Bukka White and Jimmy Crosthwait onstage at the the Overton Park Shell in The Blues Society. (Photo: Randall Lyon | courtesy of The Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane)
Four years ago, the Oxford Film Festival was the canary in the coal mine. It was the first film festival to cancel because of the rapidly-spreading Covid-19 outbreak that would, before the month was out, become a full fledged pandemic.
The festival survived the uncertain plague years and is now back for 2024 with a huge lineup, beginning on Thursday, March 21st, with Adam the First at the University of Mississippi’s Gertrude Castellow Ford Center. Director Irving Franco filmed Adam the First in Mississippi, and he will be in attendance at the Oxford opening night festivities, which will also be the movie’s regional premiere. Oakes Fegley stars as Adam, a 14-year-old living deep in the country with his parents, James (David Duchovny) and Mary (Kim Jackson Davis). But one fateful day he finds out that James and Mary aren’t his real parents, but fugitives hiding in the woods from some mysterious bad guys who just found them. Adam flees, but not before his foster father tells him the name of his real father is Jacob Waterson. The boy looks up all the people he can find by that name and visits each of them, trying to discover who his real father is.
The screening at Oxford’s Ford Theater will be proceeded by a recording of Thacker Mountain Radio Hour, the syndicated radio show that has longtime ties with the festival. Thacker Mountain is broadcast in Memphis by WYXR on Fridays at 6 a.m. Original Brat Pack member Andrew McCarthy, star of Pretty in Pink and Less Than Zero, who went on to direct 15 episodes of Orange Is the New Black, will be the guest of honor.
On Friday, the festivities move to the Malco Oxford Commons Studio Grille. Three Memphis-made feature films will be screening during the festival. The first is Juvenile: Five Stories(Friday, March 22nd, 4:45 p.m.), the documentary directed by Joann Self Selvidge and Sarah Fleming. The film traces the stories of Ariel, Michael, Romeo, Shimaine, and Ja’Vaune, who were all thrown into the juvenile justice system as children for a variety of reasons and are now helping others who are in the same place. The film is an examination of a deeply broken system by its own victims.
The Blues Society (Friday, March 22nd, 7:30 p.m.) by Augusta Palmer is a self-described “moving image mixtape” about the Country Blues Festival held at the Overton Park Shell in the mid-1960s. The director’s father Robert Palmer, music writer and author of the landmark cultural history Deep Blues, was one of the organizers of the festival, which proved to be crucial in reintroducing the blues artists of the Depression era to rock-and-roll obsessed hippies, and securing recognition of the music’s cultural value. But selling the blues to affluent white audiences entailed compromise and distortion which have shaped music ever since.
The third Memphis movie at the Oxford Film Festival is the most unlikely. Scent of Linden (Saturday, noon) is the only movie in the program with dialogue in Bulgarian. Producer/Director Sissy Denkova and writer Jordan Trippeer created story about the Bulgarian immigrant community in Memphis. Stefan (Ivan Barnev) comes to the States in search of a good paying job to support his ailing mother back home, and instantly falls in with a small but tight-knit group of eccentrics who are also chasing the elusive American dream. Scent of Linden recently completed successful theatrical runs in Bulgaria and Europe, and is now expanding to select screenings in the United States.
After the awards ceremony on Saturday night, March 23rd, the winners will have encore screenings on Sunday. For a full lineup, tickets, and more information on the weekend’s events, visit ox-film.com.
Every week on Music Video Monday, we bring you a video by a Memphis musician or filmmaker — usually both. These can range from relatively simple imagery to complex visions. But they are, for the most part, handmade, grassroots productions.
Today on Music Video Monday, we have something special. Justin Timberlake is the biggest star to come out of Memphis in the last twenty five years. His new album Everything I Thought It Was just dropped after a spectacular soft opening show in Memphis at the Orpheum. Timberlake tapped director Ti West to make a visual for the first single “No Angels,” and it’s something special. West is the director behind modern horror classics Xand Pearl, and his hand is evident in this super creepy video. It’s got blood, doppelgängers, and lotsa sexy ladies. Timberlake sings “there’s no angels on the dancefloor,” but there’s no shortage of demons pulling shapes in this supernatural banger. Take a look, if you dare!
If you’re not Justin Timberlake (and maybe if you are) and you’d like to see your music video on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Katy O'Brian and Kristen Stewart get pumped in Love Lies Bleeding. (Courtesy A24)
Here’s your weekly guide to what’s new and worth your time on the big screen in Memphis.
The movie with the buzz this weekend is Love Lies Bleeding. Kristen Stewart stars in this erotic thriller from director Rose Glass and A24. Stewart is Lou, a gym manager in the steroid jungle of Las Vegas in the 1980s. Her life is upended when Jackie (Katy O’Brian from The Mandalorian) starts training at her gym, and spending the night in her bed. When Lou’s mob boss dad (Ed Harris) gets involved, bodies start to hit the floor.
The second film opening this weekend which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival is The American Society of Magical Negroes from first-time helmer Kobi Libii. The magical negro, a stock Black character who shows up in stories to make white people feel better about themselves, is a long tradition in American fiction. David Alan Grier stars as a trainer for the secret society, designed to keep on a lid on race relations, who bites off more than he can chew with his hapless new recruit Justice Smith.
The Malco Summer Drive-In is reopening for spring, and Time Warp Drive-In is back with Night In The City: The Deadly Urban Worlds of Martin Scorsese. The first of the triple feature is a favorite of Marty heads everywhere. Goodfellas is a flawless film about the lure of the underworld and the consequences of the lifestyle. Early in the film, Scorsese drops one of the all-time great long takes, called a “oner” in movie parlance. Watch as Marty simultaneously introduces Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco’s characters Henry and Karen Hill and paints the world around them in a single tracking shot that lasts a little over three minutes.
Taxi Driver is where the legend of Marty really got rolling. Robert De Niro stars as Travis Bickle, a cabbie with a violent streak who develops a crush on a campaign worker played by Memphian Cybill Shepherd. On set, De Niro served as a mentor to Jodi Foster, who was twelve years old when she was cast as a child prostitute who Bickle tries to rescue from a life on the street.
I’m just going to say it: Oppenheimer was mid. Killers of the Flower Moon should have won the Best Picture Oscar. It’s now my favorite Scorsese joint. Anyway, here’s the trailer to my now second-favorite Scorsese, and the third film on the Time Warps’ killer triple bill, which rolls on Saturday at dusk, After Hours.
Credit where it’s due, Kung Fu Panda, the animated series of furry wuxia parodies is way better than it has any business being. That’s mostly thanks to the flawless voice work of human cartoon character Jack Black, but you gotta give the inventive animators props, too. The fourth one in the series is currently the number one movie at the American box office.
If you haven’t caught Dune: Part Two yet, the sci fi epic is worth seeing on the biggest screen you can find. If you have seen it, maybe go again.
Nothing warms the heart of Music Video Monday like a little Memphis DIY video. Anna Rose Baker, a young singer-songwriter from the Bluff City, is also an emerging video auteur. In “Afterthought,” Baker appears in two guises: as the shy would-be lover (which the credits identify as “herself”) and the confident rock star Ramona. It’s the “Jolene” dynamic, with Ramona pausing mid-song to take a call from the guy she’s toying with (Emmett Carlson as Glen the office guy), while Anna watches helplessly from the sidelines.
Most importantly, the music is great. “Afterthought” features a soaring, beautiful chorus and tough-minded lyrics about loss and longing. Baker’s future seems bright, if she can just get over that loser Glen. But don’t take my word for it, take a look:
If you’d like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphsflyer.com.
Hiroyuki Sanada as Lord Yoshii Toranaga in Shogun.
Long before the days of prestige TV, the miniseries was the closest network television came to the kind of serialized storytelling now familiar from The Sopranos and Game of Thrones. The greatest of all the miniseries was Shōgun, which attracted 30 million viewers per night over the course of five episodes in 1980. Shōgun was adapted from a 1,200-page doorstop of a novel by James Clavell, and starred bearded heartthrob Richard Chamberlain and legendary Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune. Clavell’s hero John Blackthorne’s story was loosely based on the life of William Adams, who, in 1600, became the first Englishman to reach Japan.
With networks searching for the next Game of Thrones, Shōgun seems to fit the bill nicely for FX. It’s a period costume drama with lots of political intrigue, violence, and sex. While the Japan of the feudal Edo period didn’t have actual dragons, it’s been a source of fascination for anime and live action stories alike for decades. Plus, it’s got ninjas! What’s not to love?
The action starts onboard the Erasmus, a Dutch trading ship that is the last survivor of what was once a fleet of five. Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) is the pilot and navigator whose job it is to find Japan, but things have gotten so out of hand on this two-year voyage that the captain kills himself in the first scene. The Erasmus does eventually find Japan, but instead of sailing triumphantly into port, it kind of washes up on the beach. The crew who haven’t starved to death are so weak with scurvy they barely even notice when a squad of samurai board the vessel. The Erasmus is full of South American silver, various trade goods, and most importantly, hundreds of muskets and twenty heavy cannon.
The cache weapons are of great interest to the five competing daimyo, lords who were left in charge of Japan after the death of the former ruler. They are to share power until the crown prince comes of age — unless one of them can maneuver the others out of the way and install himself as shogun, or military dictator. At first, the scheming Kashigi Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano) tries to quietly confiscate the ship’s cargo so he can expand his coastal fiefdom. But his machinations are easily detected by Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), the old ruler’s former confidante who swoops in and brings Blackthorne to Osaka Castle, where he is attending a meeting of the five houses called by Ishido Kazunari (Takehiro Hira). It’s an open secret that Ishido intends to use this meeting to turn the other regents against Toranaga, so the old warrior plays for time while trying to find a way to wiggle out of his bind and keep his word to his dead emperor.
Meanwhile, Blackthorn quickly comes to realize that while he’s the first Englishman to reach Japan, other Europeans have been there for a while. Namely, Portuguese Jesuit missionaries who are building churches in the major cities and converting the Japanese to Christianity. Among the converts is Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai), the cultured courtier of Toranga who serves as translator between her master and the European barbarians.
The language barrier is the source of much confusion for Blackstone, and humor for the viewers. By 1600, the Portuguese Catholics and English Protestants had been at war on and off for decades. But the Jesuits have conveniently neglected to tell their Japanese hosts that there is more than one country in Europe and more than one flavor of Christianity. As long as the European money keeps flowing in from the church, the daimyo tolerate the annoying missionaries —until Blackthorne tells Toranaga that the Portuguese intend to colonize Japan and install a Christian ruler of their own.
If nothing else, Shōgun is well cast. Jarvis has Richard Chamberlain’s look down pat, and lends scenes an expressive and often baffled presence. This is in contrast to the outstanding Japanese cast, led by the stoic Sandara, who excel at expressing complex emotion with subtlety. Yoriko Doguchi is particularly great as Lady Kiri No Kata, Toranga’s sharp-tongued consort.
Showrunners Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks retool the tone of the original, which tended towards Orientalist exoticism, by exploring the complexities of Japanese society and making it clear that Blackthorn, while a quick learner, is mostly bluffing his way through things. The first two episodes are tight plotting engines in the Game of Thrones tradition, but it gets fuzzier in the third, when an elaborate naval battle and chase scene falls flat. But thanks to the excellent cast, if you’re looking for a post-GoT, castle-drama fix, you could do a lot worse.
Matthews’ new music has a harder edge, thanks to blues and R&B samples courtesy of the Fat Possum Records catalog that have been expertly reworked by producer C Major.
The video for Limelight Honey was created by Lawrence and his brother Martin Matthews. It expands on the austere style of his earlier videos, and promises a bold new direction for the artist. Take a look:
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya are star-crossed lovers in Dune: Part Two
When I recently rewatched David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of Dune with filmmaker Mars McKay, we agreed that Lynch had omitted one of Frank Herbert’s most important themes. In Lynch’s version Paul Atreides, a nobleman from a decimated great house, is in hiding from his enemies on the desert planet of Aarakis. When he’s rescued by the nomadic Fremen, they discover that he is their prophesied messiah, and he leads them to victory over their Harkonnen oppressors, and in the process, they install him as emperor of the galaxy. It’s a standard Chosen One narrative, like King Arthur or Star Wars.
But in his 1965 novel, Frank Herbert makes it clear that the whole situation is a setup. Paul’s mother Lady Jessica is a Bene Gesserit, an all-female order of space witches who are the power behind the throne on hundreds of worlds. Over the course of centuries, the Bene Gesserit spread a belief in a coming messiah on many worlds, while they secretly manipulated dynasties in order to breed a psychic superbeing called the Kwisatz Haderach. When their demigod is finally born, he will have an army ready to serve him no matter where he goes.
Paul knows this, and wants no part of it. He has visions of billions of people killing and dying in his name, and tries desperately to avoid his fate. His victorious ascendence to the galactic throne is actually a defeat.
Denis Villeneuve understands that Paul’s interior conflict is central to the emotional impact of the story. The mounds of burning bodies from Paul’s visions are the most indelible image of Villeneuve’s 2021 Dune, and the creeping dread of jihad hangs over Dune: Part 2 like smoke from the funeral pyres.
Paul Maud’Dib rallies the Fremen in Dune: Part Two. (Courtesy Warner Brothers)
The first installment ended with Paul and Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) joining the Fremen tribe led by Stilgar (Javier Bardem). Part Two begins light years away in the palace of Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken), who is starting to think that helping House Harkonnen ambush House Atreides was a mistake. His daughter Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh) writes in her journal of rumors that Paul survived the massacre.
Meanwhile, on Arrakis, Stilgar’s band fights off Harkonnen attacks as they head for the relative safety of the deep desert. Paul’s guerrilla war in the desert — which Lynch’s version all but omits — provides some of the most thrilling sci-fi action in recent memory, even before Paul becomes Muad’Dib by riding a giant sandworm through the desert.
Bardem’s magnetic performance proves crucial. Stilgar steps in as a jovial father figure to the grieving Paul. But he’s also a Fremen fundamentalist who takes the prophecies seriously, and Lady Jessica makes sure he sees Paul as the “voice from outside” who will lead them to victory and make Dune green again. Chani (Zendaya), the beautiful warrior who takes a shine to Paul, sees the would-be Mahdi for what he is. “You want to control people? Tell them to wait for the messiah to come,” she spits.
Paul and Chani’s love story is heartrending. They cling to each other as the currents of history threaten to pull Paul away from his humanity. If they can kick the Harkonnen off the planet without calling millions of Fremen religious fundamentalists to jihad, maybe they could make a life together in the aftermath. But when Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) replaces Harkonnen commander “The Beast” Rabban (Dave Bautista) with his more competent cousin Feyd (Austin Butler), the Fremen are backed into a corner, and holy war becomes the only way out.
Sandworms attack in Dune: Part Two. (Courtesy Warner Brothers)
Dune is the product of Herbert’s very 1960s obsessions with religion, desert ecology, and psychedelic mushrooms. Nevertheless, it has only become more relevant over the 60 years since its first publication. One need not look far to find leaders cynically using religion for political gain, or sparking savage wars of extermination by appealing to ancient scripture. The clarity Villeneuve brings to this multilayered story is its own kind of miracle, and he’s able to do it without sacrificing the visceral action blockbuster cinema requires.
None of this heady stuff would mean much without the human element. From Dave Bautista’s petulant manchild Rabban to Josh Brolin’s crusty warrior Gurney, everyone in the sprawling cast delivers. Rebecca Ferguson is especially creepy as she whips believers into a frenzy while mumbling conversations with her unborn child.
But Zendaya and Chalamet are the beating heart of Dune: Part Two. It ain’t easy to draw real human emotions out of such fantastical material, but these two movie stars make it look like it is. Like Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, they try to carve out a little solace in the midst of war, only to find out the problems of two little people ain’t worth a hill of beans in this crazy galaxy.
A prisoner of Auschwitz
walks through Commandant Rudolph Höss’ garden in
The Zone of Interest. (Photo: Courtesy A24)
While I was watching The Zone of Interest, my mind kept going back to “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” Ursula Le Guin’s Hugo Award-winning 1974 short story describes a utopian city where all of the civic functions seem to run pretty smoothly, and all of the citizens are cared for and happy. But this town has a secret. Once citizens are old enough, they are shown a prison cell where a child in chains is slowly being starved to death. The citizen is told Omelas’ happiness and prosperity depends on this child’s suffering.
Most people just shrug and move on with their otherwise fulfilling lives. There’s just one kid in the box, and so many who are doing great. It’s a fair trade-off, they think. But every now and then, someone who finds out about the child chained in the prison cell wanders into the wilderness and never comes back. Why anyone would do this is a mystery to those who stay behind.
In Jonathan Glazer’s new film, exactly one person walks away from a beautiful villa built next to a death camp. Because the moment comes so unexpectedly and is done so perfectly, I won’t spoil it in this review, except to say that the one who walks away is not Rudolph Höss (Christian Friedel), the owner of the home who, not coincidentally, is also the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
It’s 1943, and Rudolph is riding high. The Nazi project of conquering all of Europe to the Urals, exterminating the Jews and subjugating the Slavs so that the Aryans can have lebensraum (“living space”) to build beautiful farms where they raise beautiful, white families, is working. Rudolph and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) refer to themselves as “settlers.” As befitting an SS officer of his rank, the couple has a huge house with a sprawling garden and even a swimming pool with a slide. On one side, their property backs up to an idyllic country stream. The other side shares a wall with the Auschwitz death camp, whose foreboding stone buildings are just visible behind the razor wire. This is convenient for the commandant, who likes to work from home.
Rudolph Höss, not coincidentally, also starved random children to death. He did it as a method of collective punishment every time a prisoner escaped Auschwitz.
The real genius of The Zone of Interest is that Glazer never shows any of Rudolph’s work on screen, save for one moment when a line of prisoners is led into his fields by guards on horseback. But the signs of the atrocities happening just over the wall are inescapable. When the wind is right, ash from the crematoria floats over laundry drying on the clothesline. Hedwig gets periodic deliveries of fine clothes and household goods confiscated from prisoners as they were led to the gas chamber.
The family, which includes five children, carries on with an eerie normality, but the one thing they can’t filter out of their perfect little world is the noise. The Zone of Interest is up for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, where it faces stiff competition. The one award it deserves to win outright is Best Sound. Tarn Willers and Johnnie Burn’s soundscapes faithfully recreate what it was like to live next to a murder factory. When Hedwig’s mother (Imogen Kogge) visits, their tour of the gardens is punctuated by screams and gunfire. One of the film’s most chilling moments comes when the couple’s toddler son overhears his father order the guards to drown a prisoner in the river where the family plays.
Glazer’s last film was the excellent 2014 sci-fi creeper Under the Skin, which starred Scarlett Johansson as an alien predator who develops empathy for her Earthling prey. Rudolph and Hedwig don’t act like monsters. Mostly, they just stick to their routine as busy executive and doting housewife, throwing kids’ birthday parties, tending the garden (or at least supervising the enslaved gardeners), and navigating office politics. Ninety percent of the time, Glazer stays in their perspective — this is a film about how monsters view themselves, after all. But even surrounded by all the creature comforts, the family can’t keep reality at bay forever. The question Glazer’s remarkable film raises in the viewer is, “What atrocities do our comfortable lives allow us to ignore?”
The Zone of Interest Now playing Malco Ridgeway Cinema Grill & Bar
“With modern times often full of heaviness and darkness, how do we find the strength to survive and grow? From the changing climate to wars and our personal stories of loss, it can be overwhelming to dream of a more harmonious life for the entire planet,” says June. “I recorded my cover of ‘Ordinary World’ because, despite the challenges we face every day, there is beauty to be found in the ordinary. Though we often think of change as an enormous process, it is the little things that make significant shifts when multiplied; one small and simple act of caring for the Earth or a stranger is a way to see the extraordinary hidden within the ordinary. The toolbox that helps us create a world of joy and peace must have simple, tiny actions.”
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Mars McKay is a Memphis-based, experimental horror filmmaker and the host of Black Lodge’s monthly LBGTv Queer Cinema Night. The avid cinephile had never seen David Lynch’s infamous 1984 adaptation of Dune. We attended a sold-out 40th anniversary screening of the film at Malco Paradiso, then retired to Houston’s bar for cocktails and debriefing. Coincidentally, while we were discussing Dune, we saw Memphis director Craig Brewer, who joined the conversation while he was waiting for his table.
Mars McKay: Hello, how you Dune?
Chris McCoy: What do you know about Dune, the David Lynch version from 1984?
MM: I have been trying to avoid everything at all costs! Well, I’m currently reading the book to prepare for Dune and Dune 2.
CM: How far along are you in the book?
MM: I am about halfway through, and according to my friends, I’m about where the first Villeneuve movie ends. The David Lynch, I hear, is very polarizing. When people start talking about it to me, I’m like, Uhuh, no. I want to go in with as unbiased and opinion as I can. So all I know is what I know from reading the book.
CM: What’s your attitude towards David Lynch?
MM: Oh, I love him. Love him. I’m not the biggest fan of Eraserhead, but Mulholland Drive! [makes chef’s kiss gesture] Which, I got my theories about … but I love his work.
137 minutes later …
CM: Okay, Mars. You are now a person who has seen David Lynch’s Dune. What did you think?
MM: I’m definitely smiling from air to ear right now.
CM: Yes, you are!
MM: My favorite character, the one I got the most hyped for, was Pug Atreides
CM: Yes! The Battle Pug!
MM: Battle Pug!
CM: We’re going to be out there shooting lasers at each other, so let’s take pugs into battle with us!
MM: Pugs can be ferocious!
CM: And it’s Patrick Stewart who carries the pug into battle!
MM: It was my favorite part of the movie — me and the guy sitting next to me with The Thing t-shirt. He and I were like, “Is that Captain Picard?”
CM: With hair!
MM: I, of course, was super on board with the presentation, the translation from the book to the movie, through the first half, up until the point where they start developing the relationship between Paul and Chani. After that, I was like, this feels rushed now. I loved it, though!
CM: It feels rushed because it is rushed. Here we are, about 90 minutes in, and we’re just now in the desert, meeting the Fremen, you know?
MM: In the book, that’s like 350 pages.
CM: Yeah. Because there’s all that world-building.
MM: Which I love.
CM: Me too. But I think the real problem with adapting Dune is all the world building. At some point, you’re going to have to explain the thousand-year selective breeding program the Bene Gesserit witches were running to develop the ultimate psychic super-being, the Kwisatz Haderach, to a theater full of over-caffinated 12-year-olds. It’s a super complex narrative that doesn’t adapt easily.
MM: The white savior narrative, Paul as the messiah, is intentional. The Bene Gesserit went from planet to planet planting those myths.
CM: They did it on purpose.
MM: That’s something that was not addressed in the film at all. But it’s so ingrained in Fremen culture, their priesthoods connect. They already have their own Reverend Mother, and when she dies, Lady Jessica just steps in there and takes over.
CM: It was all a setup by the Bene Gesserit to create their chosen one …
MM: … and then the first thing the Chosen One does is turn on them.
CM: Right.
MM: He doesn’t want to do it.
CM: The real message of Dune is, “‘Don’t have Chosen Ones, they’ll always turn on you.”
MM: You could say it’s predetermined.
MM: One thing I really didn’t like about the movie was Paul’s sister, Alia the little kid. I haven’t gotten to that part of the book yet, but every scene she was in just made me a little uncomfortable. Like, just something about the way she’s shown.
MM: But overall, I really liked it. The first thing I said to you when it was over was, “I don’t understand why this gets so much hate.” But the last half does feel rushed, kinda cramped.
CM: I’m reading A Masterpiece in Disarray, which is a book about the making of Dune. Dino De Laurentiis produced it. He got David Lynch on board, and then said, “My daughter, Raffaella, you will produce it!” And she kinda didn’t know what she was doing.
MM: So, it was the financials. Speaking of David Lynch’s cameo …
CM: That was amazing! I’d never noticed that before!
MM: I didn’t realize it at first until you were like, “That’s David Lynch!”
CM: He’s the poor guy in the Spice Harvester going, “Hey guys, can you come get us before the worm eats us?”
MM: He’s got that voice.
CM: So Lynch, obviously, was not the right guy for the job, but I don’t know that there was a right guy for the job. There’s no way that you remotely do that story justice in two hours. It’s a long movie!
MM: It was two and a half hours.
CM: At one point it’s like, “For the next two years, there’s this giant war …” Well, that’s usually what we see in movies — stuff that’s important to the plot!
MM: I liked having Lynch as the director. It’s wild to see him do a space fantasy. I loved the dreamy elements within it, when Paul’s seeing the visions after ingesting spice. The visions are just fantastic.
CM: That’s David Lynch’s wheelhouse, you know? And there’s a lot of it in the book.
MM: They probably looked at that stuff and said, “Let’s get Lynch!”
CM: George Lucas tried to get Lynch to direct Return of the Jedi. Can you imagine?
MM: I don’t think that would have worked at all.
CM: After he was nominated for Best Director with The Elephant Man, he was a hot commodity around Hollywood for a while. He turned down Jedi because he wanted to do something that wasn’t an established vision, and did this instead.
MM:The Elephant Man is one of my favorites of his. People go from Eraserhead to Blue Velvet, and I’m like, “Don’t skip Elephant Man!”
CM: The psychedelia is impeccable. But what this story needed was a good editor, and I’m not talking about a good film editor, I’m talking about a good story editor. And that just wasn’t happening.
MM: That was my only qualm with it. The pacing at the end where it just felt kind of like doing a visual, as opposed to the way stretched out first half. I was super happy to see that ’cause I’m really loving the book. But seeing that presented and then all of a sudden, the moment the whole stuff with Chani happens, it just felt like it’s trying to squeeze into pants that are too tight.
CM: She’s the one who draws him into Fremen society, and their whole relationship is nothing.
MM: Chani is a nothing character, and I hate that because in the book, she’s, immediately depicted as … not aggressive but …
CM: … Assertive.
MM: Assertive and a bit ferocious. But it was the Eighties, and I see a lot of, “We have two attractive leads here, let’s just throw them together.” I also felt like the way Lady Jessica’s presented is not nearly as freaking badass as she is in the book. If I met her in real life, I would be terrified. The Bene Gesserit, I envision them as very intense and intimidating.
CM: You know who was great, though? Stilgar. Javier Bardem plays him in Villeneuve Dune, and he’s fine, but Lynch’s guy [Everett McGill], he is the bomb. His voice is just perfect when he says “Usul” and “Maud’Dib.”
MM: Yeah, but when he’s first introduced, he goes, “I’m Stilgar,” and then he does that weird coughing thing. I was trying hard not to laugh.
MM: The moment I saw Kyle MacLachlan as Paul, especially with the early, young, 15-year-old Paul, I was like, yeah, this is him. He’s so boyish, I even wondered, how long did it take to film this? Because he looks older by the end of it. He looks more distinguished.
CM: It was such hell to film, I think, that everybody like looked older by the time it was over.
Around this time, Craig and Jodi Brewer showed up in Houston’s bar. They joined the conversation with us as they waited for their table.
Craig Brewer: Have you ever seen the David Lynch Dune? 1984?
Jodi Brewer: I don’t think I have. I’ve probably seen clips.
CB: Sting’s in it.
MM: I’m not gonna lie. Sting’s hot. He’s got tiny nipples, but he’s hot.
CM: It’s like prime, Police-era, yoga-body Sting. He’s nearly-naked, and has a knife fight with Kyle MacLachlan.
JB: That’s hot.
CB: So hot.
CM: Mars, would you recommend people watch David Lynch’s Dune?
MM: Absolutely. But I think you should temper your expectations. I think a lot of people are very excited about the Villenueve version coming up. But my recommendation would be doing what I’m doing, and reading the book first
CM: Honestly, it made more sense to you because you’re reading it. If you didn’t have that background, some of it would just be noise to you.
MM: That’s why I say read the book. I do think that, the only frustrating element was, if I had not read the book, I would be lost. I feel like I’m just pushing the book now, but …
CB: It’s great! The book is amazing! It was one of my father’s favorites.
MM: The book made me appreciate the movie so much more. And so I am very excited about the Villenueve version.
CM: He really sticks closer to the book, and he can stretch out and tell the story.
CB: I hope he sticks the landing.
CM: The Lynch Dune is like a beautiful mess. When Lynch is on, he’s on.
MM: This is going in the collection of movies that I love by him now.
CM: If you want to see David Lynch with an enormous budget just going nuts, it works great. But if you’re looking for a coherent movie that makes sense the same way Star Wars makes sense — which is basically what Lynch was signed up to do — no.
