The Hitcher: 'How Do These Movies Get Made?' (2003) - full transcript

It was my first professional movie.

I was very entertained by the

idea of being able to

go into video stores and find it on the shelf.

It's funny because when you go to Blockbuster

you'll find it in the horror section.

To my great surprise, to this day, inexplicably,

it was listed in the comedy section.

I guess it's a thriller with a bit of a horror twist to it.

-The story has the logic of a nightmare.

-Well, it's a thriller

-To me it's not really a horror film.

-I'm not a big fan of horror.

-It's definitely a psychological thriller.

-First of all, it's a very...

-strange, horrible fairy tale.

-Incredible action in this movie.

Drive and hunt and scare.

-You could possibly put it into the action section.

-It's a mind fuck.

I've never exactly felt comfortable

with quote part with it being a harmony.

It's a weird movie, i mean,

it's still a movie about a killer.

Certainly somewhere between that and thriller.

Some sort of suspense thriller,

horror in there somewhere.

I don't think there's any moment

where you wouldn't think

that this could happen out there.

If you've never seen this film,

you can't look a this film

and know what's going to happen.

THE HITCHER

"HOW DO THESE MOVIES GET MADE?"

The inspiration for The Hitcher

was the Dora song Riders in the Storm

which is about a Hitchhiking killer.

And I always loved the song and thought that

it was a great opening for a film.

So I started with the screenplay of The Hitcher.

I started with the opening 1012 odd page

scene between Jim Halsey and John Ryder.

And basically went from there.

I got a copy of the California

Production Manual, first of all

while I was living in Texas.

And went down the list of all the producers

And I sent what's called a query letter.

Basically, I sent a half page description of the story,

and I kind of dared people to read it.

I got a 40% response,

and I actually got to Ed Feldman by accident.

I'd sent the letter, actually,

to a producer named Phil Feldman

who produced The Wild Bunch, And I said,

I thought , this is probably a good

idea to take a look at the picture.

And it got to Ed's company by accident.

My associate at the time, David Bombeck,

thought it was a very good idea for a movie,

and he said "could he develop it?"

And so we developed a movie over the phone.

We never met Eric Read,

until we had the final draft of the picture.

We used to do. He would be

on payphones in Texas

and we would talk over the project with them.

Between the time i was a still photographer

and the time i became a director,

I was a camera, i was a DP

for some number of year.

Not something i really wanted

to do for a living

but i felt this was a logical

progression from still photography,

and a position in which i could really learn

much more clearly how movies are made

and get closer to the action, so to speak.

And Robert had done a short film

called "China Lake",

which had a very it was about a rogue cop

and it was shot in widescreen

and had the same

sense of hard edged realism

and violent psychology.

And China lake was in the same

spirit and genre

as The Hitcher,

and he had been a stills cameraman.

I don't know, we were just overwhelmed

by his work on China Lake.

My agent at the time called,

and i stille remember this word,

he said to me,

i have a project i'm going to send you,

and you're not going to believe,

he said,

how much fun you're going

to have making this movie.

My agent sent over the script of this

thing called The Hitcher

and as i was reading it,

i was thinking, why did i ever make the

right short film to get this job?

Because, in effect, already made the movie.

John Seal had done witness for me.

Just to meet John Seal

you want to keep working with him forever?

He's really such unique individual.

And Ed said "you should listen".

You should check out this guy, John Seal.

Of course, i never heard of him.

Nobody in America had heard

of him at that time.

I wasn't too impressed with the script.

I did feel that there are an awful

lot of people killed in the first 36 minutes,

and a lot of it, as written,

was slow motion death.

And i wasn't really honestly prepared for that.

So i had a long talk to Robert Harmon,

on the phone, and profit that and said

look, i'm a little worried that there's

so many people

just getting slaughtered in slow motion.

And he said "no, let me tell you how

i'd like to see the film made".

And i think 23 minutes later i signed up.

And i hired him, i'd never met him.

I met him the first time he came to L.A

to begin work on the movie,

and it proved to be a very happy collaboration.

There was a brief period, i recall, in which

we were discussing Terrence Stamp.

Somebody was very interested in, and

it didn't work out. Terrence

was very clear that

he felt that it would take him in a place

he didn't want to go at that moment.

That's how he put it.

And he's been very kind in the year since,

i run into him every now and then.

And he has always expressed a regret

that he'd made the decision because

he seems apparently he's a fan of the movie.

Sam Elliott came through an interview.

We interviewed him one Sunday

morning at somebody's office

in the San Fernando Valley.

He was so scary that i was afraid

to go out in my car

and even drive by anyone, but it

i thought he was going to do the film

and then he backed out at

the 11th hour and we got Rutka.

We were fortunate to get an

actor of Rutka's caliber.

Yes, Rutker was,

i thought, an unattainable possibility.

I believe what pushed

him over the edge

was that the screened my short.

He wanted to see what i had

done as a director.

I saw a short film that he had financed himself

because he was tired of being

a set photographer,

or a Playboy photographer.

He was for two years, and

he wanted to photograph movies.

And it was a wonderful movie.

I saw that film along with the script,

and i just felt

look that, i got to do this movie.

John Rider is, on one hand,

a very tough, resourceful,

murderous character,

but on another hand, no longer

wants to live or continue.

But he wants to

stick around long enough

to pass on to this one kid

this one person who he finds

has a course of life,

how to be, in his terms, strong

enough to survive.

In the original script, it was described

as skeletal, with apologies to him.

I remember that Eric Red used to

talk about Keith Richards as the model.

He was also described in the

script that i recall reading first,

as having no natural voice,

but he had sort of an electronic voice box.

I think in general, their portrayal,

physically and emotionally

of the writer character in the original

script was a little bit more monstrous.

He was certainly a human being,

but he was,

i think, without goodness,

without any quality of...

anything human.

He was just a force of

horror and awfulness.

There's so many elements to it

that we think about,

because Rutgers character shows up

at the right time, at the right place,

is he magic?

-Is he supernatural?

-John Ryder?

That's a rental company.

This guy's name is not John Ryder,

forget it.

And to me, he doesn't exist.

He's just a piece, he's just a ghost

that comes out of the desert sand

and starts haunting people.

He's shooting down helicopters with pistols,

he's slicing people up left and right

and they can't catch him,

he can sneak into a jailhouse

and kill all the cops,

and unlock my cell without me knowing.

There are valid criticism of

the movie in terms of

how could he pop up here,

and how could he pop up there,

and how could he know where he was?

And all those questions, which are,

from one point of view, valid questions,

but from my point of view

and i believe from Eric, Ed Feldman's

and all the other

filmmakers involved in the movie,

the questions is not appropriate.

It might say, if you don't get it,

don't get it.

But the movie is not supposed to

work on this super real level.

I think it's a normal story of

a serial killer.

Except the cleverness of the

script made it more

he made, made the man more than just

a character on television,

where you see villains today, he made...

i think it's one of the most horrorific

characters in the history of films.

And i think that's why the picture

enjoyed the success it did.

To me, the first thing that is scary

about a character is intelligence.

If the guy is intelligent, and now we know,

they are around, but that's scary.

So, you know, you can't fool

them too easily.

You have to be smart to fool them.

It lifts up the whole story.

It lifts up the bad guy.

It lifts up the the hero.

The more complicated, the more

complex the bad guy is,

the better the hero is off when

he finally gets it,

my character shows him that

i want to win

that i'm not so fearful that i'll just collapse

and let you stick that knife in

my heart and drain my life.

I want to survive.

And he recognizes that,

and that inspires him

to take me to the next level.

He says "okay, kid,

i'm taking you on a ride".

In terms of the character, i thought,

this is a guy who knows he's very sick,

but he doesn't quite know

where to go to have it fixed or he

doesn't know how to end it.

He has a coward too.

If he would have the guts to

commit suicide,

that will be fine, but he doesn't have that.

So i guess somewhere in his mind

he comes up with and idea that

if he can just find somebody

who gives a little shit.

He can have some fun with,

and then ask him to just take

him out of the way.

Now, i thought Rudka's character

was a very well balanced,

weirdo in the desert and very frightening,

because of that, because he was subdued too.

He just wasn't some screaming maniac.

He was very subdued and evil

about the whole thing.

And i think that build a suspence in the film

that might not have occurred otherwise.

Rider wants to teach the kid,

train the kid, make him,

strengthen him, forge him.

And the kid, like all people who are in

the process of being challenged

by someone has both a terror and

a respect for this guy.

And also, by the end of it,

desire to rid the world of him.

It may be a slightly twisted view of it.

But at the end of the movie i

certainly have always felt

that Tommy has left to wonder whether or not

if i could.

If the hell of Tommy's character

if the Halsey character could

turn back the clock,

and choose to have never met John Ryder.

I'm not so sure that he would choose that,

he would change anything at the end.

There's that moment when Rutger

is laying on the pavement,

and Tommy walks up to him,

and he certainly believes that he's dead.

The fact that he isn't, is

immaterial at that moment.

And he kind of caresses his hair with the gun.

It's a sort of farewell.

He's not walking over to him

with the gun,

and putting five more bullets in them,

or turning the rifle around

and bashing.

It just would be completely wrong.

There's a certain gentleness, is almost...

controversial, though this,

may be almost a thank you,

involved in it.

That's how i've always felt about it.

I was doing a tremendous amount of driving,

around the Califiornia

area looking for locations.

So it was incredibly carefully picked locations.

And they were carefully picked as

far as their design,

where the mountains laid out,

where the sun was,

all these elements that came together.

It was shot down in the areas

around El Centro, California.

On through the Death Valley

into the Vegas area.

So you get that really old style western look.

A lot of the pre production

was trying to suss out

how Robert wanted to handle it

and how to make the desert look

basically a beautiful place,

where this madness was going on.

I don't know how many people

respond to this,

but it was shot in a wide screen form

in True Anamorphic 235, Panavision

and if you see it in that form,

certainly on a screen,

on a big screen, it has a certain scope to it.

And i also think,

so much of the movie is about,

you might say,

figures in a landscape.

And as soon as you begin to have enormous

scope shots with small cars

and small figures,

you start to feel a certain scale to it.

I feel that John's great strength is that,

his work is beautiful, but always natural.

You don't get the feeling for the most part,

of a camera trying to show off.

He films in a very humanistc way.

He doesn't try, but when he

has to shoot in a small area,

he does it in a small area.

And in fact, i like it,

because in some ways

i feel putting a camera in the area

that the actors must be in.

Say, like inside a car or a small jail cell,

or shed or whatever.

If the camera is included with

the actors inside,

somehow i think it's a

better way of making a film,

than when you pull a wall out.

The actor's psych,

knows that it's a fake set.

We know it's a fake set.

And the camera almost proves

that it's a fake set,

because it can shoot from angles that aren't real.

How about that shoot on the Western dolly,

down low on the road after i kick Rutger out?

And it comes zooming up to

him as he stands up

and he just pans up with the man.

He was on a sandbag on a dolly himself,

having two boys push him down the street.

And of course, it's cinematography.

That's good stuff, you know?

It's not television.

It's big and it's wild.

You know, It's open.

The process of working

with a younger director,

i find, can be quite exciting, because

they know no limitations.

Their imagination goes rampant.

And in a way, that's fun.

Because Eric's writing was, like, rampant.

He had this stuff in there.

And then Robert, i think, very wisely,

was pulling it back and doing it by inference.

And i think that young innocence

of new writers and new directors

is very exciting to work with this.

The experience was very intense,

and i was a young actor,

with limited skill and limited tools,

at the age of 18.

That was put into a very life

altering situation.

I mean, as... i'm talking here

in my real life,

not in the movie.

I really had to deal with Rutger,

who is very intense,

and that was possibly the

peak of his Rutgernance,

if that makes any sense.

And he was a very intense,

very intimidating person.

I remembere how excited he was

you know, when he knew that

we were going to do it.

And he said, i've never acted before, really.

And now i'm going to act now.

And he was stoked.

And what i loved specifically about him,

that he was totally into

whatever would happen

between us in the scene.

And i was also working with the

amazing Jennifer Jason Lee.

Who is as equally intense

when it comes to her craft,

because this is an actress

who has many skills,

and many tools in her bag.

And she made the choice to

never break the character,

out of the scene, in the scene.

She was always that character.

So here i was, the third in this triangle

of some people

who showed up every day to kick some ass.

And i felt, for the first time

pressure.

What real pressure was to deliver.

There's this moment where i actually

elbow him out of the car,

after he's had the knife and

he catches a tear

off of my cheek and he holds

the knife up to the camera,

and the tear runs down the blade.

This is not written stuff,

this is Rutker.

And i'm like "Dude, don't fucking

stab me in the eye with that knife".

And he's very intense with it.

Picking my tear up.

And letting the tear run down the blade.

And these are the things that

i think people picked up as

homo erotic moments, when

i spit on him in the jail cell

and he licks it up.

Why would he do that?

Is he gay?

Dude? It's just interesting filmmaking.

I was just as creative as i can be, and

i always come up with hundreds

of ideas, and then

it's sort of up to the director to say, okay

that can go, and that you can keep.

And i was fascinated working with him.

I just couldn't...

he'd be driving down the desert,

full speed in the black truck,

and there's a white hanky blowing

out the windows of the truck.

And that's just Rutger holding

hanky out as he's driving.

And the director is not

going to say "ehi, bro,

put the hanky out the window.

The sports of this picture, to me,

and the way the character sort of dances around

with the characters in the movie

and with the audience as well,

is that, he has to put them on the wrong leg

in order to surprise him again.

And that was my goal, basically.

The thing is, he doesn't sit down

and explain to everybody,

okay, director, this is what i'm doing.

Producers, this is what i'm doing. I mean...

he just goes and we're all going,

"what's he got the white hanky

out the window for?"

I don't know. Do you want to ask him?

Not really. What's for lunch?

And you watch it, and there's a reason for it.

And it pays off at the end.

There's a wonderful scene

where Riders just shot two

police officers in the car,

when he's trying to turn himself in,

and the kid grabs a gun and it's it,

he's going to commit suicide.

There's no reason to live.

The nightmare is going to end,

and he puts the gun under his jaw.

When the director yelled action,

it was like something took over.

There was this and it's one of a

really beautiful moment,

where i fell out of the car and

i raised my fingers,

and i started going bang, bang,

and kind of losing it.,

and i started to rub this dirt in my face,

and i looked up to the sky,

kind of pleading to God,

just in time, which normally would

have ruined the movie,

for a big cloud to move away,

and hit me right in the face.

And that's when my character just stood up,

shook it off,

and said, i'm going to fucking meet this guy,

i'm going to take this guy on.

And it all happen in the moment.

The director was clever enough to appreciate

the work that took place, as oppose to

we had a lighting change.

We got to do that one more time.

My DP, John Seals, who is

an Academy Award winning DP,

probably my favorite and most

talented DP i've ever worked with,

said, in his Australian accent,

mate, look at that there.

Let's just give another shot of that cloud.

Go and bar it here, we cut it in.

It's a brilliant moment, mate.

And that's what they did.

And it's funny how fans pick up on that stuff.

Because they've seen the movie

again and again and again,

and they start seeing that stuff.

There's so much to be intimidated by,

that most of the audiance are always

sort of in the same mode as he is.

Once you're past that, you can start

seeing other things,

which is great fun.

We desperately tried to find angles,

and ways of shooting the stunts,

that would be...

that would maximize the stunt effect.

It was a stunt movie and i went for it.

I'd had an idea which seemed, at

the time like a good one.

Everybody has to remember,

this was before the days

of computer animation of any kind.

There weren't even that many

computers behind the scene.

Much less involved in actually making the movie.

It was a sequence of the movie where

the three cars line up side by side,

the end of the chase scene.

Two colleagues cars are

flanking Tommy Howell,

and Jennifer's car, which is in the middle.

They're about to shoot him from either

side out of their two police cars,

and the Tommy Hall character

gets the idea to jam on the brakes.

And since they're all moving down the

road together at 65 miles an hour or so,

when he puts on those brakes,

he would therefore immediately back

away and the two cops would,

in fact, shoot each other,

which is what happened.

So i had this bit of coverage

that occured to me,

that we would take a camera car,

an insert car,

sometimes called, and crane off the side

of that car with a camera.

Off a little crane arm.

So our camera car is driving behind

one of the two cop cars,

and we are craned out,

and flying along the roadway,

about that far off the ground,

six inches or so off the ground.

So the road is whizzing by the camera.

The idea that was when Tommy

Howell's car hits its brakes,

of course, it would immediately

come right back at the camera.

But since we're on a crane arm,

theorically, as that happened,

we could go and move the

camera right over,

and let that car go right under the lens.

We would continue traveling

at 60 miles an hour,

as two cop cars begin to roll.

Completely insane idea.

We did the stunt and it

all went off very well,

until see Thomas How's car went backwards.

The camera went in the air,

shot underneath.

The other two cars started

to go into their turn,

and should have made safe.

But the outer one went into a long slide,

and crossed over and came into

the insert vehicle lane.

And, of course, it was shedding speed

a lot faster than the insert vehicle.

And the insert vehicle driver, who was

a fantastic driver,

he realized that he had men

on top of the vehicle.

He had a camera on the front of

the vehicle, as well on a low platform.

So he had a men on the front of his vehicle,

who was now looking like

he was going to be squashed

between the police car and the insert vehicle.

So in a split second, he made a decision

to put the right hand wheel down,

And swerve the insert vehicle to the right.

And it just ended up sliding sideways,

trying not to hit the police car

with the guys on the roof.

And we shuddered to a halt.

The one thing i never want on in

a picture is anyone to get hurt.

No movie is worth anyone getting hurt.

It doesn't matter how well we

planned things back then,

there was always an opening for

accidents to happen.

And luckily, the professionalism

of that man's driving

was such that we just got out

of that quite happily,

but we're pretty careful again after that.

Rutger was amazing, man.

I remember one scene at the

patrol gas station

that he had to drive out of

the shed of the garage,

out of the door,

smashed the door,

and then he had to go up and

around and come back,

and knock over all the petrol pumps.

And the stunt coordinator tried it

with the door open,

and he drove out, roared up the top,

turned the wheel, couldn't make it,

slammed it in reverse, went back,

filled, came down and knocked over the pumps.

And Ruth had just stood there

looking at it and he said,

"let me do it, we'll roll film."

so all the cameras were set up

and we rolled film,

and he crashed out of that garage,

he went up and did a full power turn,

without stopping and backing and filling,

and rolled down and knocked the pumps over.

And i think the poor stuntmen sat there

with their mouths open,

because he did something that really

even a good stuntman

was having trouble doing.

He just did it like that.

There was a love scene in the motel room,

but i remember when we

were going to film that scene.

Jennifer, i believe,

wasn't feeling, that was a truthful moment.

She felt like that was one of those

Hollywood moments,

that like, okay, here's where

the guy in the movie sleeps

with the girl in the movie.

Oh, wait a minute.

Everybody's dead and we're

running for our lives. Hello.

That scene has changed a bit,

it didn't seem to feel right that

Nash and Halsey would have sex,

there was something...

it's not a consummated relationship

between the two of them.

And she's gonna get torn apart bewteen two tracks.

and it was it,

was better to keep the tension

that it might happen,

but not consummate it.

They already like each other there.

They're surviving.

There's already a bond.

It's a survival bond,

and that's heavy than anything.

I feel that a film scorer's job is to help tell the story.

In a sense, you should almost

be able to turn the dialogue off,

and have the music tell the story.

There's a film called "Mrs. Soffel",

that mark did the score for.

Again, it must have been one of

his very first scores.

I thought it was fantastic.

I really liked the movie too,

but i walked out of the movie and i

was so amazed by the music.

He just called me.

he must have gotten my phone number

from my agent or something,

and said, i've been a fan of yours.

And we had several long phone

conversations long before we met.

And he just expressed his enthusiasm

and describing what he wanted to make.

It all sounded fascinating to me

and he said yes.

And i still don't quite know why,

but we've been friends ever since,

-and worked together many times.

-I fortunately came into this business,

when video was available to

the common man,

and so i could have a video machine at home

and work directly to the picture.

Having a synthesizer keyboard

and a computer,

so i can play something in.

Record it in the computer.

Hit play on the video,

hit play on the computer,

and become an audience

for a moment, and just

see is it working? Is there a connection there?

And then the good news is that

the director can come,

and sit next to me, and we can

have that discussion.

Before we have to get on the

dubbing stage and spend

lots of money to record anything for real.

We can test it out on ourselves,

and we can interact and

we can move it,

we can try it 5 seconds earlier,

we can take the drums out,

we can play the melody backwards,

we can get it the way.

Both he and i know that we're going to want it.

He just enhances the visualization

he just brings you to it.

He becomes one with it as opposed to,

sometimes, i think, score can be a distraction,

for me when i'm watching

a movie, and all of a sudden,

oh, there's a score.

Oh yeah, this is a movie

instead of an experience,

where it all becomes one

and it goes together.

And that's what the score of this

film did for me, which i loved.

I mean, it really...

it really is one with the film

and you don't fell that the score

is a distraction.

It's a beautiful use of sound

there's a scene when Jim Halsey

is locked into the police station,

after he's been arrested and

he goes to sleep,

and he starts having a dream,

and he's dreaming of picking up John Ryder

and when Ryder from his point of view,

leans over and knocks on the

windshield of the car,

It's a sound for several gunshots.

The kid wakes up into the police station,

and the sell doors open, and he

finds that Ryder come in,

and shot all the police officers

or cut their throats.

So, in fact, that...

those gunshots had

intruded on his dream.

That's the sort of subjective stuff.

It's a turn on to me, the sounds,

how you put the sound of a movie together,

because sound goes straight to your heart.

It does not go through a filter of

you've seen this before,

you have never heard

anything before like this,

because it's always original.

I think we previewed the

film in New Jersey.

-It was all very fine.

-There are certain moments, of course,

where they scream,

and then when Nash dies

you can hear people in the audience

saying, "it's not going to happen".

"Oh, my God."

it was so much fun.

They were on the chairs.

And that's the moment you work for it,

to see how it gets there and

how it is received,

and then you know that you did it right.

Some people came over and

thought it was a masterpiece.

Some people wanted to kill me.

I mean, there was a couple of nuns

came over to me in theater and say

"how dare you show this movie?"

and i think it has to do with the realism

of the psychology between

John Roger and Jim Halsen.

It's not a Freddie movie.

It's not a candy man movie.

It's not a guy in a ski mask

with a machete.

-That's some kind of fantasy.

-The LA Times decided

they wanted to do the cover story

of the Sunday LA Times Magazine

about the movie.

And we thought, "wow, that's fantastic."

it'll be the cover of it.

It's called the calendar section of

Los Angeles Times,

and we were all interviewed and

it was all very positive feeling.

It was all very auditory, sort of how

effective it is and all kinds of issues.

And we're all thinking, this is great,

this will be wonderful publicity.

And it'll be fantastic.

So we all are interviewed,

and the day comes for this,

front cover story of the LA Times

calendar to come out.

And i remember opening the paper

and looking at the front page

of the calendar and thinking:

"i must be dreaming", because the

headline of the story,

on the front page was a large shot of

Rutger with his coat blowing in the wind.

It was a still from the movie,

from what we used to call

the Ghost Gas, and this dust storm

and Rutgers Long coat. And it

was a very evocative shot,

but the headline read, "how do

these movies get made?"

by i forgot her name.

And it was basically a story which we all felt

we had been thoroughly tricked

by this journalist,

because there was no hint

in her discussion of the question,

or what the nature or the take of

the story was going to be,

that it was, in effect, not even necessarily

negative about the movie,

but it was a kind of a moralistic quote.

These movies, how do these

movies get made,

that are so horrifying and so frightening?

Years later, in fact, it was

only about a year ago,

when a woman that i met,

heard that i'd photographed the Hitch,

and she said, "that dreadful film".

She said: "how could you have torn

that child apart between those trucks?"

and i thought, she's sounding like

she actually saw it.

And i said, but you didn't see that.

I said, there was just a fantastic little editing

of the accelerator going up

and down the clutch,

coming in and out, Rudka saying,

shoot me, shoot me,

and the gun in his forehead,

and the kid not being able to shoot,

and i said, and then the

revving and the clutch,

and suddenly the wheel turns and your

hear a scream and you go to black.

She said, "not at all true."

i saw that poor child get torn apart.

And i thought to myself,

i know what's happened,

you closed your eyes and you saw it,

in your mind's eye, and when

you opened your eyes,

we were into the next scene.

And for all intents and purposes,

she had seen

Jennifer Jason Lee torn apart.

But you never see it.

When Jennifer Jason Lee is torn apart,

supposedly the good old indian way,

because in the mediaval period

they used to do that.

And the Indians sort

of did some of that, too.

Four horses, and there you go.

Yeah, we're funny creatures.

People always ask me, where's the cut footage

of Jennifer Jason Lee being ripped in half?

That great makeup effect.

And it was never a makeup effect,

and it was never in the script.

That was never seen on screen either.

It was lost screen. It was

done actually by sound.

And of course, the sound does trick there.

The sound of the truck does the trick.

You know, 500 horse power,

not 4, 500 hundred.

The Hitcher is a film that's funny.

It's really a film more about how

don't show it than how you show it.

And people think it's a much

more violent film,

and it got a tremendous reputation

when it came out for being

this incredibly violent picture.

And there's certainly a lot of

violence that happens in it.

But i'm not seeing.

A lot of it's left to your imagination

or it occurs off screen.

it's Blade Runners is 22 years ago,

this is 15 years ago,

but these are to me, they're big moments,

because they give you trust.

Because if you feel that

strong about something,

there's something to be found

and there's...

there's no way or there's no us in fighting it.

I think the people who love movies

regard the Hitcher as a classic of its kind.

And they don't make pictures

really like that anymore.

The Hitcher is just my kind of movie, man.

Good acting, good cinematography,

wicked stunts, and a hell of a story.

what else do you want?

It's now? What? 15 or 16

years later, i still think,

i can't believe this is great.

It's full of trouble and full of problems,

and full of...

all kinds of issue, but

they're within the confines of

a much larger perspective.

Wait a second, we're just making movies here.

It's not he end of the world.

So i'm quite happy about it all.