Excerpt from the Inner Views interview with David Lynch

The feeling you had after a subsequent film didn't turn out right wasn't quite as uplifting. Dune.

But I learned a lot of stuff on Dune. I started selling out on Dune. Looking back, it's no one's fault but my own. I probably shouldn't have done that picture, but I saw tons and tons of possibilities for things I loved, and this was the structure to do them in. there was so much room to create a world. But I got strong indications from Raffaella and Dino De Laurentiis of what kind of film they expected, and I knew I didn't have final cut. And luittle by little by little -- and this is the danger, because it doesn't happen in chunks, it happens in the tiniest little shavings, little sandings -- little by little every decision was always made with them in mind and their sort of film. Things I felt I could get away with within their framework. So it was destined to be a failure, to me.

Well, the failure of Dune saved you from having to do Dune II and Dune II.

Yes, that's a plus. Though I was really getting into Dune II. I wrote about half the script, maybe more, and I was really getting excited about it. It was much tighter, a better story.

Did you feel like a failure?

Yeah. I was made to feel like one, and I felt like one too. There were times before, like on The Elephant Man, I went throught some things that I thought would be the end of me, but Dune was pretty bad. Even in post-production, I started feeling the writing on the wall.

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