Do Go On - 441 - Dune: The Unfilmable Novel

Episode Date: April 3, 2024

Dune is a 1965 science fiction novel by Frank Herbert, it has been described as 'unfilmable' but that hasn't stopped people from trying! Tune in to hear Dune (movie not novel) expert and friend o...f the show, AJ from Cult Popture explain its arduous (and ridiculous) journey from page to screen!This is a comedy/history podcast, the report begins at approximately 07:19 (though as always, we go off on tangents throughout the report).You can find AJ's podcast here (the ep Jess & Dave appeared on and the recent Prime Mates Crossover): https://shows.acast.com/831d9c95-c466-4be2-a66f-2c6375cf8a8c/63f05383479d500011cdb820Support the show and get rewards like bonus episodes: patreon.com/DoGoOnPodSupport the show on Apple podcasts and get bonus episodes in the app: http://apple.co/dogoon Live show tickets: https://dogoonpod.com/live-shows/ Submit a topic idea directly to the hat: dogoonpod.com/suggest-a-topic/Check out our merch: https://do-go-on-podcast.creator-spring.com/ Twitter: @DoGoOnPodInstagram: @DoGoOnPodFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/DoGoOnPod/Email us: dogoonpod@gmail.com Check out our other podcasts:Book Cheat: https://play.acast.com/s/book-cheatPrime Mates: https://play.acast.com/s/prime-mates/Listen Now: https://play.acast.com/s/listen-now/Who Knew It with Matt Stewart: https://play.acast.com/s/who-knew-it-with-matt-stewart/ Our awesome theme song by Evan Munro-Smith and logo by Peader ThomasDo Go On acknowledges the traditional owners of the land we record on, the Wurundjeri people, in the Kulin nation. We pay our respects to elders, past and present.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Melbourne and Canada, we got exciting news for you. And we should also say this is 2026. Jess, what year is it? 2026. Thank God you're here. Right now, I'm in Melbourne doing my show with Serenjai Amarna, 630 each night at the Cooper's Inn Hotel, having so much fun. We'd love to see you there.
Starting point is 00:00:17 Canada, we are visiting you in September this year. If you've somehow missed the news, we are heading up Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and Toronto for shows. That's going to be so much fun. Tickets for all this stuff, I believe, are online. And I'm here too. And welcome to another episode of Do Go On. My name is Dev Wonki and as always.
Starting point is 00:00:52 I'm here with Jess Perkins and Matt Stewart. Can you believe it? Yes. After all these years, Matt and I have buried the hatchet. We're back together. Baby, it's a reunion show. All you need to say was that magic word and you finally did. So I'm glad.
Starting point is 00:01:10 I won't. Obviously, it's a magic word just between you and I. Yeah. I won't be sharing it. in case somebody tries to use it against us. You whispered it in my ear last night, and I said all is forgiven. Yep, and here we are together,
Starting point is 00:01:22 sitting closer than we ever have. That's right. I'm on Jess's lap. And joining us this week, a returning guest, he's not just our editor, he's our friend. It's AJ! Hey, Jay!
Starting point is 00:01:36 Hello, hello, everyone. It's so good to be back. It's so good to once again cross the boundary of being a fan and then editing the show and then ending. It was all, I'll reveal it now, it was all a plan to one day guest on, do go on. I said, first, first I'll offer them my services and then they'll feel too bad to deny me access to the podcast.
Starting point is 00:02:00 First I'll offer my services at a price. It's very Hollywood, isn't it? Going from fan to employee to now on the record, as Dave said, friend. Yeah, I think, yes. I think Margot Robbie did that. You all heard it. You all heard it. Margot Robbie did that with Martin Scorsese. She started out as his landscaper. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:02:23 Wow. Yeah. She can do it all. She really can. AJ has, have those two work together? Martin Scorsese and Margo Robbie. Yeah. Famously, she discovered her in the Wolf of Wall Street.
Starting point is 00:02:35 Okay, great. Oh, well, discovered her. She had been on it. Neighbors. Yeah. I think Reds. Grundy might have something to say about that. These references are getting too Australian for me.
Starting point is 00:02:47 Sorry. These don't cross across the dirt. There's a lot of Americans listening going, he's not Australian? Yeah. Aren't they all English? We all sound the same. He sounds just like them.
Starting point is 00:03:01 And we're like, listen to how funny he sounds. Exactly the same. AJ, you are gracing us with another report as well. which again, you're doing all of the work this week, and we love you for that. You're on man, Ben. Thank you so much. Before we get started, Dave, do you want to explain how this show works? Absolutely, I'd love to.
Starting point is 00:03:24 So basically, what we do here, and we have for the last eight and a half, something like that years. We take it in terms of a report on a topic, often suggested to us by one of the listeners. We'd go away, do a bit of research, write up a report and bring it back to the group. And as Jess says, it is AJ's turn. I say turn. He's volunteered to give us a report this week. It's AJ's turn once every 40 episodes. And I hope he knows this by now because just in case people who don't realize AJ is the editor of the program. And so you've heard us say this many, many times, and you've also listened to lots of episodes before that.
Starting point is 00:03:59 We always start with the question, AJ, do you have a question to get us onto the topic? I do. Here is my question. Which famously unadaptive? novel boasts over 20 sequels, several comics, dozens of video games, and multiple TV shows and movies. War and peace. That was going to be my answer. Basically unadaptable. Couldn't adapt it.
Starting point is 00:04:24 Couldn't adapt it. Too big. It couldn't be done. It couldn't be done. What about James Bond? Does that ever been in a movie? Unadaptable. Maybe some indie films.
Starting point is 00:04:35 I can't see how that would work. AJ, is it Dune? It is Dune My backup question was going to be What month was I born in? And which all of us from Australia and New Zealand would say June And that is going to be one of the many, many hard to pronounce words in this report It's just D-U-N-E
Starting point is 00:04:58 How are you meant to say June? So I guess like we from this part of the world We push D-Us and T-Us together to make like a J sound often with, with, um, tutor. Well, that's more of like a C.H sound, I guess. But, um, but I guess it's Dune. Like, you've got to really get the, the U after the D.
Starting point is 00:05:22 D. D. D. Right. I think there are Americans right now going, are you telling me that A.J. is not from Australia like the others. Is A.J. from Australia?
Starting point is 00:05:32 They might be asking him to that. I'd say, no. No. No. How do we say no? No. No. I got to do that version of it.
Starting point is 00:05:40 We say no like Dr. Evil. That's how it's how it's insane. This is me impersonating Americans are personating me. Neer. Is that not it? I thought that's how they did. What is it? Can you know what again?
Starting point is 00:05:55 No. Nor. Nor. It's Eno R. It's how it's spout. A lot. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:06:02 Whereas Kiwis don't say it like that like we do. We say no. Like Kiwis, how do you say? know? It's more, it's softer so it's like a, it takes you on a journey. It's a, no, no, like that's an exaggerated version. I think, I think generally if people are wanting to pick up on the differences between our accents, you guys like really chew on your vowels and it's like, we don't want anything to do without our vowels. Like, we want to get through the vowel as quick as possible and be unintelligible to the rest of the world. And you also change, oh, sounds for you
Starting point is 00:06:36 sounds and stuff like that. Fish becomes soft, etc. Exactly. Exactly. There we go. And I'm sure this will come up plenty of times on this report. My question, AJ, is the author of Dune slash Dune, where were they from? And would that give us any? Like, how would they
Starting point is 00:06:57 have said it in an interview, for example? They are American, so they would say Dune, which I also don't agree with. I think that's going, the opposite direction. direction, right? It's like, now you're not even acknowledging the you. Dune. Like sand dune. Sand dunes. Sand dunes. Water. Sand dunes. Water. Sand dunes. Man in parts from all these sand dunes. Let's get some water. Oh, so you guys are familiar with the plots of Dune. Do they go to Bonnie Dune? Is that a thing? Bonnie Dune would be a great, it's probably not more than just a Twitter meme. Like maybe a Photoshop poster for Bonnie Dune. But someone should make it.
Starting point is 00:07:36 Ah, there we go. Almost definitely already have, I reckon. That's how good it is. Dave's never had an original thought. As if I could. Oh my God. It would melt me down. Now, AJ, anyone can suggest a topic at any time that we cover on this podcast if they
Starting point is 00:07:55 go to do go onpod.com and click suggest a topic. And I've just looked it up here in our hat and a couple of people have suggested we cover Dune slash Dune. Yay. I'm glad that I fulfilled. the prophecy. That's right. So I'd like to say thank you for suggesting this to Miles Blakey from North Yorkshire and also to Pedro Rosario Silver from Portugal. Thank you so much. Nice. Before I begin my report, I do want to clarify what exactly I'm going to be talking about
Starting point is 00:08:24 today. You do want to clarify. I do want to do it here on Dune. The name of my Google Doc is Dune go on, which was a joke for only me, but now it's the rest of the world as well. that's good stuff that feels meme worthy on Twitter as well well done thank you so much um June is one of these franchises that has an endless amount of finicky law that people have been obsessed with
Starting point is 00:08:49 since 30 years before I was even born right so to come in here and be like hey guys I'm gonna tell you all about the plots of June would be incredibly foolish of me and I'd lose all my nerd cred and it would also be your longest episode, probably longer than the Saints one, to be honest. Jesus.
Starting point is 00:09:09 There's a lot of law. There's a lot of law. A lot of spinoffs. Yeah. Yeah. I have included more plot stuff than I initially intended, but hopefully not so much that you guys would get in undated with tweets correcting the minutiae.
Starting point is 00:09:27 The point of this report is not the minutiae. So if I get something wrong, I wear that. I own that. And we should also say, don't tweet us. Tweet. Tweet A.J.N.H.D. Please do. I think it's important, I guess, to give a taste of what this unfilmable story is like
Starting point is 00:09:46 and why it's considered unfilmable, right? So there is going to be some fun, very tedious world building. I'll explain to you guys at some point. But no, this is more about the journey of the novel to the movie, because it's an incredibly interesting story if you're a filmmaking nerd like I am. I love that caveat. And to give myself even more of an excuse,
Starting point is 00:10:13 I haven't actually read the books. So if anyone comes at me, I'll just be like, I don't know, I just follow the IMDB page updates. Can I say, I got given a copy for Christmas, not the one just gone and the one before.
Starting point is 00:10:28 It's been on the shelf. I am committing to reading. Actually, depending on how interesting I find what you're about to say, I might do it on book cheat, and do you want to come on and I'll tell you about Dunes slash June, the real story, okay? The real story, yeah.
Starting point is 00:10:42 Yeah, one of my favorite reviews that my podcast, Kolpoppaupshire ever got, said that we're a podcast that is more obsessed with the IMDB trivia page than the movie itself. Yeah. Which I love that. I think that describes not just my podcast, but me as a person very well.
Starting point is 00:10:59 I can't watch a movie without pulling up IMDB, and looking at all the trivia. I've ruined so many movies for myself by reading the plot while I'm watching it or seeing a spoiler in the trivia, but I have to. And then I have to be like, you know where that guy's from?
Starting point is 00:11:13 He's also in this other obscure movie you haven't seen. And everyone watching movies with me is like, you're fun. The worst thing to do is you look up, you know, who's that actor? And you look them up. And then you find their character in this movie has a slash.
Starting point is 00:11:28 And you're like, oh, it's going to be revealed. You're like, gosh. Gosh, there's a reveal later, and I've ruined it. Yep. Or they're only in four of ten episodes, and it's like, well, what happens to them? Yep. My flatmates and I are very into Survivor at the moment, and you cannot Google a thing about past seasons of Survivor
Starting point is 00:11:48 without getting that spoiled. So it's a dangerous world out there. Be careful, everyone. Careful spoilers, everybody. Can I just double-check with Dave and Jess? I don't know anything. Apart from the fact that it's sand related somehow, I don't know anything about these movies or books.
Starting point is 00:12:06 No. Haven't seen either. No. No. Have honestly very little interest. So good luck, AJ. Sorry. AJ, I'll stop everyone.
Starting point is 00:12:19 Yeah. Cards on the table. I once tried to watch a 1980s, I believe it was, adaptation of this movie. Yeah. I got 10 minutes in and I thought, this is the worst film I've ever seen. I turned it off.
Starting point is 00:12:31 It remained the worst film I'd ever seen until we started the phrasing the bar podcast and now that film has slipped to third worst film I've ever seen the worst ones ever best star, Brandon Fraser. No, fair enough. So yeah, the story of Dune, the unfilmable novel, begins with a man named Frank Herbert. Frank Herbert began his career as a novelist in the 1950s,
Starting point is 00:12:58 having read sci-fi for about 10 years before deciding to write it. I found like a list of his influences, if anyone wants to know what the guy that made Dune was into. Authors that he followed were Robert A. Henlin, who wrote A. Hainland, who wrote A. Strange Land and Starship Troopers, which are pretty big pop cultural tent poles. Jack Vance, who wrote a book called The Dying Earth, and Paul Anderson, who wrote a number of more well-known. He wrote Brainwave, There Will Be Time. But he also wrote a novel called What I Can Only Assume is pronounced The Servants of Wank.
Starting point is 00:13:39 This was in the 50s. It's spelled W-A-N-K-H. Well, that's all of this, isn't it? Yeah, we're all servants of wank, aren't we? I mean, that's nominate determinism. If your first name is Hull, you're born to be a perv, aren't you? It's no, it's Pohl with a P. A poll.
Starting point is 00:14:02 I feel, yeah, pole wank. Wait, was his surname Wank? No, the book was wank. Okay. The books were wank. I thought his name was Hull. I think pole even more so, Dave. Pole's still pretty horny.
Starting point is 00:14:14 Every hole needs a pole. It might be pronounced Paul, but it's spelled. P-O-U-L, so I don't know. Again, very hard to pronounce words. Are you going to mention probably, I assume, his biggest influence, George Lucas. No, George Lucas was not born a long time after Frank Herbert, I believe. That's what he also lists H.G. Wales, previous do go on heavyweights. You did a report on War of the Worlds, which H.G. Wells wrote, so not a report on H.G. Wells himself.
Starting point is 00:14:47 And he was also a Herbert. There you go. And a pervert. It's true. It's true. Can't defame the dead. There's just assuming he's dead. Okay.
Starting point is 00:15:03 Frank Herbert began writing Dune in 59. Apparently after doing way more research than was needed for a magazine article about sand dunes that he never published. So he was writing for some reason, he got command. mission to write about sand dunes, did a bunch of research and then thought, I'm going to make a groundbreaking sci-fi epic about this instead of this magazine article. It is also widely
Starting point is 00:15:28 believed that he was very into silo-cybin, which is the naturally occurring psychedelic compound found in magic mushrooms. Very important, if you know anything about June, which you guys don't. So get ready for a trip. Is the whole, does the sound wake up at the end and they were just having a magic mushroom trip? Not literally, but metaphysically, that's not too far away from how weird June gets. Remember, this is unfilmable. So it's very, it's not very movie friendly, the initial, the original texts, I guess. So in Dreamer of June, which is a biography written about Frank Herbert, written by his son, Brian Herbert,
Starting point is 00:16:12 We're told that Frank was passionate about culinary mushrooms, but doesn't elaborate any further than this. So we know for sure he liked mushrooms. Right. Do with that information what you will. You know someone's very creative when they name their son Brian. Yeah, and then all their son Brian has to say about them is he liked mushrooms. Yeah, that's the whole biography is just he liked mushrooms.
Starting point is 00:16:37 My daddy liked mushrooms by Brian. Brian's a beautiful name. For a boy or girl. Boy or girl. I'm absolutely beautiful, but you just wouldn't see it in a sci-fi novel. You'd expect like Zeno 1-2-9 or something like that. I am so glad you've set this up, Dave, because there are some boring-ass names in the Dune universe.
Starting point is 00:16:57 Really? Yes. Before it was published as a novel, June was split into parts and released across eight issues of a sci-fi magazine called Analog, which started in 1930, and is still running today, which is pretty interesting that this legacy still exists. When they tried to turn it into like a hardback novel, it was rejected by nearly 20 publishers initially
Starting point is 00:17:25 with one editor beginning their rejection letter with the sentence. I might be making the mistake of the decade, but... Oh, they sort of knew. Wow. Exactly. They probably, I reckon they soften every rejection by starting this letter with that. Hey, yeah, now that I'm thinking about it, every time I've been rejected, it's been like, this is probably the mistake of the decade, but no. Every time I've been rejected, the other person's gone, you, bleh!
Starting point is 00:17:53 So, you know, we'll have different experiences. Yeah, you give someone the vomit of the decade. The vomit of the decade. At least I'm memorable. The reasons for these rejections were pretty understandable. This book was dense. It was complex. It was.
Starting point is 00:18:11 896 pages of world building, confronting politics, and relentlessly overwhelming jargon, some of which we'll get to later. But those who got it, got it. And June was eventually published by Chilton Book Company, which is a publisher that mainly produced auto repair manuals. So we're talking about like underground, underground, like it's a success story now for multiple people involved because even though Herbert was given an initial advance of $7,500, but June would go on to sell 20 million copies worldwide,
Starting point is 00:18:49 making it the highest grossing science fiction novel Oval Time. Wow. Mm-hmm. Whoa. Yeah. And I'm only just learning it was a book. Me too. Like moments ago.
Starting point is 00:18:59 Same. This is part of it. This is genuine. The fact that it's so influential but so underground, a massive part of like why, the why of Dune. The only thing I know about it is that it, what's the June writer's name? Frank Herbert. All I know about it is that Frank Herbert, the day he saw Empire Strikes Back, he said,
Starting point is 00:19:22 I've got an idea. I've got an idea. That's all I know about it. The novel's success was slow at first, but by the 1970s, Herbert was able to go full-time as an author, and by his death in 1986, he had published several more novels, including six sequels to Dune, which are called Dune Messiah,
Starting point is 00:19:47 children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and Chapter House Dune. These came out between 1969 and 1985. He did plan on writing a seventh novel to conclude the series, but then he died,
Starting point is 00:20:02 and after his death, the series very much did not conclude. with his aforementioned son, Brian, and sci-fi author Kevin Jay Anderson, picking up the franchise about a decade later, and would eventually dwarf Frank's output, writing dozens of ancillary novels and short story anthologies, the most recent of which, which is called Dune, the Air of Caledan, was released in 2022.
Starting point is 00:20:28 So they are very much still going. This is a very long series. You said the amount sold, was that just that initial book, or you're talking about the whole series. I think the initial novel since 1965 has sold 20 million copies. Wow. That's wild. Right, Matt, were you thinking that there'd been 20 million sequels
Starting point is 00:20:49 and they'd all sold one copy? Yeah. I was just wondering if AJ was, you know, playing as for fools. Ballooning the numbers. Padding the stats. So that means if every edition of the book, that's been sold was to sit on a seat at the MCG. Dave, how many MCGs would those sales feel?
Starting point is 00:21:14 About 200, 200 is it? 200. 200 MCGs. Two thousand. Look at him doing maths. Look at the cogs turning in that little brain. Wow, I've only ever heard it on the podcast. I've never seen it in real life before.
Starting point is 00:21:28 Yeah, it's beautiful, isn't it? What an honour to be here seeing Dave do maths. Let's hope Matt has a regret face at some time today. Yes, oh my God. I've wondered for years what the regret face actually looks like. Yeah, me too. I have no idea when I've done it. You can feel it though.
Starting point is 00:21:48 Yeah, I mean, I feel regret, but it doesn't always translate to the face. I want everyone to know listening at home that Dave is still doing that. It's right the first time. But AJ, you'll edit it together to make it look like Dave's real quick. That's what we used to do. A mastermind, exactly. Yeah, exactly. I'm actually so stoked that we can, yeah, just in real time tell you, AJ, cut that.
Starting point is 00:22:10 Cut that. Yes, there you go. So what is the deal with the novel? What is June actually about and how much of the following plot details will I get completely wrong? And we told about it on Twitter. Yeah, exactly. I would relish more people coming to my Twitter account, to be honest. It's very desolate over there for me.
Starting point is 00:22:34 So as well as I sounds being made into U sounds, you also turn E sounds into A sounds. You relish it? Just keep an italian for Americans if they still think we say in the same, which I think he sounds ridiculous. He sounds like an idiot. How can you equate me to that? But we, we don't, if you were to say, do you think you sound silly? I'd say, no. He just can't do it.
Starting point is 00:23:01 He thinks all Australia is a Dr. I don't know how to, I don't know what to do. Yeah. So I know I said I don't want to focus too much on the law, but some of the stuff is so bad shit and so just fun to kind of like, I want to see what your guys' reactions are to some of this total bullshit, right? Can I just before, can I just, sorry, I will stop being a pain in the ass. I'm drinking coffee.
Starting point is 00:23:25 But can I just double check with you? Did you say that it sold 20 million copies? I love grinding a podcast to a halt because you thought of a good yes and to something from 10 minutes ago. That's our whole life here. I'm sorry, I'm coming in on delay. Sorry, AJ. Sorry, sorry, everyone, shut up.
Starting point is 00:23:50 Everyone shut up. I've got a joke from 10 minutes ago. Hang on, shut up. I was going to jump in, but I thought, I'll wait. I'll wait till AJ's saying something serious again. Then I'll stop him. I've stopped a podcast. before to be like, hey, I've thought of a better thing to say to what we were talking about.
Starting point is 00:24:08 You'll fix that in the adit, won't you, Adri? Absolutely, absolutely. Just for anyone who's worried, I've stayed away from any massive plot. Boilers, just sort of cherry-picked a mix between contextually important stuff and the most bizarre and tedious stuff. Chari pock them up. Fucking hell. AJ, do go on. June is so dense that even a basic plot summary ran me about half a page of this report.
Starting point is 00:24:35 So here we go. Set over 10,000 years in the future in a universe where mankind has long since colonized hundreds of planets, the June franchise largely revolves around the spice milange, which is a psychedelic drug produced exclusively on the desert plains of the planet Aracus. And when you consume the spice melange, it can give you a longer lifespan, greater vitality and heightened awareness. Spice, as it is colloquially referred to, can also unlock prescience in some humans, which is a form of precognition, which makes interstellar travel possible. So because of this, spice is considered to be the most valuable substance in the universe. And because of that, it is an extremely sought-after commodity. So spice is harvested from Iraqis, often at the expense, and the subjugation of the Fremen, who are the indigenous people of Iraqis, for whom.
Starting point is 00:25:35 the spice has long been part of their cultural practices and way of life. I know it felt a bit too good to be true. Yeah. Exactly. So June is a story of a capitalist colonialist government stealing a valuable resource from a downtrodden indigenous race because remember, he who controls the spice controls the universe. Wow. So this is real, like he had to be very creative. He's taken a scenario that probably has never occurred in reality. And, um, and, um, and, um, and, um, and, um, put that on the page. Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:26:07 What a writer. Well, it was 60 in 65, so there's like height of Vietnam War. Like, America generally still aren't very much ready to hear some of these hard truths or look at their dark soul. But even in the 60s, that's right at the height of like looking the other way about the war that's going on. How interesting that the Vietnam War inspired Star Wars and then Star Wars inspired Dune. It's so interesting, right? What is cyclical So one of my
Starting point is 00:26:37 I'm a land I'm a lans I'm a lans Such a great You're doing you can Spice Malange The hand tip is so essential For the joke selling
Starting point is 00:26:52 And it's a podcast Spice Milange Spice Malange And spice malage to you What a fun word One of my favorite things about June is that because it is set in the year 10,191, humanity is largely unrecognizable culturally, but somehow some very basic boring names have survived, including Paul, Duncan, and Jessica.
Starting point is 00:27:25 Yeah! Probably the second main character in June is named Jessica. So you made it 10,000 years. great name for a, yeah, for cool people. Well, it's like, like, names come back, don't they? So it probably felt retro to their parents and they brought it back because they're great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandparents.
Starting point is 00:28:03 Yeah, he went two over, he went two over, and Duncan. Duncan, Duncan, Paul. Paul's evergreen Paul's always in Yeah You think Paul's evergreen Even 10,000 years into the future It'll be fine Paul, I think Paul's forever Yeah
Starting point is 00:28:20 Well the main character of June Is named Paul Atreides So the main dude The name you hear Paul Atrady Well we know we probably won't Arrive on time then Or on budget
Starting point is 00:28:33 Amazing joke That's awesome Paul Atradey Another Twitter meme Right there Someone make that Paul is a young noble from the planet Caledan, whose family are assigned by the Galactic Emperor
Starting point is 00:28:50 to travel to Iraqis and take over spice harvesting from the brutal House Harkinan, who are the bad guys. So Caledan or House Atreides are the good guys, House Harkinan are the bad guys, and the emperor has just said, hey, Harkinen, you're out, Atrates are in, they're going to be the stewards of the spice from now on, right? Stewards of the Spice!
Starting point is 00:29:14 Exactly, yeah. To make things even more delightfully complicated, Paul is essentially the chosen one for two to three separate parties. He is both the heir to the powerful House of Trades and the supposed Messiah for the Fremen. His mother, Lady Jessica, is a member of a zealous but sinister a spice-based religion called the Ben-Jeserate. Now, if you need to write these names down, I'll give you some time.
Starting point is 00:29:47 Paul was carefully conceived specifically as a crossbreed of spice-sensitive bloodlines and is believed by some to be the all-powerful Quizzat's Hatterak, which is a prophesied Messiah who can bridge space and time like none before him. This is all making sense so far. Can we got any questions? My eyelid is twitching. I think that's the coffee. That's the coffee, though.
Starting point is 00:30:15 That's the coffee. It's the spice. You've consumed some spice. Melange. Spice malange. Praise to bean. Melange, I heard recently, is actually like French for variety. So variety is the spice of life.
Starting point is 00:30:31 I don't know if that's true. That's one of those things you hear on the internet and go, that's true. I'm going to tell people that for the next 15 years. Quisat's Hatterack is far from the only mind-boggling term that is coined by the Dune books, and it's not even the only word used to mean what it means. The world building in Dune can seem so overwhelming until you realize that a lot of this shit is just different cultures interpretations of the same basic idea.
Starting point is 00:31:00 So yes, Paul is believed to possibly be the Quizzat's Hatterack by some members of the Benny Jesuit, but he is also referred to as the Lissan Al-Gaiib, meaning the voice from the outer world. This term is used by Fremen who have specifically been converted by Ben-Jeserite missionaries. Not all Fremen, just converted Fremen, right?
Starting point is 00:31:24 Generally, Fremen also use the term Mardi to refer to a mythical, messianic figure, a word which means the one who will lead us to paradise. And on top of these, Paul is also, given not one but two new names when he meets the Fremen, Usul, which means the strength at the base of a pillar, and Muadib, which is the name of a small but wise desert mouse that roams Aracas and a star constellation used by the Fremen to navigate.
Starting point is 00:31:55 So all of these terms. So did you say 20 million copies? But also 20 rejections, so it makes a lot more sense now, right? All of these terms basically mean space Jesus and throughout June are used often interchangeably to refer to Paul, right? They'll be like, Mardi, Lisan al-Gaib, Usul, etc, etc. Paul, Paul.
Starting point is 00:32:18 Paul. Other fun terms you'll find littered throughout June that don't just refer to Paul include Fidiken, Sardukar, Sech, Still Suit, Thumper, and of course, Shy Hulud. which is the fremen name for the enormous sandworms that tunnel through the deserts of Iraqis. You will see, if you Google Dune, you will see sandworms featured in all of the, most of the imagery used for various Dune book covers and posters and artwork.
Starting point is 00:32:50 I would say the spice and the sandworms tend to be the two big things the general public often know about June if they're not that familiar with it. And I never knew this is a metal band called Shy Hulud, and I never knew of that. Oh, there we go, there we go. I didn't know that. A nerdy metal band? Well, I never. So the two elements, the Shihulud and the Spice, are actually related in universe
Starting point is 00:33:17 because the spice is a substance produced by sandworms when they are in their lava stage. Now, that sentence isn't technically correct from a law standpoint, but from what I can see, even the biggest June fans are like, yeah, that's basically it. The spice comes from the worms, sure. It's a simplified way of saying a needlessly complicated piece of fictional law. Any questions about the Dune law so far that I probably can't answer. Space Jesus, special spice from worms, got it. Exactly, exactly.
Starting point is 00:33:53 You would know this. Has there ever been a Dune Barbie? No. Well, not yet, but both properties are very in vogue right now, so I wouldn't be surprised to see some kind of crossover. in some form. Does any toy manufacturer own the rights to Dune? What a deep cut question.
Starting point is 00:34:10 I have no idea. Probably, right? You'd think so. Because it's Mattel. And it'd be easy. So when you consume a lot of spice, your eyes turn like this brilliant shade of blue. So it'd be very easy to just get a Barbie and make her eyes super blue.
Starting point is 00:34:25 And then you go, there you go. It's a... Sit her on a big worm. Lisan Al-Gaib Barbie. Sit her on a worm comes... The worm's salt. separately though. We've sold separately.
Starting point is 00:34:38 So the desire to develop the due novel into a film dates back to the 70s before Frank Herbert had even written half of the books. But as you can probably guess, based on all that bullshit, I just told you, this is not a very adaptable story. This is not something that makes a lot of sense
Starting point is 00:34:57 for a average runtime for your standard movies, especially at the time. And it was also, like, it's very spectacular, which in the 60s there was a lot less, like, it's not like today in the digital effects age, right, where anything's possible. This was like 2001 a Space Odyssey was the craziest thing anyone had ever seen at this point in time. And it still is today to be fair. George Lucas and Star Wars changed the game in two ways. June's expansive story and inaccessible screeds of made-up history can read less like a,
Starting point is 00:35:33 novel and more like an encyclopedia at times, which is maybe why, despite being relatively niche in underground until recently, June is considered to be maybe the most influential piece of sci-fi ever written, with countless other works incorporating, indirectly referencing or blatantly ripping off the franchise's ideas and bespoke glossary over the last 59 years instead of adapting the source material. So you'll see sci-fi concepts eerily similar to those featured in general. show up and everything from Studio Ghibli to Mad Max to SpongeBob Squarepants and of course Star Wars, which did actually, you might not know this, came out after the June book was written.
Starting point is 00:36:16 Did you guys know? Wow. Isn't that one of the trippiest things about it? I feel like I'm having Milanche right now. Because I am tripping balls. How is that possible? How can you inspire something that came from before you? Someone called the Lassan Al-Gaiib, because I'm.
Starting point is 00:36:33 I'm tripping out on spice right now. Yeah. Your eyes are a vivid blue. But that's just always. He sounds a bit like the guy who Liam Neeson was in Batman. Is that a similar name? Raz Al-Gul. Yeah, totally.
Starting point is 00:36:46 Quite different, actually. Don't worry about it. There's an owl in the middle of it. Okay. I'll tell me. I'll take it. Anything to not be completely wrong. Star Wars owes its entire existence to June,
Starting point is 00:37:00 and is probably the reason June seemed so obscure for so long. because Star Wars usurped it as being the definitive piece of sci-fi pop culture and a much more accessible medium and a streamlined story about a spiritually gifted young man battling an evil galactic emperor, right? So they made it a lot easy. Like, like Dune is full of moral grays and stuff, whereas Star Wars is quite famously, there's good and there's evil and there's nothing really in between, which again is probably not true for those of you that really love Star Wars, but that's what it looks like if you only watch the movies. Even if it was intended that way, though, it's not really, is it?
Starting point is 00:37:39 Because isn't it all about balance? It's like, isn't the whole thing about you need half evil and half good? That's very true. Which makes it quite grey in itself, really, doesn't it? That you need, you're like, the system needs half evil. Wow. What kind of system is this? George?
Starting point is 00:37:57 Come where George didn't survive. Yeah, but Jessica did. world of Paul and Jessica. And Duncan. Duncan's in its own leave. I was going to say, yeah, Duncan deserves to... You want to know, is the character's surname? Yes.
Starting point is 00:38:09 Is Idaho. Duncan Idaho is the name of the character. Absolutely fucked. Yeah. That rules. Yeah. Spud country. It's played by Jason Mamor in the new movies. Oh, that's so good.
Starting point is 00:38:23 Okay, so currently in our do-go-on group chat, my nickname is Daddy. And I never wanted to change that because I think it's very, funny that the boys type in daddy to talk to me. But I'm tempted to change it to Duncan Idaho. Dunk Idaho is so funny. You're not tempted to change it to
Starting point is 00:38:42 Lady Jessica, the character who's actually in June. God no, how boring. Duncan Idaho or Daddy. Matt, you can be Lady Jessica just for supreme confusion and the do-go-on-com. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Malange. And Dave, you can be the Quizzats
Starting point is 00:38:58 Hatterack. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. That feels right. It's an honor. Yeah, so Star Wars also heavily features several desert planets and there's even a spice in Star Wars that is, it's off screen, I think, in movies, but if you read the comics, you'll see that spice is a narcotic that is harvested for its psychedelic benefits. So it's not even different. It's just exactly the same thing. And I haven't gone too much into this, but there is some like bad faith. People interpret as pretty bad faith on George Lucas's part that, like, this is not, like, loving homage as much as it is just blatantly stealing ideas. Right, but how could it be a rip-off if Star Wars is set a long time ago? Oh, this is set 10,000 years in the future. Explicitly in the future.
Starting point is 00:39:50 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cop that, I don't, you've got me, you've got me. Which is probably a bit rich coming from us, saying, as you are literally in the past right now in New Zealand I'm in the future actually I'm two hours ahead of you. Jeez, whoa Yeah
Starting point is 00:40:06 It's 3 be in here baby! So you're saying June is June is like New Zealand? June is like New Zealand Let's start the report again June is like New Zealand Now, what do I mean by then? They talk a little different
Starting point is 00:40:25 It's so funny to see AJ yelling It's 3 p.m. here, baby. Hopefully this all gives you guys a sample of why exactly June was considered impossible to adapt. But this didn't stop Chilean French avant-garde filmmaker and fellow AJ, Alejandro Hodorowski, whose surname I'm going to accidentally pronounce Joe Dhrowski, probably a hundred times in this report, because I am an uncultured New Zealand. as we've discussed. So, Hodorowski is wild.
Starting point is 00:41:04 Best known for some extremely crazy weird breaks all the rules. Films like El Topo was his first film. And you may have heard of this one. It's called The Holy Mountain, which is a movie described by director Richard Stanley as feeling like a work of art that comes from a parallel world. I've seen clips of the Holy Mountain, and it looks very strange. It's very vibrant colours, but everyone's naked in it and running around deserts, and it's from like the early 70s. Very, very strange film.
Starting point is 00:41:39 But it was very successful, especially in the avant-garde Chilean French scene, I guess. And in 1974, after the immense success of the Holy Mountain, French producer Michel Sedu, approached Hodorowski, wanting to make a film with him. Sedu asked Hodorowski what he'd want to make, and Hodorowski said Dune. In the 2013 documentary Hodorowski's Dune, of which I've taken a lot of information from, and it's great. Everyone should watch it. It goes into far more detail. In a loving homage kind of way, right? Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 00:42:16 It goes into far more detail than I was able to in this 4,000 word report. Go check it out if you want to learn more. But, yeah, in the documentary, Hodorowski explains that he hadn't actually read the novel, but his friend had and said it was fantastic. So, just like me doing a report on a novel I haven't read, I'm in good company with fellow weird AJs. Yeah, so Hodorowski then moved to a castle in France and began to assemble a team of artists and filmmakers to bring an adaptation of the novel to cinemas.
Starting point is 00:42:54 Not only had a Hodorowski, not read Dune, but he doesn't seem to really like how the book was written either. In the documentary, he describes his experience trying to read it as, quote, you have 100 pages of literature where you go on to discover with great difficulty what the book is about. The first 100 pages, you understand almost nothing. It is insinuations. So, straight from the guy that wanted nothing more than to adapt this book, even he is like, This is not a good book to adapt into film. Hororowski goes on to explain the spiritual experience of translating this apparently unreadable book to screen and describes his ambitious Dune film multiple times in the documentary as sacred.
Starting point is 00:43:40 You get the impression that he wanted to make a movie which transcends the medium of film, transcends art, something that would become a thing of worship. Very strange guy. Very strange films. And is this the movie that Dave ranks as the third worst of all time? It is not. We'll get to that one. Oh, okay.
Starting point is 00:44:00 So this is the fourth. Yeah. Hodorowski's team soon included artists and designers like Gene Mobius Girode. Probably pronounced that terribly, just as I have half the other stuff in this report. Dan O'Bannon and Chris Foss, which I don't have much trouble pronouncing, I guess. And H.R. Giga, who many probably recognizes very first. famous creepy, surreal artist. A lot of these guys just straight up moved to Paris for the opportunity to work with
Starting point is 00:44:31 Hodorowski and bring the film to life. Together they tirelessly went to work creating dozens of costumes, hundreds of incredibly detailed and beautiful pieces of concept art, and a 3,000 panel storyboard of the film, essentially doing all the cinematography on paper first in basically the form of like a roughly sketched comic book. So they put in the hard yards because back in those days, I guess they really had to prove that this was possible, because it didn't look very possible. The film was to start with an unbroken long shot zooming through the universe, blitzing past galaxies and planets, past space pirates stealing spice from transporter ships until finally arriving on Iraqis. And this is all pre-Star Wars in 1974.
Starting point is 00:45:22 Star Wars was 77. This is 1974. The only thing close that people have seen is, as I said, 2001 a Space Odyssey. And when they went to the guy that was the like art director for 2001 of Space Odyssey, the best in the business, they had
Starting point is 00:45:38 an interview with him and Hotorowski went, this guy's not for me. He's too controlling and went with Dan O'Bannon instead, who'd art directed like a very cheap B movie in the sci-fi genre. Wow. Yeah. So, Hororowski also had a pretty all-star cast in mind for bringing the film to life.
Starting point is 00:45:58 He brought in David Caradine to play Duke Leto Atrades. This is Paul's father. He is played by Oscar Isaac in the new films, if you're wanting a sort of modern-day reference. He also approached Mick Jagger to play Fade Ralfour or Rafa. Fade Rafa is played by Austin Butler in Dune Part 2 that came out earlier this year. and he also sought Orson Wells, another War of the World's heavyweight, as the hedonistic Emperor Harkinen, who was played by Stalin Skarsgaard in the new films.
Starting point is 00:46:32 My favourite character, he's this gross, gluttonous blob that bathes in pitch black oil. It's great. But yeah, he wanted Orson Wells and promised to, like, hire the chef of his favorite restaurant to be on set in order to secure Orson Wells for the film. That's great. Darren from Dominoes, that's rules. You got Darren budget? He knows how to put on the meatballs
Starting point is 00:47:01 better than anyone in the biz. Anyone. For the role of Paul Atreides, played, of course, by Timothy Charlemais in the new films. Oh, he plays Paul. He plays Paul. Hortorowski cast his 12-year-old son, Brontas Hortorowski.
Starting point is 00:47:19 Brontes. Bronis, yeah, exactly. Brontes was forced by his father to learn karate and acrobatics, hiring stunt coordinator Jean-Pierre Vinoe to teach him not only karate, but Jiu-Jitsu, judo, Ikeido, Atimi Jitsu, and sword fighting. Vinot trained Brontas Hortorowski six hours a day, seven days a week for two years to prepare for the role of Paul Atreides. Brontas now grown up describes Veno as having had,
Starting point is 00:47:49 no mercy. Alejandro Hortarowski justifies putting his son through such a strict regimen by explaining quote, and that time if I needed to cut my arms off in order to make that picture, I will do it. It was sacred. You need to sacrifice yourself. I was even ready to die, which gave me, I wish I was never born vibe. So I jotted it down. But also he's saying like I, you know, I, you know, you got to, you make sacrifices for the art. I would have cut off my arm. Instead, I just tortured my son. I tortured my son through something he really didn't want to do for a really long time with a person who had no mercy. That's the kind of sacrifice I was really...
Starting point is 00:48:31 I was making. That's right, yes. I sacrificed my relationship with my son. Exactly. We don't speak now. I really had to that, like, after like a few months, the son just beat up his dad because he's like, I'm awesome at martial arts. No, you're thinking of Star Wars again, Dave. Do you know what? When I started doing, because I did taekwondo as a teenager,
Starting point is 00:48:53 and my mum had a rule that I was not allowed to practice on my brother. My brother who was seven years older than me and was already hitting me with no technique. That's badass, Jess. So I'm not allowed to hit back now that I know how to. You can defend yourself. Was that a taekwondo move, Jess? I don't know. It was my own mixed martial art that I invented.
Starting point is 00:49:16 It was Jessquando, and it's very cool. that Jess, that was a tight window block. Let your brother hit you please. No blocking. Have another go, Matt. I will say that Brontas and Alejandro are still, like Brontas is an actor these days and they still have what looks like an all right relationship.
Starting point is 00:49:37 So I don't want to dump on them too much, but it is questionable. You did just say Brontas is an actor, mate. So I think out in public he's going, oh, you know, I love my dad. I'm glad he's... I'm glad he made my childhood fucking miserable. Sorry, just jitsu. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:49:56 Great, great stuff. Thank you, man. We'll insert that. We'll insert that. Most notably of all the casting decisions, though, Hodorowski sought out Salvador Dali to play the Galactic Emperor pulling all of the strings. Dali's involvement ballooned the estimated budget for the film
Starting point is 00:50:17 because Dali wanted to be the high. paid actor in Hollywood with a rate of $100,000 per hour. They talked about it. And in the documentary, you get the sense that it's not about money. It's still kind of about art. Like Alejandro and Salvador Dali are like, yeah, yeah, it'll be like part of it as you're the highest paid actor, you know? Like, it's part of the fun for them.
Starting point is 00:50:44 But Dali eventually settled on a counteroffer of 100K per minute. for the total of the three to five minutes that he would appear in the film, loving the idea that he would be known as the 100K per minute actor. I would take that. That's a good title. I would take three to five hundred K for three to five minutes of work. I'd take that. But you'd be playing Duncan Idaho, of course,
Starting point is 00:51:09 who's in the films a lot more than the emperor. And also you're getting paid based on how many minutes you're on in the film, right? so the editors could really screw you Yeah, yeah. I had that thought too. You shot for five months, but yeah, we just chopped your character arc out of it. So yeah. You actually owe us money for cable. Any extra scenes needed of the emperor were to be performed by a robot lookalike
Starting point is 00:51:37 and Dali eventually accepted the role on condition that the plastic lookalike was donated to his museum and that his throne room would be, well, that his throne would be a toilet made up of two intersecting dolphins. Those were his final terms, which is very Salvador Dali, from what I understand of the artist. Rinosaros. That's my, sorry, that's my Darlene impersonation. Rinosaurus. Part of Hodorowski's vision also involved roping in different bands to compose the scores
Starting point is 00:52:10 for the different planets featured in the film. That's fun. Yeah, he brought in French prog rock band Magma for, oh, I should have looked up to pronounce this, Guyi Prime, which is the home planet of House Harkinen, but famously also brought in Pink Floyd for Caledan, which is the home planet of House of Trades. The story goes that Hodorowski had a meeting with Pink Floyd while they were eating hamburgers in between recording sessions, whereupon seeing their disinterest, Hodorowski completely tore into them, explaining that he was offering them the opportunity of a lifetime.
Starting point is 00:52:46 the chance to score, quote, the most important picture in the history of humanity. We will change the world and you're eating Big Macs. How? And this apparently convinced them to join the team. So all of these people are officially on board, by the way, by this point. In my mind, though, like, he was pitching to them and they just hadn't said anything because they were eating. But he's interpreted that as not interested. And then he just starts to be yelling at them
Starting point is 00:53:17 But they're like, no, that was sounding good. Yeah, no, I was going to do it. Yeah, oh, well, yeah, you're really blown at this time, boys. I just do want to speak with my mouth for. Yeah, I'm polite. He keeps escalating. If you don't do it, Pink Floyd, my son will bash you. My son will die training for this role,
Starting point is 00:53:40 and you're not even going to put down your big neck. I'm going to force my son to learn prog rock. Six hours a day. Six hours a day, Robert Fripp's going to set him down and make sure he knows what it's doing. So, Hodorowski's vision of June was, despite its various dark elements, seemingly a lot less cynical than a lot of other interpretations. Without spoiling anything from the novel or the new films, I would say most commentators read it as like power corrupts, the pure, you know? Like, as I said, it's a very morally
Starting point is 00:54:19 gray story, and Paul's journey of embracing the role of Lissan Al-Gaibe is at least a cautionary tale, right? You're not supposed to, it's not like Luke Skywalker where it's like, yay, he became a Jedi. This is a lot more ominous, I guess.
Starting point is 00:54:36 But Jodorowski departed from this in the novel, sorry, Hodorowski departed from this in the novel, seemingly drinking the Kool-Aid, himself instead. The film was to end with Paul being killed in battle, but his voice bellowing out of several of the characters in this film saying, I am Paul, and you cannot strike me down, before his spirit possessed Iraqis itself, sprouting a lush green paradise out of the desert and blasting the entire planet throughout the universe where the voice of Paul
Starting point is 00:55:07 brought salvation to other galaxies. This is not in the book. This is what Hortorowski thought the ending should be. Wow, Paul is very powerful. So all of this pre-production, the Dream Team assembled and the Bible-sized art book wasn't enough to secure the estimated $15 million budget. The Hollywood bigwigs described the extravagant pitch as wonderful and superb,
Starting point is 00:55:36 but too weird and not relatable to American audiences. And they didn't understand Hodorowski as a film, filmmaker who was constantly pushing back against the 90-minute runtime requested from studios, insisting the film should take however long it takes, which he estimated would be get ready for it, 12 to 20 hours long. Did they start the rejection letter with, we might be making the mistake of the decade? I mean, it's true, they do seem regretful. And, like, Horatowski's not the only person with, like, skin in the game trying to get this major.
Starting point is 00:56:15 you know, but it's just, it's too long, it's too big. And like nowadays you'd look at a sentence like that, and you'd be like, okay, so make an HBO limited series, right? But I guess TV was looked quite differently at back then, maybe. But it's so funny, he's the visionary, but he's also clearly, because he won't compromise at all, he's the reason it's not getting made as well. 100%. Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:56:39 Yep, so the project was cancelled, and Hodorowski's June went down in history as what many consider to be the greatest film never made. So that's it. It's gone. The unfilmable books, greatest film never made. Yes, yeah, exactly. It is believed that only two copies of this famous art book still exist today, and one of them is owned by Hodorowski himself.
Starting point is 00:57:06 It's not all for waste, though, because imagery from the art book is also thought to have been gutted and reused in films, which released in the wake of June's cancellation like Star Wars or Flash Gordon or Indiana Jones and of course Alien, which poached almost all of Horatowski's entire creative team, most famously H.R. Geiger, who designed the phallic pseudo-sexual palette of the alien aesthetic, basically. Film critic, and here's a fun name for your collection of fun names in the Do Go On Library. Drew McQueenie.
Starting point is 00:57:46 He says that without Hodorowski's June, there is no alien, so then there is no Blade Runner, and then there is no The Matrix. And can you imagine what the early 2000s would have looked like if The Matrix never came out? It's just not a world I want to live in, AJ. It's not a world I'm living. So not only is June the novel,
Starting point is 00:58:07 probably the most influential sci-fi novel in history, but the failed attempt to adapt it is also incredibly influential. Director Nicholas Winding Refn says in the documentary, what if the first film of that nature had been Dune and not Star Wars? Would the whole Megabucks blockbuster structure have been altered? Which is a fascinating thing to think about because it wasn't that far away from being a reality and I think the world, or at least my world of movies and pop culture,
Starting point is 00:58:36 would look very different if the one that cracked the blocker. Buster spectacle was June instead of Star Wars. But what if they made it and it was a huge failure and meaning that Star Wars and any of these movies never really got a crack? And there was no big budget sci-fi at all. Think about that, AJ. The pretentious film nerd and me would argue maybe that would be a good thing because I would argue Star Wars is output into the world now is kind of ruining Hollywood a little bit.
Starting point is 00:59:07 And also, I like Star Wars fine, but like before the 70s, you've got taxi driver, you've got the Godfather, you know, you've got these intellectual, very smart movies, and then Star Wars basically made everyone go, oh, special effects is cooler than moral gray areas. Let's focus on that instead, whereas June is the middle point between those two, I think. So maybe we would actually have a more balanced blockbuster landscape. Would you argue that there aren't any good movies anymore? Yeah, man. Or would you put it like this, AJ, would you put it like this? They don't make them like they used to. They don't.
Starting point is 00:59:49 They truly don't. Or in the case of Horatowski's June, they didn't make them then either. Or in the case of Star Wars, they're still making them. Yeah. Hodorowski has himself reused a lot of the imagery from his ill-fated dune in his comic. In a comics, I think it might be a series, it's called The Inkel. You look at it and there's a lot of the same ideas in there. So Alejandro Hodorowski, however, is not the only filmmaker to try and tackle a June adaptation. And in fact, he's not even the only fucking weird filmmaker to try to do it.
Starting point is 01:00:26 are we at all familiar with the director David Lynch? Do we recognise the name? Do we know as well? Yes. Mohollen Drive? Moholland Drive is David Lynch, Blue Velvet. Twin Peaks or Twin Peaks as you would say? Twin Peaks?
Starting point is 01:00:41 Yep. The Elephant Man. The Elephant Man, great. I'm very impressed to do go on TV. I did a primates episode about a short film he made a few years ago about a monkey or a chimp or something. It's like what happened to Jack or something. Yes, that's right. Are you most impressed by my reference, though, AJ?
Starting point is 01:01:00 Malholland Drive is a fantastic film, Jess. Have you seen it? I did it in a film class at uni, and I had to watch it twice, well, multiple times, and while reading along with an explainer, because I did like it. Fun? Awesome. Yeah, super fun. I loved it. Is that the one that just had a bit tacked on at the end?
Starting point is 01:01:20 It was meant to be something else or something? No. It was converted from a TV show to a movie. Yeah, yeah. That's what I mean. Yeah, so for those unfamiliar maybe listening, David Lynch is an American surrealist filmmaker. Yeah, Twin Peaks, Mallholland Drive. If you've never seen a David Lynch film,
Starting point is 01:01:40 think about the stereotype of the surreal or weird or intentionally off-putting student film that you'll have seen 100 examples of in your life. Those films are all trying to be lynchian, whether they realize it or not. I see David Lynch as like, the inventor is a strong word, but the guy that like put this brand of weird
Starting point is 01:02:02 out into the mainstream, basically. So his films are littered with strong, violent, religious and sexual imagery, and his personal life is no less bizarre. The man has been married four times. He's very into transcendental meditation, and during the pandemic, he would release weather reports on his YouTube channel.
Starting point is 01:02:24 That's all he was doing. He would, you would go on there and be like, okay, so today, this is a really good David Lynch impression, by the way. Today it's going to be cloudy and a high of 15. And then he'd be like, see you tomorrow. And that'd be the weather report. I've never heard him speak before, I don't think. I wasn't picturing that. He acts in quite a lot of his stuff.
Starting point is 01:02:47 If you've seen Twin Peaks, he plays the deaf police captain in Twin Peaks. I have seen Twin Peaks, but you can't tell you any of it. about it. Apart from there's a cafe. He goes to the cafe. Yeah. There's a cafe. There's a diner.
Starting point is 01:03:02 There's a diner. He's got great hair. He does now. He's got a shrock of gray hair. It used to be pitch black back in the Twin Peaks days. So he went hot to cold. Yeah. So he is a weird guy, but perhaps one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, right?
Starting point is 01:03:24 And in 1980s, Hollywood producer Dino DeLorentis hired Lynch to direct an adaptation of Dune after none other than Ridley Scott dropped out of the project due to, you know, everything that stops people from making a Dune movie. June would become Lynch's third film following up his career making debut a race ahead and his sophomore hit The Elephant Man that Dave mentioned before. Lynch had also never read the novel, but unlike Hortorowski, he did pick up a copy and finish it before. for agreeing to direct. Legend has it that Lynch chose directing Dune over another space opera blockbuster searching for a director at the time
Starting point is 01:04:04 called Revenge of the Jedi, later retitled to Return of the Jedi. Wow. Whoa. Whoa. How different would that have become? Yeah, well, that's what everyone says, but I think it's one of these things
Starting point is 01:04:18 that's over-embellished. Like, when I've heard Lynch address it, it sounds more like someone asked, hey, what about a Star Wars movie? And he says in an interview, he immediately got a headache when he was offered the role, the job. Lynch also saw Dune as being too broad for a standard 90-minute runtime, but as attempts to split the project into two movies were quashed by producers with a budget of over 40 to 42 million June began filming in Mexico, with 80 sets built on 16 sound stages and a crew.
Starting point is 01:04:54 of 1700 with over 20,000 extras. The cast is not quite as like recognizable today as it would have been in 1984, but names and faces that I recognized when I watched it recently include Kyle McLaughlin plays Paula Trady, so he's the coffee guy from Twin Peaks. Yes. You've also got Patrick Stewart, who plays Gurney Halleck, who's played by Josh Brolin in the new films. I'm Patrick Stewart.
Starting point is 01:05:22 There's a very famous scene in David. Lynch is June where Patrick Stewart is carrying a pug in like a baby thing, you know, like the straight-the-baby-carrier. He's carrying a pug into battle, and he's like, to battle or whatever, and he's just no context has a pug in a baby carrier on his chest. Pugs survive. They don't evolve. Pugs don't evolve.
Starting point is 01:05:47 Forget even flatter. Yeah, exactly. And infamously, also, a sting was cast as Fade Rafa. This is Austin Butler from June 2. Yeah, so he's very strange character design. He's got like spiky orange here and he's topless for a lot of it. It's very strange. I've seen photos of him.
Starting point is 01:06:07 Is that right? I never knew what the movie was. Yeah. It looks like he's in the sex pistols. Yeah. But like in the future. Yeah, six pistols in the future. Probably the were the sex laser beams.
Starting point is 01:06:19 Well, this film also had a popular band at the time come on board to score it. Who do we want to guess? Who do we reckon scored David Lynch's June? Queen. No. Right ballpark though. It's a right ballpark though. It's a right ballpark.
Starting point is 01:06:34 They were Flash Gordon, which I think... Oh yeah, true, actually. I thought I was being quite funny, but that wasn't a bad ballpark. I did. I definitely at the right ballpark. Think they've got a very famous song that's about a continent. Oh. Toto.
Starting point is 01:06:50 Toto! Toto! Scores June 1984. So, that makes sense. The first cut of the film, like the initial edit, ran over four hours, which was eventually whittled down to just over two hours with the use of voiceover and new scenes shot to compress the story. There are several versions of the film out there with varying durations,
Starting point is 01:07:16 but the theatrical cut, which released in cinemas in 1984, was but a conservative 137 minutes. So it's, yeah, a little over two hours. I think the version that I saw was the worst one. Whatever that was. Well, that's maybe all of them actually, Dave. It was honestly 10 or 15 minutes and there was a lot of voice of like Carl McLaughlin was like, I don't know, being being telepathic with someone and I was like, what is going on?
Starting point is 01:07:45 And Sting was there. I was like, what? Yeah, yeah. I think I'm I myself. The Melange got you. Your eyes are turning. So I think it's important to understand that David Lynch is one of those artists whose work is often so beyond reproach that any criticism of his work can be rebuked with a classic, you just don't get it. Which I actually, that's probably true.
Starting point is 01:08:07 A lot of his stuff which hasn't worked for me has been confusing, not like poorly constructed or anything, right? But with that being said, even the biggest Lynch fans in the world tend to be very divided on June 1984. It is generally considered his worst movie, and David Lynch himself has disowned the film, denying the offer to edit a director's cut and prefers not to talk about it in interviews. Wow. Is June 1984 related to Wonder Woman 1984? They're both bad movies, is that... But actually, I'll do you one better.
Starting point is 01:08:45 They're both bad movies by promising directors that I actually really like. Quite related. There, yeah, there you go. There are some defenders of June 1984. It's sort of a cult film now. And I will say, I think it's aged quite well. The 1980s digital effects would have looked really cheap and limited at the time and even upwards of like 10, 20 years later.
Starting point is 01:09:12 But now I feel like they present like a rich and nostalgic aesthetic. visually there's a lot of harsh green screens and dopey stop motion and it's very silly but but what I like about it is it feels far more like otherworldly in my opinion than the new films like it feels genuinely alien like you haven't you haven't just gone to a new planet you've gone to a new ecological system you know like yeah I didn't hate how it looked but that is to say nothing of the plot and the pacing, which is nuts. In my opinion, the film chugs along at a fairly comfortable rate for the first few acts. Characters are underdeveloped and some of the,
Starting point is 01:10:01 the big heavy weights are reduced to like two-dimensional pastiches for time. But the main stuff is all there. And the events that would be later contained to the entirety of 2021's Dune, part one take up almost the full length of 1984's June with the events of 2024's June part two reduced to the final 40 minutes. At which point it just snaps into a breakneck pace with liberal use of voiceover and montage just to get it over and done with. The entire second half of the story is squeezed into this last chunk and is edited like a previously on section at the start of a TV show.
Starting point is 01:10:41 So it's like, and then he did this. he did this instead of like the slower pace of the first three quarters. The film also underperformed at the box office grossing 30.9 million from a budget of around 40 million and famous film critic Roger Ebert gave it one star out of four and wrote the movie is a real mess, an incomprehensible, ugly, unstructured, pointless excursion into the murkier realms of one of the most confusing screenplays of all times. The movie's plot will no doubt mean more to people who have read Herbert than those who are walking in cold. He later named it the worst movie of the year.
Starting point is 01:11:23 So Dave, very good company. Roger Ebert, probably the most respected film critic in the world, agrees with you. I'm actually so relieved to hear that because I thought that I might get a lot of flack from not liking it. But thank God. I mean, if Ebert is always right, right? Yeah, well, not always. He didn't like, I think, The Matrix was a famous one. He pooed.
Starting point is 01:11:43 But anyway, I, well, actually, this will be relevant for phrasing the bar. He rated the Mummy 3, the highest of the Mummy trilogy, isn't that? Oh, my God. Doesn't that offend you? Doesn't that offended me when I found that out. Yeah, they can't rank. They're all equally perfect. Oh, the third one is where Rachel Weiss isn't in it.
Starting point is 01:12:03 Yeah. Or they recast her? They recast her. Recast. That's right, yeah. And their son is an adult. Yeah. Terrible film.
Starting point is 01:12:10 It's bad. Terrible. But not as bad as June 19. 1984, and while many of the people involved were able to salvage their careers from it, it is also maybe the reason we haven't seen Sting in a lot of things since, or a lot of main roles, since I think a lot of people consider it like the career ruining, or the movie career ruining thing for Sting. And really the only person who was at all happy about the film's failure was one Alejandro Hortarowski, who begrudgingly saw the film and was delighted.
Starting point is 01:12:43 to see how bad it turned out, but he was careful to blame the meddling producers and not Lynch's directing. He actually says, in the documentary, he says, I love David Lynch, and I went along, and as I was watching the movie, I started to feel elated that it was
Starting point is 01:12:59 terrible. Wow. There's always a silver lining for at least one person involved in these terrible movies, either getting made or not getting made. Aja, he also goes, one out of four stars to David Lynch's blue velvet,
Starting point is 01:13:16 which is seen as one of his better ones, right? There you go. Yeah, he mustn't have liked David Lynch. I wouldn't be surprised. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the like. He's got a few biases you can track through his reviews like that where he won't like one thing or something like that. So after the absolute chaos of both Hortorowski and Lynch's attempts at adapting June,
Starting point is 01:13:37 the franchise entered a dark age into the late 80s and 90s, with any expansions on the source material being far more underground. There were several retro video games based on June released around this time, including one that borrowed imagery from the Lynch film. These tended to bear, to fare better than the movies. Westwood Studios, June 2, released in 1992, being considered, you guessed it, one of the most influential video games of all time.
Starting point is 01:14:08 So, wow. A lot of, that has come up a lot in June's legacy. Of note as well were a couple of mid-budget TV shows produced in the early 2000s. A three-episode miniseries called Frank Herbert's June was released in 2000, and a sequel miniseries, Frank Herbert's Children of June, based on the second and third novels, came out in 2003. Here we see the likes of William Hurt and James McAvoy join the franchise's growing list of associated stars. and the series was actually received fairly positively,
Starting point is 01:14:41 but criticised for lacking spectacle, which is to be expected from a TV, an early 2000s TV budget for something like June. Right. Yeah. Luckily though, with the massive innovations in the digital effects boom of the 2000s with films like Lord of the Rings,
Starting point is 01:14:57 Harry Potter and the new Star Wars movies, the famously unfilmable novel was starting to seem a little more filmable, and eventually the reigns of the long, fabled perfect June. adaptation were picked up by French-Canadian director Denny Villeneuve, which is funnily enough, the hardest to pronounce name in this whole report. Denny Villeneuve, I looked it up, I repeated it back at the YouTube lady saying it back
Starting point is 01:15:26 at me and I'm still not sure that I've got. Wasn't there a race car driver called Villanuev? Villeneuve? Yeah, too, Jacques Villeneuve and also his father. I think they're the father-son only world champion, something like that. Wow. Any relation, AJ? Well, I don't know.
Starting point is 01:15:45 How many Villeneuve's are in the world, I guess, is the question. At least three. Yeah. His father, Gilles Villeneuve. Oh, there we go. Yeah, so I kind of think of Denny Villeneuve as like a French version of Christopher Nolan. he is hailed by some of his contemporaries as being one of the best currently working filmmakers. And if you haven't seen them, his films are Prisoners, Arrival, and Blade Runner 2049 are all fucking great.
Starting point is 01:16:19 Probably some of the finest pieces of mainstream cinema of the 2010s, in my humble opinion. And are they all sci-fi? Prisoners is more of like a crime thriller. He also did Sakaria. I haven't seen Sicario, but that's a pretty... famous one of his as well. But yeah, a rival is about like first contact with aliens
Starting point is 01:16:39 and Blade Runner 2049, obviously a sequel to Blade Runner. So Villan... I've got a fact check myself. Got a fact check myself on the F1. I'm so sorry. Gio Villanerve the father only came second in the world championship.
Starting point is 01:16:54 The father... The father... The father... ...to come second. Is that right? Probably... I was thinking of Graham and Damon Hill. Muchly easier to pronounce.
Starting point is 01:17:04 out surname. Dave, don't ever embarrass this podcast again. That was for the one person I knew that. I'm sorry. That was a bad one. That was a really bad one. We may never recover from this. Yeah, I don't think so either.
Starting point is 01:17:21 For sure. You now look worse than sting after the release of 1980s. We've lost the Ecclstein dollars. Is that his name? Sure. What's a race card guy? Matt, you don't ever embarrass this podcast. I am sick of carrying you two by just shutting up because I don't know anything.
Starting point is 01:17:44 Except Mulholland Drive because I wanted AJ's approval. Yeah, and you got it. You got it. There's another one. I forgot there's also Kecky and Nico Rosberg that also won the world championship. Oh my God. All right. We're going to have to kick Dave off the Zoom call.
Starting point is 01:17:58 I think you've done enough damage you, mate. It's actually more common for father-sons to win than non-related drivers. So Denny Villeneuve was and is a perfect fit for Dune, beating both Lynch and Hortorowski by having actually read the books and already been a fan before seeking out the job. Before it was greenlit, he was quoted as saying, a longstanding dream of mine is to adapt June, but it's a long process to get the rights and I don't think I will succeed. So, you know, that's pretty cool that he got to achieve his lifelong. goal when he secured a deal with Warner Bros. To adapt the first novel into two films, presumably because studios were now very aware of how long and arduous this novel was.
Starting point is 01:18:47 I don't think I've ever heard anyone call it Warner Bros. Hey, we're Warner Bros, dude. Is that what the people say? I know it's written Warner Bros. I'm sorry, you've never heard someone call it Warner Bros. No, Warner Bros. Really? Both are acceptable, but I've heard Warner Bros.
Starting point is 01:19:04 What are bros plenty of times. Hey, hey, Warner Bros. And that's funny coming from Australians because we do shorten everything. So you'd think if we were going to call it one or the other, we would go for bros. Does Bros sound, does that sound familiar to you? Warner Bros.
Starting point is 01:19:19 Yeah. Yeah, I've heard both. And you have the bloody theme park over there as well. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Hollywood on the Gold Coast. Okay, so you don't call it. So you do call it.
Starting point is 01:19:29 That'll be it because you have a cultural touchstone that refers to them as brothers. Yeah. Whereas I watched Animaniacs where they call themselves the Warner Bros. Oh no, they do that. What do they say in that? We are the Warner. They say a lot of stuff in Animaniacs, man.
Starting point is 01:19:43 Oh, oh. They say heaps of shit on animation. Hey, Jay, you're just realizing you've made a huge mistake? I'm disconnecting from the Zoom call right now. Jess, what about him? Me and Dave are off the pod for making a mistake, and now him. For this thing that we don't think is a mistake, but still. I couldn't even get a fucking word in, mate.
Starting point is 01:20:02 I like, yeah, the mistake is I call. The floor is yours, kick him off. He kicks himself off. He said, I'm leaving. I'm disconnecting. And I, in my head, I was going, yeah, good instinct. Makes sense. He'd say bros.
Starting point is 01:20:13 I wish David do the same. Yeah, that's true. The biggest film, bro, I've come across. Did you see before when he's told Jess she's got to watch the Godfather? I don't think that's it. You haven't seen the Godfather? I have. I love the idea that I subconsciously without realizing told someone they have to see the Godfather.
Starting point is 01:20:34 What a pastiche I've become. So Villeneuve began writing the screenplay and assembling his cast, which is pretty much every big, exciting name in Hollywood, including you've got Timothy Charlemais as Paul Atreides, Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica, Oscar Isaac as Duke Letto Atreides, Josh Brolin as Gurney Halleck, Stalin Scarsguard as Baron Vladimir Harkonan,
Starting point is 01:21:02 Dave Batista as Raban, Dendaya as Charnie, Charlotte Rampling as Reverend Mother Moheim, Jason Mamor as Duncan Idaho, Javier Bardem as Stilgar and David Desmeltian as Peter DeVries, and joining the cast for the sequel, which released earlier this year, which we didn't really say, but that's part of the reason why I offered to do a June report is because it seemed like the iron was hot to strike the June in the cultural moment that is, right now. Yeah, we want to ride that wave.
Starting point is 01:21:37 Yeah, exactly. We have Austin Butler as Fade, Ratha Harkinen, Florence Pugh, second episode in a row that Florence Pugh has been brought up. She plays Princess... Oh, Florence Pugh.
Starting point is 01:21:48 Yeah, exactly. She pongs. She Pongs. She plays Princess Arulin, Leah Sedu as Lady Margot Fenring, and Christopher Walken, as the Galactic Emperor Shadam the 4th, which is pretty interesting casting
Starting point is 01:22:03 because this is not Walken's first Dune-related role as he famously danced his way through a shopping mall in the music video for the song Weapon of Choice by Fat Boy Slim, which contains the lyrics, Walk Without Rhythm It Won't Attract the Worm, which is a reference to how the Fremen walk in disjointed steps across the Aracus Desert in order to not attract Shy Halud, who can sense rhythmic vibrations in the ground. Wow. Wow. Wow.
Starting point is 01:22:35 And he was also in the presidents of the United States's film clip for Little Blue Dune Buggy. That's not true. Oh, great. I'll add it to the report. So, yeah. Great tune, though. You familiar with the song, everyone? It's such a good song.
Starting point is 01:22:54 Of course. Little Blue Dune Buggie in the sand. Little Blue Dune Buggie in my hand. I think... Little Blue Dune Bucky. Nice. That's going in. You're about...
Starting point is 01:23:12 You're seconds away from asking me to remove that. Can you edit that at? And he won't. Yeah. So, the legendary composer Hans Zimmer scores both films, which I think is nothing against Pink Floyd or Toto, but I think it's a...
Starting point is 01:23:30 It's certainly a more grandiose... person to assign the job. And both films, June and June Part 2, received critical acclaim upon release, but the June curse was still alive and well, with the first film releasing towards what Hollywood will call the tail end of the pandemic. They released it in a baffling cinema slash streaming same-day release on HBO Max. So would you rather go see this literally made for the big screen movie at home or in, you know, do you want to go out to the COVID ravaged streets to go and watch it, how it was intended to be seen? So everything was underperforming financially around this time. But the early streaming release put the sequels fate in question initially.
Starting point is 01:24:22 And also, despite his skill, Villeneuve had also had a pretty bad track record with flops, especially Blade Runner 2049, which is thought by some to have been omitted from the best picture conversation at the 2018 Academy Awards because of its underwhelming box office. Like everyone got rave reviews, but it underperformed financially. And it did win Best Cinematography for Roger Deacons, who's the Stephen Spielberg of cinematography, and that's his first Oscar win and rightly deserved, I think. And have you guys seen, 249? Beautiful film.
Starting point is 01:24:56 I love 25. No, but it's funny to be the Steven Spielberg and still also work in the same industry as Stevenson. Sorry, sorry. I'm talking about Roger Dinkins, the cinematographer, the director of photography, not the director. No, yeah, I still find that. Surely he's more like the Jacques Villeneuve of cinematography. Certainly not the Gilles Villeneuve coming second. Terrible.
Starting point is 01:25:19 I've watched about half of it, the first half, and I was going to come back to it. So you're the reason that underperformed then is what you're. you're telling me. Yeah, it was just, you know, it was, it seemed pretty good.
Starting point is 01:25:30 That's Ryan Gosling. Uh, yeah. And am I right? Is David Patista in it as well? He is. He's got tiny little glasses and these glasses that I... Yeah, and they clip off in the middle,
Starting point is 01:25:41 right? I remember that about it. I should go back to that. That was pretty good. I bought, bought these glasses partially inspired by Dave Batista's little glasses and Blade Runner 2049.
Starting point is 01:25:51 And they're working. Thank you so much. The cast for June's really interesting with, because quite a few. of them are maybe most famous for being in big sci-fi blockbusters as well, like Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars and stuff like that. Yeah, exactly. Aquaman.
Starting point is 01:26:08 Yeah. Is that a sci-fi blockbuster? Sure. Absolutely. I don't know. The difference in sci-fi and fantasy is tricky. I know... Fantacies typically...
Starting point is 01:26:16 Star Trek is sci-fi and fantasy Star Wars. Is that right? Well, I would call Star... This is so nerdy. And it's even worse that I sincerely went in to say this. I would classify Star Wars. Wars as a space opera more than a fantasy. But people often say, like, Star Wars is what happens when you take a sci-fi.
Starting point is 01:26:34 Well, when you take a fantasy and put it in sci-fi's clothing, basically. Right. Fantasy tends to be about magic, whereas sci-fi tends to be about, like, scientific concepts that are, you know, presented as possible in what we know of science currently, I guess. That makes sense. Yeah. That's actually the first thing that's made sense to me this episode. So luckily the sequel was greenlit soon after the first film premiered, got rave reviews,
Starting point is 01:27:07 and Warner Brothers were like, well, we're going to green light this. I think they waited too long. I think that they should have greenlit them at the same time so that June part two could have come out like 10 months later. I think that they lost a lot because probably the most common and probably most valid criticism of June part one is that structurally it feels like half a story. It's very long. It's two and a half hours long or so, but it does, structurally, the movie watching self that has been, you know, you've been watching movies your whole life, you get to the end and there is a feeling of like, oh, it feels like we're just getting started. I really like it, but that is a
Starting point is 01:27:50 valid complaint of the film. And also, I have a dumb brain, so I had to watch it a few times to fully understand all the wonderful terminology. It was my first introduction to the franchise was watching that movie. Yeah. Part two, though, seems to have a much more unanimous acclaim with many film commentators, myself included, seeing it as a landmark achievement in filmmaking whose influence, like the source material, will be seen in future films.
Starting point is 01:28:20 for years to come. This is the dark night of the 2020s. This is the, or, um, I don't know, remember when Mad Max Ferry Road came out and it feels like it was the biggest thing ever. June part two, I think, is going to be the movie that gets imitated the most in probably the next five to ten years, I think, anyway. Wow. Is it, is it a box office head as well?
Starting point is 01:28:45 Yeah, it's doing really well, both, uh, critically and, uh, at the box office. The only person who doesn't seem to like the new June movies is maybe Alejandro Otorowski. To be fair, I couldn't find a quote from him after the movies released, but before they came out, he was very sort of sour puss about it and being like, oh. He was waiting for Paul to sprog a whole field in the desert. Yeah, it's wrong. He did say he would see it, though, but no word on what he thought of it.
Starting point is 01:29:19 Which that actually means a lot from him. Yeah, yeah, totally. I think... He said, I'll hate watch it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll wait till it's on a streamer and I'll hate watch it then. Mm, hmm. An open world MMO video game titled June Awakening is currently in production,
Starting point is 01:29:36 which looks to be set in the, specifically in the universe of the new films. And another TV show titled June Prophecy is in development at HBO Max. Sorry, Max. It's just called now, because dropping you. your brand name from your product is a smart business decision. June prophecy is set to focus on the origins of the Benegeserate thousands of years before the events of the films. And finally, Villeneuve also recently announced that he is in fact working on a screenplay
Starting point is 01:30:06 for the third film, June Messiah. I did look up like, what's the deal with the other sequels? So Frank Herbert wrote six films and I found a Reddit thread that says, how filmable is the rest of the Dune series? And most people are saying that June Messiah and Children of June will work. God Emperor of June could maybe be a TV series, but the other two books, which are called Chapter House Dune and... What was the other one?
Starting point is 01:30:36 Chapter House June. That's the sick one. It's not good. No, it's my least favorite title of the bunch. Yeah, something about... Heretics of June and Chapter House June. are apparently very unfriendly to adapting. I saw a comment that said that the books five and six will be harder to adapt
Starting point is 01:30:57 because they're very philosophical, a lot of talking and has, quote, weird sex stuff in them. Okay, now I'm listening. Finally. And they're saying you can't make it because of the weird sex stuff. Exactly. Get the holy mountain go. back on.
Starting point is 01:31:19 Yeah, yeah. He sounds like this would be right up his alley. Exactly, exactly. Uh, yeah, that is, that's my report on the unfilmable novel that was eventually filmed and split into two films. And finally, given the illustrious cinematic treatment that it's so, so deserved for over, over 50, nearly 60 years. Yeah, wow.
Starting point is 01:31:40 The author of the films went, did you say he wrote, did he write screenplays for the books as well? Or he, I believe, did he never. candid them to Oh, sorry, Frank Herbert, do you mean? Yeah. So he wrote a script that are based on the first film, and that was going to be the Ridley Scott one, that Ridley Scott then ditched.
Starting point is 01:32:00 And when David Lynch came on, he wrote his own version. I didn't include too much about that because this was already very long and it seemed like the less interesting unmade films. How long did he survive, Herbert? He died in 1986, so a couple of years after he, was able to see his work sullied by David Lynch. Oh, no. Sting killed him.
Starting point is 01:32:24 Yeah. Oh, no. Good one, Stings. See Sting in those little underpants just was too much for him. Exactly. Little underpants. It's really interesting. He had a heart attack in his balls.
Starting point is 01:32:40 So there it is. There's a regret face. Yes. The, like, the aesthetic for, the Harkinans in the new films is like pale, like painted on white, like body paint, very black and white, dark, very creepy. I think in the original books, it's kind of a vaguely homophobic, very camp depiction is what the Harkinins are in the book. And in the David Lynch movie, it's just they're all ginger. They're all ginger and don't wear a lot of clothes. So a bit like you, Matt. That sounds pretty good. So yeah. Well, do you want to read it now, Dave?
Starting point is 01:33:23 I guess that's the question at the end of the episode. I think I want to see the films. They sound like much more palatable. Like the new ones that is, I'll never go back to this to the Lynch one. My God. There's not enough lifetimes. But the novel itself, now you've said the fact that the main character has 58 different names. He's the Messiah for 30 different cultures.
Starting point is 01:33:48 It does, and the fact that the names, apart from Paul and Duncan, seem a bit full on. I wonder how I'll go. Yeah, Jessica, ugh. That's a mouthful. Yeah. I'm going to give it a crack and see how I go. Nice. Because I think the only way I'll get anywhere near reading it is by listening to Book Cheat and talk about it.
Starting point is 01:34:10 Yeah, I'll do it so you don't have to. Okay. I'll sacrifice myself. There you go. Because you'll cut off your arms if it means putting out a good episode of Book Cheat. Exactly. And my child is currently training in seven different types of martial. It has nothing to do with the podcast, but, you know, sacrifices must be made.
Starting point is 01:34:31 Far out. AJ, thank you so much for that. What an absolute treat. Of course. Thank you so much for putting in the terms that we could understand. Yeah. Simpletons like us. For me as well.
Starting point is 01:34:41 Now I fully get it. Yeah. Zertog took over the empire. of sand. Yep. He was snorting up mushrooms. Yep. And yeah, in the end, they sploged a new meadow.
Starting point is 01:34:57 Yep. In the desert. Absolutely. And flew off into space and saved the universe. So, easy. Yeah, I said, my work here is done. See, yeah, Horterowski understands that for some of life's hard questions, there are very easy answers, I think,
Starting point is 01:35:12 is what he can see than none of his other artists could see. There's no easier answer to any question. question for me than saying, no. That's a no. That's a nir for me. That's how we talk. Sorry, I went full Australian then.
Starting point is 01:35:30 NERR. NER. AJ, thank you so much for that. Do you feel like hang around for everyone's favourite section? Oh, it's everyone's favourite section? I've got to. I need to stay around it for it, because I edit these, I need to stay around for it to actually speed you guys through it, I think, because
Starting point is 01:35:47 Sometimes the edit job on some of these episodes is already harrowing And then I check the duration And we've only just got to everyone's favourite section And it's got another hour left to go Sorry, that's true Just in case some people are going to ditch us now I don't think they ever will Because this is the favourite section of the show
Starting point is 01:36:06 Or if people are tuning in now Because I've skipped ahead to this section Your enthusiasm for movies and popular culture is infectious We love hearing you talk about it AJ And people can hear you talk about it regularly on your own podcast called Popshire. Correct. So I have a podcast, get this, we're much less well known than you guys are, but we've been going for about the same amount of time, which I always thought was kind of fun,
Starting point is 01:36:28 that like we're entering like our eighth year now, I think. So there is a massive backlog of episodes. I wouldn't necessarily recommend going back too far. But yeah, we do a show called Cold Popcher where every two weeks we do something called film franchise fortnights where we look at a different, we watch an entire film franchise and discuss it with me and my co-host Richard. And Matt is actually just been on an episode, a crossover episode between primates and Colpopshire where we looked at two films called Space Chimps and Space Chimps to Zartog's
Starting point is 01:37:04 Revenge. No, Zartog strikes back. No, it's not out yet. I think Richard still edited. At the time of this episode coming out though, I mean. Yeah, yeah, it comes out on Monday. So, yeah. So I'll put it out in the primates feed.
Starting point is 01:37:17 So you can find it primates and cult pop char. Yes, please. I also, if anyone's interested, I don't usually plug this as much, but I'm also like an amateur filmmaker with a filmmaking crew called One Dollar Genre that where I've been asked by my producers to use every connection I have to try and get one dollar genre more seen. So we make a short film every month that is, based on a genre that gets chosen by the Patreon we set up for it. So that's also something I do if anyone wants to see, wants to see me put my money where my
Starting point is 01:37:53 mouth is and actually make a film instead of just talk about it. I love that. I didn't know about that. I'm going to check it out. It's awesome. You must be the busiest man in New Zealand Hollywood. I truly, oh, it's certainly in Christchurch. That's you and Peter Jackson, right?
Starting point is 01:38:06 Totally, yeah. The big two. Peter Jackson's too busy rigging mayoral elections, which is a story for another time. when I come and do my slanderous Peter Jackson report for you guys. Wow. Love it. What is New Zealand Hollywood called? Auckland.
Starting point is 01:38:22 Just the New Zealand film industry. Well, I mean, if you go to Wellington, they do have what I consider to be a pretty, like, gross, ugly, Welliewood sign on the hill when you fly in. I think it's pretty stupid. Wellywood. Yeah. I disagree. I think that rules.
Starting point is 01:38:39 That's awesome. Yeah, that's great. That's weird that the windy city's got something that's. so derivative like that. So the way this... I don't get it. But they laughed. Chicago's Windy City.
Starting point is 01:38:53 Wellington also calls itself the Windy City. So I was saying it's funny that they do some derivative but I called them. That is good stuff. Can you beat Chicago on a good day though? That's the question because you famously can't beat Wellington on a good day. Oh wow. I love...
Starting point is 01:39:07 Wellington is so good. I love visiting Wellington. Nice. Beautiful city. Thank you so. On behalf of a city I don't live in, thank you. Cross Church, another beautiful city. Beautiful place.
Starting point is 01:39:18 New Zealand's just a beautiful country. Yeah, thank you. Everyone should go. No, don't come here. We're already dealing with the fallout of the American politics is taken over here now as well. Everyone should go to New Zealand. Everybody book your tickets. That had a little ring of fuck off we're full about it, AJ.
Starting point is 01:39:39 That's our thing. The psychological is the American sentiment that seems to have come over this way but you're right maybe I need to carefully examine how I'm expressing that concern
Starting point is 01:39:54 So anyway AJ This next part of the show is everyone's favourite section Where we thank some of our fantastic supporters If you want to get involved Go to patreon.com Have you ever been a Patreon, AJ?
Starting point is 01:40:07 I actually am currently a patron You are a fricking led to So I give you some of the money back that you give me to. That is stupid. Yeah. Well, the thing is, though, because we have people, like, on our team as well that pay for our Patreon for the various benefits. But it's like, Patreon doesn't give you an option to give people, like, a comp. Exactly.
Starting point is 01:40:30 Yeah. So. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Why would they? Because they get a cut from people just passing their support around their friends. Exactly.
Starting point is 01:40:39 Dogs. Nah, good on them. The good people. We love them and we rely on them, but, you know, it's a perfect system. Patreon.com slash diggeron pod is where you can support us. And if you want to do that, there's a bunch of different rewards. I think Jess is probably in the best place to explain some of these. The seat to the left of you.
Starting point is 01:40:56 Yes, it is the best place for it. So the benefits. Yes. Voting on topics. Yes. Two out of three, you're voting on. There's also early access to live shows, to tickets, to live streams we do some discounts to the tickets as well.
Starting point is 01:41:13 There you get access to the Facebook group, which is the nicest corner of the internet. Yes, where I've started semi regularly when I'm in different places. I've been doing some Patreon catch-ups, which have been really fun. Very nice. We've got one coming up in Melbourne tonight at the time of recordings already happened, and it was a great time.
Starting point is 01:41:28 Beautiful time. No one else showed up, but it was, I just think it was nice for me to hang out. Yeah. You know, you know. It's nice for you to hang out. It was nice for me to hang out. It's nice for you to get a break. Yes.
Starting point is 01:41:39 And we also do three bonus episodes a month, just moving on from Matt being sad and alone. So, yeah, let's thank some of our wonderful patriarchal. I'm interstate Matt, otherwise, I would have been there. I swear to you, I would have been there. And Jess? And I am busy. Yeah, you're supporting your friends. I'm supporting my friends at my home.
Starting point is 01:41:58 Yeah, yeah. Good on you. I'm my own friend. But somehow we came all the way around for you to sound as sad as me. So anyway, the first thing we do is called the fact quote of question section. for people who signed up on the Sydney Seanberg deluxe memorial level and this actually has a little
Starting point is 01:42:15 jingle go, something like this. Fact quote or question. It was too high pitch for the... You always remember the ding. I mean, we didn't hear it. Too high pitch for the Zoom audio gate. Oh, really? You couldn't hear that? I was...
Starting point is 01:42:29 I'm sure. Honestly, because you paused for so long I thought, oh my God, have I done it wrong? What's happening? Yeah, was uncomfortable because we could see you, ding, but we couldn't. hear you ding. Sorry, man, silently ding and then pause and look sand. So the way this works is people can give us a fact, quote, or a question or a
Starting point is 01:42:52 suggestion if they're on the Sydney-Shaunberg level. I'll read them out then for the first time. That's just excusing myself for mucking up pronunciations or them saying something crook. But the first one this week is from Amelia Todd. And they also get to give themselves a title. Amelia's title is still the official website quality assurance tester. Bloody hell, Amelia, doing God's work there. And Amelia has a question writing,
Starting point is 01:43:15 Hi, guys, on a recent episode, one of your patrons, Tessa, wrote in saying she's having a baby due in August. I'm also having a baby due in August. Wow. If Tessa is listening, I wanted to wish her loads, lots of good vibes for the remainder of her pregnancy and beyond.
Starting point is 01:43:32 Ah, that's pretty appropriate. That's like a sci-fi sort of thing to say, isn't it? It's exactly like a sci-fi thing. Yeah, you're right. We're about halfway there already. Also, since it came up in the last conversation, I'm a Virgo. Another Virgo, virgin, virgin birth. But, you know, like Jesus.
Starting point is 01:43:56 Anyway, I sort of like space pool. Yeah, yeah. Now on to my question. I'd love to hear any tips and advice you guys have for a soon-to-be-new parent like myself. It's possible Dave's might be the most relevant since he welcomed in a little one of his own recently. Congratulations, Dave. But I'd love to hear from Jess and Matt as well, or whoever else is there. It's a guest episode. Oh, that's nice. That's good. P.S. I listen to all the ads. Thank you for listening to all the ads. Dave, I'm going to ask you
Starting point is 01:44:23 to sit this one out. I think between AJ Matt and I, we have got some good parenting tips. I think maybe better than anyone. AJ currently lives next to a kindergarten. Yeah, that's true. Not for long, though. I'm moving out in about a week into an apartment. And that's definitely. not because of the sound of children. Parenting tips. What do we got? What are we got? What are your earliest memories of your parents? What are the things that you remember? You still remember the things that you're so grateful they did for you when you were young. One time when I was a kid, it was raining outside, and I had sort of just connected that people called rain showers. So I asked if I could shower
Starting point is 01:45:02 outside, and they said, yeah, go for it. So I ran out into the backyard nude while my parents just kind of watched and then my brother threw a bar of soap at me. So I think that would be, that would be a tip. And you cracked him round the head with your jujitsu. Yeah, that's right. Jess jitschis jits. Ju jist jits. So that's my advice, I guess.
Starting point is 01:45:25 Wait, what is that exactly if you're going to put that into advice? Let them run around, dude. Let them learn. Let them learn. Live and learn. That's right. Let your little freak run around. I wrote my mum, I just remember just doing.
Starting point is 01:45:38 and all these lovely little things. And she, she has told me since, because she went back to work when I was, I don't know, nine or seven or something. And she's like, oh,
Starting point is 01:45:47 I can't, she sort of feels bad. I'm like, no, you don't have to feel bad. Because I remember, I don't remember any of those times anyway. The main things I remember the things she did do.
Starting point is 01:45:56 Like, yeah, making Play-Doh for us, you know, homemade Play-Doh, making this book that, I can't even remember what it was rewarding, but it was like different pictures and we get to color,
Starting point is 01:46:05 like there was one that was heaps of scoops of ice cream on a cone. Yep. And every certain thing that I did, I don't know, read a book or something, we'd get to shade it in a different color and put a little star sticker on and stuff. That's pretty fun. I remember, I just remember sweet stuff like that. So I think you could probably get more hung up on the things you do wrong, but just enjoy the good times probably.
Starting point is 01:46:25 And don't be too hard on your kid because, well, whatever. I don't fucking know. Yeah. Yeah, my advice. My advice would be. I don't know why you asking me. My advice would be that you should always put your kid first unless you feel you have a divine calling to direct a movie
Starting point is 01:46:44 based on this unadaptable novel, in which case sacrifice anything including your child to get them made. Your arms or your cello. Yeah. Arms or torso. Yeah. And with everyone having given advice, I think we can move on.
Starting point is 01:46:59 Fantastic. Thank you, Amelia. I know we should say, Dave, anything coming to? mind there, Dave? As an expert. As an expert, yeah, as someone who's been a father for about 50 days at the time of recording. As a father. As a father. I would just say, have you ever had that father? I have. I have. Funny thing. I would say at the moment, I'm just taking it one day at a time, and that is good for the fun moments, for the harder moments, maybe in the middle of the night,
Starting point is 01:47:30 but it's all good. And when we first found out we were pregnant, you know, you go to the hospital And I say we, my wife was pregnant. We went to the hospital and they give you like a pamphlet and stuff. And one of the things was like, you got to, you should come up with a mantra, a mantra for when you're, for while you're pregnant. And when you have the baby, you make you keep coming back, something positive. And the mantra we came up with was a bigger fuckheads than us have had babies. Yes. Absolutely true.
Starting point is 01:47:56 So we've had heaps of them. Exactly. So how hard can it be? You'll be okay. Just trust yourself. Take it one day at a time and try and enjoy it. Pretty full on way to talk about your parents, Dave. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:48:07 That's right. One of my friends went, cavemen did this. I can't be fucking it up that badly. Exactly. That's great. Yeah. And you've got a blog.
Starting point is 01:48:18 You've got blogs you can read. Yeah. They didn't have blogs. You've got all these things you can read to feel like you're doing a bad job. Yeah, that's right. You know, it's good to have things to compare to on blogs, mummy bloggers and whatnot. They're the best people.
Starting point is 01:48:29 Yeah. And also, Dave's been telling us that, he hardly goes a conversation without someone going, oh, hope you don't need a good night's sleep for the next 25 years. So, yeah, look forward to that as well. That's why also I don't want to give advice because, you know, one, I've got no idea what I'm doing.
Starting point is 01:48:49 And then also you have so many people that will give you unsolicited advice. I do like the idea. It's like with most things where people universalize their experience, they go, so it was hard for me in this way. So it will be for everyone else. Yes. Yeah, that's what I worry about too. I don't want to come across as being like,
Starting point is 01:49:07 this is exactly what happened to me and it will happen at you. But this is quite literally solicited advice, Dave. Yes. I think you're okay here. But what I will say is, a huge congratulations. How exciting. How exciting. August babies.
Starting point is 01:49:22 Yeah, it's going to be the best. Good luck. And Godspeed. The next one comes from Nick Fidion. And Nick Fidion is, Also known as the luckiest man alive version two. Wow. The long-awaited update edition.
Starting point is 01:49:40 Oh my God, Nick Fidion. And Nick Fidion's got a fact writing, best wedding ever. Oh. As requested about five months ago, we have an update about my wife, Lucy and I, who got married on the 28th of October last year. Unfortunately, Matt, neither of us have an auntie Faye to have a few too many shandies or a rat bag of an uncle Bill. I remember saying this thing.
Starting point is 01:50:06 This is the best kind of fact quota question where it like earnestly and sincerely and lovingly references a conversation from two months ago that you've forgotten. Mate, I've forgotten what we talked about three seconds ago. Well, that was mainly because it was AJ spouting nonsense. That's true. Because that's Hatterack.
Starting point is 01:50:30 Nick goes on, however Lucy does have a brother who didn't realize driving licenses go out of date or that he would need one to drive Lucy's car on the day of the wedding. That's very good. Luckily, we have other family members who can legally drive and are willing to pick up wedding buffets. Man, Lucy's brother is so clever. Oh, I'd love to go collect the buffet.
Starting point is 01:50:54 My license is expired. Can I have a look at that? No, no, no, no. No, it's definitely expired. I could do it if you want to. risk, you know, me going to jail. Yeah, but you would have to wear the fine. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:51:08 Okay, I've already had to rent a new suit. Yeah. Rent a new suit. Yes. Nick goes on, luckily for us, but unfortunately for you, nothing went drastically wrong on the day. Though we do know Plato was dropped on the vicar from a balcony. What are the odds of Plato coming up twice in five minutes?
Starting point is 01:51:26 Yeah. We had a 26-year-old bubble boy in place of a flower girl. Love it. It's the mopes. It's a little Sinefeld, bubble boy reference. And the efficient forgot how to say Lucy's surname after knowing her for roughly 15 years. That happens to me sometimes.
Starting point is 01:51:50 I'm saying a show and you're like, oh my God, I am blanking. All in all, it was a wonderful day. It was especially nice at the end of the day, noticing we'd got a message from Dave via Patreon, wishing us many, many congratulations. Listening to your podcast together. Oh, yes. That's right.
Starting point is 01:52:05 So I somehow remembered on the day of their wedding. That's right. Yes. It's their wedding today. So I messes them on the day of their wedding. They said they read it as they were falling asleep that night. So you know what they'd just been up to? Smoking a cigarette.
Starting point is 01:52:20 Losing their burgo status. Listening to your podcast together and getting RSVPs via fact quota question has been a joy for both of us. Apologies for the Delahueger. on sending this in and sorry it's so long, but Jess did say last time that I could have gushed more. Also, because I haven't gushed yet, let me do that now. Lucy looks so beautiful on the day and I think I did post a photo in the Facebook group a while back and my love for her has only continued to grow since then. The first five months of marriage have been truly wonderful, well, honeymoon period and I'm looking for so, so many more.
Starting point is 01:53:00 It's all down here for me, right? Lucy makes me so happy every day and it's always the highlight of my day when I get home from work to spend time with her I truly am so lucky to be with her sorry again for the long slash late message and thank you for indulging me slash us Nick you big old sweetie
Starting point is 01:53:18 Thank you for the update Thank you for gushing Congratulations again to you and to Lucy We've got a gusher is what you might say I wouldn't Is that from anything Is that a good
Starting point is 01:53:30 It is now. Yeah, great. All right, next one comes from Adam Kripinski and Ortropchinsky. Oh my God, so sorry. It was definitely the first one, I think. Okay. Adam's title is official mover and shaker. Wow.
Starting point is 01:53:50 And he's got a fact writing, since we've been having problems with the stove being way too hot, I was able to obtain a new stove. Oh. Unfortunately, it makes everything way too cold. So on another note I got the So basically I got the
Starting point is 01:54:06 Tripitch Club a new freezer Great and I mean like thank you Adam But like The problem is everything is too hot You've just taken one problem And turn into a different kind of problem Adam Jesus Thank you like nice thought
Starting point is 01:54:20 But fuck Adam But thank you Thank you I really appreciate it Even if my tone says otherwise And finally, from Nathan L. Okay, senior executive of delegating Jessus do go on work to Dave. That's correct.
Starting point is 01:54:38 I do the least here, and as it should be. Nathan has a fact as well. I take the ball for me. Writing. Hey, gays. Hey, guys. Hey, guys. Hey, guys.
Starting point is 01:54:54 I have listened to your entire catalogue of episodes, and I'm currently on my second run through. And for some episodes, my third or fourth time. Before you think I'm too crazy, I work in parcel delivery, so 40 hours of my week are on the road with an earbud in which allows me to binge several episodes in a row. Your show has become something of a comfort listen to me.
Starting point is 01:55:14 Anyways, I noticed that a previous fact quota question prompt made a small mistake to you, but quite a large error to me. When talking about American President Andrew Jackson and the relocation of Native Americans, a typo was made that then made all of you ask the wrong question. to the prompt. Oh. Andrew Jackson was behind the trail of tears, not the trial of tears.
Starting point is 01:55:37 The trail of tears was the force displacement of five civilized tribes of indigenous peoples by the US government and is quite the dark time in American and Native history, which is why you may hear many Americans with native ancestors talk extremely unfavorably of President Jackson. There are many Native Americans who now live west of the Mississippi River. while their ancestors were originally from what is now the southeastern US, myself included. This was part of the Indian Removal Act and hopefully the of Tears part of the name for the trail route they force natives on gives you a picture of how that went down without getting too far into it here.
Starting point is 01:56:20 Anyways, this was just an update for you all and listeners who may not know too much about the US and Native American relationship during the early years of the country and were confused about a trial instead of a trail. I'm pretty sure this update also fits the criteria of a grim fact. And as the expert on grim facts, I can say yes, you are correct. That is a very grim fact. So Dave, as my title suggests, could you please ask Jess if you may ask Matt if this is a grim fact and then return to Jess with Matt's answer? Okay, I'll withhold judgment actually. I'm going to have a think about it. Don't worry, Jess. I'll make sure Dave stops slacking and gets back to your work from here on out. Thanks, guys.
Starting point is 01:57:02 Thank you so much. I'm on it. I'm on it. Oh, they've just done it. And, yeah, Jess, can you tell Dave? Is that right? No, Dave, Dave, has to tell me. Oh, Dave. I sit here and do nothing.
Starting point is 01:57:13 Dave, can you tell Jess that, yeah, that is a grim fact? Can I do anything to help here? Oh, yeah, actually, AJ, can you pass this on to Jess? Because actually, she said something to me that was mean off here before and I'm not talking to her. Can you please tell Jess that this is a grim fact and also, fuck you. Yes. Dave says it is a grim fact
Starting point is 01:57:29 and also, what are you doing for lunch later? Do you want to hang out? No. I think the Zoom call is the internet's cutting out. This is one of those games of telephone where the message has got wildly mixed up.
Starting point is 01:57:43 First you couldn't hear me ding and then he couldn't hear me fuck you. Interesting. You couldn't hear me fuck you. The next thing we like to do is shout out to a few of other great great supporters. Thank you for moving on.
Starting point is 01:57:56 And I think, Just really, we've got a great opportunity to make AJ do my work. The work here. Yes. So what's the thing? He could give him a, he could give him like a Dune name or something. He's got an idea. I've got the, I've got the Wikipedia page open for Glossory of Dune.
Starting point is 01:58:16 I thought we could take the first letter of their first name and I'll find a corresponding piece of Dune jargon for them. Love it. June jargon. June jargon. Yes, love that. All right. If I can kick us off, I'd love to thank from the windy city, but not the northern hemisphere's windy city, Chicago in Illinois, United States. Mike Joyce.
Starting point is 01:58:37 Thank you so much. Mike Joyce. So on M, we've got the maker hooks, which are the hooks used for capturing, mounting and steering the sandworms of Iraqis. So the Freeman actually ride shy hallood. They worship and ride shy hallood across the desert. It's how they migrate. Ah, cool. Mike Joyce, what a beautiful tribute that is.
Starting point is 01:59:03 You're the hook. Next up from, ooh, address unknown, can only assume from deep within the fortress of the moles. Please. And thank you to Dave Hancock. Dave Hancock, we've got D wolves, like the letter D and then wolves, which are the guardians of the Serere on Arachus in the time of Leto 2 Atradis. Ferocious wolves descending from gazehounds and originally wolves noted for their keen eyesight. That's awesome. But, AJ, you can say dick on the show.
Starting point is 01:59:39 Thank you. They're dick wolves. And finally, for me, from Carrollton in Texas. It's Monday, Carrie. Monday. Monday, so M we're going to? Yep. M or C, whatever you prefer.
Starting point is 01:59:58 Let's go. Missionary. Protectiva, which is an arm of the Benegeserate, charged with spreading contrived myths, prophecies and superstition on primitive worlds so that the Benegesirate may later exploit those regions. Wow. Now that makes you think.
Starting point is 02:00:17 That is grim stuff. May I thank some people? Yes, please. I would love to thank from Sacramento. Oh my God. California. Capital City. Go Kings if this exists as a basketball team.
Starting point is 02:00:30 thumbs up. I would love to thank Trent Casperus. Trent Casperus, I'm going to give you thinking machines, which are intelligent and sentient machines created in the likeness of a human mind and thus
Starting point is 02:00:46 abolished in the Baltarian jihad, which I think this, June heads will get mad at me if I get this wrong, but I think that refers to when all computers, all computer technology was wiped out in the timeline of June. AJ, is that, could you pinpoint the moment when Herbert stopped trying?
Starting point is 02:01:09 Was it around the time he came up with thinking machines? Probably, yeah, yeah. Thinking machines. Next I would like to thank from Appleby in Great Britain, Henry Smith. I've been to Appleby, beautiful village, beautiful town, yeah. When have you been to Appleby? A few years ago I hired a car
Starting point is 02:01:30 I had a friend who was His family was from there Went out and checked out the village green There was a little market on it was beautiful Check out the Irish pub gorgeous Yeah might have So Henry For Henry I've got
Starting point is 02:01:42 The Holtzman effect Which is the scientific phenomenon That makes among other things Instantaneous Space Travel And defensive force shields possible Whoa Pretty cool stuff Henry. That's actually pretty huge. Yeah. And finally for me, I would love to thank
Starting point is 02:02:03 from Helston, also in Great Britain, Sophie Law. Sophie, we've got a lot of options for us. Let's go still suit, which is the body enclosing garment of Fremen, which the design performs the functions of heat dissipation and filtering bodily waste as well as retaining and reclaiming moisture. So in June, when they're in the desert, they'll wear these tight black suits that are designed to, when you sweat, when you piss, when any water leaves your body, it recycles it back into your system so that you stay hydrated in the desert. So you're drinking your own piss, essentially. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 02:02:48 Big piss drinkers. I wonder they're focusing on the bloody spice. Yeah, yeah. Not the big selling point. What are you going to watch that spice down with? Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Dave, do you want to thank some people as well?
Starting point is 02:03:05 I would love to thank from Frankston South in Victoria. It's Beck Dunn, which is so close to Beck Dunn. Wow. And also close to Beck Duncan. And also kind of close to Benegisra, but we've already just talked about that one. So I'll look for another one. Let's go.
Starting point is 02:03:21 Buddha Islam, which is the term for the religions derived from the syncretic fusion of denominations of Buddhism and Islam. So in June, they just combined all the religions, basically, to save time, I think. Sure. Oh, okay. Why haven't we thought of that? Well, that happens over the next 10,000 years, right?
Starting point is 02:03:39 Yeah, 10,000 years. It takes time. Takes time. That's how long I think that Janie was in the lamp in Aladdin, is not? 10,000 years. Gives you a mighty crick in the neck. Yeah, absolutely. I would also like to thank from Chicago, Illinois,
Starting point is 02:03:55 again from the Wendy City, a big shout out to Felipe Cabrera. Is that Felipe with a P or an F? Oh, it's with an F. Oh, that's lucky. Nearly went straight to P. I would have looked like an idiot. That's what June people do when they're looking for a drink. Straight to pee!
Starting point is 02:04:12 Let's go fish speakers, which is an all-female military force created by Leto Atreides to enforce his rule over the known universe. Hell yeah Fish speakers Shit yeah Fish speakers right on Fish speakers right on again
Starting point is 02:04:32 Yeah this is past This is past phoning it in Fish speakers How did he do it? He came up with his own law It's the most sexy It sounds like he's not trying But what you've got to understand
Starting point is 02:04:44 As June was so influential That people just didn't talk about fish Before June came along Yeah Yeah And finally from me I'd like to think from Bakery Hill, also in
Starting point is 02:04:57 Victoria. Thank you to Kath Martin. Kath with a sea. Man, how good is Bakery Hills? Kath with a Sea. Sorry, yes, Kath with a Sea. Let's go for chome or combine on it OberAdvanceer
Starting point is 02:05:13 Mercantiles, the Universal Development Corporation controlled by the Emperor and Great Houses with the Guild and Benazer Jesuit as silent partners. This corporation essentially controls the economy of the known universe with shares and directorships determining each house's income and financial leverage. Very fun.
Starting point is 02:05:36 Good stuff. That sounds like that might have been more influential on the prequels of Star Wars. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, thank you so much to Kath, Philippe, Beck, Sophie, Henry, Trent, Monday, Dave and Mark. And the last thing we need to do was welcome a few people into the Triptitch Cup. We've got five inductees. this week.
Starting point is 02:05:56 Jess, you want to explain what the Triptitch Club Club is? Triptitch Club is like a cool club for cool people. And once you've
Starting point is 02:06:03 supported the show for three consecutive years on the shoutout level or above, you are welcomed graciously into the club. We've got everything you could ever possibly need.
Starting point is 02:06:14 You want to have a nap, go for it. You want to ride a unicorn, you got it. You want a soup that's far too hot. Have I got you covered? Yes.
Starting point is 02:06:23 Matt's behind, Matt is lifting up the velvet rope. That's right. I got the door list here. You got five names on it this week. Dave's behind the booking desk, booking a band. And Dave, who have you booked this this week?
Starting point is 02:06:36 You are never, ever going to believe it. Because before this, I never do. Before this episode, I actually had no idea what this even meant, of course. But this is amazing that I've booked this band, a metal band that I haven't thought of in a long time until I booked them for this show. Shai Hulud is here today. Oh, my God. Wow.
Starting point is 02:06:55 Can you believe? And they will be performing on giant worms. Wow. Awesome. They're not suffering from them. Yeah, but no, I mean giant worms, but like in our reality, you know, earthworms. They're performing on top of earthworms.
Starting point is 02:07:11 Big earthworms. But quite some of the biggest ones you've ever seen in your garden. So now I've got to also come up with some catering for worms. Thanks for the heads up, Dave. Sorry, but sorry, sorry. Fucking out. What are they going to have on their rider? They love soup.
Starting point is 02:07:25 They love it hot too. Some like it hot. And when the phrase some like it hot was referring to worms. I've actually so lost. I've lost the thread of the joke of why worms eat soup. I'm trying to yes and you guys, but I'm like, yeah, and the worms, they eat soup. That's right. They eat soup.
Starting point is 02:07:45 Yeah. Hey, Jay. You add it, but do you listen to the show? All right, Jess, you've worked on something behind the bar. You've got a, you've worked on something behind the bar. You've got to drink this week. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I filled martini glasses with sand. Oh, yeah, great. Drink up.
Starting point is 02:08:02 Yummy. And, yeah, you know, everyone provides their own June-style drinks this week. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, bring out the bubble. You can have one complimentary glass of water and then that should do you. Yeah, that just keeps sucking around. All right, so five names here. What do we give?
Starting point is 02:08:17 What's AJ's role here? because Dave is on the stage. He's going to see him seeing the show. I'm going to welcome in the new guest, the new inductees into the Triptitch Club. AJ can do my job and just hype Dave up. Just go like, yay. Dave hipes them up with some sort of weak wordplay or whatever
Starting point is 02:08:32 based on their name or where they're from. And then, yeah, AJ, you can just try and make Dave feel okay about it because he'll run out of steam otherwise. My brain is going for dune-themed theme ways to encourage someone. I'm like, oh, okay. Just cheer him on. All right. So first up, please welcome from Biss Hampton in maybe Worcestershire in Great Britain. It's Alex Pater.
Starting point is 02:08:58 Alex, let me give you a patter on the back as you run on through. Yes, yes. There it is. That was June-Royating. From London in Great Britain. I'd love to welcome in Jamie Alcantara. Jamie, you are my number. You ain't lay me. You ain't lay me, man.
Starting point is 02:09:18 Oh, the man cannot be stopped. From Hull, which AJ is, I'm not saying Hill in a key way accent. From Hull in Great Britain, it's Nathan Bauer. I bowed down to you, sir. I bowed down to you. Oh, my God. I am stunned. I'm lost for words at how good that wordplay was.
Starting point is 02:09:42 From reservoir. I got stuck in my head. I'm like, we don't say it how it's meant to be said. It's reservoir when it's the suburb. But I said it. I do it all the time. I didn't say it the right way in either senses. I think you did.
Starting point is 02:09:57 And from reservoir in here in Melbourne, it's Lockie. Locky here, have a chalky. Oh, have a chalky. Oh! And finally, from Inchicor in Dublin in Ireland, it is. No, see. Don't talk over. I have.
Starting point is 02:10:19 Interesting names as well. so make sure to stay here and then consider subscribing for more learning. Yes! This spelling is confusing as it's often the case with Irish names, but it's pretty straightforward, Aveen. Aveen. Avee. I'm not joking, that's the same guy that taught me how to pronounce Deney Villeneuve.
Starting point is 02:10:42 He's the best. I love this man so much. Matt, your impression is very good, so it's Aveen. Aveen. And finally, for me, I'd love to welcome in from Mugi-Colm. in Dublin Island, it's Avine Hobson. Avine, just hooked them up to my veins, like IV. Sounds about like IV trip.
Starting point is 02:11:05 An Avine drip, yes. Nissan Algae, Dave, you are the Quisette's Hederek. You're here to deliver us from, deliver us to paradise. That's how good your wordplay is. That's right. That's funny he went for IV, because the name sounds more like vein, like, there's more of a close thing to vein. I thought you were going for vein as well.
Starting point is 02:11:24 actually. Welcome him. I'd say hook them up to my veins. We were all there. We're hanging out. We're having a good time. Well, welcome into the clubs. Make yourselves at home.
Starting point is 02:11:34 Get some soup. Beat those worms in for the soup. Avina, Lockie, Nathan, Jamie and Alex Beto. Anything we need to tell people just before we P.O.? Just that we love them so much. And anybody can suggest the topic. You don't have to be a Patreon to do so.
Starting point is 02:11:53 So if you would like to tell people. to if there's a story you want to, you think would make a good do go on report, chuck it in the hat. The hat, there's a link to it in the show notes. It's also on our website, which is do go on pod. And you can find us on social media at do go on pod as well. And we're also doing comedy festival shows if you're in Melbourne. Come along to those.
Starting point is 02:12:14 They're on Sunday afternoons over the next couple of weeks. I don't know what day it is. But come along. It'll be fun. 14th is one with Mesao, Nick Mason, the 7th. is sold out. There's an extra show on the 14th. And maybe there's a couple tickets left for the 21st. Nice. I think there's eight left at the time of recordings. Who knows if they'll still be there? Nice. Yeah. We're big time, AJ. I'm so impressed. Eight tickets.
Starting point is 02:12:40 Yeah. Pretty crazy. AJ, thank you again for coming and doing the pod. Have fun editing this as well. And if you could also do some of my other tasks, like, I don't know, update some social media or something, that'll be great. I will. Yeah. I'll take you. your dog for a walk or something. If you wouldn't mind. Of course, of course. All right, Dave, beat this baby home.
Starting point is 02:13:04 Hey, thank you so much for listening. Until next time, we'll say thank you so much. And goodbye. Bye. Don't forget to sign up to our tour mailing list so we know where in the world you are and we can come and tell you when we're coming there.
Starting point is 02:13:23 Wherever we go, we always hear six months later, oh, you should come to Manchester. We were just in Manchester. This way you'll never, will never miss out. And don't forget to sign up, go to our Instagram, click our link tree. Very, very easy. It means we know to come to you and you'll also know that we're coming to you. Yeah, we'll come to you, you come to us.
Starting point is 02:13:41 Very good. And we give you a spam-free guarantee.

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