The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir

by William Friedkin

  Nick was tough to work with. He was going through a difficult divorce–custody case after a ten-year marriage and was on edge most of the time. The year before, he was named People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, and he did everything possible to shed this image, not combing his hair and wearing pajamas in public. I let him actually coach the games against Bobby Knight, and he told me it was the best experience he’d ever had of “living” a role, but he would often shrug off my suggestions, and we had angry confrontations every day. Even so, as I see his performance today, I find it original and powerful.

  With some actors you have to be gentle, with others firm; the last thing you want to do is try to “show” an actor how to play a scene. Metaphor works best. The great musical conductor Carlos Kleiber, when rehearsing a passage with the Munich Opera Orchestra, told the string section to play a passage as if they were “serenading a beautiful woman.” He “described” the woman, and told the string players they should try to court her with their music. When they played the passage again, it was far more emotional and intense.

  A fond memory I have of Blue Chips is filming scenes with Nolte and Larry Bird in French Lick in southern Indiana, a town of about fifteen hundred people in a four-square-mile area. It was Bird’s hometown, and we drove in along Larry Bird Boulevard past the Larry Bird auto dealership to Larry Bird’s home in West Baden, just outside French Lick. Being on a first-name basis with one of the best players in the game and casting him in a film was the wish fulfillment of a lifelong basketball fan.

  The film was well received but weak at the box office. It’s hard to capture in a sports film the excitement of a real game, with its own unpredictable dramatic structure and suspense. I couldn’t overcome that. Blue Chips had solid performances but didn’t resonate with audiences.

  Jade

  No one was pounding on my door to direct another film, but the producer Bob Evans, head of Paramount in the 1970s, responsible for the Godfather films, Love Story, and Chinatown, came to me with an interesting idea that Paramount wanted to develop. The script was to be written by Joe Eszterhas, who had Basic Instinct, The Jagged Edge, and Flashdance to his credit. He was then the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood, and he as well as Evans and Craig Baumgarten, the coproducers, all wanted me to direct it.

  Sex and violence were Eszterhas’s specialties, and he had pushed the envelope with Basic Instinct. A tall, heavyset man with a large mane of hair and a beard, and the fearsome countenance of a lion—that was Joe Eszterhas.

  The film was called Jade. Set in San Francisco, it’s about a powerful lawyer, his psychologist wife, and a young assistant district attorney who went to college together and remained friends. The DA is still in love with the lawyer’s wife. She leads a secret life in the sex trade, and becomes a suspect in the murder of a wealthy San Francisco businessman. The assistant DA is torn as suspicion falls on the woman he still loves, the wife of his best friend. It was complex, erotic, and suspenseful, a combination at which Eszterhas excelled.

  We cast Linda Fiorentino as Jade. She was hot off the surprising success of a low-budget film called The Last Seduction, in which she showed the talent and sex appeal of the legendary actresses of the 1940s and ’50s—Ann Sheridan, Joan Crawford, Lauren Bacall.

  David Caruso was the charismatic lead in the hit television series NYPD Blue. Irish and Sicilian, he had bright red hair, youthful good looks, and a deep voice. When he left the series to pursue a career in films, it was viewed as a kind of irredeemable cardinal sin by the entertainment press. TV Guide listed it as number six on the ten biggest blunders in television history. We cast him as David Corelli, the district attorney. Chazz Palminteri was our choice to play the criminal lawyer Matt Gavin. Chazz wrote and starred in his own autobiographical play and film, A Bronx Tale. The year before Jade, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Bullets over Broadway and had a key role in a much-praised film, The Usual Suspects.

  A terrific cast. A wonderful script. Great locations. How could it miss?

  The best chase scene I’ve ever directed and the most difficult to realize is the one in Jade. It begins with a black sedan stalking a woman in broad daylight, then running her down on a busy thoroughfare, before it turns into a slow and deliberate chase of inches, two cars crawling through a crowded Chinese New Year’s parade, with hundreds of people in harm’s way. Finally it breaks into high speed on the O’Doul Bridge and ends with Caruso’s car being dumped into the San Francisco Bay.

  Some of my films have been dismissed, others overpraised. But Jade, a critical and financial disaster, contained some of my best work. I felt I had let down the actors, the studio, and most of all, Sherry. I went into a deep funk. Was it the Exorcist curse, as many have suggested, a poor choice of material, or simply that whatever talent I had was ephemeral? Maybe all of the above.

  12 Angry Men

  At around this time the O. J. Simpson murder trial was being broadcast live across the country and was a constant topic of gossip, rumor, and disbelief. I knew O. J. and didn’t believe he could have committed two murders until I heard the evidence, but after months of trial, a jury verdict acquitted him. Reasonable doubt? He seemed to have motive, opportunity, and no credible alibi. The verdict split the country along racial lines. I remembered the film 12 Angry Men and watched it again, fascinated how each of the jurors held fast to their own prejudices until a set of contrary facts began to prevail. I hadn’t seen the film for many years, and I was struck not only by its timelessness but by the brilliance of Reginald Rose’s screenplay. Why was I not making films like this?

  I met with executives of the Showtime cable network to see if they’d be interested in a new version for television. Reginald Rose originally wrote 12 Angry Men as a one-hour “live” drama in 1954 for the Studio One Anthology series. It was expanded and filmed brilliantly in 1957 by Sidney Lumet, with a cast that included Henry Fonda and Lee J. Cobb. It became an immediate classic, though it closed in first-run theaters after a week.

  The entire action takes place in a jury deliberation room after the jury is handed a murder case involving a Hispanic teenager accused of killing his father. At the outset eleven of the jurors are convinced of the boy’s guilt. Juror number eight is the only holdout. He’s not certain of guilt or innocence but implores his fellow jurors to carefully examine the evidence before deciding the boy’s fate.

  Showtime was interested—if I could put togther a cast they’d approve. I called Reginald Rose, and he was enthusiastic. At the time he was seventy-seven years old, retired, and living in Norwalk, Connecticut. One of the best writers of the 1950s, the golden age of live TV, he moved to series long-form, where he created and wrote The Defenders. Like his contemporary Paddy Chayefsky, he excelled at writing realistic dramas about important social issues. Twelve Angry Men is his masterpiece, and is still performed “live” around the world. The story unfolds in real time, and the deliberations gradually reveal each character’s prejudices.

  I told Rose I wanted to cast several African American actors, which was not done in the original versions, and I asked him for a few dialogue changes to bring the script up to date. Casting director Mary Jo Slater assembled the finest cast I’d ever worked with—Jack Lemmon, George C. Scott, Ossie Davis, Hume Cronyn, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Tony Danza, Edward James Olmos, Courtney B. Vance, Dorian Harewood, Mykelti Williamson, Billy Petersen (before CSI), and James Gandolfini (before The Sopranos).

  The budget was $1.75 million, low by any standards, especially with that cast. I rehearsed for eight days and filmed for twelve. I had the “jurors” move around the room as much as possible to hold visual interest and my work with the actors was largely a matter of pace and tone. Two cameras were handheld, and I encouraged the cameramen to freelance and find their own shots to give the film a documentary feel. I shot in sequence from the jurors’ entrance until they leave the room.

  One morning I came in two hours early to work out the blocking of a complicated scene. I heard a lone voice re
citing lines: James Gandolfini. He was to film a scene that day with Lemmon. I watched him for a while and saw that he was trembling.

  “What’s wrong, Jim?”

  He turned to me abruptly.

  “I’m nervous,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “You think I’m doin’ okay?” he asked.

  “You’re doing fine.”

  He walked around staring at the floor, then, “I can’t believe I’m in a scene with Jack Lemmon.” I put my arm on his shoulder and said, “Jim, one day people will be saying that about you.”

  “Yeah,” he said ironically.

  I didn’t know if that was true or not. Two years later, The Sopranos appeared on HBO, ran for six seasons, and Gandolfini’s portrayal of Tony Soprano became one of the most celebrated in the history of television.

  Twelve Angry Men was a success, showered with critical praise and awards. I had regained some respect and self-confidence, but the zeitgeist was again changing around me. I had to expand my horizons. That opportunity would come from an unexpected source.

  14

  A NEW PATH

  For a long time Sherry and I have known the renowned music conductor Zubin Mehta and his wife, Nancy. Whenever Zubin and I are together, we talk about music, but he loves films as well. One night at dinner at the Mehtas’ home in Brentwood, Zubin suddenly asked: “Why don’t you do an opera with me?” I didn’t know how to respond; the idea had never occurred to me.

  I said, “Jeez, Zubin, I’ve never seen an opera.”

  “But we’ve spoken many times about opera,” he said.

  “I’ve listened to recordings, but I’ve never seen one staged.”

  Sherry, as always, positive, said, “Oh, go ahead, I think it’ll be fun.”

  Zubin pressed on. “I think you’d be a terrific opera director. What would you do if you had the chance?” What I didn’t know about opera would fill the Rose Bowl.

  To put him off, I said, “What about either of the two Alban Berg operas?”

  Berg wrote only two operas, Wozzeck and Lulu. Both are considered masterpieces of the twentieth century—but the operative word is twentieth. The greatest period for opera composition was between the time of Handel in the eighteenth century up to about 1920 and the operas of Richard Strauss, which pointed the way to modernism. Wozzeck and Lulu break totally with the tradition of classical opera in that they are atonal, in the twelve-tone system invented by Berg, Anton Webern, and their teacher, Arnold Schoenberg. Their works are still difficult for audiences who prefer Puccini, Verdi, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky.

  Zubin left the room and came back moments later with his datebook. It was about four inches thick and had his bookings for the next seven years. He began to leaf through it. Finally he stopped at a page and declared, “Okay, I’ll do Wozzeck with you in two years at the Maggio Musicale in Florence if you commit to it now.” This was in 1996.

  Not a lot of American film directors have staged operas. The only one I knew personally who worked successfully in both media was the late Herbert Ross. Herb directed a production of Puccini’s La Bohème for the Los Angeles Opera, which I later saw. It was beautifully staged and is still in their repertoire. Sherry and I visited Herb and his wife Lee Radziwill at their home on Long Island.

  “I’ve been asked to direct an opera,” I told him.

  “Oh, really, which one?”

  “Wozzeck,” I replied quietly.

  “Wozzeck!” he bellowed. “Well, that’s a tough one.”

  “Herb, I need your advice. I don’t know a thing about opera. I’ve never seen one. How do you go about it?”

  “How do you go about it?” He laughed incredulously. “How do you go about what?”

  “I mean, how do you rehearse? What do you say to the singers when they come into the room?”

  He waved the question off.

  “Oh, it’ll come to you,” he said with condescension.

  It was good advice. My questions were those of a dilettante. But his advice, though given frivolously, was good. It will “come to you” if you are willing to study it and immerse yourself in its complexities.

  For the first year I did nothing except read the play by Georg Büchner upon which the opera was based. And I listened to a recording conducted by Pierre Boulez.

  Almost a year later I got a call from Zubin. “How’s our Wozzeck coming?”

  I had done nothing, but he continued, “Have you chosen a designer yet?”

  I hadn’t. “We need to have a set plan so the opera company will know how to budget,” Zubin insisted.

  Only then did I take it seriously. I read everything I could about Alban Berg and the origins of Wozzeck, and since the libretto was in German, I took German lessons four days a week from a private tutor at UCLA. Among my readings were articles by the composer and musicologist George Perle. Mr. Perle lived in New York, so I called and asked if I might talk to him about Berg and Wozzeck. He agreed, and we had three days of conversations at his New York apartment. I became aware of how influential Berg’s discordant and disturbing composition had been for modern music.

  Wozzeck was based on an actual murder case in Leipzig in the early 1820s. Johann Christian Woyzeck, a soldier and a barber, was accused of murdering his mistress. It was the first time an insanity defense was offered, but it was rejected by the Royal Court of Saxony, and Woyzeck was executed in 1824. The insanity defense was a daring concept in the early nineteenth century. Some dozen years later a young German doctor of philosophy and would-be dramatist, Karl Georg Büchner, began to set down the events of the Woyzeck case as a play, but he died of typhus in 1837 at the age of twenty-three, leaving the play unfinished. Wozzeck was not edited for publication until 1879, forty-two years after Büchner’s death. The play wasn’t performed until 1913 in Munich, and six months later a young composer who had just been inducted into the Austrian Army, Alban Berg, saw it in Vienna. Berg became obsessed by the play, and during his military service he suffered a physical breakdown that deepened his identification with Büchner’s title character.

  After World War I, Berg began work on the music. He used Büchner’s play as the libretto and finished the opera in 1922. The cost of printing the score was borne by Gustav Mahler’s wife, Alma, to whom it is dedicated. The first performance was not until 1925 in Berlin, where it was immediately recognized as a masterpiece.

  It’s easy for me to say I suggested Wozzeck to Zubin “to put him off,” but there was something more, something deeper that instinctively drew me to it, not just the challenge of directing an opera.

  Wozzeck deals with a hapless soldier who is brutalized, humiliated, and crushed on the wheels of society. He’s slightly retarded, both victim and criminal. He seems born to a tragic fate, but he has the ability to love—he loves Marie, the woman he lives with, though he is unable to satisfy her. To supplement his income, he is paid to endure harmful experiments by an army doctor. He is tortured mentally by his captain and physically by the drum major. The final insult is his discovery of Marie’s affair with the drum major, which leads to her murder and Wozzeck’s suicide. At the end of the drama his little boy is left alone, taunted by his playmates, another Wozzeck in the making. The underlying philosophy of Büchner’s play is that there is no free will; our destiny is predetermined, all action is futile, and we are only here to be destroyed. The opera is a descent into the abyss. It was a perfect fit for my own obsessions.

  My research gave me the inspiration to devise a staging plan. Wozzeck had to be presented simply, devoid of sentimentality but with a deep feeling for its emotional undercurrent. It had to be intimate. Wozzeck has none of the grandiose scenes one finds in Aïda or Tosca; it’s a character piece that takes place to some extent in the mind of its central character.

  The first problem was how to achieve intimacy. In film you have camera lenses that bring you closer or take you farther away from the action. How do you affect a close-up on a large stage where no angle changes are possible? It’s done w
ith lighting and in the way performers are positioned.

  I’m often asked the difference between directing for opera and film. The great singers today want the same things good actors seek: a psychological underpinning for their characters and a staging that works. The ideal opera staging allows the singers to move freely and interact with one another, as in a play. Few singers want to come out and just “park and bark.”

  On a film the director is the final arbiter; it’s his or her vision. A screenplay can be changed as the actors make the words their own. Pages are revised or cut from a script, and the story is often altered in the cutting room. Operas that have lived for centuries and continue to fill theaters across the world can be newly conceived but not revised.

  The pecking order in opera is first the composer, then the conductor, then the singers, and finally the stage director and the designers. The operas I’ve directed have been chosen and cast by the theater managers and the music director years in advance because of the limited availability of the top singers. I’ve been exceptionally fortunate in the casts that were chosen for me.

  As I immerse myself in the theme and structure of a work, ideas take shape from the sense memories the music calls forth. While preparing Wozzeck, I was watching H.-G. Clouzot’s Le Mystère Picasso, a documentary about Picasso at work. Picasso and Clouzot are having a conversation during which Picasso tells Clouzot that the screen is not wide enough to encompass his vision. Until then the film was being projected in the standard ratio of 1.85 to 1; at Clouzot’s command, the screen is expanded to cinemascope, and Picasso continues drawing on a wider “canvas.” I thought, Why not use this kind of dynamic framing on the stage? Why not expand or contract the “size” of the stage as befits the scene?