Being from Tacoma, there’s a near civic obligation to like Frank Herbert’s Dune. He has roots in my hometown. He went to the high school where I used to teach. There’s even a park named after his book. I think the park was going to be directly after him but he was posthumously milkshake ducked.**
Unlike the rest of my nerdy adult friends, I didn't read Dune at thirteen. Instead, I spent my teens reading Tolkien (like a respectable person) and then took a very regrettable near decade slide into the Ryan-verse (I acknowledge the error of my ways). Okay, that’s not quite true. I tried to read Herbert when I was younger and found it dull and impenetrable. I also vaguely remember watching David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of the book. It was bad then; upon revisiting it last year, it aged like buttermilk.
I have a theory about great books: You have to read them at the time it’s right for you. I loathed Gatsby in grade eleven. But when I picked it up while backpacking in Colombia, it became one of my favorite novels I ever read. I couldn’t read Dune when I was younger. Now that I’m older, living two hours from the desert that serves as Arrakis, it hits different. Herbert imagined an entire universe and a history (spanning 15,000 years) as deep as anything ever put to paper. Dune is remarkable–it’s white-savior nonsense, but it’s white savior nonsense par excellence.
But however good the book is, Denis Villeneuve’s film is better. When it came out, we went opening night… and the next day… and then the following weekend. I was absolutely mesmerized by the way the film looked and sounded. This wasn’t how I envisioned it from reading the book, it was better. That never happens! The sets, the music, the costumes, the dampness of Caladan, the Zimmer score, the menace of the Sardaukar–all of it, perfect.
They started shooting Dune II in UAE’s remote Liwa Desert earlier this month. So the cast and crew are all in town. My wife and I even made a half-hearted effort to find the set deep in the desert. This past weekend, I went to a talk given by Patrice Vermette. He’s the Academy Award winning production designer for Dune and the sequel.
Vermette, during his talk - Photo by Yer Boi
He was joined by Mary Parent, who co-produced the film. I was struck by Parent’s immersion into Herbert's lore; she talks about Dune with the depth of a r/FrankHerbert moderator. The two hour talk was a treat. Vermette is the MJ (or choose your own G.O.A.T.) of what he does. It’s rare you get to be in the presence of literally the best person in the world at what they do, especially not in such an intimate setting.
I have been thinking about the talk all week. He contrasted, with some pride, his work with some of his contemporaries. At length he discussed his hesitancy to use CGI, instead preferring to use practical effects when possible, but also how this clashes with the realities of modern studio filmmaking. It was a good metaphor for the everyday compromises and tradeoffs we make in life. Trying to please everyone is a one-way trip to an ulcer and an aneurysm. We have to make the decisions that work and sometimes make peace with the results.