Duel: A Conversation with Director Steven Spielberg Page #2

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Because I said to him,

"I wanna shoot this all on location. "

He said "You cannot shoot a movie

of this scale on location in 10 days.

You need to send somebody else out

to shoot all these plates...

and do it on a soundstage

with process. "

I said, "I don't want to shoot this if

I have to go inside. It'll look fake. "

You look out all the windows of the car.

It won't be a chase.

It'll be a guy sitting on a soundstage

with bad process out the windows...

which is always out of sync

with the way the grips move the car.

The car moves this way, the process

goes that way. It never works.

Wally said, "If you spend the first half

of the first day of shooting...

shooting plates,

so we have those banked...

then if you stay on schedule

for the first three days...

then you could shoot on location,

else you gotta come back to the studio. "

I said, "Okay. "

That was the thing I had to prove,

that I could stay on schedule...

so I didn't have to go back inside

to make a real fake-looking movie.

I did stay on schedule to earn me the

right to shoot the whole film outside.

Where I did fall behind schedule

in the last three or four days...

was where Wally Worsley said...

"No one could have done

that film in 10 days. "

We wound up shooting that in 12.

Maybe 13.

I went two or three days

over schedule on that...

which made the studio not very happy,

but I was getting good stuff.

Well, I'm never gonna make

that appointment now.

In order to stay on schedule,

I couldn't just do single setups.

I knew I had to do

some multiple cameras.

But there's only so many cameras

you can put on so many mounts...

hanging off a car

before that starts looking like process.

I wanted a lot of

independent movement...

so we got Pat Hustis to bring

this camera car he invented...

and designed for the movie Bullitt.

He brought this low racing car,

insert car.

I was able to get these cool

low-angle shots of the truck and car.

And also was able to plot the shots.

So I'd put four or five cameras

on a mile stretch of road.

I'd have on one mile run of the truck

chasing the car, I'd get five run-bys.

They'd be all right to left.

Then I simply took the cameras...

took them to the other side

of the road...

which looks different than

the side of the road I was shooting.

When you go to the other side of

the road and look back the other way...

I got five more shots when the truck

and the car were turned...

to their starting positions.

That was the way I was able to quickly

shoot some of the chases in the film.

What took time was more

on the insert car.

We're getting complicated shots

moving in and out of the truck.

Pulling ahead of the truck

where the car comes in the shot.

Letting the car overtake us

and going right into the grill...

with all the dead bugs

I put into the grill of the truck.

And splattered dead bugs

across the windshield.

Things like that took the time,

but things like that created suspense.

I said, "Let's plot the entire

74-minute film...

on an overhead map,

so I can just plot my cameras. "

We did kind of like

a architect's overhead plan...

of all the highways in Pearblossom

and Soledad Canyon and Sand Canyon...

out in Palmdale

where I shot Duel.

Put all of these incidents- the

caf, the phone booth and snake farm-

all the incidents or the set pieces

along the road of the narrative...

on this big overhead map,

and it was a huge mural.

It wrapped around the entire

motel room that I was given...

to stay in for the time

I shot on location.

But I was able, every day,

to make notes on the map

and plot what the menu

was going to be to achieve that day.

The day's work that I needed

to achieve...

in order to stay on schedule

and make a really good movie.

I was able to do it from a bird's -eye

view looking straight down.

I didn't do single storyboard frames.

That would come later in my work.

But on this film, that overview

really helped me understand where I was.

When I jumped out of continuity,

I knew exactly where I was.

The truck was the antagonist.

In the story,

it had to have a personality.

It couldn't just be a sparkling new,

freshly minted truck.

The idea was to make the truck

look like a veteran...

of these road crimes.

This was "murder, incorporated"

on wheels.

There was grease on the windows

and fake dead bugs all over the grill...

and on the windscreen

and against the headlights.

The truck was painted oily

and streaked with oil...

coming out of every single possible

known vent on the truck.

The truck was put

into makeup every day.

Dennis Weaver was in his makeup chair.

The truck had seven or eight people...

with large brushes and mops,

spattering it...

and making it look

really grizzly and horrible.

It was the kind of makeup you would

do on Frankenstein or the Wolfman...

or the Phantom of the Opera.

All those license plates were the states

he drove motorists into the ground...

off cliffs,

against guard rails.

Those were the notches

in his Colt. 45.

The intention was that he was

basically a marauder in every state.

Cary, who liked to be called

"Old Vapor Lock"...

was a guy who I knew because I'm

a big fan of all the old westerns.

Cary Loftin and Dale Van Sickle,

who also worked on Duel...

were two of the most famous stuntmen

in the annals of Hollywood history.

I wanted Cary, and Cary

then suggested bringing Dale along.

Dale drove the car, and Cary drove the

truck. That was kind of the way it was.

There's no hidden piece

of antiquity about Cary Loftin...

as a background character

or standing by the roadside.

He was just the truck driver,

but he was a brilliant truck driver...

because I couldn't have

got any of these shots...

if it weren't for how safely

Cary drove that truck...

and yet made it look dangerous

and frightening and deadly.

But Cary was a very safe driver.

Actually, on certain scenes, we couldn't

get the truck to go very fast...

so I had to use tricks, like having

the camera lower to the ground.

And to create more speed from the truck,

I always put cliff walls...

on let's say

the east side of the highway.

Then I'd be in the insert car

with Pat Hustis driving...

with Jack Marta, the DP,

and the operator.

We'd be shooting toward the truck,

but always with that cliff rushing by.

As you know, you don't have to

go faster 25 miles an hour.

But if you shoot dead flat to a wall

or an obstacle moving by...

it makes the truck look like

it's going 100 miles an hour.

And the longer the lens is,

the faster the truck looks.

When I say "longer the lens is, "

anything around a 35 or a 50...

looked awfully good

in terms of speed.

If you went a little wider,

as long as you didn't show the road...

it still looked like you were going

fast if you stayed dead to the side.

So many of those shots

were shot slow...

but cheated with geography

moving by very quickly.

There's a couple shots that are sped up

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