Duel: A Conversation with Director Steven Spielberg

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You just never know.

You just go along figuring

some things don't change, ever.

Like being able to drive

on a public highway...

without somebody

trying to murder you.

And then one stupid thing happens.

And it's like, there you are,

right back in thejungle again.

My God!

I'd like to report a truck driver

that's been endangering my life.

I was sitting around the office one day,

looking through scripts...

continuing to write, trying to get

my feature film ideas off the ground...

trying to get hired.

My assistant, Nona Tyson,

found Duel.

She said, "I read an article, a short

story by Richard Matheson in Playboy. "

I said, "Why are you reading

Playboy, Nona? Are you kidding?"

She said, "No. I love the fiction. "

She said, "I want you to read this.

I think it's right up your alley. "

I read the short story,

and I said, "Wow. This is terrifying.

This is like a Hitchcock movie. "

It's like Psycho or The Birds,

only it's on wheels.

A truck chasing a salesman

through the desert.

She said, "I also found out that Richard

Matheson is writing a screenplay.

They're gonna do a Movie of the Week,

produced by George Eckstein. "

She gave me this info. I called

Eckstein, who didn't know me from Adam.

Knew of me, because they used

to call me "Sheinberg's Folly"...

'cause I was the young kid

he had hired.

I think I was the youngest person ever

signed to a term contract at Universal.

I wasn't really that highly regarded.

I was this abstract young person...

that only loved lenses and dolly shots

and didn't know anything about acting.

That's the reputation I had then.

I called George Eckstein up and said...

"I've read the short story, but not the

script. Let's talk about this. "

He invited me over to his office

and asked me to bring my best work...

so he could see an example

of my most recent work.

I brought over the rough cut

of Columbo, which hadn't aired yet.

I brought the rough cut over and left it

with him after this conversation.

He saw the cut.

He called me back to his office.

He said, "Okay. Gimme your ideas on how

you'd like to make this into a movie. "

He gave me the script of Duel.

I read the script. I came back,

had another meeting with George.

Gave him all my ideas,

and he said, "I'll get back to you. "

A day went by, two days went by.

I didn't hear a thing.

The third day, I got a call from George.

He said, "I'd like you to direct this. "

It was like the greatest phone call. The

second greatest phone call I ever had.

The first being when Sheinberg called me

and got me out of college...

to, you know, be a director.

The second one was when Eckstein called

and said, "I'd like you to direct Duel. "

That's how it all began.

I was intimately familiar

with the work of Richard Matheson...

because I was a complete obsessive-

compulsive Twilight Zone follower.

So I knew of his work

on the Twilight Zone.

Some of the really

great episodes of that.

You are getting smaller.

Certainly I'm a fan of The Incredible

Shrinking Man, which he authored.

I actually, in one week, got to meet him

and Ray Bradbury for the first time.

It was kind of

a banner week for me.

My attraction to it wasn't

because it was a horror movie.

I didn't really see anything

about it as a western.

I thought it was just

a complete exercise...

in a cat-and-mouse game

of classic suspense.

To give credit where credit is due,

it's Richard Matheson...

that was very clear in his teleplay

that you didn't see the driver.

You might see a hand out the window

telling him to go into oncoming traffic.

You might see his boots, but you

will never see the face of the driver.

That was Richard Matheson. That

attracted me more than anything else.

The unseen is more frightening than

what you throw in the audience's face.

Dennis Weaver was suggested

by the studio...

'cause he had huge ratings

from earlier films on TV.

I love Dennis Weaver,

and I actually had a vote in it.

George Eckstein was saying, "What

do you think of this or that person?"

It was great that they did that, 'cause

he brought me into the casting circle...

and let me consult

on who the network wanted.

When Dennis's name came up,

I said, "It's got to be Dennis Weaver. "

I just went nuts. George said,

"Why are you so hot on Dennis Weaver?"

I said, "You never saw

Touch of Evil?

You never saw the motel caretaker?

It's the greatest-"

I went on and on.

I remember George saying...

"He was pretty good

as Chester in Gunsmoke. "

I said, "That was great, but look at

the characters he played in the movies. "

'Cause I was a big fan of his

from that one film.

He reached a level of anxiety

and panic in Touch of Evil...

and paranoia that I envisioned

David Mann...

the character he was playing in Duel,

arriving at in the story's last act.

That's where I wanted him to get to,

was that character in Touch of Evil.

So when Dennis Weaver said yes, that

was one of the happiest days of my life.

I knew I wanted the car to be red,

because looking at desert locations...

the desert was pretty much beige

and brown and earth colors.

I wanted the car to stand out. It would

go "pop"in wide shots of the desert.

I simply said, "I don't care what

the car is. I want a red car. "

What happened was the art director

had a casting call for trucks.

I got into a little electric cart

and motored to the back lot.

There were about seven semis

waiting for me to cast the star of Duel.

I walked up and down the trucks.

It was obvious the truck I chose...

because the Peterbilt I chose

was a little more retro.

It was an older truck.

It had a face.

The windows were the eyes

and has a huge, protruding snout.

The grill and the bumper

are the mouth. It had a face.

The other trucks on the back lot

were the flat-nosed, blunted trucks.

The ones that didn't really form

anything but a large conical cab...

where the window went

straight down to the headlights.

There's no engine sticking out in front.

The engine was probably in the back.

If you tip the cab forward, you can see

the engine behind the driver's seat.

I think that's how those trucks

worked in those days. I'm not sure.

But my eye went right to the one truck,

and I said, "You got the part. "

First of all, I didn't quite know how I

was going to achieve this in 10 days.

They were giving me 10 days

to shoot about 73 minutes of film.

With commercials, it fills out

the hour and a half...

of the ABC Movie of the Week format.

I didn't quite know

how I could do this thing in 10 days.

They assigned me a highly regarded

production manager, Wallace Worsley.

Wallace is kind of

gruff and tough.

He was a pussycat on the inside, but

on the outside was gruff and tough...

who looked at me and often

gave these derisive snorts of...

"Yeah, prove you can make this

into a movie.

Because if you can't, you're history.

We'll bring somebody in who can. "

I really respected that.

He took a hard-line position with me.

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