Artwork by Chris Foss, Courtesy of Chris Foss/Sony Pictures Classics

Frank Pavich’s new documentary about a movie that was never made sounds like it’s meant for a niche audience of cinephiles and science fiction geeks. It doesn’t break any new ground in documentary filmmaking. But at the film’s heart are universal themes, and its leading man is one of the most charming, charismatic figures you’ll see in any movie, fact or fiction, all year.

Alejandro Jodorowsky worked in avant-garde theater before directing what is considered the first midnight movie, 1970′ El Topo, starring himself as the lead hero-god and his son Brontis as the naked imp he initiates into a violent and colorful world. The movie was an underground hit, which led producer Michel Seydoux to give him a million dollars to make his next picture, 1973’s The Holy Mountain, which was even stranger. The director starred as a platinum-blonde Christ figure who defecates a golden turd. Seydoux said he would back whatever the director wanted to do next. “Dune! I didn’t read Dune, but I have a friend who say me it was fantastic!”

The movie as Jodorowsky envisioned it never happened, with the project ending up years later as a universally panned film by David Lynch (Jodorowsky’s reaction to Lynch’s Dune provides a wonderful catharsis for this film). Pavich tells the story of how Jodorowsky tried to make it, and why it failed. It was a crazy dream, but the white-haired, wildly gesturing director tells us how close his dream came to fruition. He tells story after story of how the creative team he wanted to work with would suddenly appear before him. Comic artist Moebius happened to be meeting with Jodorowsky’s agent! Jodorowsky was staying at the same New York hotel as Salvador Dali! Mick Jagger was at the same party in Paris! The stars aligned, until they didn’t.

Photo by David Cavallo, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

To call Jodorowsky an enthusiastic raconteur does not do him justice. The man says things that would come off as arrogant, outrageous, and even offensive from other people, but he has a childlike innocence and passionate conviction that is completely infectious, even though he’s telling the story of personal creative heartbreak. On the surface, Jodorowsky’s Dune is about a movie that doesn’t exist, but it’s much more than that. It’s the story of resilience, a touching naiveté that Jodorowsky still has at a young 84-years-old. It’s also about something as corny as following your dream and believing in yourself.

And in a way the movie does exist. As the movie explains, the seeds of Dune can be seen all over Hollywood, from Star Wars to Raiders of the Lost Ark to Prometheus. And, most notably, in Ridley Scott’s Alien, which used the core of the creative team Jodorowsky had assembled for Dune, including H. R. Giger, Dan O’Bannon and Chris Foss. How many artists would feel terribly bitter about seeing their own ideas pilfered time and again? Not Jodorowsky.

Jodorowsky’s Dune might not have been a great movie. The director has a gift for charm and talk and unforgettable images, but El Topo and The Holy Mountain don’t sustain the attention the way Jodorowsky the person does by sheer force of personality. It is personality as much as aesthetic drive that fuels Jodorowsky’s Dune. For the most part, it’s a talking heads movie, with sparingly uses animation that lets its subject and his vision carry the movie. Which he owns.

Alejandro Jodorowsky could sell me anything, but he could not sell his meticulously planned adaptation of a popular science fiction novel to Hollywood, even with a dream team in front of and behind the camera. It would be a heartbreaking failure to any artist, and in some ways, his career never recovered. But thanks to this film, Jodorowsky reunited with his former producer, and his first film in 23 years, The Dance of Reality, opens at Landmark E Street Cinema on May 30. I can’t wait.

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Jodorowsky’s Dune
Directed by Frank Pavich
With Alejandro Jodorowsky, Michel Seydoux, H.R. Giger, Nicolas Winding Refn
Rated PG-13 for some violent and sexual images and drug references
Running time 90 minutes
Opens today at E Street Landmark Cinema