The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir

by William Friedkin

  When I called, she got on the phone. “Hello, Mrs. Torch,” I said. She wasn’t amused. I asked if I could speak to “Marvin.” “He doesn’t do that anymore,” she screamed at me. “This is for a movie, Mrs. T, it’s not for real.” When “Marvin” got on the phone, I explained the problem, and he came down to the Dominican Republic three days later. He arrived with two suitcases of flammable “beauty supplies” and the next morning blew the tree to smithereens, then departed with my deepest gratitude, like Willy Loman, carrying his suitcases.

  It took a week to see a day’s rushes, as we had to fly the exposed film to Los Angeles and have it processed. The prologues were beautifully shot, but the early scenes in the jungle were underexposed. After we’d screened a week’s worth of dark footage, I took Dick Bush aside and told him I thought we’d have to reshoot. His response was: “We should have done all this on a stage. We could have duplicated everything we’ve done here, and I could have balanced the light properly.” It was Adam Holender on Boys in the Band all over again. “Are you serious?” I asked him. He was. When we first met, I told him I wanted to shoot actual locations. No sets. He enthusiastically agreed, but now that he’d seen the jungle rushes, there was no argument but that he’d underexposed the film, and lost confidence. I brought in a cameraman I had worked with at Wolper, John Stephens. John was a prolific shooter mostly of commercials as well as a designer of camera mounts for helicopters, bicycles, and skis. He had a thriving commercial business, but he eagerly accepted the challenge. When he saw the rushes, he said we should have used reflectors to balance the deep shadows of the tall trees. We were shooting in natural light, and the locations looked beautiful to the eye, but the exposures and the film speed had to be carefully balanced. John took over and changed lenses and film stock, and the quality of the photography was consistently improved even as the logistics of the production were becoming insurmountable. We fell further behind schedule, until no end seemed in sight. Crew members were getting seriously sick, from food poisoning, gangrene, and malaria. Almost half the crew went into the hospital or had to be sent home.

  I was becoming detached from reality. Urgent inquiries came from executives at Paramount and Universal. When would I finish? I ignored them, and Dave Salven bore the brunt of their anger alone. The pressure became too much, and Dave cracked. His wife was threatening to leave him. Raising two young children alone, she gave him an ultimatum: Come home or face a divorce. He quit the picture. We had been close friends for ten years, and this was our third film together. He was the best line producer I’ve ever worked with, and his loyalty and persistence kept The Exorcist together. In a fugue state, I was angry and felt betrayed, and it took years for me to forgive and understand what Dave had gone through and why he had to quit. The studios sent in a new line producer, an experienced and efficient Englishman named Ian Smith. “And so we beat on, boats against the current.”

  The most important scene in the film and the most difficult I’ve ever attempted is the bridge-crossing sequence, wherein the two trucks have to separately cross an old wooden suspension bridge that appears completely unstable. The bridge was anchored by crossbeams at each end, and the ropes suspending it were frayed, the wooden planks rotted and in some places absent. The crossing takes place over a rushing river during a blinding rainstorm. John Box designed the bridge so that it was controlled by a concealed hydraulic system with metallic supports. Each truck, as it crossed, was attached invisibly to the bridge so that it would sway but not capsize. That was the theory. Built at a cost of a million dollars, the bridge took three months to complete and was totally realistic, but it was a mad enterprise and definitely life-threatening.

  We found the perfect river over which to build it, with a strong current and a depth of twelve feet. The river was more than two hundred feet wide, so that dictated the length of the bridge. Thick forest flanked it at each end.

  As the weeks unfolded, there was little rainfall, and the river was diminishing. How could this be? Local experts and army engineers assured us that the river had never gone down. But slowly, agonizingly, it was doing just that. From twelve feet, the water level dropped down to ten, then eight, then five. By the time the bridge was finished, there was a little over a foot of water; and then the river dried up entirely! We had constructed a bridge over nothing. This was becoming a cursed project. With costs escalating and so many on the crew lost to illness and burnout, the sensible thing to do was to come up with a simpler sequence. That was the advice of all the executives, but I had become like Fitzcarraldo, the man who built an opera house in the Brazilian jungle. When I saw the finished bridge, I believed that if I could film the scene as I conceived it, it would be one of the greatest in film history. My obsession was out of control, and if I hadn’t been so successful over the past few years, I would have been ordered to stop. The two studios bet on me against their better judgment, because they thought I still had the mojo; maybe I was so in tune with audience tastes that costs wouldn’t matter. No one in his right mind would have continued on this course, but no one was in his right mind. I had the confidence, the energy, and the drive of an Olympic downhill skier, and those who stayed with me—the camera crew, the grips, electric, props, John Box, Roy Walker, my assistant director, Newt Arnold, and Bud Smith—all shared my passion. So we dispatched scouts to Mexico, to the Papaloapan River outside the town of Tuxtepec, where we had been told there were rushing waters in similar terrain that had never dropped in level, “the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.” John Box went to Mexico and came back with photos that matched our Dominican location perfectly. We dismantled the bridge and left the Dominican Republic with only two scenes left to shoot. We had to shut down while holding on to our four principal actors and key crew.

  We flew to Vera Cruz, a shadowy seaport on Mexico’s Gulf Coast, which would be our base for three days, while John organized the precise location to rebuild the bridge. I discovered a small hotel in Plaza de las Armas, the main square. The tree-lined square was filled with mariachi bands and old men playing dominoes, smoking cigars, and drinking locally grown coffee. We filmed a prologue for Paco Rabal’s character Nilo, who kills a man execution-style in a room at the hotel overlooking the peaceful plaza below.

  Our next stop was Tuxtepec in Oaxaca Province, one hundred miles to the south and east of Vera Cruz. From here we pushed farther south into the jungle surrounding the Papaloapan, to what had been an ancient Aztec village, with a small peasant population. The weather was humid, and thick, lush vegetation surrounded the fifteen-foot-deep branch of the swiftly rushing river. The bridge was already designed and built, so now it was a matter of reassembling and anchoring it. The shutdown of production lasted a month while we regrouped, at great expense to management. When we arrived at the Aztec village, I noticed what appeared to be a mass exodus of the local population. One of the authorities told me it was because of word of my arrival. They were a deeply religious people, and the man who made The Exorcist was coming to their village: bad karma. But a few of the locals and people from surrounding villages stayed and worked with us to put up the bridge.

  I know this is hard to believe, but again the river level began to drop, at the rate of six inches or more a day. We had been told it rained often in this area, but we weren’t told that rain occurred only in the summer season. It was now the fall. I could see where this was going, but there was no turning back.

  I became friendly with the local laborers. I used to share cervezas with them after a day’s work. One evening a man named Luis, who helped to organize the local crew, knocked on the door of my cabin. We all stayed in small wooden cabins in the jungle, the size of prison cells, with only an army cot, a chair, and a single hanging lightbulb. Luis asked if he might have a word with me. I was exhausted, but he was a good man who worked hard with a pick and shovel all day. I invited him in, and he handed me a beer and had one himself. We sat down and exchanged small talk for a few minutes; then he reached into his shirt pocket and pu
lled out what looked like an identity card but was on closer examination a badge. His look turned serious and sad. “Si, Señor Bill, I am Federales.” He was a federal agent assigned to work undercover on our set. “I have to inform you of an unfortunate situation,” he said. “There are members of your crew who are using drugs. This is a serious problem in my country.”

  Was this a shakedown? “In a normal situation,” he continued, “I would be obliged to arrest them, and they would go to prison. Because I like you, I will not arrest them.” I was shocked; I wasn’t aware of who was using, or what. I thanked him and promised to make sure this activity stopped. “But they have to leave the country. Tomorrow,” he added. “Tomorrow?” “Sí.”

  He gave me a dozen names, handwritten on a scrap of paper. They included members of the grip crew, some of the stuntmen, and the makeup artist. I told him this would seriously damage my ability to finish the film. “I am sorry,” he said quietly. “I’m sure you don’t want them to go to prison, and it is within my authority to arrest or send you all home, even those who are not using drugs. This is the best I can do; these people have to leave Mexico tomorrow.”

  And so they did. It took two weeks to replace key people who had been with the film from the beginning, while the river continued to decline to a height of just under three feet, then became a stagnant pool. I called a meeting of the crew and explained the situation without inquiring who else was using. It was clear that anyone using would be caught and arrested. There were no more “unfortunate situations,” and thankfully the actors weren’t at risk, or we’d have been forced to shut the picture down.

  We were able to divert sections of the river to our location using large pipes and pumping equipment, and I decided to shoot the scene in rain, manmade rain, so we brought in half a dozen large sprinklers that drew water from upriver. The sky was cloudy from morning until noon, then bright sun appeared and we had to shut down and go to our cabins until five o’clock, when the clouds rolled in again and we could resume shooting in matching light. The scene runs twelve minutes, roughly 10 percent of the final cut, but it took months to complete and cost more than $3 million, most of it not budgeted. The only thing that could save me was a hit picture. I had no doubt it would be. The performances were terrific, and the action scenes were original and believable.

  Though the bridge scene was carefully prepared, the trucks would occasionally fall to one side. No one was hurt or injured, and none of the actors took the fall, only the stuntmen, who were heavily padded with flotation gear. I ran three cameras at different angles, but with the split shooting days it seemed as though we’d never be able to complete the scene. By the time it was over, a month later, I was exhausted and stressed but relieved, proud of the film but anxious to get home.

  I hired a twin-engine Cessna to take me from Vera Cruz to El Paso, Texas. After clearing customs, I would take off immediately for Los Angeles. One of the stuntmen, Eddie Hice, asked if he could hitch a ride with me instead of going back a day or two later with the crew. No problem. When we landed in El Paso, a customs official came to the plane: “Welcome back to the United States, Mr. Friedkin.” I thanked him. We exchanged small talk about how long I’d been away and what we were filming. As we headed for the customs office with the pilot, another official appeared with a German shepherd. The dog ran straight for Hice’s bag and started to freak out. The officers took our bags and asked us to wait in the office while they brought the dog onto the plane. After half an hour, the two officials came into the room. Their manner had changed. “Mr. Friedkin,” one said, “this aircraft is now the property of the U.S. government.” My bags and the pilot’s were clean, but Hice’s traveling case was found to contain scattered grains of marijuana, totaling more than an ounce. This was punishable by at least a year in jail. El Paso, being a border town, was especially tough. Calls were made to Los Angeles, establishing that neither I nor the pilot had criminal records, so we were cut loose after hours of questioning. Hice was held for two weeks before the lawyer we got for him was able to spring him as a first offender.

  Bud Smith and I started editing Sorcerer, and it was coming together well. All the problems of the shoot melted away in the cutting room, and there was enough coverage to pace it any way we chose.

  A couple of years before, while on tour for The Exorcist in Germany, I’d heard a concert in an abandoned church in the Black Forest by three musicians called Tangerine Dream. They were on the cutting edge of the electronic synthesizer sound that was entering the mainstream. The concert began at midnight and they played long, rhythmic, sensuous chords, somewhere between classical music and the new pop sound. They performed for three hours in darkness, outlined only by the twinkling lights of their electronic instruments, and along with a large audience of stoned young people, I was mesmerized. I met with them afterward and said I’d like to send them the script of my next film. When Wally’s script was done, I mailed it to Edgar Froese, their leader, and told him how I saw the film. “Just read the script,” I said, “then write your impressions of what I’ve told you about it.” Months later, while I was in the Oaxacan jungle, two hours of audiotapes arrived from Germany. They were an inspiration as we cut the film to the music, selecting passages at random.

  The one sequence left to shoot was the last leg of the journey of the surviving truck, the Lazaro, and I wanted it to be different from the other locations. I wanted a surreal, otherworldly landscape, and John Box found it in a place called the Bisti Badlands in northwestern New Mexico, thirty-five miles south of the town called Farmington. The Badlands are spread over several thousand acres with no vegetation or wildlife, an area that appears to be on another planet. Dirt roads wind past pastel rock formations called hoodoos. Surreal mounds and petrified wooden boulders form mushroom-shaped “cities” of shale, sandstone, and other minerals. This was sacred Navajo land, where the bones of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals dating back seventy-five million years were still being discovered. It was a place of ancient magic, said to be home to generations of sorcerers and alchemists. It was the landscape we chose for the end of the journey, in which Scanlon embraces madness, abandons his truck, and carries the dynamite two miles to the burning oilfield. The entire area was a feast for the senses, and with permission from the Navajo Nation we filmed there for four days. Everywhere we pointed the camera, beautiful images in unique natural light seemed to appear as if by magic, the landscape of dreams.

  I had persevered to make a film that I would want to see, a relentless existential voyage that would become my legacy.

  I had only a rough-cut work print, neither color-timed nor sound-mixed, but the Universal executives asked if they could see it in the editing room. I explained it would have to be a reel at a time on a twelve-inch editing screen. They said fine, and the next morning Wasserman, Sheinberg, and Ned Tanen, president of production, came into the cutting room and saw twelve reels of rough cut. When it was over, Wasserman thanked me and said it was a terrific film, and Sheinberg was also complimentary. When they left, Tanen took me aside and said: “Whatever happens with this picture, I want you to know I’m proud to be associated with it.” It seemed a heartfelt response, and I was grateful for it.

  After a few changes, Bud Smith and I got the film ready for a double system (separate sound and picture) screening. We ran it for Sheinberg and Tanen as well as Barry Diller and his new head of production at Paramount, Michael Eisner, an enthusiastic young man who, like his boss, had formerly been president of the ABC Network. Again, positive feedback. It was the first time I’d seen the film on a screen, and I found most of it watchable, some of it very good. A few scenes were labored, but overall I thought it was a great ride and, with Paramount and Universal behind it, a surefire hit. Diller asked if he and Sheinberg could see me the next day to pass along a few notes from their team. Since The French Connection experience I wasn’t keen on notes from executives. So I said okay, but I’d want to bring my editors and the writer so they could hear the notes f
irsthand. Diller and Sheinberg weren’t used to meeting with “below-the-title” guys, but they reluctantly agreed, thinking it was in the spirit of cooperation. It was a sham.

  I told Wally and Bud and the assistant editors, Jere Huggins and Ned Humphreys, to come unshaven, button their shirts incorrectly, leaving them outside their trousers, wear scruffy, mismatched shoes and socks, and generally look like homeless guys. I told them to wear sullen expressions, project indifference, not smile or nod or do anything that showed understanding, let alone agreement with whatever the executives said—just stare blankly at them while they talked. And don’t react to anything I might say or do, I added. Sheinberg and Diller were successful, high-powered executives, but I felt they had little to offer on how to improve a film I worked on for over a year. I thought that an audience’s response was worth a thousand times more than any executive’s, and that all these guys wanted to do was leave their mark on the film, like a dog pissing on a tree.

  The meeting took place over lunch at the posh private dining room at Universal. Sheinberg and Diller were in suits and ties, and my guys were dressed as I had instructed them. Two waiters. Drink orders. Everyone ordered iced tea or bottled water or Diet Coke except me. I asked for a bottle of Smirnoff vodka, no glass. Shocked glances all around, especially from the waiters, who thought I was kidding. I wasn’t. When drinks arrived, I opened the vodka bottle and started glugging. Though not a drinker, I can handle booze and have only been drunk twice in my life. Diller and Sheinberg had a handful of meaningless notes, to which we gave neither visual nor verbal response. Lunch was ordered, but when it arrived, I just kept drinking from the bottle. After about fifteen minutes I fell to the floor facedown. No one reacted, so I just lay there until gradually there was silence. Then Diller turned to Wally and the editors and asked, “Does this happen often?”