Duel: A Conversation with Director Steven Spielberg Page #5

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and starts to push him

into the moving freight train.

That was one of the expansion

sequences for the European release.

Duel unlocked the gateways

of the continent of Europe.

I never had been to Europe before,

and I went to Europe for the first time.

It was amazing. Nonstop flight

from New York to Rome.

Got to see the Spanish Steps,

stay at the Hassler Hotel...

and meet Federico Fellini

the next day, who had just seen Duel.

I'm very proud of a picture I have that

was taken the day after he saw Duel...

and has his arm around me

in front of the Grand Hotel.

I look like I'm as skinny as a rail.

He looks as thin as he ever looked,

and we're standing together.

We became friends

from that moment on.

And had infrequent but still contact

from that time on.

No. Please. No.

I had made a movie that was

the roadkill equivalent to High Noon.

The Europeans were reading in

all this esoteric, abstract symbolism...

about class warfare in America.

Which kind of haunted me, 'cause

when my first feature came out...

which was about cars again,

the same critic said...

that Spielberg was attenuating those

themes and carrying them even further.

I was proving their point

by making The Sugarland Express.

But that's fine.

You know what that teaches you to do?

It teaches you not to think reasonably.

It taught me to think in the abstract.

It really instructed me

not to just look at something...

and say, "Everybody is bound to see this

picture the way I see this picture.

We're gonna see the same colors,

the same sky and horizon.

We're gonna interpret this

exactly alike. "

I learned very early on that nobody ever

sees the same picture the same way.

It's impossible.

I'm probably not the best judge of how

many sides I have as a picture maker.

One film I can say- I indulged myself

in that, for me or for the audience...

that's popcorn

and that's brain food.

I don't know if I'm

the best judge of that really...

'cause I take

all of my movies seriously.

I took Raiders of the Lost Ark

seriously. I had to.

I had to believe the story

was really happening.

If I thought it was a romp

and a confection...

then the film would have been a parody

of the serials from the '50s and '40s

But I took that story very seriously.

I wanted the audience to believe...

that Indiana Jones was actually going

after the Lost Ark of the Covenant.

When that ark opened,

the power of God was within...

and was gonna wreck havoc

on the Nazis.

I believe that stuff.

I don't think you can be

a serious filmmaker...

making audience popcorn movies unless

you believe the stories you're telling.

I haven't seen Duel in a long time,

but my memory is that I was proud of it.

I look back at it, number one, saying,

"How did I get those shots in 13 days?

How was that possible?" To this day,

I don't think I could do it again.

If I had to go back right now

and re-create Duel...

in 12, 13 days,

I couldn't do it, be impossible.

I think I was so hungry back then.

I was so ambitious.

I was so excited about

having been given this chance.

I was so thankful to the studio...

especially George Eckstein and Wally

Worsley for supporting me in this.

I even use Wally Worsley.

He came in and did E. T. with me.

I look back at it and say,

"I couldn't do it that way again today.

I'm probably too smart

to have done it that way again. "

Which means a lot of the spontaneity

would be left out.

I would be the Europeans

analyzing Duel...

and putting all those different levels

of interpretation into it now.

I think I'd be too headstrong

about telling that story again.

Sometimes you have to look back

and say, "Those early films...

are a mark and a measure

of who I was back then. "

I'm not the same person today

as I was back then.

I always have held

that nobody's the same person.

Once you grow up

and have children and a family...

and learn more about

the world you live in.

You make new friends

and lose some old friends. You change.

I could never go back and make those

early films as well as I made them...

when I was of the appropriate age

and naivety...

to be working

on subjects like that.

But also I couldn't have made

Schindler's List or Private Ryan...

when I was 22, 23 years old either.

It's a fair trade-off.

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