DUNE 7 BLOG

Tuesday, August 1, 2006

Dune on Paris TV

A Paris TV show will do a special on the Oregon Dunes, where Frank Herbert’s idea for DUNE originated. A French reporter and his cameraman researched the dunes around Florence, Oregon the last two weeks of July, doing filmed interviews along with extensive filming of the Oregon coast dunes. Reporter, Vincent Perazio, along with his cameraman of 20 years experience, Jean Cristopher, delved into the ecological history of the dunes and the importance that it played in Frank Herbert’s idea to create the most legendary novel in the history of Sci Fi literature. The camera crew also visited Penny’s home to film original DUNE memorabilia.

DUNE originally began as a research project for a book on the influence of messiahs in history. Then in the 1950's Frank Herbert went to Florence, Oregon to do an article on the USDA dune-control project (as described in “They Stopped the Moving Sands” included in THE ROAD TO DUNE). The two ideas dovetailed into a long work that he envisioned as a trilogy.

As the story goes, Frank was so taken with the Florence-area dunes he rented an airplane and pilot to fly him over the coastal dunes. He said that when he looked down on this landscape he had a vision of a messianic people running across the dunes. After 6 years of research, including extensive studies of dryland ecology and thousands of years of nomad desert cultures and modern scientific theory, all of that information combined to create the story’s nucleus. DUNE was first published in 1963.

The "Thalassa" TV show will be airing this report the end of September. They have been broadcasting in Paris since 1975 on Fridays at 8:30 p.m. on the national channel "France 3". It is best described as a discovery show dedicated to the sea. The BBC Channel 5 also televises this program. The French website is: www.thalassa.france3.fr.

-- Penny