John Harrison... DUNE

By Ted Elrick

Director John Harrison (pointing) on the set of Dune with production designer Miljen Kljakovich , executive producer Richard Rubinstein and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (long hair behind his arm).

For decades filmmakers have struggled to adapt Frank Herbert's mammoth and immensely popular science fiction novel Dune. Director David Lynch was the first to succeed in adapting it, but many Dune fans felt that because of theatrical release-time constraints, the book lost quite a bit in the transition. On December 3 the Sci-Fi Channel will begin airing the latest adaptation, a six-hour miniseries written and directed by John Harrison.

Budgeted at approximately $20 million, the miniseries required considerable talent and ingenuity to capture the richly defined world that Herbert created in his novel. For stylistic reasons, visual effects greenscreens and computer-generated environments were not used to provide the various palaces and camps called for by the story. Instead, Harrison chose a more stylized approach. He selected a method developed by renowned cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and his son Fabrizio they call Translite. Dune is the first U.S. production to employ this technique.

Pictures of existing ancient buildings and landscapes were combined with paintings in Adobe Photoshop. From this combination, gigantic backdrops were created, similar to theater flats of yore. The advantage though was that these backdrops are 3-D realistic and the lighting of them could be altered to achieve any mood, time or atmospheric condition.

Harrison is no stranger to finding innovative ways to surmount budgetary limitations. He has a diverse background in commercials and independent films in his hometown of Pittsburgh, PA. He even acted as a zombie in George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (he's the one killed with a screwdriver to the ear in a J.C. Penny's). He served as Romero's first AD on Creepshow and Day of the Dead, has directed a number of rock videos and episodes of Tales From the Darkside and Tales From the Crypt and moved into feature films directing Tales From the Darkside: The Movie. Most recently he was a co-screenwriter on Disney's animated film Dinosaur.

DGA Magazine spoke with Harrison about his directing methods, his background and the challenges of transforming a massive and beloved epic into a TV miniseries.

How were you able to get this project?

Richard Rubinstein, the executive producer, had a great deal of success in television with adapting epic-scale books for TV miniseries - The Stand, The Langoliers, that kind of thing. So he was looking for another project to do. One day he was looking across his bookshelf and saw Dune, remembered he loved it, and talked with his partner, Mitchell Galin. They discovered that Dino de Laurentiis had let the rights lapse for television. He still owned the theatrical, but he didn't see any value in television. So Richard and Mitchell talked ABC into bankrolling it. Then, ABC as a network said, 'This movie isn't right for our demographics.' Richard went to Sci-Fi and Barry Diller had just taken over at the time and they snapped it up. My name came up because I had done some movies for USA Networks and Sci-Fi is part of that group. So they already knew me as a writer and director. I had also worked with Richard before on Tales From the Darkside, some sports docs and Tales From the Darkside: The Movie. So I came in and pitched them on how I would adapt the book.

So many people have tried to adapt Dune, but they didn't have the advantage of the time a miniseries could devote to the project. Still it's massive, and there's a lot of hardcore fans with very definite ideas of how it should be done. Were you intimidated by the size?

Honestly, I had to try to ignore all that in order not to be intimidated by it. If I had allowed myself to study what David Lynch did or what Jodorworsky or Ridley Scott tried to do, I would have been very bogged down. I pitched the project to the network as a three-part, six-hour miniseries and they were amenable to that. There was discussion beforehand, should this be a four-hour, six-hour or eight-hour series, because The Stand had been eight. I said that I thought eight would be stretching the material. That might force me to elaborate on some things that could make it a little boring or unfocused. Four was definitely too short, but I thought six hours was just right and the reason is because the book is divided into three parts - Dune, Muad'Dib and The Prophet. And this was how I wanted to structure the miniseries. Start with Dune and show the environment, the empire, the royal houses, who is feuding, what the value of the spice is, what Arakis is, and the fact that there is this boy, Paul, a young prince who seems to have this special destiny. Really make the story Shakespearean with feuding royal houses and conspiracies. In Book Two, Muad'Dib, the young prince is taken in by these indigenous desert people, the Fremen, nomadic and mysterious, and they think maybe he's the messiah they've been longing for. Then Book Three, The Prophet. Paul is now the Fremen leader and he starts the rebellion against the emperor. So each of these parts is really a stand-alone story with a beginning, middle and end, and the adaptation becomes more manageable.
That's the way I pitched it. And like the book, the story doesn't really end. Our miniseries is almost a beginning, not an end. It has closure when the emperor is defeated. But if I've done my job right, the chain reaction that Paul has set in motion is now about to start and hopefully we'll see that in successive miniseries.

What was the budget on this?

Just about $20 million.

Harrison

That's pretty incredible with the elaborate sets, costumes and effects you've got.

I was really lucky. I was able to draw to the project some world-class artists. The production designer, Miljen Kreka Klijakovic, for example. I'd been chasing him for about a year. My good friend, Pasquale Buba, had worked with him on Johnny Depp's movie The Brave and introduced us. Kreka had worked on Kusturica's Underground and Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Delicatessen. I had been admiring this guy's work and Pasquale said, "If you ever want a production designer, I think this guy's a genius." When Dune came up and we went overseas to North Africa and Europe on a scouting trip, I asked the producers to go to Paris where Kreka lives. I told him about the project and he got very excited about it. When we were ready to go, he was available, and we brought him over here and we sat in the Sportsmen's Lodge for a couple weeks just drawing and talking ideas. Then we got Vittorio Storaro as the cinematographer and he introduced us to his Translite process. Then I was able to get Theodor Pistek who won an Oscar for Amadeus to do our costume design. So I had all these phenomenal artists on my team. Vittorio, Kreka and Fabrizio Storaro worked out all the wonderful Translites that you see in the sets. It's a very theatrical approach. And we made the decision that we weren't going into the desert. We weren't going onto locations for a variety of reasons.

The stuff on the sand wasn't shot in the desert? That scene where they're rolling down a dune looks as if you shot it in the Sahara.

No. We wanted to create a unique and memorable style that would draw you in to this unfamiliar world. The style had to hold up; be consistent. I couldn't cheat and say to the audience that what you're seeing is really Morocco or Tunisia. I had to say, this is something really stylized, something operatic, something you've never seen before. The lighting is hyperbolized, the design is eclectic, the sets, the Translites, all integrated so that you are transported into a different reality, a different world. That was the directorial style I imposed on this production. I knew with the money and schedule that I had available we could not do a credible job in the open desert. There were simple practical reasons why. We would have been dealing with a short day and terrible flat light. I couldn't wait for an hour in the morning or evening to shoot. I knew I'd never find the number of locations we'd need within a practical shooting radius. We didn't have the money to build the huge Fremen communities in the caves out in the open desert of Morocco, so I would have had to use existing mountains. That would not have given me the freedom to create the cultural lifestyle I wanted for the Fremen. Now the desert communities in which they live is an amalgam of different places around the world that Kreka, Vittorio and I agreed on and put onto one set with the Translites. I could never have found that anywhere. But, we could create it.

I really wouldn't have known these were like theater flats. That must have really helped the actors.

Oh, yes. They didn't have to pretend they were someplace. They weren't in front of a greenscreen.

What was your shooting schedule?

We made this over a period of about five months, in Prague. We took a break over Christmas.

William Hurt and Julie Cox in Dune.

Did you storyboard this?

Not a lot. I don't usually storyboard. I will for effects shots or certain action sequences so that I can show everybody what's in my mind.

The only two actors in the film that I was aware of are William Hurt as Duke Leo Atreides and Giancarlo Giannini as the emperor.

My wish all along was to use relative unknowns in the film. For instance, Paul who in the story goes from the age of 15 to 18, in my version he's more 18 to 22. The talent pool in that age group is shallow and I don't mean that in the pejorative sense about young actors. I'm just saying that most kids don't have the life experience to pull off something like the character of Paul Atreides. If we were to go with some of the bigger names in that age group, simply to have the name value, my theory was we were going to bring the baggage of their fame with it and that would overwhelm the character. So my thought was we go with unknowns, we get someone who is only Paul Atreides. Then the talent search began. I finally found Alec Newman in London. The luckiest day I had on Dune.

You've got quite an international cast.

Barbora Kodetova, who plays Chani, Paul's love interest, is from a very respected Czech acting family. Saskia Reeves who plays Jessica, Paul's mother, is a renowned British stage actress. The actor who plays Stilgar, Uwe Ochsenknecht, is a huge German star. I was really thrilled at the level of acting talent we had and I was never forced to use TV stars simply for their name value. My argument to everyone was always that the story is the star! Who knew who Mark Hamill or Harrison Ford were before Star Wars? Maybe they remembered Ford in American Graffiti, but that was it.

You also had a variety of accents because of the actors' backgrounds? It seemed to work by giving different cultures to the project.

Exactly. Dune is a multicultural tapestry. The universe is made up of different planets, different people - the Harkonnen, the Atreides, the Spacing Guild, the Bene Gesserit, none of them are the same. Yes, they're all human, but they come from different places. They all have different cultural backgrounds that I wanted to see in the production design, cinematography and in their behavior. When we were casting, I wasn't doctrinaire about it. I didn't say, "All the Atreides are going to be British." We chose really good actors, be they Czech, German, British, Scottish, Irish or American, but the question was raised, did I intend to dub the movie. I said, "Absolutely not." While I may lose a few people who won't understand a word here or there, to me the entire production is going to be enriched by people who are not the same. If they all speak American English, it's going to be flat, monochromatic. It's not going to feel like the world Frank Herbert created.

You joined the Guild as a director. When you were first on Creepshow and Day of the Dead these were non-union films. How did you make the transition from AD to director?

I came up in the independent world. I never went to film school. I never had that opportunity. I had a small production company in Pittsburgh. My partner, director Dusty Nelson, was the cinematographer and my other partner, who is now well known out here in Hollywood, Pasquale Buba, was the editor. There was no real plan to it and I didn't have the formal training that the Guild provides. I wish I had but the background that I got from being on the street and having to do everything was incredibly valuable because you had to learn by doing. You learned by making a lot of mistakes. As a director, I think I've been real lucky because I've had just absolutely first-rate DGA 1st ADs who have been able to teach me certain things. My story sense, visual sense and ability to work with actors is very strong, but organizationally, the DGA-trained firsts I've worked with, Matt Clark and Nick Mastandrea, I've learned from them. They're absolutely first rate ADs.

From left: Actress Barbora Kodetova, Rubinstein, Harrison and 1st AD Matt Clark.

You insisted on having a DGA first with you in Prague. Why was it important to you?

Because they contribute so much. I've done three pictures with Matt. The first picture I did with him was really important to me and I was very nervous. It was called Donor Unknown and it was a small picture I adapted from a book a friend of mind had written. It was a very short schedule, low budget and I needed somebody who could really help me get it down. About one week into shooting I said to him, 'How did you know my taste, how did you know my style?' He said, 'Well, I just talked to you.' All through pre-production we were doing the boards and I was saying, 'I'll never get that day done' or 'That day's so fat we'll be sitting around all day.' He'd say, 'No, I think it's balanced right.' Sure enough, I got that day done that I never thought I'd get done. And, the day I thought was fat, I barely got out alive. [laughs] I said, 'How did you know that?' He said, 'It's because of the training.' And also we got along great. We communicated well. He has a great sense of humor. Always work with a first who has a great sense of humor. So when I was going off to do Dune, I wasn't going off without him.

How many pages a day do you think you were able to do?

I think, on the average, about four pages a day. We had a very strict regimen. We did 12 hours a day with an hour for lunch. We went overtime one or two days. It was a long and hard shoot but we basically worked five 12-hour days a week.

And you had Saturday and Sunday off?

Well, I didn't but everybody else did.

A five-month shoot, you're going to need to take it slower.

Exactly, there is no need to beat everybody up. Fortunately, I had the support of the producers on this and there was never any talk of doing six-day weeks.

You shot this in 35mm?

Yes. We shot it on 35mm, processed in Rome, then had timed dailies digitally transferred for editing.

I asked because at the DGA Directors Retreat, Mick Garris said that Richard Rubinstein made him shoot The Stand on Super 16mm because of budgetary considerations and Richard produced that film as well as Dune.

Some think Super 16mm is fine, but these decisions I deferred to Vittorio Storaro. In fact, we entertained the notion of shooting this digitally. Vittorio was very interested in that but the 24p cameras were not available then, and without them we really didn't want to do it. We didn't want to risk it on digi-Beta. Vittorio uses a unique 3-perf system, not a 4-perf, and it saves about 25% in terms of film costs because you're only 3 perfs instead of 4. It's called a Univisium, a system which he has developed.

How do you think the Dune fans are going to feel about your adaptation?

I think it's real faithful to the book. Look, any book is going to be modified for film in some way. But I think the rule must be are you true to the spirit and themes of the book? There are a couple of books in my education that have been translated into films that I think of whenever I have to do this. One is To Kill a Mockingbird and the other is Rebecca. In those two, there are departures from the book. But, if you read the book and then see the movie, they are exactly the same story. You do not feel cheated. You do not feel that they're two different sides of the same coin. I'm sure that with Dune I've been true to that. There are some narrative changes, I've had to move things around, in some cases to make it more linear and in some cases to make sure that the flow of information doesn't confuse an audience. It's one thing when you're reading a book to be introduced to a whole new subject matter and you don't know what it means or how one thing relates to another. Sometimes you will only find out how 300 pages later. You can do some of that in a movie, but you can't leave so much unconnected for too long because if you do, an audience can't follow, loses interest and they leave. There were some condensations of some characters. But, I think I've been very true to the book. I think our film is a very successful translation.

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