David Lynch’s Dune is the rare kind of troubled film that actually produced something worthwhile. 1984’s Dune didn’t do much business on release, but has since become one of the best science fiction movies to viewers who like their storytelling a little on the strange side.
Kyle MacLachlan led the cast, as Paul Atreides, the heir to House Atreides and the subject of Fremen prophecy to save Arrakis. In a new oral history for one of the best ’80s movies, excerpted by TheWrap, he breaks down a fight scene between Paul and Jamas, one of the Fremen, that got cut, and why he wasn’t sad to see the sequence be taken out.
“In the book, the structure was that I’m drawn into this fight and I don’t want to fight. There’s a delay, so it doesn’t happen right then; we go back, and it’s more a ceremonial thing,” MacLachlan says. “It was challenging to go through the idea that you’re killing and the adrenaline is running through you—the kind of energy that has—and then to stop that and suddenly have, ‘Oh, I just killed someone, and now I’m crying because I killed them’. The book had set it up perfectly.”
What happened didn’t live up to Frank Herbert’s text, instead condensing it all down. “All of a sudden, that’s all been squeezed like this. I’m like, ‘All right, so I’m killing him and now I’m supposed to be crying’,” the actor states. “I was young, and when you’re that age, that’s one of the things that stops you dead in your tracks, because you know what’s coming and you’re like, ‘Ahhh, I don’t know’.”
Some extreme methods were employed to get the right reaction, but it wasn’t exactly a showcase of MacLachlan’s talents as one of the best actors. “They said, ‘OK, we’re going to do this thing, we’ll give you this menthol’,” he recalls. “And I was like, ‘What’s that?’ They said, “You breathe this and – ” and I was like, ‘Ugh, that’s a cop-out. That’s not the way it should be done. It’s got to be organic’. I was all into that idea, but they gave me this menthol and it’s still not working. I’m frustrated.”
He even tried rubbing the substance into his eyes, but while tears flowed, the Spice of the scene did not. The whole thing was scrapped, and according to the excerpt from TheWrap, MacLachlan was glad. One of a myriad of problems Dune had, as despites its status now as one of the best thriller movies from that decade, Lynch had a famously tough time putting it together.
You can find out more when A Masterpiece in Disarray: David Lynch’s ‘Dune,’ An Oral History by Max Evri. Now go see out lists of the best movies, best alien movies and best action movies for more viewing options too.