David Kappes keeps the world of Dune in constant motion

With the SCI FI Channel's ambitious, six-hour miniseries version of Frank Herbert's Dune, producer David Kappes takes on his biggest challenge to date. And Kappes is no stranger to big challenges. Among his many credits are Stephen King's Night Flier, Stephen King's The Langoliers, Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, The Vernon Johns Story, In the Line of Duty: The F.B.I. Murders, Terrible Joe Moran (James Cagney's final project), Jaws 3-D and Boxing Helena.

SCIFI.COM caught up with Kappes, who pronounces his name Kapp-ess, on the set of Frank Herbert's Dune in Prague, where he filled us in on the scope of the miniseries and the massive effort involved in bringing it to life.

Can you define what it is you do as the producer of Frank Herbert's Dune?
The producer for Dune has to keep a huge army on the move all the time. I am totally in control of the budget of the film and responsible for keeping the schedule fit inside the budget so that John Harrison, the director, gets everything he needs to produce the great show that Dune is at this point. But it has to be within the budgetary constraints we have. So I am an arbiter, in a way, between the various creative entities on the project because everybody wants more, more, more, bigger, bigger, bigger, and better, better, better, and I have to bring them back to reality at times without crippling the aesthetic of the show.

I am also sometimes the mediator between great creative minds. We are blessed on this to have Vittorio Storaro as director of photography, or cinematographer, as he prefers to be known. He's got three Academy Awards. Theodor Pistek is our costume designer. He has an Academy Award for Amadeus as well as many other awards for operas here in Prague and around the world. He also designed the uniforms for the Presidential Guard, of all things. He had his vision for the costumes. Kreka designed all of these wonderful sets. Now, all of these pieces have to be integrated and sometimes they're in conflict. Pistek saw the costume colors this way, but they didn't fit with Storaro's color plan for the scene, and it was "No, it's got to be this," and "No, it's got to be that." And I would have to get in the middle and make sure that we got the best for the picture without bruising too many egos and keeping everybody on the same team, pulling the sled in the same direction. That's a good part of what I do.

Would you describe yourself as the driving force behind getting Frank Herbert's Dune off the ground?
Well, no. I was not a major force in getting it off the ground. The major force in getting it off the ground would be Richard Rubinstein, the executive producer. He was the one who worked with ABC to purchase the underlying rights from the Herbert estate and what rights were still left from the De Laurentiis purchase of the theatrical rights. We have only TV, DVD and video rights. We do not have any theatrical rights. But Richard Rubinstein worked with, I believe, ABC to purchase the underlying rights, worked on getting John Harrison commissioned to write the scripts, and then worked to get the financing elements together.

I was brought in about two, two and a half years ago to figure out how much money it would actually take to do this. So I would work hand in hand with Richard Rubinstein and his then-partner, Mitchell Galin, another executive producer, on [answering the question] "What is it going to take to get Dune done? How much money are they going to need to raise to get it done?" Naturally, I wanted a lot more money, but [once I was told] "This is the total amount that could be raised," [the question became] "What can we do for it? What kind of picture can we develop?" The actual getting it up and getting it to the point where the reins were handed over to me, saying "OK, we've got X amount of money, go make it," that was (the doing) primarily of Richard Rubinstein and Mitchell Galin.

Had you read the book before becoming involved with the miniseries?
A long time ago. A long time ago. I had gone through my science-fiction period. I read Dune and it was sort of in the back of my mind somewhere. It is the seminal work in science fiction. Everything derives in some way, shape or form from Dune. I mean, George Lucas himself has come out and admitted that Dune was the basis for much of what he took for Star Wars. So, yes, I was familiar with Dune, but it was not something that was current on my library shelf, shall we say.

So many people on the production have a great passion for the book and also for John Harrison's script adaptation.
When the scripts were sent to me I said, "Mmmm, science fiction. I've done science fiction. I've done Stephen King. I've done that sort of thing." I knew the value of Dune as the basis of so much of what we see in science fiction today. ... I started to read the scripts and it was three scripts in one sitting. And I thought, "This is great reading. I can see what he's trying to do, and I can see where this can go." It was John's scripts and it was John himself [that convinced me to sign on]. I had worked with John before on a picture (Kappes produced the Harrison-directed Tales from the Darkside: The Movie). I have the most incredible respect for him, for how he has been able to do what he has to done so far and stay totally even-tempered. He never gets bent out of shape, and that is just amazing to me.

How faithful would you say Harrison's scripts are to the novel?
They're very close. Yes, John has had to condense an awful lot and there has been compression, but it's pretty true to the book, from what I can see and from what I remember of it. When I got the scripts, I also did a quick skim of the book. And it is pretty faithful. John doesn't go off on his own flights of fancy. There are times that, under the pressures and exigencies of shooting it, that we have had to do some twisting and turning to make it fit into the box that we had, but for the most part it's pretty faithful.

Some people out there are not sci-fi fans. What can you say to them about this production of Dune?
Well, it's not sci-fi. It's a great human story about the growth to maturity and taking on the mantle of responsibility for a young man. It is the rite of passage of a boy into assuming the responsibilities that face him in life and accepting the challenge and going on. That it's set 20,000 years in the future means nothing. It is a great human story. Yes, it has certain science-fiction elements to it because it's in the future, but it's not a science-fiction story.

You've got a terrific cast and crew on this production. How does it compare, as a shoot, to some of your other experiences?
This is sort of a strange slant on it, but there is something special to Dune that is different. I've worked on a lot of pictures and on a lot of different locations. And as difficult as I was afraid this was going to be, being in an ex-Iron Curtain country, with a work ethic that we weren't sure of, with a mixed crew and a potential language problem, none of that happened.

I attribute a fair amount of this — and I may be considered odd and off the wall — to Prague. There is a true magic to this city, and there's a true magic that happens to people who come here, and not just as a tourist whizzing through on a tour bus in three days. If you spend time here, there is a spirit that has infected the crew in a very positive way. There have been practically no crew problems. It's the rare film where one department isn't at another's throat, especially when you have mixed crews, because everyone [usually] gets into cliques and tears apart, rather than works together. Here, everybody has really just pulled together and it has been magical.

I think a lot of it also has to do with John Harrison and his direction on the set, the way he is always of an even-tempered personality. I think that Vittorio Storaro has gone a long way toward keeping the entire crew together with his day-by-day, step-by-step, "we'll get there" attitude. It was a very daunting task to do the amount of work we had, with the complexity of it, in 80 days. Everybody said, "It'll never happen." But everybody has pulled together. I think it's John and Storaro and Kreka and the various Czech department heads all saying, "This is what we've got to do." And I think Prague contributes. It's a great place to be. You do your 12 to 14 hours on the set every day, and then you come back into town. And it is a great town to be in. I think that puts everybody at ease. Everybody gets up the next morning ready to go.

Have you ever before dealt with such elaborate sets?
There are times when I could brain Kreka for how large and elaborate he has made the sets, let me tell you. Now you've not only got a big set, but we need more extras to fill the set, otherwise it looks empty. I've worked on a number of special-effects films with big sets and also little sets, where we built everything in miniature and then did all the composition work on it. So I've done it both ways, but never anything as elaborate as this, especially in the timeframe in which we had to do it.

One of the big problems we had was that we ran out of space. We ran out of sound stages. We had to turn sets over so quickly and Kreka's designs were so brilliant and elaborate that we didn't have time to shoot on the sets, tear them down and get a new set built there in time to shoot on it. So we had all four stages going, plus three warehouses in town where we were building additional sets. So it has been a massive amount of set work. And to keep it all going and coordinated, so the sets were ready when we were ready to get there and shoot them has been trying at times.

We're out of questions, but is there anything you want to add?
It's just been exhausting, seven days a week, 14 to 18 hours a day, but I think it has been worthwhile. From the footage I've seen and what I know we're getting, I think it's just brilliant. I think Dune is going to be a phenomenal show.