In the ’70s, cult midnight-movie director Alejandro Jodorowsky was asked by a producer what film he’d like to do next. Frank Herbert’s sci-fi epic “Dune” was the response. Jodorowsky hadn’t even read the book at the time.
This documentary by Frank Pavich chronicles how the Chilean Jodorowsky put together a cast including Orson Welles and Mick Jagger and named Pink Floyd to do the score for an ultimately doomed “Dune.” Studios nixed Jodorowsky’s vision, which seemed to herald a lengthy, expensive and noncommercial product.
Ah, but those execs were just “accountants” who were “afraid” of Jodorowsky’s genius, we learn here. The doc consists of interviews with the absurdly grandiose Jodorowsky (whose fans include Kanye West) plus acolytes like current director Nicolas Winding Refn and film nerds, all of whom walk us through storyboards and tell us how awesome this “greatest film never made” would have been.
Yeah, well, “Flash Gordon” probably looked cool at the storyboard stage, too. If “Jodo” was such a genius, why didn’t he make some other masterpiece instead?