Finally, See Spielberg's "Duel" on the Big Screen (If You Can Get to Denver Monday)
Because the power of the Murilee Martin Lifestyle Brand™ is so extreme, the Alamo Drafthouse Theater in Denver has fallen under my spell and allowed me to select and introduce four car films, to be shown each Monday during their “Alamo Takes the Wheel” month of April (actually, it was the endorsement of Repo Man director Alex Cox, who teaches at the University of Colorado, that convinced the Alamo management that this idea wasn’t completely stupid). The first of those films is the amazing Duel, an all-time-great Malaise Era car movie that shouldn’t need any introduction for TTAC readers.
In fact, my original plan for these Monday car movies involved having four triple features, including such must-see car films as The Junkman and Blue Collar, but the Alamo management just gave me the same funny look that people give me when I talk about putting an LZ9 engine into a Cadillac Cimarron. Anyway, so they picked four films from my twelve-film list, and they’ll be showing one on each Monday in April. Duel shows on April 6 at 7:30 PM, and moviegoers are strongly encouraged to bring their coolest, weirdest, and/or hooptiest vehicles to show off in the theater parking lot beforehand.
Once Duel (which even I have never seen on the big screen) is done, we’ll have three more Monday movies selected and introduced by yours truly. These are:
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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I will be in town monday, may have to check this out. I live way out in the burbs. So getting downtown, which is where I assumed this theater is dank prove to be tough. I have two lane blacktop on tape and would love to get it on DVD. perhaps a good discussion board would be what are the top 10 or 20? Must have movies every gear head should own.
I remember me and my dad watching "Duel" the first time it was shown. Dennis Weaver's whiny voice made him perfect for the part. I saw a tractor like the one in the movie for sale in AZ once for $1000 in 1979 or so, and I tried to convince my friend, who had a commercial license, to go halves on it with me and buy it. It had that same grungy patina on it, and driving it around Vegas would have been hilarious. Everyone I knew had seen Duel and would have loved it.