The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir

by William Friedkin

  The Yazidi holy site is in a lush valley called Lalish, less than an hour’s drive northeast of Mosul. Here, homes and places of worship are built of rock in a conical shape, like a witch’s hat. Embedded into each wooden doorway is a metallic serpent. Dogs, oxen, chickens, and bulls roam the grounds freely. There are no roads, only pathways. Yazidi men wear long white robes tied at the waist, and dark kaffiyeh (caps). The women wear black burqas, but mostly stay out of sight. Tarik and I were led to where the sheikh sat cross-legged on the ground outside his house. He looked like the Ayatollah Khomeini—sloe-eyed, with a scraggly white beard and a harsh demeanor. Flies were everywhere—in the air, on the people, on the stone houses; the sheikh was covered with flies on his face and body, in his eyelids, his beard, his hair. He beckoned Tarik and me to sit opposite him and offered us chai. I had to tolerate the flies, waving them off when they became unbearable. The Yazidi paid no attention to them. Try to imagine what it’s like to have a conversation in a foreign country in another language, covered by swarms of buzzing flies. I wore Arabic head and body cover, but I could see the bites appearing on my hands, and when I touched my neck, my hands were covered in blood. I wondered how the Yazidi lived with this each day of their lives. Though I had been given ample warning about the danger of being among them, I felt no fear, only discomfort and fascination.

  The sheikh was curious about my beliefs, and I disappointed him when I explained that the statue of Pazuzu and the daily “sacrifice” was for a movie! He had never seen a movie nor had any contact with Americans, but I found him to be modest and curious. He explained his beliefs, which seemed to come down to the idea that there is an all-powerful God who is forgiving, but the devil makes the rules on earth, so he’s the one who must be given respect.

  A month after my arrival in Iraq, after extensive preparation, we started filming.

  In order to link the events in Hatra with those that later occur in Georgetown, I added a sequence showing Merrin’s discovery at the dig in Nineveh of a Saint Joseph medal that was not from the Assyrian period. This medal is not in the novel. It was my intention to use it as a kind of inexplicable object, like the obelisk in Kubrick’s 2001. The medal is first unearthed in Iraq, then worn by Karras during the exorcism, and finally given to Chris at the film’s end by Father Dyer. It also turns up in Karras’s dream. Other Iraq sequences portray Merrin’s foreboding of a future encounter with the demon.

  The temperature was 130 degrees Fahrenheit by eleven each morning, so we had to start shooting before seven and stop by eleven! Then it was back to our tents until 7:00 p.m., when we could start again, film until ten, when darkness set in. In addition to the oppressive heat, severe desert winds blew sand into our camera and sound equipment, which had to be cleaned two or three times a day. Illness—dysentery and flu-like symptoms—affected each member of the crew, and we were unable to project our dailies, so I had no idea how the footage looked until I got back to New York several weeks later. Once each week, Billy Williams was able to call his contact at Technicolor in London, who told him the footage looked beautiful. On a normal shoot, you see your rushes the next day, but not in so remote a part of the world.

  Von Sydow would go into the makeup tent at three o’clock each morning, and Dick Smith and Rick Baker would work on him until it was time to start filming. He would keep the makeup on during our daily hiatus of about seven hours; then Baker and Smith would freshen him up for the evening shoot. At the end of the day, they would peel the makeup off, and torrents of sweat would pour from his face. This took an hour, so he would get three hours sleep each night, and a nap during the afternoon. We were lucky to get eight shots a day, but the Iraqi crew was hardworking and enthusiastic. One morning, Jean-Louis Ducarme, our sound recordist, was allowed into a mosque to record the sound of the morning “call to prayer” that opens the film. It was a beautifully recorded track, and the song of the muezzin proclaims the underlying theme of the film: “God is good. . . . God is great. . . .”

  After two weeks of filming, our Ba’athist hosts came to me and politely reported that we couldn’t film the next morning; we would be confined to our tents. “What’s wrong?” I asked. They said there were problems not involving us that would soon be worked out. I suspected the worst, and I was afraid we had committed some faux pas or that my extracurricular activities with Tarik had come to light. The crew became frightened and concerned. We were being held hostage. This went on for four days, with assurances from the Ba’athists that it had nothing to do with us and would soon be remedied. Our nervousness turned to panic when, on the fifth day of what was essentially a friendly captivity, we were told what happened.

  President al-Bakr was on a state visit to Poland, and his return flight had been delayed for several hours. Waiting for him and his party at Baghdad Airport was a forty-man assassination squad led by al-Bakr’s friend, the chief of secret police, Nazim Kazzar. Because of the plane’s delay, over four hours, the hit squad gave themselves up in groups, fearing they were entrapped—but Kazzar escaped and was hiding out near where we were filming in Mosul! When he was apprehended and confessed, a trial lasting one day took place in Baghdad. Twenty men were hanged by the neck in Baghdad’s main square the next day, and nineteen more the day after. They died facing the statue of Hammurabi, the lawgiver. Kazzar, mastermind of the plot, was spared; President al-Bakr was unable to order the execution of his trusted friend. (A few years later, al-Bakr was overthrown by his cousin, Saddam Hussein.) With order restored, we were allowed to continue filming, with apologies from our hosts.

  Always eager to expose me to the more exotic heart of Iraq, Tarik took me to a small apartment in one of the poorest sections of Mosul. You could hear the beating of drums from a first-floor apartment a block away. The small room was packed with about fifty men, some in robes, others in white trousers without shirts. The night was humid, the strong scent of bitter hashish was in the air. Older men pounded drums while teenage boys, shirtless, danced in circles, chanting. This was the rite of passage of the Rafa’iyyah, a dervish sect. To prove their devotion to Allah, the boys each held a long, thin blade and danced wildly, building up the courage to stab themselves through the midsection from front to rear without damaging an organ or killing themselves. I could see the boys running themselves through, with just a trickle of blood at the point of the blade’s entry and exit. Some of the older men showed me their stomachs, with scars from numerous self-inflicted stab wounds. They were taught where to stab, and there was no margin for error. I was told that many had failed and died in their attempts. Several of the boys worked themselves into a frenzy but, unable to complete the ritual, would leave the room in tears. Our camera operator, a sturdy Brit, threw up watching the ritual and had to leave. But I was mesmerized and filmed the ceremony. I hoped to integrate it into the film, but I couldn’t figure out how. Somewhere in the vaults at Warner Bros. are several thousand feet of film of the Rafa’iyyah ritual.

  The days and nights I spent in Iraq are etched in memory. The physical conditions were more difficult than any I’ve ever experienced, but the people were wonderful. I was sorry to leave, but before long the Iraq shoot was over, and I went back to New York to begin editing the film—at 666 Fifth Avenue!

  Editing is the most enjoyable aspect of filmmaking. Everything that’s shot is basically raw material for the cutting room. A film can be made or destroyed there. A performance that may have seemed unfocused in dailies can be fashioned into something memorable in the editing process.

  In late summer of 1973, I finished the almost year-long shooting schedule, but I wouldn’t have the luxury of a long editing process, “finding” the film. Warner’s had a release date of December 26, and in addition to going through hundreds of thousands of feet, over forty hours of film, I had less than six months to edit, build the sound effects, record the demon voice, record a music score, mix the sound elements, color-time the print, and approve release prints. Delaying the release would cost Warner millions in guarante
es, taxes, and revenue. They didn’t care how I accomplished it; the picture had to be in theaters on December 26.

  There was the question of the rating. The Exorcist could easily get an X from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which would have made mass marketing of the picture impossible. In the years since the code was devised, Midnight Cowboy got an X, did well at the box office, and won the Best Picture Academy Award, but it was the only movie ever to do so. Last Tango in Paris, also X-rated, was a critical and box office success, but these were exceptions. An X rating was basically the kiss of death for a major studio release, implying excessive brutality or pornography. The sooner the ratings board could see the film, the better. If they gave it an X, Warner Bros. would have forced me to make cuts to obtain a more lenient but still restrictive R—no children under eighteen admitted without a parent.

  I hired four editors—Jordan Leondopolous, Evan Lottman, Norman Gay, and my old pal from Wolper, Bud Smith, to whom I assigned the Iraq sequence—plus two assistants for each, in rooms side by side. Each editor was given different scenes, and I would go from room to room making changes for at least twelve hours a day, six days a week. Once an editor finished one scene, he’d take on another. This was an unprecedented, potentially chaotic way to edit a film. The performances were consistently good, so that what to use became a matter of choice, not necessity, as was often the case with The French Connection and some of my earlier films. The editing style of The French Connection was something I thought would serve The Exorcist as well: cutting too soon, or too late, going against an audience’s expectations of where the cut would occur.

  On the set, directing is a collaboration with the cast and crew. In the editing room, I tend to become a dictator. I have a feel for what I want, which often differs from how an editor might see the film. I’ve collaborated with editors who contributed excellent ideas, but the memory of earlier bad experiences on Good Times,The Birthday Party, and especially The Night They Raided Minsky’s made me gun-shy of entrusting the film to an editor.

  Initially, I had no idea how to achieve the voice of the demon. Linda Blair recorded everything, but her voice had to be transformed, in the same way we altered her appearance.

  Blatty describes the demon voice as “coarse and powerful,” “an oddly guttural tone,” “a deep . . . deafening voice . . . thick with menace and power.”

  How do you achieve that with the voice of a twelve-year-old girl? All I knew was that the voice had to be dubbed. But how, and by whom? Before I left for Iraq, it came to me. My old friend from Chicago, Ken Nordine—whose audio experiments and free-association recordings, which he called “word jazz,” were the hippest things in sound. He did remarkable sound tracks for radio and TV commercials. Anything that could be done to alter the human voice, he was able to accomplish. Ken’s own voice was deep, mellifluous and versatile. We hadn’t been in contact for years, but I called him, told him about the project, and sent him a script. I also sent him a sample of Linda’s voice. Ken was interested and said he’d like to try a few experiments.

  When I returned from Iraq, Ken sent some recordings. Using his own voice, he attempted a demonic sound. However distorted, it was still the voice of a man coming from a young girl’s mouth. It made me realize that a male voice, no matter how “coarse, guttural, or deafening,” could not emanate from Regan’s mouth.

  What was the alternative? I started to think about the 1940s radio dramas that had a lasting effect on my imagination: Inner Sanctum, CBS Mystery Theatre, Suspense. There were great voices in radio—Orson Welles, Jack Webb, William Conrad, Peter Lorre, and one particular woman. Mercedes McCambridge. She later became a distinguished stage and film actress who won a Best Supporting Actress award for her first film, All the King’s Men. She was also the leader of the murderous gang in Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil and Rock Hudson’s sister in Giant, which brought her another Academy Award nomination. But the thing I remembered most about her was her voice! I’d describe it as “neutral” rather than male or female. Bette Davis, Lauren Bacall, Ida Lupino, Lizabeth Scott—many of the female stars of the 1940s had deep voices—but Mercedes McCambridge! Orson Welles called her “the greatest radio actress ever.” I didn’t know if she was still alive. I asked David Salven to check.

  She was appearing in a road company of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in Dallas. I called her, and there was that distinctive voice over the phone. She heard about The Exorcist, but hadn’t read the novel. “When would you need me?” she asked. “As soon as possible,” I said, and sent her the script.

  We met in Los Angeles, and I ran a rough cut for her. She didn’t speak for a while. Then she asked, “What do you know about me?” Biographically, I knew nothing. “Why did you come to me?” I told her of the unsuccessful experiments I had conducted that led me to realize I needed a woman’s voice, and that she had one of the most distinctive I’d ever heard. “Let me tell you about myself,” she began. “I’m Catholic. I was also in AA, and I smoked for thirty years. I have two friends who are priests. If I do this, I’ll need their advice and counsel at all times. To get the sound you want, I’ll have to drink bourbon, smoke, and do other things I haven’t done to my body for years.”

  “I certainly wouldn’t want—”

  She cut me off. “You shouldn’t worry about it. Just get the performance you need, but we’ll have to trust each other, and I have no idea how long it will take. It’s not just the sound—you want me to find my inner demon. I’ll have to unleash things in myself I’ve kept hidden for years.”

  For three weeks we worked in the main dubbing stage at Warner Bros. The stage was constructed before the increase in auto and air traffic around Burbank, so you could hear extraneous noises while trying to record a “clean” track. Hal Landaker, who designed sound studios, worked with me to “tune” McCambridge’s voice with various wooden panels he placed around her, moving them so her voice had more reverberation or less.

  At her request, she sat with her hands and feet bound to a chair. She wanted the bonds tightened when it appeared that Regan was suffering or being punished. She would sip Jack Daniel’s throughout the day, while swallowing raw eggs and smoking cigarettes. This combination gave her voice a guttural, menacing tone. Sometimes she would just breathe into the mike at close range, and you could hear three or four wheezing sounds coming from her throat. We dubbed these sequences a line at a time, sometimes one word at a time. We would do as many as twenty or thirty takes of one word. McCambridge would produce noises or laughter or cries I would later mix into the track or overdub. I also slightly offset two or three of her line readings, so it sounded as if the demon spoke in several voices at once. She would record for an hour or two, then take a break and go to a couch at the back of the stage, where the priests would comfort her and sometimes read scripture with her. Often she burst into tears. We would record ten hours a day, not stopping until Mercedes said she’d had enough.

  When we finished, she took me aside. “This was tough,” she said.

  “I know, but you were wonderful,” I told her.

  “You think it’s all right?” she asked.

  “Beyond my wildest hopes.”

  “I have a favor to ask you,” she said.

  “Whatever,” I answered.

  “If the film works, as I expect it will, I don’t want people to think about who did the voice. This girl gives a marvelous performance. I don’t want screen credit. I’m not asking for it contractually, and I won’t accept it if it’s offered.”

  “Mercy, you deserve it,” I said. “I want you to have it.”

  “Please do as I ask,” she responded. “It’s better for the film if I take no credit.”

  The next problem was the music score, but I looked forward to it; my first and only choice was the great Hollywood composer of the late 1930s through the ’80s, Bernard Herrmann. Herrmann had written scores for Psycho,Vertigo,Citizen Kane,The Magnificent Ambersons,The Devil and Daniel Webster, and many more class
ic movies, for Hitchcock and others. I took the print to London to screen it for Herrmann, who left America. He had become disillusioned with Hollywood after being fired by Hitchcock for his score for Marnie. He was still writing for films, but only from self-exile in London. I thought then, and still do, that he was the best of all film composers.

  I met him at the William Morris office in London, after he screened the rough cut, and he came right to the point: “I can probably help you with this dreck, but you gotta get rid o’ that first scene.”

  I had been warned about his bluntness. “You mean the prologue in Iraq?”

  “Yeah—what do you need that for?” he asked. “What does it do for the picture?” He went on: “You probably want to keep it ’cause it was hard to shoot and cost you a bundle.”

  “No. I think it sets the mood for everything else,” I insisted.

  He waved me off. “It don’t mean shit.” He went on to say that if I wanted him to do the score, he would only work in London, recording all his music in an old church called St. Giles Cripplegate that had great acoustics and the most beautiful organ he’d ever heard. His candor provoked me to return it in kind: “You want to use a church organ in The Exorcist?”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  I was talking to the best film composer ever, and his participation would lend prestige to the film, but I was as straightforward as he was: “Why not? ’Cause I think it’s a cliché. I don’t want a church organ in The Exorcist.”

  “Look”—he was becoming impatient—“you want me to write somethin’ for this, leave the print here, and when I’m done, I’ll mail you a score.”

  “You don’t want my input, not even where I think we need music and where we don’t—?”

  “Kid, I’ve done hundreds of scores. How many films have you made?”