WASHINGTON 鈥� He won Best Picture and Best Director for “The French Connection” (1971) then proceeded to make arguably the scariest movie of all time with “The Exorcist” (1973).
This Friday, Oct. 30, legendary director William Friedkin will join writer聽William Peter Blatty atop the infamous in Georgetown to commemorate the famous film locale with a plaque.
“I thought it was a wonderful idea,” Friedkin tells 海角精品黑料. “It’s been called The Exorcist Steps for many years anyway, but this is going to be official. I was very happy to participate in it.”
罢丑别听 event is free to the public from 4-6 p.m. at 3607 M St. NW, where聽fans are invited to bring memorabilia for the filmmakers to sign (limit one item per person).
The official plaque will happen at 6 p.m. with Friedkin, Blatty, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans and Georgetown University President Jack DeGioia.
It will be followed by a聽private screening of “The Exorcist” with Friedkin (invitation only).
Friedkin says he used to have mixed聽feelings toward聽the Exorcist Steps聽and Exorcist House.
“I had misgivings for many years,” Friedkin says. “The woman who owned (the house) at the time we made the film was a woman named Florence Mahoney, a wonderful woman … While we were filming there, she was hosting George McGovern, who was running for president at the time. … She had no idea whatsoever what those steps would become and it kind of made her life very difficult. … People took stuff out of the fence and they graffiti’d the walls for years, and I guess a lot of people still camp out there on the steps. Mrs. Mahoney is gone, but I imagine it’s caused a lot of unexpected problems.”
Now, he loves the idea of The Steps as a D.C. landmark and聽understands why fans聽still flock there decades later to see the exact spot Father Karras (Jason Miller) plunged himself in a sacrificial act.
“I’m very pleased about it. Mr. Blatty wrote that house and those steps into his novel without knowing who owned the house,” Friedkin says. “At聽the time he wrote the novel, there wasn’t going to be a film made. He could have never anticipated that area would become so iconic.”
Blatty, the聽son of a deeply Catholic mother,聽graduated from聽Jesuit school at聽Brooklyn Preparatory in 1946, before studying graduate-level聽literature聽at George Washington University and Georgetown University. There, he learned of a聽1949 case聽involving a聽14-year-old聽boy from聽Mount Rainier, Maryland, who underwent an聽exorcism聽in St. Louis, Missouri. Blatty now lives in Bethesda, Maryland.
“Your listeners can Google it, just type in ‘1949 Exorcism,’ and you’ll get a two-and-a-half page in The Washington Post by a reporter named Bill Brinkley, who laid out all of the details of the case without mentioning the name of the person, of course. But it was the lengthy article that inspired his desire to write about that case. Of course, The Church kept it, then and now, very close, because they didn’t want to create a lot of publicity around it or reveal the name of the victim, who was exorcised and is still around and has no memory of what happened. … (Blatty)聽actually spoke to the original exorcist … Father William聽Bowdern, and they corresponded for a long, long time.”
Thus, he penned the 1971 best-selling novel “The Exorcist,” which he then adapted into an Oscar-winning screenplay.聽It follows Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair), the 12-year-old daughter of a Hollywood actress (Ellen Burstyn), who visits聽Georgetown to shoot聽her next project. After a series of freaky occurrences,聽the possessed Regan is treated by two priests, the spiritually conflicted聽Father Karras (Jason Miller) and the world-traveling Father Merrin (Max von Sydow), to drive out the demon.
The film was an instant hit,聽fueled by of moviegoers fainting and聽vomiting in the aisles.聽“The Exorcist鈥� was not only the highest grossing movie of 1973, it remains聽the No. 9聽grossing film of (adjusted for inflation). It also聽won two Academy Awards聽(Screenplay and Sound) among聽ten total nominations, including Best Picture and Director.聽How many horror films can claim that?
The teenage Blair won聽a Golden Globe for her performance 鈥� with a demonic voice provided by Mercedes McCambridge 鈥� while three actors earned Oscar nods: Blair, Burstyn and Miller. In fact, Blair and Miller were rookies compared to Burstyn, who聽won Best Actress the following year for Martin Scorsese’s “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” (1974), and Von Sydow,聽a legend of Ingmar Bergman’s Swedish masterpieces from “The Seventh Seal” to “Wild Strawberries” (1957).
“Jason Miller and Linda Blair were gifts of the Movie God,” Friedkin says. “Neither of them had been in a film before. Jason had done some acting in road companies, never leads. He was basically a playwright at the time, and I met him very offhandedly. Linda came in for a meeting in my office in New York … We had seen thousands of girls her age … and I began to think I could never cast that role. Then one day, Linda’s mother brought her in, she walked through the door, and I knew instantly.”
While Blair turned Regan MacNeil into one of the聽American Film Institute鈥檚 ,聽the physical Georgetown locations聽have become聽legendary characters in their own right.
The first time we see both the house and the steps is an extreme wideshot of the Georgetown skyline, filmed聽with a long zoom lens from a hill in Rosslyn on the Virginia side of the Potomac River.
“We shot it early in the morning, so the steps are very hard to see,” Friedkin says. “It’s not until later in the film that I feature them, but at that point, if you know where the steps are and you look for them, you can probably pick them out. It’s about 10 minutes in.”
Friedkin says聽he would have likely shot the Georgetown introduction differently today.
“It was the best zoom Panavision made at the time, but it was obviously underexposed, done at a time of very low light levels. It had about a 20:1 zoom ratio,” Friedkin explains. “If I was doing it today, I’d use a drone! There’s a lot of very effective shots, very stabilized as well, from drones now. Tiny, little handheld drones that contain these GoPro cameras, and that’s what I would have done today. But at the time, (it was) the only place you could get back safely聽far聽enough from the steps to give an overall view on the left side of the frame of the university, and on the right side the steps and the house.”
Of all the iconic horror moments that occur in that house 鈥斅爐he shaking bed, the crucifix masturbation,聽the 360-degree spinning head, the upside-down backwards stair descent, the聽levitation聽鈥� Friedkin lists two lesser known, more intimate scenes as his personal favorites.
“I have two favorite scenes. One is between Lee J. Cobb, who plays Det. Kindermen, when he first comes to the house to interview Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) about the death of the director of her film who had fallen down the stairs somehow with his neck turned completely around. It’s a scene that shows the two of them both talking聽around the subject, tiptoeing around it very cautiously, each of them knowing that the only person in the room with the man who fell down those stairs was her 12-year-old daughter. That to me, to this day, is the most beautifully played scene I’ve ever directed.”
He says the scene was simply shot, but powerfully conceived and acted.
“I just did one take on each side, one on her side looking at him, and a reverse of that,” he says. “It was one take each, two great actors and they just nailed it, and I cross-cut between those two zoom shots. That’s a scene I’m really proud of. It’s more horrific than some of the more graphic stuff.”
So what’s his聽other favorite scene?
“The other scene is between Ellen (Burstyn) and Linda Blair just before Chris MacNeil puts her daughter Regan to bed and they have a conversation. We had rehearsed that scene so often that I allowed the two actresses to just improvise it. I had聽rehearsed them so much that I told them, now just put it in your own words and just be a mother and daughter, and they played it so beautifully. Those are the two scenes I’m most proud of, of anything I’ve ever done!”
It says a lot about Friedkin’s sensibilities that these two intimate scenes are his favorites.
“Blatty and I set out to do a suspense film. We never used the word, or talked about, a horror film. Obviously, the book was disturbing. … But we set out to make a suspense film about the mystery of faith,” Friedkin says. “None of the great horror films were my models. The scariest film I had ever seen at the time was ‘Psycho,’ which is at least as much a suspense film as it is a horror film. And then much later, the scariest film I’ve ever seen was ‘Alien,’ which is undoubtedly a horror film and a great one. … ‘Les Diabolique’ is probably the second or third favorite suspense film I’ve ever seen.”
In fact, it was Hitchcock who helped launch Friedkin’s career, landing a gig directing the final episode of “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour” (1962-65), the follow-up to “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” (1955-62).
“It had been on for 10 years and I did the last one. I was very young and had never been on a soundstage, but I had made a documentary that impressed the producers. … One day, (Hitchcock) came on the set! … Hitchcock was brought over to meet me, and of course he was a legend then, and he walked over to me with his entourage, all in black suits like him, and he stuck out his hand in a manner that appeared as though he wanted me to kiss it. … And I took his hand and I said, ‘What a great pleasure to meet you,’ and he said, ‘Mr. Friedkin, usually our directors wear ties.'”
Friedkin was wearing a T-shirt at the time,聽but he聽sported聽a tuxedo the next time he saw Hitch.
“Five years later, I had won the Directors Guild Award for ‘French Connection.’ At the dinner, I noticed at a table right below where I was standing to accept the award, there was Hitchcock with his family. I had one of these rented tuxedos and a clip-on bow tie, and I had this enormous Directors Guild Award. Instead of going offstage to do interviews with the press, I walk down the center steps to Hitchcock’s table and I snap my bow tie at him, and I say, ‘How do you like my tie now, Hitch?'”
The DGA Award was just the start of the “French Connection” accolades. 罢丑别听crime聽drama was nominated for eight Oscars, winning five: Best Picture (Philip D’Antoni), Director (Friedkin), Actor (Gene Hackman), Editing (Gerald Greenberg) and Adapted Screenplay (Ernest Tidyman).
The film is best known for its legendary chase scene, where Hackman’s obsessed cop Popeye Doyle drives beneath an elevated train, chasing the villain who’s on the speeding train above.
“I didn’t storyboard it. …聽We filmed one shot at a time. It’s not unlike knitting. …聽It’s one stitch at a time. Knit one, purl two. That’s how a chase scene is filmed. … There were times we went 90 miles an hour through big city traffic without any clearances to do it. … What I think makes that scene effective is it’s more about the driver than it is about the car. … I don’t think there’s enough of that in chase scenes today. A lot of filmmakers who do them today think it’s about how fast you can run the cars. … One thing about the woman with the baby carriage; that was the easiest and least dangerous sequence to shoot. It was a zoom into the woman’s face. She was never in proximity to the car.”
While the chase sequence shows the power of the edit, the聽rest of the film boasts聽gritty handheld camera moves. The camera聽weaves in and out of subway cars via聽handheld camera operators under the watchful eye of Oscar-nominated聽cinematographer聽Owen Roizman. This was prior to the invention of the Steadicam, mind you, so these camera moves were achieved riding in wheelchairs.
“I had a great cameraman, his name was Ricky Bravo, who actually photographed the Cuban Revolution at Castro’s side and later he defected. But he was a great handheld camera operator, so we never laid down dolly tracks. … He could keep the camera smooth while being pushed in a wheelchair. … He also photographed ‘The Exorcist,’ where we did use a lot of dolly tracks because it required a different style, smoother than ‘The French Connection,’ which I shot like a documentary.”
罢丑颈蝉听驳谤颈迟迟测, cinema verite聽approach is reminiscent of the Neorealist style pioneered in Italy, where Friedkin just recently directed聽“Aida” for the Teatro Regio in Turin.聽While there, he spoke at the International Rome Film Festival. He聽returns聽next month to direct “Rigoletto” for the Florence Opera.
But first comes聽the once-in-a-lifetime “Exorcist” event Friday here in聽Georgetown.
“I’m very pleased and proud of it, which is why, God willing, I will attend the dedication of the Exorcist Steps on Oct. 30 in Georgetown.聽I’m very honored that the city of Georgetown has undertaken to do this. It’s a great honor,” Friedkin says. “Here’s the test: those films that stand the test of time, that you can still watch after 75 or 50 years or more聽…聽a film that will live on past its end date.”
Something tells us “The Exorcist” will make heads spin forever.
Listen to the full interview with William Friedkin below:
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鈥� William Friedkin (@WilliamFriedkin)
