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Alexandro Jodorowsky (born February 7, 1929, in Tocopilla, Chile) is a director, actor, and writer of a handful of esoteric, surreal and shocking films, as well as a writer of comic books. He is also a New Age spiritualist, and one of the world's leading researchers of the Tarot.
His films El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973) are regarded as cult classics. Neither film is currently available on DVD in the United States because of disputes over ownership with Allen Klein, though bootleg copies are occasionally circulated and a DVD of El Topo is available in Italy. His first feature length film, Fando y Lis, is available on DVD in the US and is infamous for inciting a full scale riot at its premiere in the Acapulco Film Festival.
Jodorowsky began working in 1975 on an adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune. The project was intended to involve Orson Welles, Salvador Dalí, Pink Floyd, H.R. Giger and Jean Giraud (Moebius). Ultimately, its funding evaporated, but Jodorowsky claimed it was sabotaged by the major studios in Hollywood because it was too French (seemingly a strange claim about a movie slated to be directed by a Chilean, but it should be noted that Jodorowsky has been a resident of France for many years). Many close to the project claim that the set designs later turned up in Star Wars. Several of the people working on Jodorowsky's version of Dune later worked on Aliens with similiar elements from the failed movie. Of course, in the early 1980s, David Lynch made his version of Dune.
A sequel to El Topo called The Sons of El Topo was planned, with Alfonso Arau (who appeared in the original film) as the producer and starring Marilyn Manson and Johnny Depp, but Jodorowsky could not find investors for the project.
Jodorowsky once said, "Most directors make films with their eyes. I make films with my testicles."
He is also the writer of several science fiction comic book series, which all are set in the same universe: The caste of the Metabarons, Technopriests, Incal, Megalex. Many ideas and concepts devised by Jodorowsky from his planned adaptation of Dune (which was only loosely based upon Frank Herbert's original novel) later turned up in the Metabarons comic books. (which also contain many references to Dune in general)
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