WEBVTT
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I want to cut it out right, just just cut
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it out. Okay. So wow, now come on, I mean, please,
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I don't. Let's not play games.
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Well, how are you talking about?
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I'm called please? Do you think that I won't?
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You know, mister, if you think you can take that truck,
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if you wis and just use it as a murder weapon,
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just killing people on the highway, you're wrong. You've got
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another thing coming.
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Welcome to the Cinematic Flashback Podcast. Get ready to hop
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into the wayback machine as we journey through the wild,
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bolt and unforgettable films of the nineteen seventies. Each episode,
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do we break down a classic movie or forgotten Jim
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seeing how it performed then and now, and wrapping things
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up by asking did a groove for the decades or
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did it lose its feat I am your host, Chuck Bryant,
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and today we are reviewing Steven Spielberg's nineteen seventy one
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thriller Duel starring Dennis Weaver. This is our second film
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in our Origin Stories month, where we focused on the
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first films of directors in the seventies. Last time, we
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looked at George Lucas's THHX eleven thirty eight, and this
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time we are focusing on Steven Spielberg and I am
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looking in my rearview mirror and writing my bumper is
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Matt Sargent. Matt, welcome back Burg.
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I'm coming right up with you. Chuck.
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Yeah.
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Oh, I'm so happy to be doing this origin series
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because it casts a lot of light on how these
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directors we might call their formative films that certainly they
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weren't watching the movie of the week or something with
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the family and would have been a movie that we
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would have watched. I'm surprised that we didn't see it. It
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probably came out at some time or something or other
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that we weren't watching, because back then you didn't have
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DVRs or VCRs or anything like that. You watched it
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when it was broadcast.
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Matt, in our very first episode of the Cinematic Flashback,
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you used a phrase that I had never heard before.
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It was appointment scheduling television. What did you mean by.
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That, Well, it's like, you know, you knew when when
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mash came on it was at a certain time on
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a certain day of the week, and everybody made sure
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they were available. I mean that went up until my
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college years because we watched Magnum Pi on Thursday evenings
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at my apartment in Harrisonburg. My best friend from college
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and still very very good friend of mine, probably still
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my best friend. He would come over to the apartment
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and we'd watch Magnum Pi. And a lot of people
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had shows like that obviously, you know, there were soap
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operas that were on every afternoon that people watched. That
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sort of thing very common.
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Sometimes the ABC movie the Week was actually a theatrical
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film that they had cut for television. That's how I saw.
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A lot of the films were rated are, but they
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had been sanitized a little bit.
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Yeah, they sometimes sanitize them for content, but also they
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would cut them to fit into the available time slots
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and commercial breaks. So one hundred and twenty minute movie
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with commercial breaks might be way too long to broadcast,
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so they would cut out. So that's where a lot
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of and I believe I remember hearing stories about directors saying,
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I won't put my film on TV because it'll they'll
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just chop the butcher it, yea. And they feel like
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they've already cut it to the bone to tell the
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story they want to tell, and they just can't imagine
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cutting anything more out now. I think we've all seen
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a few films that could bear with a little cutting
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out in the middle. So again, an artist in this
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craft might sometimes not always be compatible with selling.
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So well, great, I'm sure we're going to talk more
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about made for TV movies today since this is the
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topic of movie that we're watching.
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Matt, who do we have talking to us today? Well,
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I'm happy to report that we have Maddie B. Nineteen
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and that is not me. I did not make a
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suit about that. I did not make a pseudonym to
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make a comment. Guys, listen to last episode. We had
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a comment that was a little more critical. This one's
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a little more positive. So we like to mix in
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the good with the bad. So here we go. So
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he brings a quote from one of our favorite films,
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Dirty Harry. He left us five stars, thank you very
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much and says quote, do you feel lucky? The podcast
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is informative, fun and insightful. If you're a fan of
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seventies films, you just hit the jackpot. The logo is
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really good as well. Thank you, Maddie B. Nineteen for
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that review. We really appreciate it. We hope you tell
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your friends that you like the podcast and you find
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it somewhat pleasurable to listen to and somewhat informative. That's
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what we're here for. To have a little fun and
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to sort of spread the good word of some famous
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seventies films and a new light and sometimes some maybe
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not so well known seventies films.
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So that's the mission. That's the first time anyone has
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ever commented on our logo. To be honest, I think
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I found some clip art and it eventually evolved where
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I thought of putting a TIEDI item behind it. That's
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the evolution of that logo.
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I feel strongly that our listeners are going to now
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take some of our podcast, go to an ai and
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generate us a new logo and then post it on
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our reviews and we will look at each of those
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logos and have some fun with them.
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That's very good.
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You guys can use your own tokens to generate those
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logo or send us the prompt you know exactly. So
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we are looking at Steven Spielberg's first film, and I know, Chuck,
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you always have a lot of information with a little
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bit of backstory. How did this movie happen?
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Matt. To rightly discuss how this movie happened, we have
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to go back just a little to nineteen six when
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Sid Sheinberg joined the television division of MCA and Universal.
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Now Sid is important for a couple of reasons. One,
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he became one of the key figures of modern television
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entertainment by popularizing the concept of quality made for TV movies.
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The other reason is because of a short twenty six
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minute film that he watched called Amblin, directed by this
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young English major attending cal State Long Beach. That student,
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as you may have guessed, was Steven Spielberg. While Amblin
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may have been his first film shot on thirty five
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millimeter film, it was not his first film. Spielberg had
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been making movies since he was a kid, and what
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Sid Sheinberg saw was talent, and he offered Spielberg a
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seven year contract to come work for him in television.
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His first television episode was for the Rod Sterling anthology
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series called Night Gallery. The episode Spielberg was a sign
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was called Eyes and Joan Crawford.
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I remember more than anything else, the first day of shooting.
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The crew had a very antagonistic reaction to my involvement
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as the director of the show. Because in those days
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we're talk about nineteen sixty nine, the crews the average
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age was fifty to fifty five and sixty. And these
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crew members who worked with all the great directors, they
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worked with capperin Sturges, they worked with Hawks and Ford,
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they worked with CB de Mill And I remember Joan
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giving a speech and standing up and saying, I have
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great respect for this director. I've worked with him before
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a Small White Life, and I want you to treat
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him as well as you would treat me. Well, we're
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all professionals. And I don't forget that speech he gave
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to the whole crew. And from that moment on, not
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only did the crew should be better, but Joan treating
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me like I've been directing for fifty years. She I
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guess just imagined I was George Kukoor.
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But Spielberg is only half of the equation. For the
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second half, we have to leave the seventies and go
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back to Friday, November twenty second, nineteen sixty three, the
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day that JFK was assassinated. Writer Richard Matheson was playing
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golf with a friend when he heard the news.
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The idea for Duel came to me on the day
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that President Kennedy was assassinated. A friend and I were
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playing golf over in Filmore, and when we came in
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for lunch, we heard about the assassination, and we were
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so distressed by the news that of course we forgot
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about the golf game and started going home. And as
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we were going through this narrow pass on the way
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back home, this huge truck started tailgating us, and we
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went faster and faster. He went faster and faster, and
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we were screaming out the windows, with as much fury
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about the assassination as about him trying to kill it.
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And finally my friend pulled off into a dirt siding
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and his car spun around, and this truck went flying past,
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and we were really shaken up by it, but having
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the true writer's mind, within a few moments, I thought,
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ah Man gets chased by a truck, and I wrote
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on an.
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Envelope That incident led him to write a teleplay called Duel,
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but no studio wanted it. Matheson adapted the story to
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a novel lette and found it published in Playboy magazine
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in March of nineteen seventy one, and this is where
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Nona Tyson, Spielberg's assistant, spotted it and brought it to
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his attention. But Spielberg was considered too inexperienced. Fortunately, he
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had advocates like Sheinberg and Duel's producer George Eckstein. Based
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on his television work, Spielberg was already employing techniques by
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two of his heroes, John Fordes and Howard Hawkes. He
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would use wide shots to establish a scene and then
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close ups to tell the narrative. The film was so
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affected that Universal later financed additional scenes so it could
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be expanded into a theatrical feature for overseas distribution. Today,
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Spielberg's production company is still named after his short film
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Ambling and the relationship between Spielberg Sheinberg. In Universal, it
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became one of the most successful director studio partnerships in
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Hollywood history, producing films like Jaws Et, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List,
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and many more. And Matt, that is how this film happened.
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That's an amazing story, and it's cool to get that
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background on how it kind of came to be and
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that it was a little bit of a test case
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and they picked the right guy. It would seem as
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a director.
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The story is is that he only had ten days
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to shoot duel. That's amazing, and he did it in
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thirteen and because of how efficiently he shot the first
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three days and they were seeing how quickly he was
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shooting that thirteen days was not a problem.
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That's amazing. And I mean it goes to the thing.
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It's like it's a TV move it the movie. The
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budgets are smaller, the time frame that you can shoot in.
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And we talked about the size of the screen. Nowadays,
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people don't realize that when you were watching film, you know,
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something on TV in the nineteen seventies, you weren't looking
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at a four K image. You were looking at you know,
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with five hundred and twenty five lines of resolution or
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something like that on a sure you know, it was
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just not of high resolution screen. So the idea of
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wide shots is exactly what they're saying. You always had
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close ups. That's why the soap operas and personal drama
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films where you had close ups of everybody face has
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worked really well because that worked great on that format.
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So it was a real it was a real trick
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for him to get something this exciting in that format
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and have it so well received by the by the
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watching public so well. With that said, I think we're
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just about ready to get into production details. But before
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we could do that, we need to take a quick break.
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Back and amatic flash back the.
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Movie of the Week presenting the world premiere of an
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original motion picture produced especially for EBC. Tonight on the
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Movie of the Week, you are man hit that car
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head on Dennis Weaver, Open Jack, I've read why why
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is he doing this?
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Feel welcome back. Let's go through the production details. Duel
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originally aired on November thirteenth, nineteen seventy one, as part
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of ABC's Movie of the Week. It was later given
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an international theatrical release by Universal, with additional footage bringing
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the running time from seventy four minutes to ninety minutes.
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And what is remarkable here is that Duel was made
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for around four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The film
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was directed by a twenty four year old Steven Spielberg
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and what essentially was his feature film debut. The screenplay
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was written by Richard Matheson, adapting his story that had
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originally appeared in Playboy magazine. Earlier that same year. Duel
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would be Man's last short story. The cinematographer was Jack Marta,
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and Spielberg insisted on shooting out on a real desert
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highway in California, even though the production team thought that
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the schedule and budget were just too tight to make
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that practical. The entire movie was shot in roughly thirteen days.
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As a note, Matt Spielberg would make this same decision
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later when he decided to shoot Jaws not on a
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production studio backlot but out on the open ocean.