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<\/h5>\n<\/h5>\nSean Hutchinson and Mental Floss<\/a> present 10 Facts About Steven Spielberg’s Duel<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Here are three of my favorites…<\/p>\n 1. THE MOVIE WAS INSPIRED BY A REAL-LIFE INCIDENT.<\/strong> Matheson initially pitched the idea to TV producers but, after it was rejected numerous times, he decided to put his real-life incident into prose form. In order to gather details of the open road, Matheson set out from his home in Ventura, California with a voice recorder in hand and simply described what he saw. Those descriptions of the desolate landscape ended up in the novella.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n 3. DENNIS WEAVER\u2019S WORK WITH ORSON WELLES GOT HIM THE LEAD IN DUEL.<\/strong><\/p>\n For the lowly protagonist, David Mann, Spielberg hand-picked character actor Dennis Weaver because he loved his performance as the jittery and feeble hotel night manager in Orson Welles\u2019s 1958 film Touch of Evil.<\/p>\n Weaver drove more than 2000 miles while shooting his scenes, and did many of the stunts himself, including the dangerous phone booth scene at the “Snakerama” gas station in a single take.<\/p>\n Of working with the rookie director, the veteran Weaver later said, \u201cI gave him the benefit of the doubt. I said, \u2018There\u2019s no reason for me to judge him because of his age. Let\u2019s see what he does.\u2019 And he did extremely well … I really think it\u2019s one of the most creative jobs he\u2019s ever done.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n 10. SPIELBERG HAS REVISITED DUEL MORE THAN ONCE\u2014AND PEOPLE HAVE STOLEN FROM HIM, TOO.<\/strong> The Snakerama gas station seen in the film also appears in Spielberg’s 1979 World War II comedy, 1941, with actress Lucille Benson again appearing as the proprietor. The two elderly people Weaver tries to flag down in a car also appear as helpless motorists in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.<\/p>\n But it wasn\u2019t all good luck. Spielberg was not happy when stock footage of both vehicles was later used in an episode of the television series The Incredible Hulk, titled “Never Give a Trucker an Even Break.” The recycled footage was completely legal since the show was also produced by Universal<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sean Hutchinson and Mental Floss present 10 Facts About Steven Spielberg’s Duel.\u00a0 Here are three of my favorites… 1. THE<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,53,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-horror","category-movies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20649"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20669,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20649\/revisions\/20669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\nAuthor and screenwriter Richard Matheson based his original novella, which first appeared in the April 1971 issue of Playboy, on an actual road rage incident. Matheson had played a round of golf on November 22, 1963, the same day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. On his car ride home, and in a daze after receiving the terrible news, he was ruthlessly tailgated by a truck driver.<\/p>\n\n
\nDuel was something of lucky charm once Spielberg\u2019s career began to take off, and he\u2019d continually reference parts of the movie in subsequent films.<\/p>\n