McMillian looked at the elements with me, then went to work. We had less than a month, but because of Warner’s concern over the possible negative impact of the film, we only had to make twenty-six prints, not several thousand, which potential hit films have been generating for the last few decades. Bud Smith and his assistant editors, Jere Huggins, Ned Humphreys, and Ross Levy, joined me in approving or discarding reels. The reels we rejected were destroyed so they would not “turn up” in subsequent prints. The Exorcist was printed on twelve reels. We looked at several hundred reels to get the twenty-six prints I ultimately approved. It was as though McMillian “painted” each frame. Without his skill and dedication, the film would not have been as effective as it proved to be. There is no award for color timing, but the best timers, like McMillian, are artists whose contributions to film are immeasurable and unsung.
We delivered the prints on time, and I went with two technicians from Warner Bros. to the twenty-six theaters around the country where the film was booked for six months. We set the sound level and screen brightness for each theater. Most theater owners lower the light level on projectors to save energy costs. This results in a darker picture than was intended. Often audiences aren’t aware of it, but when they complain they’re generally ignored. I had the names and phone numbers of each projectionist at the twenty-six theaters and either because I was a perfectionist or a pain in the ass, I called them all, each day, for the six-month run. I would ask where the light and sound levels were set. Often, one would tell me the manager had instructed him to cut the light level, or he’d say, “I had to turn the sound down ’cause we’re getting complaints.” I would throw a fit over the phone and tell them that unless the levels were returned to where I had originally set them, I was going to pull the picture out of their theater. I had no authority to do this, but the theater owners and managers believed I did.
The number of theaters had to be increased immediately because of demand. In some theaters, people were literally breaking the doors down to get in. But the studio could only expand within theater chains that had originally booked six-month exclusives. We could have opened on five thousand screens and done sold-out business. Eventually it played in many more than that, and grossed more than $600 million over the years. Its financial success is ongoing as home video continues. The money it did gross was mostly achieved on a ticket average of three dollars. With the twenty-six-screen release, I had control of the film as though it was a play. The projectionists would tell me when a print or a reel was wearing out, and I’d get the studio to send them a new one.
With The Exorcist, I was still learning on the job; from production to postproduction, it was a voyage of discovery. I never lost faith that we would overcome the problems and find the answers. It would be years before I would again experience that kind of self-confidence on a film set, a belief in a kind of Divine intervention.
In the weeks leading up to the opening, Dick Lederer, head of Warner’s marketing, showed me the print ad he had prepared. It was a line drawing of a little girl’s bloody hand clutching a bloodstained crucifix above the phrase “For God’s Sake, Help Her.” I thought his ad would hurt the film, and I told him so: “You can’t use God’s name in an ad, and why would you underline the film’s most controversial scene?”
“What do you suggest?” Lederer responded coolly.
“The ad should understate the film’s content,” I said, and suggested they use the silhouette of von Sydow standing in front of the house in Georgetown, the image inspired by Magritte. Reluctantly, the studio agreed, and that’s been the iconic image ever since.
The Exorcist opened on December 26, 1973. The prints were delivered on Christmas Day. I approved the final ones on Christmas Eve, but we had one print ready on the twenty-third, and that’s when the film had its first preview, in Los Angeles at the National Theatre in Westwood.
There were lines wrapped twice around the block. The studio publicity department had put up a gigantic three-dimensional window on the outside of one wall of the theater. It was meant to represent the window in Regan’s bedroom, and the curtains were blowing out toward the street. It was the idea of a Warner’s publicity genius named Marty Wiser, and it put audiences in the mood for the film before they saw it. The theater was filled, but there wasn’t a sound throughout the screening. When it was over, the audience sat silently without moving or speaking, then slowly filed out.
As I headed for the parking lot, with Ellen Burstyn, Jason Miller, Blatty, and other friends, Mercedes McCambridge suddenly confronted me. She was crying, shouting, and pulling at my arm: “You screwed me! How could you do that? Why would you do that to me?” she yelled. I took her aside: “What’s wrong? What’s the matter?” I thought she was upset by the film’s content and thought it blasphemous, as others have over the years. “You promised me a credit!” she screamed. “Where’s my screen credit? You lied to me!” I was stunned. I reminded her that when she agreed to do the demon voice, one of her conditions was that she not receive credit—that the audience not be reminded that the voice was dubbed. At the time I thought she just wanted cover in case the film was condemned by the Church. I felt bad for her but furious at the same time. I walked away, her voice trailing after me: “I’m gonna get you for this, Bill Friedkin!”
The next week, she gave a story to the trade press, Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, saying that I denied her screen credit in order to protect Linda Blair’s performance. Her lawyer threatened to sue. At the same time, Eileen Dietz, Linda’s stunt double, who appears in twenty-eight seconds of the film, claimed that she shared the performance of the demon with Linda. These were out-and-out lies by two women who saw an opportunity to claim part of the limelight. Dietz did receive screen credit, and Warner’s decided to redo the last reel and insert McCambridge’s name. As there were only twenty-six prints at the time, the cost of redoing a reel wasn’t much. She deserved this credit, so I had no problem with it, but when the CBS Network bought the film for television several years later and asked for a few changes to the demon’s lines, I dubbed them myself in my best Pazuzu growl. One of the lines I changed for television was, “Your mother sucks cocks in hell” to “Your mother still rots in hell.”
The week the film opened, a porno theater in Long Beach obtained a bootleg 16 mm. print. They too had lines around the block. There was a hand-printed sign outside the theater: “Technical difficulties, no refunds.” In fact, the sound was out of sync with picture because the print had not only been illegally but amateurishly copied. This didn’t seem to bother the patrons. I heard about it from a friend, and I immediately reported it to Frank Wells.
“We’ll get our lawyers on it right away,” Frank said. Ten days went by, and the bootleg print was still playing. What angered me was not the loss of revenue; the film was earning a fortune. It was that people were not seeing it as I intended. I asked Wells what was happening with the lawyers, and he said they were preparing a complaint.
Dave Salven and I had a friend who was on the wrong side of the law. He asked if I wanted him to “handle the situation,” and I told him to go ahead. That Saturday night, Dave waited in the car with the engine running while our friend went into the Long Beach theater, past the crowds, and up to the projection booth. He told the projectionist to take the film off the projector, put it in its container, and hand it over.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” the projectionist responded. My “friend” opened his jacket to reveal a .45 automatic, whereupon the projectionist complied, leaving an angry and confused audience.
The following Monday, Wells called me, panicked, asking if I had anything to do with the theft. “What are you talking about, Frank?” I responded innocently. “Somebody stole the print from Long Beach, and the theater reported it to the police! The LAPD is in my office now!” I couldn’t believe it. “They want to talk to you,” he said, his voice a hushed whisper.
He brought two LAPD guys, a cop from Long Beach, and a nervous, balding,
heavyset guy who turned out to be the Long Beach projectionist to my office. The cops sat on my couch, I was behind a desk, Frank and the projectionist stood.
Under the couch was the purloined print.
I told them the theft was news to me. “But why,” I asked, “are you investigating this, when the theater was showing a stolen print?”
“Because it was taken at gunpoint,” the Long Beach cop explained.
“It wasn’t their property,” I said, hoping they wouldn’t ask to search my office.
“Pulling a gun is worse,” one of the LAPD said. “It’s called armed robbery and could get whoever did it eight years.”
The projectionist couldn’t ID me, so the case went away. But other reports came to me about bootleg videos turning up at bars around L.A. I went to my “friend” each time, but soon, bootlegs were turning up around the country and the world.
As a result of the actions of McCambridge and Dietz, Linda’s performance was put into question, which I believe cost her an Academy Award. The Hollywood old-timers were looking for ways to deny The Exorcist too much acclaim. This is not sour grapes. My friend Jack Haley Jr. produced the Oscar show that year. He told me that it was being said among influential members of the community that “if The Exorcist wins the Best Picture Award, it will change the industry for the worse, forever.” The person leading the backlash was the veteran director George Cukor. It so happened Cukor was hosting a luncheon at his home in Beverly Hills that weekend for the nominated directors. When I arrived, Cukor greeted me at the door. “Bill,” he said enthusiastically, “welcome. It’s good to meet you.” And putting an arm around me, he congratulated me on the nominations. Before leading me into the living room, where the others were gathered, he took me aside. “You know,” he whispered, “these rumors about me knocking your film are bullshit. I think it’s a great picture.” I thanked him and told him I hadn’t heard the rumors. It was curious that he denied it so vehemently without my having mentioned it.
Though nominated for ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture, The Exorcist won only for Sound and Adapted Screenplay. Though I had expected nothing for The French Connection, I thought The Exorcist would be widely honored. Entitlement and hubris had overtaken me.
I had come from a one-room apartment in Chicago to the finest hotel suites in the world, first-class air travel, the finest tables in the best restaurants, beautiful women who sought my company, top of the line all the way. I was able to buy a sixteen-room apartment on Park Avenue and Fifty-Fifth Street that took up an entire floor of a twelve-story Belle Epoque building, and a house on an acre in Bel Air, California. I vaulted to the top of the Hollywood A-list, and thought I’d stay there forever. My successes were born of my failures, and like Monroe Stahr, Scott Fitzgerald’s character in The Last Tycoon, I thought I had the formula. When people tell you how great you are, you start to believe it.
Warner Bros. asked me to go to various cities in Europe to do promotion. I was happy to make the trip and bask in the reflected glory of the film. I stayed at the elegant Plaza Athénée in Paris and was treated like royalty. There were lengthy articles in French newspapers and magazines about the Exorcist phenomenon, and the critics were ecstatic in their love or hatred of the film. I met Chabrol, Truffaut, and a man whose films I revered, H.-G. Clouzot, director of Diabolique and The Wages of Fear. One of France’s leading actors and a favorite of mine, Lino Ventura, showed up at a dinner for me in the private room above Fouquet’s, where Warner’s PR rep Joe Hyams took me to a window overlooking the Champs-Elysées. He pointed to a large movie marquee that read “L’Exorciste, Regie de William Friedkin” in red, white, and blue neon letters visible all along the Champs, with lines around the block on both sides.
I felt a sense of achievement beyond anything I had ever experienced. To me, the French filmmakers and the French public were the most knowledgeable and enthusiastic audiences in world cinema. To be accepted by them was what I’d hoped for but never expected. What Billy Wilder told me at the time applied to European cineastes: “You’re only as good as your best picture.” In America, it’s “You’re only as good as your last picture.”
Hamburg, Germany. The local Warner’s rep asked if I would agree to a late-night interview with a journalist from Axel Springer’s Bild-Zeitung, one of Europe’s largest-circulation newspapers. I wasn’t arriving until late in the evening, but the Bild-Zeitung was prepared to send a journalist and a photographer to my hotel suite and to hold the next day’s front page for an exclusive interview with me! I begged off. I was exhausted, but the Warner’s rep said this was not only a major publicity coup, but Springer also promised to give us the cover of his magazine Der Spiegel, the Time magazine of Europe. I reluctantly consented but said I would give the interviewer only half an hour, as I had a full day of interviews the next day and the following two weeks in other cities around Europe.
The hotel manager escorted me to a spacious, elegant suite. The young journalist from the Bild was waiting with a photographer. I was dreading the interview. It was late, and I’d long since realized that most journalists’ questions are the same, no matter the country. I folded into an easy chair, prepared to be bored, while the reporter sat opposite me. The photographer buzzed around, snapping pictures. To my surprise, the questions were intelligent and insightful. I became fully engaged. It was more than an interview; it was a philosophical conversation about good and evil.
The next morning, the piece appeared on the front page as promised, under a large photograph of—the hotel bedroom. The article was in German, so I had to ask the Warner’s rep to translate it. He arrived at the suite apologetic and chagrined. The caption read, “This is the bed where the devil sleeps!” The gist of the article, which contained little of what I said, was that I had reintroduced the devil to America, and was now attempting to export evil to Germany and the rest of Europe and the world.
I called Frank Wells and my lawyer and told them I wanted to sue the newspaper. They were sympathetic and promised to follow through, but the head of Warner Bros. in Germany explained that a libel suit had no chance of getting to court; the German press had an absolute right to print whatever it wanted without consequence. My anger persisted for weeks, and I canceled the rest of my interviews in Germany. It seemed ironic that a German newspaper would accuse me of bringing evil to Germany.
Rome, Italy. The film opened at the Teatro Metropolitan on the Via del Corso adjacent to the Piazza del Popolo, a large square usually filled with hundreds of revelers at outdoor restaurants and coffeehouses. But on the film’s first night, a thunderstorm broke out and a bolt of lightning struck an eight-foot-wide, twelve-foot-high metallic cross on top of a nearby sixteenth-century church. The cross fell to the street in the piazza, smashing into the pavement. Only bad weather kept the area clear of the large crowds normally gathered there. Miraculously, no one was hurt or killed.
For almost thirty years, Blatty and I continued to disagree over my final cut. Over the years, the arguments subsided, and we came to accept the film’s continuing hold on new generations. It was our stated goal simply to tell a story about the “mystery of faith,” until the film began to win international polls as the “scariest film” or “the best horror film” ever made. We could no longer deny public perception. When Blatty would prod me about having undercut the film’s moral center, I would call him a “sore winner” who continued to profit from my “amoral version” of his masterpiece.
Postscript. In the fall of 2003, American soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division occupied Mosul, shortly after the invasion of Iraq. Some of the soldiers were watching DVDs of The Exorcist and realized that the area they were occupying was Hatra, where I had filmed the Iraq sequence.
I got a fax from Major General David Petraeus, commander of the 101st, who told me his troops had given a grant of five thousand dollars to students at Mosul University in order to launch what became known as the Exorcist Experience. The locals were totally supportive of the project, wh
ich involved revamping the site, building a hotel, and starting a tour company that charged the equivalent of $2 for the tour and $5 with a kebab lunch. With the help of U.S. soldiers, the mayor of Mosul, and other civic leaders, they also built a car park and a police station nearby. Petraeus and I exchanged faxes, and he asked me to come to Mosul, bring some DVDs, meet the troops and the locals, and lend support to their effort. Soon after, I heard from Colonel Ben Hodges, commander of the First Brigade of the 101st Airborne, and Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Felix, who was responsible for U.S. forces in Hatra. We discussed several dates for my visit, and I looked forward to it with enthusiasm.
A month went by with no word. On February 27, I got a message from Major Tom Osteen, operations officer of the Fifth Battalion, Twentieth Infantry, in Iraq, apologizing for not getting back to me sooner: “At the moment, the security situation in Northern Iraq is very volatile, as you may know from the news, particularly in Mosul. A visit by Mr. Friedkin . . . would be a tremendous boost to the area of Al Hadr (Hatra) and Mosul; however, we must ensure that we can do this without endangering the life of a national treasure.” He was referring to me. “I will keep you updated on the progress,” he assured me.
Sadly, there was no further correspondence. Hatra had survived invaders since the third century. Today, it’s under the control of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
PART III
THE TUNNEL AT THE END OF THE LIGHT
9
HUBRIS
One of the most decent and talented men I know is Francis Coppola. Our interests and ambitions were similar, and while I was struggling through The French Connection, Francis was having similar problems with The Godfather.
After the opening of The Godfather, when the film earned $50 million at the box office, Charlie Bluhdorn, the owner of Paramount Pictures, gave Francis a blue stretch limousine as a gift. Coppola and Peter Bogdanovich, who had just won major accolades for The Last Picture Show, Ellen Burstyn, and I went for a ride in the limo to celebrate our recent successes. We had the driver go along Hollywood Boulevard, and we stood up, the four of us, with the roof of the car opened, and shouted at curious pedestrians. “Academy Award, Best Picture, The French Connection!” I yelled. “Every major critical award, The Last Picture Show!” screamed Bogdanovich. “Fifty million dollars, The Godfather,” Coppola reluctantly chimed in. Ellen laughed and we enjoyed the ride and the warm California breeze in our faces. We were pranksters who made it big, making fools of ourselves.
The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir Page 29