The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir

by William Friedkin

  Malley estimated it would take at least six weeks, with a lot of overtime, to rebuild the set and furnish it again. The extension to the exterior of the Georgetown house hadn’t been built yet, so we would have to shoot other locations in New York: the two scenes in a physician’s office; the interior of the Jesuit residence in Georgetown, which we were able to relocate to Fordham University, a Jesuit college in the Bronx; and the arteriogram and pneumoencephalogram that were to be performed on Regan, to be filmed at NYU Medical Center with a real neurosurgeon and his assistant. In total, it was little more than a week’s work. This meant shutting down production for at least a month, with everyone on payroll! The Warner executives were supportive but, like me, completely mystified. Much has been written about “the Exorcist curse,” and if I believed it at the time, I could not have continued. I had to keep up my spirits and everyone else’s; fear was now circulating among the cast and crew. As we prepared the scene between Karras and Dyer, in the Jesuit residence at Fordham, another strange and disturbing event occurred. On a cold morning in November, Jason Miller’s wife, Linda, took their young son Jordan to play on Rockaway Beach. A young man about half a mile away was practicing wheelies on his motorbike when the unthinkable happened. The bike started tearing along at high speed toward little Jordan. It hit him straight on. Jordan was taken to a hospital emergency room, and filming was suspended while Jason and Linda stayed with their son. Jordan was in serious condition for a week and given a fifty-fifty chance to survive. Jason came back to the Jesuit residence, where he and the priests stayed up several nights to pray for his son’s recovery. Jason decided he wanted to go ahead and film the scene in which Karras and Dyer get drunk and bemoan the death of Karras’s mother and his guilt over his neglect of her. Jason’s genuine grief pervades the scene; his emotions were real. Thankfully, Jordan recovered.

  After Dyer puts Karras to bed, there’s a dream sequence over which is heard Karras’s labored breathing as he sleeps. The sequence has its roots in Blatty’s novel. Here’s how the passage reads: “He had dreamed of his mother. . . . He had seen her emerging from a subway kiosk across the street. He waved. She didn’t see him. She wandered the street. She was growing frightened. She returned to the subway and began to descend. Karras grew frantic, ran to the street, and began to weep as he called her name . . . as he pictured her helpless and bewildered in the maze of tunnels beneath the ground.” I shot it pretty much as Blatty wrote it, but months later in the editing room the idea occurred to me to combine Karras’s dream with images associated with Merrin in Iraq. Many of the images would be subliminal, no more than two or three frames. In Karras’s dream, his mother is crying out to him, but I inserted quick shots of the wild dogs in Iraq, the Saint Joseph medal discovered by Merrin at the archaeological dig, the clock pendulum that stops in the Iraqi curator’s office, and a quick image of the demon’s face.

  Karras’s dream intermingles with images from Merrin’s life in a kind of symbiosis. Merrin and Karras would soon collaborate in a transcendent experience. The dream sequence would encompass their past, present, and future. I’ve never been able to create a scene like this since, but I was so attuned to the story’s possibilities, I was inspired to discover what I believe was a new way of storytelling.

  Many people, including Blatty, have said that the most disturbing scene in the film is not the demonic manifestations or the supernatural but the arteriogram, the process by which brain damage is determined. A fluid injected into the carotid artery outlines the tiny arteries that surround the brain. It shows if any have been damaged or do not appear “normal.” Regan’s strange behavior was diagnosed by “Dr. Klein” as having been caused by a lesion in the temporal lobe of her brain. The arteriogram is able to determine precisely where that lesion is located. Marcel Vercoutere rigged the hypodermic injection and the blood spurt, and the procedure was done by the neurosurgeon and an X-ray technician who performed the actual procedure several times a day at NYU Medical Center. This portrayal of medical science at its most invasive was particularly shocking because the patient was an innocent young girl, whimpering as the syringe went into her skin.

  7

  EMPIRE OF LIGHT

  The image that most inspired me and the one that became iconic comes from a painting I had seen at the Museum of Modern Art: René Magritte’s Empire of Light II. Magritte made several variations of this painting over eight years, but the one that most compelled me is the one he painted in 1954 that’s in the Beaux-Arts Museum in Brussels, Belgium.

  The painting is that of a dark house on a quiet street at nightfall. The bedroom windows on the second floor are warmly lit from within; other windows are visible but shuttered, and there’s no front door. Overhead is a daylight blue sky with floating clouds. On the street in front of the house is a single lamppost, but the 1954 version shows rainy reflections of the house and lamppost. There are no figures in the painting. I began to recompose this image in my mind’s eye. I saw a powerful light shining from Regan’s bedroom window down to a silhouetted figure standing near the streetlamp. The man would be Father Merrin arriving at the Georgetown house. Magritte’s painting is an example of how he juxtaposed realistic but unrelated objects. In the film it became a real house, on a real street, an upstairs bedroom in which a young girl is possessed by a demon.

  To achieve the effect of the light from the bedroom window, we had to construct a platform behind the extension built onto Mrs. Mahoney’s house. On the platform was an arc light aimed directly at Merrin as he emerged from a taxicab. Prospect Avenue was wetted down, and we used fog machines to enhance the mood. We put our own streetlamp in front of the house. I had a taxi come down Thirty-Fifth Street, make a U-turn on Prospect, and pull up in front of the house. This meant Owen had to light two streets and produce the surreal effect from the bedroom window. We set aside a full day and night to light this one shot and photographed it the next night in one take.

  On the morning of the pre-light, Max von Sydow arrived from Sweden. Our wardrobe supervisor had his measurements, so his priest’s clothing, black overcoat, and hat had been fitted. Dick Smith had previously made a mold of Max’s face, and he and Rick Baker spent the day applying his makeup. Dick applied several layers of latex to Max’s face, and dye to whiten his hair, while Rick painted liver spots on his hands. Max was in his forties, playing a man in his seventies. He was about six-eight, lean and with perfect posture, so he had to develop a slouch and arthritic movement for his character. I’ve never worked with an actor more dedicated. His makeup took four hours a day to apply and an hour to remove, and had to be reapplied each day. In addition to Linda’s makeup, this meant that Smith and Baker would be working ten straight hours on just these two characters, and the makeup not only had to be constantly refreshed but perfectly matched from one day to the next.

  I had sent Max books by Teilhard de Chardin, and we discussed Father Merrin’s profound faith. Max was to remain with us for rehearsals and research with the Jesuit community before we returned to New York to film the exorcism. Just before we were to shoot his introduction he received a telegram. His brother died. The following morning he had to return to Stockholm for the funeral.

  In the fall of 1972, the old red-brick streets of Georgetown, the foliage in bloom, the cold gray skies, occasionally relieved by warm sunlight, were ravishing to the camera, providing a stark contrast to the events we were filming.

  During the filming I kept getting further confirmation that the story I was telling was true. Father Henle put me in contact with the aunt of the young boy who was the victim of the 1949 possession. She was unaware of the novel or the film, but I assured her we would not reveal the identity of her nephew. Because our meeting was arranged by Henle, she agreed to talk to me and accepted my word that the characters and events we were portraying were fictionalized. We’ve never claimed that The Exorcist was based on this one case, but the aunt had been witness to many of the manifestations that had occurred, and her account was terrifying an
d confirmed everything that was reported in the diaries and more.

  In the middle of production, Pope Paul VI said, “Evil is . . . a living spiritual being, perverted or perverting. A terrible reality. Mysterious and frightening. It is contrary to the teaching of the Bible and the church to refuse to recognize the existence of such a reality. . . . It is not a question of one Devil, but of many, as indicated by various passages in the gospel. . . . But the principal one is Satan. . . . We know that this dark and disturbing spirit really exists and that he still acts with treacherous cunning . . . [and] finds his way into us by way of the senses, the imagination, lust. . . . The Devil can easily penetrate and work upon the human mind.”

  Until the Pope made this statement, the idea of a personified devil had been opposed by academic theology. As Blatty has a psychiatrist say in the book and the film, “It’s something the Catholics keep in the closet.” Paul’s successor, John Paul II, also believed in literal possession, and assigned exorcists to many of the dioceses around the world.

  Our final scene of night shooting in Georgetown was the exterior of Father Karras’s jump, in which he plunges from Regan’s bedroom window down the long flight of steps. David Salven found the perfect stuntman in Chuck Waters, who was in his mid-thirties and bore a striking physical resemblance to Jason Miller. Chuck determined he needed to do the fall in several sections. First, he would dive from the false bedroom window extension, past the camera, and onto a cushion of pads and boxes about twenty-five feet below. He would then continue the fall from one landing to another, then to the last landing at the bottom of M Street, where in his final position he would be replaced by Jason, facedown in a pool of blood. Marcel and his crew concealed black rubber padding on the edge of each step. Chuck had to execute four different falls, each linked to the one preceding. We added a point of view shot by suspending a lightweight camera, an Eyemo, from a bungee cord at the top of the steps. Each of the falls was dangerous, if not life-threatening, but Chuck carefully prepared for weeks until he felt comfortable, and we filmed it in four shots, one take each.

  When Karras’s final position at the foot of the steps was established, Father Dyer (Bill O’Malley) was to appear and administer the last rites to his friend and brother in Christ. Karras, unable to speak, squeezes his hand in confession and receives absolution. By the time we got to this scene, it was three o’clock on a freezing cold morning after a long day and night, and our final day in Georgetown was scheduled for the next morning. O’Malley, not a professional actor, had problems getting to the emotion. It’s a difficult scene for an experienced actor, with spectators, a full crew, and lights everywhere adding to the unreality in which films are made. We must have done twenty takes, and I was beginning to think we wouldn’t get it, not that night. I called a halt, whispered to the crew what I was about to do, and told them to be ready to roll on a second’s notice. I then took O’Malley aside and grasped him by the shoulders. I said, “Bill, I want you to listen to me carefully. Look at me.” He was shaking from the cold and his increasing anxiety. “I don’t know if I can do this,” he said, already on the verge of the emotion.

  “Bill, you can do this,” I said with conviction, though I wasn’t sure. I held his shoulders tighter: “Do you love me?”

  “Yes.” He was trembling, not knowing where I was heading.

  “Say it!” I said firmly, pulling him to me in an embrace.

  “Yes, I love you, Billy, you know it.”

  “I love you,” I said, at which point I slapped him across the face as hard as I could and pushed him to his knees, next to the prone body of Jason Miller. I signaled Ricky Bravo to roll the camera and shouted, “Action!” O’Malley burst into tears and performed the scene. The crew was in stunned silence when I yelled “Cut,” and went to O’Malley, helping him to his feet, once again embracing him.

  “Thank you,” he said, “thank you for that. Oh God, thank you!” He has told this story fondly many times since. This is not a solution I recommend to aspiring directors, but there are times when you have to have the solution to whatever problems arise. Occasionally and rarely, the solution is as drastic as the one I’ve described, which I have used on only three occasions in a career spanning more than forty years.

  The next day we shot the finale, in which Chris and Regan are leaving the Georgetown house to be driven to the airport by the servant, Karl. Dyer comes to the house to see them off, and Chris introduces him to Regan, once again a normal twelve-year-old girl. Regan notices Dyer’s white collar and impulsively reaches up to kiss his cheek, perhaps in memory of Father Karras. Chris gives Dyer the Saint Joseph medal, first discovered in Iraq by Merrin, later worn by Karras, and torn off in his struggle with the demon. Just before the car departs, Dyer returns the medal to Chris. He walks to the top of the steps leading down to M Street and looks to the place where Karras plunged to his death. Over his shoulder we see Regan’s bedroom window, now boarded. On the sound track, months later, I took out all sound over these shots, even traffic ambience. This sequence and the one following in which Dyer and Kinderman meet in front of the house, the last scene in the film, were all intended to keep the memory of Karras alive in the minds of the survivors and the audience. It was Blatty’s sense that the film needed a “happy” ending to suggest Karras had made the ultimate sacrifice, so the child could survive.

  We returned to New York to film the exorcism sequence. I knew the film was suspended on a slim thread of the supernatural scenes being believable. And though we had gone through trial and error for months to perfect the effects, much depended on integrating them with the actors’ performances. As fine a cast as I had assembled, there was no precedent for what we were trying to accomplish, but I was determined to push myself and everyone else to the limit of our imaginations and abilities.

  Events in the country drew people’s interest to The Exorcist before it was released. People felt they weren’t safe in their homes because of the Manson murders in 1969; and the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe vs. Wade in January of 1973, that a woman was entitled to control of her own body, had been controversial. In The Exorcist, the child’s body is not simply violated; it is invaded by a demon. These events were part of the public debate while we were trying to complete the film in an old studio on the West Side of Manhattan.

  So that the actors’ breath would be visible, the bedroom set was built within a refrigerated cocoon on top of which were four large air-conditioning units. Each night, we’d turn them on until the following morning, when the temperature dropped to thirty degrees below zero. After our lights were on for an hour, the temperature would rise to levels above freezing. We’d then have to shut off the lights and build up the cold again. None of this was originally budgeted, but there was no other way to do it. From the 1930s through the ’60s, large bricks of ice were manufactured in the Glendale Ice House, in which scenes requiring cold air, snow, and visible breath were photographed. Lost Horizon, The Magnificent Ambersons, and many other films were shot there, but it had long since been closed. Our crew wore insulated nylon ski suits. The cast had to rely on long underwear. We all contracted colds and flu—all but Linda Blair, who had the least amount of protection against the cold. We were lucky to complete three or four setups a day, working more than twelve hours.

  Walls and ceilings were movable, so we could put the camera and sound equipment anywhere. Behind the bed wall were forklifts, made of steel poles the special effects crew used to lift the bed and shake it. Regan’s levitation was accomplished by strong but very thin piano wires suspended from above the false ceiling. Owen had the wires spray-painted alternately black and white, which served to further conceal them. Ceiling cracks also helped to hide the wires. Projectile vomit was accomplished with a long, thin plastic tube that Vercoutere and Dick Smith concealed in Linda’s nightdress, up through the thick makeup on her neck and jaws, then into a mouth harness, where the nozzle was turned to project out of her mouth. At the base of the tube was a large vat of “vomit” ma
de from oatmeal with thin pea soup for coloring. This mixture was pumped through the tube. For the reverse shot, where the vomit splashes onto Father Karras, we used a portable pump to shoot it at him.

  Regan’s head spinning was accomplished with a life-size dummy made and operated by Dick Smith, turning a long stick attached to the dummy’s head from below its waist. Another tube ran up into the dummy’s mouth, through which Marcel blew cigarette smoke that appeared to be cold breath.

  Bill Malley finished sculpting the twelve-foot-high statue of Pazuzu to be sent to Iraq for the opening prologue. I asked him to bring it up to the bedroom set and put it next to the bed. An inspiration came to me: having the statue appear briefly during the exorcism as Regan reaches toward it in supplication. We made the room darker, concealing the demon’s presence until on cue, Owen lit it from below, then faded it out. When I saw the shot in dailies, I thought it was over the top, but Blatty loved it and persuaded me to keep it in the finished film.

  When we screened the first dailies from the cold room, no breath was visible! Like rain, we learned, breath doesn’t photograph unless it’s backlit or sidelit. We had to redo the entire day, with Owen setting small lights on the floor around the room, focused on the actors’ breath.

  The frustration of the Warner executives grew as the problems multiplied, but the pressure I felt was only indirect. They would call Salven and scream at him, but what could they do? John Calley always came to my defense. Having been a producer, he knew how to watch and interpret dailies, and he could sense the film’s potential.

  We came to the scene where Merrin, exhausted and with a weak heart, has to summon up a final burst of strength and shout at the demon: “I cast you out, unclean spirit, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!” at which point the ceiling above him was to crack. We had six artificial ceilings made, and I thought we’d get a take quickly, given von Sydow’s consistency. On the first take, I felt he was too calm, not enough brio. We did another. Same problem. We went through six repeats and didn’t get a take. Since the scene had to be shot in sequence, I couldn’t move on to something else. We finished early without printing a single take, having run out of false ceilings. I ordered six more to be built. The construction crew worked overtime the rest of that day and night to produce them, and we returned the next morning to the same scene. To my bewilderment, Max was no better. Six more takes. No prints. No more ceilings. I saw the dailies, and they were as bad as I thought.