Seriously, this guy was one of the formative influences on me of what potentially constituted "fantasy". And at least now I know why 5th Element looked so familiar.
If for no other reason than it's a historical relic of the first open source creative project (Moorcock, whose name I accidentally Freudian-spelled up above, encouraged other artists and writers to take swings at Jerry Cornelius. Even though Moorcock has since rescinded this, Cornelius keeps showing up in sci-fi work, like Dr. Who. Even though I've never found any official reference to this by the Dr. Who people, it's kind of obvious. "Ambiguously sexual immortal time-traveling James Bond secret agent? Like the one in those British sci fi books you are just the right age to have read as a child? The devil you say!")
The story is that Jodorowsky got fired from Dune after spending a huge percent of his total budget just on preproduction. Most of the stuff that got built seems to have been scattered on the winds to various prop shops and attics but I have seen some of Giger's concept sketches. They do in fact look like Alien. And I don't just mean in that way that everything Giger does always looks a little like Alien.
Now Moebius; him I've always been curious about. I remember leafing through boxes of your old comics a couple of times looking for Moebius stuff because it just seemed like something you'd have but I never did find any and I still haven't read anything he's worked on. Clearly that's gotta change. I'll buy some Moebius stuff, you buy the Jodorowsky box set and between us we'll be all caught up. Then we should move on to Tarkovsky, whom I'm also woefully under-versed in.
Anyway, I'm searching google for a place to learn how to dance, of all things, and one of the dance teachers I'm looking at is also a proponent of a movement-meditation that was influenced by the creator talking to Jodorowsky(!?!), so I go look him up. And good lord. He inspired Moebius to sci-fi work in the first place. The sets from the aborted Dune movie supposedly ended up in Star Wars and Alien. Even if that's hogwash, a bunch of the people who were working on Dune (including character designers other than Moebius) ended up with those two projects, including Geiger. I'd heard about the 5th Element lawsuit before, but hadn't recognized Jodorowsky's name involved.
Now I'm kinda thinking about buying the boxed dvd set of his movies (including El Todo) and watching 'em the next time you're down. I am also totally down to see King Shot if it ever actually makes it to "made" status. There's just too much weirdly cool there not to.
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Here's a collection of Giraud's work: http://www.bpib.com/illustrat/giraud.htm
Here's Moebius's character designers for the aborted Dune movie with comments by Jodorowsky: http://www.duneinfo.com/unseen/moebius.asp
Here's a couple other Moebius works that I just like:
http://www.artistas.es/wp-content/moebius-08.gif
http://www.discogs.com/image/R-150605-1104416038.jpg
http://www.ctrl-c.liu.se/ftp/IMAGES/moebius/moebius-09.gif
http://www.ctrl-c.liu.se/images/MOEBIUS/MOEBIUS-04.GIF
Seriously, this guy was one of the formative influences on me of what potentially constituted "fantasy". And at least now I know why 5th Element looked so familiar.
Reply
If for no other reason than it's a historical relic of the first open source creative project (Moorcock, whose name I accidentally Freudian-spelled up above, encouraged other artists and writers to take swings at Jerry Cornelius. Even though Moorcock has since rescinded this, Cornelius keeps showing up in sci-fi work, like Dr. Who. Even though I've never found any official reference to this by the Dr. Who people, it's kind of obvious. "Ambiguously sexual immortal time-traveling James Bond secret agent? Like the one in those British sci fi books you are just the right age to have read as a child? The devil you say!")
Reply
Now Moebius; him I've always been curious about. I remember leafing through boxes of your old comics a couple of times looking for Moebius stuff because it just seemed like something you'd have but I never did find any and I still haven't read anything he's worked on. Clearly that's gotta change. I'll buy some Moebius stuff, you buy the Jodorowsky box set and between us we'll be all caught up. Then we should move on to Tarkovsky, whom I'm also woefully under-versed in.
Reply
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