Duel: A Conversation with Director Steven Spielberg Page #4

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from the day I wrapped

the principal photography on Duel.

There was three weeks

and a couple of days...

to the time that story

was going on ABC Movie of the Week.

I couldn't just do it with one editor.

As a result,

five editors worked on Duel.

I was bicycling from editing room to

editing room for three and a half weeks.

It was an amazing time.

Each of these editors was really

talented and did great work on the show.

I remember a sequence that

one of the editors created...

that wasn't even in the script

or in the way I shot the film.

But he created a kind of tempo...

when the truck is finally bearing down

on Dennis Weaver's character.

The truck is forcing Dennis

to hit speeds of like 100 miles an hour.

There was never enough coverage. He

began stealing from other sequences...

to have enough footage

to create a faster cutting rhythm...

to culminate in this crash,

where the car goes into the wall.

You know, sort of totals itself

or totals the front end of the wall...

before the climatic

climb up the hill...

before the climatic fall

into the canyon.

He had created that scene, unbeknownst

to me he was working this way.

I came into the room, and he said,

"You wanna see something?"

I said, "Sure. "He showed me

the sequence that just blew me away.

Sound design is just a glove

that goes over the hand...

of where the camera

is positioned.

Sound fits like a glove. It has to.

It has to be a partner...

to everything you see

and everything you sense.

Sound is going to make

everything scarier.

Something wrong?

Sound's gonna make

everything more suspenseful.

A silent movie

is certainly less suspenseful...

as being able to hear

the creaks and groans...

in a haunted house of doors

and windows opening and shutting.

It was the same with Duel.

It's a haunted truck movie almost.

Here you have a guy

sleeping by the train track.

He's so exhausted,

he kind of passes out.

I put the sound of a truck into a visual

of the train coming around the corner.

So thrown way out of focus

in the background is this object...

that comes into the rear window.

You can tell it's a train. It's red.

The truck was never red.

I always said,

"I wish that train had been brown. "

It would have been a much better

cheat for the audience.

You can tell it's a train,

but I put the sound of the truck in.

You hear the truck, you hear the truck,

you hear the truck.

And suddenly- bang! It's the train

going by. Dennis wakes up with a start.

He screams.

He grabs onto the wheel.

Then the sound of the truck becomes

the sound of the diesel freight.

It passes,

and Dennis starts to laugh...

just from sheer exhaustion

and relief that he's still alive.

Joy that he's alive

and he's laughing and laughing.

Then he blithely

just moseys on his way.

The death of the truck

is a little cheaper I guess.

I was a little bit more

on the nose in those days.

I said, "This truck's like Godzilla.

Let's get a dinosaur roar in there...

when the truck turns over

and dies. "

It's the same sound I used

when the shark dies in Jaws.

I took the very same sound effect,

the same moan I had put into Duel...

when the truck is rolling over, comes

out of that cloud and continues to fall.

That's where I put

the prehistoric kind of groan.

I took that same sound effect.

It's almost like a little nostalgia.

I stuck that same sound effect

into the last scene...

where the shark blows up and the carcass

sinks to the bottom of the ocean.

That sound reoccurs there.

I put the sound at the same point

that the fin of the shark...

comes out of the cloud of blood like

the truck came out of the cloud of dirt.

It was a little of a self-congratulatory

pat on the back...

but it was also like saying, "Gee, thank

you, Duel, for putting me on the map.

Gee, thanks for

giving me a career.

And thanks for getting me started

in making movies. "

Without Duel, I wouldn't have

gotten the green light...

to make Sugarland Express

when I did.

So, one thing always helps another.

I was turning backwards in time...

having finished Jaws to say, "Thank you,

Duel, for letting me have Jaws. "

Well, it's about time, Charlie.

My God!

I see Billy Goldenberg's contribution

to Duel as being very important...

because he didn't do

a conventional score.

He used African instruments

and he had low drums.

He had kind of like tubular bells.

It was so experimental and so

courageous to have a score like that.

Especially on

an ABC Movie of the Week.

I thought Billy did one of the best

scores he had ever written for Duel.

I think he was inspired by the story

and didn't want a conventional score.

He didn't want a string section.

He didn't want horns.

He wanted it to be almost

a kind of atmospheric feeling.

He added so many layers

of creepiness with his music...

that it really brought Duel

up even further.

I have a couple of appearances

in the movie.

For one thing, I needed to be

in the car sometimes with Dennis...

so I sat in the backseat,

way over to the left.

On the television frame, I was fine.

But when the film was released overseas,

on certain 1.85 aspect ratios...

you can see part of me

sitting in the backseat.

They had to take those prints and do a

field blowup to get me out of the movie.

There were other things they couldn't

get me out. I didn't realize it.

I'm inside the phone booth, reflected

in the glass of the phone booth...

when Dennis Weaver

goes in to make the call...

to report the truck,

trying to call the police.

There I am with a script in my hand,

looking up and down...

making sure all the lines are right,

and I'm in the phone booth.

There was no coverage,

and by not seeing dailies every day...

I didn't have the luxury

of coming back the next day...

and filming it over again.

It had huge ratings then. The ratings

today would have been titanic.

Because today there are

so many other distractions...

that the four big networks

don't get the kind of ratings...

that the three big networks

used to get in the '70s.

Getting a 35, 40 share was something

you did if you were a hit show.

That wasn't extraordinary.

If you got a 60 rating for Roots,

that was extraordinary.

Today's shows are actually renewed with

ratings of 10, 12, 14. They're renewed.

Back then, if you had a 14 share,

you weren't renewed.

You were gone after two episodes.

When the market share was larger, more

people watched the three networks...

we got a huge number.

Then when the film went overseas

as a feature film...

after I went out and shot

some extra footage...

to expand it to

the legal limit of 90 minutes.

They said you couldn't release a film

overseas unless it was 90.

We were 74, so I went back

and I shot that scene of Dennis Weaver.

It's a scene I kind of made up.

I thought it would be a cool scene.

Dennis Weaver comes to a train track,

and a train is passing.

The truck suddenly pulls up,

appears behind him...

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