Duel

This week on That '70s Movie Podcast, Jonathan and Michael hit the gas for Steven Spielberg's 1971 chase movie, "Duel."

We talked at length about Steven Spielberg's legacy as a director and how "Duel" showcases his abundant skills but also shows a very un-Spielbergian edge. We praised the masterful ways Spielberg creates tension and suspense in the film, the numerous bad choices made by the main character, played by Dennis Weaver, and why the movie works best as an allegory. 

So fix yourself a cheese sandwich (on rye), make sure your radiator hose is working, and give this week's episode a listen.

If you're enjoying the podcast, show your support by buying us a cup of coffee! Or just leave a review and tell us what you think!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

You're wrong, Mr. You you if you think you can take that that truck of yours and just use it as a murder weapon to say and killing people on the highway, what you're wrong. You've got another thing coming.

unknown 0:22

Don't you tell me I need help.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

Welcome everybody to the latest episode of That 70s Movie Podcast. I'm your host, Michael A. Cohen, joined by my co-host, as always, Jonathan Kirschner. Jonathan, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Once again, um hanging in there, maybe maybe by a thread, but definitely hanging. The thread is getting uh it's getting uh uh um like in a movie where the rope becomes more spindly.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Exactly. Exactly. It's like uh it's like Bruce Willis hanging off the building and you know the hose is beginning to break and he has to break through the window with his gun and so forth. Uh yeah, it's rough out there. But you know what? We're here to talk about movies today, so that's kind of exciting. Uh so actually, let's just start off with the big movie event of the week, which was the Oscars on Sunday evening. Uh Did you watch the Oscars actually, Jonathan?

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Yes. I thread this fascinating needle. I watch the Oscars every year with great attention, and yet I think the whole thing is ridiculous. I disapprove of awards and awards shows. But I but I watch and I watch with interest. Uh that they're rarely good. I thought this was actually an above-average telecast as these things go. But um I'm very firmly of the view that watching rich, beautiful people tell each other how great they are is kind of a waste of everybody's time, and I waste my time doing it.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

You know, I kind of agree. I actually was watching it sort of uh with it on, but not paying much attention to it. I think we both agree one battle after another was a really solid movie and was as worthy of a best picture Oscar as anything that was nominated this year. Um I'm just glad it won and Cinners didn't, a movie that I just really didn't like at all. So and I have to say, I don't care that much about this stuff, but like uh Michael B. Jordan, I like him. He's a good actor, he was great in the wire, what have you. He wasn't really that great in Centers. I don't get why he won Best Actor. I think it's while it's all politics. I think at least three of the performances I saw this year were better than than his performance in the centers, but you know, it is what it is.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

You can simply worry about such things. There's nice. It's nice when someone you're rooting for happens to win an award, but you know these things don't really have any meaning for us. I mean, I don't own a stake in any of these films, so whether they win an award or not. I uh it would have brought a tear to my eye if, you know, Jafar Panahi or it was just an accident was recognized in some way. That would have been very, very special to me. But but even Panahi, you know, we're not close personal friends, actually. I just really admire his films tremendously. Uh exactly.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

I think it's also notable that uh Sean Penn won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Um performance that I think we had, you know, we had mixed feelings about. I mean, I liked it, but I think there's some issues with it. But I think it's uh interesting. He's it's his third Oscar. He's only the, I think, fourth actor to win three Oscars, along with Jack Nicholson and uh Walter Brennan. I cannot remember the other one. Um but uh yeah. I mean deservedly so.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

He's a great actor. Don't we agree? Yes. No, I think he's a s a brilliant actor. He wouldn't have been my pick uh for this particular award, but he gets, you know, but I was showering him with roses for the no show. I mean, nothing I liked more than the no show.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

I I know I give him credit for the no show. And I'm guessing your pick would have been my pick, which was Benicio del Toro.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Yes, that hit that would have been my choice if I was handing out these little statuettes. Exactly. I felt the same way.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

I felt the same way. No, it's funny. I I, you know, having done this podcast and talked about movies we've loved from the 70s that didn't win awards, you do sort of realize that the best movie or the best performance doesn't always win and often often doesn't win. And so it's kind of meaningless, and I kind of didn't really care all that much about this this year's awards. Um I I just my own I told you I did before. I just wanted to see Wagner Morrow win for best actor. That didn't happen, and you know, that was pretty much disappointing for my evening. But other than that, it is what it is. Anything else you want to mention that you've seen recently that you liked?

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Yes, two things. We were doing a few repeat views, and there one of my favorite living directors is Arnaud Despochen, the French director, and he has a film called Ismail's Ghosts with Mathieu Almaric and um Charlotte Gainsberg, and uh act actor whose whose name I'm blanking on now tragically, Maria Cotard. Thank you. Oh, I love her. Oh, she's a lovely actor. She's a wonderful actress, big fan of that. This is about the fourth time I we've seen this one, and it's just such a special film. It's our it's it's thoughts that it is our number three of his uh of our favorite films of his, but it was a real delight uh to catch up with it again. And then in anticipation of today's uh podcast, which is going to be about Steven Spielberg, we did I did check-in with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which I had not seen since childhood, and I expected to think it was okay, and my expectations were not quite met.

SPEAKER_02 5:19

We'll talk more about that in a second, get to Spielberg. I I have some thoughts about Close Encounters as well. Uh I saw a bunch of things this week, nothing really stood out, although I did actually end up going back and watching randomly enough this early 90s movie by Abel Ferrero called The King of New York, uh starring Christopher Walken in full sort of Christopher Walken mode. Uh-huh. Young uh Lawrence Fishburn. But um You know, it's a funny thing. I I we talk about 70s movies being bleak, but I do think that like the early 90s kind of matched the nihilism and bleakness. Actually, it's more they're more nihilistic than even the 70s films, uh, but certainly the bleakness of early 70s cinema. And I at some point I think I think it's kind of fun to to dive in a little bit to early 90s uh s independent cinema, because I see a lot of similarities between that period and sort of the new Hollywood as kind of a revolt against you know what was dominant in the box office, or at least the dominant sort of movie culture at the time. Th though a lot of these early nineties movies really were just going in a very different, darker direction than the movies that we'd seen in, say, for example, the late 80s.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Yeah, as you said, there are no podcast police, so they can't stop us if we want to pick up some nineties films.

SPEAKER_02 6:29

I I think it's uh actually a a period worth discovering. I mean, not everything works in that period, and there was like I think, you know, yeah, more like by pole fiction, which I think was a little later in maybe '94, which of course everyone tried to imitate often poorly. Uh you know, it's just an interesting thing. And I think that it's one it's it's a very fertile period of of directors being given leeway to do interesting stuff uh by studios, by usually independent studios. Um and you know, directors often just pushing the envelope a little bit. And so I think it is a it is kind of a I mean, I look I say this, I I was in college in the 90s. I I I I think of the the music and the movies I love the most, it's it's often from that period because when I was sort of, I guess, active and about and and sort of really experiencing the culture in in a serious way. So I I do love that stuff. And plus I grew up in the 80s where the culture was, you know, not nearly as good as it was in the early 90s. Um okay, two quick housekeeping notes. We had a request from a um from a listener to put this podcast on Deezer. Now, neither Jonathan and I knew what Deezer is. I discovered it's a podcasting platform, so I went ahead and it's on Deezer now. So if you listen to your podcast on Deezer, you can listen to us there. Uh also we got some nice comments this week, and I want to just mention something we've been talking about doing, uh having a bonus episode, having a subscription service, and we're gonna try to at some point get that going, but we don't really have the time to do a lot of bonus episodes. So instead, what we're gonna do is we're gonna ask you if you were enjoying the podcast and you want to just sort of make a contribution uh to what we're doing here, you can buy us a cup of coffee. This is uh a website that you know allows you to uh just make a little contribution, buy a cup of coffee, you know, to phrase some of the costs we that we incur in trying to put this thing online. If you want to do it, great. If you don't want to do it, I understand. No problem, don't worry about it. But I'm gonna we're giving that option to you. So if you like what you're listening to, if you want to make a small contribution uh to what we're what we're doing here, we'd appreciate it. So there it is. There'll be a link uh in the um at both uh Spotify and Apple Podcasts where you can where you can do that. So if you do that, we we thank you in advance. If you don't do that, at the very least, let's give us a thumbs up, maybe leave a comment, just telling us you're enjoying the podcast. We got some wonderful, wonderful notes this week from listeners telling us what they they enjoyed the Clued episode, enjoyed other episodes. You know, I gotta tell you something. It warms my heart whenever I get those notes. Don't you feel the same way, Jonathan?

SPEAKER_01 8:51

Yes. Uh uh I love seeing some of the comments. You know, even in uh we often disagree with each other, and so it's not we don't need people to write and tell us what they agree with. Uh it's just such a pleasure to get you know feedback and commentary on any of the episodes. It is nice to get the praise, but again, uh any kind of engagement i is always just uh it brings a little light in any given day. A hundred percent.

SPEAKER_02 9:13

In fact, actually somebody somebody left a comment on our one bot and other uh criticizing us for not um drawing a clear conclusion, clear conclusion whether we like the movie or not. And I was like, okay, you know, that's fine. Uh yeah, you know, I I I we can handle negative uh takes. That's fine, no problem at all. And please tell us what you think. We'd love to hear from you. It really does. I it it makes my day. You know, in these dark times, to get a note saying that something that you're doing, that you're producing, is is causing somebody some s some slight moment of joy or happiness really is rewarding. So absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, today we are talking about the 1971 movie Duel, directed by Steven Spielberg. This, in fact, was his first feature film, although it was actually a TV movie before it was released as a feature film. Uh, it is based on a short story by Richard Matheson. The music is composed by Billy Goldenberg, the editing is by Frank Morris, cinematography by Jack Marta, and it stars Dennis Weaver, and that's basically it as far as the stars. There are some other actors in this movie, but Dennis Weaver really is a star. Also, the other star is a giant tractor trailer uh that tries to chase him down and kill him, uh, who is driven by a stunt man named Carrie Lofton. We'll give him a shout out because he has been in hundreds of films and he plays the truck driver in this movie. Um, it was not nominated for any Academy Awards, it was nominated for Best TV movie at the Golden Globes. It did not win, but it did win the Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Film Sound Editing. So good for that. Uh and what's it about? Very basic story. A man is driving uh in uh California, sort of middle of nowhere. He gets chased by a truck that tries to kill him. Chaos ensues. So that's the movie. And we get to the point now of the podcast that of course everyone looks forward to. Uh Jonathan, Duel. Is this a good movie? Is this a bad movie, or is this a great movie? I think it is a good movie. Oh, interesting. Oh, look at that. I think it's the first good movie we've gotten so far. Yeah. Interesting. All right. Okay. Good movie. Not great, but not bad.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Exactly. I also should say that. You're saying I do I do a lot of driving in the Boston area, and so for a while I thought it was just a documentary. Excellent. That is a good line.

SPEAKER_02 11:35

Good joke right there, Jonathan. Well played. Well played. Okay, so I want to say this about this movie. First of all, this is directed by Steven Spielberg, and we're gonna spend some time talking about him today, because even though I you know am the host of a 70s movie podcast, I love Steven Spielberg's movies. I know that's is counterintuitive. A 70s film buff should not be a big Steven Spielberg fan because so many of his movies are uh let's see, sentimental, not necessarily a lot of moral ambiguity, but I love Spielberg. And the reason I love Spielberg is that he makes great movies. Now, before I get into my love for Spielberg, I'm just gonna ask you, Jonathan. Are there any Stephen how do you feel about Steven Spielberg? Are there any movies of his that you particularly like?

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Well, I want to be very uh careful about the way I phrase this, because I think Steven Spielberg is an enormously talented filmmaker. And I really admire the fact that he's also a working filmmaker. You know, the the way they say a writer writes and an actor acts. He's a filmmaker and he makes films. So he's an enormously talented filmmaker, obviously has a multitude of gifts, and he continues to work, you know, prolifically. And uh so all those things I find extremely admirable and appealing. And I, on the other hand, am pretty much, you know, calling into talk radio. Hi, this is Vinny from Queens, and let me tell you why the Mets manager is. Exactly. Exactly. Nevertheless, I you know, a man walks into a theater, but at a certain point he has to admit he is that man. And I have never warmed to the charms of of Spielberg's films. Um I I actually my favorite Steven Spielberg film is that is it is the first episode of the Colombo movie series that he directed uh with Jack Cassidy. I think that's terrific, and I think that that was made right before he made Duel. And I do think as a filmmaker, he came closer to things I was interested in from a filmmaker than he did when he moved on to become the institution that he was. You said he, you know, he's very sentimental. I find him unbearably sentimental. I also find him unbearably earnest. Uh, in late career, I think he really wanted to make important films, uh, which again I disapprove of. Uh my homie Claude Chabral once wrote an essay when he was a critic for Cayuta Cinema, talking about in defense of small themes, and he said that the death of a barmaid in an alley is no less important than the death of a hero of the resistance. And he said, he went on to say that in fact the smaller the theme, the deeper you can go into the personal drama, because when you have a big theme, you have the weight of the responsibility of handling that massive, even ponderous topic, and it kind of constrains what you can do as a filmmaker. And so I think in in late career, Spielberg has often tried to make quote unquote important films, and so I kind of shy away from those types of films. But, you know, and then he had his I like to make blockbusters phase, which is, you know, the enemy of the new Hollywood, right? The blockbuster killed the new Hollywood, so I can't really like that. I also have an esoteric complaint to make about Steven Spielberg, which is I find and I'm not I'm not shopping for a dirty movie, I'm shopping for an adult movie. I find that he has no sense of eroticism. That is the kind of romantic or sexual connection between adult characters. Um I think is there's some there's a certain kind of neutered sterility to a lot of his relationships, even between married couples, that I find a noticeable theme uh across his entire career. He just doesn't seem to be into that sort of thing. And part of that may be that he takes often as a point of departure a child's eye view of the action. I tend not to enjoy his use of children in movies more generally, and this is one of my the things I didn't enjoy about my recent screening of of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where I found the children uh extremely annoying uh uh to deal with. All right. But having complained my way through all that, let me double down on my appreciation of his Columbo episode of this movie. And I I want to mention two movies that are I think worth talking about. I think for me, there I would go with Bridge of Spies and I would go with Minority Report. But in each of those two cases, I would still have some reservations. I think Bridge of Spies has a bit of an edge to it, but I think that's because the Cohn brothers were involved in writing it, and so they're they brought their cynicism to it. But even then, you know, compare the ending of Bridge of Spies uh to the ending of uh the spy who came in from the cold in 1966.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

It's not even comparable.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Trevor Burrus, Jr. No, but by the way, a f a phenomenal movie just for the phenomenal movement. But but they end similarly with a spy traversing Checkpoint Charlie. And in Spielberg's, you get the whole of the music and the pumping, and not just the happy ending, but the double happy ending after he's jerked you around with the suspense for 20 minutes and the spy who came in from the cold, maybe slightly less happy ending there. But you know, uh Martin Ritt did that in like 101 minutes. Uh it took Spielberg 141 minutes or so to do British Spies. That's the one I liked, by the way. I thought it was very well acted. I thought you know, Tom Hanks. Mark Wright, I think it's his name. He's great. Marvelous in that movie. He's great. Um, Tom Hanks is in his early I am Stephen Spielberg's Jimmy Stewart character phase, and you know, gets to give speeches about America, which is great. But I I found that movie very engaging. I just it it's just still had the elements that I that I sometimes find irritating. Minority Report, I thought had a real hard edge to it and a beautiful, coherent visual stylizing that there's locked be in. And it was a Tom Cruise movie. And so if you know if I'm locked into a Tom Cruise movie and those are the things that uh beautiful use of color, the suspense was good, and and you know, it's probably because of the source material, the you know, dystopian short story or novel by Philip Dick. So you have to deal with that material. And I was really engaged in it was raising challenging moral questions. Again, I thought it unraveled uh in the end. Normally I I revere anything Max von Seidau does, but then suddenly it just, I don't know. I I got confused about what was happening in the last third of Minor Report. But I do think it was perhaps his sharpest, his sharpest movie. That's and that's what I'm the word that I'm looking for is sharpness.

SPEAKER_02 18:12

I I'm a big fan of that movie. But let me say this about Spielberg, and this is where I think you and I diverge a little bit. I'm gonna do I'm gonna divide Spielberg's films into three categories. Okay, so the first category I'd say is like just hugely entertaining, not necessarily deep thematic movies, but just really fun at the movies. And I put in that category first and foremost, Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Arc, which is one of my favorite movies of all time. Actually, the third Indiana Jones movie, The Last Crusade with Sean Connery, which in some ways is actually better than the first one, but just the first one has that nostalgia for me as a kid seeing it. Um Catch Me If You Can. I know you haven't seen that. Yeah, I absolutely love that movie. It's just a really fun movie, great performances, uh, just really well done. Uh Jurassic Park, I mean, look, it's a stupid blockbuster dinosaur movie. I get all of that. It's hugely entertaining. I saw my brother at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C., and we had such a blast watching that movie. It's so much fun.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Yeah, but when the dinosaurs learned how to open doors by using the water.

SPEAKER_02 19:10

Oh, it's ridiculous. Oh, are you kidding me? But this is the okay, this is the thing about Spielberg, and this is actually a point. There's a moment in in Jurassic Park that when they first see the T-Rex, and the way he translates that, the way he he he the visual storytelling, the way he tells it, is you see this cup of water, and all of a sudden the water begins to move a little bit. And that's when you realize something is happening. And I love those little touches. He's a wonderful visual storyteller, wonderful eye. He's so good at building tension. And some of the set pieces, like in Raiders, are just phenomenal. So I I know that like we had the conversation before we did the podcast about like I'm just if I go to a movie and I'm just entertained for two hours and it's a fun experience, that's enough for me sometimes. I that's just fine. And the movies I just mentioned all do that. Um and I and I love all of them. And you're you're right, Jurassic Park, when the if the opens the goddamn door, it's like, I really but I don't care. You just have to suspend a little bit of belief, and that's okay with me.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

Sure, but I mean this is uh maybe I'm being unfair, but uh again, I am serious when I say this is a person who uh is just you know exudes cinematic talent. And I I expect more from him than than than to to take me on a roller coaster ride for two hours.

SPEAKER_02 20:26

That's fair. I that's fair. I mean, look, if he's just a director who makes movies that are hugely entertaining, that's fine. I mean, you're right, you can see he can do more with that, but that I think that actually in it like we talked about Rob Reiner, right? We I think we agree that Rob Reiner wasn't necessarily like the most imaginative or or or or or or skilled director, but he made really entertaining movies, and there's something to be said for that. And I think that's true for Spielberg. Now, to your point about movies that are hit on a deeper level, I think there are a few that do that. You mentioned Minority Report, but I would also add um Munich, which I think is his as a masterpiece, and maybe the most 70s film he ever made, and also a deeply subversive anti-war film. It's the best anti-war on terrorism film, which by the way has a little bit of that eroticism that you mentioned, slightly has a little bit of that element to it. Also, some wonderful performances, even if they have Daniel Craig playing a Jew. Uh and then the third one is Save and Private Ryan, a movie that I truly think is one of the best movies ever made. I shouldn't say that. It's one of the best war movies ever made. Let me put it that way. I think the opening sequence of that movie is I have no words for it. It is just it is an extraordinary piece of visual uh storytelling. It's an extraordinary piece of filmmaking.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Aaron Ross Powell As someone who has never been close to combat, uh I I am in awe of the portrayal of the D-Day landing in the opening sequence of that movie. It's it's it's astonishingly brilliant. Astonishing brilliant.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

Absolutely. It's a ston I mean on every level, right? Visually, the sound of it is incredible. It is just extraordinarily well done. And and um, you know, I watched I watched that movie a few times. I really have a hard time watching it. Opening that movie again. Right. I remember seeing in the theater the first time, and I I wanted to crawl under my seat. It was so difficult to watch. But so and and somebody who has studied World War II and has had been to Normandy Beaches and I've been obsessed with things about DD, and and I it was hard it was such a difficult thing to watch. And I think it was extraordinary filmmaking.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Trevor Burrus, Jr. But it stands out, I think, in in Spielberg's career because unlike most of his stuff and unlike the rest of the movie, it is so unflinchingly unheroic. I mean, people die because they they they go out of their landing vehicle too soon and so they drown due to the weight of their equipment, or they get onto the beach and they kind of and it's random luck who gets their head blown off and who doesn't. Exactly. You know, but that's not normally what you get from Spielberg.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

But okay, but let me finish the point about this. This is why I think this movie is so good. I think the same private there is an image of Sabre Private Ryan that it is jingoistic, that it is nationalistic, that it is pro-American. It is not. People who think that, I think, have misunderstood the film. Look, that's my opinion. That's just an opinion. But I I think there's two things about the movie that stand out. One is every character in that movie that you come to like, that you come to associate with, that you, that you find some kind of relationship with, gets killed. And every character in that film who is loathsome, who does something terrible, like the uh Up in the guy who kills a prisoner of war, they survive. I think that is a that is the kind of courageous filmmaking that Spielberg doesn't do very often. Right. It's the opposite of Schindler's Let's Well. I'll get to in a second. So I think, and also the second thing is I think is fascinating in that movie, is that every single character in the movie that that commits a war crime or human rights violation of some sort is American. It's only the Americans who do it, not the Germans. And I think that movie actually is asking some really hard questions about the choices that one has to make in war and the and and how war turns you into a different person. By the way, for that record, I watched Break Your Morant the other day, because we we talked about that. Right. And very similar movie, by the way, that's very much about similar kinds of themes. Great movie, by the way, you should all watch it. But I just think St. Pride of Ryan is is Spielberg at his most ambitious and his most courageous, not courageous, but his most he's where he's challenging the audience the most. And that's why I love that film so much. And I think it's great filmmaking. Now, there's the third category, the films that I hate. And that would be Lincoln, a movie that is so drenched in sentimentality, it it drowns. Uh the Terminal, another terrible Tom Hanks movie. Um Schindler's List. I know I shouldn't be saying this, but I really didn't like that movie. I have so many problems with that movie. How you make a Holocaust movie with a somewhat happy ending. Uh and and to the point about Saban Private Ryan, every character that you come to have a relationship with in that movie survives. That's the opposite of what happens in Satan Private Ryan. I have so many issues with Schindler's List. The opposite of what happened in the Holocaust. Exactly. Thank you. Exactly. Exactly. So I it really I the people who were killed are people you have no relationship with. They are symbols. They're not necessarily flesh and blood. And I think it's I think he was he he pulled punches on the movie, even though I do would agree it's a it's a beautiful film, beautifully, and there's some wonderful performances in it. Um I also hated Close Encounters, the Third Con. I think it's a boring movie. Uh and the fourth Indiana Jones might be the biggest pile of monkey shit I've ever seen in a movie theater in my entire life. So he's made some bad movies. He's not perfect. But I just think that the ambition of what he does, and he gets and he gets caught up in his sentimentality. Look, Save Private Ryan, people hated the ending of it because it was so sentimental. And I get why they feel that way. Didn't ruin the film for me, but it doesn't really not perfect. A minority report, right? The ending is very sentimental too. I was okay with it. But I get why people don't like it.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

Trevor Burrus, Jr. I don't remember it vividly. I remember for me, I thought it kind of just got a little ragged in the in the end. And I I thought the movie was going to end, and it just kept going on and on for like 15 more minutes.

SPEAKER_02 25:54

That's a problem of modern filmmaking. People don't know how to end movies anymore. Uh so that's my basic take on Spielberg. I just think he makes very entertaining movies that I come back to and I revere. I think when he pushes the envelope and challenges himself, he can also make great movies. And and I said this before, I think Munich is one of the best movies in the last 25 years. Everyone should go see it. It's fantastic. My best Hollywood movies the last 25 years. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

Yeah. If I was gonna go back to one, though, I think for me, I would I would revisit Minority Report.

SPEAKER_02 26:22

Yeah, I think I should watch that again, too. And you're right, Tom Cruise not my favorite actor. He has a few things I like, but not somebody that I I not a go-to actor for me by any stretch of the imagination.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

Um but the combination of the really coherent and ambitious visual stylizing on top of just inherent moral ambiguity, you know, these this is all I'm shopping for when I go to the movies.

SPEAKER_02 26:43

Absolutely. Absolutely. It it's a it there's a lot going on in that movie, and I think it's I think it's well done. So okay, so we talked about that. So let's talk about Duel, which is what we're supposed to be talking about today. And what I think is interesting about this movie is that you see so much of what makes Spielberg such a distinctive and talented director, his eye. Um the the c the way he frames shots, the composition of the shots, the the the the way he builds tension and suspense, it's all here in this film. This film is like a precursor to Jaws in a lot of ways. It's like Jaws, but the butt the shark is a truck.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:20

I like the truck better than the shark personally. I kind of do too, actually. I kind of do too. Uh but there's something else this movie, this movie has an edge to it that you don't get at a lot of Spielberg's films. Right. And I suspect that's what you liked about this film.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

Definitely. I like the fact that it had this edge. But also, uh, we talked about this a little bit before we started uh recording. These these two early TV movies, um, the Columbo episode and Duel. I I actually saw some interviews with Spielberg in which he talked about how when he was doing work as a TV director, which he did reluctantly because like all good directors. Right, that's how he started off, is uh making TV movies, right? That was but he was kind of snob about it, like like all good young directors should be. They just want to slum in TV, but he needed work as work and he needed the work. But he talked about it, and he's correct, that he brought a film kind of style to his TV productions in that television, especially back then, you're looking at small black and white TVs, depended a lot on close-ups because you had to see the characters and you had to see what they were saying. You were watching it on TV. And he brought a kind of longer shot sensibility to that. And so you had all of these fascinating compositions in that Columbo episode I keep lauding, and also even in this, you know, originally shot for TV movie, had a lot of long shots and a lot of ambitious kind of frame compositions that you don't normally associate with television. Now, again, we won't talk about dual, but I feel like Spielberg was slightly more ambitious in his compositions, not in his ability to make beautiful shots, but in his frame compositions in these early TV movies than he would become in his later blockbusters. And so that's why I'm just I so favor some of them. And there are several really attractive shots uh in dual. Some of them are maybe a little show-offy, but he was a young director who wanted to show off, and that's okay because I think they worked well dramatically. But a lot of long shots, kind of deep focus, in which you have the frame composed with action in the foreground and the background really thoughtfully structured. Uh again, in a movie that that is a little tougher than I normally associate with with Spielbergesque material.

SPEAKER_02 29:31

Yeah, I mean I think that's I agree with all of that. And I think that you know, there this is a horror movie in a lot of respects. Yes. Um this is a movie about a guy who's driving Dennis Weaver, leaves his house in LA, suburban household. You see the opening where he's driving through the streets of LA, he's getting and as he's driving further away, he's getting more and more sort of away from civilization, if you will. And he's he's going to this meeting with a client. We don't know what the meeting is about, we don't know what the client is, we just know he's going to this thing. And at some point this truck is in front of him, refused to let him pass, and so he passes the truck, and basically from that point on, the truck is trying to kill him. That's basically what happens in the movie. Um and what I the thing is uh the Jaws comparison is interesting because I I like I'm a big I like Jaws. I think it's a great movie. I think it's it's wonderfully done. It shows a lot of his talents. But one thing on I watched it again recently that I noticed that really kind of annoyed me was the score. He has all these like treacly kind of John Williams scores that I in all of his movies that just annoy the hell out of me. In this movie, there is a score, actually it's a pretty good score. Uh the guy's name was I think Billy Goldenberg, is that his name? Uh yeah, Billy Goldenberg. And I felt I felt as though the score, which is kind of a little discordant and just a lot of like sort of odd percussive noises, is actually really effective. But in general, this is a quiet film. This is a good this could have been a silent film, actually, in a lot of respects.

SPEAKER_01 31:01

Yeah, it could have been, but also aside you know, talking about dialogue, but the use of the sound design in general is very effective throughout throughout the film. So I don't know, I don't know if it would have worked silent. I think it would have worked you don't really need any of the dialogue that you've got.

SPEAKER_02 31:15

You don't need a lot of the dialogue. Right. And there really isn't. So I mentioned earlier, I've jokingly said, that this star is Dennis Weaver in a truck. That is basically who's in this movie. There is very little dialogue. Uh most of the movie is Weaver talking to himself in this car being chased by this truck. Um there's one scene if you're going to diner when you see when he has dialogue, and that it's uh perhaps one of the more interesting scenes in the movie. But this is a movie really just about Dennis Weaver's struggle, if you will, and the challenge is his his challenge. And to be clear, the backdrop for him, as much as we have a backdrop, but we don't know a lot about him, is that he is, for lack of a better term, feels somewhat emasculated. And and the theme of that comes across in this opening radio bit that he listens to, in which it's a it's an actual comedy bit of somebody asking a question about filing out his census form and confused as to saying, like, Am I the head of the household? Right. There's a man saying this, because my wife really is the head of the household. And, you know, does she it do we need she she be the head of the household? And and it's it's meant to be a sort of a a play on this idea that this guy is sort of emasculated by his his his wife. And right after the scene happens, we see Weaver call his wife and her kind of give him a hard time because they'd had a party the night before, and some friend of his had, it's in her words, almost raped her at the party, and he didn't see anything about it. So you see him as kind of this nebushy kind of character.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

Trevor Burrus, Jr. And there's a lot, there's a lot of the fish in communication there. Because you know, the the the radio bit, which is hilarious, it's yeah, again, it's a reminder that nothing is accidental, right? We have this long radio bit, and the guy says, Well, she's really the head of the household, but I I I can't not check the box that I'm the head of the household because if by just by checking that box, what will that mean? And the radio host says, Well, no one's ever going to see what box you're checking. Right, right, right. But yet he can't bring himself to do it. And so we're being asked to understand that conceptions of masculinity and the male role are very important for the movie because that there it is on the radio at the very start. And then you have the folk with the wife. Now, I wasn't at the party, but I get the sense that that guy probably was just hitting on her in a really annoying and lecherous way, and the husband kind of, Dennis Weaver, that has kind of looked the other way, and she was kind of irritated that he didn't intercede. I I don't know. I've been to a lot of parties and rare, rare or there are near rapes that take place in them. Seems unusual. Trevor Burrus, Jr. But she was irritated by this, and so you've got this sequencing of events of a discussion of masculinity, and then her criticizing him for failing to come to her aid as the male in their relationship. And then you have him confronted with this challenge that is a threat to kind of his his personhood, but also to his masculinity. I mean, the movie the title of the movie is dual, so it is suggested that it's kind of a mono-amano type thing, and he has to think about, you know, how he's going to respond to this challenge and and this confrontation between the unseen trucker and and and and himself.

SPEAKER_02 34:17

Aaron Powell And there's various points in the movie where he is kind of belittled, right? First of all, it's fair off by saying his name is David Mann. So there is kind of th that's very symbolic, obviously. It's um when he pulls into the gas station, the gas station attendant says, You're the boss, and he says, um he says, No, not in my household, I'm not. And there's a scene later with children, which I know of course you don't like because there's children in the movie, but there's children on a bus, and he's trying to his car is kind of stuck on this bus, he's trying to get it on uh r released, and the kids are all laughing at him in the bus.

SPEAKER_01 34:50

Um, I think that's right, but I want to pause at the bus scene, which is a ridiculous scene, and there should never have been in the movie. But I do want to pause to say this is not normally how Spielberg gives us children. These children are scary mothers. I mean, they they're the way they look at him, they peer at him like almost like through the windows as a kind of chorus. They're they're menacing little creatures. Yes and scary. And so in that sense, they're not the kind of innocent naifs, you know, oh mommy, where are you that you usually get in a in a Spielberg movie. And so I did I actually didn't like the bust scene. I didn't think it really made sense as to why I was there in the movie. But for the the menacing chorus of urchins, I thought that again had a certain type of of edge that I don't normally associate with Spielberg. I mean, I was I was afraid of those kids. I know.

SPEAKER_02 35:41

They were they're they're scary kids, they were mean kids. By the way, one thing in that scene also that you s when the truck is not visible in that scene, but he fears the truck is coming back, and then all of a sudden he sees the truck, there's a tunnel, and the truck is at the end of the tunnel. It's a gorgeous shot. And again, it's another example of just Spielberg has such a great eye, and it's a beautifully composed shot, and it really does create that feeling of uh tension. But I think what makes this movie so compelling is that first of all, the truck itself, the production design of the truck is incredible. It is this huge 16-rig truck, it is filthy, it's a slamble on the back, and it just has this look of like uh a beast. It it it doesn't look like a normal truck, it looks like a truck that's been through something or that's done something to some people. And um and you never see the driver, but but just before I get to that, but the the truck is just uh you see these wonderful shots of the truck, you often shot from from below to give it a more foreboding look. And you by the way, you see all these license plates on the front. I read somewhere this was supposed to indicate that these were all the people that he the typer had killed.

SPEAKER_01 36:46

Yeah, I saw that too and wondered why the authorities weren't doing a better job of tracking down this guy. You would think, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:52

Um and also it but like the the truck itself feels like uh it's like an animal, it's like a beast. You know, I mean it it it he loses the truck and the truck comes up and finds him again, and you know, i s sort of is is it's a character in itself.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

Yes. Um it's it's very effective in that in that regard.

SPEAKER_02 37:12

Yeah, I mean I think that's what I think you see what with with Spielberg, what it's uh well, you see that's how effective he is at creating tension and creating that kind of suspense. He builds it up so beautifully in the film. And it's I mean, I think you could say it gets a little old after a while. Not for me. I thought it was completely compelling from beginning to end. I loved it. I just I found everything about the chase scenes beautifully shot and just really enjoyable. And also seeing Weaver's kind of descent uh as he's becoming more and more like sort of unhinged by what's happening to him.

SPEAKER_01 37:40

So that this movie kind of lost me in its last third, but I don't want to I wanna I want to keep praising it for a while before we get to my my complaints about it.

SPEAKER_02 37:48

Aaron Ross Powell Well, tell me what you think about Des Weaver's performance. He is not Des Weaver is not somebody I think is associated, like he's not a leading man necessarily. I always think of him, he was on the show Um was it McMillan and Wife, I think was the show. No, he was McLeod.

SPEAKER_01 38:01

McLeod Oh McLeod, sorry. And that is a TV show that was also in the NBC Wheel movie of the week with Columbo and with McMillan and Wife, as you mentioned. And it was in the show McLeod was inspired by a Don Siegel film. Um again, the the name is escaping me from 1968, in which a sheriff from New Mexico comes to New York to solve a crime. It is essentially a a dry run for what would become Dirty Harry. I'm I'm kicking myself for not being able to remember the name of this movie, which I've seen several times. But and it's it's quite interesting. And so it's about that as McLeod was, about this kind of southwestern sheriff type figure trying to make his way in the in the tough town of New of New York. Uh and if I knew the title of the movie, which I really should, uh I could, you know, say Lee J. Cobb shows up as a nice role, Susan Clark as a nice role, and so this becomes a TV series uh with uh McLeod, and Dennis Weaver is best known for that, although he was also had a prominent role in two long-running TV series in the 1960s. However, Spielberg claims, I don't know, people tell stories. Spielberg claims that it was uh Dennis Weaver's performance as the deranged nightman, the manager of the of the motel in one of the greatest movies ever made, Orson Wells' Touch of Evil, that he saw something in Weaver's performance there that he thought was ideal for this movie. I I I can't help but think he's telling the story there because he was such a prominent figure in two very visible TV series in the 60s, and then he did the McLeod show. And so the idea that, oh, and I cast Dennis Weaver because of because of Orson Wells' 1957 uh Touch of Evil that no one but me has seen, uh I I I have some skepticism about. Trevor Burrus, Jr. You're not buying it.

SPEAKER_02 39:49

You know, I didn't mention this earlier, and I I I'd forgotten this until now. I mean, his most prominent role was that he was uh in Gunsmoke. He was in the line share of the Aaron. I've never seen Gunsmoke, but it was a I have never seen Gunsmoke either. I never had a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 40:03

But it was a major American phenomenon that ran for endless years. And so to have a prominent role in that show, and then you say, Oh, that's not what I thought of Dennis Weaver. It's just I I it's I I didn't buy.

SPEAKER_02 40:14

So but here's the question about this. I mean, so uh looking at his sort of filmography, it's really a TVography. I mean, he's a TV star. He's on another show called Gentle Ben before he was on McLeod. Uh he did a lot of TV movies. I mean, this is a TV movie, so it makes sense that he'd be cast in this role. Um But I think back then in the 70s, so TV stars and movie stars were very different. There was a pretty clear divide between sort of the caliber of actor, if you will, who'd be in a TV film versus uh uh a film. Today those lines have been have been um crossed, if you will. I mean some of the best actors working today are are in TV. Um so I guess the question I have for you is does he have the chops to pull off a performance like this where he's the where he's not has to be kind of has to be a movie star, even though it's a TV movie, he is to be a movie star, and he is also the only character that you see in the movie.

SPEAKER_01 41:09

Um I I didn't sit there in awe of their role of the performance, but I also didn't sit there saying, gee, I don't look, I don't think he's up to this. So I thought he was a professional player doing a professional job. I'm not sure if I kind of had this counterfactual imagination in my head of putting a different actor in the role saying, oh, the movie would have been much better if we had this instead of Dennis Weaver. Uh I'm going to interrupt the action here to say I was thinking of the movie Coogan's Bluff, which also starred uh Clint Eastwood, and as many ways raises similar questions to Dirty Harry three years later, but actually in a somewhat more sophisticated way. Uh so that might be a movie we want to talk about uh in the future. But but Dennis Weaver, so I thought Dennis Weaver, I had no problems with his performance uh in the film.

SPEAKER_02 41:53

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, I I he's he's fine. He's good. There are moments I think he he actually really kind of stands out, but I don't find his performance uh one of the better ones we've done in this podcast. I'd probably put in the bottom tier of performances. And I I think I don't think that matters as much because this movie really isn't about his acting.

SPEAKER_01 42:13

Aaron Powell But I think that's a key point. I was gonna say that, so I'm sorry to step on your toes here. No, no, but we were praising Sean Penn uh as a great actor. I mean, do we really want Sean Penn, you know, in in this role? Or do we really want that level of, you know, I am now Capital A acting and showing every emotion that's coursing through my veins with the raising of an eyebrow? Because as you say, it's he's really supposed to be an everyman. And so there is a certain built-in ordinariness to what he's supposed to be portraying. Right. Right. I think I think that's right.

SPEAKER_02 42:47

And I I guess I it you think about this role, would would would a different actor have been more compelling? I don't know. I mean, again, as I said, I mean he you he has that everyman quality that kind of works in the film. Um I mean, the biggest moment I think where, besides look, he spends a lot of time in this movie um looking at his rearview mirror. If we had to if we had to drink a beer every time he chips in the rearview mirror, we'd be drunk off our ass. Okay. There's a lot of that in this movie. There's a lot of shots of him looking pensive and looking, you know, concerned and so forth. That's that's a big the thing where he probably does the most he has to do the most acting is when he goes to the diner. I know this is your favorite scene in the movie. Just talk about let me let me set this up before we get there. Basically, he has the first the first sort of interlude with this truck driver. Right. Right? At one point the driver motions him to pass him the second time, and as he as Weaver moves into the other lane, another car is coming. He tries to get him killed, basically, in that moment. I mean, he tries to cause an accident. So at some point they stop at a gas station where he sees the guy get out of the truck. He sees his boots, so he has some idea of what he was wearing cowboy boots. And after but but after this sort of interlude with the two of them with this, you know. Almost kills him and throws him off the road. He goes into this diner. Chuck's Cafe, it's called. And that's where the movie kind of goes to a different level. So talk a little bit about that, if you could.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

Aaron Ross Powell Oh, I want to talk about that. But I do want to emphasize that this is the first moment in the movie when things have really gotten out of hand. I mean, they're playing kind of cat and mouse, and and you know, maybe it's a very dangerous game of cat and mouse, but this is the first time it's gotten dangerously overturned. It feels like his life might be in danger. Yes, right. Yes. And so and that's my problem with uh later on in the movie is that he should have figured this out some time ago because that was that was a real, a real life-threatening episode. And he kind of crashes his car and he gets himself up and dusts himself off and he heads into this diner. And I don't just like this diner scene. I love this diner scene. Oh, and here we go. This is here we go. This is I I reviewed it and it is 17 plus minutes long. Yeah. Okay. So we're talking about it's close to 20% of the entire running time of the film. It's like a short film in and of itself. And it is, and I don't use this phrase lightly, it is Hitchcockian. It is suspenseful visual storytelling because you don't know what's going on or where the threat is, but you share the anxiety with the character. And this is what Hitchcock's gift was: was to impose the anxiety of his protagonist on the audience. So Weaver comes into the diner, and again, 17 minutes. And and again, the dialogue is irrelevant here, so it's all about telling the story. And he does what you would normally do, which is he goes to the restroom and tries to collect himself a little bit because he's he's a little dazed from being knocked around a bit in his car. He goes to the restroom, he collects himself a bit, he comes out, he settles in a booth in a part of the diner, and then you have this really attractive long shot with a pool table in the foreground and him in the background. You have some some guys playing pool, and then he looks over his shoulder and ooh, spooky, the truck is there. Well, that's in the parking lot.

SPEAKER_02 46:01

So what's henching is that he goes to the bathroom and the truck is not there. Right. He comes out of the bathroom, he looks out the window and the truck is there. And then he looks back and he sees a bunch of guys sitting at the bar, tries to figure out who's the driver.

SPEAKER_01 46:16

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yes. And that is again very Hitchcockian in that there's a row of guys sitting at the bar, maybe five. And any one of those five guys could conceivably be the driver of that truck. And what do you do in that situation? And he's trying to he's doing what we try would all try to do. He's trying to figure out which one but they're mostly all wearing boots, and some of them have hats. You know, it's like Exactly. So it could be anyone, and he has this awkward exchange with the waitress, which of course you would because you're not really thinking about the food then. You're thinking, you know, which person sitting at that bar is the person who just, you know, tried to kill me, really, when you when you think about it. And so then he settles in on one of them, and that guy gets up, and again I'm gonna invoke Hitchcock, and we see him leave. But then he goes to a different truck and drives it away. So oh, I thought it was him, but it's not him. It's you know, there's kind of the kind of the whole false alarm.

SPEAKER_02 47:09

Little bait and switch there. Yeah. I want to mention two things about the waitress scene. First of all, he orders a cheese sandwich. Yeah. I have no idea what that is. Uh not a grilled cheese sandwich, but a cheese sandwich. That just sounds awful, by the way, just to be clear on this point. He but he also says something interesting. He says, I want a cheese sandwich on rye, and then he spells it out, R-Y-E, as if the waitress is too dumb to figure out what he means. And there's a part that it's the other thing that I movie that I think is sort of interesting is that Weaver's character isn't really all that likable. Right. He's kind of a little bit of a jerk, actually. He's a jerk to the guy at the like we goes to a gas station early and the guy tells him that your that your radiator hose is is is broken and want to replace it, and he goes, Yeah, yeah, trying to sell me something. Turns out, by the way, it's like um uh it's it actually ends up like Chekhov's radiator. It ends up actually. He comes back later and sort of almost screws him. But he's kind of a jerk to that guy. Um he's kind of a jerk to the waitress. Uh he's kind of a jerk to the bus driver in that scene as well. Like he's just not the most pleasant character. And even when like he even when he gets like his car gets kind of thrown off the road, people try to help him, he's not very friendly to them either. I know he I know he's frazzled, I get that. But there is something about a little bit of like um what's the word? Not uh uh he's just a little bit arrogant.

SPEAKER_01 48:29

Yes, and also get get back to Spielberg. He's also not the Tom Hanks character, right? This is not Tom This is not Tom Hanks as Jimmy Stewart in a Steven Spielberg movie driving the street car. And I I like that. You know, I don't I don't want, you know, that would not be the actor and or the character that I would want to see uh in here. By the way, just a small point on the on the radiator host, but Chekhov's radiator host comes up twice, I think, in in the movie, and of course it then becomes a very important plot point. But then there's Chekhov's inflammable truck, which does not burst into flames. This truck has flammable written on it on the side, and we get shots of that word over and over and over again, and then it never blows up. And I thought, you know, there we were kind of being mocked as if they were saying, You think I'm gonna make this truck blow up, but I'm not going to, even though it's gonna crash.

SPEAKER_02 49:17

Not so fast. Um I think back to diner scene for second. I mean, there's another shot, too, that I freaking love where uh uh Spielberg does this pan of the guy sitting in at the at the bar. Yeah. And it's like almost like saying to the audience, like, who do you think this is? Exactly. Who do you think it is? But as the camera pans across these these like five individuals, you can see glimpses of Weaver in the background staring at them. Ah, it's such a beautifully composed shot. I mean, ow, I it's both like the audience asking the question and weavers asking the question. And you are Weaver for that brief moment. It's so that's the kind of stuff he does that it makes people look such a great director.

SPEAKER_01 49:55

But sorry, go ahead, Sardin. It is successfully anxiety-provoking. You want it, you know, you can really relate to, you know, somebody here is is a is a threat to me and I don't know who. That's something that, you know, uh I mean some of us can relate to. But then he has uh this interaction, he he decides in a very manly way, I guess, to confront someone at a table who he has decided definitively is the bad guy. And he confronts him, which is uh you know, shows some bravado there. But then that guy turns out not to be the bad guy, but beats him up. He's yes, but they have a fist fight, and Dennis Weaver loses. So you have all of this action going on. And then that guy gets dusted off and dusted off and sent on his way by the helpful staff of the diner, who also suggests to Dennis Weaver maybe you should leave too. But that guy then goes to a car and he's not the bad guy either. You know, that's only that's the only time when we learn for sure that he's not the bad guy, and then finally uh Weaver has to leave. But I'm telling you, 17 minutes of of cinematic storytelling there, entering, mulling, looking, anxiety, confrontation, exit. It's almost 20% of the movie, and I think it's the most beautiful set piece in the film for me by far.

SPEAKER_02 51:12

Yeah, I I agree with you. It's so ham-handed the way he talks to this guy, right? He doesn't say to him, like, is that your truck? Right. He's like, you know, cut it out. And the guy's like, what are you talking about? Like he the way he he just he assumes that it's the guy and he immediately gotta take up to from zero to sixty very quickly, and then the guy is like no idea what he's talking about, and he and he throws his sandwich out of his hand, like an uber aggressive move that like just of course is gonna get his ass kicked. Seems oddly unnecessary. But I mean it does speak to how much he's becoming emotionally undone. I mean, I think that's what's interesting about the scene is that you see him sit down, try to compose himself. He has for some aspirin, he's trying to like uh get a handle on what's happening, but then he decides I'm the this is the guy and I'm gonna challenge him. And you can kind of see the the wheels coming off for for Dennis Rever's character. I mean, you see it before in the bathroom because he has this internal monologue where he's talking to himself. I don't love that monologue. I don't think you asked it needed it to be honest. But I think that i it's a really good inflection point in the movie because you see, as you said, all the things about building suspense and building tension and and really kind of you know make adding to the mystery of what's happening, and then you sort of see him sort of fall apart a little bit. And then the thing after this, this is where you said to me this movie only works as an al allegorically. I think I know what you mean by that. Um can you just sort of explain what what what you wh why you say that.

SPEAKER_01 52:33

Well, especially as it continues to its last third, which again I'm I'm less sold on. Right. This can't be understood, I don't think, as a a literal thing happening. It has to be understood as a kind of a metaphor for something about man's struggle, because it you know menacing trucks are menacing trucks, and people can often be frightened by episodes they have on the road. In fact, uh the the writer of the short story was inspired to write the short story because he was kind of blindsided by a truck on the highway. That's as far as it went, but you know, he was very intimidated by that, and he was a writer, so I said, hey, that would make a great story. Um but after a while, the truck becomes the shark. I mean, you know, it is so it is it is jaws on wheels, although it it comes before Jaws. And so you just have this relentless force chasing this singular man. And in that sense, there are a lot of things that happen that I don't think make logical sense, but you can cut some slack for the movie uh if you think of it in that allegorical way. At a certain point, the truck becomes a little too clever. I mean, Dennis Weaver kind of ditches the truck at one point, and there's an hour of time passes, and then before you know it, doo-loo-do-doo, the truck is back. You know, what was the truck doing for that hour? I don't know, but it's it it didn't seem super credible for me that the truck would reappear.

SPEAKER_02 53:59

Yeah. There's something else too, by the way, which I which I thought of the second, I think the second time I watched it, I was like, why does it just turn around and get home? You know, like he could just leave. He doesn't have to be a good one. No, no, that means added notes.

SPEAKER_01 54:10

And then at some point Especially after what I thought was the weakest scene in the movie. Once he pulls up at this train stop, you know, the the guard is down and a long train is going by, I'm saying, oh man, okay, so now the truck is gonna come and they're gonna pin him. It's gonna be the truck behind him and the train in front of him. Right. And so it was low-hanging fruit, and Spielberg snapped it right up, and the truck starts to push him towards the train, and of course, at the very last minute, the gate goes up, the truck is passed, and it's able to survive. And again, I thought that was that's poor man's Hitchcock. But that's but to make your point, from that point of the movie on, he's gonna turn around and go home.

SPEAKER_02 54:56

He needs he needs to go the other direction. He needs the other direction. Yes. There's no question about it. I mean, one thing I'll say about that train scene is that it's pretty obvious that I mean I don't know if it's obvious, but my take on that scene was that the driver could have killed him in that scene, or could have the truck could have driven his car into the train, but he didn't. And there's an element here where this is where I think kind of plays on the serial killer idea, right? The driver is toying with him. Right. He is he is trying, he is it's almost like he's a cat with a a mouse. Right. He's he's he's really playing with him and toying with him and like almost torturing him. Like that so that that train scene to me, I think I I I didn't I had a less issue with it because I felt like it kind of pushed that idea out that this is he is not trying to kill him, he's trying to mess with him. The scene where he tries to kill him is the scene where he where Weaver stops off at the side of the road with this very strange woman who has snakes and uh snakes and spiders and spiders. And right. And uh that he and Weaver makes his phone call, and it's a really amazing shot. He's on the phone trying to call the police, and then you see the the you see in the backdrop, you see the car and it honks and it comes right toward him and it and it he almost it almost kills him. And that's when it goes from like I'm toying with this person to I'm literally trying to kill him. Yeah. And then the Yeah, but then there's that green scene afterward where he drives away and the truck drives away and and the truck is like kind of sitting it like this, kind of uh on the side of the road, and Weaver is stops his car, and whenever tries to pass, the truck moves forward like as if to say, You're not gonna pass, I'm gonna catch catch you if you try to do this. It's I don't know, it's interesting, like the tension really builds up after that point.

SPEAKER_01 56:49

Yes, but that was also when I I mean you lost enough. Yeah, it was the truck comes, he's in the phone booth because he's finally decided, oh, maybe I should call for help. Right. Right. Which would have occurred to me sooner in the action. And and the truck, you know, slams into the phone booth, Dennis Weaver escapes at the very last second, and then knocks over all these things with the snakes and the spiders and the leaf.

SPEAKER_02 57:13

The poor woman is complaining bitterly because her tru her her poor uh um uh spiders and snakes have been have been harmed. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 57:20

You know, and that's I that's when I thought the movie kind of left the building a little bit. It's it it is uh analogous for me in when the dinosaurs can use doorknobs in Jurassic Park. Also in I think the movie Aliens, when one of the when the bad alien takes an elevator ride, it's like suddenly the alien knows how to use the elevator. Right. And suddenly the truck was behaving in a way that seemed even more than a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 57:45

Oh come on, Jonathan. The truck is literally like, first of all, has the moves of like a s a sports car. Yeah. Okay, first of all. Secondly, like, you know, there's plenty of scenes earlier in the movie where he loses the truck, but the truck like ends up behind him again and like tracks him down. I mean, I I think I I didn't I saw what everything happened that point on. It's completely consistent with what happened before. The truck is like a it's like a phenomenon. It's like a uh it has some kind of supernatural abilities, right? I mean it's the thing. It it becomes very supernatural at that point. But it kind of has to a little bit for the movie to work. I mean you you have to suspend a little bit of belief to the same.

SPEAKER_01 58:25

I will, and I stick with my story. I prefer it to the shark. So, you know, it's it's it's good for me. But it is, but it is at that point some sort of abstract existential thing about menace and death and pursuit and and and evil and and man's you know lonely experience in the desert in which there are these unstoppable forces coming to get it.

SPEAKER_02 58:49

I mean, there's something too about like you know, man against machine, right? There's something about like this idea that that uh um the the machines are gonna you know destroy us all or something along those lines. I don't know. I don't know if it's that well developed of an idea. To me, the idea is pretty simple. A truck tries to kill this guy, and he, who his entire life has been like not entire life, but at least recently, for what we can tell, has been kind of a wimp, ties his hand up for himself. Um that leads, of course, to the big finale in which which I by the way, I I did notice this uh that it's like at a corral, it looks like it's almost like it feels like a yeah, it's like a um there's like a um there's these fences, right? That made me feel like it was a corral. It made me feel like you're like an old western, right? It's the duel, the final showdown between uh the two gunfighters, but this time it turns out to be a red, I don't know what the hell I don't know what the a red uh uh car and uh a giant truck. Well the name of the movie. Exactly, exactly. And what happens is that he he puts his briefcase on the the the the uh accelerator, some sort of metaphor there, I'm supposed, and runs the car into the truck, truck goes off the side of the road. Great shot, by the way. The shot of the truck went off the road. I mean, yeah, it must have cost a fortune to to get that shot. Goes off the road, and you don't see the driver, you don't know what happens. There's no explosion. There's no explosion of the flammable truck, I know. There's no explosion. Yeah, I know it's true. It's true. But I think you know what actually? I'm fine with that because that would have been like the modern way to do it, have a giant explosion. But I kind of liked it. I liked it more with the truck kind of going off the side of the road and going down the canyon and and and that being and because it's very elegantly shot. It's very um it's kind of a beautiful shot, actually.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:32

Beautifully shot, but I bet the word flammable is on screen for two and a half minutes of screen time.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:37

I don't I I would I would bet I might even go more. It's it's like pretty fascinating. You're right. Um so so I I I guess I guess my question to you is you like the ending so much. I mean, how else do you end that movie? I I do feel like that that's where the logical place for the movie to go. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:55

And it's not the very ending, it's that I No, I know, I know, I know, I know I pr I started to problem solve. You know, once I know for sure this guy is, you know, not just frightening and menacing, and it's the unknown, right? When you have an when you have a frightening truck on a highway and something bad happens, it's the fact that you don't know just how scary this truck or that truck driver might be. And that's where the kind of the universality of the experience I think comes in for the audience member. But once he's tried to murder you two or three times, at that point it's all about problem solving. And I was problem solving like like why not search out streets? Yeah, a car does better on a uh on on streets.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:40

Well he does. No, wait a minute. But he does he he make the what he does at the end of the movie is he excel he goes up this hill with the idea being that the truck cannot go as quickly up the hill. Yes. Like that's the way to get away from it. And you can even see him celebrating, and then all of a sudden, of course, Chekhov's radiator hose explodes, and then you know he's screwed. And I, by the way, love that. I thought the way that was done was so so effective. And I know it's like a trope, and you know, that when like it's the with Daniel Mall of the movie, like if things like are gonna go well and all of a sudden that you know the it falls off the cliff proverbially. But like I like the way it was shot. I thought it was really effective. And I don't know, I I think um the while he doesn't look, I I remember, as I said earlier, at some point I'm like, you can just turn around and go home. But he doesn't, because I feel like I I think that's what relates to the earlier themes of the movie, that he feels like he has to have this fight. He's not gonna back down from this bully.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:32

Trevor Burrus, Jr. And that's maybe where the movie comes up a little short for me. I mean, you know, people used to say to Hitchcock, you know, why don't your characters go to the police? And he would flippantly say, Because going to the police is boring. But nevertheless, in Hitchcock films, he does at least try and give you things to hang on to as to why the police are an implausible option, why that why that option is foreclosed for the characters. Here he's voluntarily kind of not pursuing the exit strategy as aggressively as I know I would have been. You know what's funny about this conversation?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:06

This actually completely is uh a metaphor for our disagreements about Spielberg. Okay? In that I don't give it a lot. No, it's great. This is actually perfect. So I'll just give you an example. I was watching Raiders the Lost Ark a couple weeks ago with my kids, and the scene where the famous, famous scene where he falls off the front of the truck and then he hooks up the uh his his uh whip to the bottom of the truck and he like goes underneath. All right, my kids were like, that would never work. I'm like, of course it would never work. It's a fucking movie. What do you want uh what are you doing? Like, why don't try to analyze it, just enjoy it. And I think that's actually what's happening here. I I you're right. There's a lot of plot holes in this movie. A lot of things his behavior doesn't make sense. Who cares? It's a movie, it's entertaining, it's about a fucking truck trying to kill somebody. Like, you don't, there's no logic here. I mean, I think you just I just am having fun with this movie, and I found myself just, you know, uh so wrapped with attention to watching it. I just I thought it was so uh compelling, everything about this movie, and I didn't really care so much. If I thought about it more, I think the second after reviewing I thought, yeah, you know what, that doesn't make a lot of sense. I didn't really care because I just found myself so I don't know, just uh taken by the visuals of the movie, the entertainment factor of the movie, the tension, the suspense, all of it. I loved all of that. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:25

Well, I did rule it as a good movie. That's sure you did. You did, you did. So I'm not I'm not giving it uh the proverbial thumbs down or anything. I'm just saying when I got my 17 minutes in the diner, I'm that's when I'm locked in. And when the truck is driving through the phone booth and setting the snakes free, that's when I'm saying, this is not really my thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:47

I I mean, I look, I I get it. I I just uh to me I was I was I bought in. I was I was all in with this movie, all in with the story, and I was just, you know, I I was I I wasn't gonna like worry about the things that didn't make sense, which you know, there's lots of it doesn't make sense, but I was okay with that. Um I think and I think that is actually our key difference with Spielberg. I'm just happy to be entertained for an hour and a half by a really compelling movie. Um by the way, I thought it's good, you know, as I said before, this movie was a TV movie originally. I I c I it's kind of amazing to think about this as a TV movie. It's a pretty it's a bit I mean, for broadcast television is pretty edgy. Um but some of but as I mentioned earlier, he had to add scenes to it to get this out for f for film release. And I do think some of those added scenes, I mean you mentioned the bus scene, we mentioned earlier the train scene, I think kind of don't work as well with the movie. I think it probably I I'd be curious to see it when it's an original TV movie, it might be a little bit more um cohesive. It does feel padded a little bit in with this version of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:50

Yes, he didn't he didn't take the Godard approach in Band Apart, in which he was told the movie had to be a little longer, so he had his characters read the newspaper aloud in one scene. Is that what he did, really? Yeah. Good for him.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:01

Good for him. I also read, by the way, that this film was was shot in twelve days, which is pretty extraordinary, actually. Uh I guess he I mean it gives you the sense he knew exactly what he was trying to do with his movie. And as I said before, I think that there's so many wonderful visual shots. As you said earlier, I mean I think your point, you said like compositionally, Spielberg's such a good director, and you really do see that um in this film. I want to have one last question to you. We never see the driver. We never see the driver, but we do we see his arm. So does that bother you? Does that work for you? Would you like to see the driver?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:34

I think you and I agree on this fully, which is we we do not want to see the driver, and we do want to see the arm. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:42

Because the arm makes it seem like it's a you then you know it's a real person, not like a machine. As you said earlier to me offline, it would be a Stephen King film if you didn't see the arm.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:52

Yes. But if you see the person, you it it takes away that you you can't there is no person that can be as frightening existentially as not seeing the person.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:05

So here's a a fun little game we can play uh before we finish up here. If this movie was made today, how would they ruin it? And I was thinking about this, like so first of all, I think you would see the driver. I think you'd get some kind of backstory on the driver, right? You might see a flashback to some earlier person that he'd killed with his truck. You definitely would have gotten another character, a hitchhiker, almost certainly a woman. Because like, you know, that's you'd like to have like do you know you want to appeal to women to women viewers. So uh you'd have somebody who he'd pick up as a hitchhiker, and then they would be together against this truck. I I I think what's interesting about this movie, it's it's it's um it's a different kind of filmmaking that I do not think we would see today in a big budget Hollywood film. Or even if Spielberg made it today.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:50

Yeah, I mean definitely there would be big differences, but uh I got distracted in my in my internal thoughts while you were talking, thinking that this also has there's this excess not I don't think it's a brilliant film, although it has people who revere it. Uh but this this existential car movie called Vanishing Point about a guy who's kind of driving across country. And this movie and that movie have some interesting overlaps with it. But the reason why that popped into my head was he said, well, he'd picked up a hitchhiker and it would have been a woman. And I think you're right about that today. But what's interesting about Vanishing Point is in the British cut of that movie, he does pick up a woman. And even more interestingly, it is Charlotte Rampling. Uh but she kind of appears and disappears. Oh, we love Charlotte Rampling. But in the American cut, they decided that because the Rampling character is never explained, it's not like the conventional hitchhiker, and then he talks to her and then something happens. Rather, she kind of appears mysteriously, they have an interaction, and then she vanishes. They decided American audiences would get too confused by who she was and what happened to her. So she's just cut from the American version and it doesn't happen. I see. I see.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:00

Interesting. No, I mean I think in this film, it's better not having another character. It's better just having it weaver. I think it works much more effectively. It's a duel. It's supposed to be between two people, not three people. Trevor Burrus, Right. That that's a good idea. I don't know what that would be called. Uh a thru a thruple duel. I don't know what that would even be. I don't think there. Yeah. There's the modern version. The thruple duel. Yeah. That's probably the first time that term's ever been used before. Um I I'll just say for record, I I love this film. I think this is a really, really fun, entertaining, compelling movie that, again, as I said before, I think shows a lot of Spielberg's abundant skills as a director, um, but also brings something a little different. It brings a bit of a harder edge uh that you don't get often from Spielberg. And I think it's what makes this film so compelling.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:50

Yes, it is one of my favorite Steven Spielberg movies.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:55

Now, the big question is gonna be is this the last time we do a Spielberg film on this podcast? I I I mean there are two more we could talk about.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:03

There's no way on this planet you're you're not gonna want to do Jaws at some point. There's no way to love anywhere without doing jaws. Yes. We will we will we will discuss Jaws.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:13

But again, I I I want everyone listening to just note this point uh that that that Jonathan has committed to doing a Jaws, a Jaws discussion. Let it be noted. Let it be noted. And also we should at some point talk about Sugarland Express, which I think is actually a really interesting movie. Sure. Um but I don't know that we have anything else for Spielberg that we need. Well, you know what, actually, I'll say one last thing. This is uh this is a sort of interesting idea that Jonathan came up with uh in our conversations this week. Uh he wanted to do the Columbo episode that Spielberg, which by the way, is a great episode. Um who is that? It's Patrick Um what's his name? The um the protagonist, the murderer. Jack Cassidy. Jack, not Patrick, Jack Cassidy. Jack Cassidy. Jack Columbo murderer. Exactly, exactly. And he's wonderful. Um So we talked about should we do a Columbo episode? And if we did, which one would we do? Uh that's the challenging part. So as a little, you know, homework for our our listeners out there, two things I'm gonna ask you. A, tell us what tell us what Steven Spielberg films you like or don't like. Just I want to I'm just curious to hear, are you guys Spielberg fans? Anything about his movies you like or don't like, anything that stands out to you, anything you think is really notable, something we didn't mention possibly. Uh and also uh Columbo. Is there a particular episode of Columbo that you like and you think that we should talk about? The challenge with the Columbo is they're like an hour and a half long, right? So how do you narrow down? We could do I mean we talked about maybe picking our favorites.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:43

Yes. I think that's the way I mean that's my vote. I think we should have our we should do like a top five, not not ten altogether, but because I know we both have one that would overlap. But if we had two others, I had two and you had two, and we shared one, then we could kind of count down a T five uh uh Colombo. It is I I I take Colombo very seriously. Uh and so I I'd be happy to do that. But also, you know, I'm very flexible.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:08

Listen, I'll tell you in the Cohn family growing up, my parents were huge Colombo fans, right? Huge. And I like Columbo a lot. Anything with Peter Falk, you know, I'm on board for he's great. There you go. And so maybe we'll do that at some point. But as for next week, we'll figure it out. I mean, we after Clute, we wanted to go a little bit lighter. Yes. So we chose a horror film, of course. But you know, lighter fair as far as like maybe thematically, this is lighter fair than Clute. So I don't know what we're gonna do next week, but as always, if you have suggestions, if you have ideas, if you have things you want us to talk about, uh please let us know. And actually, we did have a listener who wrote sent a note to us complaining that we weren't gonna do Marathon Band. Uh and so I I we may have to at some point do a quick foray into that movie, because this woman has asked twice now that we do it. I don't love that movie, but I don't know. Maybe we'll have to think about it. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:58

It should be on our long list, you know. I don't know when we'll do it, but it's there's the talent attached is such that it it is it is worthy of attention, even if it's needed. Schneider Hoffman, Olivia, some some real some real people in that in those. Also, do you know director Mr. John, I think. Oh, right, John. And I think Goldman did the script. So there's a lot a lot going on there. A lot going on.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:19

Okay, maybe we'll maybe we'll we'll figure out a way to do it. But you know, we we may not take every suggestion, but we love to get them. And we have to get them. We love to get them. And in many cases, we have actually done suggestions from viewers, uh, I think a good number of the films we've chosen. So until then, uh thanks for listening as always. Leave a review, buy a scope of coffee, and we will see you next week on that 70s movie podcast. Thanks a lot. Bye-bye.