On the Many Cuts of "Dune" (1984)
On the Many Cuts of "Dune" (1984)
Reflections on David Lynch's arthouse blockbuster
In this article, I want to discuss three different versions of Dune, the maligned 1984 arthouse blockbuster that director David Lynch credits with convincing him to never make a movie again without having secured final cut.
In addition to sharing my impressions of the Theatrical Version (1984) and the Broadcast Version (1988), I will provide new insight into the revision history of the picture, particularly when it comes to the sadly unrealized 4-hour director’s cut that Lynch had wanted to release on video in the latter half of the 1980s.*
*Please note that this article has been revised and retitled since its initial publication.
Table of ContentsOn the Dune Theatrical Version (1984)
I love the cinema of David Lynch.
You probably already know this if you’ve read my personal essay, which discusses how Mulholland Drive inspired me to get into film studies and really take film seriously as an art form. Since first seeing the surreal yet emotionally endearing masterpiece in 2002, I started to collect Lynch on DVD and slowly but surely got to see pretty much all of his feature works. I don’t recall when exactly I got to Dune (1984) but I think it might’ve been around 2004-2005, before the release of the Region 1 discs in 2006.
Dune (1984) is a movie that feels simultaneously like a Lynch film - at least in certain parts, like the introduction of Baron Harkonnen - but also completely unlike a Lynch film, with its big budget, expansive scope, and high number of special effects. It is very clearly a RUSHED film, where the editing stands out like a sore thumb, making you feel like you’re getting a cliffnotes version of the full thing. You can simply tell that a much longer movie should be in there somewhere.
The plot is difficult but not impossible to follow in the theatrical cut, in my opinion. What really works though is the imagery. I remember one time I put the movie on in the living room to watch while my parents had guests over and my uncle, who is a painter, stopped to admire the film for a few minutes. He didn’t speak English, and so couldn’t follow the dialogue, and wasn’t much of a film viewer, but he told me that almost every shot in the movie looked like a beautiful painting.
And I think that this is a very accurate assessment.
Take away all the dialogue and story, and what you have is a series of beautiful images and sounds. And on that level, Dune provides a mesmerizing experience that truly makes it worthy of being called an ‘arthouse blockbuster.’ It could very well be Lynch’s worst movie, but even then it is far more interesting and memorable than 90 percent of what passes for ‘good’ Hollywood entertainment out there.
On the Dune Broadcast Version (1988)
Of course, like other cinephiles that are into Lynch, I had to see more of Dune.
The theatrical cut simply wasn’t enough. And so, I eagerly got the 2006 DVD release, so as to check out the longer Broadcast Version that was said to have 40-something minutes of extra footage.
I saw it only once and I hated it.
For all of its issues, the Theatrical Version nonetheless plays as a “finished” work in the technical sense, with finalized music, sound effects, dialogue mixing, etc. The Broadcast Version, by contrast, doesn’t feel finsished at all. It consistently does things that break viewer immersion, such as repeating the same footage multiple times - eg. the prophecy scene with Reverend Mother Ramallo (Silvana Mangano) - or by adding scenes where the Fremen characters that are all supposed to have glowing blue eyes appear with normal eyes, drawing attention to missing visual effects.
Anyone deeply interested in a breakdown of the differences between the broadcast and the theatrical versions should read either the Movie Censorship.com breakdown by Slayer, which has illustrations, or the text-only variant of Sean Murphy’s “Building the Perfect Dune,” an article initially published over two issues of the excellent Video Watchdog magazine in 1996. As Murphy puts it,
“The one saving grace of the TVV may be the fact that it restores major footage to the film that hasn't been seen anywhere else. The one drawback to this is that the editing is so poor and the footage so obviously of a lesser quality that the new footage in the TVV is seriously compromised. That said, the new footage is a treasure trove of information about what DUNE could be if time was taken to let the film unfold at it's own pace.”
The Mystery of the Broadcast Version
Far more interesting than the Broadcast Version itself though is the story surrounding its creation. By all accounts, David Lynch was not involved in its making. But why exactly he wasn’t involved and the degree to which he was aware of the TV version’s development remains the stuff of mystery.
In part, this is attributable to the fact that Lynch himself has adopted a policy of silence on the Broadcast Version presumably due to his decision to remove his name from it and replace it with the pseudonym “Alan Smithee.” The most commentary I’ve found from him appear in the 2018 book Room to Dream, where he states:
“A while later they wanted to cut a television version of Dune and asked me to do it, but I said no. I’ve never seen the cut they did and never want to see it — I know they added some stuff I’d shot and put more narration on it.”
Source: Christine McKenna and David Lynch, Room to Dream (New York: Random House, 2019), 199.
Compare this to the claims of Harry Tatelman, the MCA-TV exec behind the Broadcast Version, as outlined in a 1989 Cinefantastique article:
“Tatleman said he contacted Lynch about the job, but Lynch begged off, having committed himself to other projects. After having assembled the footage and shown it to Lynch, Tatleman said that Lynch commented that the new, expanded version was “not the film I envisioned.”” (108)
Source: Dennis Fischer, “The Complete Dune,” in Cinefantastique Vol 19 No 1–2 (January 1989): 108, 119.
Lynch’s account suggests that he had no interest in revisiting Dune at all following the theatrical release.* By contrast, Tatelman’s account states that Lynch was simply too busy to participate. This simultaneously contradicts Lynch’s assertion that he had never seen the Broadcast Version, while also indicating that the screening of Tatelman’s new cut was the direct impetus for Lynch removing his name.
*This conflicts with statements Lynch made in interviews during 1986-88. See the next section for more detail.
A slightly different version of events is provided by a 1988 Los Angeles Times article, according to which Tatelman was seemingly intent on working with Lynch on the Broadcast Version, but could not reach the writer-director.
This makes it seem as though he never directly contacted Lynch about the new cut and that Lynch did not ‘beg off’ due to his commitment to other projects. It also makes no reference to his showing the Smithee version to Lynch at all.
“MCA TV’s Harry Tatelman, special projects veep, did the overhaul, assembling all the original raw footage and starting from scratch--using the original editor’s script as a guideline. Thus, virtually every scene is different (in most cases longer), not to mention many scenes never before seen.
Tatelman usually works with the director and/or producer when making such massive changes, but was told Lynch was unavailable.”
Source: Chris Willman, “Dune II: The Re-edit,” LA Times, 5 Jun 1988, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-06-05-ca-6381-story.html.
Finally, there is 1997 interview with Raffaella de Laurentiis by Faisal A. Qureshi, which corroborates the idea that Lynch was busy at the time the broadcast version was in production but specifically attributes his decision to not participate to a lack of financial compensation on the part of Universal/MCA.
RDL: Universal asked David and myself to work on a "long" version of Dune to be prepared for television. They wanted 3 hours so it could be shown over two nights on TV. (2 hours per night with commercials) At the time David was busy and was not prepared to go back to work on Dune with out further compensation. He and Universal could not reach a financial arrangement so Universal went ahead without him and David's name is not on the long version. I don't think Frank Herbert lived to see that long version. DDLC was not involved as they had sold the TV rights to Universal.
I worked closely with Universal to help them with the long version and I thought the final version was pretty good. I always wanted David involved, but unfortunately it never worked out with him. I think a re-release could be possible only with David's involvement, and I don't see that happening.*
*While De Laurentiis omits any mention of the director’s cut project, she admits to working with Universal on the broadcast version. One has to wonder how Lynch felt about De Laurentiis participating in the creation of a version he removed his name from.
If true, then this would suggest Lynch may have wanted to work on the extended television version but required additional monetary compensation. It is unclear, as to whether this means Lynch wasn’t going to be paid at all to help recut the film for TV or if he wanted more money than was being offered.
On the Unrealized Lynch Cut
What is fascinating about Dune from a historical standpoint is that, by virtue of not having received a director’s cut, it remains an outlier of 1980s auteurist Hollywood cinema with a history of behind-the-scenes battles over editing between the director and the distributor.* However, if you read my extensive article over on MEDIUM, you’d know that David Lynch did, in fact, attempt to make a four-hour cut of Dune in 1986-1988 for the VHS market only for it to fall apart behind the scenes.
*To clarify, many pictures from this period, such as Heaven’s Gate (1980, dir. Michael Cimino), Blade Runner (1982, dir. Ridley Scott) and Brazil (1985, dir. Terry Gilliam), were reissued in a director’s cut on video and/or television years after a compromised theatrical release. Dune, unfortunately, has not received the same treatment.
I don’t wish to directly repeat anything from that article here, but I do want to add to it, in part because I wasn’t quite satisfied with the number of direct quotes from Lynch that I managed to find at the time.* Thus, before you proceed any further, I ask that you read that article, as the following sections will assume that you have.
*My sense of dissatisfaction was somewhat magnified when I found a reddit thread discussing the piece, where one participant seemed convinced that the sources I cited were simply making things up, as there were (almost) no direct quotes from Lynch himself on the subject! Fortunately, since then I had gained access to a database of old newspapers, where I was able to find more interviews from 1986-1987 that both corroborate the plans for the extended video version and have provided some more clarity on the timeline of the project.
The following citations are from interviews with Lynch that were conducted and published in Fall 1986, when Lynch was promoting the release of Blue Velvet and talking up his next potential project with Dino DeLaurentiis, which at the time was supposed to be a superhero-esque movie called Ronnie Rocket. Among other things, Lynch discusses his new approach to make the movies he wants to make by keeping the budget low, while also reflecting on what happened with Dune.
“I’ve got to hand it to Dino, he didn’t blame me for the failure of ‘Dune.’ When I finished ‘Dune’ I thought it was what I wanted. Now I think it should have been four hours instead of two and a quarter. I shortened it because hardly any very long films have ever made money. But by shortening it we took out the moods of the different planets and wound up over-explaining the unexplainable. When the video version comes out, maybe we’ll make it four hours.”” (180)
Source: Bart Mills, “Director Lynch hung up on warp and weave of life,“in The Sacramento Bee (Sacramento, California), 21 Sep 1986, p. 180.
[The article then states that Ronnie Rocket, his next project, was to be shot in the Spring of 1987 in England.]
““Dune’s reputation is getting better as time goes by,” Lynch claims. “A lot of people saw it on video and came around to a better feeling for it. Dune didn’t help me, but it didn’t hurt me either.
“It still should have been four hours long. In fact, we’re thinking of releasing a four-hour version for video.””
Source: Morley Walker, “Dr. Demento Strikes Again!” in The Winnipeg Sun, 17 Oct 1986, p. 27.
[Lynch goes on to note that he has mixed feelings about video. He doesn’t like the little screen but he believes video has potential and that directors will have to make movies that should be seen more than once. One can see some foreshadowing here of how Lynch would go on to embrace the DVD format years later.]
““Dune” was a debacle, Lynch believes, because he had to shoehorn what should have been a four-and-a-half-hour movie into a shorter running time “so theaters wouldn’t lose a screening a day.” He has plans to recut it into a long video once he has done with his next movie, “Ronnie Rocket,” a picture of typical Lynchian weirdness about a bald midget who wears a wed wig and is somehow connected to electricity.” (85)
Source: The Times-Advocate (Escondido, California), 6 Nov. 1986, p. 85.
New Info on the Director’s Cut
First of all, Lynch’s comments here indicate that he wasn’t actually sure how long exactly the Lynch Cut would run and only gave estimates of both 4 and 4.5 hours. This means the Lynch Cut could’ve potentially lasted up to 270 minutes and so would’ve required restoring as much as 133 minutes of footage. This lines up with the James Verniere interview, where Lynch is asked about the ‘four-and-a-half hour’ version.
Second, it seems clear now that Lynch was planning to actually produce the new cut after filming Ronnie Rocket in Spring 1987.* Thus, initial work on the recut was unlikely to begin until Fall 1987 at the earliest, assuming it would’ve taken Lynch the Spring and Summer of 1987 to shoot and then edit Rocket.
Of course, as fate would have it, the plans would change. Ronnie Rocket would go on to become one of several potential Lynch projects from the mid-80s that ultimately failed to get off the ground, alongside Up at the Lake and One Saliva Bubble.
Lynch also would not begin work on the Dune director’s cut in 1987 though it appears that some form of negotiation between him and Universal had taken place, as evinced by a February 1987 article discussing revised home video versions.
Author Mike Cidoni points out that
“economics decide whether or not a film is restored for video. Before its theatrical release, almost an hour of David Lynch’s Dune (1984) landed on Universal’s cutting room floor, but wasn’t added to the video.”*
*Cidoni’s comments here can be interpreted to mean that either an earlier incomplete 3-hour cut of Dune existed at the level of post-production or that Lynch had attempted to restore an hour of footage for video but was rebuffed. Notably, 3 hours was the runtime Lynch preferred for theatrical release. However, Lynch’s own comments in the interviews cited here indicate he wanted a 4-4.5 hour runtime for the director’s cut on video.
The article then cites Mike Fitzgerald, who was vice president of technical operations for MCA/Universal Home Video in 1987.
Fitzgerald, the article points out, had restored a number of Universal titles for home video release, including Spartacus (1960), Scarface (1932), and Frankenstein (1931). However, he apparently did not see the benefit of restoring Dune for video, as this would’ve necessitated finalizing the deleted footage’s post-production elements:
““The additional Dune footage is there, but it had to be scored and conformed. Sound effects, mixing and dubbing were needed. Basically, the only thing that was done was the shoot. If it had been economically feasible, I’d have loved to put it out…””
Source: Mike Cidoni, “Video brings new look to old films,” in Argus Leader (Sioux Falls, South Dakota), 27 Feb 1987, p. 12
It can be extrapolated that Lynch had entered negotiations with Universal/MCA to make the director’s cut by February 1987 but they had not reached an agreement due to the forecast costs of the restoration. These negotiations would apparently continue into Spring 1988, as indicated by the Verniere interview, before falling apart.
Furthermore, Fitzgerald’s words lend credence to my theory that Lynch’s 4-hour director’s cut project was ultimately deemed too expensive by Universal and so was shelved in favor of the much cheaper Broadcast Version by Tatelman.
Additional Thoughts/Conclusions
So, how did I learn about the Lynch Cut in the first place?
Well, in a very Lynchian case of happy coincidence, I stumbled upon the evidence while conducting research a few years back for my dissertation’s third chapter, which focuses on the releases of alternate cuts on home video in the 1980s. As I was browsing the Proquest database, a 1986 Chicago Tribune article where Lynch mentions his plans to release a “four-hour version” of the film on videotape popped up, making my jaw drop. I did some more digging, and got a full-blown Variety article that discussed the same piece of news in more elaborate detail.
I put these articles away as I couldn’t really fit them into the framework of my dissertation. But I kept them in mind. For a while, it seemed that these were the only pieces of evidence I had. And then, late in 2020, while browsing the Facebook page of the excellent DuneInfo website - which contains TONS of scanned magazines, interviews, and other bts materials on the various Dune adaptations - I found an interview from 1988 by James Verniere that had maybe the most in-depth discussion with Lynch on his plans for the four-hour cut to date.*
* At the time, I sadly did not have access to the newspaper database that helped me locate the four additional interviews cited above.
So, I got out those old news articles and slowly but surely pieced things together into what ended up as a nearly 5000-word-long narrative. I ultimately chose to publish this article on Medium, rather than Substack, as the text ran long and I didn’t want to break it up into multiple parts. Moreover, I believed this would help increase its visibility, as my Medium articles have higher chances of being found on Google.
I can’t help but hope that one day Lynch himself will set the record straight about his director’s cut and its connection, if any, to the broadcast version. But even if this never happens, I am happy to have contributed to the cultural discourse surrounding the film by disproving the popular myth that Lynch hated Dune so much that he “declined opportunities to make a director’s cut.” Lynch did not outright hate Dune, nor did he decline such opportunities (as far as we know anyway).
Rather, he hated the fact that control over the movie’s final assemblage was taken away from him time and time again. It is not inconceivable then that, should the stars align there will be another chance for the Lynch Cut to be completed and released. In fact, I believe there is a slight chance we might get a Lynch Cut in 2024.
In a recent AVClub interview, Lynch has signaled his interest in revisiting and recutting the film. At the same time, Villeneuve's new 2021 adaptation has helped popularize the Dune brand as a whole, which means Universal is probably thinking of ways to exploit that. Finally, 2024 is the 40th anniversary of the film, making it the perfect time for some sort of new special edition home video or streaming release.
No guarantees then, but window of opportunity is definitely there, methinks.
And as they say, third time’s the charm, right?
