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After years of hard work, our documentary about Spielberg’s Duel is almost ready!

Carol, who played in the Duel soundtrack, was a member of the very respected Wrecking Crew, “a loose collective of session musicians based in Los Angeles whose services were employed for thousands of studio recordings in the 1960s and 1970s, including several hundred Top 40 hits. The musicians were not publicly recognized in their era but were viewed with reverence by industry insiders” (Wikipedia). Carol's playing is easily recognisable in such hits as Mission Impossible, I’m a Believer, Good Vibrations or La Bamba.

Andrew Gordon is the author of Empire of Dreams: The Science Fiction and Fantasy Films of Steven Spielberg. He is a teacher at the University of Florida. Andrew is director of the Institute for the Psychological Study of the A. He is author of An American Dreamer, coauthor (with Hernán Vera) of Screen Saviours, and co-editor (with Peter L. Rudnytsky) of Psychoanalises/Feminisms.

Duel Location Hunter - Dan Zito watched Duel at the age of 10. Many years later, Dan was driving through Soledad Canyon Road, outside L.A., when he recognized the Duel tunnel. He then decided to track down every Duel location, taking pictures of them, creating Then and Now compared sets of images.

When Medavoy saw Spielberg’s short film Amblin, he signed him straight away. From then on, their relationship had its ups and downs, as Spielberg had a contract with Universal television and, in those days, TV was not the place to be in order to make films. Medavoy went to become one of the most distinguished producers in Hollywood.

Losasso, from Burbank, CA., claims that, when he watched Duel as a kid, the film mesmerized him, it changed his life, and made him love big trucks forever. Many years later, rumours reached him that one truck had survived the filming. He looked into it without success until he heard that George Sack, The Jackknife King, had it. He visited the truck in Sack’s yard and agreed to buy it. This way Neil became the second owner of the Surviving Duel Truck. Sometime later, he was forced to sell it. The car finally ended in North Carolina.

When Juan Alonso bought his restaurant in Sierra Highway, outside L.A., he didn’t know it was a film location: Chuck’s Cafe, the set of one of the most admired scenes in Duel. But he found out soon enough, as he started noticing people from all over the world stopping by the place and taking pictures…

Steven Awalt, with a long track of Spielberg expertise in the form of a prestigious website, is the author of the book Steven Spielberg and Duel. The making of a Film Career, an account of the making of Spielberg’s iconic movie. Every aspect of its creation is in its pages. Steven is now in charge of the Amblin website.

Derek Drinkwater, from Surrey, England, remembers watching first Duel as a kid, hiding behind the settee, as the first horror film he ever saw. When he grew up, he found a Peterbilt for sale on eBay, very similar to the truck in the movie, and bought it. He then had to go to the US to pick it up, cross the country with it and put it in a ship to Europe. Derek then decided to turn it into a food business.

4 times Emmy winner, TV composer Billy Goldenberg was Spielberg’s TV musician of choice. They worked together in series and Tv films like Columbo, Night Gallery (Eyes episode) and Duel, just to name a few. Goldenberg has created songs played by singers like Barbra Streisand. He is the author of the Michael Bennet-directed Broadway musical Ballroom.

Brad Wike is a Duel fan and a truck collector. He owns a replica of the Smoke and the Bandits truck. So it’s no surprise that the Surviving Duel truck ended up with him in North Carolina. He takes good care of him, even got him a red Plymouh valiant replica to chase around. He had to stop showing the truck to the fans that called him because it took him too much time. But still, if you want to see it, every year he celebrates the Southern Classic Truck Show in Lincolnton.

Gaydos, as well as one of the chiefs of Variety Magazine, is a film writer. Variety, widely known as The Bible of Showbusiness, followed Spielberg’s career from the very beginning. Critic Tony Scott’s made a very favourable review of Duel when it came out on television as a Movie of the Weekend in 1971.

Joseph McBride, a teacher at San Francisco State University, is a very respected author of many film books -his works on Welles, Ford, Hawks and Capra are widely admired-, wrote a very thorough biography of Steven Spielberg, digging in every aspect of his private and professional life, a seminal work.

Mario Roussel, Canadian Duel fan and model maker, has watched the film more than 1000 times. As there are not much Duel memorabilia available to buy -the film was made in 1971 for TV, so almost no Duel memorabilia exists- Mario decided to make it himself. A very skilful model maker, he has built a series of great dioramas based on scenes of his favourite film ever.

Johnson created a string of successful TV series in the 70s, like The Six Million Dollar man, The Bionic Woman, V, and The Incredible Hulk. The unexpected link with Spielberg’s Duel has to do with one Hulk episode which reused material from Spielberg’s movie. The Duel makers were so appalled by this that Spielberg added a clause to all his subsequent contracts stating that no material of his could be used as stock footage. The Hulk episode, named Never Give a Truck an Even Break, has become cult material.

Zinoman is the author of Shock Value, a first-class book about the evolution of horror films from the end of the 60s until the 70s. He writes about comedy in the New York Times. His latest book is Letterman: The Last Giant of Late Night, a biography of David Letterman.

Ingram is a classic American TV expert. After many years in Los Angeles working in the entertainment industry (television and motion pictures), Billy Ingram created a website, TVParty.com, about premier television history. Together with the contributions of people far and wide, Ingram has made TVparty a celebration of man's electronic achievement.

As A.D., Fargo organised the shooting of Duel, which was made only in 13 days, a great achievement given the fact that was a complex action movie. Fargo worked in The Sugarland Express and Jaws, Spielberg’s subsequent feature films. He then became a director in his own right, with films like Clint Eastwood’s The Enforcer and Every Which Way but Loose.

Sheinberg met Spielberg when, at 21, he was just an aspiring filmmaker who had made only amateur shorts. Sid somehow saw something in him and pushed his career forward as much as he could. He was behind Spielberg making Duel, The Sugarland Express and Jaws, the key movies in the beginning of his career.

A famous stuntman, George is known as the The Jackknife King. Jack Knife is a ``dangerous situation when a large 18 wheel truck and its trailer go into a skid and the trailer swings out and stops to form an angle of 90 degrees with each other.`` (Coachranfirm.com). George worked in Duel, being in charge of the back-up Duel truck, the surviving truck. He became its first owner for more than 20 years.