. People all over the world love this book. It was a huge book. To be clear, I love the book. I know. But I just, if I'm just kind of like tossed Dune, right? Like, hey, why don't you check this out? First of all, you better duck

because if it gets you in the head, you're gonna get hurt. But you know, and you crack it open, I'm not gonna be like, yeah, why don't you check this out? First of all, you better duck because if it catches you in the head, you're going to be hurt. But you know, and you crack it open, I'm not going to be like, yeah, this would be easy. You know what I mean? I'd be like, Jesus, how the hell do you do this? Yeah, but don't you think that that's what animates David Lynch to a certain degree? That and the fact that instead of working with a control freak like George Lucas in San Francisco, he's working with two Italian, a mother, I mean, a father, daughter producing.

Who are a little bit outside of this. A little more. What are the De Laurentiis? What's the book on the De Laurentiis family at this point? That's a really good question. Oh God, I get this. It's so much to talk about. I mean, what's the book on Dina De Laurentiis?

Griffin? Like I just don't remember. He starts making movies in like the 40s. But what was he known for? Well, the first Conan had happened at this point, Barbarella. Right. Right. First Conan has happened at this point.

Yes, it has. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 82. I think Conan the Destroyer is 84. Yeah. So, Pupy. King Kong, the, you know, the. Oh, that's a big one.

Right. Like, he does these big genre films... Yes. That do have an arty twist to them sometimes. Yeah, but with like a pulpy Italian arty, but kind of shabby element to them. But like, he starts out in Italian films, he does a lot of genre stuff, he does Fellini stuff, he's one of these guys who's just like a fucking mogul. In the 70s and 80s, 80s trying to do big epics

I do feel like he loves oh absolutely like and like not in a negative way really But he's a big bossy guy direct But if I'm David Lynch, and I see these two charismatic Italian people one of whom is you know made Barbarella Yeah, like I would be much more inclined to be like I can probably I can probably work my way into this world better than I can work my way into George Lucas's world. Absolutely. Is my guess. But also, just like, he did Serpico.

You know? He did like fucking, I mean, Barbara Elie said, John Huston's The Bible in the beginning. Like, just a very weird swath of movies. Here's the thing I want to bring up as a conversational topic. Hollywood loves, when anything is a success, trying to figure out how to copy it, right? Run it into the fucking ground. Dune was positioned so much as, here is the next Star Wars. It is coming out a year after Return of the Jedi. So Star Wars has been a thing at this point for over

six years. No one else really tries to do Star Wars. Well, Star Trek, I would say. That's the other thing. You know what? You're right. But that it's such a weird example because it's like reviving another thing. It is, but Star Trek the Motion Picture happens because... Of course. You're right.

They're like, fuck. Like, Star Wars scooped our ass. But here's my point, I guess, right? Like a big space opera thing? There had been the Flash Gordon movie. Well this I want, let me pin this okay? Because it's like certainly Star Wars legitimizes sci-fi which had you know it's sort of post 2001 run I would say. This is presuming you accept Star Wars as a science fiction film. Well, but well I'm gonna pin that as well. Alright. 2001 leads to a spate of things like silent running, you know, these movies that are like very heady.

Heady. And are serious and grown-up. And sort of more hard sci-fi. Clean and streamlined in their design. Totally. Very, very specific Tomorrowland look to them. Right. Then Star Wars becomes an industry in and of itself.

Yeah. Popularizes this sort of space opera sci-fi fantasy as An a picture a legitimate a picture that is making so much money and is like we built a world here This is expansive this can run forever And then the immediate things you get in the wake of Star Wars I would say the Star Wars halo effect are like alien Perhaps being a pitch that is more warmly received because it's like well audiences like sci-fi you get in the wake of Star Wars, I would say the Star Wars halo effect are like alien. Perhaps being a pitch that is more warmly received because it's like, well audiences

like sci-fi. This is an R rated slasher film. Blade Runner, we got one of the stars of Star Wars, but it's doing a weird sci-fi noir. No one's trying to do the big like two-fisted, four color sort of sci of sci-fi, fantasy, epic thing. Right. Build a world. I would argue Krull is one of the only ones... I was about to say, there's some.

Okay, there's Krull. There is Flash Gordon. That was a big movie. Flash Gordon, I want to put as this category of things like Last Starfighter, like the Masters of the Universe movie. I was going to say Last Starfighter. Right. Where it's like one foot firmly in our reality.

Right? Those movies all have the like, here's a normal guy who ends up in space. Or here are space people who end up in Earth. This sort of Star Wars dune crawl thing. And of course on television you had Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers. There's almost more of a direct influence on television

than people taking the big bet of like, we have to invest in building a whole world and the movie starts and Virginia Madsen's face has to explain everything to you. Still feels like a thing they find daunting. It is daunting. It's obviously a major ask of people. Krull is a funny one.

Krull has fantasy, you know, like a lot to sort of keep it grounded a little bit. And I would say that, you know, you mentioned that Star Wars... I'm looking at a sort of sci-fi list right now. As an A movie and it was obviously a very successful movie. But I think that at the time, like 2001 was an A movie made by a serious director. Yes. Do you know what I mean?

So indebted to 2001, I would say. Right more. But you know, Star Wars and... Star Wars and Jaws in 75 and 77 legitimized the B-movie. Obviously, what they became was high-quality B-movies that a lot of people in culture still turn their nose up at. Absolutely. And we're like, this is degrading New York.

And it was not cool. So obviously, George Lucas, I think, would basically admit that he did, he was heavily inspired by Dune. There's no question. And obviously, Dune, when the more you learn about it, the more you read the sequels, especially in just Herbert in general, like you're getting one man's very particular historical and political thoughts and interests crammed into this crazy sci-fi narrative, right?

And beyond that, things like the Bene Gesserit, where Frank Herbert is basically like, what's up with nuns? Like, you know, I went to Catholic school. Those people are crazy. Like, you know, things like that. And then Lucas is kind of like, right, the Fremen makes so much... I never thought of the Ghamjibar as being a ruler

that a nun would hit you with. That's obviously what it is. That's obviously what it is. It's so deeply rooted in him being scared of nuns. kind of like right I the Fremen. I never thought of the Gomp Jabbar as being a ruler that a nun would hit you with. That's obviously what it is. It's so deeply rooted in him being scared of nuns. Which I, nuns seem scary. Yeah yeah. You ever see that nun? The nun?

Well she's no good. She's not a good, I mean. And she's actually in Mulholland Drive right? Oh yes, the actress. She's the lady behind the dumpster. Yeah you're right. Anyway. Gotta watch out for the nuns. And the nun too. And not just the nun behind the dumpster. Yeah, you're right. Anyway. Yeah. Gotta watch out for the nuns.

And the nun too. And the nun. Right. Not just the nun, also the nun. Also the nun. Lucas stretches. Okay. Nun too hyper nun.

Sorry. Lucas. Do the voice. If you want us to stop doing bits, you gotta do the voice, David. Lucas stretches, I think, the guerrilla stuff, the Fremen, right? Like into this more broad narrative. Lucas is obviously like, this is like the Viet Cong, right? Like, you know, like revolution throughout history.

I'll make it like a little vaguer. And the Force wouldn't exist without Paul's inner journey. All of the kind of... The Force is just like Dune. The Force in Star Wars is like Dune without the drugs. Yeah. Like, I would have loved to have seen the trench run and the death star. With them huffing spice. Luke is like, I can't read my targeting computer.

I just threw up all over it. They straightened spice orgy before they get it. It is a little bit. And the Force is just like further abstraction. In Dune, it's kind of like you can connect to everyone in your bloodline all the way back. And the Force is kind of like, the Force is just everyone's energy kind of connected all of life. But also it's a blood disease as we've litigated.

It's a blood disease and it means that you can like pull something that's like, you know, you ever wanted a cereal bowl that's like kind of far away? That's what the Force is for. That is why Star Wars is so wonderful and accessible, right? Because it's like, here's a big metaphysical concept. What is the Force? The Force is what connects and binds the universe. That's all you need to know.

That's all you need to know. And that's why it's so funny that when someone is like, and that means you can do this, fans are like, no, the Force is, this is the Force, not this is the Force, you have to go to school before you do anything in the Force, and they're normal about it, always. Always normal.

Hodgman, do you feel comfortable sharing the anecdote you've told me in the past about Peter Berg? Oh, yeah. Well, that's book two of the Dune Chronicles of John Hodgman. Director Peter Berg. I think we can start interweaving these narrative threads between the dossier and the books of Hodgman. So after I've seen, after I watched the Dune in 1984, time marches on. Fast forward, chapter house, Dune style, 3000 years or whatever. I-

Did you turn into a worm? I read the book, Alan Hodgeman and his wife fall deeply in love, his children grow. And another thing. Yeah, I did not become a half human, half sandworm hybrid. Spoiler. I watched the Sci-fi mini series, which came out in 2000.

Which I love. Which is fine. But that, right, that thing is basically just someone being like, what if I just wrote down Dune as a screenplay? Right. Like, most faithful adaptation possible, whatever sci-fi can afford, it has like, And we'll film it in this high school auditorium. Right, it has like pretty good production value

for a sci-fi mini series of the time Wildly expensive at the time at a scale that now is microscopic But it really is and they do Children of Dune as well where they're just like let's just fucking write it down, man And I just I watched a little bit of it again because I just wanted to see some scenes and I was like who's that guy playing? Fade Routha He's Matt Kieslar. Yeah, The great Matt Kieslar. Yeah. The last days of disco, the middle man. And also he was Johnny in Waiting for Guffman.

That's another one. He's so handsome. Handsome. What was the thing I saw him in recently? You realize, like 15 years ago, he's become... Became like a professor or something? Let me get this right. I wanna say...

I love Matt Kieslar. And I'm not even sure if I'm saying his name right, but I'm pretty sure it's Kieslar. I'm sure he's happy no matter how you say it. He became a physician's assistant. He's an instructor of urology at the Oregon School of Medicine. Yes. Wow. You can read a paper he wrote at Portland Community College or I'm sorry from Reed explaining his shift. I think he's great. When his career had slowed down. I think he's really great in Scream 3. What was that? I saw him in something fucking... I mean, he wasn't in anything recently.

So he must have seen an older thing. Oh, you know what it is? What? I, for the first time ever, watched Larry David's Sour Grapes. You sure did. I saw that you watched Clear History as well. You're really a... I had a very bad case of bronchitis. Yeah, you were just laid up. And in my madness, I was like, let me watch both Larry David movies.

And how are they? Neither one is good. Matt Kiesler plays Matt LeBlanc in Sour Grapes. There's this whole new running thread in Sour Grapes of how much Larry David clearly hates friends. Right, right, because it was made right after he left Seinfeld. Yes. Got it.

And Kiesler's clearly playing LeBlanc. Yeah. And to spoil Sour Grapes, a movie that no one likes, that's almost impossible to watch now. I promise you I will never see it. Yeah. Steven Weber's character is encouraged to perform surgery on him, even though it's not

his specialty. He has testicular cancer. And I think Steven Weber's usually a heart guy. And he's going through all the stress of the Larry David style hijinks and in his stress and distraction he puts the transparency backwards. He removes the wrong ball and then has to remove the second ball. And then you see him waking up and Stephen Weber telling him the news and then the next time you see the character it's through characters watching this friend's parody.

I think it's called Pals or something on TV. And Matt Kieslar now sounds like Mickey Mouse. And he does the whole second half of the movie doing an incredible Mickey Mouse voice. Oh, wow. Well, Kieslar did a great job. Yeah. Anyway, he played Fade for Alpha. By that time, I've seen the miniseries.

What a tangent. Incredible tangent. Really worthwhile. And I just wanted to respect that actor. I like to misfaith Routh in that thing. I like to miss Johnny in the Guffman. I didn't see whatever movie you were talking about, The Wrong Ball or whatever it was called. It's the wrong ball. And then, you know, I go through my own life journey where I accidentally get kidnapped by television. I go on The Daily Show by accident promoting a book, The Areas of My Expertise, available probably somewhere.

And then I get hired to do these ads for Apple Computer and I get flown a couple of times to the coast in first class. And on maybe my second or third trip, had to have actually been by 2007 because I'd moved to Brooklyn, maybe I second or third trip had to have actually been by 2007 because I'd moved to Brooklyn. Maybe I second or third trip, I find myself in first class sitting next to Peter Berg. Now Peter Berg at this time I know as an actor more than as a director even though he had directed Friday Night Lights at that point. Yeah had only done very bad things Friday Night Lights and The Rundown possibly.

He was obviously he's an actor. He was the guy from Chicago Hoes. Yeah, I'm saying, but as a director, those were the three. I knew him as Chicago Hoes Billy Cronk and I knew him from a weird indie movie called While You Were Sleeping, where he's a World War II guy gets frozen woken up in 1990. It's probably not called that because that's a famous romantic comedy. Right, so anyway, it was called something else. Sure.

Not While You Were Sleeping, but anyway. But I feel like particularly after Friday Night Lights, he was positioned as like, this guy might be a serious director in the making. Right, and I believe in the context of our conversation, he was probably working on Hancock at that time. Makes sense, which was obviously a huge step up in budget and working with hottest talent in Hollywood, what have you. Right, so you know, I'm still confused as to why I am sitting in first class in anything.

Well, I can explain to you. You were a PC. That's true. It's called Late for Dinner. Late for Dinner. Thank you very much. Wild. That is a wild thing for them.

Pretty good title. Yeah. Peter Berg. Peter Berg. Yes. So I recognize this guy because I used to work in a movie store and I saw him on... Yeah, you know. Okay. Move it along. I can't believe that he's and I saw him on the street. Yeah, you know, okay. I know who he is. Move it along.

Dude. It's a good story, David. Let him spin his yarn. I'll try to keep it. Thank you. I stretch it out. Okay. So let me see if I can remember the type of aircraft we were in.

If you don't cut this up, I'm going to cut it off. I will use the voice. Okay. Okay. So sitting next to Peter Berg, I'm like, wow, Peter Berg is here and already my life is pretty surreal. There's a delay and we're stuck on the tarmac for a long time and it's really, really annoying. Like we're there for an hour and everyone's kind of huffing and puffing.

And then Peter Berg reaches into his leather suitcase or satchel that he's got at his feet and he pulls out a copy of Dune. And I can't help myself at this point. I was like, wow. And I say this out loud. I wish I had a copy of Dune to read. And he goes, do you want one? I've got two copies.

And I'm like, why do you have two copies of Dune? And his answer, which does not answer the question ever. The question is never answered. He says, because I'm thinking about turning it into a movie. Got to have two. Got to have two copies, I guess. Got to have two. Just do it like this.

Yeah. And he starts talking about guess. You gotta have two. Just do it like this. Yeah. And he starts talking about this. Both hands to work. Yeah. He starts talking about the movie Dune that he's gonna make. And he's like, this is a very famous science fiction novel. I'm like, Peter Berg, it's me. I know.

I'm a PC. I got it. And he's like, you know, and you know, no one's ever really been able to crack it. And I'm thinking to myself at this point, am I gonna be the one who has to break it to Peter Berg? Does he not know that this is impossible? Well, not only is it impossible. There is a Dune movie.

But there was one made. Oh, sure, sure. Not only one, but two at this point. There was Dune and then the Frank Herbert's Dune on sci-fi. Does he not know this? Do I have to tell Peter Berg, is this my job? Yeah. And as David was saying,

the sci-fi miniseries received well, but kind of interpreted as, well, that's the only way you could do it, which is just literally spell it out. Right. And even then, I'm not sure anyone, I mean, David, you liked it, but I don't think anyone who loved Dune or David Lynch's Dune or anyone thought that they had cracked the code. Not making something worthy of. And Peter Perg felt that he was going to crack the code because he showed me some spreadsheets

of the most popular movies of all time. He had come up with the algorithm. Yeah, and he was like, you know, Star Wars, Harry Potter, such and such. What do these all have in common? Young men coming of age stories. Sure. I'm like, it's pretty universal.

Absolutely as part of the Dune DNA is the boys' adventure element. And he's like, I'm, I'm, and then he revealed that he did know that David Lynch had made a version of Dune. And he's like, I want to make Dune, but I want to, I know that David Lynch had his own take on it, but I want to really emphasize the less weird stuff. I want to be a, I want to be boys adventure, military science fiction, and it's gonna make all the money in the world. And basically he was gonna like make Dune for Normies was his idea.

Yeah, he was on that for a couple years and then dropped out saying it wasn't the right thing for him and the script was taken to Pierre Morel, who was the guy who made Taken. Geez. Now, the- And was in his hands for a minute before Paramount dropped the rights. This was Paramount.

At one point, after I talked to Peter Berg, and I do not know how this happened, Peter Berg and I had a long ranging conversation about doom, life, and everything. That's great. You know, at one point he asked me what it was like to live in Brooklyn. I everything. That's great. You know, at one point he asked me what it was like to live in Brooklyn. I said, it's great.

He's like, well, I have kids, but I'm divorced and I wanna have a place that's good for kids. And I'm like, well, Park Slope is terrific. Sure, get yourself a brownstone, Peter. And then Peter Berg, and listen, Peter Berg, if you're listening to this, this is what I remember. Peter Berg goes, right, but if you wanna fuck a woman at 2 a.m., what do you do?

And I'm like, okay, now you're talking to the wrong person. I would say, I would say, not great for that. You can't just like hit the bars in Park Slope at 2 a.m. There may be an answer, but John Hodgman is not gonna, I'm a PC. There's like one Irish bar where where cops will yell at me maybe? I don't know if any ladies are going to want to fuck me. The Mac would maybe know. Not to stereotype, but the Mac would maybe know.

Justin might know. Justin might know. I'm not going to say anything about Justin Lump. The Mac. Oh, the Mac. That's an idea. That character, yeah. That's a dramatic construct.

And sometime after that, I got a call saying, Peter Berg's working on Dune. Would you want to take a swing at the script? And I was like, this is not ever going to work. It's not going to happen. So I have to pass it up, which is a mistake. I could have made a little cheap money on a movie that was probably not going to happen. I would have gotten to hang out with my best friend Peter Berg somewhere. Just don't be around him at 2 a.m.

Peter. David? Yes? This episode, can you guess? Movie! Brought to you by Moomi! We're gonna be around him at 2 a.m. Peter. David. Yes? This episode, can you guess? Movie! Brought to you by Movie! Wow, the curated streaming service

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How did he find anything to play that kind of look? We're excited to see this movie I don't I have our tickets at the time. It's recording. Yeah, you got your tickets It got huge reviews a can it was a I mean, it's a big player this year I'm very excited to see it. I've heard it is absolutely crazy and fun Look look it'll change your life. Let's just say this we love the way movie does it. They're buying challenging movies Putting them in theaters and then letting them live on their streaming service forever They're doing it the right way and we want to support that good job movie So visit try the substance calm for showtimes and tickets.

And you can try Mubi free for 30 days at Mubi.com slash blank check. That's M-U-B-I dot com slash blank check for a month of great cinema for free. Goodbye. Bye bye. Now, I love Kyle McLaughlin. This movie gives David Lynch the gift of Kyle McLaughlocklin meeting this guy who's gonna be such an incredible figure in his language as a filmmaker, being able to use this guy as sort of an analog for himself. It is so bizarre to me that he got this part without having a pre-existing relationship with Lynch and that he is kind of a weird fit for it in that for how young he actually

was when they made this movie, no one has ever perpetually looked like a grown ass man more than comic block Lynch. He just has such an adult jaw. I think he's good in this. I like Kyle in this. I don't think he's bad in it. But I also think you don't watch this and go, oh my God, the shit Lynch is going to do with him. This is his guy.

It doesn't feel like this amazing discovery partnership has been formed. Well, I mean, the thing is, and I realized this and I was reading this when I was 13 years old when I was trying to read Dune. It's like the thing that I could connect with was Paul is 15. Sure. I'm going back to the dossier. Okay. You guys, we've jumped all over.

I just want to say one quick thing, which is Late for Dinner, the film you referenced, was in fact directed by W.D. Richter, the only other film directed by the man who did Buckaroo Bonsai. The only other, right. That must have been why I watched it. I didn't even remember that. We always talk about it.

Good movie. We'll talk about that later. Mark Ruffee Jacobs at one point wanted David Lean to make Dune. Sure. That makes sense. David Lean said, and I quote, no. I don't know if he actually said no, but he passed.

At one point they got, tried to get, well, they tried to get the script a little wet and the Dalton Trumbo was brought in to type this one up in his bathtub. There was a writer's strike. I think Haskell Wexler was on some kind of... They would have had to put him into a dirt bath or a sand bath. Yeah, it would have been tough for him. That's not the wrong mood. Anyway, Arthur Jacobs dies in a heart attack.

Trying to write in a sand pit. Exactly. The sleeper must awaken. And then of course in the 70s, Alejandro Gawdorowski. You can watch the documentary about it. Certainly commissioned a gigantic book of concept art. He brought in lots of interesting people. Spent a lot of money.

H.R. Giger, he spent a lot of French money all over town. Getting people involved in his notion of a Dune movie, which if you want, you know, the concept art that was produced for it is really lovely and cool to look at, I would say. The people he gathered together went on to do deeply influential work in other films. He had H.R. Giger, the cartoonist Mobius, and Dan O'Bannon together, right?

Like before Alien, before anything else. That's sort of his biggest claim to fame. Obviously he makes this giant book, sends it to studios and studios are like, are you crazy? We would never give you money for this. By the way, Tim, I'll take this and this and this. They used it as a menu for science fiction film development for a generation. But you just watched that documentary for the first time and you were saying, people talk about it as like, oh my god, it's this tragedy about the greatest

near-miss film. I mean, right. And the narrative crux of the movie, this is always what I found frustrating about that movie is just, it's been so much time talking up the pitch and then you're like, what happened? And they're like, he pitched it and everyone said no. There was no like ransacking. It's not like a near-miss. No.

Everyone's just like, well, no, you want us to give you money for this? It's an entertaining movie because he is an incredibly entertaining person when he's talking. My favorite part of Hodorowsky's Dune was when he was complaining. It's like, the problem was I could never make my movie because all people ever cared about was money. And he doesn't say money. He reaches in his pocket and he pulls out somebody and goes, this, this awful stuff. And I noticed he's like, you're holding about a thousand dollars.

Is he just walking around with that? This is flush. How you doing buddy? You really don't care about this money? Cause you got a lot of it. You're trying to get laid in parks. No, but two AM. The thing about Hodorowski also is you watch it and you're like, okay, so how old is he? 65. And it turns out he's like 88. Yes.

He's so young and hot, like for whatever. He's still going, I think, right? He's still going. Yeah. But you imagine that he maybe would have, in his mind, if people had just given him money... Less than a hotarovski in his passing. ...and fucked off, right? That he would have gone like, and I'm just gonna make this about mood. I'm not gonna worry about every character explaining every bit of lingo. Obviously, famously he was gonna have Salvador Dali

play the emperor. At like 10% of the budget going straight to him. He did something like, I will pay you, I can't remember what it is, with like 100 grand an hour. And like, that'll quote unquote make you the highest paid actor in film history. No one's ever gotten paid that as an hourly rate,

but we'll shoot you out in like three hours. I think that was sort of their plan. Mick Jagger was going to be Faye and Ralph. Keith Carradine, I think, was going to be, or David Carradine, maybe, was going to be Leto. And of course, his own son Brontas was going to be Paul. And he had Brontas do like two years of kung fu for a movie that never even made it past the pitch stage. Also a great sci-fi named Brontas. Brontas do like two years of kung fu for a movie that never even made it past the big stage.

Also a great sci-fi named Brontas. Brontas Yodorowsky. Stop me if I'm just late to this. Late for dinner directed by W.D. Reiter? I've heard good things about that film. From you. If this is a conclusion that other people have come to. Years before me.

But I'm watching this and I'm like could any filmmaker have pulled this off at this point in time realistically within the studio system within like having the track record to have a little bit of reassurance from the studio they know to handle this thing there's the one guy and I'm I'm happy that he did what he did instead. But in retrospect, there's the one obvious answer who in 1984 would have made sense to do Dune. Which is? George Miller. It's pretty early for him.

He had already done Road Warrior. Yeah, but still pretty early. But if you're looking at someone's second film and saying who could make Dune as their third film. Maybe you take Miller over to Lynch. Road Warrior makes a lot more sense than Elephant Man. But Elephant Man was like a best picture. No, I know.

It massacres. Yeah, and Road Warrior, a cult hit. Yeah, I mean one of the things, and having just seen Furiosa, which I loved. An excellent film that all of us love for the record. We hated it, listen to the app. Okay. That's not what I read.

100% shitting out. Okay, whatever. I'm trying to rewrite history here. I've talked three times in theaters. Yeah, no. I mean, obviously, and this is true about Lucas too, which Lynch couldn't quite do, which is like, you know where everyone is at every moment. Yes.

You know how things, like Lynch... Miller's very good at it. Lynch curated a beautiful, arresting, sometimes terrifying space where these characters were in, but you didn't know where they were or where they were going or where the worms were or what was going on. You couldn't move them through the space. Miller incredibly good at the just like giving you a sense of lore and history and connections and how structures work without needing to have it actually explained. But when we talk about how Dune is unfilmable, as many people did,

there are reasons for it, right? Obviously, it's very long. Obviously, it's pretty esoteric. Obviously, it's multiple different novels. There is a boys adventure novel. There is also an ecological parable. There's tons and tons of religious nun fear. There's tons and tons of religious, uh, uh, uh, none fear. There's tons and tons

of just drug stuff in it. Like it's exactly what a novel can be, which is discursive, tangential. It's, uh, you know, and on top of that though, I think the thing that really made it hard to do was that so much of the novel is interior. Yes. And also these fucking worms, these fucking, you know what I'm talking about? These fucking worms. They're big. And it's not just that they're big and hard to pull off. They're weird and big and they're phallic.

When you are reading a book and you read about giant sand worms that eat sand and vomit and poop drugs and you can ride around on them, you're like, yeah, I'm all over this, this is fantastic. Images baked into your brain that now the film has to live up to. Well, and there are just some things, for the most part, that when you put them in front of you, they take it out of your mind's eye and put it onto a screen, it looks dumb.

Yeah. So, like, you know, so much of the animus behind Superman the movie and the Spider-Man TV show or whatever is like, what do these people look like in the real world? It's really hard to make superheroes in those costumes in the real world not look dumb. Yeah. Only Chris Turev could really do it. Do you know what I mean? Decades of iteration.

Yeah. And that's the one example that worked until the late 80s. Right. Yes. And those worms, setting aside the technical issue of filming worms so they look real. And that they have to do a lot of shit. Right. Yeah.

They're a big part of the story. Yes. And when you take them out of your mind's eye, even if you could make them look perfectly real, but you couldn't at the time, there's a real risk of them looking dumb. And I would say the other thing, what Villeneuve could do with regard to the worms, first of all, I think you're right, David, that he took it out of the interior inner monologue

and actually dramatized what was happening in the story, which helped. Mostly through building it around relationships, figuring out the right way to structure acts around interpersonal relationships. Yeah. And he figured out a way to make those worms look good, move good. Obviously a lot more technology allows him to do that. Obviously perfectly suited for a popcorn bucket, which the lynch worms were not. But even so, I would say that it might not have come off unless David Lynch's dune existed. Like the Benegesserit Missionaria Protectiva. Someone had to do it incorrectly.

Seating myths throughout the galaxy to prepare the way for Paul to say that he's Maud Dieb when he meets the Fremen. I feel like we've gotten this in our head enough that when we see them this time, they don't look totally jarring and dumb and weird. I would agree with that. I also think it is interesting to me. We were watching the special feature on the Arrow Blu-ray that's like a 20 minute feature read about the merchandising efforts of Dune.

How hard they went on this movie in the wake of Star Wars and like blowing it out with bed sheets and fucking activity books and all sorts of toys and what have you. Pencil cases for elementary school. David, you had a very good slam, which is they actually only should have made merch for Poindexters. It should have just been you know that shit. You're right. But they made every type of thing. And on the back of the packaging for all the toys,

they used to have what they called the cross cell, where you could see all the other products in the line, so you knew what you need to collect. It said Sandworm, Deluxe Sandworm. And then they put like a fucking bar over it that said, Top Secret. They were in the lead up to this movie being like, we can't even show you a toy of the worm yet, because this has to be saved for the fucking big screen. And also probably it would be illegal to send this through the mail in certain states, because

this thing is so much of a penis It is so sexual the great failing of the toy Is that the mouth is very shallow and you can't really get any practical use out of it Wow, but otherwise it looks like it's just meant for them David Lynch Some other people gonna you know Ridley Scott's the most obvious person who flirted with making this movie but decided too similar to stuff I've done, I'm not going to do it. David Lynch though, okay?

David Lynch. David Lynch. David Lynch. He comes aboard. Christopher DeVore and Eric Berggrin had worked with Lynch on The Elephant Man already, and so they help him kind of, you know, draft this novel into a gigantic screenplay. Lynch does pitch Should We Do Two Movies, which I think is a classic pitch. Yeah.

Yeah. And that gets basically shot down. Even with Star Wars as a model, everyone was terrified of the idea of leaving any story incomplete. Right. Eventually the other two guys leave because they're sort of like, they sort of see trouble ahead basically. They're like, there's no way to make an entertaining movie that Danino De Laurentiis is going to like with a lot of action in it and have David make a movie that David wants to make.

Sure. But they get David Lynch and they're just kind of like, you know, the navigating being faithful to this novel, making a blockbuster and making a David Lynch movie. We just don't really see how it's going to work. Too many masters to serve in opposite directions. Lynch eventually submits the shooting script. It's about 135 pages long. It also, as Lynch says, has to be a PG.

And so some of the quote unquote stranger stuff has to get thrown out the window. Now, Val Kilmer, I believe was the first choice to play Paul Atreides and makes a ton of sense. Because he has that kind of perfection to him, right? Where you're like, it's eerie. And the sort of studious. He's all angular, yes, yes. A little, like he kind of hate him,

he kind of root for him. But you know what I learned, and this may or may not be true, but I saw it online, that also considered for the role, another Buckaroo Banzai... Peter Weller? Perfect Tommy, Louis Smith. Interesting. Perfect Tommy, Louis Smith.

Yeah. Peter Weller would be too old. Well, that's why I was confused. And so is Louis Smith, and so is Val Kilmer for that matter. Kilmer's maybe... Because this is post... No, it's right around top... What's he talking, 86? 80... Yeah.

So this is pre-Top Gun. He'd done Top Secret and Real Genius? Had he done like Willow yet? Or is it... Wait. Let's look. Let's look here. Let's take a look for him to say. No, that's later. So yeah, who is he? He's in The Outsiders.

He's done Top Secret of Real Genius. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So I don't know, I mean, yeah. You know what? Top Secret is this year. Right. Is this same year.

Obviously Tom Cruise is also mentioned. Tom Cruise is just kind of like a hot new face at the time. But would have really, he would have fit. He probably would have fit. I think they had the fear that he's kind of too charismatic. And one fear is the mind-boggler. He smiles and yeah, well that's another thing they had to deal with. Paul Atreides had, I mean Paul Atreides,

Colin McLaughlin had graduated from the University of Washington. He'd never acted in a movie. Lynch doesn't apparently do traditional auditions. He kind of just meets. What? He does things his own way? Gets your vibe. McLaughlin said, I had seen Eraserhead, didn't really know what to make of it.

I more liked movies like The Three Musketeers. I get it, swords. They talk about growing up in the Northwest, they talk about red wine. And Lynch is like, I like your vibe, read this script. Like, we'll film some scenes. Wild. It is wild.

There's some weird shit like of like, why didn't he go for Kilmer? Cause Kilmer makes so much sense. So is wild. There's some weird shit like of like, why didn't he go for Kilmer? Because Kilmer makes so much sense. So much sense. Just kind of like a little bit of a known entity. The most commonly offered- But you can understand why someone, and look, I was trained to believe the author is dead, that authorial intention means nothing, only the text remains.

But I will say, you could appreciate a world in which David Lynch is like, well, there's this movie star that they want me to make this thing with. Yes. You could appreciate a world in which David Lynch is like well There's this movie star that they want me to make this thing with yes or this up-and-coming star that they want or This kid I found in college I think in the Pacific Yeah, it's a bit more of a blank slate and Val Kilmer's notoriously difficult like I don't know if it was notorious back then but meeting with him you could imagine how he's like The other thing this guy's got ideas of... What this is gonna do for his career. David's like, why does this guy keep calling me his Huckleberry?

Well, he is your Huckleberry. He is. If you want to appall the Trades. The other thing I think that is, is like, Kyle McLaughlin is as close to David Lynch finds as an analog for himself as a young man. Right. Obviously, Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks,

though like, that's him. But clearly there's some part of him. Everything I'm reading about Twin Peaks, is I am now just deep in Twin Peaks. Like, that's him. But clearly there's some part of him. Everything I'm reading about Twin Peaks, is I am now just deep in Twin Peaks, guys. I don't know if you guys know about this, but I'm so deep. I've seen all of Twin Peaks before,

but now I'm just kind of soaking in it in a new way. And what I've learned is that like, everything on Twin Peaks was, you know, Mark Frost did lots of stuff, obviously, but Lynch handled Dale Cooper. Yeah. And the words coming out of Dale Cooper's mouth, people are like, that's how he talks.

Like that's just how Lynch behaves. Right. And maybe he just meets this guy and is like, they're talking about the Pacific Northwest or whatever, and Lynch is like, yeah, you know, you're me. If I'm making a coming of age story, this is me when I was coming of age. Yeah. Yeah. Lynch is, Lynch is Lido to, uh, uh, Kyle's age. Yeah. Lynch's Lido to Kyle's Paul.

Yes. Orson Welles obviously is considered for the Baron. Apparently Divine was considered. Cool. Had health issues. Goes to Kenneth McMillan, who I feel like is classic, just like, yeah, you can eat a British guy to kind of yell and shit. Like, he's good for that.

And then does rule in this. He's having so much fun. He's having I like a completely unembarrassed performance like this You know what I mean? I love what stones cars guard does so much Yeah, but I you know this guy's like this guy's like the most evil guy in the world. He flies around I would say so I sure I can do that. He flies up to the ceiling to chomp the scenery up there Already chopped the whole floor. Glenn Close's number one pick for Lady Jessica. Okay. Makes a ton of sense.

I see, you know, like she passes on it because she was displeased that when she read in the script there was a scene where we're quote quote running away from a big worm or whatever and The woman fell down and everyone has to come back and get her and she was like, I don't want to be some woman They all have to rescue. Okay, okay So they go for Francesca and it's really good. Yeah, yeah, it's sort of British Shakespeare I think of her and she's in the Polanski Macbeth I think but but another example of like one of the things that Villeneuve gets really right is what he sort of builds around that relationship. She's so good. Yes.

Beyond just Ferguson being fucking phenomenal. Very good at her job. Right. Watching this movie now, I was like, it's kind of insane to think that you could put that much emotional weight on this character with how she's presented in this movie. Right. Yes. And he heightens her in the, well let's not talk about that movie. Let's talk about this movie. Let's presented in this movie. Right. Yes. And he heightens her in the, well, let's not talk about that movie. Let's talk about this movie. Let's talk about this movie.

Jürgen Prochnau, it is funny again, like, it's like Gregory Peck, Rucker Hauer. You see these big names, then it like, it goes to a middle name. Sure. So I do think there was this automatic from a lot of the big stars, like, eh, some sci-fi crap. And a lot of people that Lynch will then use again, it makes sense as like weird energy face people sure But you're like this movie is basically cast with severe Europeans

It's true I mean which Star Wars has this interesting balance of like, you know Those are the people in the functionary roles and the officer roles Yes, he knows which people to let be the color. I love Jurgen Prochner. I do You know, he's a pillar. He's awesome. He doesn't get to do a ton in this movie. Kind of in the same choice for those parts.

He gets the Sleepy Must Awake monologue at school. He'd been in Das Boot, that was what he was coming up with. Do you think when they're standing over the ocean in Caladan at the beginning of the movie and he says to Paul, I'm really gonna miss the ocean, that's a Das Boot joke. I've been in that fucking thing. I had such a good time.

If I were in Dazboot, I'd be like, yeah, get me to the desert planet right quickly. Dry. My only marching orders for my career. Sean Young, she's a pretty hot young star, right? She's getting Chani. Aldo Ray is cast as Gurney Halleck, who is of course, his ex-wife is Joanna Ray, who ends up casting all the Lynch movies. He is too drunk, not to speak ill of his severe alcoholism, but he is fired from the movie.

He's not able to do the work. So he is replaced by Patrick Stewart, who owns in this movie, with the little that he gets to do. John Hurt was cast as Dr. Yue and then Dean Stockwell It's just so funny that you're like, well, of course Dean Stockwell's in it. He knows David Lynch. No, right This is where this is where it all and then he finds the better role for him. It's every McGill It's like yeah, well, he knew ever McGill no Yeah, but I did watch it sounds like how is John Hurt not in this like John Hurt's the exact guy

He should have carried over John Hurt does guy he should have carried over. John Hurt does feel like- Hopkins he should have carried over, although they famously didn't really get over. But right, Hurt, it does feel like, why isn't, apparently Hurt, whatever, had some, you know, scheduling disarray or whatever, you know, there's reasons for this. You have Freddie Jones, of course, from Elephant Man,

is the one actor he does bring over from that movie. Who's good? Yeah. Playing the most disgusting man in the world. And look, it's a, there's a lot of competition. He just don't like his big bushy brows. It's true. There's a lot of competition in there.

It's true. But I mean, you're talking about, Macmillan's got boils all over his face. Yes. And his monster. Yes. You're talking about Thufir Haalot with the big eyebrows. Those eyebrows are gross.

I'm being too mean to the eyebrows. Brad Durif also. They're gross. They're not nice. Brad Durif also has the big eyebrows and he's also in a blue velvet later I mean also as the stained because there's another litany. I it's by will alone. I set my mind in motion I drink the juice the juice provides a stain Because that was made up too for for it's cool though, right? It's very cool. But you do like I

Brad shows up that makes that gives them superhuman intelligence and computing power turns them into mendets. Short of... I'm just saying that for anyone who's very impressive. No, Josh, I think you're right. I don't think anyone watches David Lynch's Dune and understands that there are no computers in this world and people have taken the place of computers.

Does not come across. That's an important point. And I think some... Villeneuve communicates it immediately. Right, someone might even say it aloud, like for all I know, because there's so much information being thrown at you, but right, you just kind of like,

yeah, let's see, he's like a weirdo guy, I get it. He's got big hair, okay. I'm not thinking about it. Yeah, another weirdo. Right, but I'm like pulling up Wikipedia. Most of the characters I can track, and I'm like, who's Stephen McKinley, Harrison, Henderson, like this doesn't seem...

Oh, well, Bluto! You made the joke right before we started recording, but Paul Smith. Yeah. as the Beast Raban. Who, of course, plays Bluto in Robert Altman's Popeye. But then there's weird stuff, he's bringing a lot of Bluto energy to this role, though. I kept wanting him to burst out and, I mean, I mean, I mean, you know what I mean. Trying to describe it, it's almost like he's got a shaved Bluto vibe.

It's just, you have something like Max Monsido. I know he's not a superstar, but that's a very big serious actor. At this point, the man has been in major films for 20 years. He pops in as Liet Kienz. He does like two scenes. He's good. Yeah. And then you have like Everett McGill as Stilgar, who... Like, Everett McGill basically just played like heavies. He wasn't a big actor at all.

He'd been in like Brew Baker, the Redford movie. And he's getting, I would say, one of the biggest roles in the movie, although he also doesn't get enough to do. It's just funny how they sorted through it. I don't think any of the casting is bad. Can I say something about Max Von Sito in this movie? You sure can. He did a really good job, especially delivering the lines with regard to the stillsuits.

Feces and urine are processed in the thigh pads. He somehow delivers it in a way that doesn't make you giggle. And it's like, again, this is like, every time I would watch this movie, I would see another thing, and I would just be like, the sheer audacity. This is a line that was written, and then someone had to transcribe it to the Captions because I got to watch movies with captions. They're like cat milking box So the shit in the pants is in the book Yeah, yeah, it recycles your body's waste and turns it into water, but it's not an Denise movie

and turns it into water. But it's not in Denise's movie. Nobody says like, your thighs do poop. You're right. But I mean, it's where you're... He makes the smart choice to not really spell it out. Because that's... I got really held up on that. I had to pause it.

The second you say it directly, yes. The adult men and women are shitting their pants while in the desert. Constantly. Every conversation they're having. Well, you can't just let that stuff go. It's got moisture in it. Yeah, that's valuable stuff. Sure. Okay, well that all checks out. But yeah, Max von Sido is exactly the kind of guy who can make that sing, right?

Patrick Stewart, with not a lot of screen time, clearly shows himself fast enough with this kind of shit. That like, you have to imagine this is the performance that gets him Picard. I would imagine, yes. There's no way he ends up with that part without this. Even if this didn't make his career instantly. Obviously it's a huge benefit to him that he was on screen in a big movie, right? There's no like...

Yeah, but he's got... Just sort of poise and the gravitas of saying this shit like it means something. And yeah, and he pulls it off and you feel completely convinced that he's in this world and he's part of this world. He's great in this movie. I love Patrick Stewart. And he's got to do a whole fight scene hidden behind proto-CGI bogus shields, which again was something that I would think about every time I see him.

It's like the fucking audacity. I mean, it's just... Like you can't even see these actors. If people haven't already picked up, taken their normal popcorn buckets home with them, right, after, and another thing, it's also called Dune, or after, you know, then when it's like, engage your shield, and then they turn into like...

Block, block, block, block, block. They turn into Minecraft characters or whatever. Yes, exactly, yes. It's, I love how it looks, because you're, They turn into Minecraft characters or whatever. Yes, exactly. Right. Yes. It's... I love how it looks because you're, like you say, the audacity of it, but I cannot imagine people were punching the screen with excitement seeing the blocks go like...

When I saw Star Wars as a child... And then him being like, you got your knife through there, and I'm like, I can't see that. I don't understand. If you say so. Good. The slow blade penetrates the shield. Oh, great. The blade's so. Good. The slow blade penetrates the shield. Oh, great. The blade's slow.

Great for an action movie. Well, I mean, you know, when I saw Star Wars, I was old enough to see it in the theaters. And I don't remember a moment where I felt like I was seeing something new. I felt like what I was seeing was something I've known my whole life. That's the magic of Star Wars. Like, I just felt like I knew this world instantly. Yeah. And, but with seeing Dune that makes it so unsettling,

Yes. among other things, Yeah. is this sense of like, oh, I've never seen anything like this before in my life. Well, that's the, but here was another thing I was thinking about while watching this.

The Lucas magic in that original film of just everything feeling like only a couple of steps away from a real-world Analog that makes a ton of sense right right whether things that were reflective of society in the 1970s or things They're just part of like the most popular myth and lore that we all grow up with you're like okay Knights Samurai soldiers farms desert like everything is just feels like it's just a little bit interesting. A little bit mashed up, you know? But real strong, like, kind of like centering pillars around it.

This movie is engaging in the sort of like gilded sci-fi. Of everything being like very heightened and very like hermetic and very self-serious. And let's take these ideas and stretch them out and make them as weird and intellectual as possible. Like we're gonna wear personal shields, but if you move... And we're gonna have hand-to-hand knife combat in the future. And if you move your knife slowly, that's how you get through it. It's all this sort of counter-intuitive science fiction stuff, which is why Dune is science fiction stuff, which is why

Dune is science fiction Star Wars is fantasy now mind you even though it is still fantasy the prequels get into a lot more of this vibe and People largely react with boring right? Why am I watching like fucking Senate meetings, right? Why am I seeing people walk very slowly through Grand Halls, right? You know? And most times sci-fi tries to go into this arena. I think it's a goofier movie, but Jupiter Ascending has the same thing of like palace intrigue. Yeah, because it's all metaphor for political condition, human condition, ecological condition,

which gets lost completely in all of the adaptations. There's no real way to handle it because no one wants to talk about it. But yes, it's all this metaphoric, what's the, cerebral shit that I'm thinking of. Yeah, and sort of like trying to treat it with a sense of like Shakespearean self-seriousness. I think, I agree with you David, that no one in this movie is flat out bad. No. I think I agree with you David that no one in this movie is flat-out bad No, but the problem is that like you need to think I mean you were saying shorthand casting is what Villeneuve does but the other thing that like only a few of the actors in this movie side out and Stuart being perfect examples of the difficult balancing act of Can you invest a sense of gravitas in into this stuff that could be seen as really silly or dry

while simultaneously putting some spin on the ball? Like you also have to make it a little theatrical, a little fun, because what you're saying isn't innately that dramatic. And it's a lot of like classical training, Royal Shakespeare. Can you just have control of your voice and rhythms in this way? That like, Jurgen Prochow is like, tremendous presence, but is doing a very straightforward, like, I'm just playing him like a real guy. I think Kyle, as much as I love Kyle McLaughlin in general, is he's good at the earnestness.

He is sort of surprisingly, no, not surprisingly, sort of... At the beginning of the movie. And he doesn't have much flair later on. The movie is selling him out at that point by being like, oh, and then he became a messiah that like completely runs an armory where you're like, he does? And you know, he's not like embarrassing at the end when he's saying like, you know, don't, you know,

you don't control me anymore, basically. But it's like the shallow-made performance is that is that you need to be scared of this person. And you know, what I liked about the casting of Chalamet, first of all, is that he looks 15. He looks small and fragile. He does. And that brings a lot more to the character. Bratty child energy.

And then his transformation into this... He has presence. I mean, his transformation into this powerful, confident person. Right. Obviously, he's got more time to develop that. And this is the thing, the biggest issue is always going to be like, yeah, this movie just has to cut ahead to, then he became a really, really charismatic magic man. Right. But also, this movie is never gonna let him become the slightly scary figure in... They're never going to say we're adapting Boona...

Jesus Christ. Boona. We're adapting Boona. We're doing Boona as one big budget... Diablo Cody's Boona. Diablo Cody's Boona. One big budget movie that we want to sell a bunch of bedsheets and at the end of the movie everyone in the audience is going to walk out and be like, man, Paul Tray's kind

of sucks, huh? Yeah, he turned into a global dictator. I mean, a galactic dictator. I would say... So he also can't go as hard in the performance. The big... He cannot. Right.

The biggest failing of this film beyond its general rushness is that it basically is uninterested in the largest point of Herbert's writing, which is like, if you create a hero like this, he becomes a messiah, and that is just death. He's at the head of something that's just war and destruction, and this is scary. And Villeneuve's very invested in that in his adaptation, obviously, but this one has to have this happy ending where he's like, water! And then you're like, dude is saved! Now there's water everywhere! And so it can't end with like, but what does it mean that Paul runs like an army of like

kind of zealots? Like, is that good? Is that bad? He's just kind of like, what do you mean? It's great. They fucking killed the Emperor. Hate that guy. They don't even kill him, but you know, beat him.

Beat his ass. That's one of the reasons why the novel is sort of unfilmable, right? Because by the time you're making movies in the post-Star Wars world, you can't... The novel, you know, undoes its own premise. It takes the idea of heroism and says it's actually horrible. Yeah, and I recommend you read Doom Messiah, which does even more of that. Maybe I will. But you can do that as that's the point the middle movie ends on.

You can do that if... Right. chapter two out of three is that. Yeah, I mean, yes, this movie decides to have an ending and that's a fair decision because yeah, you don't know if you're making more of them. But the ending is a little flat because he's just like, I'm thinking really hard and I made water and you're like, oh, you could do that. Yes, I can. And that solves everything? Sure. It doesn't even have him marrying Irulan, which is like a key dramatic moment at the end of the book.

It is bizarre how irrelevant she is to the movie for how much she opens it. Right, and then like the whole point of seeding her is like, yes, this is one of the sacrifices he's gonna have to make. He'll enter into this political marriage. Doesn't happen. You have stuff like Thurfer Hawat getting kidnapped, you know, getting bound by, you

know, whatever. Captured by the Harkinids. That's right. He gets brought to their horrible basement. Yes. And they're like, right, here's a milk. He's given a poison and then Sting hands him a cat that's duct taped to a rat. He sure does.

Inside a space cat carrier. And you're going to have to milk this cat for the antidote to the poison. He sure does. Inside a space cat carrier. Right. And you're going to have to milk this cat for the antidote to the poison. And like, that's, you know, insane and like, obviously just like an insane David Lynch idea, is that from the book? No. But it's also the last you see of him. Right.

You're seeing that and you're like, oh, okay, so maybe Thurfer will like escape this and maybe come back and help them in some way. And so it's like, no, we don't check in with him again. Assume he's milking cats. Just assume he's milking cats. This is a movie. Like, he could have said Thur, he could have said Thufir died in the invasion. That? Sure, anything. Do you know what I mean? And we certainly don't see Thufir Howlott in any more of the

Villeneuve film. No, Villeneuve shot stuff with him in part two and decided not to include it because he was like, it's too superfluous. But you have to understand that David Lynch was like, I don't want to kill him because I need that cat. That's what I'm saying. That cat rat sequence, that's kind of important to me. It's such a clear feeling of this movie

that it is really hard to track who is still alive in any given scene. You don't usually know when people die. No. And like. If someone's not on screen, you're like, are they done? And, right, and then stuff like Harkonnen giving him the cat, right? It's like, well, that demonstrates that Harkonnen's a bad dude, which you might not have picked

up on before now. That's already a... You're almost done with the movie by the time he gets that. And also every time he's on screen, he flies 10 feet in the air going like, I love evil! Give me someone to eat! And to be fair, David Lynch complains a lot about how he didn't have final cut. Sure.

But apparently Dino De Laurentiis or whoever was making the final, did have final cut. I was like, yeah, let's keep that cat rat thing in. That's stuff that I just wonder if they fought with him and Lynch was like, please can I just have the cat? And they were like, I mean, it's two minutes. I guess you can have the cat. We were cutting a lot of other stuff.

But it also has glacial pacing and it has this very deliberate sort of like off rhythm. When I started rewatching it, cause I'd seen it so many times, I'm like, I feel bad, but I'm going to try to watch this at like 1.5 speed. And then I'm watching at 1.5 speed, I'm still, I'm like, this is really slow. So Lynch, so, you know, one of the things, so there's a big book that just came out called The Masterpiece in Disarray by a guy named Max Evry, which is huge. Some of the stuff I'm reading from his. Yeah, it's huge. And I've not read the whole thing.

I've dipped into it. There's also, it's a huge oral history. There's also a book by a guy who was on set who was doing, trying to create a documentary about it named George Godwin. No, Kenneth George Godwin. Anyway, there's a lot of documents out there. One of the things that I kind of picked up from this was that as they went on in Mexico, as the studio started to freak out. Yes, the film shot in Mexico just FYI because it was cheap.

Yeah, they got more for their they got more for their buck Yeah, they were filming often in something called the dogs graveyard Right the hope hope for budget of course is 30 mil It eventually cost 42 right so quite over and as it went on like what what people were saying was David Lynch was getting upset about how much he had to pull back. And that instead he would try, he would focus in on certain little scenes like the cat rat. And be like, this is where I'm going to leave my fingerprint on this.

Which feels like a real thing that carries over into his films after this, which is just like if an idea interests me, I'm gonna spend as much time on it as I want. Yeah. Even if other people would view this as like a sidetrack, the kind of bit, off topic rant. And is it wrong? Because when you think about it, what are we all talking about?

That cat taped to a rat. Exactly. So JJ read the 500 page book, A Masterpiece in Disarray. Must be nice. Our researcher, and he's fired for reading that long. Of course. It's disgusting. We didn't ask you to.

And he says his summary of the production from reading this is basically like, Dune is not really a runaway disaster. It was just a gigantic undertaking that maybe everyone had underestimated a little bit. This is not a movie where on set people are like at each other's throats. This is JJ talking.

Yeah. He's sort of somewhere, you know, like it's more a thing of like we've all bitten off a little more we can chew here. And when you hear Sean Young talk about that time, I mean, there were flare ups and stuff, but basically it was a kind of summer camp people got along. Sure. Yeah. And they're all in it together a little bit. They had a thing where Apogee, which was a special effects company that was John Dykstra's, who's obviously a big figure at that time, leaves the movie early and in comes Barry

Nolan who works at a lower budget. Maybe that had some issues. The big issues come after shooting the movie. That's when suddenly Lynch gives a three and a half hour cut to De Laurentiis. Frank Herbert saw it and liked it. Dino De Laurentiis, and I'm sure he said this in a normal tone of voice, found it quote boring. So Lynch is like, okay, let me give it to three hours.

Okay, and De Laurentiis is like two hours 15. No, no, De Laurentiis is like three hours unacceptable. It get it to... Two hours 15. No, no, but De Laurentiis is like three hours unacceptable. It's like way too long. Three was his first counter. Correct. You're like, are you crazy? We are going to rip the guts out of this thing. Lynch says, I never hated being in Mexico,

but I got real crazy when we came back to LA because the time we got to the editing room, the writing was on the wall. It was horrible. It was a nightmare what was being done to truncate it basically. The voiceovers were added for this, right? Just to explain things.

And Dino, I think is just going off the, you need to make a regular movie for me. Sorry. Please. Like this needs to be, this is a big movie, it's expensive, it needs to be commercial, it can't be three hours long. We don't make those movies right now. And I heard somewhere or read somewhere

that part of it was like, if we, it has to be 2.15. We don't make those movies right now. And I heard somewhere or read somewhere that part of it was like, if we, it has to be 2.15 so we don't lose a showing in the theaters. I think the longer your movie is, obviously the less times you can show it during the day. And yeah, yeah, yeah. It's funny that this has always been this theory when a movie is too long, the studios are like, fuck, we're losing money because we're only, we're showing it two times fewer than every other movie playing right now and then you look at the top ten films of all time and

Snapshot almost any year sure the majority of the top ten films of all time are like three hours long Here's the thing Griffin. Everyone's wrong about everything. This is true. That is so true Yeah, anytime someone decides that they're right about something. They're almost certainly fact wrong It's not even just like oh well in 50s, three-hour epics were popular. You're like, it's still fucking Avengers Endgame and Avatar overtook Gone with the Wind and Lawrence of Arabia, you know? Now, Universal distributed this film,

and indeed, apparently, they were less afraid of the three-hour runtime. And Tom Mount, who ran Universal, saw the longer cut and says, it's better, it's more David's version. I think the cuts didn't help it I think the bravado that David banked into it got curtailed and it's the deleterious way movies hurt if you fuck him up Which is you know, that's a great way to put it. That's a Elaine May ecology line.

Right, but Dino is the one who's like no no no like that's three hours is just too long This makes it all the crazier that the next movie David Lynch makes is with Dino de la Renta's yes, but that's that's showbiz that is showbiz But it's let's find the absolute smallest size for a movie where he'll just let me be David Lynch We talked about in our elephant man episode John When they were developing that movie Lynch was, and of course I will do the makeup. Like his plan was to do the makeup effects entirely himself because he was used to working that way on Elephant Man.

Or not Elephant Man, Eraserhead, right? And they were just like, you will? And he's like, yes, I did them all for my old movie. And they're like, this is like the lead character in a complicated narrative film It's gonna be an incredibly complicated prosthetic that has to match historical man Yeah And like worked on it really hard and really far along until he finally was like this has gotten the better of me

And they were like you have to let go and broaden a professional You could imagine for a guy who was so used to I'm in charge, I'm touching every element of a film. It's a struggle for me to let someone else do the makeup. Was never gonna come out of an experience like Dune feeling good. Even if he got everything he wanted, a production of this size is like running a giant corporation. It's like mounting like an army to attack like a months long war. And there's no way, even if everyone is following his vision, that he's going to

feel that level of control and like he never gets close to anything being this size again. No. Not only does he never try to make something of this scale, but like he keeps his budgets pretty fucking under control. Yeah. Twin Peaks The Return is the only other thing he made that cost lots and lots of money, I feel like.

And that cost a lot of money because it was 16 hours long. Correct. And, you know, God bless him. Yeah. But that movie, you know, the Twin Peaks The Return does not have crowds of people charging it at Pyramid or whatever, you know. This is, yes, this is a different kind of scale. Toto, I just want to shout out, please. Shout out Toto.

They were talking about my law before we started recording. Toto IV is the album that has Africa. We're trying to Toto-pill Ben. Surely you've heard of Africa. Yes, of course. The Weezer song. That Toto got a time machine, went back in time and recorded it before Weezer, but of course it's a Rivers Cuomo original.

Ben was being derisive of Toto, which is fair. Mm. Bad name. Yeah. It is a bad name. It's kind of a tough... You know how bands pick a name and then that's their name? And then obviously sometimes they're like,

this name sucks, let's change it, right? But it is like, it must suck to just get stuck with Toto. And you're just Toto forever. And then you release one album and you're like, fuck, now we have to always be Toto, right? Are there any other bands named after fictional dogs? Probably. Were you ever in a band, Ben?

Was I ever in a band? Yes. No. That's a bummer. I was hoping you'd been in some band called, like, you know, Bonefuck. Yeah. Do you play any instruments?

I was a band kid. Right. Of course you played tubo. Why are you gesturing to instruments? I was a band kid. Right. Oh, of course you played tuba. Why are you gesturing to me? Because you sense band kid in me. Yeah, you were a band kid. Yeah, I did. But you were in the woodwinds. I was more of a chamber music woodwind guy.

Oh, wow. Not a marching band. I did play in the band. You're right. What specific woodwind instrument? Nice to see you. Nice to be seen. What's that? Clarinet. Clarinet. Single reeds. Yeah. I was trumpet and then at one point my music teacher took a look at me.

I was a fat kid and he said, you know what? I think tuba would be good for you. Why? Because it would be funnier visual. I think it was more that I could hold it. You could hold it. Yeah, I could carry it around. They're heavy. They're big.

They're cumbersome. But I wasn't ever, I was only with, like I hung out with kids who were in bands. I went to like local punk shows, but I never had the patience to learn how to play guitar or bass. You know what's a good name for a band? Local punks, true. Yeah.

Do you guys like the Toto score? I love the Toto score. Yeah, it's good rules. Toto and Brian Eno. Brian Eno contributed one piece of music. Toto is very mad that he's even given prominent crediting. So it's like the Danny Elfman, Alf Clausen relationship.

Yeah, I think- He came up with the main thing. Eno's hot stuff, obviously, and so they wanna get his name up there. But this is Toto. Which one did Eno write? Did he write, brr, brr, brr, brr? No, that's Toto.

That's Toto, huh? That's Toto, baby. I don't know which one Eno wrote. But they credit Eno as main theme bar? Yes, I think he did the, doon, doon, doon, doon, doon. Pretty good. Doon, doon, doon, doon, doon.

But I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Someone else can tell me. Toto doesn't like it because I think Toto thinks it makes it look like Brian Eno kind of goes for a lot of the music. Right? You know, and then Toto came in and like laid some tracks down. Yeah, no, I think the score rips.

I mean, it's what you said. You walked in and the fucking DVD menu was playing and you were like, every time I think, how could this not be a masterpiece? Right. And I do feel that way of like, if you look think, how could this not be a masterpiece? And I do feel that way of like, if you look at almost any individual image from this film, if you watch any 30 second excerpt, if this movie were projected at a bar, which is where... Yeah, I take it back. This is the only thing that Eno did.

This shit. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Toto did all the main themes and stuff. Anytime you hear a sick guitar riff. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Toto did all the main themes and stuff, right? Anytime you hear a sick guitar riff. Yeah. Right. Wow.

Wow. Wow. They were big session musicians for Steely Dan and bands like that. Bob Skaggs. And they united as a band and of course their first album had Hold the Line, which is probably another song you know. I mean, I started listening through and I realized they're like, they had a ton of songs I've heard on classic radio or classic rock radio.

Classic rock radio hits. In terms of how successfully this movie realizes an entire world visually. Worlds? Worlds, I'm sorry. Mostly do. I keep making this mistake. I was like, this is one of the few movies to fully kind of achieve for me the power of Metropolis, which is one of my favorite movies of all time, where I just watch it in every single, like, I fucking can't believe this exists.

Right. I can't believe they made this. Yes. Right? Not, you know, Zack Snyder's Metropolis. Thank you. Metropolis has an incredibly simple story that is like very sort of alligeic.

Don't turn on robot. Yeah, there's a pretty robot. Don't turn it on. Human heart's important. It just keeps, it has one point it keeps making over and over and over again, which allows it to stretch itself into this epic scale and venture into all these different areas.

Be a little narratively wide ranging because you're like, they keep on underlining it's only about one pretty simple, easy to follow thing. I do feel like, you know, a lot of times Blu-rays will have these cuts where it's like, you can watch the movie just with the score and no dialogue, or just score and sound effects. I don't know if you took all the dialogue out

and I was just hearing Toto and the ambient droning that I'd be able to follow the plot. But I do think if I were watching that, I'd go, man, with the dialogue, this must be the greatest film ever made. You would be able to track like, these people are bad. This person is good, right? You would at least maybe get the broadest strokes.

And you just imagine, well, with the words, I'd probably understand all of this, and then it would fucking ruin my world. The words are what ruin it. The whole thing. And you're still, I mean, I still, I agree. It's like, it's so effective in pieces. In pieces, it is astonishing.

And you know, when I came in, you were screening the Rat Cat scene, which gets me every time. And for the first time ever, I noticed Jack Nance, a racer, himself is in the background, eating a hard boiled egg for some reason. He is. Just going to town. It's so, just like, obviously lovely

that Lynch used Nance, right, you know, over and over. But it's especially funny that he's in this one. It's like, who do you play? It's like, oh, you're just in the scenes with the Harkinids. Just in another costume. He made up the character for Jack Nance fans to give him more stuff to do. Yeah. Okay.

You're playing the music still, right? Or am I just hearing something? You're just hearing it, baby. You're just staring at your head. The sleeper must awaken, Ben. Jesus. You've tuned in. I'm doing the hand.

You take any spice before? Yeah. You're going to places that terrify us. Are you spicing it up? I mean, my eyes are completely blue. Which also mentioned, speaking of you doing spice, this very weekend is your birthday and you've decided to celebrate your birthday by doing Hot Ones. That's correct.

We've mentioned this on a couple episodes now. I am doing the Hot Ones challenge to myself. Well after his birthday. But it's a thread we have to establish. Ben is going to do the full Hot Ones lineup and have all of his friends write questions that he will answer during the Hot Ones. Yeah. Yeah, I'm very scared. Oh, it'll be fine. They're all fine except for the mom, which sucks. Right. That's what I'm kind of I think more now just like, wow, I don't know if I should do bathroom talk, but I'm just worried about the second act.

Yeah, I'm worried about book two. Yeah, maybe you've got to just have a heart out, right? Kind of like, you know what, I'm feeling some rumbling and it's time for everyone to go right now. Maybe like rent a hotel room very close to your apartment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or just right. Many men have tried, tried and failed, tried and died.

That's what you're in for. What a life time for you, buddy. David. Yes? You famously love being on airplanes. Oh, yeah. Love it. I've done it so many times recently.

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And you can get an extra three months free expressvpn.com slash check. So Dune is about the known universes ruled by the Emperor Shaddam IV. Look, we've talked about a lot of... Teenish. Yeah, I don't think we can really... What are things in Dune we have yet to talk about in the film that we might want to touch on? Well, I think we can mirror the movie

and that will just be like, eh, there's Paul and he's this guy, you know, there's this guy, he floats around. The Paul narrative is coherent. Yeah. Basically. Yeah. Basically coherent.

But it's a young man. He's with his family. His family is betrayed. He goes into the desert with his mother. He meets Stilgar. Does Stilgar take one look at him and basically go like, oh yeah, you're that kid I was talking about. This entire legion belongs to you basically.

You're awesome. What do you want us to call you? And he's like, I don't know what people call people here. I don't know. Can I actually crazy? Can I choose five different names? Yeah. It's like, yeah, how are you doing?

You'll be called us old in our language. That means the base and any other names you want can be called my dip. Great answer, buddy. Anyway, but this whole Virginia is like, I know, you know, the glossary thing of like Arrakis, which we also called Dune. Let's make it clear. We have two names for the same thing. I talk about this a lot, but a lot of my relationship with my 90 year old grandmother, how dare

you? That's 81 years old. My 45 year old grandmother is doing tech support for her. Yes. And so often I go and I fix her devices, whatever streaming service isn't working or whatever and she goes Why was it doing this and every time I make this choice where I'm like if I explained to her what I just solved It will confuse her so much the answer. Yeah, right You don't even want to say that she will no longer trust it right and I'll just either make up something or I'll go

You actually don't want me to explain it. Just be happy it's working right now. And it's that thing you said of like glazing over. Where the second a movie is setting up by being like, here is like what this is, but also it's also this, but it's also this, but forget that. Just think about the first thing, unless we mentioned the other two things. You're telling me not to give a shit about this.

Yeah. A little bit. That's why it works better in little parts. When you meet the Harkinens, you obviously get that they are evil. Yeah. A little bit. That's why it works better in little parts. Yep. When you meet the Harkinens, you obviously get that they are evil because... Original title for the movie. Meet the Harkinens. You can tell they're evil because Kenneth McMillan has boils all over his face and it's

like, ah! But I don't think you really get much more. No. I like the look of the crazy, you know, the open-mouthed sort of building that they're in. Oh, the baby face. That's cool. But so funny when you compare to the Villeneuve movie where it's like these people exist in black and white. They are joyless.

Right, right. I love the Villeneuve take on it. And this is like they are the most colorful people in the world. They're all like fat kings. Yes, the gentleman to evil is like basically what they're like. Yes. Every scene with the Harkonnens is like the scene in the first awesome powers where all the bad guys laugh for too long and it doesn't cut. Yes, essentially, yes. What else is going on in Doonikeen? That's basically it. There's not too much devoted to like the politics of the planet, right? Who the Fremen are, what they're doing there, how long they've been there. It's just kind of like they say there's Fremen.

There's no space for it. There's no space for that. And Peter Burke says that he was going to scrape out all of the weird stuff and focus on just the boys' adventure. But really, that's what David Lynch did. Kind of. Surrounding it with weird stuff. And let's...

But then Lynch is like, let's have 10 minutes to meet a guild navigator, which is not even in the book. Right. You know what I mean? There's things that Lynch obviously is just so animated by and he should be. It looks cool. Yeah, absolutely. But in the way he talks about his creative process where it's like, I had a dream where an image came to me

and I spent hours trying to unpack it. Like it's clear that certain things he just latched onto, but this movie's too busy to allow the space for that and also everything it wants to accomplish narrative. What Lynch approaches and gets as deep as he probably can into it is what you identified, David, which is this idea that the sleeper must awaken, that there is an inner journey that Paul goes through.

That we all must go through probably, but that he's identifying with Paul's journey awakening, from boyhood to manhood. And there is an element of that in the book. The problem is the book just has too many, it's about too many things. The book is about a lot of things. And one of the things that the book is about

is a bad land deal. Like, you know, I think that it's interesting that there's this history of this movie being unfilmable quote unquote, and these big personalities, all kind of thought, am I going to be the one to do it? The book is also about a guy who's like tempted. Duclido is like, right, I'm being given this plan. I know this is a trap. I know I'm being set up to fail.

What if I can figure it out? I'm the one who's going to crack the Dune code. I can solve the war in the Middle East. But that's also what the Bene Gesserit, not to get too nerdy about Dune, but maybe I can for a minute or two. You know, the Bene Gesserit have a plan, right? Where they're like, we have been working for multiple generations. Love to hear the plan.

Go ahead, tell me. You know, we have been seeding throughout history, you know, images of prophecy and stuff throughout the universe, but also we've been like breeding our perfect savior, right? He's coming. Right, and what's he gonna do exactly? They think they can control him, obviously, and then of course- What's he gonna do exactly? What's this piece I taught her? What's he gonna do exactly? They think they can control him, obviously, and then of course...

What's he gonna do exactly? What's this Quizhead Tartarac... What's he gonna do when he gets there? What's he gonna do for me lately? What's he gonna do? You tell me! I don't know the answer! He's gonna go where they can't go. Okay, what does that mean? Well, so, I mean...

Well, it's a place that they can't go. He can be a traveler, he can be in many places at once. He can, well, he's the bridging of the way the quizzes had a rock He can he can access the memories of everybody and that's what gonna do what's gonna do what well that is that gonna help Obviously the the benedict right now. I'm like defending the benedict excuse me I'm not a good idea, right? This is where like you've I'm hoping that you've gone to places that I can't go because I thought about this and I can't quite Get there. They have to you all you're arguing. They want a mess. I know it's working again. Yeah, maybe you can get it flushed

I am there miss don't don't waste your water. Don't waste your water Don't waste it Griffin. Just do it in your pants. Just do it in your pants. It'll be processed in your thigh pads They they think they can create a Messiah that they control right? It's the ultimate They think they can create a messiah that they control, right? It's the ultimate sort of folly of religion, basically a religious order, of like, yes, we can guide the world to follow this messianic figure, but we can also guide the world in a way that the messianic figure is just another Bene Gesserit, right? Yes, it'll be a man. That's what will make him the Kwisatz Haderach, that it'll be the first man to have our power, but he'll be under our spell. And then Jessica fucks everything up.

And then they're in charge. And then they're in charge and they can benevolently guide the universe, is their hope. Okay, I got you. You know, what they think is benevolent is up for debate, right? But like that's their hope. Sure. And that, you know, Jessica fucks everything up by making a boy instead of a girl because she wants to. And as Ben and Jess said, she can control her old body on a cellular level. That is correct.

And she loves Ducledo and he wanted a son. Right, she's been told to make a daughter and that that daughter will be bred with Fade Ralpha and the product will supposedly be the quiz at Tatarac. Instead, she makes a boy because yes, she loves somebody. Now let me ask the listener, do you enjoy this kind of exposition? Yes, you do! It's fun, right? And of course, in creating Paul, they create the imperfect Messiah, which I love. Like, Paul is someone who has all the power that they dreamed of creating, right?

Right. Perfect flush, by the way. Perfect knowledge. But when he's given it and when he then leads a holy army, you know, to run roughshod over the entire universe, he feels bad about it because he's a human being and he cannot reconcile the nightmare of what he's doing with the sort of like, ah, but it is for the greater good. Even though he has the brain power to be like, I've done all the math and I do think this is for the

greater good. Like, this is the worst, the best worst option, right? Every other option, more people die. He's Dr. Strange did. He's seen a million outcomes and he's picked the least worst one. And not to spoil the future Dune. Attention, attention. This is a spoiler alert for the 48 year old novel Children of Dune. But of course, the eventual thing is that his son, Leto the second, Paul gives up. He's like, fuck this, I don't want to do it anymore.

And his son is like, I'll do it. The only way I can do it is by turning into a worm. Into a sandworm. And I will live for millennia and be kind of evil. And I will basically take this burden onto myself in an inhuman way and it will destroy me. He'll be the hero that the Duneverse needs. The fourth book, God Emperor of Dune, is just, Leto the Second is a sandworm.

David, yes. I know. Go on. I think we maybe shouldn't know because I think this is too many spoilers. Spoilers for what? You're telling people to read the fucking books and now you're just telling everybody what happened to the fucking books. Yeah, pick a lane.

Okay, well, put a spoiler warning on it. Should they have a spoiler warning on it? Put a spoiler warning on it. I am. People to read the fucking books and now you're just telling everybody what happens to the fucking books. Yeah, pickle lane. Okay, well, should they have a spoiler warning on it? Should they have a spoiler warning on it? Put a spoiler warning on it. I am. He becomes a worm and the book is just him arguing with Duncan Idaho, or Duncan Idaho is like, you're a jerk. And he's like, yeah, I am a jerk.

Duncan Idaho is like, well, that sucks. And he's like, yeah, that's fucking life. Tough cookies. It's the whole book. It rocks. He says tough cookies. He says tough cookies every chapter. Yeah. Every chapter adds to them saying like, and what else do I say?

Tough cookies? He's got a catchphrase. The full phrases, tough cookies, numb nuts. Exactly. Can I read what JJ texted us? Sure. If you want to. JJ, while we were recording, texted David and I, hope the Dune dossier still made sense

once you reach the deeper pages lol in a way writing that dossier was a lot like making Dune parenthetical 1984 high hopes early on good work to kick things off eventually overwhelmed by the enormity of the book that was being adapted of if either of you ever writes an oral history please please please please please edit out some of the repeat statements. LOL. Well, JJ, you're fired. What is this in my hand? It's a pink slip.

It's the pinkest slip. The sleeper must be fired. Is there anything else? We talked about the big blocky shields. Well, now I want to look at the later pages of this dossier and see the messy shit he's talking about. I think he's talking about how this moment that I tried to read out where he's like, this book is so long, let me try to summarize what it was about.

I have, having heard now a couple of times, Dune style, a couple of different plots and opsies for the books to come that I've never read. I still have no interest in reading them. They're so good. I mean, if you meant that they're fun, but I mean, it's like, I think that they reach a point of dementia where I feel like I'm not going to be along for the ride. They definitely abandon the more traditional Peter Berge and boys adventure stuff. Right.

For more like, no, let's just go deeper into the philosophical implications and the world and all that stuff. And that's, and I honestly like, I think that the idea that Paul is imperfect Messiah, who's actually made a choice to kill billions of people across the universe, because that's the least worst outcome, is an interesting end to the novel Dune and to the villain of Dune. I think that is no, I think it's fair play that it is not the end of the David Lynch Dune. I think it is fair play that it is not the end of the David Lynch Dune. I don't think there's any problem with that at all. It's not in this movie.

It would be weird if at the end he was like, and now I'm in Messiah. You're like, I didn't see that coming at all. But it's also fascinating that Villeneuve finally did crack the code on how to make Dune into a populist blockbuster while making it very much a movie for grownups. Like it is like sci-fi, cav making it very much a movie for grownups. Like it is like sci-fi, caviar.

That is a movie he would make. Yes. Like it's not like a movie where you're like, ah, Denis is really selling himself out here. You're like, no, this is his aesthetic and his interest. And he was just like, we have to accept what Dune is and do the Dune-iest version of Dune. It's Duney, Duney, Duney.

And there are certain things I will do to make this more like, penetrable for an audience. Yeah. But also like, this is a movie that does not care about kids at all and That is like dark and that is heavy in everything right is I have I have to say there's no coloring books coming There is no coloring books. Yeah, it's interesting. You did text us earlier today, hodgeman pictures of the coloring book you said I don't know what happened to my coloring book. I think I might have lent it to someone. A very kind listener to Judge John Hodgman, available every Wednesday at MaximumFun.org.

And starting in a couple of days in Ann Arbor on tour this fall, go find out, go search Judge John Hodgman tour and whatever search engine you like and find out and get tickets. If you please, it would be great to see you there It's better when you're there But and especially if you're the one who sent me the coloring book and the activity book for dune which I took pictures of and Sent you some pictures But I sent the I took the pictures a long time ago because I don't know what happened to them I feel like I may have sent them you say you're trading cards as well and you ate the gum I got trading cards as well

Yeah, I I was unconscious for three weeks as I journeyed to a place I'd never been before. When I woke up I could be many places at once. John, look at what I've had underneath my laptop this entire time. Whoa! For hours. What? Since you've been here I've been keeping this under my fucking laptop. The doom coloring and activity.

For the on-mic reveal. Thank you very much. No, I didn't send it to you, did I? This isn't my copy. No, no, no, I purchased this. Oh, you picked this up. Wow, exactly. We have an episode coming later in the series

with David Lowery, who talked about Dune being a very big film for him, and him having the coloring book and the picture book. Oh, wow. When he was a child, and it made me want to track this down, which I was able to find for a good price and good condition but it is I would argue the weirdest piece of Dune merch if we can do a little merch spotlight here. Yeah, merch spotlight. Because like coloring books like this

try to also like simplify the narrative. Oh sure. I mean they're giving you pages to color that have like the one sentence description of what that page is trying to depict. And obviously this is a very easy story to boil down into about 30 pages. And what do kids like to do when they're coloring more than color in their favorite characters and their horrible pustules and boils? Yes. You gotta make sure you get the right purple for all those boils.

Yeah. Yo, wowee, Zowie. Relive all the excitement and adventure. Remember when people didn't have phones and you had to relive shit in a coloring book? Yeah. Kind of rocks. Or like we were, the fucking special feature we were watching, they would sell different Dune read-along books where it either came

with a 45 vinyl or cassette tape. Okay. And you had a picture book and you'd play along. Right. Someone narrated. That sounds so stupid. Yeah. See if you can work as fast as Thufir, the human computer.

How many words can you make from the letters in the boxes below? Trying to gamify the movie we just watched into fun little puzzles for children. I mean, I understand obviously the thinking of this is merch, the height of merch, right? You know, Star Wars, He-Man. We must have merch. And Star Wars was the first film franchise that really, like, because it had always been

a TV thing that got merged out that hard, by and large, up until that point. But yes, no, it is funny how confidently they went into this. Well, someone had to do it. Do you know what I mean? I love this page. I might debate that someone had. No, someone had to do it. Someone got hired.

I'm sure it's not. Someone got hired, too. It's, all right. Do you know Coloring an Activity Block book by Arlene Block, illustrated by Michael McCaster. Who's Arlene Block? I don't know, looking at the name sounds kind of familiar. I really feel for Arlene when she wrote this, the title of this page that just says, what's

with GD Prime? Well, I searched for her and I found her obituary. Oh no, RIP. She died about a year ago. It seems like she wrote a lot of... Like tie-in stuff. But also just kind of generic children's activity books and coloring books and such. That's cool. I wrote a book called Will Ants Come? I don't.

I don't regret her this job and I feel bad for her, but she had to do it. I just want to call out the Making of Dune book that you brought in. By Ed Naha? Uh-huh. Novelizer of Ghostbusters 2? Yes. The dedication at the top of the book is for the ticket buyers. Ah! Wow. Ticket buyers must awaken. Yeah. Just feels like a very funny thing

to put in a book. I mean, thanks. Tied into a movie that ticket buyers didn't like. There were a few though, a few ticket buyers. Yeah. There were a handful out there, Ben. What? Any thoughts? Uh, the new Dune? Mm-hmm. They got a monopoly. They do. There's a... Of course they do.

...Dunopoly. Dunopoly, that makes perfect sense. That's just one of those things that takes five minutes, right? Yes. That's why there's always a new... Right, because it's just like, uh-huh, okay, so just can you give me 20 properties? Yes. Yes.

Okay, great. No further work is required. We release a new monopolyopoly for every episode. That's how easy it is to map anything onto a Monopoly game. And in the 90s, there were some computer games that were extremely influential. Those are influential strategy games. Very influential. And they're cool.

And Dune, again, it sort of speaks ill of Dune a good fit. It speaks ill of Dune as a blockbuster. But you're like, what's it good for? A resource management sim, where you're mining spikes. Exactly, exactly. Right, you know, like that's, yes, it was so ideal for that 90s genre of like top-down strategy game. What has it been?

I'm looking at the board. It's also a famous board game. Yeah. There's just free parking on the board. That's my favorite thing. Sure. Some of the Monopoly stuff is like required Not even it's just a little fucking cartoon car. Sometimes I come up with like a clever analog and other times they're just like, it's just go to jail. It's just an old timey officer pointing and it says go to jail. They didn't even try.

In Gus jail it should be through how I'm milking a cat. It's so weird that in Monopoly, and I'm sure a thousand stand-ups have done this joke, like there's one crime you can commit, which is landing in that square. It's like you're going to jail. For what? The crime of landing here. Go to jail. It's actually, it's kind of an anti-purge, right? Everything is legal in every square. Everything is legal unless you're standing in one spot and then existing is illegal. Where the cop is like, jail! I saw you!

Yeah. I saw you! If you take one wrong step, it doesn't matter what you're doing. You're going straight to jail. Okay, let's play the box office game unless there's anything else we want. Let me just... Yeah, Jon. What's Ben reacting to?

Oh, I hear something in the hallway. Vacuum. It's like a David Lynchian. I was going to say. Every time Ben does something like that, I'm like, is there an elaborate bit about to play out? No, but this was just genuine. Someone's cleaning the carpet.

It's one of those third stage guild navigator vacuum cleaner guys out there. Does David Lynch still have a sound credit on this movie? It is an interesting thing I want to just call out. Particularly in Eraserhead, it's getting really Lynchy in the hallway. I love it. Eraserhead and Elephant Man, it is sound designed by David Lynch. Which makes sense.

But there are directors who are also their own DPs or their own editors, whether under their own name. He is credited as a sound designer, Griffin, on Eraserhead, the Elephant Man, not Doom, not Blue Velvet, not Wild at Heart, but Twin Peaks, Fire Walk with Me, not Doom, not Blue Velvet, not Wild at Heart, but Twin Peaks, Firewalk with Me, Lost Highway, The Straight Story, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire, and Twin Peaks The Return.

I just cannot think of another director who also takes that credit other than maybe on their first film when they have a crew of four people and they have to multitask. Where you're like, this is no, this is important, I need to do this. How would he say it though? Let me make the noises. I want to do the cling clanging myself. John is there anything yes? Well, I mean, so there were two more chapters tonight.

I'll just be very quick about this. This is kind of these thousands of years in the future. I said said that stupid braggy thing about how I got this weird call saying, do you want to take a pass at a script for Peter Berg and I said no. And I kind of feel self-conscious about that because I was never going to ever get anywhere near that. Sure. It was just where I was in that time of my career. Sure.

And a couple of years after that, I was in LA to do some work, probably for Apple. And a couple of years after that, I was in LA to do some work, probably for Apple, and a director, a nerd director said, he said, you know, you like Dune, right? And I said, yeah. And he said, should I direct it? It's been offered to me. Sure. And I can't say who the person is. You can tell us off mic.

Yeah, I'll tell you off mic. Great. Can you say it right now and then we'll bleep it? Ah. Interesting. And I don't know how fully, and so I'm going to tell you this story and you bleep out the people, okay? Yeah, of course.

So says that to me and I say, no, I would stay away from it. It's unfilmable. If I couldn't write a script for Peter Berg, you shouldn't have fun making a movie. Yes. But then I thought about it on the way back to the hotel where I was having dinner that night with a new friend who's a very prominent, very smart, very lovely nerd creator of things whose name I will not reveal on Mike because I don't know if he likes the story being told. But his name is ****.

And he's a wonderful guy, a wonderful creator. And he said something to me in that evening that has stayed with me ever since. Which is that I was like, hey, you know, this other person, your friend, just was like musing about whether he should make a new Dune. And I initially said, no, don't do it, it's unfilmable. But I've been thinking about it, other friend here with me at dinner,

we should go ahead and like tell him to direct it so that you and I can write it. And beyond that, we'll get like all of our other nerd friends. And we're going to take over a whole floor of this hotel and live for a year, trying to crack the Dune code just like Lito tried to do. And we will fail and we will be murdered. And we will eat a gas tooth and die.

But we'll have a great time doing it. The sport of the exercise was suddenly what became appealing to you, not the idea that you could succeed. But then nothing came of this? Well, no. My friend who I was having dinner with said, I will not do it. Right. Saw the trouble.

And I said, why? It's just fun. He said, no. He said, we create science fiction and fantasy. That's our world. Like, I mean, sort of including me grac science fiction and fantasy. That's our world. Like, I mean, sort of including me graciously in that, it's not my world. You know what I mean.

Like, I'm adjacent. You were a PC. Yeah, I was a PC. And he said, you know, and this was probably 2011, right? Sure. This is around when Paramount is dropping the project and it's kind of like what's gonna happen. It's back in play.

But I mean, almost a decade and a half ago, and already, this friend of mine was like, anything that's being, everything that is being made is a reimagining, a reboot, a relaunch, a sequel or whatever. And that's fine. But as people who are involved in science fiction, our job is to think of the new. We have to make new things. We can't, we have to make new things. If you have have the ability to create you shouldn't be going back to other right? So like we should be creating what and the implication was like what Frank Herbert?

Did which is like do a lot of mushrooms get fascinated with the history of resistance in the cook the Caucasus Wars in the mid 19th century Become obsessed with the oil crisis and Oregon dunes. I was about to say also Oregon sand dunes. Right, mishmash that up into something that will make young John Hodgman, 13 years old, confused and uncomfortable in a theater. That's our job.

Delay him talking to women for another couple years. Exactly, so. Oh, and it's like, yeah, who do you think my favorite character was in that movie? The sand worms? Uh, no. Third stage gold navigator. Weird only child floating around in a tank never has to touch a person.

You will do as I say. That was my guy. That was my guy. That makes sense. And it checks out. Yeah. And I was, and I was just so, he was so right. And I was so taken by that.

And I thought about it very deeply. Now it turns out this wonderful guy didn't end up doing some work on the script for the new Dune. Okay. Like he totally turned around and didger. I mean a decade later. But not his project as much. No. Right.

It was just a gig. And you know the sentiment is still the same. Mm-hmm. But it was just this moment of feeling like, oh, right. This is the lesson, right? The lesson of Dune is the sleeper must awaken. We have to, I mean, it's the Jurgen Prochnau monologue. It's like, if we don't do new things, we fall asleep. And we, I know, I'm sorry, David. And so... You start doing something new.

It was a big life lesson. And then fast forward to 2021. Nelly Corbin. Yeah. Okay. I don't know how much he contributed. I don't know what he contributed to this movie or how much it showed up on screen, but I went to go see it at the IMAX.

And of course I saw it with Tim McGonigal, the guy I saw it with when we were 13 years old. And it was a profound vindication. We got to finally see everything that... Yeah. You know, and, but at the same time, like, I'm haunted by how sad David Lynch is about this. Yeah. No, I don't like that he's sad about it. I did see, there's one interview where he expressed the mildest interest in, like, maybe

looking at all the footage again. Right. You know, in this notion of, like, hey, would you ever want to try and, like, reassemble your cut? The whole thing with the TV cut was that, like... was the thing. You know, in this notion of like, hey, would you ever want to try and like reassemble your cut? The whole thing with the TV cut was that like... That's not a real thing, right? That's like, yeah.

Years of him disowning it, they were like, well, what if we tried to reconstruct your version? He's like, there is no my version because I felt compromised while I was on set, so there's no version of it that's going to accurately represent what I felt like I wanted to do, so if you're doing this, you're doing this without me. And he just had this general kind of like, I don't want to talk about you. Yeah.

And I mean, you know, you describe how he felt like he was dying during the edit. Sure. And I think that there's a way to read that and it may be, I mean, you have to take him as word, right? It's just like, I sold out. Yeah. I compromised. I'll never do it again.

Everything else. But there was a thing in... I was playing the game in a way It's just like I sold out. I compromised. I'll never do it again. Everything else. But there was a thing in... I was playing the game in a way I did not ever do again in my career. Well, right. And also, but there was a thing that in this book, the masterpiece in disarray that I learned, like there were, once they started to cut back, right, there was going to be a scene that they end up filming but cutting where Paul and Leto and Jessica walk

through the streets of Arakeen, the city in Iraq, is also known as Dune, also known as Desert Planet. And they had some cost, all the costume designs, I think Bob Ringwood did the costume designs. They're so incredible. And some milliner made 1000 Fremen hats for the 1000,000 extras who were gonna be in this scene.

And then they had to cut the extras down to 200 and they ended up only seeing 12. And the thousand hats were burned. Jesus. That's classic movie making. 1,000 made hats. And when you think about when they were in Mexico together, there were ups and downs to be sure.

But it doesn't sound like it was an awful situation and it was this incredible collection of craftspeople. You know what I mean? Like truly talented. Doing really cool work. On screen and off screen. And I just feel like, you know, to make, to do the best you could to make what you could and then have it be so completely reviled.

People had, people ate so much lunch. So much angry, contemptuous lunch on his dime with this. Just yelling about how terrible it was. And obviously it was rejected by audiences as well at the time. I can understand why when you've brought in all these people and they're relying on you and then you let them down, it's got to feel awful.

So I just want David Lynch to know. It's okay. You did like the movie really actually connects with people in a weird way. Thanks, John. And I'm one of them. And would you know, look, I don't use Twitter anymore. But when you stopped following me, because you're a, I don't use Twitter anymore, but when you stop following me because you're a Bernie person and I voted for Hillary, I'd really like you to come back and it would

be like, can we, can we, can we make, I will, you never, perhaps I'm unforgivable for that, but I hope that we can, I just want you to know I really like you, David. He does get so many of his greatest collaborators from this experience. And this does feel like, I mean, it's what we were sort of saying at the beginning of the episode of it being his ultimate bounce, where it's like this kind of thing we're fascinated by on this show, which is like the movie that changes someone permanently. And like if this movie had been even marginally more successful, David Lynch's career probably would be significantly

less interesting. Fair enough. In the same way where like, even the version of him just accepting the sort of like, I'm the co-driver or the backseat driver on Return of the Jedi, having a movie be that level of hit for him would have given us a less interesting

following 30 years of David Lynch. And he said he had a three picture deal for this. He wrote half of the sequel. As much as he had a difficult experience, if this has been a hit, he would have kept doing it. He thinks so. I mean, obviously, who knows? But he says, right.

And a lot of our favorite filmmakers, the people we've covered on this show, they have this defining moment where it's like Learning exactly what they never want to do ever again, right? But I mean less from your successes because then you become a little freaked out on how to replicate it versus the failures Where you go great? I can rule that out forever now And you know, I just feel like how bad it must feel to be like in David Lynch's head and be like I don't understand it. I gave them the cat tape to the rat and people didn't like it.

And then eventually people realized they liked the cat tape to the rat. Yeah. They like the weird stuff. They like the weird stuff. And he figures out how to build entire movies out of the weird stuff. Yes. I also, I think the Villain Live movie helps the Lynch movie in a lot of ways. And then it's like, okay, now you have a sort of fairly straightforward adaptation,

even the Syfy Channel thing. Like, if you want Dune, go see Dune. Now you have David Lynch's Dune as this special object, it's interesting, it's flawed. It's not seen as this like ultimate artistic failure. The lack of pressure. The shield, the thing, or whatever. Any weird production of Macbeth, where you're like,

well, isn't the assignment to reinterpret it and do something personal with it? Sure. It's not the only one that's ever going to be made. It just took a couple decades for there to be the weight taken off of it. And I love the Villanova movies a lot. I agree. I think they're terrific. I love them so much.

I think they're great. In fact, I wish that they were a lot longer. Just give me that all day long. I'd just watch it all day long. Me too. I would fucking watch 18 million hours of that shit. Well, don't worry. Where the fuck is my third stage guild navigator? You can't, five hours, you can't give me one peek at this dude.

I agree. My friend. Ten hours of the HBO Max series coming? Yes. I mean, I don't know how much Dinny directed that, but I'm excited for that. It's his world. It looks cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Box office game. We've played it it before Griffin, but you may not remember it. December 14th, 1984.

Dune is opening number two at the box office to $6 million. Ouch. It's not great. Good alley. Makes it to 27 domestic. There's not really an international take listed here. I'm sure, okay, internationally.

So obviously an underwhelming film. Sure. Financially. Mm-hmm. Number one is a big hit that we just covered on this podcast and it came out the week prior. Main feed or Patreon? Main feed. We just covered it. It is called Beverly Hills Cop. That's right. Never seen it.

Is that true? Never seen a single Beverly Hills Cop. Wow. Clearly you never been to Beverly Hills Cop. Wow. Clearly, you've never been to Beverly Hills then. Yeah. Or if you went there, you didn't understand how to interact with people. You had no guide to follow. Well, I was floating in my tank full of gas at the time.

I would check out Beverly Hills Cop. It's a very entertaining film. Yeah. I don't know why I never did. I just never did. Yeah. It is just one of the most astonishing time capsules of movie stardom. Yeah, I mean I feel like why reading a lot of the letterbox logs and such of the episode we did

and listeners of this show who had never watched Beverly Hills Cup before are just like Jesus Christ This is the most like off-the-charts charisma. Yeah, this is just a guy fully coming into his power who is fucking unstoppable off the charts charisma. This is just a guy fully coming into his power who is fucking unstoppable. Number three at the box office is a film. Are you talking about Eddie Murphy? George Reinhold.

David, number three at the box office? It's, well we talked about it last week, or last time we did Beverly Hills Cop because it's just a week later. It's a buddy cop, no, but not buddy cop. Buddy crime. You say last week, because the episode just came out last week,

it will have been the fucking 87 months. You understand. I get it. I understand. It's a buddy crime movie with two gigantic stars. That was a flop Oh, it's city heat city heat. Okay, city Eastwood and Burt Reynolds. Oh, yeah Period piece. Yeah, it's back in the old days in the third Get out of here right I need some booze back in the 30s when you had a gun Hey, get out of here, right. I need some booze. Back in the 30s when you had a gun. You know what I mean? No, I know what you mean.

Number four, The Box Office is a sci-fi sequel. We've covered it on this podcast. We've covered it on this podcast. In the year of 1984. Sci-fi sequel. We talked about it, I believe, in the Beverly Hills Cop episode. We talked about it in the fucking Beverly Hills Cop episode. Oh, you got it?

I know what it is. What is it? Is this part of a major science fiction franchise? It is a sequel to a major science fiction film, but it is the last in the... Oh, then I know what it is. What is it? Is it 2010?

It is. What did you think it was? Wrath of Khan, maybe. Also a great guess. But this was the search for Spock year. It is the search for Spock year, that's true, because Nighthawk's playing it was. Wrath of Khan, maybe. Also a great guess. But this was the search for Spock year. It is the search for Spock year, that's true, because Nighthawk's playing it tonight. Because they're doing a 1984 series. But this is 2010, the year we made contact.

Peter Himes film. Roy Scheider, right? That's right. John Lithgow, Helen Mirren, Balaban. Those are pretty wildly different takes. Balaban. Balaban. Big studio sci-fi occupying theaters at the same time.

I would agree. Not a bad movie. We discussed it on the show. It's pretty watchable. That was one of those movies that they made during that time when they made movies just because they kind of had to. They kind of just got to keep making movies. You just got to make a 2010. Just kind of got to, you got to make it 2010.

We're not going to stop. Because Arthur C. Clarke had come out with a 2010 novel. There was something for them to work on. Now we got to, same thing like the movie 1984. Like it was 1984. That was truly a film they made because like they were like, someone's going to fucking make one of these, right? Yeah, see versus... And you know what they did? They really made a movie out of 1984.

It was the first R-rated movie I ever saw. And it was the most depressing, appropriately the most depressing thing I've ever seen. It's a depressing film. It was like a really good movie of a movie that shouldn't exist. A really good snapshot of what you were saying, the old business model that Hollywood studios used to follow versus now where they've been experimenting with this idea of what if we don't make movies? What if we don't make anything ever?

Right. And it's like, then what do you put in theaters? And they're like, hear me out. Nothing. But then we're going to complain when there's not enough box office. We're going to be really upset. Number five at the box office is another mega flop of the era from a great director. It's new this week. It's opening to $3 dollars. This director has a film out this year in theaters It's a Coppola. It's a Francis Ford Coppola. Is it one from the heart? No 80s flop by Francis Ford Coppola. There are so many answers to this

84 84 mega flop he recently recut a new version of it I was gonna say that's not really a good clue, but it is The Cotton Club. It narrowed it down to one of eight movies. With Richard Gere and... Fred Gwynn and Bob Hoskins. Yeah. Those are the ones.

Gregory Hines. And Tom Waits is in it too, I believe. I have seen it. Pretty interesting. Not entirely successful. I've not seen the new cut. I'd like to see the new... I had the soundtrack on cassette and I would listen to it as a weird only child.

That would be my next attempt. That's what I would listen to as I was getting ready for high school. Jazz music. I have heard that of the Coppola recuts, that is the one that is most effectively transformative. Right. The others you're kind of like, eh, he has interesting ideas and he's putting interesting stuff in here. Or the one from Heart Redux, would argue actually makes the film worse. I think there are apocalypse now Redux makes it way worse. It does but the one from the heart one is making a movie that already didn't work worse.

Bringing a five star to four and a half is less damaging. Versus Apocalypse now it's like, this is an interesting alternate version. We can all agree the other one's a masterpiece. What is this Cotton Club? It's called Encore? The last ten years in the lead up to Megalopolis when it felt like Francois Coppola is trying to sort of close the book on his whole career. He's gone back to almost all of his maligned films and done radical recuts.

He did the new Godfather 3. Right, the death of Michael Corleone, Godfather Coda. That I remember. I just never heard of the Cotton Club one. Yeah. It got a limited theatrical release. And it is now available streaming. Have you seen Megalopolis? I have not. I'm dying to see it. I'm gonna wait for the redux.

Number six at the box office is Starman. Ben, I set that one up. Did you hear me set that one up? Ben, did you hear him set that one up? Yeah. The reason we've done this before is because number six is Starman. Ben, I set that one up. Did you hear me set that one up? Ben, did you hear him set that one up? I set that up. The reason we've done this before is because number six is Starman, but I have no memory of doing this box office game because those were crazy times. Yeah. But another interesting analog to like where sci-fi filmmaking is at were like Carpenter's very political and is very rooted in reality.

Number seven is a sci-fi film, Runaway, the Tom Selleck movie directed by Michael Crichton. Villain Fade by Gene Simmons. Yes, Robots, I think. And number eight also has Robots, it's The Terminator. Oh. And then number nine is the film, Falling in Love. The De Niro, no. It is De Niro, isn't it? De Niro and Street. De Niro and Street, okay in love. The De Niro? No.

It is De Niro. Isn't it De Niro on Street? De Niro on Street? Yes. Okay. Yes. The first time they... And number 10 is Missing in Action.

No, because they had done Deer Hunter. Deer Hunter, right. It was their reunion. It was a big deal. I remember that. And they were falling in love, a thing that at that point in time had not really been... They'd never seen it on film. No.

It was like Doom where people went like, you're really gonna take this on? Someone got the rights to falling in love? Jesus cock, the audacity. The concept of? Jesus cock. Ben, you're leaning in. I don't work that clue typically. No, I think it's good.

I think it's really good. Are you leaning in to tell us it's time to be done? End of the episode. Okay. The voice. It was well played. We didn't mention that they have sound weapons in this movie because David Lynch decided desert kung fu would be too weird and he didn't want to show the weirding way.

So instead they have boxes that go, yes! They have weirding gloves? Weirding modules. Yes, which it's not like that makes more sense. You wear an Xbox headset. And then it connects to a box that you hold in your hand. And then you say a word and then it shoots sound. I'm sure the LJN toy company, who are already far along in their action figure line,

equipped with battlematic action, were really excited when they heard that David Lynch took out all the fighting. It's just weird that he's like, I don't like the kung fu. And it's like, there's still lots of kung fu in this movie, basically. There's a lot of people punching each other and shit. Yeah. Anyway. And also there's a six-year-old girl walking around being like, hello, how are you?

You know, it's like, yeah. I mean, she's cool. Why is the quiz at a direct? I mean, at that point, there's two people left in the theater, right? Yes. And they're loving it. They're loving it. That's why.

Me and Tim McGonagall. They'd get it. They're loving it. That's why. Or if they weren't. Me and Tim McGonagall. They'd get back around to it decades later. It'd grow. And it grows on you. Yeah. June.

John, thank you for being here. Thank you for inviting me. It was one of those obvious Lynch wins or March Madness. And then we were just, I think we taped it in to our spreadsheet before we even asked you. Oh, I forgot to tell you. Oh. No, that was to tell you. Oh? No, that was just my reference to Virginia Madsen.

What if I started another hour of material? We almost successfully set up everything for this episode, but let me circle back. I forgot the last time. It was very intimidating to confront all of my feelings about Dune and to awaken that sleeper and also to think about all of the things that have come up around. I mean, it's like, obviously there are these activity books, but people are fascinated. and to awaken that sleeper and also to re to think about all the things that have been

Come up around. I mean, it's like obviously there are these activity books, but people are fascinated these these books about the making of them I think are quite good and interesting and uh, anyway, yeah, I agree did my best. Hey, you're great You did a great job. Good to see you both always all three of you. I should dare say well I appreciate that. You're welcome. Jesus cock, that was a close one. You almost didn't get a friendlies hat. You were this close. I know, I was going to get an enemies hat. That's right. Yeah.

Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. The Linfian vacuuming is once again returned outside our office. Oh, I forgot to tell you. Judge Sean Hodgman's going on tour. What? We're going to Ann Arbor Judge Sean Hodgman's going on tour. What? Ann Arbor, Madison, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Portland, Maine, Burlington, Vermont, Turner's Falls, Massachusetts, Washington DC, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

If I've forgotten any, you can correct me by going in your search bar and searching Judge Sean Hodgman on tour, where you can probably get tickets as well. And it would be lovely to see you there. Sorry about that. I forgot to tell you Virginia Manson style. Look in the episode description. There'll be a link to the tour dates. Hey, look in the episode description. Look in the episode description. Yeah.

Thank you to Marie Barty for helping to produce the show, Adrienne McKeon for editing, bleeping out all the names, David's in the bathroom, Ben's is pointing over to- Coward. Should have peed his pants. He fucking should have peed and pooed in his pants. I know, let it be processed in the thigh pads. Thank you to JJ Birch for being fired. It's been a great run of doing research up until this point, but God, was that dossier unacceptable?

We're kidding, we're rehired. Thank you to Joe Bowe and Pat Reynolds for artwork. Lame Monk Armory, the American Null for our theme song. You can go to blankcheckpod.com for links to some real, nerdy shit, including our Patreon blank check special features where we do commentaries on film series and other sort of bonus stuff. We're doing a Lynch short films episode and we're doing our tabletop games around this time.

We'll be doing Battleship in Ouija. Battleship in Ouija. Battleship in Ouija. Peter Berg's Battleship? Yes! Look at that! Tune in next week for Blue Velvet with Jamie Loftus. One of the greatest. One of the greats. I'll be listening.

Yes. Good. Good. I hope you do. And as always, you know what's better than doing a podcast on Dune? No. Dune two podcasts at the same time? I'm going to call her in this coloring book now. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm It's me doing lynchian ambient droning. You can layer that in over the whole episode.

Nope. Ready? Here's the, put that at the end. Here's the episode.