In anticipation of Jodorowsky’s Dune being released on Blu-ray and digital on July 8th, we spoke with director Frank Pavich about his gripping documentary, which explores the eponymous French-Cilean director’s doomed attempt to bring his adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic 1965 sci-fi novel to the big screen.

In our chat, Pavich speaks about Jodorowsky’s natural magnetism, the bonus material we can expect to find on the Blu-ray, the incredible animated storyboard sequences in the film, an alternate universe in which Jodorowsky’s Dune made it to theaters, and much more.

Own Jodorowsky’s Dune on Blu-ray and digital on July 8th.

Although Dune never got made, I’m glad it led to this film being made, because Jodorowsky is such a fantastic documentary subject! I could listen to him talk for days.

Frank: He’s one of a kind, for sure. We’re so lucky to have him as the main subject of our film because he’s a natural performer. He’s a trained mime! He studied under Marcel Marceau. Jodorowsky apparently wrote the very famous mime routine of a mime trapped in a clear box trapped in another clear box. He’s this natural storyteller, has great hand movements, and he’s like a cartoon character come to life.

When you hear Jodorowsky say things like, “Dune will be the coming of a God,” what was your reaction? Were you fascinated? A little spooked?

Frank: It was more than we ever could have wished for. The whole, “Dune will be the coming of a God,” was actually the very first thing we recorded him saying. When we first sat him down to record, he said, “I want to give you a prologue!” He went into this five minute spiel. “First I made El Topo, then I made Holy Mountain, and then I wanted to make Dune, and I wanted it to be an LSD trip without dropping acid!” We couldn’t believe we were actually getting it on tape! Me and my crew packed up our gear, walked to the sidewalk, looked at each other and said, “Oh my god! Can you believe how amazing this film is going to be!” We had no idea how magnetic he was going to be, so we were overjoyed.

I shudder to think of the process of cutting out of the movie a lot of the things he had to say, because I’m sure it was all mind-blowing.

Frank: Thanks to the modern invention of DVD and Blu-ray, you get to include those gems that couldn’t fit into the narrative structure of the film. Thank god we have all this fun bonus material we actually get to share with people. Once you watch the movie, how could you not be in love with him? You want to watch another hour and a half of him. Another three hours. Another ten hours! Who wouldn’t want to see that? We wanted to give a little more footage of this incredible person and the amazing, sometimes controversial things that come out of his mouth.

Talk a bit more about what’s on the disc for people who are going to pick it up.

Frank: Some of it is essentially deleted scenes, like an animated sequence or two that we trimmed out. Most of it is stuff we cut together from the raw footage specifically for the DVD and Blu-ray release. There’s Jodorowsky espousing his thoughts on religion or his thoughts on the Hollywood machine or filmmaking in general. We just sort of let him talk. Our interviews were conversations between me and him. Sometimes you hear my voice in there, but it’s really just him giving his philosophical ideas on so many different aspects on life and art.

I love the animated sequences in the film.

Frank: I knew right when I had the idea to make this movie that the artwork was the key piece of the film. That’s what makes it an interesting story. He and his team of “spiritual warriors” spent two years in Paris making all these designs, storyboarding the film, doing costume designs…all this stuff. We knew once we saw the storyboards that they had to be brought to life in animation. The audience needs to see his vision moving, giving them an idea of what the film might look like. I asked an artist friend of mine for a recommendation for an animator. He said, “There’s one person: Syd Garon. He’s the only one you need to speak to.” Once I saw Syd’s work, it was like he was one of my spiritual warriors! I knew he was the right guy for the job.

I really like Syd’s technique, because he can do so many things. He understood that we needed to have a light touch to the animation. What we tried to do was bring Alejandro’s vision to life. We didn’t want to re-do the artwork and make it all CGI. Only Jodorowsky really knows what it would have looked like. The movie exists in his imagination. The power of it is it exists in my imagination, in your imagination, and in all the viewers’ imaginations. We took the very simple, pencil-on-paper drawings and breathed just enough life into them to animate them and kind of lift them off the page. We keep the simplicity in there so you get an idea of what the sequences would look like, and hopefully your imagination is sort of filling in those blanks.

We found this amazing audio interview with Dan O’Bannon, but we had no footage to go with it! We didn’t want to pan over black and white photos, so we thought, let’s just animate it. We gave Syd an idea of what the sequence should be, and he just went to town. One of the crowd-pleasing moments in the film is Dan talking about meeting Jodorowsky for the first time and getting some magical, spiritual marijuana from him and going on this otherworldly trip. It’s hilarious.

Can you imagine an alternate universe in which Dune was completed? What do you think cinema would be like?

Frank: Let’s say that he got to make his film. He completed it, and it was however many hours it was going to be. People wen to go see it in 1976. There are two ways it could have gone: It could have been a huge success, thereby changing the timeline of movies forever, or it could have been a huge disaster, thereby also transforming the timeline of movies forever. If the first true space opera had been Jodorowsky’s Dune and not Star Wars and it had been a success, what would have happened? Would the major studios have looked at themselves and said, “We need to give more money to the next drugged out, trippy, spiritual movie made by a completely unique artist”? I think we’d be having more avant-garde, larger budgeted films. If his film had been a disaster, the biggest one ever, how would that have changed the world? Fox was already iffy on Star Wars, and science fiction was unproven as producing money-making films. Had Dune come out and been a failure, Fox might have pulled the plug on Star Wars. Where would we be without Star Wars? Would we have these big tentpole superhero movies? The different realities that could have existed are incredible.

It’s hard to believe Alejandro Jodorowsky hasn’t released a film in almost 25 years. The cult director, whose surreal hit El Topo made him the father of midnight movies, is only increasing in popularity over the years. Now, with The Dance of Reality and Frank Pavich’s documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, 2014 is the year where the 85-year-old director’s filmmaking career comes back to life. The Dance of Reality feels like the director never left the director’s chair in his two-plus decade absence though; he’s as strong as he ever was, and his latest work shows no drop in quality or imagination.

The film is autobiographical, or as autobiographical as Jodorowsky can be. It starts with a young Alejandro (Jeremías Herskovits) growing up in Tocopilla, Chile. His father Jaime (Brontis Jodorowsky) is a tough Communist, while his mother (Pamela Flores, singing every one of her lines in an operatic fashion) provides love and affection he can’t receive from his father’s overtly masculine attitude. Jaime abuses his son repeatedly, forcing him to get beaten up or have dental surgery without anaesthetic to earn his “approval.” Alejandro’s mother disowns him once his long, curly blond hair is cut off by Jaime.

Jodorowsky’s childhood is one defined by exclusion and isolation, not only by his parents but also by his Ukrainian and Jewish background. The melancholy undercurrent runs throughout the film, only offset by the surreal and sometimes humourous images Jodorowsky conjures up. Themes and ideas from the filmmaker’s other works often pop up: religion, spirituality, deformities, even Jodorowsky himself just to name a few. These scenes, combined with the overly colourful set design and compositions, are just as fascinating and bizarre as anything in The Holy Mountain or Santa Sangre.

As a filmmaker, Jodorowsky works in paradoxes. His films constantly call attention to the filmmaking process (seen here by the director inserting himself into scenes as he narrates) yet their spell is never broken; his films are dark and vulgar, but they’re infused with a childlike sense of wonder to them. When The Dance of Reality keeps its focus on Alejandro’s upbringing in Tocopilla, the film functions as a brilliantly crass fairy tale of sorts. Simply put, Jodorowsky is a truly singular filmmaker, and it’s impossible to think of any other director in the past or future capable of matching his level of creativity.

Eventually the autobiographical elements get pushed off to the background, the perspective shifting from a young Jodorowsky to his father’s own journey back home after a botched attempt to assassinate the country’s president. This storyline isn’t as affective as Jodorowsky’s own childhood experiences, with a lot of repetitive moments contributing to the film’s bloated two-plus hour runtime. The Dance of Reality may suffer from some indulgences, but one can’t really blame Jodorowsky for indulging after such a long absence. If The Dance of Reality is the director’s final film, it will make for a satisfying yet minor work, and a fitting culmination of his career. Of course one can’t predict or expect what Jodorowsky will do next, but getting anything new from a person this creative feels like a gift by this point.

The Dance of Reality trailer

This morning I made a rookie mistake by leaving my umbrella at the hotel and not checking the weather before I left. The weather in Cannes can turn from sun-baked beaches surrounded by palm trees to a cold downpour in an instance. As I made my way down to the Croisette for a bright and early 8:30 AM press screening for Jimmy P. I was astounded by just how quiet the streets were. It makes sense as the parties here in Cannes can go on all night as long as you know the right people to get in. It seemed as if only once the rain started to let up a little that the security guards felt like opening the gates for the press to walk up the red carpet into the breathtaking Grand Lumiere Theater. It may be just another way that the guards remind everyone who has power at the festival.

Cannes Red Carpet

Jimmy P.

After suffering apparent brain trauma a few years past his time spent at war, Jimmy Picard (Benicio Del Toro) has frequent migraine attacks and even experiences temporary blindness from time to time. Doctors examine him only to stubbornly conclude that because Jimmy P. is an Indian, that they cannot accurately determine the extent of his psychological issues that plague him. That is not until a new arrival of a doctor that a more sympathetic view on the Native American culture takes place. The portrayal of ignorance that Americans had at the time toward the Native Americans is heavily present in the beginning of the film, but the film ends up being less of a history lesson as it is an unlikely friendship bonding film between Jimmy and the only doctor that seems to want to understand.

The new doctor (Mathieu Amalric) explains the phenomenon of how the Native American tribe Blackfoot tends to believe dreams shed light on the future rather than on the past. So when Jimmy has a frightening nightmare about killing animals, the doctor suspects that it could potentially unlock what is going in Jimmy’s head. Their daily sessions quickly become the main focus of the film, which subsequently shifts the overall theme that the film began with.

Even though there was some great acting by Benicio Del Toro and some dream reenactments that were entertaining to watch, nothing else is very groundbreaking. Given the time period the film is set in and the stereotypes against Native Americans in that time period and even still today, I felt like the story could have been more than just a bland narrative that is was. Jimmy P. is a straight-forward film that could have been better if it did not feel so uninspired. This true life story makes for a better case study than it does a feature film.

RATING: 6

My original plan was to head to the second press screening of Inside Llewyn Davis, but the chatter on Twitter expressed the demand was very high for the first screening (not surprising) but that many people who were turned away from it immediately formed a new line for the later show. Therefore, I decided to catch another Director’s Fortnight film by the legendary filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky. Unbeknownst to me, and likely everyone, Nicolas Winding Refn, who is in town for his own film which is In Competition for the Palme d’Or (Only God Forgives), came on stage to introduce the filmmaker. Refn proclaimed, “[Jodorowksy] is the last king of cinema”.

Nicolas Winding Refn introduces Alejandro Jodorowsky

La danza de la realidad (The Dance of Reality)

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Dance of Reality pans out to be more like a theatrical play than your typical biographical film. Which is what the film dramatizes; Jodorowsky’s own upbringing. Everything found in the film is presented and told in fairy tale style. The mother who is portrayed as a heavenly angel of sorts, sings each one of her lines in an operatic fashion.

Although much of The Dance of Reality is rather comical and playful, there are some depictions of some deep personal emotional pains in the film. For example, the young Jodorowsky boy seeks constant approval from his father, Jamie (Brontis Jodorowsky), who is nothing but resentful of his son. The first half of the film is about the son trying to earn his father’s respect. Jamie claims that his long curly blonde haired son is more like a whore than a real man, and eventually resorts to some gruesome tests to prove the manhood of his son. For instance, for each slap across the face the young boy’s face received from this father, gains him more admiration from him.

The Dance of Reality is certainly not for the squeamish or the easily offended. A buzzed about topic around the festival is how shocking it was for the film Mexican film Heli to feature a man’s genitals set on fire. Perhaps equally as shocking is when a female urinates on her husbands face in full detail. There is no doubt that this film contains the work of a legendary filmmaker, but Jodorowsky’s style alone cannot save for the film’s lack of overall consistency. Parts of the film are semi-autobiographical and other parts are flamboyantly told in a over-dramatic ways. Jodorowsky himself makes several cameos in the film but does not always help improve the scene or story. All said and done, the film felt equally as great as it did disorganized.

RATING: 6.8