Intense and so beautiful. It was composed by this chap called Ilo Battigelli (1922-2009, RIP) who worked for Aramco’s oil refineries in Saudi Arabia until the mid-50s. The locals took to calling him “Ilo the Pirate” because he had his studio at a beach 🏴☠️. He appears to have had a long and lovely career as a photographer after leaving the Persian Gulf. You can read a little more about him here.
I was able to find this colorized version by Lorenzo Folli (Instagram).
This beauty is by Owen Gent an artist and illustrator from Bristol (Insta). He appears to do a lot of book covers and I just love his work. Here are a few favorites.
In case that link goes down here’s a cached version. Others include The Man Who Killed Don Quixote by Terry Gilliam, Revenge of the Jedi by David Cronenberg/David Lynch, Heart of Darkness by Orson Welles, and Gladiator 2 by Ridley Scott/Nick Cave. ↩︎
Good government never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.
— Law And Governance, The Spacing Guild Manual, Dune
The Dune screenplay was written on MS-DOS on a programapp called “Movie Master”. It has a 40 page limit which helps the writer, Eric Roth.
Writing is fundamentally about putting your ass in the chair and typing the words. Eliminating distractions (I’ve checked Twitter at least five times while writing this short blog) is a key to success. Nothing eliminates distractions like a stripped down simple program with no internet access. Roth also said the 40 page limit helps him structure his screenplays.“I like it because it makes acts,” he said. “I realize if I hadn’t said it in 40 pages I’m starting to get in trouble.”
Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.
I can die, they can do my picture. I have 84 years, but I am still creating. All my life I create, and is more and more and more.
The mind is like a universe. It’s constantly expanding. Like the universe, exactly like the universe, open the mind. The opening of the mind is every day, is open. That was this picture. Open the mind of all the persons who worked there. From the producer to the artists. From the workers… for every one was an opening of the mind, this work.
Was ambitious, but not too ambitious. Myself, I have the ambition to live 300 years. I will not live 300 years. Maybe I will live one year more. But I have the ambition. Why you will not have ambition? Why? Have the greatest ambition possible. You want to be immortal? Fight to be immortal. Do it. You want to make the most fantastic art of movie? Try. If you fail, is not important. We need to try.
Watched with LD. What an incredible story. His vision would’ve strayed a bit far from the book but what a wonderful thing it would’ve been to experience.
I am going to read The Incal posthaste. It’s a set of highly regarded graphic novels by Jodorowsky and Moebius. I’m told it’s a heavily copied work too. Lovely stuff. Never give up.
