138: Dune

Hello and Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you are preparing for or driving to a great meal! If not, I hope you are having a great day and we are getting you there. So we watched Dune (1984) and wow. I don’t think we could say it any better than the director himself David Lynch. “Dune, I didn’t have final cut on. It’s the only film I’ve made where I didn’t have. I didn’t technically have final cut on The Elephant Man (1980), but Mel Brooks gave it to me, and on Dune the film, I started selling out, even in the script phase, knowing I didn’t have final cut, and I sold out, so it was a slow dying-the-death, and a terrible, terrible experience. I don’t know how it happened, I trusted that it would work out, but it was very naive and, the wrong move. In those days, the maximum length they figured I could have is two hours and seventeen minutes, and that’s what the film is, so they wouldn’t lose a screening a day, so once again, it’s money talking, and not for the film at all, and so it was like compacted, and it hurt it, it hurt it. There is no other version. There’s more stuff, but even that is putrefied.”

Also, dear friends, if you like live comedy and want to support me, your host, come and watch me do the joke’em’ups as I riff over Santa Claus (1958) (AKA Santa vs the Devil) with Cineprov. Join Larry (our founder and comedy writer for MST3K season 11), Evan (from Evan and Garrett Take On The World and 99x) and me as we “welcome” in the “holidays” as Santa fights the war on Christmas!

How will you stand when we put your past on trial?

Host: Nicolas

Defendant: Erin

Panel: Matthew and Daniel