Universally panned by critics and movie-goers alike, "Dune" was Toto's -- particularly David Paich's -- first foray into movie scoring. Although the film was far from a hit, it has since become a cult classic, with several DVD editions. With an all-star cast including Sting, Kyle MacLachlan, Virginia Madsen, Linda Hunt,
=> Brad Dourif, Jürgen Prochnow, and Patrick Stewart, "Dune" was directed by acclaimed film director David Lynch ("Twin Peaks," "Mulholland Drive," "Blue Velvet"). It was the first film adaption of the monumental Science Fiction series by acclaimed author Frank Herbert and has since been remade as a mini-series on the Sci-Fi channel. The film was produced by Dino De Laurentis and cost $40 Million to make.
Steve Lukather on scoring Dune:
We wrote the whole score; the orchestral stuff. It was kind of an experiment for us, because we'd just fired our singer, and we didn't know what we wanted to do. [Director] David Lynch came to us and wanted us to do this movie, and we thought it would be great; a Star Wars kind of movie, but they pulled the plug on the money, and he didn't get to finish it the way he wanted, so now it's known as a cult film.
It was a learning experience for us. At the time, we were offered Dune or Footloose; we chose Dune, and the Footloose soundtrack sold something like 10 million copies!
(Chuckles) It was terrible. We were at the premiere, and as the movie went on, we kept sliding lower and lower into our seats (laughs). I remember Marty Paich, David's dad, was sitting behind us, and he leaned over to his son and said, "Dave, I told you this was a turkey!" It's not Lynch's best work, but I'm still a huge fan of his; 'The Elephant Man' was tremendous. (Vintage Guitar, November 2000)
In a later interview (1992), Luke says he doesn't think it was a detriment to Toto's discography:
We got offered Footloose, and turned it down, which is kind of a bad joke, because we'd probably have made a fortune. Instead we ended up doing Dune with a full orchestra. A lot of people feel that was a mistake. I don't think it was detrimental, but it didn't do anything to further our career. It really was musical masturbating. It was really David's puppy. Coming from a classical background he wanted to do something like that and we all went along with it. I just look at it as something we did, neither good nor bad. (Source Unknown)
Toto wrote, performed and produced 16 of the 17 tracks on the album. The only non-Toto track was "Prophecy Theme" by Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Roger Eno. Backed by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and joined by Marty 'the Maestro' Paich, Toto recorded the score in Vienna. David Paich later commented that "... next time I do a soundtrack, I want the word 'London' written in my contract".
The Toto members decided to to rename the movie "Dune" to "Doom", since the project didn't go that well. David Paich:
It was a real major challenge and everything like that. We wanted to actually score a movie, and not just write song for it and have them placed wherever they wanted. We looked at all the scenes, and there was a good hour and a half of music. And everybody put their heads together and we came up with the stuff we wanted. Some of it ended up getting rchestrated, and we're playing a lot of the stuff, cut on 24-track with the orchestra over-dubbed to it.
I was happy with it from an educational standpoint. Movies end up being kind of more than they're worth as far as the hassle standpoint. And when you finally hear the outcome of the movie, the music's not really mixed the way I wanted. I don't think the movie ended up being as good as it could have been, but you learn. (Source Unknown)
Dutch fans will recognize "Dune: Desert Theme" as being the theme for a famous TV-show some years ago: "Jongbloed & Joosten."
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