Jodorowsky had gone and talked to Doug Trumbull
and he was more than qualified, obviously
but Jodorowsky was looking for something else 'cause Jodorowsky
is a completely original human being.
and when I met with him we just hit it off
like we'd known each other our whole lives
and he ended up hiring me to do the special effects on this production Dune
and he took me over to France, to Paris
and introduced me to some artists that he was using
and one of them was this amazing man named Jean Giraud.
At that time his stuff was not published in America
it was, you know, France and Belgium in other places
I didn't know about his work
until I went over there and saw his work
and I was completely enthralled, and
I hadn't even watch him work yet, all I had done was seen some paintings
and drawings by Giraud, and they were absolutely astonishing.
But they weren't nearly as astonishing as when I went and watched Giraud actually work
Alejandro rented a big office space in Paris
and he put all of us in one big room
and he set everybody up with the equipment he wanted
Giraud wanted a certain drawing board and certain equipment, and Chris Foss who was
a science-fiction artist from London
he wanted a different kind of thing, he wanted an air brush setup
So he sets everybody up with the equipment that he wants
and he has them working in the same room
and then he started them working designing the movie.
The result of having the artists in the same room
was that they competed with each other
They knew, they were looking at each other what they're doing
and their artwork kept getting better and better
and after a few weeks of course the artwork as it was created
we would hang it on the wall
we had a long piece of wall space for it
After a few weeks it was like being in an art museum
dedicated to fantastic art, it was just extraordinary.
Giger came on the project late
as a matter of fact I only meet him
a couple weeks before the thing fell through.
but Alejandro had just seen Giger's work in... I think its the Pompidou
and he came back saying there is this fantastic artist, he's fantastic,
he's name is Giger, he's fantastic you have to see what he's done.
So he takes me over to Giger's hotel room and I meet him
and his personality, and the way he dresses and displays himself
is very dramatic, because Giger dresses all in black
and in those days his hair was black too
So he's sort of like Dracula
but he has a very mild manner
Giger does, because he's a very friendly person
and he had some of his art books there
in the room and I picked them up and I started looking at,
this is my first encounter with Giger's work was in
the book that accompanied the Pompidou show
and I began to look through these
and I'd never seen anything like this in my entire life.
Charlotte Rampling was going to be the mother, right,
and Salvador Dali had agreed to play the Emperor of the Universe
and I don't think he had yet cast
the lead, the young guy.
He was having a hard time finding somebody he was satisfied with.
David Carradine had agreed to play Kynes, the planetary ecologist
those are the only ones I remember off the top of my head
I did spend one afternoon in a hotel room with
Jodorowsky and David Carradine and a very strange conversation
and at the end of which
Carradine agreed to play Kynes.
Well many names were just mentioned and went, he had got Pink Floyd
to do the score, I meet them one evening.
Half a dozen very tall men with long hair came around
where we were working, and he talked to them, this is Pink Floyd
they're going to the music. I said "Great".
But you know when you say that names were mentioned
I mean half the actors in the world were mentioned
I was just remembering the ones that stuck in my head.
You know the only people that are ever hard to content
are money people
that's the hard part, getting somebody to put up money.
It's not that hard to get people be in a movie
you're paid a salary, sorry!
That's about the way it is, it was a real movie it was happening and so
you could have got just about anyone you wanted.
Alejandro was my guru
From the moment I met him I knew that he was his own greatest creation
I'd seen his films before meeting him, you know, El Topo and stuff,
but it did not prepare me at all
I was simply expecting to meet an avant garde filmmaker
and I met an advanced human.
He's the only person in my life that I've ever told
that I would do anything he said
and I'll never say it anyone else again either.
and I'm glad I did, and I was right to do so.
He very much is a shaman
A shaman is someone who takes you into the spiritual world
cuts you up into little pieces
glues you back together and brings you back into this world better than you were
that's what a shaman does
and that's what Alejandro did for me, and if they hadn't pulled the plug on
his money he would have done even more
Occasionally I see he pops up in the press somewhere
and he still looks great, still sounds great
I'm so glad that he's out there
Hello Alejandro, and hello Jean
Jean you know how good I think you are
I've told you to your own face, well I am telling the world now Jean
You're really really really good
Giger was the one I
was in contact with after that simply because we made Alien
see that's the way it is in movies your friends are whoever you're
working with on a movie now
In the course of a movie one strikes up
life-long friendships that end as soon as the pictures end, it's just
the way of business.
It's heartbreaking but it happens.