Tag: steven spielberg

CHIEF BRODY JAWS PREQUEL GREENLIT

BREAKING NEWS – In an announcement that has shocked Hollywood, Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment have announced a Chief Brody Jaws Prequel has been greenlit, with Spielberg himself set to direct the picture. The film will follow his mainland career as a cop on the edge and on the take. The Exec spoke with Amblin development executive, Emelia Shnart to talk about the project.

So, A Chief Brody Jaws Prequel Is In The Works. This Sounds Exciting.

We’re all very excited about the project. We were in a production development meeting and to be honest with you. We were shit out of ideas. Indy IV is in the can. Schindler’s list II is a non-runner, so I’m told over and over again. And the Jurassic World franchise is in the shitter. We had nothing left.

Where Did You Get The Idea For A Chief Brody Jaws Prequel From?

Did you know Spielberg is an ideas fountain? He just shits out ideas all day and all night. The man is a machine. The trouble is, the vast majority of these ideas are garbage. I mean, they are ass gravy, the loosest stool water ever. So we employ someone to write them down, tell the him how great they are and throw them all in a big friggin container.

You Got Desperate And Opened The Container?

Yep. We trawled through shit idea after shit idea and eventually we happened upon this little nugget. We only ran with the concept. His idea was for a cop who was friendly, inclusive and relatable. That shit aint gonna fly these days. We’ve all seen too many videos of cops beating and shooting decent people of color. So we got to work.

So Brody Is Going To Be Corrupt and Racist?

Damned straight he is. There’s a reason he got transferred onto an island full of white people. Why do you think he seems so content in the movie? He fucking loves it there.

Do You Have Anyone In Mind For Role Of Brody?

Casey Affleck. He can do morally dubious assholes better than most, know what I mean?

And What About The Part Of Ellen Brody? Originally Played By Lorraine Gary.

Florence Pugh. Why not? She’s in everything at the moment.

You’ve Given This Some Thought.

Nearly a whole afternoon’s worth.

Chief Brody Begins Filming This Fall.

WAS STANLEY KUBRICK MURDERED?

LONDON – A new book asks the question: Was Stanley Kubrick murdered?

Stanley Kubrick‘s life was surrounded by a miasma of legend and rumor. His films are the rich breeding ground for OCD analysis, OCD analysis and some more OCD analysis; and now his death has become the subject of  a new book by Hardy Mantellance – Who Killed Stanley Kubrick?

The Stanley Kubrick scholar claims that the Spartacus director was done in by a fatal confluence of Masonic Satanism, poison and an unbalanced man who had been fatally damaged by watching Barry Lyndon every night for eighteen years. 

I spoke to Hardy Mantellance in her West London home. 

Stanley Kubrick suffered a myocardial infarction in his sleep shortly after completing Eyes Wide Shut. A myocardial infarction is relatively simple to provoke with the use of poison. Who do we know who uses poisons in all his films and had a deadly rivalry with Stanley Kubrick?  Steven Spielberg.

But Spielberg was Stanley Kubrick’s friend!

Until they began to develop the script for AI together, at which point a deadly enmity grew between them over the creative disagreement. Kubrick wanted to make a ‘good film’. After Kubrick’s death no one was there to stop Spielberg from making a ‘bad film’, exactly as he had always wanted.   

So you’re accusing Oscar winner Steven Spielberg of murder?

That’s what they want you to think.

Who’s they?

The Saturn Death Cult who Kubrick had so brilliantly exposed in Eyes Wide Shut. The Saturn Death Cult are a secret group made up of the elite from business, politics and celebrity. They perform ritual sex orgies which culminate in human sacrifice and their members include that old enemy of Stanley Kubrick, Jack Nicholson.

What?

The night Kubrick died Nicholson was overheard to say at a Lakers game, ‘We did it!’ At the time people thought he was referring to the Lakers victory, but it was only afterwards some right minded folk realised he was actually referring to the successful conspiracy to do away with the man who had forced Nicholson to say ‘Here’s Johnny!’ 78 times, even though his name is actually Jack.

So Nicholson murdered Kubrick?

Ha ha, how innocent you are! But ask yourself this, if Nicholson killed Kubrick, why was Nicole Kidman unable to contain her tears on the Eyes Wide Shut featurette?

Because she was sad at the passing of a man she admired.

Those were tears of joy. Following the orders of her Svengali like husband – Tom Cruise – whose own religious cult Scientology had just signed a pact with the Saturn Death Cult worth billions of dollars, Nicole Kidman had baked some cupcakes which were laced with a powerful chemical provided by Steven Spielberg and concocted in his ‘Temple of Doom’ laboratory deep in the Hollywood hills and placed in a Tupperware container bought from a Kmart by Jack Nicholson on the twenty fifth anniversary of the Apollo moon landings, moon landings which were faked convincingly by Stanley Kubrick who was as a reward given the right to make any film he liked, even Barry Lyndon.

The fact would be exposed in Capricorn One directed by Peter Hyams, whose silence was bought by being given the apparently peach job of making a sequel to 2001: a Space Odyssey, but the peach proved to be a poison apple and the film – 2010: the Year We Make Contact – was a critical disaster. Hyams (who grew up two doors down from Ryan O’Neal) spent the rest of his life watching Barry Lyndon on a loop and plotting revenge, a revenge that was only made possible by a coincidental meeting with Malcolm McDowell, the actor made famous by A Clockwork Orange, but who Stanley Kubrick had humiliated when he once, June 7th, 1978, asked if Malcolm had lost any weight, knowing full well that Malcolm had not. 

So Peter Hyams, Malcolm McDowell, Steven Spielberg, Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise, the Church of Scientology,  Jack Nicholson and the Satan Death Cult all conspired to kill Stanley Kubrick?

It would be comforting to think so, wouldn’t it? But the truth is actually a lot darker. Shelley Duvall…

At this point my recording device cut out and the rest of the interview is lost. Coincidence? I don’t know. 

Hardy Mantellance’s Who Killed Stanley Kubrick? is available from Amazon and all good book stores.

STEVEN SPIELBERG CRITICIZED FOR TROPHY HUNTING IMAGES

HOLLYWOOD – Trophy hunting images spark outrage against Steven Spielberg.

Pictures apparently showing Steven Spielberg posing with a trophy kill has caused consternation and fury across social media. One twitterbook personality something Paul told the Studio Exec:

I think it’s completely crazy. I for one love Always and 1941, but this will not stand. How can someone go into the wild and kill these beautiful animals is utterly disgusting.

Martin Havesmith shouted his disgust down an old style telephone with the curly wire.

The BFG filled me with a childlike wonder with a stunning performance by Mark Rylance but how would Mr Spielberg liked it if he was shot and stuffed and then photographed by a bunch of high paid animals? Not very much. That’s how.

The ASPCA announced that a full investigation is ongoing.

It is unclear whether Steven Spielberg has broken any laws. However, we do know that the animal he is photographed with is believed to be close to extinction if not actually now extinct. This is outrageous. It makes me want to sick up.

A spokesperson for Mr. Steven Spielberg told the Studio Exec:

Spielberg made Tintin and the Secret of the Unicorn, he can shoot any fucking animal he wants to, so go fuck yourselves you bunch of whining shits.

West Side Story will not be very good.

STEVEN SPIELBERG TO MAKE HOOK PREQUEL

HOLLYWOOD – Movie industrialist, Steven Spielberg has announced he is making a prequel to Hook.

Spielberg will be making the Hook prequel right after shooting the fifth Indiana Jones film. The Studio Exec sat down to talk with the director.

Steven, can you tell us about your next project?

I’ve been looking at the numbers for Hook and it made a shit ton of money. Because of that, they gave the money to make my little independent film called ‘Jurassic Park’. Have you ever heard of it?

Umm, I believe so. That made over 1 billion dollars worldwide:

Did it?! My movies don’t normally make much money, so that’s really cool. Anyway, Hook has been the one film I’m still proud of, you know? I thought people don’t know enough about Neverland and wouldn’t it be great if we told the story before Hook. We will find out what happened to Wendy and the Lost Boys. It will be a massive hit. Because it’ll be unlike anything we’ve ever seen on screen before.

That sounds like Peter Pan by J M Barrie:

J M Who?

J M Barrie wrote the original book, Peter Pan and it was a big hit. That’s why you made Hook:

The fuck you talking about?

Your film was a sequel to Peter Pan:

Whatever you say, my friend. How about I make a sequel to Jaws? But this time, we’ll set it in a water park. We can make it in 3D, because of the tech we now have. Therefore, it’ll be called ‘Jaws 3-D’.

They already made that in the 80s:

Really? Ok. So how about this? An orphaned boy lives with his mean Uncle’s family. He sleeps under the stairs. So one day, he finds out that his Mum and Dad were actually Wizards and he learns how to become a Wizard. The title’s ‘Barry Totter Goes To Bobwart’s’.

Spielberg’s totally original Peter Pan starts shooting after he wraps on Indiana Jones 5.

PETER JACKSON WAKES UP AND REMEMBERS HE’S GOT A TINTIN FILM TO MAKE

WELLINGTON – Peter Jackson – director of King Kong, The Lovely Bones and the entire contents of JRR Tolkien’s head – awoke in a cold sweat with the realization he still has a Tintin movie to make.

Peter Jackson turned to his wife (Fran Walsh or Philippa Boyens I can never remember) and gasped. ‘Shit, I’ve just remembered I promised Steven Spielberg I’d direct the second Tintin film.’

Jackson told reporters:

My wife mumbled something like “Go back to sleep, you can do it in the morning.” To be honest I don’t think she was really awake. But I couldn’t go back to sleep. How was I going to find out what my deadline with Steven was without letting him know that I’d forgotten all about it.

Fortunately, Jackson’s muse and house boy Andy Serkis was awake in the garage. ‘It looked like he was trying to get out off a glass box, which confused me,’ said Jackson. ‘There isn’t a glass box in the garage. And then I realized, it was his physical theater that had created the illusion.’ 

Jackson explained his problem to Serkis and the Gollum star was already half into his motion capture suit.

Serkis said:

I must obey Peter. He has my children.

The two men started to work and by ten o’clock when Jackson’s wife finally emerged from her slumber, they had the first two acts in pre-visualized: ‘Only seven more to go,’ said a clearly relieved Jackson.

Tintin and the Something Something will be out in 2022.

STEVEN SPIELBERG LOSES NETFLIX PASSWORD

HOLLYWOOD – The real reason for the Steven Spielberg Netflix feud has come to light.

Last week Steven Spielberg lost his Netflix password. A close friend of the Talking Mountain, as he prefers to be known, told the Studio Exec:

He was wanting to watch the Marie Kendo thing about tidying up that everyone was going crazy for so he thought that he’d watch some Netflix. But when he tried to get into his account he realized it had locked and he couldn’t remember his password. Initially he tried LucasLickB@llz because that’s his email password but it didn’t seem to work. So than he decided that Netflix were never going to win an Oscar.

Wow. That’s how it worked?

Yep that’s how it went down.

Steven Spielberg’s new film – Atlantic Chocolate – will be released in 2020 on Amazon Prime.

HARRISON FORD LOSES HAIR IN CURSE OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL

LOS ANGELES – Harrison Ford has lost all his hair as a direct result of appearing in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the fourth instalment of the celebrated archaeology/sadomasochism saga.

Some industry experts have pointed specifically to the scene where Indiana Jones survived a nuclear explosion by hiding in a fridge.

One Lucas insider told The Studio Exec EXCLUSIVELY:

As everybody knows, Spielberg is a stickler for realism. So he actually had Harrison in the fridge and he actually detonated an actual bomb.

Comparisons have been drawn to other ill fated films, such as Tarkovsky’s Stalker, which cost the life of the director, his wife and one of the lead actors; or the John Wayne one shot near the nuclear testing sites, after which everyone died and stuff.

Other victims of the curse are Ray Winstone who was forced to appear in The Sweeney as a direct consequence of the Curse. John Hurt and Shia LaBeouf were both captured by Danish film maker Lars Von Trier and forced to appear in sex films. Cate Blanchett’s life has been a catalogue of disasters since filming Indy 4. First, she fell in love with a really old guy who then turned into a baby, then she was killed by a child assassin and now it looks like she’s going to have act with Hobbits again.

The one person to have escaped the curse is Karen Allen, who had the fortune to have her scene deleted from I am Number Four, thus saving her a further indignity.

Indiana Jones 5: The Violation of Childhood will be released in 2022.

SPIELBLOG: 2. THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS

HOLLYWOOD – SpielBlog is a soup to nuts film by film rundown of Steven Spielberg’s film career.

I came to Steven Spielberg’s first film very late. Only a couple of years ago. I might have seen some of it on TV as a kid but I never sought it out and its fame was obscured by the mega-fame of the subsequent Jaws. But The Sugarland Express is a beautifully shot tragicomic road movie with a surprisingly dark undercurrent.
In the early seventies, a debut movie was released of a young filmmaker. ​Based on a true story, it told the slim tale of two naive young lovers from Texas who go on the run from the law and become the targets of a media frenzy as they are pursued. The film was called Badlands and the director’s name was Terrence Malick. The similarity in subject matter meant that Pauline Kael reviewed both films together in The New Yorker. Kael didn’t much care for Malick’s first film comparing it unfavourably to Spielberg, even though her praise of Spielberg frequently sounded patronising: “I can’t tell if he has any mind, or even a strong personality, but then a lot of good moviemakers have got by without being profound.”
Her argument was that as a craftsman and an entertainer – both of which counted as feint praise from Kael – Spielberg was one of the most promising debuts in a long time. He was a product of a Hollywood machine, albeit one that was firing on all cylinders and would produce some of the best films ever made over the span of the decade. In fact, watching the film today, it seems easy to imagine it could have been the work of Robert Altman or Arthur Penn.

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Goldie Hawn was the star attraction as Lou Jean Poplin, or single mother, petty criminal who decides to break her husband Clovis (William Atherton) out from a low security prison in order to rescue their baby who has been placed in foster care. Lou Jean and Clovis have no grand plan and their witless progress is only facilitated by the overkill of the response moderated by the restraint of Captain Tanner (a fantastic Ben Johnson).

Having stolen one car and totalled it, they then steal the car of the policeman Patrolman Slide (Michael Sacks) who was pursuing them, and taking him hostage head for Sugarland where Baby Brandon is feeding steak to the family dog. They’re pursued by an increasing convoy of police cars, as well as a TV news team and ultimately crowds of well-wishers.

The photography is superb, celebrated cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond can take some credit, but Spielberg’s shot choice is already there. His ability to tell a story visually, to marshal background detail and juxtapose different elements, to find beauty and grime in the same location is truly stunning and goes someway to justifying Kael’s enthusiasm.

Ironically, the film would pick up Best Screenplay at Cannes, whereas this is probably the weakest element. The characters aren’t well drawn and at crucial moments make staggeringly dumb decisions. Whereas Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek imbue their leads with an edge of sociopathic charisma in Badlands, here Hawn and Atherton come over as doomed lovers via Dumb and Dumber. To be fair, Atherton seems the most knowing of the two, occasionally his expression betratying that he knows how this is going to end but he’ll go for it anyway. But just when the possibility of pathos scratches the corner of your eye, he’ll prove himself as dumb as a brick in the next scene. (He would later reappear as the eminently hateable asshole in Die Hard and Ghostbusters.) Goldie Hawn, meanwhile, was reaching for a more dramatic role, but the character is underwritten and – crucially – irritating. Her squealing when delighted and hollering when angry are equally annoying and it is ultimately Lou Jean who is the motivating force for the dumbest decisions.

And then there’s the police cars. The excessive demolition derby of police cars seems to be an obsession in Seventies American Cinema. John Landis in The Blues Brothers for instance goes all the way. It’s the mad cap chase that would lead to such capers as Smokey and The Bandit, Convoy and The Cannonball Run. I can’t help but suspects Spielberg likes the look of the flashing strobes on the roofs of the cars and the different angles he can get them from. When Captain Tanner wants to show his contempt for a pair of duck hunting vigilantes, he smashes the strobe light on their car like a general ripping the epaulettes from a disgraced officer.

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As with Duel, I get the feeling Spielberg is consciously making as big a film as he can out of fairly slim material. With Duel however the simplicity worked int he film’s favour. Here, there is more ambition but paradoxically The Sugarland Express ends up as a smaller film overblown. A superficially embossed calling card which isn’t funny enough to be a comedy or thoughtful enough to have something to say. There are glimpses of darkness on the edge of town. The two snipers brought in to assassinate the outlaws provide a brief glimpse of workmanlike malevolence, with the bullets stuck in their ears to protect them from the noise.

As a calling card it of course worked. Getting him the next job of his breakout Jaws. It also significantly provided him with John Williams, the composer and collaborator who would contribute significantly to his future success.

SpielBlog by noted film critic John Bleasdale is also published here and will continue next week.

BREAKOUT STAR OF READY PLAYER ONE TO GET HIS OWN SPINOFF MOVIE

HOLLYWOOD – Ready Player One side character – the Iron Giant – proves so popular he’s going to get his own spinoff outing.

Steven Spielberg has packed Ready Player One with delirious entertainment and a whole slew of characters. One of them however stands literally head and shoulders above the others and now has earned himself a new spinoff movie.

Spielberg spoke tot he EXEC:

While we were making the movie, we kept wanting to put more of the big guy in. He was so fun to work with and looked great. The only thing that left me feeling a bit down was the way he bowed out. It was basically Shrek 2. I think he deserved better and so the idea of a stand alone movie.

But doesn’t he already have…?

And there are other characters I’d like to see get another chance. There’s this little character who we see just for a split second. He has a hat and stripy jumper and knives for fingers. He’s called Freddy but we only glimpse him. We do a whole series of films on that guy.

Nightmare on Elm Street.

Stop babbling Exec. And obviously the whole Shining part. Of course that’s already a movie. But wouldn’t it be great if I remade it with more action?

Ready Player One: The Iron Giant will be released in 2020.

GEORGE LUCAS ANNOUNCES TOMB RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK IS GO

HOLLYWOOD – Lara Croft and Indiana Jones meet in a Tomb Raider movie to come.

Today George Lucas confirmed that Lara Croft and Indiana Jones will meet in a new Tomb Raider film, following the debut of Alicia Vikander in the role of the video game hero. Lucas spoke excitedly with the Studio Exec, spraying bits of Pringles everywhere.

Alicia is just amazing and Harrison is getting on. So the idea is we have them team up. Harrison does the cerebral stuff and Alicia kicks ass and gets into scrapes.

How does Steven Spielberg feel about this?

I’m going to be taking the chair for this one.

You’re directing it?

Yes. I don’t want to. I want to do small art films. But I can hear all the people after Force Awakens and Last Jedi shouting from behind the fence: ‘Come back George! Show these bozos how it’s done!’

What’s the story?

Indiana Jones finds out that the Ark of the Covenant has been stolen and he is the only one who can get it back. But – importantly – he has a bad back. And that’s where Lara comes in. She has some daddy issues, so she takes to Indy straight away.

This sounds..

Great! I know.

Tomb Raiders of the Lost Ark is filming right now.

STEVEN SPIELBERG TO FILM HAMILTON

HOLLYWOOD – Steven Spielberg will film the movie version of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton.

According to sources close to Steven Spielberg, the Jurassic Park director is set to film hit Broadway movie Hamilton. The source told the Studio Exec EXCLUSIVELY:

Steven got the idea after the cast spoke up when Mike Pence visited the production soon after Donald Trump’s election. He felt that the musical had not become such a phenomenon that he could do something special with it. Plus, he always wanted to make a musical and so this is it.

We immediately phoned Steven for confirmation. He said:

How did you guys know? Was it Kathleen spilling the beans? Oh, cripes. Gosh. Well, yeah. We were hoping to keep it under wraps. In fact I’d told everyone I was making West Side Story and we’d been auditioning the cast on that basis but all along it was for Hamilton.

Lin-Manuel Miranda is closely involved in the project, Spielberg confirmed.

He is an essential component. The way I see it is the film is a prequel to Lincoln. In fact, I’m also in talks with Daniel Day-Lewis to re-film some scenes of Lincoln but with singing.

Didn’t he retire?

Not anymore.

Hamilton is to be released in 2020.

THE POST – REVIEW

THE POST – REVIEW – All the President’s Men gets a prequel.

Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks star in a Steven Spielberg film about the Washington Post and the publication of the Pentagon Papers during the Nixon presidency. This should be nailed on Oscar glory and guaranteed quality all the way through. Not to mention with the Trump war on Fake News and the Free Press, there’s an urgency to getting this right. And yet… and yet…

It seems as if an air of complacency set in somewhere around the story conference stage. There’s very little drama here. There’s precious little politics. And although Spielberg is obviously in love with the thingness of things – heavy telephones, newsprint and hair cream – the period doesn’t even fell right. It feels more fifties than seventies.

Part of the problem is that everything is centered around Streep as the publisher and owner of the paper. This sucks the drama from the picture. There’s no David and Goliath here. It’s more Goliath and a smaller Goliath with huge Maggie Thatcher hair and a series of night gowns. Christ almighty, can we get Meryl out of the night gowns for just five seconds please!?

Tom Hanks walks around like white bread made flesh. And all the events of great moment come down to a simple decision made by someone very rich who might become slightly less rich. And lose a couple of her politician friends.

Obviously, it’s unfair to compare the film to All the President’s Men, except the film actually does it itself.

So let’s just say it’s shitter than All the President’s Men.

For more Reviews, Click Here.

SPIELBLOG: 1. DUEL

HOLLYWOOD – SpielBlog is a soup to nuts film by film rundown of Steven Spielberg’s film career.

TV movies come with their own constraints. The budget is low; the schedule tight and the ambition narrow. Steven Spielberg got his shot with a Richard Matheson script based on his own experience driving home from a golf game the day JFK was shot. But Duel broke through a ten day shoot and the threat of Gregory Peck – whose casting would have seen Spielberg booted – to become one of the best TV movies ever made.
Duel starts with the car’s POV as we drive through a city towards the freeway. On the radio a comedian (Dick Whittington) prank calls the census. He’s bothered because although he’s the man of the house he doesn’t think he’s the head of house and he doesn’t know what to put. Right from the get go with have this idea of male insecurity, anxiety that the thin veneer that makes up civilisation and enables a weakling to live in apparent safety is a vaporous illusion. ​
The allegorically-named David Mann (Dennis Weaver) is the perfect foil. A familiar TV face, Weaver’s one notable film credit was a ludicrously over the top motel janitor in Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil. Everything about him is unattractive: his stupid sunglasses with lenses the colour of urine, his sub-Burt Reynolds mustache and his whiny voice-over voice. His wife complains about him not standing up to another man at a party who was ‘practically raping’ her. He suspects the mechanic of trying to con him with talk of a new radiator hose. His appointment is with a man who has to leave for Hawaii. You suspect David is never going to Hawaii.

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The 1955 Peterbilt Truck that will terrify Mann and chase him across the mountains and through the desert is everything that he is not. It’s dirty, where Mann dabs at his neat mustache with a napkin, spewing foul smoke. It’s assertive where Mann is deferential. It seeks conflict. It’s industrial and working class compared to Mann’s office stiff wardrobe and monogrammed briefcase. And whereas Mann is the embodiment of male anxiety, the Peterbilt is basically a large cock on ten wheels, loaded with the number plates of previous victims.

The conflict escalates with a black sense of humour. What is apparently a misunderstanding and then vindictiveness, slowly escalates into a deadly hunt. The relative sizes of the car and the truck, the speeds and the road are expertly conveyed. This is Mad Max level brilliance and yet was filmed in 13 days (three days over schedule) and on location against the wishes of a studio who wanted the whole thing done on a sound stage with back projections.

Along the way Mann meets up with a variety of grotesques who show for the first time Spielberg’s vision of a banally-indifferent-when-not-actually-corrupt America. These are the same people who will want to keep the beaches open because it’s the Fourth of July weekend. Mann’s stop at a roadside eatery is full of menace. Any of these people could be guilty and Mann hasn’t the confidence to just say to the room “Hey, who’s driving that rig out there?” Of course, he picks on the wrong guy – mostly every decision Mann makes is frustratingly obviously wrong. Mann takes plot-convenience naps and seems blissfully unaware until the last second that a massive truck is heading for his phone box. Weaver’s performance is obviously what Spielberg wanted – he was a huge fan of Touch of Evil – but you can’t help but wonder what Richard Dreyfuss would have done with the part.

Just how much the world is in sympathy with the truck and out of sympathy with Mann is hit home again and again. From the clientele of the truck stop to the school bus driver, everyone seems to distrust Mann and be indifferent to the Peterbilt. The funniest example of this is the woman with the rattlesnake ranch right next to the phone box – ‘What a weird place to keep snakes!’ Mann exclaims. (By the way look in the reflection of the phone box and you can see Steven Spielberg standing beside the cameraman and watching the scene. Charitably we could say this is his Hitchcockian cameo for what is essentially a Hitchcockian thriller, something the score is relentless in pointing out.)

Stripped of all help and isolated, Mann must face the truck alone. The final showdown is expertly conveyed. Shot from multiple angles with seven cameras, Spielberg ended up only using the one shot in slow motion for the climactic crash and cliff dive. It is this kind of decisive restraint that marks him out as a director of genuine vision, even so early on. The way we have read ‘Inflammable’ on the back of the truck all this time, but then it doesn’t explode when it goes over the cliff. This is 1971 so endings always have to have a hint of the ambiguous rather than the audience pleasing catharsis.

Duel got good ratings and reviews as TV Movie of the Week and ultimately some re-shoots to make it feature length. Spielberg used it as his calling card, touring it round festivals in Europe. It was a TV movie that looked like it should be on the big screen. And that was exactly where Steven Spielberg was heading.

SpielBlog is also published here and will continue next week.

STEVEN F*CKING SPIELBERG IS ACTUALLY GOING TO F*CKING MAKE INDIANA JONES 5

HOLLYWOOD – Steven Spielberg is going to make Indiana Jones 5.

Donald Trump is President of the United States. Britain is Brexiting. The ice caps are making. And Steven Spielberg is actually making Indiana f*cking Jones 5.

The news was welcomed by accountants the world over and some tape worms were felt to writhe in anticipation. Shia LaBeouf has gone into hiding and a trail of blue M&Ms was found marking a path from Harrison Ford’s house to an extremely rickety World War One bi-plane.

When asked about the project Spielberg told the Studio Exec EXCLUSIVELY:

The film will be set in the present day Indiana Jones is now extremely old. We’re talking Guy Pearce here. He is called on to go to Charlottesville to pull down some ancient statues. Only here he will find his old nemesis. The Nazis.

Indiana Jones and the Alt Right will be released in 2020.