The stories are epic.  They feature intelligent characters.  They are rife with ideas.  After I read them, I sought out and found, then read, more of Frank Herbert’s work.  Destination: Void.  Whipping Star. The Pandora series.  The Santoroga Barrier.  Hellstrom’s Hive. The Heaven Makers.  The Green Brain.  The Dosadi Experiment (<- really, honestly, very good).  et al.
But I’m poor and there’s nothing out there that appeals to me at the moment, so I’m re-reading Dune.  (Strange. I’m suddenly not that poor when an author I like releases a new work.)

However, I’m out of cash and books, so I’m re-reading Dune.

And since I read this ages ago, and have touted it wonders to anyone who would listen, and have watched every TV and movie version that has been released (with varying levels of dismay), I wanted to mention the scenes that I have no recollection of ever reading.

Duncan Idaho comes in drunk off of spice liquor.  Jessica berates him.

Paul saves his mother, Jessica, from a sandslide. Then using water and the batteries in the paracompass to create a foam barrier, they manage to rescue their pack.

Paul sings a love song to Chani.

Feyd fights a rigged fight with a slave/gladiator.  Such a big scene, and I had no memory of it.

Count Fenring.  He’s practically a new character to me.  But such a good one.  Almost glad I forgot about him, just so I could meet him again.  Loved his scenes with the Baron around the gladitorial fight.

Thufir Hawat, the Mentat, captured by the Baron.  Hawat still believing that Jessica betrayed House Atreides.  This, too, was not recalled.

Well, there’s quite a bit actually.  But there’s still alot that I do remember.  I think that time, and subsequent big and small screen visual depictions, have driven from my memory alot of detail.

And re-reading it makes me hate those visual depictions all over again, but this time with a keener edge on my seething anger.  Why is it so difficult to find a director who has read the novel on which the film is based and then bothers to read just prior to actually making the effin’ movie?  Personally, I’d feel compelled.

I stumbled onto a Dune fansite some time back, and there was alot of talk about a new film in the works.  There were alot of quotes from the potential director, Peter Berg.  I learned to despise him.

He couldn’t stop using the word ‘muscular’.

Here, I’ll paste:

My experience with the book was different than David Lynch’s experience or the people behind the Sci Fi Channel’s experience. I found it to be more of an adventure tale, more of a muscular action/adventure story. I think that’s my approach, not as an R-rated film, but as a pretty hard PG-13 film about a young man dealing with issues of vengeance over the death of his father and wanting some payback and having to come to terms with his destiny along the way.

Peter Berg at MTV Movies Blog

“I think I had a much more different experience, I think, with the book than David Lynch did. To me, I think my interpretation will feel significantly different from that and the [Syfy] Channel miniseries that aired. I have a different experience than both of those filmmakers did.”

“[The book] was much more muscular and adventurous, more violent and possibly even a little bit more fun, I think those are all elements of my experience of the book that can be brought in without offending the die-hard fans of the Bene Gesserit and Kwisatz Haderach. There’s a more dynamic film to be made.”

“I’m finishing this [documentary] now, we’re editing it now, I think it’s going to be in the Toronto Film Festival. [I'm] working now on getting Friday Night Lights up for the new season and getting Dune up and running. I’m working all the time.”

Peter Berg at Sci Fi Wire

We’re gonna have a script in at the end of this month [January 2009]. Josh Zetumer’s writing the script. I fully intend to do it. It’s another example of where I’m aware that there’s — I don’t think rabid is a strong enough word — fanbase for the film, and I understand that some people support me directing it and some don’t. All I can tell you is that I was as much a fan of the book as anyone, and I’m really looking forward to getting that script in.

To me, the book had a tone that was, for lack of a better word, more muscular. It was a little dirtier, it was scarier, it was rougher, it was more intense, and I think that Lynch’s film and the Sci Fi miniseries took a tack that was different. It wasn’t any of those things as I remember the book being. There were so many different aspects of Herbert and his personality…. I will focus on — again, for lack of a better word — a rougher, more muscular version of Herbert’s work. A more muscular interpretation.

There’s a scope to Dune, and certainly a Shakespearian quality to that family, that I don’t pretend to ignore.

Peter Berg at Television Without Pity

“The hype around [Dune] is understandable but it’s a little excessive. The fanatics are worried I’m going to destroy it – I’m like calm down, I read the book when I was a kid too! If you re-read it – it’s just a great adventure story. There is a spirituality to it, and a mysticism, and there is a parallel metaphorically about oil, the corporatisation of resources – but at the end of the day, it’s about a kid becoming a leader. There’s incredible action in it and really great intrigue and betrayals, it’s Shakespearean in its scope and I think it’ll be a blast.”

Peter Berg at guardian.co.uk

One, with the advances in CGI, we’ll be doing things Lynch couldn’t do. Two, I had a completely different experience with the book than he did.

I look forward to taking it on as an adventure story, in the vein of “Star Wars,” “Indiana Jones” and “Lord of the Rings.” It’s a big, bold adventure story. That’s how I see it.

And, yes, I am out of my mind.

Peter Berg at austin360.com

There is a sense in the book that the commodity is driving the train. But I don’t want to hang the story on that. I read the book and really liked it. What I never saw in Lynch’s film was a really strong adventure story. There’s a much more muscular time to be had there.

Peter Berg at The Hollywood Reporter

Fortunately, Peter’s been scratched.  86′d.  Nixed.  The dude is fixated on muscles.  Let him direct Bruno 2.

Why do all director’s miss the point?  The essence that makes the stories popular to begin with? And WHY would they miss it?  You’d think they’d want to tap into it.

And to make it easier, the author himself explained what he was trying to convey.  This is the Foreword for Heretics of Dune:

Heretics of Dune (1984)

The interweaving of the many plot layers I had planned required a degree of concentration I had never before experienced.

It was to be a story exploring the myth of the Messiah…

When I was writing Dune there was no room in my mind for concerns about the book’s success or failure. I was concerned only with the writing. Six years of research had preceded the day I sat down to put the story together, and the interweaving of the many plot layers I had planned required a degree of concentration I had never before experienced.

• It was to be a story exploring the myth of the Messiah.
  It was to produce another view of a human-occupied planet as an energy machine.
  It was to penetrate the interlocked workings of politics and economics.
  It was to be an examination of absolute prediction and its pitfalls.
  It was to have an awareness drug in it and tell what could happen through dependence on such a substance.
  Potable water was to be an analog for oil and for water itself, a substance whose supply diminishes each day.
  It was to be an ecological novel, then, with many overtones, as well as a story about people and their human concerns with human values, and I had to monitor each of these levels at every stage in the book.
  There wasn’t room in my head to think about much else.

Foreword (April 1984)

And while I was looking for that, I found one of my favorite quotes:

Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept?

A Guide to Trial and Error in Government, Bene Gesserit Archive

First,

Let me just say that I had to open Firefox to even post this story.  Chrome wouldn’t process the rich text plugin I’m using (FCKEditor) and it ignored other basic elements in terms of display for this CMS.  IE, Firefox…works fine.  Whatever. I know I need to update this CMS [author's note: I've since switch to another CMS since writing this], but to just ignore basic/standard/popular JS and CSS?  Not cool.  I could be convinced that this is actually smart and cool, but you’d have to be naked and female.

2) New Tabs WTF

If Chrome were a car, bumper stickers would be applied by the manufacturer.

3) Friggin’ status bar.