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	Dune

John Harrison: Absolutely. In fact, I wouldn’t even call it science fiction and I hesitate to do that because to me, this is epic adventure. Science fiction, for all of the wonderful works in the genre, connotes a certain restrictive definition of what drama is and I wouldn’t put Dune in that category.

This is not a story about technology, it’s not a story about human interaction with technology, either being overwhelmed by it or succumbing to it or merging with it or competing with it. This is a story about the human condition. This is really a classic, mythic tale. It just so happens to be set in a time that is futuristic, if you will, even though it feels almost retrograde in many ways.

You’re right, it is a very dense and complicated story and adapting it was not an easy task because it is a story of human politics and the human condition. There are themes and there are characterizations which are familiar and in that regard there are guideposts as to how to adapt it into this different medium.

SPACE.com: My wife and I divide all visual media. If it’s on spaceship, I watch it. If it has period costumes, she watches it.

JH: Well, then hopefully you’re both satisfied.

SPACE.com: Exactly, that’s what I was going to say.

JH: Well, I hope that that’s true. That’s my intention. I do believe that this is an epic, mythic love story that has a very wide appeal. I want to really find those core elements of the story that have broad appeal because they’re intentionally there on Herbert’s part.

SPACE.com: Now, when you’ve got a source material this dense, even when you’ve got six hours, you’re going to have to make some compromises. What did you have to cut?

JH: Because a novel and cinema are two entirely different medias, there were elements of the narrative that I had to linearize, in order to make the time flow to the more passive experience of watching a movie as opposed to the more interactive experience of reading a novel.

When you read a book you have the opportunity to use your imagination and allow the flights of fancy that the novelist, if he’s any good, can give you with the time and space folding that he can do. Whereas in cinema you’re really guiding an audience. You’re taking them on this collective dream and it’s a more passive experience. If you’re not careful as to how you parcel out the information you can lose that audience very easily. There’s no opportunity to turn the page back and find out what it was you didn’t quite understand the first go around.

I had to make sure that the narrative line of Dune was comprehensible and that made me force certain timelines onto the project.

I couldn’t fully explore certain characters as much as I wanted. I had to make certain choices. And every one of those decisions was really painful because I love the book. I loved poring over it. One of the joys of doing this adaptation was continually going back to the book and reading it again.

SPACE.com: When the Lynch movie came out, audience members were handed a little cheat sheet, so they could keep track of all the places and characters.

JH: Yeah, my brother and I went to see it and he hadn’t read the book so he looked at me and said, "I’m totally lost." Who wants to go a movie and have to read Cliff Notes before they see the opening credits?

So I was very careful, almost to the extreme, in terms of laying out the narrative. I think the first hour of Dune is the slowest part of the entire miniseries. It’s necessary really, because you have to show everybody who’s who and you have to lay out the world of conspiracy and intrigue that exists.

SPACE.com: You worked as both the writer and director of this project. Do you two guys like each other?

JH: Well, it depends on what time of day it is. There have been times when the director was on the set rolling his eyes saying, "What the hell did that writer get me into?"

And, there have been times when the writer has looked at the director and said, "Boy, you really didn’t quite get that one, did you?" It’s a great tension because to me it’s all filmmaking.

I like to say that when you make a movie you’re really writing it three times. You write it when you write it, you write it when you shoot it and then you write it again when you edit it. And, each one of those processes is distinct from the other and it really allows you to form a whole piece out of those three discreet processes. So I prefer writing and directing even though you have to really clone yourself and separate yourself out of each stage of the process.

Next page: Shakespeare and structure

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SPACE.com: Now, let’s talk about the language in the book verses the language in the miniseries. Obviously, there had to be a lot of winnowing down.

JH: Yes, there was a lot of winnowing but there was also a lot of expansion because in the book, Herbert uses a lot of internal monologue. And, I am not a fan of what was done in the earlier movie, which was to stop the movie and listen to people’s thoughts. That’s fine in a novel, but I think it’s deadly in cinema. You have to find ways of externalizing those internal moments.

There were the obvious moments where I had to cut down the speech from what it really was to the essence of what it was, or I had to take the dialogue scene and cut to the chase.

But, by the same token, I found ways of actually enlarging on ideas and themes that were really internal to the characters in the book. So there’s a bit of give and take on both ends there.

SPACE.com: When you were writing it there was clearly a Shakespearean model to the point where some of the Harkonnen scenes end in couplets.

JH: Well, that’s just a bit of fun really. I really would not want to say that there was an attempt on my part to ape Shakespearean language. It was just a way of having fun. I love the Baron, he’s a vicious, brutal, cruel character but he’s a libertine and a sensual individual who loves perversity in all of it’s forms including perversity of language, so why not?

SPACE.com: There is this split in the book between high religious thought and Dionysian sensuality. Even Paul is split, because, he’s got this mystic destiny but he also has blood lust.

JH: Absolutely. And, that is an essential theme in Herbert’s book. "When religion and politics ride in the same cart, the whirlwind follows," which is taken directly from the book. But, you could extend that to say that the spirit in a unified whole is not able to be divided so neatly into the heroic and the cruel or into the enlightened and the perverse.

That’s Paul’s problem as well as the universe’s problem. That’s what makes this book so wonderful. This book operates on so many complex and deep levels. It’s a mythic tale that has familiarity to it.

This story comes out of a classic tradition of myth making: Bible stories, Mallory, the Arthurian legends, Shakespeare, Beowulf, anything that you can think of. So many traditional tales that we have all grown up with, that follow that same pattern. While it is complex and it is different, set in a unique time and place, it has a familiarity, which makes it accessible.

SPACE.com: In those myths and in those stories, you see a boy realizing his destiny and becoming a man. And, you see the clear growth in Paul throughout the miniseries. How did you chart the beats for his character?

JH: I followed the book. I went to the network and I pitched the paradigm of the book as the paradigm for the miniseries. It was very evident, to me, that if we followed the three internal chapters of the book that we had a perfect structure to follow in order to show the journey of Paul from young man to enlightenment.

We were successful in that. We made each night a discreet story with its own beginning, middle and end and yet part of a chapter of the whole three-night saga with its own beginning, middle and end.

So the first night really is the young prince taken away from his home, taken to this wasteland of a planet, conspiracies abound, his father is killed and he’s left in the desert to die. You introduce the players, you introduce the conspiracy, you set the stage for what this epic journey is all about.

Then in night two he’s rescued by the Fremen and he learns their ways, begins to understand what his destiny is and he becomes the Muad’Dib.

In night three he is the Prophet, he is finally their leader, the Messiah, the Muad’Dib, the one they’ve been waiting for to lead them to victory and he ultimately triumphs over the Emperor. But, what is wonderful about it is that even though that’s the ending, it’s also the beginning. Because the story doesn’t really end there. It just concludes one part of what has happened.

SPACE.com: The structure of each segment of the first book is broken down into each movie, but you’ve got six hours where you have to maintain narrative drive.

JH: Well, I think you have . . . there’s an old sort of writer’s saying which is "know your ending."

Having known where I was going to end up, it was not so difficult to keep that narrative thread connected. There is a danger with a story that is this rich and complex that you’re gonna suddenly veer off into wild tangents and never be able to get yourself back.

But, I always had the book to guide me and I knew where the story had to go. So, it was really a matter of structuring each night very well. I knew where I wanted to be at the hour of climax of each night and then at the end of each night and the book really gave me those guidelines. To know that they go off into that storm and not know what’s going to happen to them is a perfect way to end the night.

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And, yet you know next night you’re gonna come back and there they are and there’s a whole episode of living in the desert with the Fremen, which finally concludes with him seeing what his destiny is, if he leads them into this jihad.

Well, sure enough, night three has to start with that jihad in the works and Paul almost Hamlet-like struggling with whether he should pull the trigger. But, of course, he knows he has to. He just is looking for a way to make it work the way he wants it to. And, ultimately, it does, he triumphs. So, I knew at the end he was gonna have to defeat the Emperor. He was going to have to marry Irulan, he was gonna have to assume the mantle of both Fremen mystic god and emperor of the universe, so, it’s just a matter of trying to get there.