HBO Max Brings Back the Car Chase Show with 'Duster'
An empty desert. A ringing pay phone. A rookie agent. A grizzled criminal, torn between loyalties. Wavering in the heat shimmer of hot tarmac, the recognizable rumble of Mopar muscle.
So begins HBO Max's new eight-episode 1970s crime thriller Duster, which is currently rolling out in June. No spoilers (apart from the one on the back of the titular, window-rattling Plymouth), but if you're a fan of Vanishing Point or Starsky and Hutch, you're going to want to catch this one.
A 1970 Plymouth Duster is a pretty unusual lead for a '70s drama, which is exactly why it was chosen. Rather than opt for a more obvious Dodge Charger or Ford Mustang, co-creator and showrunner LaToya Morgan picked out a car that brought some character to the screen. It's a bit of a scruffy underdog of a car, but one with a bite, all jacked up in the rear and ready to pull tire-scorching spins any time a quick getaway is called for.
Warner Brothers
At the wheel of the Duster is Josh Holloway, playing underworld driver Jim Ellis. Perhaps best known for his appearance in Lost, Holloway did a villainous turn on the third and fourth seasons of Yellowstone, and he is note-perfect here as both good guy and bad guy, the rogue you love to root for. Duster's other co-creator is Star Wars director J.J. Abrams, and in Holloway he's got his Han Solo.
There are punchups, car chases, gunfights, larceny, and plenty of groovy early 1970s rock and funk. As a crime drama with a sense of humor, Duster is a roller coaster. There's a team-up with an inexperienced but dogged FBI agent, a host of underworld villains, and a brassy stepmother from hell. The opening credits feature model cars crashing through the desert, and if you wanted to think of the show as a sort of R-rated Hot Wheels track, that'd be accurate. It's huge fun.
However, for sharp-eyed auto enthusiasts, the background of nearly every street scene in Duster has hidden gems to spot. Getting the details right is the job of picture car coordinator Ted Moser, and as a longtime Mopar fan, he's dedicated to the task.
"I'm married to a production designer, who designs the look of the sets—that includes the cars and costumes. So I've learned a lot," Moser says.
Warner Brothers
Duster is set in 1972, and Moser breaks down the vehicles into three basic eras. If it's five years old or newer, it needs to look new. If it's a 1962–1967 model, it should be fairly worn. If it's older than ten years, a background car should be a clapped-out hooptie.
Moser has a great deal of experience as a picture car coordinator, and he specializes in this era of vintage car. His most notable work for gearheads is probably building all the cars for 2 Fast 2 Furious, but he also chose the background cars for 2012's Argo and 2016's Quarry, both set in the 1970s. Moser's company is called Picture Car Warehouse, and he has hundreds of cars to choose from.
"You're looking for the muscle cars because that's what everyone's been hyped on," he says, "And I shift my focus to, 'Okay, but what about everything else?"
The Duster 340 gets to be the hero, and there are plenty of other up-front cars matched to main characters, but Moser is most proud of the more subtle choices, the cars in the back of the shot. He calls them ND cars, short for nondescript, vehicles that make the Southwestern sets look period-correct and lived in. There's a bit of trickery done by swapping out wheels so a background car can appear on screen more than once, but it can't be the same Mustang on every corner or the audience will notice. Moser gives Morgan plenty of credit for being extremely knowledgeable and working with his team on getting the cars right for the year.
Warner Brothers
That level of care extends to the cars themselves, as Moser tries to protect the classics from getting used up in stunts. In one chase scene, the Duster is pursued by an AMC AMX, which gets wrecked. An AMX is a stubby little duck-tailed bulldog of a car, uncommon enough to deserve preservation. Instead of smashing up a real AMX, a little movie magic was applied to a rust-bucket Javelin that was beyond hope, and that was wrecked instead.
As for the Duster itself, that car came with a few unexpected quirks. There are four cars used in filming, two hero cars with all the correct details, and two stunt cars for doing the skids. Previously, Moser set up the Challengers from 2 Fast 2 Furious with 318-cubic-inch V-8s and short 4.88 gearing, as stunt cars need to be sprinters, not top-end performers. Those Dusters were built by another specialist, and arrived in the filming fleet powered by V-8s that stung Moser's pride as a longtime Mopar enthusiast.
"When we received [the stunt cars] for Duster, they had LS3s in them," Moser says with a rueful laugh, "These cars were nicely done, don't get me wrong, but being a Mopar guy you're falling on your sword to do that."
The other surprise was Holloway's genuine skill behind the wheel. "We took Josh out to a racetrack west of Albuquerque for a day," says Moser. "He got so proficient at it, we started using him instead of the stunt driver in some of the stunts."
Warner Brothers
The stunt cars were not set up for interior filming, so the team had to scramble to get some of the details sorted. Moser refers to the result as "good enough for shoulders-up" filming, but says there will probably be some fine-tuning for a next season.
Without giving anything away, the show ends with plenty of unresolved material to leave room for a second season filled with even more criminal capers, shootouts, and shots of a red Plymouth Duster, firing on all cylinders, ready to scorch across that desert and into a whole mess of trouble once again. With so many recent shows focused on psychological drama in boardrooms and Beverly Hills, it's fun to get a good auto-heavy action option for TV car spotting.
Brendan McAleer
Contributing Editor
Brendan McAleer is a freelance writer and photographer based in North Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He grew up splitting his knuckles on British automobiles, came of age in the golden era of Japanese sport-compact performance, and began writing about cars and people in 2008. His particular interest is the intersection between humanity and machinery, whether it is the racing career of Walter Cronkite or Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki's half-century obsession with the Citroën 2CV. He has taught both of his young daughters how to shift a manual transmission and is grateful for the excuse they provide to be perpetually buying Hot Wheels. Read full bio
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