TRIBUTES TO WILLIAM FRIEDKIN

Since the loss of director William Friedkin last week, outpourings of remembrances and respects have been paid. Following are just a few of them.

Print the Legend: On the Legacy of William Friedkin

The Editors | August 09, 2023 | rogerebert.com

The world lost one of its best filmmakers this week with the passing of the brilliant, passionate, and unapologetic William Friedkin. A Chicagoan through and through, he changed the film landscape with works like “The French Connection,” “The Exorcist,” and “To Live and Die in L.A.”—a trio of masterpieces that puts to shame the entire filmography of most of his peers. What always struck me most about Friedkin was the undeniable commitment to his craft in everything he did. Even the films that “didn’t work” were rarely lazy. He had such a gift with momentum, making movies that felt half their runtime, bursts of cinematic energy that felt like they couldn’t have been made by anyone else. We asked our writers if they wanted to share some further thoughts on the life and work of an American master after our wonderful tributes from Chaz Ebert and Scout Tafoya. Here are their contributions. – Brian Tallerico

BRANDON DAVID WILSON

Social media has been awash in absolutely choice interview excerpts since the news of William Friedkin’s passing broke. The guy knew how to give viral-ready quotes. His death is arguably the end of an era in which Friedkin was the last of what I consider the Advance Guard of New Hollywood. The movement that revolutionized American film in the '70s really consisted of two groups: the first wave of the movement was made up of members of the Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation, and most never went to college. Rather than university film departments, they often learned their craft in TV studios which Friedkin did when he began directing live television and documentaries at age 18 for WGN-TV in his native Chicago.

Of course, we will miss Friedkin’s work (though his final film “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” his first narrative feature since 2011’s “Killer Joe,” will world premiere next month at the 80th Venice International Film Festival). And yet Friedkin’s best work has likely achieved immortality because of the way he blazed a trail for himself at a time when the film industry desperately needed his trademark brash intensity. Friedkin is known more than most directors for his bravura set pieces, whether it’s his car chases, foot pursuits, or the harrowing confrontations with pure evil itself. But the key to Friedkin was his deep roots in documentary filmmaking, which he always talked about. That’s what made his films unique: the way his much-maligned but reappraised film “Sorcerer” (1977) veers from gritty authenticity to hallucinatory expressionism. Take one away from the other and it might be good, but it wouldn’t be William Friedkin.

“Sorcerer” was the film I turned to the night I heard of his death. I won’t say it is the quintessential Friedkin film. But it blends a lot of his greatest hits: a prologue shot documentary style, an examination of masculinity, and a tension between the natural and the supernatural. The delicious ambiguity of the ending lingers like the aftertaste of a good meal. Regarding masculinity, Friedkin really stood alone in his examination of men in that he began the '70s and '80s with transgressive gay stories long before that was allowed in the mainstream. Before the 1990s, you'd have to look to Almodóvar to find another director as at home with the idea that homosexuality was simply one expression of hyper-masculinity and not its antithesis. 

The filmmaker I really see as his closest compatriot and friend-rival is Francis Ford Coppola. Friedkin all but admitted that “Sorcerer” was to some degree his pre-emptive strike against “Apocalypse Now.” Coppola is the first of that second wave of film school-educated auteurs, but in many respects he had more in common with Friedkin than the younger directors who followed in his path. They were both Romantics in a time when Modernism was in vogue. Their films are both fascinated by hell, not just as an inner state or a concept, but as a real place where some go for a season and some stay for good.

Modern directors will learn from Friedkin (“Uncut Gems” owes so much to his filmmaking), but they are unlikely to replicate his iconoclasm and total inability to suffer bullshit. Both of those qualities are in short supply these days. Because of that, Friedkin will be missed.

PETER SOBCZYNSKI

I have had plenty of memorable moviegoing experiences, but right at the top of the list would have to be April 14, 2013, the closing night of the inaugural Chicago Critics Film Festival (which I have been on the programming committee since its formation). On that evening, we were not only proud to present a very rare 35mm screening of “Sorcerer,” William Friedkin’s thrilling 1977 remake of “The Wages of Fear,” but we were honored that Friedkin himself had agreed to attend and take part in a post-screening discussion. As the film had largely fallen into obscurity since its original release (where both audience expectations creamed it—this was Friedkin’s follow-up to the ground-breaking “The Exorcist”—and the release a few days earlier of a little thing called “Star Wars”), I had only been able to see it on video at that point and while that was enough to convince me that it was Friedkin’s masterpiece, being to see it on the big screen—with him in attendance to boot—was the chance of a lifetime. The event proved to be spectacular as a large crowd gathered to get their copies of Friedkin’s autobiography (the must-read The Friedkin Connection) and then thrill at the sight of one of the most visceral and intense thrillers ever filmed, featuring scenes so audacious in their conception and execution that they put the CGI nonsense of today to shame.

Afterward, along with colleague Steve Prokopy, I conducted the Q&A with Friedkin, which was also an experience for the ages. Possessing a gift for the gab commensurate with his filmmaking skills, he regaled the audience with tales of the film’s arduous production as well as other tales from his wide-ranging career—the high point being his hilarious anecdotes in response to my query if he had ever seen any of the various “Exorcist” sequels and prequels that have cropped up over the years. He then concluded with a touching recitation of a verse from Dylan Thomas’ And Death Shall Have No Dominion in memory of Roger Ebert, who had passed away a few days earlier. This truly was a night for the ages, and the only vaguely bum note was that, amidst all the hubbub, I was apparently the only person in the place who did not get a chance to get their copy of the book signed. I may not have gotten an autographed book that night, but I got something far more significant—I got an experience, the kind that reminded me of why I fell in love with movies in the first place.

WALTER CHAW

William Friedkin was deeply into sin. His films operate on what the disgraced psychiatrist (Robin Williams in his greatest role) of Kenneth Branagh’s bonzer “Dead Again” called the “karmic payment plan,” namely, you “buy now pay forever.” Most often grouped with the film brats of the New American Cinema, Friedkin was an autodidact, starting in the mailroom of WGN out of high school. His breeding was more in line with the John Frankenheimers of a previous generation who cut their teeth on television news documentaries before beginning their feature film careers, and his ethos has always felt to me less in league with Catholic filmmakers like Hitchcock or Scorsese (despite “The Exorcist” serving as the most effective Catholic recruitment artifact in the modern era), awash in rinse cycles of the fallen, than Billy Wilder’s irascible, even noxious belief in the essential lousiness of the world and its inhabitants. Indeed, there are similarities between Friedkin’s and Wilder’s pasts: Friedkin, whose Ukrainian-Jewish grandparents fled their homeland before a violent antisemitic pogrom, and Wilder, who lost most of his family to Hitler’s death camps. Like Wilder’s prickly filmography, Friedkin’s best movies are documentaries of the inevitability of great evil. Dangerous to the touch, I don’t know anyone who has seen Friedkin’s key pictures and has not been lacerated by the experience.

His breakthrough, a documentary called “The People vs. Paul Crump” (1962), which he shot with legendary cinematographer Bill Butler who preceded Friedkin in death by just four months, is shockingly evergreen. Its dramatic recreations, moral outrage, and unfiltered accusations of police brutality earned the film an immediate suppression on the eve of its broadcast. Undaunted, Friedkin smuggled a copy to then-Governor Otto Kerner, who, a day later, commuted Crump’s execution.

Friedkin was never daunted. In stylized documentary style, he told in “The French Connection” the true story of an unstemmed drug operation centering a racist, brutal cop, Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman), as the new American hero archetype for our home of the broken trust, land of the betrayed. Joining Popeye in “The Exorcist,” a pair of haunted, haggard priests trying to protect a child from corruption; then a thug (Roy Scheider) who flubs a heist at a Catholic Church run by gangsters and finds himself one of a motley crew of exiles tasked with transporting a cargo of dangerously decayed explosives through the infernal jungle in “Sorcerer.” His manifestations of the naked nightmares of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl in the writhing midnight shades of “Cruising” (1980) rival anything in Paul Schrader’s psychosexual hells. He made counterfeiting twenties sexy in “To Live and Die in L.A.” (1985), showed off the ugly, paranoid sweats with “Bug” (2006) and “Killer Joe” (2011), and even left us with one of the great Hollywood memoirs. The first thing I revisited tonight, though, was his episode of the 1980s “Twilight Zone.” “Nightcrawlers” (S1 E4) tells the tale of a Vietnam Vet who manifests his trauma whenever he falls asleep. Wherever Friedkin went, he brought wickedness. His works are magnificent.

William Friedkin on THE EXORCIST:

Linda Blair pays tribute to late Exorcist director William Friedkin: "He Fiercely protected me"

Blair famously played the demonically possessed Regan MacNeil in the seminal horror film.

By Josh Weiss | August 8, 2023 | syfy.com

Following the death of celebrated filmmaker William Friedkin Monday, actress Linda Blair took to Instagram to pay tribute to the director who fostered (and later defended) her Oscar-nominated performance as demonically possessed Regan MacNeil in 1973's The Exorcist.

Affectionately referring to Friedkin as "Billy" in the caption, Blair described the man as a "game changer" and "maverick," whose outside-the-box approach to cinema made him an enviable collaborator in Hollywood throughout a career spanning more than half a century. 

"Every actor wanted to work with him and maybe my story is the most poignant," she wrote, going on to recall the experience of shooting an unprecedented movie that would change the face of horror onscreen.

"Taking a real 13-year-old and confirming my stability to endure the journey he was about to take me and the world on. His directing came with demanding guidance, commitment and strict work ethic. His creative licensing with my performance, always thought provoking and precise with his 'on point' direction for my performance as Regan. Pushing envelopes with groundbreaking special effects to ensure my performance was nothing less than shocking and unforgettable."

When the young actress began to receive death threats from members of the public claiming The Exorcist was heretical and glorified Satan worship, Friedkin "fiercely protected" her from "the maddening crowds."

"It was an honor to know him and I am deeply saddened at this time," Blair concluded. "He changed my life forever, along with the world through my performance, and all my performances throughout my career."

The Exorcist franchise returns to the big screen this October with David Gordon Green's Believer. While Blair did not reprise Regan, she did serve as a technical advisor on the soft reboot co-produced by Universal Pictures, Blumhouse, and Morgan Creek Entertainment. With that said, the project does feature the return of Ellen Burstyn as Regan's mother, Chris MacNeil.

"My friend Bill Friedkin was an original; smart, cultured, fearless and wildly talented," Burstyn said in a statement provided to The Hollywood Reporter. "On the set, he knew what he wanted, would go to any length to get it and was able to let it go if he saw something better happening. He was undoubtedly a genius."

William Friedkin on the famous Georgetown steps.

Remembering William Friedkin and ‘The Exorcist’ in Georgetown

By John Kelly | August 9, 2023 | washingtonpost.com

We Washingtonians love to talk about movies that are set here, some of which are even shot here. This week, a man who directed one of those movies died: William Friedkin, who in the autumn of 1972 spent a few weeks in Georgetown filming scenes for “The Exorcist.”

Friedkin got help from what you might think would be an unlikely source: Georgetown University. The novel’s author, William Peter Blatty, had gone there. He was a junior when he read a Washington Post story about the supposed demonic possession of a 14-year-old Maryland boy.

Blatty came to town for the filming, too. He was such a Georgetown booster that he’d named his production company Hoya Productions.

A Nov. 11, 1972, story in the Washington Evening Star said the school’s leaders were grateful for the attention because “the whole business of running private universities has in many cases become a horror show in which any publicity, however spooky, seems worth grasping.”

There were plenty of local angles. Father John J. Nicola, a priest who was assistant director of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, served as a technical adviser on the film. Perhaps he’s the one who, at Blatty’s request, blessed the film crew in Washington. They’d already been blessed twice during filming in New York City, though it didn’t seem to have done much good.

Wrote the Star: “[Actor] Jason Miller’s son was hit by a motorcycle, a crew member came down with a mysterious illness and a carpenter lost four fingers.”

But it wasn’t all woe. Members of the D.C. film crew played a charity basketball game at McDonough’s gymnasium against a team made up of priests from Georgetown University. The priests — playing as the “Demons” — defeated the “Exorcists,” 45-44.

After the film’s release, gawkers started visiting the Exorcist steps and what became known as the Exorcist House at 3600 Prospect St. NW.

“It’s a terrible nuisance having people ask me about it all the time,” owner Florence Mahoney told The Post’s Lloyd Grove in 1981. “I don’t think I even saw the picture.”

Florence, trust us: If you saw it, you’d remember.

By the way, probably the best dissection of the “exorcism” at the center of the film was by Greenbelt cultural and music historian Mark Opsasnick. His deeply researched 1999 story in Strange Magazine debunks a lot of the lore. For starters, the boy didn’t live in Mount Rainier, but in nearby Cottage City.

Mark interviewed people who knew the family. “Based on their testimony, I found no evidence demonic possession was involved,” he said. “Almost everyone who knew the boy in question strongly opined that his behavior was due to a psychological disorder.”

From one big blockbuster 1970s movie to another. Mark Koenig used to spend summers in his uncle’s house on Buzzards Bay in North Falmouth, Mass., where he and his cousin Dan had regular use of a 28-foot sport fishing boat.

“Renting slip space in Oak Bluffs on the Vineyard, and in the Boat Basin on Nantucket, we would split the week fishing off each island, catching bluefish wherever we heard they were running,” wrote Mark, who now lives in Bethesda.

They took their fishing seriously, leaving early in the morning to reach the day’s fishing ground.

“One day in late July of 1974 we were making our way back from Squibnocket Beach heading east and trolling off South Beach when we saw a boat in the distance sinking by the stern,” Mark wrote.

They estimated the craft was a couple of miles away and knew what they had to do. “If you’re a sailor, you help other sailors,” Mark told me. “That’s the law of the sea.”

Mark furiously reeled in their fishing lines as Dan gunned the engines and headed toward the emergency. As they got closer, they could see the boat was in real distress, listing hard to the rear, its bow high and water lapping at its stern.

“We planned to pull alongside and effect whatever rescue was necessary, not even thinking about radioing for help,” Mark wrote. “Just as we drew within a quarter to half a mile, a small runabout with two or three men onboard came out of nowhere and intercepted us, waving us off. We cut our engines to hear their shouting. They said they were a film crew filming a motion picture and told us to turn around immediately and make no more forward progress.”

Mark and Dan complied. They returned to port. They’d forgotten about the whole thing until the movie came out. It was called “Jaws.”

They’d stumbled upon the climactic scene, with Roy Scheider in the crow’s nest and a great white shark chomping at the stern.

“It’s burned into my memory,” Mark said.

William Friedkin and Father Amorth.

The Exorcist’s William Friedkin on Filming an Actual Exorcism

By Jordan Crucchiola | Originally published in 2018 | vulture.com

In February of 2016, director William Friedkin — famous for The French Connection, The Boys in the Band, and The Exorcist, to name just a few films — was in Lucca, Italy, to receive the Puccini Award for achievement in opera. But Friedkin didn’t want to hole up in one city for the entire weeklong trip, so he did what one of our most accomplished living film directors can just casually do: He called a well-connected friend in nearby Rome, and asked if he could take a day to come to the city and meet the pope and the storied Vatican exorcist, the Reverend Gabriele Amorth. His theologian friend told him that the pope was unfortunately out of town, but that Father Amorth — a big fan of The Exorcist — would be pleased to meet him.

“I just had a lovely meeting with him for about an hour,” says Friedkin of his introduction to Amorth. “Then I came back here and went to the Vanity Fair Academy Awards party, and I was talking to Graydon Carter. I told him I’d been to Rome and met with a Vatican exorcist. He was immediately riveted and said, ‘Listen. Write this for Vanity Fair.’ I said, ‘I didn’t even record it. I’ll have to go back.’ And he said, ‘I’ll give you as much space in the magazine as you need.’” That interview in April 2016 led to Friedkin getting permission to film an actual exorcism with Amorth, which has now been turned into the new documentary, The Devil and Father Amorth. It’s a 67-minute presentation of what the director saw on May 1, 2016, when the reverend performed his ninth exorcism on a woman (called “Cristina” in the film) in order to liberate her from what she believes is demonic possession.

The movie opens with a look back at Friedkin’s myth-making classic, The Exorcist, and plays a bit like an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. It’s been critiqued as “pure tabloid,” but a filmmaker as skilled as Friedkin wouldn’t idly deliver pulp. Sure, there are theatrical flourishes of horror-film string-pulling, and the director’s guided narration does bring to mind Robert Stack, but he also comes across as entirely genuine in his desire to share this unbelievable story he caught on film — a woman, entirely convinced she’s in the grip of the Devil, writhing as she’s prayed over by a bishop and shouting in a voice that is markedly inhuman — and now wants you to consider what you’re capable of believing, too.

Vulture caught up with Friedkin in his Bel Air home — past three gated entrance points, atop a hill, and at the end of a private drive — to talk about an experience that he knows, much like story of Paul’s conversion in the Bible, “defies credulity.” He also shared with us why he didn’t have a camera with him on the day of his second harrowing encounter with Cristina, how much of a role exorcism iconography (like his own 1973 film) plays in how people manifest possession, whether or not he has a “moral right” to film someone in their most vulnerable spiritual hour, what he saw when he died that one time — and if Cristina’s guttural shouts were truly left unmanipulated during the documentary’s single-shot exorcism scene.

How did you come to know Father Amorth?

I was familiar with him through his writings and his reputation. He was the Vatican exorcist for 31 years. His title was Exorcist for the Diocese of Rome, and he founded something called the International Association of Exorcists, and of course [The Exorcist author and screenwriter] Bill Blatty and I knew about him for some time. But I had no contact with him at all until I went to see him, which happened quite by accident.

That was when you went from Lucca to Rome to meet with him, and the Vanity Fair interview you met him for came after, right?

Yes. I did a really extensive interview with him, after which I asked him if he would ever allow me to witness an exorcism, which they never do. No one is allowed, except the relatives of the person who is being exercised if they want to, and permission is never given. The church doesn’t advertise this. It’s not an entertainment. It’s not for the public. It’s a very private matter for Catholics. But he said, “Let me think about it.” And in two days I got an email from his superior at the Pauline Order, who said, “All right. On May 1 Father Amorth will be doing an exorcism at 3 in the afternoon and you’re invited to come.”

So I pushed my luck and I asked him to ask Father Amorth if I could film it, thinking, “No, you can’t film it.” Word came back, “You can film it. But I’m telling you, I’m not in favor of this.” But he said no crew and no lights. So I have a little Sony CX7 still camera that shoots high-definition video, and I went there and I filmed the exorcism. I filmed this close. I was two feet away from her. The mother was going to sit in that chair, but she got up and gave me her chair. I made a couple of little cuts in it. They’re frame cuts, because I was shooting obviously on automatic focus. I didn’t want to have to focus the lens, and I lost focus a couple of times. I just made a couple of quick, almost imperceptible frame cuts. That’s it.

Did you get any pushback from the Vatican about releasing this footage, since they really don’t discuss it?

If I had, they would go right into the trash bin. I’m not interested in either their support or denial. I would say they won’t. They don’t go public about this stuff. They might say to someone who is able to do interviews around the Vatican, “We would never give our permission to do this.” And they did not. I did not seek their permission. If I had I wouldn’t have gotten it. But Amorth did whatever he wanted to do.

Is it because he was so venerated that they basically gave him a pass, despite being outspoken in the ways you mentioned?

I don’t know if they put it that way, Jordan, but he did. And they didn’t try to stop him or squelch him because they knew he would make that public, and I think that everything he probably said was true — except the stuff about Harry Potter. He was against that, witchcraft or something. But no, they never tried to censor him, and they supported him. John Paul II was an exorcist. He left three cases to Father Amorth, one of whom he liberated, the other two he was treating at the time of his death, still. I met other priests that did exorcisms. I filmed one, but didn’t use it. He was not as profoundly spiritual as Father Amorth was. And I just believe that Father Amorth was authentic, which is not to say I can tell you there is a Devil, other than metaphorical, personified by people we know of throughout history.

Why do you think he allowed access at the end of his life?

We had a very strong communication. He liked me, and I not only liked, but respected him, and I think he was the most spiritual person I’ve ever met. And I think he may have had some feeling that I wouldn’t misuse this. At that time it was difficult for him to have people understand what he was doing. He was a severe critic of the Vatican. He regularly wrote and gave television interviews about the priest scandals, about a murder in Vatican City, other problems he had with the church, and they never touched him. He also wrote about things that he thought weren’t very good, like Harry Potter and stuff like that.

But he did like The Exorcist a lot. Because of what I said. He thought it helped people to understand what he did, and I gave him an Italian copy of it, a DVD. And so he allowed me to film this. I didn’t know what I would ever do with it or anything.

Oh, so there was no intent to distribute this when you made it?

No! I thought, “I’m doing this because I can with my own camera on my own nickel.” I didn’t know what I would ever do with it, if anything. I didn’t know what it would be. I had never seen, obviously, an exorcism before I made the film, but after I filmed it I decided I would take it to four of the leading brain surgeons in the country, including the guy who is in charge of the brain-mapping project where they codify and identify the problem areas of the brain; and three brain surgeons, one from Israel; and some of the leading psychiatrists in the country. One was the editor of the DSM-IV, the other the DSM-V, the head of the Columbia School of Psychiatry, and the head of the New York Psychiatric Association.

Did you think they would be more dismissive of what you were asking them to consider?

They were black and white. The psychiatrists in the DSM-IV and V now recognize demonic possession. It’s called dissociative identity disorder, demonic possession, and if someone comes in and thinks they’re possessed they don’t say, “You’re not possessed. We’ll give you some medication and some therapy.” They give them therapy and medication, and an exorcist. There are very few such cases, but they do exist here, and the brain surgeons had no idea what this was, which shocked me. They said they would not give this woman an MRI. There’s no point. While everything originates in the brain, this wasn’t a problem in her brain. This wasn’t something they could operate and remove. This wasn’t a lesion in the temporal lobe, or epilepsy.

You asked one of the doctors in your documentary what his relationship with God was. So what’s yours?

I’m interested in Jesus. I’m not a Catholic, but I’m interested in Jesus, yes. I strongly believe in the teachings of Jesus as expressed in the New Testament, by the people who wrote the gospels and Paul. I’m not a Catholic. I don’t know anything, but neither does anyone else. No one knows anything about the eternal mysteries, how we got here, why we’re here, is there an afterlife. Is there a heaven and a hell? Who knows? Recently the pope was quoted as saying there’s no hell, and he didn’t walk it back, but the church did. I don’t know if there’s a hell. Neither does he!

So going into the exorcism with Father Amorth, were you skeptical or open-minded?

Both.

And how did what you saw affect you?

Ultimately, it went from fear in me to empathy, complete empathy, and how it’s changed me is I’ve had a much deeper inner sadness ever since I saw that. And I did have the impulse to let people see it and make of it what they will. I’m not saying that I believe there is a Devil. I certainly believe there is evil, and that bad things happen to good people. She is a good person, and productive, and there it is.

I was somewhat skeptical, but not of [Amorth]. There’s certain people you just believe in their veracity. You may be right. You may be wrong, but certain people you know are bullshitting you from the get-go, and others not necessarily.

And Father Amorth wasn’t bullshitting you?

I think he totally believed in what he was doing, and anyone who got to have an exorcism or even an interview with him had to see certain medical doctors that he knew and he was aware of. And if they had no answer to the problems of these people, he would see them if he could, because he was in demand around the world. So I believed in him, but when that woman walked into the room with her family, I wondered, what in the hell is she doing here? She’s an architect. She was totally together. I would say very attractive in the way of an Italian movie actress, you know. And more importantly, totally together, and I didn’t know what she was there for until the exorcism started, and she went into that state.

And that inhuman wail, that was truly the sound of her voice?

Totally.

There was no manipulation in postproduction at all?

I wouldn’t fuck around with that! That’s ridiculous!

I too was open-minded going into it, but whatever voice that is coming out of her during the exorcism — it’s too bizarre not to ask about.

It was to me, too!

My brain was just not accepting it as I watched.

Well, you’re a skeptic.

I’m not, though. I think it’s a self-defense mechanism to reject something horrifying like that.

Do you think I would put this thing on if — why do such a thing if it didn’t come across to me as something absolutely real?

So you think it wasn’t human?

It’s not her. I won’t say it’s not human. It wasn’t her.

She’s very reasonable in your conversation with her, very mild-mannered and seemed kind, but also very convinced that this was an action she needed to take.

Well, if you’d been told for years this was what you needed to do — but, no. Nothing was altered. Not picture or sound, just right out of the camera. I did take the picture to the same color timing house I use for all my films to bring it in the right spectrum of color, because I shot it with a still camera. I also shot a lot of it with an iPhone and a GoPro. They filmed me with more professional equipment when I went to do the interviews with the doctors.

What was it like in the room?

Terrifying.

But everyone else seemed so calm.

This was their ninth time.

Did you feel like you were in danger or like it could get out of control?

Possibly. It was possible, but five guys were holding her down, and they were sweating like crazy and you can see that in the film. And she could have come out of the chair but I don’t know what she would have done. At the end, when I went back to shoot what we call B-roll, I didn’t take my camera into this little church because she changed the time of the meeting six times, and I just wanted to go in and talk to her and see if it was all right to film her, because she had spoken to my Italian translator.

So you were just going to see if everything was okay, and that’s why you weren’t prepared to film in the church in Alatri?

Right. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I wanted to see how she was. My translator told me she was not in good shape on the phone. She changed the place of the meeting. So I just left my camera sitting where we parked outside the church.

And it sounded like her boyfriend, called Davide in the film, was also demonstrating signs of something like possession, too?

Yes. Different, though. Davide was about about six-foot-four, heavyset, built like a lineman, and he was holding her around the throat and the waist and she was in a folding chair in this empty church, dragging him around the floor towards me. And he would hold her back, but he was yelling, “Give us back the film! I want the film back!” And I would say, “I’m not going to give it back to you.” He would demand it, and she, in that voice, was saying, “No! I want this shown!” [adds monstrous voice] I want this shown! She sounded like that. I don’t know what that was.

And you said it was freezing in there?

It was freezing inside, and outside it was about 110.

So what do you think the role of iconography plays in the physical demonstrations of people who believe they are possessed?

She had never seen the film.

Do you think there is a feedback loop, though? People seeing things like The Exorcist, and mimicking that behavior — even subconsciously — when they believe they have been overtaken by the Devil?

Well, let’s put it this way, Bill Blatty invented exorcism and possession for the modern world. There was nothing of any consequence written about it, certainly not on a mass level. There were certain textbooks that referred to it. Nothing of a popular nature was written about it, and this became what people think about. Not only what I saw, but for example, I showed [the exorcism footage] to a couple of psychiatrists who said, “It looks authentic, but it doesn’t have the classical symptoms.” And I said, “What are the classical symptoms?” And they each said, “Well, the head spinning, and levitation.” And I remember saying, “Doctor, we invented that. Mr. Blatty wrote that and I had to find a way to film it.” But I never heard of it. I never heard of that happening.

Reading reviews of the documentary, people did seem to be assessing the veracity of Cristina’s possession symptoms based on what an exorcism “should” look like, which is what you created with The Exorcist and has been replicated across an entire subgenre of possession horror movies. Presumably, no one critiquing The Devil and Father Amorth for something like a trade publication has seen an exorcism in person, so what is it like having your nonfiction film being kind of fact-checked against a fiction film you made almost 50 years ago?

I’m not surprised by that. At least as many people are skeptical as are believers, and that’s not my problem. I just filmed and put out what I saw. I don’t know what this is. Maybe someday there will be a different terminology for it in the medical world, in the psychiatric world. There isn’t now. I have not read anything about it, and so I don’t know. I’m not surprised that there are or will be skeptics, but unlike fictional films, they are being called upon to determine whether they believe it or not. When you watch The Exorcist, you don’t have to believe it.

So if the original intent wasn’t even to release this in the world, by the time you decided to, what were you hoping would come of it?

I wanted people to see it. It’s that simple. That’s all.

A review I read said of The Exorcist that it “made the Devil real” again for people, and at least anecdotally it was a nice little recruitment tool for the Catholic Church. Did you hope at all for The Devil and Father Amorth to make the Devil real again?

I never thought about that line you just used. I don’t know if the Devil is real. I believe, as Father Amorth said, the Devil is metaphor. The Devil is not a person. The Devil is not a shape. He believes that he has spoken with the Devil on numerous occasions, but he himself says he has never seen the Devil, but the Devil is representative of evil that we know exists. One of the guys in the documentary is an author who’s written six books about the Devil.

The room where Friedkin filmed Cristina’s ninth exorcism. The author you interviewed in the documentary, Jeffrey Burton Russell, he seemed very uneasy with you doing this. He seemed afraid for you.

He did say a very profound thing, which was, don’t mess with this stuff. He has done extraordinary research on the Devil throughout history, and that’s the nature of his six or so books, and various characterizations of the Devil. But I believe as Amorth said that the Devil is metaphor for profound evil in the world, but it also strikes me that because there is also goodness. And what I say at the end, if there are demons, there may be angels, but not physical. I don’t believe they’re flying around somewhere. I don’t know! Maybe they are! Maybe they are. I don’t know. It’s not given to us to know. I don’t know anyone that has really seen the Devil. Father Amorth claims he has had dialogues with the Devil, but the Devil is metaphor.

A number of years ago, I had a heart attack on the San Diego freeway, driving my car on the way to my office at Warner Bros. I didn’t know it was a heart attack because I had never had one, but a pain started in my left shoulder and went across to my right shoulder and it was completely debilitating and profoundly painful, like an elephant standing hard on your chest. And I remember I got the window of my car open. I couldn’t breathe. I got out of my car. I couldn’t move. I get back in and it was about five minutes to Warner Bros., but it took me close to a half hour, and I didn’t think I could make it.

There was an infirmary right at the entrance to the Barham Avenue lot, and I remember staggering out of my car into the infirmary, and I fell on the floor, and there were these paramedics around me immediately, trying to revive me. I remember losing all of my senses individually, and I remember reading about that, and that’s what happened. The last sense I lost was the sense of hearing. My eyes were closed and I couldn’t open them. I heard one of the paramedics who was pumping my chest say, “I’m not getting anything.” And I thought — I remember by thought process. It was “I’m dying. I’m absolutely dying. And I have done nothing important with my life.” And then it was gone.

And I swear to God I heard a voice. It was a woman’s voice, very soft woman’s voice, and it was saying, “It’s all right. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.” And I was moving as though on an escalator to a very distant light. And then I woke up in the emergency room at St. Joseph’s hospital, and I thought I was in hell, because the pain was still there. I’m looking directly into these hospital overhead lights, and there were four or five doctors around me who had revived me. I had an oxygen mask, which I continually was ripping off, and I was dead for several seconds. Dead. Medically dead. And I remember the voice and the movement, and that’s similar to other accounts.

In the documentary, you talk about high occurrence of exorcisms or people seeking exorcism in Italy. Obviously, it’s a very Catholic country, and I think whether a person believes in hell or the Devil or not, your documentary is a very interesting way of considering the power of a shared belief system capable of creating its own reality, with subjective facts. For many devout Catholics, possession isn’t up for debate. It’s a fact of life. And we see the phenomenon of people subscribing to their own “facts” all the time. Possession is just a sort of magical version of what we see people willing to believe in echo chambers of their own beliefs.

I don’t know what you mean by subjective facts. Facts are facts. Or not!

I agree with you. And I think that in the age of fake news and media manipulation, someone watching The Devil and Father Amorth who is inclined to dismiss possession as too silly to believe, is ignoring how many people are galvanized by information that is literally advertised as “alternative facts.” A country filled with people under the sway of Catholicism believing at a high per capita rate that being taken over by a demon is a real threat does not seem crazy to me, given what I see people on the internet are willing to believe every day.

This has nothing to do with politics of any kind — left, right, center, none. This is an event that is religious-based, and has to do with the mystery of faith that people have or do not have. Now how does that drive me to a kind of moral right to show this film? I don’t know that there is one. That’s not something that as a filmmaker you have to consider. A filmmaker is drawn to a story. I wouldn’t fake something like that. I wouldn’t make that up. That is what I saw, and I thought, “Why should I just be the guy who saw this? I should share this.” Maybe it will bring some people closer to their faith, and maybe it will further remove the skeptics, but that isn’t my problem. It just really isn’t. It’s not going to make the plight of this woman any easier either way, or harder. She has that to contend with. She still seeks exorcism and has not been successful. But he was in a class by himself, Amorth. There are a lot of guys who’ve written books, articles, and given interviews saying that they’ve done exorcisms. I just don’t believe them. I don’t believe their accounts as I’ve read them.

Did your instincts as a narrative filmmaking feel like they helped you pull this together, or did you find yourself having to ignore certain instincts for the purposes of a nonfiction film?

No. I just shot what I saw. And I was led by my conscience to seek out doctors that I fully expected would debunk it and say exactly what the hell this was.

You thought you’d come out of this with answers?

Well, that this is all bullshit. Or, “Here’s what this is. It’s pamphlyotosis simpliani —” whatever the hell that is, but the psychiatrists shared with me a lot of literature on the subject that went into the conclusions of the DSM-IV and V.

And how did you consider the possibility of exploitation? You obviously had permission from everyone involved. Mom gave up her seat for you during the exorcism. You seemed to adhere to all the conditions put in place, but what do you think your responsibility was to the subject? Skeptics could say, “This is a mentally ill woman and this isn’t right.”

That’s their problem! Don’t ask me to either acknowledge or apologize for them.

But even believers could say, “This is a woman in her darkest spiritual hour and you are taking advantage of her vulnerability.”

Give me the names of the people who have said that.

I just want to know what you saw as your duty to Cristina.

It was much more difficult to decide to make The Exorcist film with what Blatty had written, which contains blasphemy. A 12-year-old child saying and doing blasphemous things, that had never been touched. The idea of the crucifix and the vagina in the same frame of film, there is clearly a moral consideration, and when you’re telling a story that you believe in and really want to tell, you don’t stop. You’re not stopped by moral considerations. She knew I was filming. I don’t want this to hurt her. All her family and friends know this is going on. She is in a very small religious town 100 miles or so south of Rome. It’s an Etruscan town, pre-Roman, with pictures of the saints outside all the houses, oil paintings of the saints under glass. So people are well aware in her community and her family is totally aware of what’s happening with her. If she was a public person living in the heart of Los Angeles or Manhattan I might have had a different consideration, but I don’t know.