Wired’s lengthy report on the promotional tour for David Lynch’s “Dune” is well worth checking out. It includes quotes from people closely tied to Lynch’s film, with each person presenting fascinating angles of the larger picture.
Lynch's "Dune" is well-known to be one of the worst flops in Hollywood history and, to many, the director’s worst film. It's practically unwatchable. I don't think I've ever been able to sit through its entire 137 minutes. I've tried, because I’m a Lynch completist, but it’s such a incoherent mess.
Widely panned at the time, Lynch lost total creative control on the project, so much so that he asked the studio to remove his name from it entirely, sadly, his wish wasn’t granted. The film remains part of his filmography.
In a new interview with NPR, Lynch tackles the way his “Dune” experience turned out to be the one failure that taught him the biggest lesson of his career:
My film Dune. I knew already one should have final cut before signing on to do a film. But for some reason, I thought everything would be OK, and I didn't put final cut in my contract. And as it turned out, Dune wasn't the film I wanted to make, because I didn't have a final say. So that's a lesson I knew even before, but now there's no way. Why would anyone work for three years on something that wasn't yours? Why? Why do that? Why? I died a death. And it was all my fault for not knowing to put that in the contract.
I truly hope one day we get Lynch’s directors cut. Based on many of the accounts we’ve heard and read about, it sounds like the cast and crew really loved his original 3-hour cut. Sadly, producer Dino de Laurentiis chopped it down to what it is today, and who knows where the lost footage is situated at the moment, if it hasn’t been destroyed.
Lynch, who has been open about releasing a director’s cut, recently told Cahiers du Cinema that he’s still bitter about his experience making “Dune” and that he has no interest in catching Denis Villeneuve’s version:
“I will never watch it, and I don't even want you to tell me about it, ever.”
A few years ago, Lynch did look back on the botched adaptation during a Q&A video on YouTube:
“I’m proud of everything except ‘Dune,'” Lynch answered. “I’ve liked so much working on different movies. It’s not so much about pride but the enjoyment of doing, the enjoyment of the work. I’ve enjoyed working in all these different mediums. I feel really lucky to have been able to enjoy those things and to be able to live.”
I’ll leave you with two quotes from the WIRED piece, both from former crew that worked with Lynch on “Dune”, and they all suggest the same thing: “Dune” became a victim of editing interference, and something much more than that
“What’s on the screen isn’t really David’s film. It’s a different edit. It’s a different version of the film, and that made me very sad”. — FREDERICK ELMES (Additional Unit Cinematographer)
“What you don’t realize is there’s like seven hours on the cutting room floor […] It was supposed to be two films, and it became one, really short and really not very comprehensible. — TERRI HARDIN (Stillsuit Fabrication, Stunt Double)