Dune is a journey from Lynch to Villeneuve
No remake can avoid comparison with the original. With the leading role in both versions performed by living brilliantly talented actors, popular with millions of fans, remaking a film is especially risky for the daring director. On top of that, in the case of Dune: Part One, Denis Villeneuve made use of the story filmed by the iconic David Lynch. Knowing that, we can’t help admiring how tactfully and respectfully young actor Timothée Chalamet, mentioning, among other things, the Tik-Tok audience, talks about Kyle MacLachlan, his 62-year-old forerunner, while answering our special correspondent Nellee Holmes’ challenging questions.
Nellee Holmes: Timothee, the character of Paul Atreides has already been known thanks to Kyle MacLachlan’s iconic performance in the David Lynch production. I wonder if you used it as a template or a source of inspiration while preparing for the role. Or did you prefer to stay away from it as much as you could to create something entirely of your own?
Timothée Chalamet: I watched Kyle’s performance about two months before we started shooting. I love his version and feel huge respect for this great work. I have been fortunate enough to work on other projects that have had prior iterations with great actors in them, and I feel great respect for all of them. But when Denis Villeneuve asks you to do his version of a movie, you forget all that and make yourself as humble as the source material asks you to be. I guess I just went into it like that.
N.H.: This is a truly epic story, and your presence is, indeed, very strong throughout the whole film. What does it mean to you personally and how, do you think it has influenced your career?
T.C.: Simply put, as Zendaya did, this was the honor of a lifetime for me. In some ways, I just had to be guided, as I hadn’t been on a project that size before. Maybe, I shouldn’t be admitting this, but at some point over the course of this four- or five-month shoot, I was able to lean emotionally on each and every person and artist I was fortunate enough to sit up with here. These are all actors that I have seen in projects I admire, and that is not actors blowing smoke. If we had more time, I could have a longer conversation about it. Now, I am proud to call them all my sisters and brothers. I hope we’ll get to do a second one, which would be a dream. And, yeah, I am simply grateful for the experience of doing it. Josh Brolin said it beautifully, “When you make the process of doing something enjoyable, it is different than just putting it out.” So, there are three versions of the movie: the version you read, the movie you make, and the one you edit. Now, there’s the movie we put out there, and hopefully, people will go see it. Anyhow, for me, this is already a dream come true.
N.H.: Timothee, could you tell us about the new sand walk and, perhaps, even demonstrate it?
T.C.: It was Benjamin Millepied, one of the best choreographers in the world and a director in his own right, who actually came up with this sand walk. So, the first video Rebecca and I got was the one of him doing it on Santa Monica Beach in Los Angeles. I’m afraid if I did it right now, I would be in rhythm, and this whole room would be devoured by a sandworm. Never mind. That’s just a bad joke. But that was something that Denis had to deal with in a very grounded way. And on set, not that we were being too precious or too self-serious, it was something like, “Okay, let’s not be goofy about it. Let’s really get it right.” So, Rebecca and I had the scene in Abu Dhabi and found the dialogue to it afterwards. I had to walk down, and hopefully, we’ll see people doing the same walk and stuff on Tik-Tok.