The lobster was winning.
That was the first coherent thought that passed through Duke's mind as he stood behind the camera in a rented beach house kitchen in Malibu, watching two of the most talented actors in America lose a physical confrontation with a lobster.
The second thought was 'This is exactly what I wanted'.
The kitchen was small, deliberately so.
Duke had scouted four different beach house locations before settling on this one, and he'd chosen it precisely because the kitchen was cramped, and cluttered.
A bigger space would have given the actors room to perform, but Duke wanted frantic, breathless, genuine human chaos that you can't rehearse, can't choreograph, and can't fake.
The kind that happens when two people are squeezed into a tight space with a pot of boiling water and a lobster that has absolutely no intention of going into that pot.
It was the first day of principal photography on Annie Hall, and Duke had chosen to start with this scene for reasons that were equal parts strategic and instinctive. Every filmmaker knows that the first day sets the tone for the entire production.
Shoot something safe, something controlled, something technically precise, and you tell your cast and crew that this is going to be a careful, cautious production.
Shoot something messy, something alive, something that could go sideways at any moment, and you tell them that this is going to be something different.
Duke wanted different.
"Don't act," he had told Gene Wilder and Diane Keaton before the cameras rolled. That was the entirety of his directorial instruction for the scene.
He'd given more detailed guidance to the prop master, who he had specifically instructed to source lobsters that were angry and athletic.
The prop master, a weathered veteran named Lou, had looked at Duke with a weary expression.
"You want the lobsters to be... difficult?" Lou had asked.
"I want them to be nightmares," Duke had confirmed. "I want them fighting for their lives, claws snapping at fingers, crawling off the counter and making a break for the door. If one of them actually escapes and gets under the refrigerator, that's a take."
Lou had delivered. The lobsters were nimble, furious, and apparently possessed a survival instinct that was better than most horror movie protagonist.
The moment the first one hit the kitchen counter, it made an immediate lateral dash toward the edge, claws raised. Keaton shrieked, not a scripted shriek, but a real involuntary sound.
Wilder, who had been attempting to hold the second lobster with a pair of kitchen tongs, lost his grip entirely, and the creature hit the floor with a wet thud.
"Don't let them escape," Duke said calmly from behind the camera. That was his other instruction. The full extent of his directorial vision for the scene, delivered to two actors who were now engaged in what looked less like a cooking sequence and more like a nature documentary.
What happened next was magic.
Wilder's voice climbed three octaves as the floor lobster made contact with his ankle.
"It's touching me! It's touching me!" His panic was so authentic, so completely unmanufactured, that the entire crew, grips, gaffers, the sound guy, everyone started laughing.
But Keaton's reaction was the thing that Duke was looking for. She didn't panic. She didn't scream again. She laughed.
She laughed with her whole body, doubling over against the counter, tears forming at the corners of her eyes, one hand pressed against her stomach as if the laughter was physically painful.
And while she laughed, Wilder looked at her.
Duke called cut after the third take of the scene. He didn't need a fourth.
He sat in his director's chair while the crew reset, turning the moment over in his mind. In Woody Allen version of this film this scene had taken months of shooting, reshooting, editing, recutting, trying to manufacture in post-production what Duke had just captured live on the first day.
The difference wasn't talent. The other director had plenty of talent. The difference was clarity. Duke knew what the scene was about before the camera rolled.
He firmly believed that a romantic comedy lives or dies on one question, 'Do you believe these two people belong together?'
And the answer to that question is never found in the dialogue, never found in the plot, never found in clever banter or romantic speeches or grand gestures. It's found in the small moments. Like the chaos of the lobster on the floor and the laughter that follows.
If they can survive a kitchen disaster together. The audience will believe in the relationship, invest in it, root for it, and mourn it when it falls apart.
Which, of course, it would. That was the whole point of the picture.
Duke made a note on his legal pad, 'Scene works. Move to bedroom dialogue tomorrow. Stay ahead of schedule.'
He was going to finish this picture in a month. And it was going to be great.
---
The drive back to the city would have taken most people five hours.
Duke did it in four and a half, he reached Atari lab in El Gato.
It occupied a nondescript building in a light-industrial park that also housed a carpet wholesaler and a company that manufactured replacement parts for commercial dishwashers. The parking lot was cracked asphalt.
The front door had a handwritten sign taped to it that read "ATARI INC." in black marker on a piece of cardboard, as if the company hadn't yet gotten around to ordering a real sign and might never bother.
Nolan Bushnell met him at the door with a handshake.
Next to him stood Al Alcorn, Bushnell's chief engineer.
"You've got to see this," Bushnell said, grabbing Duke by the elbow and steering him through the lab toward a workstation in the back corner. "We finished the retail unit last night. Two in the morning. Al hasn't slept. I haven't slept. Nobody's slept. But it's done, Duke."
And there it was.
Sitting on a folding table, connected to a nineteen-inch Zenith television set by a tangle of cables, was the Pong home console.
The console was rectangular, low-profile, and clad in wood-grain paneling. It looked nothing like a piece of electronic equipment. It looked like something you'd set on a shelf in your den, between the encyclopedia set and the family photos.
"The wood paneling," Duke said.
"That was your idea," Bushnell reminded him.
"I know it was my idea. I'm confirming it was the right one." Duke ran his hand along the top of the console, feeling the texture of the laminate.
"Every other piece of consumer electronics in America right now looks like it was designed by an engineer for other engineers. Meanwhile this is a piece of the American living room."
Bushnell remembered and quickly mentioned. "We've got the Sears deal locked. It's done. They're giving us placement in every store in the United States."
"How many units?"
"One hundred thousand for the holiday season."
Duke nodded. One hundred thousand units. It was an enormous number.
"The price point?" Duke asked.
"Ninety-eight ninety-five retail. Sears wanted us at seventy-five. I told them no and they just accepted it."
"Keep the price where it is."
Alcorn, who had been standing silently behind the console, finally spoke. "We've got a manufacturing issue with the paddle controllers. The potentiometers are-"
"Fix it," Duke said. "i'm no expert in hardware. But the controllers are the interface between the human being and the experience. If the paddles feel cheap or unresponsive, the whole product feels cheap."
Alcorn nodded once, and disappeared back into the lab. Bushnell watched him go, then turned to Duke.
"We're really doing this," Bushnell said.
Duke didn't respond, shook his hand again, firm, brief and walked back to his car.
___
The next morning, Duke was back on the Annie Hall set in Malibu when Jeffrey Katzenberg and Archie Goodwin arrived in the same car.
Katzenberg in his perpetually rumpled suit, and Archie Goodwin in his casual-creative uniform of a sport coat over a turtleneck, carrying a leather portfolio stuffed with comic page proofs and sales reports.
They were an odd pair, the young corporate climber and the veteran comic book editor but they'd developed a working rhythm over the past few months that Duke found genuinely impressive.
Together, they were becoming something that Duke hadn't anticipated but very much welcomed, a unified command structure for the media-comics-animation pipeline.
They found Duke sitting on the porch of the beach house, eating a sloppy joe sandwich and reviewing the previous day's dailies on a Moviola. He waved them into the folding chairs beside him without looking up.
"Archie. Good news first."
Archie opened his portfolio and pulled out a sales chart that looked like a ski slope pointed in a profitable direction.
"Transformers. The Mattel prototypes are creating a halo effect that's bigger than anything we projected. People who have never bought a comic book in their lives are picking up the magazine because they want to know the story behind the toy robots. They want to know why these things transform, where they came from, who the good guys are and who the bad guys are."
"Which means the comics are selling the toys and the toys are selling the comics."
"Exactly. It's a feedback loop. Every new issue drives toy interest, and every new toy drives comic interest. We're up seventeen percent month-over-month on PULSE subscriptions."
Duke absorbed this, chewing his sandwich. "Katzenberg. Your turn."
Katzenberg leaned forward. "The MadHouse reels are getting better every week. The quality of what they're producing in Tokyo, I'm not exaggerating when I say it's the best animation being done anywhere in the world right now. The turnaround time is-"
"I know the turnaround time. I get the production reports."
"Right. So. Inspired by what I've seen, I wanted to pitch something." Katzenberg paused, gathering himself the way a diver gathers himself on the board.
"A Ben 10 Animated series. We develop it with MadHouse, same pipeline as Blue Beetle. The concept is perfect for animation. Every episode is a new creature, a new power set, a new visual challenge. The MadHouse team would go crazy for it. The design possibilities alone-"
"Pin in it," Duke said.
Katzenberg blinked. "What?"
"I said put a pin in it. Ben 10 is a good idea. I'm not saying no. I'm saying not yet. First we prove the model with Star Trek and Blue Beetle. Once we've proven that, we expand. One thing at a time, Jeffrey."
Katzenberg's jaw tightened but he nodded.
"Now," Duke said, setting down his sandwich and wiping his hands on a paper napkin. "Archie. Walk with me. Tell me about Blue Beetle."
They left Katzenberg on the porch and walked along the gravel path that led from the beach house toward the row of production trailers.
Archie fell into step beside Duke and opened his portfolio to a spread of comic pages Blue Beetle layouts, inked and colored, fresh from the bullpen.
"Current arc," Archie began. "Jaime Reyes, teenage scientist, chronic money problems, discovers an alien scarab that bonds to his spine. Classic origin stuff, power he didn't ask for, responsibility he isn't ready for. The villains we've introduced so far are-"
He ticked them off on his fingers. "Black Cat, an art thief operating out of Hub City. The Black Goblin, a tech-enhanced crime lord. And Sediman, a bank robber with sand-manipulation abilities."
Duke stopped walking.
"Archie."
"Yeah?"
"Black Cat. An art thief. The Black Goblin. A tech-enhanced crime lord. Sediman. A villain with elemental powers who robs banks." Duke was genuinely confused. "Those are Spider-Man villains. You've taken Black Cat, the Green Goblin, and the Sandman, and put them in a DC book."
Archie, to his credit, did not flinch. He'd clearly been expecting this conversation and had come prepared. "They're archetypes, Duke. And the architect of those archetypes is the same man who's designing our book."
"Ditko."
"Steve Ditko co-created Spider-Man. He designed the look, the rogues gallery, the visual language of the entire franchise. And then Marvel pushed him out. He's been working with us for over a year now, and what he's doing with Blue Beetle, it's not copying Spider-Man. It's perfecting Spider-Man."
"He's taking every idea he had at Marvel, every concept he wasn't allowed to fully develop because Stan Lee was looking over his shoulder and editorial was cutting his budgets, and he's executing them the way he always wanted to."
"The readers don't know that. What they see is a DC character fighting knockoff Marvel villains."
"The readers don't care." Archie said it with the blunt certainty of a man who had been in the comic book trenches for decades and understood his audience with an intimacy that no market research could replicate.
"I'm not even being dismissive. I'm being honest. A twelve-year-old kid buying Blue Beetle doesn't care about the creative genealogy of the Black Goblin. He cares that the Beetle is cooler than Spider-Man. He cares that the alien scarab is a more interesting power source than a radioactive spider bite."
"He cares that the MadHouse animation when it hits screens, looks better than anything Marvel has ever put on Saturday morning television. We're beating Marvel at their own game, Duke."
Duke stared at him for a long moment. Then he resumed walking, his stride slightly faster now, his mind clearly churning.
"I see it," he said. "I don't love it, but I see it. What else do you have?"
Archie pulled out another set of document, sales charts, this time, for Marvel's flagship titles. He handed them to Duke, who scanned them.
"Fantastic Four," Archie said. "Sales are dipping. Not crashing but the trend line is heading south. The book has been coasting along for two years. The stories are repetitive, the art is inconsistent, and the readers are starting to notice."
"Why does this matter to us?"
"Because of Jack Kirby. You know the history. Kirby created the Challengers of the Unknown for DC in 1957. Four adventurers who survive a plane crash and decide to spend their lives exploring the unknown."
"Then Kirby went to Marvel, and he and Lee took that same template, the same team dynamic, the same 'family of explorers' concept and turned it into the Fantastic Four. Nobody at DC said a word, because that's how the business worked. Ideas flowed back and forth. Creators migrated. Concepts evolved."
"And now you want to reverse the flow."
Archie smiled, "I want to launch a book called The Excalibur Crew. Four characters. Designed specifically for the seventies audience. A team of adventurers who are harder, and more morally complex than the Fantastic Four ever were."
Duke was quiet for several steps. When he spoke, his voice was thoughtful, "What's Marvel doing on their end?"
Archie reached into his portfolio one more time and produced a handful of comic book pages, not DC pages. Marvel pages. "They're already playing the same game. Look at this."
He fanned the pages out. "Hyperion. He's Superman. Super strong alien, flies, shoots energy from his eyes, wears a cape."
"Nighthawk. He's Batman. Rich guy, no powers, fights crime at night with gadgets. They've assembled them into a team called the Squadron Supreme. It's basically the Justice League with different costumes."
Duke looked at the pages. And he knew that when two opponents begin openly copying each other's strategies, it means the conflict has entered a new phase. The gloves are off.
"If they want to clone our icons," Duke said slowly, "we'll take theirs."
"That's what I was hoping you'd say."
"Launch the Excalibur Crew. Full creative support, top-tier art team, flagship marketing push."
"Understand."
"Good. Then do what it takes to win."
___
Thoughs on the chapter, had a sorta writers block