0:21

I must not podcast. Podcast

0:24

is the mind killer. Podcast is

0:26

the little death that brings total obliteration. I

0:29

will face my podcast. I will let it

0:31

pass over me and through me. And when it

0:33

has passed, I will turn the inner eye to

0:35

see its path where it has gone. There will

0:37

be nothing. Only I will remain.

0:41

Very good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's what

0:44

you got to do. It's what you have to do.

0:47

I mean, you were running a couple lines

0:49

before we started recording. Are you talking to

0:51

me? Am I allowed to talk? Well, please talk. Hi.

0:53

Hi. I feel like you

0:55

were doing a very good impression of a line

0:57

reading from this film that you could also slot.

1:00

You were doing Kenneth Macmillan. Kenneth Macmillan is Baron

1:02

Harkonnen. Well, in this movie, Baron

1:04

Harkonnen. Sure. Not Harkonnen.

1:07

In the new movies, it's Harkonnen. Which

1:09

I think is correct. I

1:12

don't know if there's a correct. Historically accurate. I

1:15

guess, right. It's like, do we go by

1:17

how did Frank Herbert say it? Or do

1:19

we go by like, how linguistically should this

1:22

be said, written out, right? These made up

1:24

words. I don't know. I mean, it's

1:26

thousands of years in the future. Oh. You can say

1:28

whatever you want. Yeah, we don't know yet. It's the

1:30

future. Which do you prefer? I

1:33

think I default

1:36

to Harkonnen just

1:39

because that's what I grew up

1:41

hearing, having seen David

1:43

Lynch's 1984 Dune. The film Dune.

1:45

The topic of this discussion today.

1:47

Celebrating it many times. It's

1:49

40th anniversary. 40th anniversary. It's

1:51

pretty wild for this movie to be hitting 40 in

1:54

a year where

1:56

a Dune movie is seen

1:59

as the great. triumph of the American

2:02

commercial cinema. The savior of

2:04

theatrical presentation. Is still the highest grossing film

2:06

of the year as of this moment? I

2:08

mean, I guess. I think that record will

2:10

soon fall. Inside Out 2 will surpass it.

2:13

Without a doubt, but it is the number one film of 2024 in

2:16

June, you know, in mid June. Hold on to

2:18

it for six months. Yeah, I mean

2:20

282 million domestic, 711 worldwide. And

2:24

all year people have been like, oh, why can't we have more

2:26

dunes? Yeah. If we

2:28

had a couple more dunes this year. Well, people finally

2:30

figured it out. Dunes got the spice. Dunes got the

2:32

spice. And he who controls the spice controls

2:34

the universe. Spit, spit, spit, spit. I thought you

2:36

were gonna put podcast in there, not trying to.

2:39

No, but I mean, I was spacing

2:41

out because I was enjoying the litany

2:43

against fear, which you were referring to.

2:45

Yes, absolutely. One of the many self

2:47

soothing recitations that the characters

2:49

of Dune say to themselves rather

2:52

than move the plot along. Here's

2:54

another thing. I used

2:56

to recite that to myself in high school

2:58

before tests. The litany

3:01

against fear. Oh, absolutely. And

3:03

I think it's still valuable to me when

3:06

I'm combating anxiety or fear

3:08

of ambiguity. Do you still do it? I do,

3:10

but I can never remember it all the way through. Okay,

3:12

you used to have it verbatim. Nah,

3:14

never actually. I get hung up

3:16

on the, I will turn, I

3:18

will let the fear pass through me. And

3:22

when it is gone, I will

3:24

turn and where the fear went,

3:26

only I will remain or something. That's where I get

3:28

hung up. I will face my fear permitted to pass

3:30

over me and through me. Right, over me and through

3:32

me. But it has gone past, I will turn the

3:34

inner eye to see its path. I really have a

3:36

very distinct memory of trying to memorize that. In

3:39

the Harvard, the Harvard stop on the red line in

3:41

Harvard Square, I was going to go visit a

3:44

friend there or something. I will tell you, it's one

3:46

of my favorite. When I was in high school. I

3:49

will say this, non-hyperbolically, I

3:52

want to say it's one of my favorite moments in

3:54

podcasting, period. Is when you

3:56

brought your dear friend, friend of the podcast,

3:58

passion future guest. David Ries on

4:01

Doughboys. Very kind of you to

4:03

welcome, you know, you're connecting friends.

4:05

We were promoting Dictown at the time,

4:07

which is still available on Hulu. Get

4:10

your plugs in early. Depending on what subscription service you have,

4:12

maybe watch well on Disney+. Always be

4:14

plugging, I say, or in the spirit of

4:16

David Lynch's Dune, always be heart plugging. Very

4:18

true. What's your

4:20

favorite moment? You brought David Ries onto Doughboys. He

4:23

did not know the show well, he did

4:25

not know them. You were sort of making

4:27

this connection. I forget how it happens, but

4:29

at some point, he makes some sideswipe at

4:32

how bored he was by Denis

4:35

Velneuve's Dune, and

4:37

said something to the effect of like, what is

4:39

this? None of this, I don't understand what any

4:41

of this is. And you just went, I can

4:43

tell you exactly what it is. And then just

4:45

like launched into what clearly was still the

4:48

effects of you having memorized a bunch of stuff as

4:50

a child. I

4:52

know, but then- You started like laying out the

4:54

map of explaining how the world works. The world's-

4:56

Yes, I'm sorry. It's like a multi-planetary effect. That's

4:59

true. It's just the idea of someone being that

5:01

close a friend of yours, and someone you've worked

5:03

with for so long, taking

5:05

such a fucking hit

5:07

at a thing that you love so dearly,

5:10

and basically framed it as like, this is

5:13

impenetrable, no one could understand this. That's the

5:15

Riesian way though. Yes. Like, I don't

5:17

think he would have said that if he didn't know that I already loved it. Right.

5:19

But this is the Riesian Jihad. Your deepest

5:21

heart song is The Worlds of Dune, in

5:24

many ways. Is it? Is it

5:26

true? I feel like- What's the podcast, Who's Our Guests?

5:29

Way to sex. Oh, it's Blank Check with Griffin and

5:31

David. It's a podcast about filmographies. Wait, which one of

5:33

you is Griffin? I'm Griffin! I'm

5:35

David. It's a podcast about filmographies. Directors

5:38

who have massive success early on in their careers

5:40

and are given a series of blank checks make

5:42

whatever crazy passion products they want. Sometimes those checks

5:44

clear, and sometimes they bounce baby. This

5:47

is a mini-series on the films of David Lynch. It

5:50

is called Twin Pods Firecast with me. Today

5:52

we are talking about his, I

5:55

mean, his biggest bounce? He has

5:57

a couple of bounces, but the scale of this- No, no, no, no,

5:59

no, no. is absolutely no competition. What would

6:01

possibly be the competition? There are other

6:03

ones, I mean, the fucking Fire Walk

6:05

with me. Yeah, I

6:08

mean, I guess the other argument for

6:10

the bounce, right, is like Twin Peaks

6:12

getting away from him. Yes. But

6:14

no, Dune is, obviously, that's the

6:16

definition of a bounce for us

6:18

because it's the moment where he's like, I

6:21

must reorient my career so this doesn't happen to me again.

6:24

Fire Walk with me, he's like, I made the movie I

6:26

wanted to make, I'm sorry, no matter what. Well, that's the

6:28

thing about David Lynch. And

6:30

Dune, which is that this is the one

6:33

that got away from him. This is the

6:35

one that got away from him. This is

6:37

the one of his movies that he hates.

6:39

And he bears the pain for that, apparently,

6:41

to this day. Yes, he's extremely sad. He's

6:43

really recording this episode. There's a new, like,

6:45

news cycle of some quote he gave in

6:47

a recent interview. Yeah. Of like,

6:49

I died on that movie and I don't think I've

6:51

ever fully recovered. Yeah. Yeah. Although

6:54

it was very, very painful for him to, I mean,

6:56

it was an uncomfortable shoot. Yeah. Many

6:59

weeks, all right, you want to make a movie

7:01

that desert's gonna suck. I have a theory that

7:03

we can get into later that

7:06

perhaps why, I mean, he says it's because he

7:08

didn't get final cut, which is understandable. But

7:11

there's more to it than that. There's

7:13

a very clear, deep wound that he

7:15

feels about this movie. Re-watching this again,

7:17

just this morning, right before record. Sure.

7:20

Hadn't seen this film in

7:22

20 years, I wanna say. An easy two hours and 17 minutes. Yeah.

7:26

I certainly watch it on TV,

7:28

four by three, standard definition. I'm

7:31

trying to remember if it was gonna be original. Did you see

7:33

the on? That's my question.

7:35

I think I might've seen the extended television version.

7:38

Which is just nonsense, I think. I've never seen

7:40

it. It's not like

7:42

an extended version in any real sense. It's just, they

7:44

just put shit in it. I think it's quite

7:47

odd. Right. We talked about this,

7:50

Waterworld episode behind the paywall, but

7:52

this, for a very long time,

7:54

especially with a big expense of movies like

7:56

this. Yeah. If your movie

7:58

had an odd running time, it

8:00

wasn't a... clean half hour end

8:02

time, the studio would just, without

8:05

the permission of the director, be like,

8:08

here's all the deleted scenes we have that are

8:10

finished, that you can just put in

8:12

a narrative order, that makes this

8:14

movie totally shapeless and formless, but

8:17

allows you to have it. Now it's a three

8:19

hour block instead of it being weirdly

8:21

under two hour block. You either cut it down

8:23

or you add a bunch. And

8:25

Lynch hated them doing that so much that he

8:27

demanded his name be taken off the TV version.

8:29

He's right, they should have done that. It

8:32

was uncool of them. But I think that's what I had

8:34

seen. Sure. Well, he had

8:36

originally wanted the film to

8:38

be like about three hours. We'll talk about that.

8:41

Oh, all right. But that's not his three hours.

8:43

I was gonna say, watching it today, knowing that

8:45

he disowns it and felt like he didn't have

8:47

final control, it is fascinating how much this movie

8:49

still thoroughly has the editing rhythms of a David

8:51

Lynch film. It's 100% a David Lynch movie. I

8:54

think he overstates that.

8:58

He wanted to make a sequel to this movie.

9:00

He was not making this movie being like, oh

9:02

God, what a disaster. Let me get me as

9:04

far away from this as possible. He

9:08

didn't like how it turned out and he

9:10

didn't like what they did to it. But

9:12

yes, this is a David Lynch movie. Through

9:15

and through. The quote that we really should

9:17

do is the sleeper must awaken, which is

9:19

like his most important quote in this movie

9:21

because he made that up. That's

9:23

the thing where when you hear it, which

9:26

is the line I associate with this movie, and

9:29

I think I saw this movie first before I read Dune. It

9:31

may or may not be true, like

9:34

when I was a teenager. And then I

9:36

read Dune and I was like, why does

9:38

nobody say the sleeper must awaken? Then you

9:40

realize like, no, no, no. That's Lynch. That's

9:42

the transcendental meditative boy reading Dune.

9:44

That's David Lynch TM. And that's what

9:47

speaks to him. Exactly.

9:49

He's like, that's what's going on with

9:51

Paul. That's how I'm relating to this

9:54

as he reads this book. He

9:56

cares about this material. It's just, you

9:58

know. You know,

10:00

it's a weird result. We'll talk about it. There's a

10:03

lot of stuff I love about it, but it's a

10:05

weird result. Eventually, we'll talk about it. Well, you let

10:07

me know. You let me know. You

10:09

let me know. Okay, let's make a commitment. Can we talk about... I

10:12

thought we were going to go club random mode. Okay.

10:15

Ben has sunglasses on indoors right now. Ben has the

10:17

sunglasses on. What am I supposed

10:19

to do with this fat ass sandworm? He's got a fat

10:21

ass... He's smoking. It's

10:24

a sandworm free roll. But

10:27

it's like a stop motion

10:29

sandworm. Sandworm moves kind of

10:31

slowly. Ben's gone full random.

10:34

Our guest today... Dear

10:37

friend of the show. Yes, okay, our guest, yes.

10:40

Co-creator star of

10:43

Dicktown now streaming. Co-star and co-creator of Dicktown still...

10:45

I like to say still streaming. Still streaming on

10:47

Hulu and also Disney Plus and also Disney Plus

10:49

stars depending on where you live and what subscription

10:51

you have. Yeah, and host of the Judge John

10:53

Hodgman podcast every week on Maximum Permabor. I

10:55

want to say something else about... Well, have you said his name?

10:57

Obviously he just said his name is part of the show he

10:59

hosts. I should also mention, I know

11:01

this is a great shame of yours. His

11:04

book Vacation Lane is only available in hardback. You

11:06

can only get it in the firmest... No, but

11:08

that's not true. ...of factors. John, if it were

11:10

available in paperback... The biggest, largest book. If it

11:12

were a library edition only. If it were available

11:14

in paperback, I would have heard about it by

11:16

now. With all due respect, you're

11:18

a good friend and I do think I would

11:20

have heard that Vacation Lane were available in paperback.

11:23

That's what makes me so excited to announce right

11:26

here. What? For the very first time, Vacation Lane

11:28

is available in paperback wherever you get books, as

11:30

is my other book medallion status. But can I

11:32

get it with like... John Hodgman. John Hodgman's here.

11:35

General John Hodgman. Can I get

11:37

it with like plastic wrapping around the cover? You

11:39

know what I mean? A real crinkly... Yes. Crinkles.

11:42

Oh yeah, like a library edition? Exactly. Yes.

11:46

I'll cook one up for you. Here's the other thing, John Hodgman.

11:49

This is your fifth episode. Ooh.

11:53

As a full-time guest on a

11:55

main feed episode, you have sort

11:57

of dropped in... A

12:00

couple other times, such as on our Coraline episode.

12:03

A couple of cameos. A couple of voicemails. Did

12:05

they live? I've Jacknanced a couple of them. You've

12:07

nanced it. You've nanced it. You watched Avengers Infinity

12:09

War with us once. That's true. Which

12:12

is funny because you had watched it the night before thinking we were just going

12:14

to discuss it. I'm not

12:16

really bad about that. That was early in the morning. I had a really

12:18

good time. Okay, wait a second. And by

12:20

the way, when you say full-time guest, I only wish

12:22

it were true. I wish this were my full-time job.

12:24

You hear what I'm saying? I wish this were my

12:26

full-time job. You're too kind. You're hired. Just come on

12:28

board. Who cares? And you know what, in

12:30

fact? You want to get in this gumbo? David and I

12:33

are taking a sabbatical. Yeah, you know what, actually? It's your

12:35

show. All right. And we're going to collect all the

12:37

jazz. FYI. It's a

12:39

pure licensing play. I'm going to pay you an honorarium.

12:41

Oh, yeah. Yes, of course. I like it

12:43

when they call it an honorarium. And I mean, like, you mean money? And

12:45

they're like, yeah. I'm on the tip of the hat. Okay. It

12:48

feels a little... I'm honored. You're trying

12:50

to... I'll buy the franchise. All right, go

12:52

ahead. A master builder, which people often cite

12:55

as maybe our best episode ever. An incredible

12:57

day. Come in. A major

12:59

day. Evil Dead 2. Yes,

13:01

that's true. This is

13:03

5. What's the fourth one I'm forgetting? Buster

13:05

Keaton. College. And Steamboat

13:08

Bill Jr. Double feature. Yeah.

13:11

A big 5. But you know what? Master

13:14

builder being the biggest. I'm thrilled to be here, but

13:16

I've also never been more terrified. Why? Well,

13:18

so this is what I was going to say. This is

13:20

such... It's a big movie for you. This is the unrecordable...

13:22

As much as Dune was the unfilmable novel, this

13:25

is the unrecordable podcast for me. It is too

13:28

massive a topic. And I don't want to...

13:31

There was so much. If you just want

13:33

to go quiet and stop speaking... I'm not

13:36

saying that there's too much to discuss. There's

13:38

just enough to discuss. It's fine. You know what

13:40

I mean? I just feel like this has always

13:43

been a very big

13:45

emotional topic for me. One of

13:47

the things I have heard you invoke

13:49

the most often and the most passionately...

13:51

You know this about you. That this

13:53

movie's important to you. Frank Herbert's Dune,

13:55

the world of... And

13:57

then specifically, largely within that all-star...

14:00

So the Lynch film, how

14:02

major both are for you? Well,

14:04

I have only ever read Dune.

14:08

I've never read any of the other books. Interesting.

14:10

Because I have read some synopses of those and

14:12

they seem too weird even for me. John, it's

14:14

time for you to read the other books. I'm

14:17

doing it right now. Really? It's great. Really?

14:19

We have an amazing time. Where are you at? I'm

14:22

in chapter house. I'm in the last pervert

14:24

book. I'll admit the final- How

14:26

many thousands of years does that take

14:28

place quite a few?

14:31

I guess. I mean, the fact that not

14:33

to spoil things, but to speak in the

14:35

broadest of terms, Dune Messiah is a direct

14:37

sequel to Dune. Children of Dune is about

14:39

the children of the people in Dune. So

14:41

you're still basically like- Sure. It's

14:43

like Dune babies. Right. And then God Emperor of Dune

14:45

is like, okay, 3000 years later. And

14:47

you're like, what? And then heretics of Dune is

14:50

like, okay, okay. More thousands of years after that.

14:52

And you're like, well, who are the characters? And

14:54

they'll be like, well, this guy, his name is

14:56

like Blark, but he kind of looks like King

14:58

Leto, Duke Leto, so kind of

15:00

think of him as a Duke Leto. Sure. Like

15:02

it starts doing that to you. And Duncan Idaho

15:05

comes back- Duncan Idaho- And several clonid forms. Is

15:07

in every single book. Wow. If there

15:09

is a Dune book, Duncan Idaho is coming out of a

15:11

clone tank being like, what is it

15:13

now? And they're like, hello, welcome. It's the

15:15

year 8 billion. One of the top names

15:17

in science fiction, right? Because like- Duncan Idaho

15:20

is a great name. Truly sounds like he

15:22

picked that out of like a, two

15:25

names out of a bingo ball of potential names. I

15:27

hope he like took a whole day by the

15:29

pool after he wrote down Duncan Idaho.

15:31

Been like, I'm not topping that today.

15:33

I'm gonna go like- Like Duncan Idaho,

15:35

because Dune takes place 10,000 years, not

15:39

in our future. 10,000

15:41

years after the forming of the spacing

15:43

guild or something. Correct.

15:45

So many thousand years into our future plus 10,000. And

15:49

yet it's this whole incredible, I mean, this is

15:51

what makes the book so addictive,

15:54

spice-like addictive, is the world

15:56

building that goes into this

15:58

where it is this massive, multral. massive

16:00

cultural mishmash of words, I don't

16:03

like that word. It's a multiple

16:05

mishmash. It's a multiple mishmash of

16:08

words and concepts and religious concepts

16:11

and sociological concepts. Which I think is daunting

16:13

to some new readers or whatever. But

16:15

when you get to the name, and so there's a guy named

16:17

Paul, find it, get it. Jessica.

16:20

Jessica, these are all real names. When you

16:22

get Duncan Idaho, like how did we get

16:24

here? To me, there is at least 20,000

16:26

years of future history and

16:29

how we get to Duncan Idaho is a name. I'd

16:31

like to Duncan Idaho right now. Just sounds

16:33

like a thing you can do. You'd like

16:35

to dunk in Idaho? It feels like it's

16:37

sort of like I'm dipping a cookie in

16:39

something. Duncan Donut should do a spin-off. They

16:41

should do a mohawk. I

16:44

was gonna say, I mean, here's the thing. How did

16:46

that not happen? I know, it's crazy. That's the only

16:48

guy who's right there. He's right there. There's money over

16:50

here. Ben, well, Ben's always thinking money. He's

16:52

got that grandson mindset. Hey, that's just how

16:54

I am, baby. Yeah. You were

16:56

always a friendly sign. Always got the dollar signs on my mind.

16:59

When I walked in with his friendlies hat, I was

17:01

like, can I, I'm gonna say a swear. I

17:04

was like, Jesus, cock, that's a hot hat. Jesus,

17:06

fuck. You said

17:08

Jesus and I was like, you really don't have to

17:11

pre-apologize for that. But then cock. May

17:13

I use that quote in my

17:16

marketing materials? John Hodgman. Please

17:19

do. That's incredible. Duncan Idaho is a

17:21

name, right? You're just like, who

17:24

could ever embody that? Right. And

17:28

he's not a guy I like all the time,

17:31

but Jason Momoa, if he had any other

17:33

name in the world, it wouldn't

17:36

be Duncan Idaho. Yeah, Duncan Idaho. He just

17:38

fits that so fucking perfect. He

17:40

made a lot of sense. Richard Jordan as

17:42

Duncan Idaho doesn't make a huge impression in

17:44

1980. One of my

17:46

least, I like Richard Jordan as an actor.

17:48

He's amazing in what's it called, Friends of

17:50

Eddie Coyle, which is a movie I love.

17:52

And he's like, what's that? Hungry Red October,

17:54

I was gonna say. Are you

17:56

telling me you lost another submarine? Logan's run,

17:58

right? He's in that. Like he's a guy,

18:00

great guy. There are

18:02

several bits of casting in this movie that

18:06

I'm kind of like fine with, but he's

18:08

one of the ones where I'm like, there's

18:10

no oomph to this, what the matter? Isn't

18:12

this guy supposed to be fun? Right, and

18:14

kind of like mega charismatic and everyone

18:17

loves Duncan Idol, it's the whole point. That's why

18:19

they send him first. He looks like your Irish

18:21

uncle who got sober about 15 years ago and

18:23

he's like really white knuckling it. On

18:26

paper, not telling me what project this

18:28

is for, just listing the actors and

18:30

being like, this is the cast of

18:32

a David Lynch movie. I'm like, holy

18:34

fucking shit, perfect. I want to

18:36

see him work with all of these people. Sure,

18:39

some of these names like Linda Hunt or whatever.

18:41

Right, at least half of them are misapplied or

18:44

in the setup of the movie make no impact.

18:46

Like who are you thinking of? I

18:48

think Linda Hunt makes no impact when that should

18:50

be a slamdong. It's not a huge role. Jordan's

18:54

a perfect example, one that just like doesn't fucking

18:56

work at all. I

18:59

mean the ones that work are like, I

19:03

mean look, we'll be talking, we can't

19:05

do this episode. As David Sims would say, we're gonna

19:07

talk about it. We're gonna talk about it. We can't

19:10

do this episode without comparing this movie to the Villeneuve

19:13

films which are experiencing this fucking

19:15

like victory lap of like

19:17

holy shit, this guy pulled off twice the

19:19

thing that everyone had said for decades. Was

19:21

not possible. Right, and I think you

19:24

look at the way he cast those movies

19:26

and there's a lot of really smart strategic

19:28

casting of like this is not

19:30

literal but A, I need to fill this

19:32

movie with faces that are really comforting to

19:35

audiences. People who are kind of a pro

19:37

man. Shortcut casting. Have your burden

19:39

walks in and people are like, I get

19:41

what this is. Right, right. And the same

19:43

way you're like, maybe the character is written

19:45

isn't obviously a Jason Momoa type, but

19:48

Jason Momoa will give the energy that needs in a

19:50

movie that doesn't have two hours to spend with this

19:52

guy. As opposed to the David Lynch

19:54

approach to casting which is let's find the weirdest

19:57

looking character actors we can and then put boils

19:59

on them. Which usually works for his

20:01

movies, because very often those people just have

20:03

to represent energy. This movie, and

20:05

I wanna make it clear, I like this film

20:07

a lot. Played

20:10

so much better for me on this watch, unsurprisingly

20:14

for a number of reasons. I do think

20:16

there's something to like, this thing

20:18

has been adapted well now, there is a

20:20

pressure off of this movie, and

20:22

I also think watching it now, having seen the

20:25

Villanova movies, not having read the books, it's

20:28

easier for me to track what's going on

20:30

in the plot of this movie, because I

20:33

can keep relating it back to the movie

20:35

that is more narratively functional. Sure, sure, look.

20:37

But it looks incredible, but Sting is an

20:39

example of Lynch doing the smart kind of

20:41

casting. Right. Everyone wants

20:43

to see Sting walk out of that steam

20:45

bath. Totally. With his winged codpiece. Sting is

20:48

great in this movie, but

20:50

I always forget that he is in this movie

20:53

for five minutes. Barely. I think

20:55

of him so, I

20:58

think of him in an outsized way in this film, and it's really

21:01

like two scenes. And especially when

21:03

part two of the Villanova is all built around

21:05

that character, like this is what we've been saving.

21:07

All right. So can I, I've

21:09

only ever read Dune, as I mentioned. But

21:12

in terms of- Read it at what age? Well,

21:14

here's the thing, in terms of my experience of

21:16

David Lynch's Dune, it

21:18

is an epic story, encompassing multiple

21:21

different books of

21:23

my experience. Okay. Beginning

21:25

with a prologue. I

21:28

go to my mom's nursing school reunion

21:30

at Yale. Humble, right? And I

21:32

had- It's right. Talk about club random. I had a

21:34

great mom who was a nurse. That's wonderful. She went

21:36

to Yale nursing school. Must be nice. And we went

21:38

to one summer reunion, 1984, summer 1984. Okay.

21:42

I know this movie's coming out. I've

21:44

got nothing to do at this nursing school reunion rather than

21:47

lie around in a dorm room and

21:49

try to read Dune. How old are you in 1984? What

21:51

are we talking about here? I'm turning 13.

21:54

Perfect age. And you know of Dune, it's

21:57

a bestselling sci-fi work. You certainly have heard of

21:59

Dune. Yes. And I know that the movie is

22:01

coming out and that's why I feel hyped. Because

22:04

I've always been a science fiction

22:06

and fantasy film and television nerd, but

22:08

in terms of books, book

22:10

learning, I was never, I was not

22:12

as deep into it as I might have been. But

22:15

here is a film being positioned as a major

22:17

cultural event. Sure. This movie is released with the

22:19

energy of here you go, here's the new Star

22:21

Wars. And not only that, the

22:23

messaging of this is one of the things

22:25

that inspired Star Wars. This is the real

22:28

shit. Yeah. And I'm also a pretentious only

22:30

child. So I was going to ask. Yeah.

22:33

Lynch was on your radar already at this point. Of course. Okay.

22:36

Yeah, of course. Elephant Man was a

22:38

big release. I don't think I had

22:40

seen Eraserhead yet, but I definitely was

22:42

aware and maybe I've seen Elephant Man.

22:45

And I knew that he was a really interesting director.

22:48

And Dune is this, you know, this long

22:51

reputation as being a very thinky

22:53

book. Which music to

22:55

your ears, I assume. I got very

22:57

thinky ears. So

23:01

I'm trying to read this thing in my

23:03

deep and deep study and I

23:05

find it unfucking penetrable.

23:09

Set it aside. And I'm like, dad, take me

23:11

to go see Ghostbusters, which came out that summer.

23:14

And that's what I remember from that period of time. This

23:17

is kind of an infamous summer of just

23:19

like pure pleasure blockbuster movies.

23:21

Right. For the host cop, we just covered

23:24

that one. Gremlins. Movies that just like

23:26

fucking hit and just go down easily

23:28

for everyone. Right. Yes.

23:31

And I put Dune aside having read maybe

23:33

two chapters, barely being able to understand

23:35

what was going on. And

23:38

very little not knowing at all that

23:40

this movie was going to entwine itself

23:42

with my life for decades. Dune the

23:44

book while largely readable, I

23:47

would say. Does

23:49

not hold your hand at the start and instead

23:51

is kind of just like, let's just plunge your

23:53

head into the ice. It throws your hand into

23:55

a box and causes pain immediately. Very true. That's

23:57

the opening scene. And it throws a lot of

24:00

of words at you that are not English,

24:02

essentially, such as Kwisatz Haderach, right? Where you're

24:04

just like, what gamja bar, what is this?

24:06

Bene Gesserit. And you're just kind of like,

24:08

I think I had the

24:10

same experience of like, I need to put

24:12

this down. I don't, I can't like read

24:14

this in a relaxed way. I need to

24:16

read this with a dictionary or something. Yeah.

24:18

And may I plug once more, hard plug

24:20

once more? I'll

24:23

allow it. All right. Thank you. I do

24:25

have a sub stack, Hodgman.substack.com. Wow. There

24:27

is a post. Available in paperback? No, available

24:30

only in pixels. There

24:32

is a post titled a

24:34

secret report to the society.

24:37

There is a

24:39

paywall. It's like $5 a month.

24:41

You can join and then delete it. Beyond

24:44

the paywall, there

24:46

is a 37 minute recording

24:48

of me reading

24:51

the first chapter of Dune out loud in a

24:53

thick main accent. If that's your kind of thing,

24:56

you can hear me talk about that gamja bar quite

24:58

a bit, but that's just a little plug. I

25:01

think I'm thinking about the money, Ben. You see what

25:03

I'm saying? Smart. Trying to monetize this. I'm seeing you

25:05

hustle and I love it. Yeah. All right. Thank you

25:07

very much. Sorry I threw this all off. When

25:10

I was nine, I believe, and

25:13

I'm going to say this, nine at the

25:15

absolute oldest, if not even eight. My

25:18

best friend in elementary school was a kid named

25:20

Keir Kramlich. Great

25:23

name. Take it back. Best science fiction name in the

25:25

biz. Nine years into this podcast,

25:27

I've never named dropped Keir Kramlich, who I saw a lot

25:29

of movies with when I was a child. Can you say

25:31

he sounds like a Dune character? Correct. Where

25:34

it's like someone comes out of

25:36

a ship and is like, I

25:39

am Harold of the Change, Keir

25:41

Kramlich. K-E-I-R space. K-R-A-M-L-I-C-H. I

25:44

will almost definitely get a message from him when this episode comes

25:46

out saying, hey, a bunch of people told me you said my

25:48

name on a podcast. I

25:50

haven't spoken to him in a little bit, but

25:53

he was a voracious reader. Yeah.

25:55

Loved sci-fi. Yeah. Would

25:57

constantly be recommending things to me. Yeah. a

26:00

little bit tough. Yeah. Like,

26:03

for eight or nine, he was

26:05

pretty precocious in terms of what he was

26:07

reading. For sure. And I remember him

26:09

being like, I robot rules. And I was

26:11

reading and I was like, I can kind of go

26:13

with this, but I also understand I'd probably be more

26:16

into this if I waited five years. He

26:18

got all in on Dune, which is insane

26:21

to think about. At the age of eight or nine? Yes.

26:24

Nine at the absolute oldest, he was reading all of them

26:26

and was just like, this is the is

26:29

around the time when the Star Wars special editions have

26:31

come out, maybe the year or two after that. Maybe

26:34

that was his bridge to it. But

26:36

he was just sort of like, hey, you know, we had

26:38

just both gotten so Star Wars pilled and was like, you

26:40

have to read this. And I remember maybe

26:42

making it through half a chapter. But

26:45

just like, this is impossible. To what

26:47

your point? It's still, I mean, having

26:49

just read it out loud yesterday and

26:51

recorded it at Hodgman.SubTech.com, I

26:53

can tell you that it's still pretty opaque. Yeah.

26:55

I mean, I now understand it. It's so good.

26:58

It's the best. But now I'm like, now I'm

27:00

a grown. And you know, I did end up

27:02

reading the book. The book. The

27:05

book probably, you know, 25 years ago now. Yeah.

27:09

And I loved it when I finally was ready for it. But

27:11

this it's, it's, you know, there's a, you

27:14

know, there's a section in this

27:16

opening chapter in which Paul describes

27:18

his meditation practice and it just

27:20

becomes simply drug language. This

27:23

is the kind of non-sentence, non-complete

27:25

sentence drug language. The exact

27:27

kind of stuff that makes, made people think for

27:29

a very long time that this book was fundamentally

27:31

unadaptable. Like are its key pleasures things that

27:34

do not translate to a narrative in fixed

27:36

time? Yeah. Especially

27:39

relative to the inherent costs

27:41

of realizing this world. Right.

27:44

When you watch this movie, David Lynch's

27:46

Doom. I,

27:49

and you have, yes, now seen the Denis Villeneuve

27:52

films, which I want to say run probably combined

27:54

about two, five hours and 15 minutes, right? First

27:58

one was like maybe two and a half hours. I

28:00

think they're both like two and a half. Second one, I

28:02

think it was a little longer. Yep,

28:06

so at five hours, 15 minutes. So I was watching

28:08

David Lynch's tune and I was like, I'm just gonna

28:10

clock where Villeneuve cut it off,

28:12

right? Where Villeneuve decided to split

28:14

the story in half. Which is basically at the

28:16

end of book one in the books. The

28:19

book is three books. Which by the way,

28:21

book one was a

28:23

complete story before. Initially

28:25

he's serialized in an analog magazine. Book

28:28

one, and then it was a couple of years before

28:30

he came back and wrote book two and three. Also

28:32

serialized before he put them back. I think also that

28:35

some of the sequels were serialized. That

28:37

was done back then. It's

28:40

an hour and a half into David Lynch's tune

28:43

is the end of Villeneuve's Dune part one.

28:45

Everything that he made the second film is

28:48

contained within 45 minutes. Correct. Including

28:50

credits. And my wife was watching with me.

28:52

My wife has seen the Villeneuve movies, has

28:55

no other knowledge of Dune. And

28:57

was chortling at the point that,

28:59

you know, suddenly Virginia Madsen's like,

29:02

and then this happened. And then she took the water

29:04

of life and he did too. And let's keep it

29:06

going. Where you can just get this sense of like,

29:08

oh, they just have to run through the rest of

29:11

it. It has the most insane yada, yada, yada. I

29:13

have ever seen in a movie, which is by the

29:15

way, they fell deeply in love. They dated for two

29:17

years. His sister was born. She

29:19

grew to maturation. Warm. Things

29:22

that Villeneuve was like, I think my

29:25

audience can't handle at all. Right. The

29:28

movie instead is like, anyway, she got born. Then she

29:30

grew up a little bit. She could talk. She's like

29:32

a talking six year old. You got that? Okay. She's

29:34

going to be very important. She'll have like five lines,

29:37

but like hugely important to the plot, kills the villain.

29:39

Anyway. Respect to Alicia Witt. My

29:42

fellow Commonwealth, you know, Massachusetts. Have you seen

29:44

the unedited footage of her? She

29:46

has a little Boston accent that they dubbed

29:48

over. It is adorable to see

29:50

footage from Dune 84 of

29:53

little Alicia Witt talking in like a

29:55

mass hall, like high pitched girl. Yes.

29:58

It's very cute. Sims is hall of fam. I

30:01

had a huge crush on Alicia

30:03

Witt, specifically in Sybil. Yes. I'm

30:06

not sure. Where she was of course, Sybil's rude

30:08

daughter. Yes. Did you

30:10

watch Sybil? I never did. Okay, well, I

30:13

guess I'll go buck myself. I love to

30:15

bring up 90s sitcoms that people largely don't

30:17

remember, such as Becker and Sybil is another

30:20

one. Where obviously Sybil Shepard was

30:22

the, I'm Sybil, I'm basically

30:24

Sybil Shepard, right? I'm this old messy actor. But

30:26

then Bransky ran away with it. Bransky is her

30:28

like martini-swilling friend who's fun. And Alicia Witt is

30:30

like the uptight daughter who's like, oh mother, like

30:33

why do you have to be so crazy? Like

30:35

I just want to like play concert piano or

30:37

whatever she was like. It sounds like my kind

30:39

of thing. Child prodigy. She wants a bit, yeah.

30:42

Yes. Was speaking at the age, or reading

30:44

at the age of two, playing piano concertos

30:46

for David Lynch at the age of three

30:49

or whatever got cast in this movie. I

30:51

mean, she's a great actress. I agree. I

30:53

mean, but I feel your affection for her.

30:55

I remember learning there was a young person

30:57

from Massachusetts in this movie and it wasn't

30:59

me. I was a little mad about it.

31:02

Oh sure. Yeah. This

31:04

is like me with a hidden pantheria in the

31:06

voice cast of Bugs Life. Yeah, exactly. How dare

31:08

they cast any child? That's right. Yes.

31:11

I was right here. Even if I'm the wrong

31:13

gender for this role. Have

31:15

no acting credits. I

31:18

want to go through more of

31:20

your journey to this becoming such

31:22

a key tax career. So that

31:25

was the prologue among, when

31:27

you're talking about doing, you gotta have a lot of prologue. But

31:29

you do see it in theaters. I do. After

31:32

abandoning the book, like a coward. This

31:34

film came out in December 1984. Now

31:37

I'm all of 13. In

31:39

the midst of the dead center of

31:41

my 13th year. And can I

31:44

just read for comparison? A big budget

31:46

film, you have to imagine and want to end up on this

31:48

list. Here's Speed Round is what the top

31:50

10 highest grossing films of 1984 were. Ghostbusters,

31:53

Beverly Hills Cop, Indiana Jones and the

31:55

Temple of Doom. The exact

31:57

amount of uncomfortable that was still

31:59

tolerable. Sure for an audience

32:01

yeah, yeah, yeah controversial, but not

32:04

on this level right then gremlins

32:06

the karate kid police academy Footloose

32:08

romancing the stone Star Trek 3

32:10

the search for Spock splash America's

32:12

going straight down the middle That's

32:15

an incredible. That's an incredible run

32:17

like good blockbusters Yeah, but like

32:20

that's the temperature of the audience. Have we just

32:22

ruined the box office game or no? No, okay?

32:24

What do you think do news on that list?

32:27

I think dune is number 23 32 that is you had it

32:29

just reverse it yep below

32:34

teachers mmm and cannonball run

32:36

2 Yeah, that's

32:39

the kind of stuff it clips at the

32:41

box office teachers with Nick Nolte right? You're

32:44

telling me the classic poster is

32:46

it the apple the wick the dynamite way

32:49

dynamite way I know the poster also a great

32:51

science fiction books This recess

32:54

yeah, yeah, bring me dynamite wick so

32:58

December to McGonagall my old

33:00

friend, and I decide we're gonna go see this

33:03

movie. We're both really into it My

33:06

dad has known that I'm really into it. He has gotten

33:08

me this book the making of doom which I handed I

33:10

still have a copy of it here Maybe

33:14

he gets that to me actually he might have given

33:16

that to me for Christmas after I saw the movie

33:18

because I remember Receiving it going this is no longer

33:20

necessary for me to read We

33:23

no longer want to learn we go to see it in

33:26

Brookline Village At a

33:28

movie theater that isn't there anymore my dad's friend

33:30

Fred Sabini had picked up some moonlighting

33:33

hours as a manager He ripped our tickets, and

33:35

then he handed me and Tim

33:37

the famous glossary Which

33:40

was what universal printed because they there

33:42

was so we're anxious They were a

33:44

little anxious about the the the confusion

33:46

that people would feel hearing so many

33:48

different oddball terms Fremen

33:51

Hurricane most comjeba Because

33:53

this movie has no exposition I'll

34:00

sit you in a worksheet. In

34:02

media race. Yes. And

34:04

I remember as a- Okay, so you're giving a glossary. And

34:06

you're probably like, oh yeah. I remember sitting down. God, I

34:08

wish someone would hand me a glossary before Blockbuster right now.

34:10

You would think that for me, I would be hell yeah.

34:13

But I'm one of those, and I

34:15

remember sitting there as a 13 year

34:17

old, looking at this thing going, oh no. I

34:21

understand- This will never work. Right, yes. The

34:23

general feeling of like, if you're handing out

34:26

glossaries at the multiplex, you've lost your battle.

34:28

But I mean, no one had ever seen

34:30

this. This had never happened before as far

34:32

as I'm concerned. I don't think it's ever

34:35

happened again. And I'm like, this kind of

34:37

speaks to me because I definitely

34:39

am a reference book nerd. And I

34:41

love having to read this. Yes, it's like, who

34:43

doesn't want to go to the library while they

34:45

see a movie? Yeah, precisely. And

34:48

I really needed something to look at too

34:50

because this whole moment

34:52

was infused with this teenage

34:56

romantic charge. Because

34:59

there was a girl who

35:01

was a little bit older than me sitting next to

35:03

me with her mom. And

35:06

the girl and her mom, and I

35:08

remember the girl was wearing a Canadian tuxedo

35:10

denim jacket, denim jeans. Sort

35:14

of the still suit of its day. Exactly so.

35:17

And she and her mom were talking about the

35:19

novel Dune. And unlike me, they had both read

35:21

it. Wow, talk about a girl of your dreams.

35:25

I'm getting goosebumps right now thinking about

35:27

it. And she and

35:30

her mom were talking about it and they were talking

35:32

about their favorite characters. And the mom said, I think

35:34

my favorite character is the

35:36

sandworms. And I'm like, what

35:39

this mom is so cool. This girl's also gotta

35:41

be very cool. And she's like, I agree with

35:43

you. And then she turns to me, the girl,

35:46

and says, are you looking forward to the movie? And

35:48

it is not an option for

35:50

me to say any words to a girl. It

35:54

was in fact not legal at that point. No, no,

35:56

no, no, it was fatal to me. It was my

35:58

Gamjabar. Like, if I... If

36:00

I accidentally flinched and turned my head and

36:03

said anything to her, I would die.

36:05

So this glossary gave me something to look at. It's

36:07

like, yeah, I'm looking forward to this. Let

36:10

me get back to what's, what's

36:12

Keetie Prime exactly? What's there is that in really, I

36:15

wish they had a map on here or whatever. And

36:18

then the movie came on the first

36:21

40 minutes, of course, our

36:23

exposition. Yes. It's like

36:25

multiple, multiple exposition drops

36:27

starting with Virginia maps. Virginia Madsen's

36:30

giant floating head talks for about

36:32

four un-tripped moments, fades out and

36:34

then goes, oh, also I forgot

36:36

to mention, comes literally, comes back

36:38

and starts a second. I

36:41

kind of love it. It's wild.

36:43

When she said, and I've

36:46

seen this movie multiple times, I always forget, but

36:48

she goes on and on and on about. She come up with

36:50

one more thing. Yeah, and then she comes back and said, oh,

36:52

I forgot to tell her. Who are

36:54

you fucking talking to? Yeah. Forgot

36:57

to know who. And that's before you even

36:59

get into a secret report within the guild,

37:01

where they then show you pictures of the

37:03

planets. They're like doing all this work to

37:05

get you to understand what's happening. And none

37:07

of it is working. That's when I started

37:09

stroking it. I mean, if there's just like

37:11

some 80s optical effect of like

37:13

planets where they're like, here are the planets

37:15

of Dune. I know they do it better

37:17

than I just did it, obviously. But I

37:19

like it. No, that was good. I like

37:21

it. Keetie Prime, can you tell it's the

37:23

bad one? It's black, you know? And

37:27

I am just so on board with that nonsense.

37:29

I know, like you're saying, that every set of

37:31

audiences are like, OK. You stroke

37:33

out when you see them? No, I'm stroking it. It

37:35

was a disgusting thing to say. He's slamming hands.

37:37

Obviously. I got you. Do not do that in a

37:40

movie theater. That's not cool. Unless you're at the Tiki

37:42

Lounge. You have an Aero 4K. Or the Tiki

37:44

Theater? What took a look? Tiki Theater, yeah. Yeah, Tiki

37:46

Theater. The first time I tried to

37:48

watch this on cable was my

37:50

budding nerd cinephilia

37:52

that I'm trying to level up. And

37:55

I think David probably similar to this. Anytime

37:58

a magazine published like 80,000 any sort

38:00

of listicle, I

38:02

was like, well, I gotta go through it. Here's

38:04

a watching guide. Here's like 30 things. Some magazine

38:06

must have published some like the greatest box

38:08

office disasters of all time. Sure is always on those

38:11

lists, right? Movies that got taken away. Some period where

38:13

I'm trying to knock out all the flops, the

38:15

mega flops, and I put on what I

38:17

think was extended TV cut, and

38:20

this shit starts and I'm immediately like, I

38:22

am, I'm never getting through this. I

38:24

think I did watch it to the end, probably

38:26

spread out over a week. Yeah. I

38:29

mean, I might've recorded it or saved it to a

38:31

deviant or whatever the fuck it was. Sure. But

38:35

yes, it's like at this point, now

38:37

I love it. Sure. You

38:39

love it? You love this movie? I

38:42

get tremendous joy from this movie, but I'm

38:44

saying I love the same thing you love,

38:46

which is just then being like. Oh, right.

38:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But when you're 13,

38:50

you're not really all for that. I mean,

38:53

even so at the end of the screening, this

38:58

could be me writing memories, you know what I mean? But

39:03

I feel like my memory was, and Tim, I'm

39:06

still friends with Tim McGonigal, so we've talked about it.

39:08

Congrats. We both look at each other and

39:10

are like, what the hell? You know, like, obviously

39:13

it did not work. Yeah. We

39:15

were very confused. It ends very

39:18

abruptly. Quite abruptly, yes. And then

39:20

you're sent out into the lobby,

39:23

and then this girl's probably gonna try to talk to you

39:25

again, so you gotta move very

39:27

quickly and get out. Try to process. Insult to

39:29

injury. Right, run interference, put on the blinders. And

39:31

you know, as you say, it's like it's not

39:33

very parsable as a film. It's

39:35

hardly enjoyable. I mean, some of

39:38

it is freaking repulsive. It almost

39:40

feels by design antagonist. Yeah, no,

39:42

it's not a fun watch. And

39:47

then it's over. And then

39:49

you're launched into the planet Earth again. And

39:53

yet there are things that I remember

39:55

remembering, like how did this happen?

39:57

Yes. Like,

40:00

just starting with the costume design.

40:03

Like, I was not a student

40:05

of film, particularly. Like, I couldn't

40:07

tell you exactly why none of

40:09

it made sense or worked together as a

40:12

film. Like, I've thought a lot about it since then.

40:14

But simply like, oh, you're

40:18

gonna have everybody in

40:21

this sort of like, Napoleonic Wars

40:23

military costumes. Very different from

40:25

any science fiction film you'd ever seen. The

40:28

set design obviously is incredible. It's

40:31

obviously building a

40:33

world that is old fashioned in a

40:35

futuristic setting. Watching this

40:37

on the 4K, beautifully restored.

40:42

I thought to myself early on and I went, let's

40:45

see if this holds up, if this opinion holds up

40:47

throughout the entire viewing. I think

40:49

this film looks as good as any

40:52

of the original Star Wars films.

40:54

I think it is pretty immaculate

40:56

looking, obviously from a design standpoint.

40:58

But I also think save

41:00

for like two or three

41:02

shots, I think almost all of the effects

41:05

hold up. Really?

41:08

Definitely not. I love

41:10

how this movie looks, but at the end when they're

41:12

riding the worms and... I think that's the one sequence

41:14

that doesn't look good to me. You

41:16

kind of need that sequence to look good. That

41:18

sequence is your hammer. You

41:21

know how Star Wars ends with the Death Star

41:23

trench run? That looks good. It looks pretty fucking

41:25

good. You can go and watch

41:27

your DC, like, oh, take all of George

41:29

Lucas' shit away from it. It still looks

41:31

fucking incredible. I

41:34

mean, my 4K was saying, I

41:36

don't really know what's going on. And obviously what's

41:38

going on is they're riding the worms and blowing

41:41

everyone up, but you still only kind

41:43

of just see the worms doing this, not really

41:45

doing this. And I feel like I needed

41:47

this. Everything

41:50

else looks pretty good. And for the listener at

41:52

home, just because what David did was just visual.

41:54

At first he was doing this, and

41:56

then he started doing this. Kind of doing this, you know. I would

41:58

say it was more of a this, but... Yeah. You're

42:00

right. No, no, that's a good correction. Yeah. I

42:03

think the sets are tremendous. The sets are tremendous.

42:06

I mean, the sets are better than, say, the

42:09

first Star Wars, where the Lucas

42:11

Star Wars looks incredible, but the janky, you know, not

42:13

janky, that's not the word, but like the kind of,

42:16

the flimsiness of it, dirty, is part of it, and

42:18

it's covering up for any- Well, it's part of that

42:20

world that he's built. Exactly, it's profound, this. Any choice

42:23

coming, yeah. Right, it's very, I don't want to say-

42:25

I mean, it's insane to say Star Wars has a

42:27

shortcoming, it looks great. A lot of a word that

42:29

came up a lot. Thriftier. But like

42:31

smart- And contemporary reviews

42:34

was ro-co-co. Sure. Incredibly

42:36

elaborate. Yes. But in

42:39

terms of lush and decadent design that

42:41

spoke to the feudal

42:43

system that this future world, this

42:45

future universe works on. You think

42:48

about like Star Wars

42:50

from 1977, and

42:52

part of the great filmmaking magic

42:55

of that movie is how

42:57

strategic they are in reusing certain elements. The

43:00

first one especially. Right. Though they have the one

43:02

hallway, they use it over and over. or

43:05

whatever. This film, I'm like every

43:07

40 seconds, someone walks into a new

43:09

room that is an entirely custom-built set

43:11

for that. They have incredible, yeah, like

43:14

halls of grandeur. But it's like, he keeps

43:16

establishing new locations, and you're like, this isn't

43:18

just they rearrange the furniture in that preexisting

43:20

room. No, I'm calling

43:22

out more, like think about Return of

43:25

the Jedi. Think about like these- Which

43:27

David Lynch was awesome about. That's

43:30

why I'm thinking about it. Sorry. It's

43:32

something that, Jon, that we're going to

43:34

talk. We're going to talk about it.

43:36

I understand, I appreciate the tease. You

43:38

know, this is not

43:40

quite that. It's not.

43:44

For getting even Return of the Jedi, the

43:46

space battles, which all look very nice and

43:48

all that, but just like when I think

43:51

of the speeder scene through the forest, that's

43:53

really insane. Like that they pulled that off

43:55

in 1983. And the movement

43:57

stuff is the stuff that he specifically fails

43:59

on. That is the thing that Lucas was

44:01

so good at. Lucas is right at the

44:04

front of it. It's beyond the fact that

44:06

anything else, it's like, that's what Lucas is

44:08

pioneering over and over again, right? Like some

44:11

new thing in

44:13

visual effects, which is great for him. Do

44:16

I prefer this movie, To Return of the Jedi? Oh,

44:18

wow. Probably not, I guess. But

44:22

do I think this movie is more challenging,

44:25

perhaps, or ambitious

44:28

than Return of the Jedi? Maybe. Over

44:30

the years, I would revisit it. I don't know. It's

44:32

a silly thing to compare, except for their sci-fi films came around

44:35

at the same time. David.

44:38

What? This message I'm about to throw

44:40

out, it's for the dudes. Okay.

44:42

I know this is our Doon app. Doon,

44:45

Doon, Doon. But this is a dude. Doods.

44:50

This is a message for my bros. Okay, what's

44:52

up bro? Hey, all guys

44:54

out there, being your most

44:56

comfortable self this fall starts from the waist

44:58

down. You know what I'm

45:00

talking about? This is just guide talk. This

45:02

is straight guide talk. You're talking about maybe

45:05

sitting on the couch, watching football, Yes, I'm

45:07

talking- Getting back into your gym routine. This

45:09

is my experience. You need to upgrade

45:12

your underwear drawer. My life is about

45:14

two things in the fall, working out

45:16

and watching games. This is a Meundee's

45:18

ad. I gotta be honest, Meundee's are

45:21

newer to Blank Check. They've only been

45:23

sponsoring us recently. Welcome Blank Check. I've

45:25

largely been using other brands. They sent

45:27

some stuff over and I was

45:30

kind of like, you know, there's all these underwear

45:32

brands these days and like, you know, what's, this

45:34

stuff is really good. I ordered more beyond

45:37

like my free, I was just like, actually

45:39

I want like 12 of these right now.

45:41

They've got, they're

45:43

very comfortable, very supportive. Apparently

45:46

they have a ball caddy sitting here. It's a

45:48

bit of a play on words. I see. Yeah,

45:50

I'll say this. You know, I was

45:52

joking. People thought maybe I was doing a bit

45:54

of a bit beginning of this ad read about

45:57

how much I love watching sports and working out.

46:00

Yeah, yeah, that's the old me who used to hate that

46:02

stuff Then I put on a pair of me undies and

46:04

suddenly I took to it like a duck to water Yeah,

46:06

and that's great for you and I realized I was wearing

46:09

the wrong underwear all along I was

46:11

sitting there watching sports games scratching itching and

46:13

I put on me undies and I get

46:15

it now And I know

46:17

that you press in 540 and also you love

46:19

that they use sustainably sourced materials and work with

46:21

partners that care for their Workers, right? That's nice

46:23

too. But I also feel like a dude for

46:25

the first time, you know If you don't like

46:27

your first pair, it's on them. You can send

46:29

it right back Yeah, and if you do like

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the first pair, it's on you when you're wearing

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it Look, you can be your most comfortable self

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outside in Griffin and you can be

46:48

a dude bro guy like me Yeah,

46:51

cuz I'm wearing me undies throwing footballs

46:53

in my head. I think

46:57

my fondness grew starting with the

47:00

set design and the costume

47:02

design Already being

47:05

very challenging to what my understanding what a science

47:07

fiction movie was and sort of changing the game.

47:09

Yeah and Having

47:11

the courage of that conviction I like Eve I had

47:13

to say that that was undeniable even as a young person

47:15

and over the years as I would watch it again

47:17

And again, I would find new things

47:19

to marvel at like look what for a guy

47:21

who's got this mortal wound that he couldn't put

47:24

What he wanted on screen sure look what he

47:26

got away with and yes notably I

47:28

mean, it's the essentially opening

47:31

the after two different existent

47:33

exponential monologues expositional

47:36

monologues the first scene

47:38

is Jose Ferrer

47:40

yep Ask place host to

47:42

a worm or not even that

47:45

not a worm because there are worms a third stage

47:47

guild navigator Of course, let's call it

47:49

what it is Navigator yeah,

47:52

and this is the scene that I returned to all

47:54

the time not just It's

47:56

an incredible looking scene. Yeah starting with the

47:58

whole port what you barely see, like all

48:00

of the costumes. Before they even bring a

48:03

tank in. Yeah, and then there's, then he

48:05

wheels in a tank that

48:07

is like 20 feet high, that

48:10

is full of this phallus with

48:12

a vagina mouth and T-Rex arms, with

48:14

blue eyes that's spitting out orange drugs.

48:17

And they have this conversation. Unbroken eye contact. Yeah.

48:21

I can't argue with what you're saying. And surrounding him

48:23

are a bunch of guys who are gonna turn into

48:25

him, if you know, if you know deep enough in

48:27

the space they get more. Spice, yeah. Yeah, but you

48:29

don't know that when you're seeing the movie. You just

48:31

see a bunch of bald guys smoking

48:34

vape pipes, wearing black leather

48:36

suits, which is the look of the movie.

48:38

If you're not wearing Napoleonic dress uniforms, you're

48:40

wearing black leather suits, even in the desert,

48:42

by the way. Great idea. And

48:45

a couple of them have these like mops and

48:47

vacuum cleaners to clean up the effluvia that's coming

48:49

out of this tank. It looks like they're doing,

48:52

like they're the guys with the brooms

48:55

occurring. Yeah, right. They're like creating, they're

48:57

slipping up the space that the tank's

48:59

gonna roll in. Sorry about the big

49:01

guy. You gotta smooth down the surface.

49:04

Exactly. And then- They're mobile

49:06

Zambonis, yes, what? Just when you think the

49:08

story's getting going, then the emperor and the

49:10

third stage guild navigator get into a third

49:13

long conversation, which is all exposition.

49:16

Ending with the third stage guild navigator saying, this

49:20

conversation didn't happen, I am not here. And

49:22

then he just appears. And I'm like,

49:25

what? That Carlo Rimbaldi design

49:28

is so blatantly grotesque and

49:32

sexual and unexpected and

49:34

weird. And like that

49:36

to me is the, I would dare say,

49:38

no, I'm not going to say linchpin, sorry.

49:40

No, do it. I'm not gonna,

49:42

Ben just looked at me. What do you think about that,

49:44

Ben? Yes or no on linchpin? Ben's,

49:47

oh, his thumb is going- It's up, it's up. It's

49:49

up. It's up. It's the linchpin moment

49:52

where I began, the

49:54

whole thing began to unpack itself to me. You lean

49:56

forward a little bit. And I'm just like, every specific-

50:00

decision in terms

50:02

of the look and feel of

50:04

certain sets, certain costumes, certain props,

50:07

certain moments in the film. They're

50:10

so weird and so beautifully weird. And he

50:12

got away with it. And not just weird

50:15

for weird sake, but there is the... It

50:18

is an actual effective version of

50:21

the Lynch magic where you're like,

50:23

this is tapping into some weird

50:25

subconscious nightmare thing. There

50:28

is a potency to this that feels

50:30

like it is speaking to some unspoken

50:32

thing in the human condition. Weirdly,

50:35

even if the movie narratively isn't

50:37

always in concert with it, as

50:39

we've been doing these, and we've

50:42

recorded some episodes that will come out long after this

50:44

one, so we've been jumping around and some Lynch stuff.

50:47

He is really not a plotty guy. Most of

50:50

his films for how sort of like naughty

50:52

they can be, if you actually break it

50:54

down, you're like, there are a

50:56

couple inciting incidents and then weird things happen

50:58

in between. And his two

51:00

most quote unquote conventional, sort

51:03

of straightforward narrative films are The Straight Story

51:05

and Elephant Man, both of which he'll joke

51:07

are like his two weirdest movies. But

51:10

Elephant Man is just like a man's life. It

51:12

plays out in sort of series of incidents. It does

51:15

not have a plot that is pushing things forward. And

51:18

Straight Story is this sort of like picker ass journey

51:20

where it's just like, got to

51:22

go from point A to point B. This

51:24

is the first and only time in his

51:26

career that he's just like, this

51:29

movie is making, I'm signing up to a

51:31

movie that is going to make promises to

51:33

the audience that it needs to fulfill. Like

51:36

my clunky metaphor is it's the difference

51:39

between making a bracelet and

51:41

making a watch, where you're

51:43

like, the only function of bracelet needs to

51:45

serve is you like the way it looks on

51:47

your wrist. A watch,

51:49

there's a fucking promise that

51:51

it's going to like fulfill its end of the

51:53

bargain. And this is a bracelet with a watch

51:56

face that is almost mocking you. Inside

52:00

is on fire. Yeah, it's a melting dial

52:02

in like a dolly. It's a dolly. I'm

52:04

not going to compare this film to the Denny Villeneuve

52:06

movie the whole time, because I do think at a

52:09

certain point, you know, what's the point? But I think

52:11

the opening is pivotal. The

52:13

Lynch film opens with, yes, Virginia Madsen, hey, can

52:15

I tell you some stuff? Which

52:17

is right from the books, of course, every chapter. You've

52:20

got Princess Sir-Elon's. Essentially, you're realizing

52:22

propagandistic diary, you know, diary, that

52:24

she's written post facto about the

52:26

events of Doom. And it's more

52:28

than one, like she's writing, there's

52:30

a Maudy breeder for children that

52:32

she writes, there's a history of

52:34

Maudy. I love it. And

52:36

you know, you got to love a beginning is a

52:38

delicate time. That's a

52:40

terrific line that it's announcing we're going to have some problems

52:42

with this film. And

52:45

then as you say, there is informing

52:47

you of the planets, here they are, you

52:49

know, and then there is a scene where

52:51

the, which is not in the book, it

52:53

is essentially making subtext text. Because in the

52:56

book, we know this happened, but it's never

52:58

shown that the Emperor meets with the Spacing

53:00

Guild and the Spacing Guild is like, do

53:02

this, you know, but put, you

53:04

know, you don't like the Atreides? Fine. We

53:07

agree. Put them on the spice planet. Let's

53:09

have the Harkenans do our dirty work for us, blah, blah, blah.

53:11

They're all talking about this. And audience,

53:14

even with a glossary is like, who

53:16

are you talking about? What the fuck

53:18

are you talking about? Villeneuve

53:21

starts with the Atreides family.

53:24

Okay. He actually starts with like, blah,

53:26

blah, blah, blah, which rocks just so you know, you're

53:28

in for like weird times. But then

53:30

it's like, here is the father. Here

53:33

is his son. Here is where

53:35

they live. Here is what they, here's the mom. She's

53:37

teaching her son to be weird like her. Yeah. The

53:40

weirding way. They live on a nice wet

53:42

planet. They have to go to a dry planet. Like

53:45

we're entering with people. We gotta move this bull head.

53:47

Like we know that we're moving because we're crating up

53:49

the bull head. Right. Like,

53:52

and now meet Duncan and now meet, you know,

53:54

fair fear and all this stuff. And

53:56

then yes, yes, yes. We're going to eventually

53:59

lay out some wider. text for you through

54:01

dialogue, you know, through some little

54:04

film books that he reads. That's

54:06

fine. But slowly. So you

54:08

actually know who this is happening to. Well,

54:10

you're showing, not telling? That's a writing term

54:13

that I just invented. But I

54:15

mean, I think even as a 13 year old, I

54:17

understood that this glossary announced we

54:19

have no faith that we can convey the

54:21

information. Correct. And I think having people just

54:24

be like, so this is what's going to

54:26

happen in the movie, like, you know, to

54:28

kick it off. Absolutely. And information becomes the

54:30

enemy, right? Because the more, I mean,

54:32

you would think like, oh, let's show you the

54:34

four major planets. But all of a sudden I

54:36

got four names in my head. You got four

54:38

names in your appointments also? Caledan, Arrakis, also known

54:40

as Dune. Now here's the thing. Like,

54:43

one of the great wounds of this film for

54:45

David Lynch was that he didn't have final cut.

54:48

And in the midst of the production, he started to have cut

54:50

a whole bunch of stuff because they were running out of money.

54:53

And, you know, one of the things you read

54:55

about is that where he left his imprint isn't

54:58

on the whole movie, but it's in moments. Do

55:00

you know what I mean? The things that he

55:02

fought for. Yeah. That he had to sneak a

55:04

David Lynch movie into a David Lynch movie. That

55:06

having been said, the movie opens and

55:09

immediately you're like, he got them

55:11

to let him do the fucking industrial

55:14

ambient droning noise throughout the entire...

55:16

Oh, I'm going over. How did

55:18

he win that argument? Yeah, right. This

55:20

is cool. No, I agree. Arrakis.

55:22

You're like, it's so odd, the things that they

55:25

let him get away with versus what he says

55:27

he feels like he failed on. What I would

55:29

say is that David Lynch, you know, like for

55:32

all the studio interference, one thing that if I were

55:34

the executive or if an executive

55:36

had said this... Okay, so you're a large Italian man smoking

55:38

a cigar. Right. Well, if I'm Dino

55:40

De Laurentiis or Dino De Laurentiis, whatever, but it's like,

55:42

if I were one of these guys at Universal, I'm

55:44

like, can we just call them

55:47

Planet Dune? Yeah, do we need to say

55:49

Arrakis? Arrakis, like, and that's from the book,

55:51

obviously, they're constantly saying Arrakis, Dune, Desert Planet.

55:53

It's like, there's three words for the same,

55:55

three things for the same, for one thing.

55:57

And the whole movie is indulgent and opulent

55:59

in that way. It makes for wonderful world

56:01

building in a book, but in a movie,

56:03

it's like, I can't just give it one

56:05

name. Call it Arrakis or Dune. Look, and

56:07

the terminology, it says Arrakis is the desert

56:09

planet known as Dune. Ben Sounding. I

56:12

know, that's the glossary, right? Which

56:14

they also directly say again in the

56:16

film. And they're saying it all the

56:18

time. And their idea is if we

56:20

say this enough, and

56:22

also if we do

56:24

enough internal monologue voiceover, then

56:27

people will get it. When in fact, all

56:29

that information just makes me turn off. There's

56:31

an awful lot of something is happening and

56:33

Paul then thinks like, you'd be bad if

56:35

I did that. I'm gonna have to do that.

56:37

Where you're just like, anyway.

56:40

This is the thing that's so wild about this

56:42

movie. And I do, I now

56:44

have gotten to a place where I love it as an object. Sure.

56:47

As its only weird thing and experience.

56:50

Yeah, me too. It's a very beautiful

56:52

and weird. Absolutely. And in a very

56:54

David Lynchian way, a deformed object. It

56:57

has perhaps the greatest percentage

56:59

of dialogue that is expositional of

57:01

anything I have ever seen. Which

57:04

is especially crazy in a Lynch movie. It

57:06

is like 90% exposition. There's

57:09

almost nothing that happens that is said

57:11

between two characters that has anything to

57:13

do with them relating to each other

57:16

as emotional creatures. Again, this is obviously

57:18

what another film hit on

57:20

is there needs to be a lot of

57:22

emotion built into this. Right, things like focusing

57:24

on the Lady Jessica Paul relationship,

57:27

the Paul Chani relationship. Which the whole

57:29

second movie is built around Chani. And

57:31

in this film, once Paul and Chani

57:33

actually meet, they have less time

57:35

together on screen than in the first movie where the

57:37

whole point is she's kind of just a cameo at

57:39

the end. Now to be fair, the book treats

57:42

Chani as an object. She's

57:45

not a particularly important character in the book

57:47

either. But that's smart Villeneuve strategy shit. That's

57:49

what I'm saying. But let's

57:51

talk about, dude, I'm opening the dots here. I just wanted

57:53

to add the one thing to this. It

57:56

is so wild when you're starting

57:59

with the multiple prologue table. setting

58:01

things. Then every character speaks exclusively

58:03

in exposition and then like 12

58:05

minutes in they introduce. Also, we

58:07

hear characters' internal monologues and their

58:09

internal monologues are additional exposition. It's

58:11

just too much to take in.

58:13

And as you point out, the

58:16

internal monologues usually double the information that the

58:18

characters are giving, using not

58:21

only their voices, the voice. And

58:23

the Lynch dream state thing is what's

58:25

potent about this movie. It makes him

58:27

a good fit for Dune in theory,

58:29

but you feel something in the inexperience

58:31

of, and this leads directly into Dossier,

58:33

it being insane that this is his

58:35

third movie. That the arc is weirdo

58:38

midnight movie he basically self-produces

58:40

over five years with film

58:42

school friends. To

58:44

surprising jump to

58:46

prestige, critically beloved, but

58:49

fairly arty, sober, highly

58:52

emotional drama and

58:54

arch period piece. To then

58:57

Hollywood being like, well, obviously he needs to

59:00

make a big sci-fi blockbuster next. That it's

59:02

not just that he makes Dune, but that

59:04

he makes Dune after being like, Dune is

59:06

the right choice for me over Return of

59:09

the Jedi. And that you feel

59:11

him going like, I don't know how

59:13

to quite do this. I don't trust

59:15

myself to figure out other ways to

59:18

convey this information. To me, trust is

59:20

exactly what's lacking in this movie overall.

59:23

Like the studio didn't trust Lynch.

59:26

He got interested initially by the dealer. Let

59:29

me open the desk. David, use the voice.

59:31

Okay. I really should use the voice. Use

59:33

the voice. Okay. Be quiet

59:35

and let me talk now. David

59:39

Lynch made the elephant man. It was a

59:41

hit. It was nominated for best picture. So

59:43

obviously now he becomes a director

59:45

that studios wish to hire. He wishes to

59:47

make a film called Ronnie Rocket. We've already

59:49

talked about it. Every time. About

59:51

a boy who is electricity. Who wants to

59:53

make Ronnie Rocket. He actually comes close now

59:56

because he has real clout. Zoetrope, Francis Ford

59:58

Coppola's you know, House of madness. I was

1:00:00

gonna say great at actually getting movies made

1:00:02

especially in the 1980s incredible

1:00:04

at having an idea that seems crazy

1:00:06

and executing Definitely

1:00:09

people go to see all of them basically

1:00:11

so one of the only Studio

1:00:14

slates you're like I'll just see whatever they release

1:00:16

cuz it's gonna be a hit Absolutely. It was

1:00:18

a guarantee you're gonna go check out that new

1:00:20

American zoetrope joint absolutely mcu of its day Yeah,

1:00:22

yeah, so he's then offered return of the Jedi

1:00:24

he told his agent tells him you get this

1:00:26

job You're gonna get three million dollars like and

1:00:28

that's in 1980 whatever And

1:00:34

what's a big part of the promise of getting a job

1:00:36

like return of the Jedi it's a double-edged sword One

1:00:39

is they're not totally gonna let you sink

1:00:41

or drown in this thing Sure, because Lucas has

1:00:43

some there will be a lot of guardrails around

1:00:46

you sure right? But the flip

1:00:48

side of that is not your it's not ever

1:00:50

gonna totally be your thing a hundred percent. So

1:00:52

he Lynch

1:00:54

recalls basically he goes to San

1:00:56

Francisco He goes to a place

1:00:59

called egg company which is near the Warner Brothers lot and

1:01:01

is handed an envelope with a credit card a key And

1:01:03

an airline ticket and then I'm sorry

1:01:05

No, he did that in Los Angeles He bet

1:01:07

and that the airline takes him of course to

1:01:10

San Francisco and he's brought to George Lucas I'm

1:01:12

wearing cap and he says he was very flattered

1:01:14

Mm-hmm, you know, but I don't know why I

1:01:16

went Star Wars is not my cup of tea

1:01:19

I was very flattered to meet George

1:01:21

Lucas Unfortunately Star Wars

1:01:24

wasn't my cup of tea a

1:01:26

nice flannel shirt tucked

1:01:28

into blue dungaree

1:01:31

jeans As

1:01:33

he this is the line I remember

1:01:35

I've seen him say it I think

1:01:37

his neck was so fat It wasn't

1:01:39

that fat back then. Okay, give him

1:01:42

a break. Okay, it wasn't 90s Lucas.

1:01:44

Okay, 80s Lucas. It's probably middle He

1:01:46

wasn't full-full frog wasn't full-full frog. Uh-huh,

1:01:48

but but he's button in that top

1:01:50

button You can't stop it doesn't matter how

1:01:52

big the neck is He

1:01:54

started talking to me and I started

1:01:56

getting a headache that got steadily worse

1:01:58

George. Can I give of the hut

1:02:00

of a giant mouth. I

1:02:03

feel like he always talks about the

1:02:05

moment where George started explaining the Ewoks.

1:02:08

He's talking about that. Being the moment that

1:02:10

broke him. I mean, obviously, fundamentally, he says,

1:02:14

I did feel pressure to say yes because

1:02:16

I did respect him and

1:02:18

this obviously was a big gig. But

1:02:20

I didn't want to do it. He says to

1:02:23

his agent, I can't do it. I feel all this pressure, but

1:02:25

I can't do it. And he says, you don't have to do

1:02:27

it. Calls George says, no, thank you. George

1:02:29

is like 100%. Don't worry about

1:02:31

it. Lucas,

1:02:34

in retrospect, is like, I might have

1:02:36

gone a bridge too far then. That

1:02:39

might have been crazy as much. I have deep respect for

1:02:41

the guy, but it is so hard. Lucas is saying,

1:02:43

maybe I dodged a bullet full of weird. Mark

1:02:48

Hahn and Return of the Jedi and everything you

1:02:50

hear about that movie, Lucas is very, very hands

1:02:52

on the entire time. Much more than Empire. I

1:02:54

cannot imagine how that would have worked with David

1:02:56

Lynch. I think probably Lynch

1:02:59

sensed that he was going to

1:03:01

get a very, very

1:03:03

strong and empowered creative collaborator, which is not

1:03:05

what he was looking for. Here's the other

1:03:07

part of it. I think about him doing

1:03:10

that movie in particular, right? A

1:03:12

film I have great love for. That's the third

1:03:14

Star Wars movie, not the second. Right. A

1:03:16

film that in my adult years, I have

1:03:19

now come to recognize some of the failings.

1:03:21

Sure. Right? Yeah.

1:03:25

In my opinion. It's a movie though. I

1:03:27

agree. It's got some shit in it that's

1:03:29

like my favorite shit in all of Star Wars, if not some of

1:03:31

my favorite shit in all of movies. That

1:03:34

stuff is the stuff that I could

1:03:36

see Lynch totally nailing. But

1:03:38

to be fair, Jabba's Palace. The whole

1:03:40

Jabba stuff. The whole first 30 minutes,

1:03:42

you're like, Lynch would go fucking hog

1:03:44

wild on that. I actually think he

1:03:46

would probably do a good job with

1:03:48

the final chunk with Luke and the

1:03:50

Emperor and Vader. I

1:03:52

think he could kind of handle the sort of like

1:03:55

monstrous sort of broken man

1:03:57

in inside

1:04:00

of Vader and all of that sort of

1:04:02

reveal stuff. Maybe. Like, there's stuff

1:04:04

in it I think he would do an incredible job with. But

1:04:07

that is the stuff the movie already does

1:04:09

excellently. And everything that I think

1:04:11

is a failing in that movie, I think Lynch

1:04:13

would have been completely confounded by. I don't think

1:04:15

he would know how to handle anything and endure.

1:04:18

Yeah. You know, I don't think he would have

1:04:20

known how to solve like Han Solo having nothing

1:04:22

to do in that movie. Right.

1:04:25

I wouldn't like to see an Ewok

1:04:27

designed by David Lynch. I think that

1:04:29

would scare me. No, and if it

1:04:31

was Lynch having to direct an Ewok

1:04:33

designed by Lucas's team, you could see

1:04:35

the movie having a feeling of disinterest

1:04:37

whenever it was on screen. So in

1:04:40

the dossier, David, when he turns from

1:04:43

ROTJ to DUNE... He does not

1:04:45

yet. I will say he was offered

1:04:47

a couple other projects that are interesting. Richard

1:04:49

Roth approached him to direct Red Dragon,

1:04:52

which of course eventually Michael Mann makes as Mann Hunter.

1:04:54

Would have been interesting. That is

1:04:57

when he pitches Roth on Blue Velvet. We talk

1:04:59

more about that on our Blue Velvet episode, but

1:05:01

that's sort of the germ of Blue Velvet where

1:05:03

basically Lynch is like, keep

1:05:05

thinking about like hiding in a closet just spy on

1:05:07

a woman. Yeah. Roth's like, okay, tell me

1:05:09

more. Got any more? Yeah, that's all

1:05:11

I got. He's

1:05:13

also offered Tender Mercies, the Robert Duvall

1:05:15

movie, which is a lovely, quiet, you

1:05:17

know, drama that is again a little

1:05:19

hard to see Lynch doing, but somebody

1:05:22

like the Straight Story speaks to it.

1:05:24

The straight story is very similar here.

1:05:26

I was going to say. That's very

1:05:28

much a match sensibility. Lynch thinks, you

1:05:30

know, Not Right For Me turned out

1:05:32

to be a great movie in his

1:05:34

opinion. He was also approached by

1:05:36

Cameron Crowe to direct Fast Times at Ridgemont

1:05:38

High. Wow. I have no

1:05:41

idea what that meeting was really like or what

1:05:43

that movie would be. Why is this happening? I

1:05:45

don't know. It's so weird to

1:05:47

think of this guy making... Crowe says very,

1:05:49

very sweet about it, slightly perplexed that we

1:05:51

thought of him, got into a white VW

1:05:53

bug and drove away. David Lynch wasn't a

1:05:55

brand at that point. I was going to

1:05:57

say, like, here's this guy who has established

1:05:59

himself very... quickly. And yet it feels like

1:06:01

Hollywood doesn't have a handle on who he

1:06:03

is. Right. Yeah. I mean, you know,

1:06:05

what had come out was Eraserhead and Elephant Man. Yeah.

1:06:08

And Eraserhead is a weird student film. Doesn't

1:06:11

count for a lot of people. I'm just saying like, and

1:06:14

then the Normies look at the Elephant

1:06:17

Man and I was like, you know, weird

1:06:19

makeup and everything else, but it is kind of a by

1:06:21

the numbers in my memory.

1:06:23

But also he's made two like movies

1:06:26

about sensitive weirdos and the

1:06:28

pain of existing in society

1:06:31

that are shot in like very arch black

1:06:33

and white. You're talking about Jeff Zwickoli. Yes,

1:06:35

of course. With like top

1:06:38

to bottom clanging. It's

1:06:41

like those two movies are very similar in

1:06:43

a lot of ways. Well, then

1:06:45

you see Elephant Man as like Judy Garlin. Thanks to

1:06:47

John Mark II. Sure. And it's like, well now what

1:06:50

if we give this guy a real thing to make?

1:06:52

Yeah. It's just funny to think like, well, clearly this

1:06:54

guy is a chameleon. It could make any type of

1:06:56

movie. I think that it was just like

1:06:58

he was the guy everyone was talking about. So he's

1:07:00

going to get all these conversations, right? Yeah. Just be

1:07:02

funny to bring in Judy Garlin to a lunch movie.

1:07:05

She could sing Clang Clang Clang Goes the Shore. Hold.

1:07:11

Hold. Hold. Hold. Rafaela De

1:07:14

Laurentiis meets

1:07:16

with Dune in about 1981 or

1:07:18

two saying

1:07:21

my daddy, Dino, has

1:07:23

acquired Dune.

1:07:27

I think you can handle it. They

1:07:29

met and she loved him right away. Dino

1:07:32

loved him too. My father loved directors and he

1:07:34

thought David was as good as Fellini, she says.

1:07:36

Okay. He

1:07:39

might be. They're kind of in similar

1:07:41

worlds. Dino

1:07:45

does, according to the dase love

1:07:47

him so much, except

1:07:50

he didn't like a racerhead. He

1:07:53

liked the elephant man. Okay. That's 50-50. I

1:07:55

would say, but he's sort of

1:07:58

saying like, I

1:08:00

want the elephant man Lynch, not eraser head

1:08:02

Lynch. And I would say, if you're saying

1:08:04

that you may have already misunderstood what you're

1:08:07

getting with this guy. I would agree.

1:08:09

Because I don't really know how you're distinguishing

1:08:11

it except that yes, one is a more

1:08:13

abstract plot, one is not, but

1:08:16

those movies have tons in common. It's

1:08:18

just that one is a more straightforwardly sad

1:08:20

story about a terrible situation

1:08:22

that a person was in. And

1:08:24

the other one is eraser head, which is also

1:08:26

honestly that as well. Lynch

1:08:30

says, Dino calls him and says, I want you

1:08:32

to read this book June. And Lynch is like

1:08:34

June? And he's like, no June. And

1:08:38

he goes on like this and Lynch had never read

1:08:40

the book, reads the book. And

1:08:42

this is the

1:08:44

part that I don't understand, but I guess love the

1:08:47

book. If I'm David Lynch reading

1:08:49

Dune, I would kind of be like, this is

1:08:51

too much to handle. People all over the world

1:08:53

love this book. It was a huge book. To

1:08:55

be clear, I love the book. I know. If

1:08:58

I'm just kind of like tossed Dune, like, hey, why don't

1:09:00

you check this out? First of all, you better duck, because

1:09:02

if it gets you in the head, you're going to be

1:09:04

hurt. But you know, and you crack it open. I'm not

1:09:06

going to be like, yeah, this would be easy. You

1:09:09

know what I mean? I'd be like, Jesus, how

1:09:11

the hell do you do this movie? But don't

1:09:14

you think that that's what animates David Lynch to

1:09:16

a certain degree? That and the fact that instead

1:09:18

of working with a control freak like George

1:09:20

Lucas in San Francisco, he's working with two Italian

1:09:23

mother, I mean, a

1:09:25

father-daughter producing duo. community.

1:09:27

A little bit outside of the community. Exactly.

1:09:29

A little more man. What are the De

1:09:31

Laurentiis, what's the book on the De Laurentiis

1:09:34

family at this point? That's a really good

1:09:36

question. Oh God, I get why this is

1:09:38

so much to talk about. I mean, what's

1:09:40

the book on Dina De Laurentiis, Griffin? Like, I

1:09:42

still remember. He starts making movies in like the

1:09:45

40s. But what was

1:09:47

he known for? Well, the

1:09:49

first Conan had happened at this point, Barbarellis.

1:09:51

Right. Right. First Conan has happened at this

1:09:53

point, right? I

1:09:56

think Conan the Destroyer is 84. Yeah.

1:10:00

King Kong, the big one. He

1:10:03

does these big genre films that

1:10:06

do have an arty twist to

1:10:08

them sometimes. Yeah, but with a

1:10:10

pulpy Italian arty, but kind of

1:10:13

shabby element to them. But he

1:10:15

starts out in Italian films, he does a lot

1:10:17

of genre stuff, he does Fellini stuff. He's one

1:10:19

of these guys who's just like a fucking mogul.

1:10:22

And he does. 70s and 80s, he's trying to

1:10:24

do big epics. I do feel like he loves

1:10:26

the movies. Absolutely. And not

1:10:28

in a negative way, really, but he's

1:10:30

a big bossy guy. Directors, yeah. But

1:10:32

if I'm David Lynch and I see

1:10:34

these two charismatic Italian people, one of

1:10:37

whom has made Barbarella,

1:10:39

I would be much more inclined to

1:10:41

be like, I can probably work my way into this

1:10:43

world better than I can work my way

1:10:45

into George Lucas's world. Absolutely. It's also just

1:10:47

like he did Serpico. He

1:10:50

did like fucking, I

1:10:53

mean, Barbarella, we said John

1:10:56

Houston's the Bible in the beginning,

1:10:58

just a very weird swath of

1:11:00

movies. Here's the thing I want to

1:11:02

bring up as a conversational topic. Please. Hollywood

1:11:05

loves, when anything is a success, trying to

1:11:07

figure out how to copy it, right? Run

1:11:09

it into the fucking ground. Dune

1:11:11

was positioned so much as here is the next

1:11:14

Star Wars. Sure. It is coming

1:11:16

out a year after Return of the Jedi. Sure. So

1:11:18

Star Wars has been a thing at this

1:11:20

point for over six years. No

1:11:23

one else really tries to do Star

1:11:26

Wars. Well, Star Trek, I would say.

1:11:28

That's the other. You know what? You're

1:11:30

right. But it's such a weird example

1:11:32

because it's like reviving another thing. It

1:11:35

is, but Star Trek The Motion

1:11:37

Picture happens because they're like, fuck, like

1:11:41

Star Wars scooped our ass. But here's my point,

1:11:43

I guess, right? Like a big space opera thing.

1:11:45

There had been the Flash Gordon movie. Well, let

1:11:47

me pin this, okay? Because

1:11:50

it's like certainly Star Wars legitimizes sci-fi,

1:11:52

which had, you know, it's sort of

1:11:54

post 2001 run, I would say. This

1:11:57

is presuming you accept Star Wars as a

1:12:00

science for... Well, I can pin that as

1:12:02

well. All right. 2001

1:12:05

leads to a spat of things like silent running,

1:12:07

you know, these movies that are like very heady.

1:12:10

Heady. And are serious

1:12:12

and grown up. And sort

1:12:14

of more part sci-fi. And clean and streamlined in their design.

1:12:16

Very, very specific. Yes.

1:12:18

Tomorrowland look to them. Right. Then

1:12:20

Star Wars becomes an industry in

1:12:23

and of itself. Yeah. Popularizes

1:12:25

this sort of space opera. Right. Sci-fi

1:12:28

fantasy as an A

1:12:30

picture. A legitimate A picture that is making

1:12:32

so much money and is like, we built

1:12:35

a world here. This is expansive. This can

1:12:37

run forever. And then the immediate things you

1:12:39

get in the wake of Star Wars, I

1:12:41

would say the Star Wars halo effect are

1:12:43

like alien. Perhaps

1:12:45

being a pitch that is more warmly

1:12:47

received because it's like, well, audiences like

1:12:49

sci-fi. Right. But this is an R

1:12:52

rated slasher film. Blade Runner. We got one of the

1:12:54

stars of Star Wars, but it's doing a weird sci-fi

1:12:56

noir. No one's trying to do the

1:12:58

big like two-fisted

1:13:00

four-color sort of

1:13:03

sci-fi fantasy epic thing. Right.

1:13:06

Build a world. I would argue Crow is one of

1:13:08

the only ones. Yeah, I was about to say there's

1:13:10

some. Okay, there's Crow. There is Flash Gordon. That was

1:13:12

a big movie. Flash Gordon, I want to put as

1:13:14

this category of things like Last Starfighter, like the master

1:13:16

of the universe. I was going to say Last Starfighter.

1:13:19

Right. Where it's like one

1:13:21

foot firmly in our reality. Right?

1:13:24

Those movies all have the like, here's a normal

1:13:26

guy. Who ends up in space. Yeah, right. Or

1:13:28

here's space people who end up in earth. Right.

1:13:31

This sort of Star Wars dune, Kroll thing. And of course on

1:13:33

television, you had Battlestar Galactica. Yeah. Which

1:13:35

is... Right. There's

1:13:37

almost more of a direct influence on television than

1:13:39

people taking the big bet of like, we have

1:13:42

to invest in building a whole world and the

1:13:44

movie starts and Virginia Madsen's face has to explain

1:13:46

everything to you. Right. Still

1:13:49

feels like a thing they find daunting. It

1:13:52

is daunting. Yeah. It's obviously

1:13:54

a major ask of people to... Kroll

1:13:57

is a funny one. Kroll has fantastic... to

1:13:59

see, you know, like a lot of, to

1:14:01

sort of keep it grounded a little bit.

1:14:04

And I would say that, you know, you mentioned that

1:14:06

Star Wars I'm looking into sort of sci-fi lists, right?

1:14:09

as an a movie and it was obviously

1:14:11

a very successful movie. But

1:14:13

I think that at the time, like 2001

1:14:15

was an a movie made by a serious

1:14:18

director. Yes. Do you know what I mean?

1:14:20

So indebted to 2001, I

1:14:22

would say, write more. But you know, Star

1:14:24

Wars and reality, Star Wars and Jaws and

1:14:27

75 and 77 legitimize

1:14:30

the B movie. Like obviously that they

1:14:32

became with high quality B movies that

1:14:34

a lot of people in culture still

1:14:36

turn their nose up. Absolutely. And we're

1:14:38

like still parodying and it was not

1:14:41

cool. Obviously

1:14:43

George Lucas, I think would basically admit

1:14:45

that he did, he was heavily inspired

1:14:47

by Dune. There's no question.

1:14:52

And obviously Dune, when

1:14:55

the more you learn about it, the more

1:14:57

you read the sequels, especially in just Herbert

1:14:59

in general, like you're getting one man's very

1:15:01

particular historical and

1:15:03

political thoughts and interests crammed

1:15:06

into this crazy sci-fi narrative, right?

1:15:09

And beyond that things like the Ben and Jester

1:15:11

where Frank Herbert is basically like, what's up with

1:15:13

nuns? Like, you know, I went to Catholic school.

1:15:15

Those people are crazy. Like, you know, things like

1:15:17

that. And then Lucas is kind

1:15:20

of like, right. I, the Fremen, I never

1:15:22

thought of the Gom Jibar as being a

1:15:24

ruler that a nun would hit you with.

1:15:26

That's obvious. That's obvious. It's so deeply rooted

1:15:28

in being scared of nuns, which I know

1:15:30

that's not scary. Yeah. You

1:15:32

ever see that nun, the nun? Well,

1:15:34

she's no good. She's not a good, I

1:15:36

mean, she's actually in Mulholland Drive, right? Oh,

1:15:39

yes. She's the lady behind the dumpster.

1:15:41

Yeah, you're right. Whatever. Anyway, yeah. I'm

1:15:44

going to watch out for the nuns and the nun

1:15:46

too. And the right. Not just the nun, also the

1:15:48

nun. Also the nun. Lucas stretches. He's not a nun

1:15:50

now. None

1:15:53

too hyper none. Sorry,

1:15:56

Luke. Do the voice. If you want us to stop doing

1:15:58

bits, you got to do the voice David. Yeah.

1:16:01

Lucas stretches, I think, the

1:16:03

gorilla stuff, the Fremen, right? Like, into this

1:16:05

more broad narrative. Lucas is obviously like, this

1:16:07

is like, you know, the Viet Cong, right?

1:16:09

Like, you know, like, revolutions throughout history. I'll

1:16:12

make it like, a little vaguer. And

1:16:14

the Force wouldn't exist without

1:16:17

all inner journey. All of

1:16:19

the kind of... And the Force is just like, the

1:16:22

Force in Star Wars is like, dune without the drugs.

1:16:24

Yeah. Like, I would have loved to

1:16:26

have seen the Trench Run and the Vets. With

1:16:28

them, like, coughing spice, right? Yeah. Like, Luke is like,

1:16:30

I can't read my targeting computer. I just threw up

1:16:32

all over. They straightened the spice orgy before they get...

1:16:36

Yeah. It is a little bit. And

1:16:38

the Force is just like, further abstraction, right? Yeah. Like,

1:16:41

in dune, it's kind of like, you can connect to everyone

1:16:43

in your bloodline all the way back. And

1:16:45

the Force is kind of like, the Force is

1:16:47

just everyone's energy kind of connected all of life.

1:16:49

But also, it's a blood disease, as we've litigated

1:16:51

it. It's a blood disease, and it means that

1:16:53

you can, like, pull something that's like, you know, you ever wanted a cereal

1:16:55

bowl that's like, kind of far away? That's what the Force is for. But

1:16:57

this is why Star Wars is so wonderful and accessible, right? Yes.

1:17:02

Because it's like, here's a big metaphysical concept. What

1:17:04

is the Force? The

1:17:06

Force is what connects and binds the universe. That's all you need

1:17:08

to know. That's all you need to know. Right. And

1:17:11

that's why it's so funny that when someone is like, and

1:17:13

that means you can do this, fans are like, no, the

1:17:15

Force is a traditional Force and not just a force. And

1:17:17

you have to go to school before you do anything in

1:17:19

the Force, and they're normal about it, always. Always normal. Hodgman,

1:17:22

do you feel comfortable sharing

1:17:25

the anecdote you've told me in the

1:17:27

past about Peter Berg? Oh,

1:17:29

yeah. Well, that's book two of

1:17:31

the Dune Chronicles of John Hodgman, Director Peter Berg.

1:17:34

I think we can start interweaving these narrative threads

1:17:36

between the dossier and the books of Hodgman. So

1:17:38

after I've watched the Dune in 1984, time marches

1:17:41

on. Fast

1:17:45

forward, chapter house, Dune style, 3,000 years

1:17:48

or whatever. Did you turn into

1:17:50

a worm? I read the book. John Hodgman and

1:17:52

his wife fall deeply in love. His children grow.

1:17:54

And another thing. Yeah, I did not

1:17:57

become a half human half human. I

1:18:00

have Sandworm hybrid, spoiler.

1:18:04

I watched the sci-fi mini series, which came

1:18:07

out in 2000. Which I love.

1:18:09

Which is fine. But that, right, that thing

1:18:11

is basically just someone being like,

1:18:13

what if I just wrote down Dune as a

1:18:15

screenplay? Right. Like most faithful

1:18:17

adaptation possible, whatever sci-fi can afford, it

1:18:20

has like- And we'll film it in this high school

1:18:22

auditorium. Right, it has like pretty good production value for

1:18:25

a sci-fi mini series at the time. Wildly expensive at

1:18:27

the time, at a scale that now is microscopic. But

1:18:29

it really is, and they do Children of Dune as

1:18:31

well, where they're just like, let's just fucking write it

1:18:33

down, man. And I just, I watched a little bit

1:18:36

of it again, because I just wanted to see some

1:18:38

scenes. And I was like, who's that guy playing Fade

1:18:40

Routha? He's- Matt

1:18:42

Kieslark. Yeah. The great Matt Kieslark.

1:18:44

Yeah. The Last Days of Disco, the middle man.

1:18:46

And also he was Johnny and Waiting for Guffman. That's

1:18:50

another one. He's so handsome. Handsome. What was the

1:18:52

thing I saw him in recently? You really, like

1:18:54

15 years ago- He like quit

1:18:56

acting and became like a professor or something? Let

1:18:58

me get this right. I want to say- I

1:19:00

love Matt Kieslark. And I'm not even sure if

1:19:02

I'm saying his name right, but I'm pretty sure

1:19:04

it's Kieslark. I'm sure he's happy no matter how-

1:19:06

He became a physician's assistant. He's the instructor of

1:19:08

urology at the Oregon School of Medicine. Yes. Wow.

1:19:11

You can read a paper he wrote at

1:19:14

Portland Community College, or I'm

1:19:16

sorry, from Reed explaining his shift

1:19:19

when his career had slowed down. I think he's really great in Scream 3.

1:19:22

What was that? I saw him in something fucking- I mean,

1:19:24

he wasn't in anything recently, so he must have seen an

1:19:26

older thing. Oh, you know what it is? I

1:19:29

for the first time ever watched Larry David's

1:19:31

Sour Grapes. You sure did. I saw that

1:19:33

you watched Clear History as well. You're really-

1:19:35

I had a very bad case of bronchitis.

1:19:38

Yeah, you were laid up. And in my

1:19:40

madness, I was like, let me watch both

1:19:42

Larry David movies that I don't know whatever

1:19:44

talks about. Neither one is good. Matt

1:19:46

Kieslark plays Matt LeBlanc in Sour

1:19:48

Grapes. There's this whole new running

1:19:51

thread in Sour Grapes of how

1:19:53

much Larry David clearly hates friends.

1:19:56

Right, because it was made right after he left

1:19:58

Seinfeld. Yes. The wrestler's

1:20:00

clearly playing LeBlanc. Yeah. And

1:20:02

to spoil Sour Grape's a movie that no one likes

1:20:04

that's almost impossible to watch now. I promise you, I

1:20:06

will never see it. Yeah. Steven

1:20:10

Webber's character is encouraged

1:20:13

to perform surgery on him, even though it's

1:20:15

not his specialty. He has

1:20:17

testicular cancer, and I think Steven Webber's usually

1:20:19

a heart guy, and he's

1:20:22

going through all the stress of the Larry

1:20:24

David style hijinks, and in

1:20:26

his stress and distraction, he

1:20:28

puts the transparency backwards. He

1:20:31

removes the wrong ball, and then

1:20:33

has to remove the second ball. And then

1:20:36

you see him waking up and Steven

1:20:38

Webber telling him the news, and then

1:20:40

the next time you see the character,

1:20:42

it's through characters watching this friend's parody,

1:20:44

I think it's called Pals or something,

1:20:47

on TV, and Matt Kieslart now sounds like Mickey

1:20:49

Mouse, and he does the whole second

1:20:51

half of the movie doing an incredible Mickey Mouse voice.

1:20:54

Oh, wow. Well, Kieslart did a great

1:20:56

job. Yeah, anyway. He played

1:20:59

Fate Ralpho. So by that time I've

1:21:01

seen the miniseries. Wow, what a tangent.

1:21:03

Incredible tangent, really worthwhile. And

1:21:05

I just want to respect that actor. I liked him

1:21:07

as Fate Ralpho in that thing. I liked him as

1:21:10

Johnny in the government. I didn't see whatever

1:21:12

movie you were talking about, the wrong ball or whatever it was

1:21:14

called. It gets to the wrong ball. And

1:21:18

then I go

1:21:20

through my own life journey where I accidentally get kidnapped

1:21:22

by television, I go on The Daily Show. Sure. By

1:21:25

accident promoting a book, the areas of my expertise

1:21:27

available probably somewhere. And

1:21:31

then I get hired to do these ads

1:21:33

for Apple Computer, and I get flown a couple

1:21:35

of times to the coast in

1:21:38

first class. Okay, cool. And on

1:21:40

maybe my second or third trip, had

1:21:42

to have actually been by 2007 because

1:21:44

I'd moved to Brooklyn. Maybe I second

1:21:46

or third trip, I find myself in first

1:21:48

class sitting next to Peter Berg. Now

1:21:51

Peter Berg at this time, I know as

1:21:53

an actor more than as a director, even

1:21:55

though he had directed Friday Night Lights at

1:21:57

that point. Yeah, had only done very bad

1:21:59

things. Friday Night Lights and the

1:22:01

rundown, possibly. And he was obviously

1:22:03

an actor. He was the guy from

1:22:05

Chicago Hope. Yeah, I'm saying, but as a director, those were the

1:22:08

three. I knew him as Chicago Hope's Billy Crunk, and I knew

1:22:10

him from a weird indie

1:22:12

movie called While You Were Sleeping, where

1:22:15

he's a World War II guy who gets frozen and woken up in

1:22:17

the 1990s. It's probably not called that,

1:22:19

because that's a famous romantic comedy. Right. So

1:22:21

anyway, it was called something else. Sure. Not

1:22:23

While You Were Sleeping, but anyway. But I feel like particularly

1:22:25

after Friday Night Lights, he was positioned as like, this guy

1:22:27

might be a serious director in the making. Right. And

1:22:30

I believe in the context of our conversation, he was probably

1:22:32

working on Hancock at that time. Makes

1:22:34

sense. Which was obviously a huge step up in budget

1:22:36

and working with hottest talent in Hollywood would have. Right.

1:22:40

So, you know, I'm still confused as to

1:22:42

why I am sitting in first

1:22:45

class in anything. Well, I can explain

1:22:47

to you. You were a PC. That's true.

1:22:50

Yeah. It's called Late for Dinner. Late for

1:22:52

Dinner. Wild. That is

1:22:54

a wild thing for them. Pretty good title. Yes.

1:22:57

Peter Berg. So how are you and I

1:23:00

this guy? Because I used to work in a movie store

1:23:02

and I, you know, I saw, I saw a lot of

1:23:04

scenes and I know what he is. Yeah, you know, okay.

1:23:06

Moving along. I can't believe that he's here. Let him spend

1:23:08

his year on that. I'll try to keep it. Yes. I'll

1:23:11

stretch it out. Okay. So let

1:23:13

me see if I can remember the type of aircraft

1:23:15

we were. If you don't hurry this up, I'm going

1:23:18

to cut it off. I will use the voice. Okay.

1:23:21

Okay. So sitting next to Peter Berg, I'm like,

1:23:23

wow, Peter Berg is here and already my life is pretty surreal. There's

1:23:26

a delay and we're stuck on the tarmac for a

1:23:28

long time. And it's really, really annoying. Like we're there

1:23:30

for an hour and we're, everyone's kind of huffing and

1:23:32

puffing. And then Peter Berg reaches into his leather suitcase

1:23:35

or satchel that he's got at his feet

1:23:38

and he pulls out a copy of Dune. And

1:23:40

I can't help myself at this point. I was like, wow. And I say

1:23:42

this out loud. I wish I had a copy of Dune to read. And

1:23:46

he goes, do you want one? I've got two copies. And

1:23:49

I'm like, why do you have two copies? Why

1:23:51

do you have two copies of Dune? And

1:23:53

his answer, which does not answer the question ever,

1:23:55

the question is never answered. He says,

1:23:57

because I'm thinking about turning it into a movie. I

1:24:00

have two. You got to have two copies,

1:24:02

I guess. I have two. Just do it like this. Yeah.

1:24:05

And he starts talking about the movie Dune that

1:24:10

he's going to make. And he's like, this is a very famous

1:24:12

science fiction novel. I'm like, Peter Berg, it's me. I know, I'm

1:24:14

a PC, I got it. And he's

1:24:16

like, you know, and no one's ever really been able

1:24:18

to crack it. And I'm thinking to myself

1:24:20

at this point, am I going to be the one who has

1:24:23

to break it to Peter Berg? Does he

1:24:25

not know that this is impossible? Well, not only does

1:24:27

it not. There is a Dune movie. But there was

1:24:30

one made, not only one, but two at this point.

1:24:32

There was Dune and then the Frank Herbert's Dune on

1:24:34

the sci-fi. Like, does he not know this? Do I

1:24:36

have to tell Peter Berg? Is this my job? Yeah.

1:24:39

And as David was saying, the sci-fi miniseries

1:24:41

received well, but kind of interpreted as, well,

1:24:43

that's the only way you could do it,

1:24:45

which is just literally spell it out. Right.

1:24:48

And even then, I'm not sure anyone, I

1:24:50

mean, David, you liked it, but I

1:24:52

don't think anyone who loved Dune

1:24:54

or David Lynch's Dune or anyone thought

1:24:56

that they had cracked the code. No,

1:24:58

not making something worthy of that. And

1:25:01

Peter Berg felt that he was going

1:25:03

to crack the code because he showed

1:25:05

me some spreadsheets of the most

1:25:07

popular movies of all time. He

1:25:09

had come up with the algorithm. Yeah. And

1:25:11

he was like, you know, Star Wars, Harry

1:25:13

Potter, such and such,

1:25:15

what do these all have in common? Young men

1:25:17

coming of age stories. Sure. I'm

1:25:19

like, it's pretty universal. Right. Absolutely

1:25:22

is part of the Dune DNA is the

1:25:24

boy's adventure element. And

1:25:27

then he revealed that he did know that David Lynch

1:25:29

had made a version of Dune. And

1:25:32

he's like, I want to make Dune, but I know that David

1:25:34

Lynch had his own take on it, but

1:25:36

I want to really emphasize the

1:25:38

less weird stuff. I wanted to

1:25:41

be a boy's adventure, military science

1:25:43

fiction, and

1:25:47

it's going to make all the money in the world. And

1:25:51

basically he was going to make

1:25:53

Dune for normies, was his idea.

1:25:56

Yeah. He was on that for a couple of

1:25:58

years. and then dropped out saying

1:26:01

it wasn't the right thing for him. And the

1:26:03

script was taken to Pierre Morel, who

1:26:05

was the guy who made Taken, jeez. Now, And

1:26:08

it was in his hands for a minute before Paramount

1:26:10

dropped the rights. This was Paramount.

1:26:12

At one point after I

1:26:14

talked to Peter Berg, and I do not know how this happened,

1:26:17

Peter Berg and I had a long

1:26:19

ranging conversation about doom, life and everything.

1:26:21

That's great. You know,

1:26:23

at one point he asked me what

1:26:25

it was like to live in Brooklyn. I

1:26:28

said, it's great. He's like, well, I

1:26:30

have kids, but I'm divorced and I want to have

1:26:32

a place that's good for kids. And I'm like, well,

1:26:35

Park Slope is terrific. Sure, get yourself a brownstone, Peter.

1:26:37

And then Peter Berg, and listen, Peter Berg, if you're

1:26:39

listening to this, this is what I remember. Peter

1:26:42

Berg goes, right. But if you want

1:26:44

to fuck a woman at 2 a.m., what do you do? And

1:26:49

I'm like, okay, now you're talking to the wrong

1:26:51

person. I would say, I would say Park Slope,

1:26:53

I'm not great for that. You can't just like

1:26:55

hit the bars in Park Slope at 2 a.m.

1:26:57

There may be an answer, but John Hodgman is

1:26:59

not gonna, I'm a PC. I'm a

1:27:02

PC. There's like one Irish bar where like cops

1:27:04

will yell at me, maybe, I don't know if

1:27:06

any ladies are gonna want to fuck. The Mac

1:27:08

would maybe no, not to stereotype, but the Mac

1:27:10

would maybe no. Justin might know. Well,

1:27:12

I'm not gonna say anything about Justin Long, but the Mac.

1:27:14

Oh, the Mac, that's an idea. That's an idea. That

1:27:17

character, yeah. It's a dramatic construct. And sometime after

1:27:19

that, I got a call saying, Peter

1:27:22

Berg's working on doom, would you want to take a swing

1:27:24

at the script? And I was like, this

1:27:26

is not ever going to work. It's not going to happen.

1:27:29

So I have to pass it up, which is a

1:27:31

mistake. I felt like. You could have made a little

1:27:34

cheap money on a movie that was probably not gonna

1:27:36

happen. I would have gotten to hang out with my

1:27:38

best friend, Peter Berg somewhere. Just don't be around him

1:27:40

at 2 a.m. Peter. David.

1:27:45

Yes. It's episode, can you guess? Movie.

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Brought to you by movie. Wow,

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Look, movies got. all kinds of

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years. They've also got a movie

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though. Not a Mubi, a movie

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out. In theaters. In US theaters

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everywhere. Starting on September 20th. A

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You might know from watching Mubi at

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on the silver screen. They do. They've

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been doing more of it and we

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love it. Did you see Revenge? I

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did. That film was excellent. This is

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from the same director. Carly Farge. You

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got Demi Moore. Big comeback for her.

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Very exciting. Giving her

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performances. Elizabeth Sparkle, a pastor prime Hollywood

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A-lister that turns to a mysterious experimental

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drug in an attempt to recapture the

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glories of her youth. She's getting Oscar

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buzz. Margaret Qualley,

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who's in everything. Yes, up and

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comer. Yeah, always in stuff. One of

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our brightest shining stars. And Dennis Quaid

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is a repellent studio executive. How did

1:29:07

he find anything to play that kind

1:29:09

of role? Look, we're excited to see this movie. It sounds

1:29:11

really cool. Ben and I have our tickets. At

1:29:13

the time of this recording. Yeah, you got your tickets.

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It got huge reviews at Cannes. It's

1:29:21

a big player this year. I'm very excited to see

1:29:23

it. I've heard it is absolutely crazy and fun. And

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look, it'll change your life. Let's just

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say this. We love the way Mubi

1:29:31

does it. They're buying challenging movies at

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cinema for free. Goodbye.

1:29:54

Bye bye. Now,

1:29:57

I love Kamala Glockman. This

1:30:00

movie gives David Lynch the gift of Kamalaeklan

1:30:02

meeting this guy who's gonna be such an

1:30:04

incredible figure in his language as a filmmaker,

1:30:07

being able to use this guy as sort

1:30:09

of an analog for himself. It

1:30:11

is so bizarre to me that he

1:30:13

got this part without having

1:30:16

a pre-existing relationship with Lynch and that

1:30:18

he is kind of a weird fit

1:30:20

for it in that for how

1:30:22

young he actually was when he made this

1:30:24

movie, no one has ever perpetually looked like

1:30:26

a grown ass man more than Kamalaeklan. He

1:30:29

doesn't have a grown up fit. He just

1:30:31

has such an adult jaw. I

1:30:33

think he's good in this. I like Kyle and this. I don't

1:30:35

think he's bad in it. Yeah. But

1:30:37

I also think you don't watch this and go, oh

1:30:39

my God, the shit Lynch is gonna do with him.

1:30:41

This is his guy. Right. It doesn't feel

1:30:43

like this amazing discovery partnership has

1:30:46

been formed. Well, I mean, the thing

1:30:48

is, and I realized this and I

1:30:50

was reading this when I was 13 years

1:30:52

old when I was trying to read Dune. It's like the

1:30:54

thing that I could connect with was Paul is 15. Sure.

1:30:58

I'm going back to the doc. Okay. You

1:31:00

guys, we've jumped all over. I just want to

1:31:02

say one quick thing, which is late for dinner.

1:31:04

The film you referenced was in fact directed by

1:31:06

W.D. Richter, the only other film directed by the

1:31:09

man who did Buck Rhubarbts. The other movie. That

1:31:11

must have been why I watched. I didn't even

1:31:13

remember that movie. Dune.

1:31:16

We'll talk about that later. Marker P. Jacobs at

1:31:18

one point wanted David Lean to make Dune. Sure.

1:31:22

That makes sense. David Lean said, and I quote, no.

1:31:25

Right. I don't

1:31:27

know if he actually said no, but he passed. At

1:31:30

one point they tried to

1:31:32

get, well, they tried to get

1:31:34

the script a little wet in that Dalton Trumbo

1:31:36

was brought in. Splits web. To type

1:31:38

this one up in his bathtub. Wow. It

1:31:41

was a writer's strike. I think Haskell Wexler

1:31:43

was on some kind of a... They would have had

1:31:45

to put him into like a dirt bath or a sand

1:31:47

bath. Yeah, it would have been tough for him. That's

1:31:49

not the wrong mood. Anyway, Arthur Jacobs died of a heart

1:31:51

attack. Trying to write to the sand pit. Exactly.

1:31:56

Just awaken. And then of course

1:31:58

in the seventies, You can

1:32:00

watch the documentary about it. Certainly commissioned a

1:32:02

gigantic book of concept art. He

1:32:07

brought in lots of interesting people. Spent

1:32:10

a lot of money. H.R. Giger, he spent a

1:32:12

lot of French money all over town. Yeah.

1:32:16

Getting people involved in his notion of a

1:32:18

Dune movie, which if

1:32:20

you want, you know, the concept art that was produced for it is

1:32:22

really lovely and cool to look at, I would say. The

1:32:25

people he gathered together went on to- A game of art.

1:32:28

The people he gathered together went

1:32:30

on to deeply influential work in

1:32:32

other films. He had H.R. Giger,

1:32:34

the cartoonist Mobius, and Dan O'Bannon

1:32:36

together, right? Like before

1:32:38

Alien, before anything else. That's sort of

1:32:40

his biggest claim to fame. Obviously he

1:32:42

makes this giant book, sends it to

1:32:44

studios, and studios are like, ah, are

1:32:47

you crazy? We would never give you money for

1:32:49

this. By the way, Tim, I'll

1:32:51

take this and this and this. Right, exactly.

1:32:53

They used it as a menu for science

1:32:56

fiction film development for a generation. But

1:32:58

you just watched that documentary for the first time, and

1:33:00

you were saying- Like a year ago, yeah, exactly. Right. You

1:33:03

know, people talk about it as like, oh

1:33:05

my God, it's this tragedy about the greatest near-miss film.

1:33:07

That is amazing. Right, yes. And the narrative crux of

1:33:10

the movie, this is always what I found frustrating about

1:33:12

that movie, is just it's been so much time talking

1:33:14

up the pitch, and then you're

1:33:16

like, what happened? And they're like, he pitched it, and

1:33:18

everyone said no. There was

1:33:20

no like ransacking- It's not like a near-miss.

1:33:22

No. It's just like, well,

1:33:25

no, you want us to give you money

1:33:27

for this? It's an entertaining movie because he

1:33:29

is an incredibly entertaining person when he's talking.

1:33:31

That's a good fucking answer. My favorite part

1:33:33

of Hodorowsky's Dune was when he was complaining.

1:33:35

He was like, the problem was I could

1:33:37

never make my movie because all people ever

1:33:39

cared about was money. And he doesn't say money. He

1:33:41

reaches in his pocket, and he pulls out some money

1:33:44

and goes, this, this awful

1:33:46

stuff. And I noticed he's like,

1:33:48

you're holding about $1,000 in your hand. He's just

1:33:50

walking around with that, Ollie. This is flush. How

1:33:52

you doing, buddy? You really don't care

1:33:54

about this money because you got a lot of it. You're

1:33:56

trying to get laid in Park Slope at 2 a.m.? The

1:33:58

thing about Hodorowsky- also as you

1:34:00

watch it and you're like, okay, so how old is he? 65 and

1:34:02

then it turns out he's like 88 and

1:34:05

he's so young and hot, like for

1:34:07

whatever. He's still going, I think, right?

1:34:09

He's still going. But you imagine that

1:34:11

he maybe would have in his mind,

1:34:13

if people had just given him money

1:34:15

and fucked off, right? That he would

1:34:17

have gone like, and I'm just going

1:34:19

to make this about mood. I'm

1:34:22

not going to worry about every character explaining every

1:34:24

bit of lingo. Obviously famously he

1:34:26

was going to have Salvador Dali play the

1:34:28

emperor at 10% of the budget going straight

1:34:30

to him. He did something like, I will pay

1:34:32

you, I can't remember what it is, but

1:34:35

like a hundred grand an hour. And like

1:34:37

that'll quote unquote make you the highest paid actor

1:34:39

in film history. No one's ever gotten paid that

1:34:41

as an hourly rate, but we'll shoot you

1:34:43

out in like three hours. I think that was

1:34:45

sort of their plan, right? Mick

1:34:49

Jagger was going to be fade. Ralph Keith

1:34:52

Carradine, I think was going to be, or David

1:34:54

Carradine maybe was going to be a Leto.

1:34:57

And of course his own son Brontes was going to be

1:34:59

Paul. And he had

1:35:01

Brontes do like two years of kung fu for a movie that

1:35:03

never even made it past the pitch stage. Also a great sci-fi

1:35:05

name Brontes. Brontes Yodorowsky. Stop

1:35:07

me if I'm just late to this.

1:35:11

And everyone's been saying- Directed by WD Reuter? Well, I've

1:35:13

heard good things about that film from

1:35:15

you. If

1:35:18

this is a conclusion that other people have come

1:35:20

to, years

1:35:22

before me, but I'm watching this and

1:35:24

I'm like, could any filmmaker have pulled this

1:35:26

off at this point in time? Realistically, within

1:35:30

the studio system, within

1:35:32

like having the track record to have a

1:35:35

little bit of reassurance from the studio, they

1:35:37

know to handle this thing. There's

1:35:39

the one guy, and I'm happy that he

1:35:41

did what he did instead, but

1:35:43

in retrospect, there's the one obvious answer

1:35:46

who in 1984 would have made sense

1:35:48

to do, dude. Which is? George

1:35:50

Miller. Well, it's pretty

1:35:52

early for him. He had already done

1:35:54

World Warrior. Yeah, but still pretty early.

1:35:57

But if you're looking at someone's second

1:35:59

film. and saying who

1:36:01

could make sure it's their third film. Maybe you take

1:36:03

Miller of Herd Lynch, maybe. Road Warrior makes a lot

1:36:05

more sense than Elephant Man. But Elephant Man was like

1:36:07

a best picture of me. No, I know. It

1:36:10

matters. Yeah, and Road Warrior,

1:36:13

whatever. Of a cult. Yeah.

1:36:16

I mean, one of the things, having just seen Furiosa,

1:36:18

which I loved. An excellent film

1:36:20

that all of us love for the

1:36:23

record. No, we hated it. Listen to the app. Okay.

1:36:26

That's not what I read. Okay, whatever. Try to

1:36:28

rewrite history here. Sometimes in theater. Yeah, no. I

1:36:31

mean, obviously, and this is true about Lucas too,

1:36:33

which Lynch couldn't quite do, which is like, you

1:36:35

know where everyone is at every moment. Yes. You

1:36:38

know how things, like Lynch- Miller's

1:36:41

very good at it. Lynch created

1:36:43

a beautiful, arresting, sometimes terrifying space

1:36:46

where these characters were in, but

1:36:48

you didn't know where they were or where they

1:36:51

were going or where the worms were or what

1:36:53

was going on. You couldn't move them through the

1:36:55

space. People are incredibly good at the, just like

1:36:57

giving you a sense of lore and history and

1:36:59

connections and how structures work without needing to have

1:37:02

it actually explained. But

1:37:05

when we talk about how Dune is

1:37:07

unfilmable, as many people did, there

1:37:10

are reasons for it, right? Obviously it's

1:37:12

very long. Obviously it's pretty

1:37:14

esoteric. Obviously it's multiple different

1:37:16

novels. There is a Boys' Adventure novel.

1:37:18

There is also an ecological parable. There's

1:37:20

tons and tons of religious non-fear.

1:37:25

There's tons and tons of just drug

1:37:27

stuff in it. It's

1:37:29

exactly what a novel can be, which

1:37:31

is discursive, tangential. On

1:37:36

top of that though, I think the thing that really made it

1:37:39

hard to do was that so much of the novel

1:37:41

is interior. And

1:37:43

also these fucking worms. You know what I'm talking about?

1:37:45

These fucking worms? They're big. They're big. And

1:37:49

what you know about them is they're weird. They're weird and big. They're

1:37:51

weird and big and they're phallic. When

1:37:54

you are reading a book and you read

1:37:57

about giant sandworms that eat

1:37:59

sand and vial. vomit and poop drugs

1:38:01

and you can ride around on them.

1:38:03

You're like, yeah, I'm all

1:38:05

over this. This is fantastic. Images baked into your

1:38:07

brain that now the film has to live up

1:38:09

to. Well, and there are

1:38:11

just some things for the most part that

1:38:14

when you put them in front of

1:38:16

you, they take it

1:38:18

out of your mind's eye and put it onto a

1:38:20

screen, it looks dumb. Yeah. So like,

1:38:23

you know, so much of the animus

1:38:26

behind Superman, the movie and the

1:38:28

Spiderman TV show or whatever is like, what do these

1:38:30

people look like in the real world? It's really hard

1:38:32

to make superheroes in those costumes in

1:38:34

the real world not look dumb. Yeah. Only

1:38:37

Christopher Reeve could really do it. Do you know what I

1:38:39

mean? Decades of iteration. Yeah. And that's

1:38:41

the one example that worked until the late 80s.

1:38:43

Right. Yes. And

1:38:45

those worms setting aside the technical issue

1:38:47

of filming worms so they look real.

1:38:50

And that they have to do a

1:38:52

lot of shit. Right. Yeah.

1:38:55

That they're a big part of the story. Yes. And when you

1:38:57

take them out of your mind's eye, even if you could make them look

1:38:59

perfectly real, but you couldn't at the time, they

1:39:01

look, there's a real risk of them

1:39:03

looking dumb. And I would say the

1:39:05

other thing, what Villeneuve could

1:39:07

do with regard to the worms,

1:39:10

first of all, I think you're right, David,

1:39:12

that he took it out of the interior

1:39:14

inner monologue and actually dramatized

1:39:16

what was happening in the story. Which

1:39:18

helped. Mostly through building it around

1:39:21

relationships, figuring out the right way to

1:39:23

structure acts around interpersonal relationships. And

1:39:25

he figured out a way to make those worms look