In March, the MPAA Ratings Board gave the film an NC-17, citing “Graphic, aberrant content including violence and sexuality and a scene of brutality.”
An NC-17 is the Scarlet Letter of film ratings. In our case the A was not for Adultery but Aberrant behavior. Aberrant could be applied to Charles Manson or Hitler. The original intent of the rating was to separate adult films from pornography as a warning to parents of children under 17. The NC-17 replaced the X in 1990, but its effect is the same. Major theater chains won’t play an NC-17, major video outlets won’t sell it, and many people won’t see it, as the rating doesn’t separate adult subject matter from “filth.”
We were stunned. Many films depict more violence and sexuality than ours but still get an R or even a PG rating. But a major studio film will never get an NC-17 because the six studios sponsor the ratings board. It’s the independents that get slapped with it, so the board can justify its existence. The board’s decisions are arbitrary. They have no objective standards. We don’t know how many people are on the board or who they are. We don’t know how they were selected. Is it political or are they “friends of friends”? Their decisions have no legal authority but they do affect box office. Do you want to see a film that’s labeled “aberrant” with “excessive” violence or sexuality? Remember that The Exorcist got an R from the first ratings board, with no cuts.
Liddell and Dinerstein immediately appealed. Yes, there is an appeals process. That committee consisted of thirteen exhibitors. Dinerstein asked me to attend. I was directing the opera Tales of Hoffman in Vienna but I told him I wouldn’t go even if I was available. What was I supposed to say? “Please don’t give my movie an NC-17?” Dinerstein thought that since Tracy was a recent Pulitzer Prize winner for his play August: Osage County, his prestige might possibly sway the board. At the appeal, Dinerstein spoke for about half an hour, citing examples of films that contained more violence and sexual content than Killer Joe. Then Tracy spoke for about five minutes trying to persuade the board that our film was not exploitative; the violence and sexuality were part of the fabric of the lives of his characters. He felt frustrated and humiliated having to justify his work. “It wasn’t about anything specific in the movie,” he told me. “It was the movie itself. They objected to it in total.” At one point Tracy said to them: “It’s like we’re being punished for doing this convincingly.” Their response was, “The fact that the violence was personalized is definitely one of the reasons.” Tracy asked, “In other words, if the violence was depersonalized it wouldn’t bother you?”
“No, it wouldn’t,” they said. “If this was just some guy dying, like in Saw, we wouldn’t care.”
Tracy felt their decision had already been made but he said, “Because we’ve given these characters depth and the actors play them well, you feel we deserve an NC-17.” Their answer was “Yes.” The board took twenty minutes to uphold the rating, unanimously, 13 to 0.
Some weeks later, when I returned from Vienna, Dinerstein and Liddell said they thought if we made just a few trims, literally frame cuts, the board would be satisfied and reverse the rating. I invited them to come to the cutting room and show me exactly what they were prepared to cut. Darren and I carried out their suggestions, which meant trimming the fellatio scene and the final scene in which Joe beats Chris. Their edits amounted to seventeen seconds but for good measure, I took out another twelve, a total of twenty-nine seconds, which I felt would have no effect on the impact of the film. Dinerstein and Liddell were happy and confident. After I’d made the cuts, I was ashamed. The loss of twenty-nine seconds would not hurt the film but the idea of giving in to the board, or even attempting to, was aberrant to me. Their final verdict came back two days later. I don’t know what took them so long. The NC-17 was of course upheld. And so the film went out uncut with the most draconian rating possible. I was actually thrilled. I was too old to bow down before an anonymous gaggle of morality police. I felt the film would be distinguished by its harsh rating, separated from the pack of R-rated films that compromised to achieve the MPAA’s blessing. In England, the film played with an 18+ rating, no cuts. In France and Belgium, three-year-olds could see it if accompanied by a parent. Nowhere in the world was I asked to cut it, not even Russia, with one exception. Germany! The German censors were specific about scenes they wanted to remove. I wrote the distributor that if they made cuts I would publicly denounce my own film in the German press and on television, on Facebook and Twitter. I would characterize it as a return to the book burning in Germany of sixty years ago. I told them they could ban the film but they couldn’t cut a frame of it. Fortunately, E-One, the controlling distributor, agreed with me but the release in Germany was severely limited.
Killer Joe is loved and hated. Praised and denounced. But it’s the film I wanted to make and I’m proud of it and it found a small audience of passionate devotees.
It’s been suggested I made Killer Joe as a response to the regular fare of the Hollywood studios and that may be true. I like to think that I made it only because I love the material and I believe Tracy’s work is a direct line from Harold Pinter’s, which had so profound an effect on me.
It will be a long time, I think, before anyone makes another film as provocative and controversial, as “in your face” as Killer Joe. The risks are too great, the rewards too small. It was like hitting a wall. I may not be able to climb over it, but I’ll never go back.
A life in film is like a long train ride. Sometimes it’s fast, other times slow. People get on, others get off, and a few ride with you forever. The thing is, you don’t know where it starts or when it will end.
20
REEL TWELVE
Random Thoughts on Directing
F. Scott Fitzgerald kept an index card pinned to the wall above his desk. It read: ACTION IS CHARACTER.
Fitzgerald was referring to characters in a novel but it’s true in film as well. What the characters do, not what they say, is who they are. The most important thing a director does is to choose his material. Next comes casting; if you miscast a key role, the entire work will suffer. If an actor is physically right for a role, then what most interests me is intelligence: the ability to understand and absorb layers of character and portray them effortlessly.
The best advice a director ever gave a performer is Sergei Diaghilev’s advice to Vaslav Nijinsky. From 1909 to 1929, Diaghilev was head of the world-renowned Ballets Russes. Nijnsky was his principal dancer. Once, before he went on stage, Diaghilev took him by the shoulders and said: “Etonnez-moi.” Surprise me! Often, when I get a good take, I’ll do the same, letting the actors know they’re free to explore the unexpected. I’m more interested in spontaneity than perfection. While it helps to have some knowledge of art, music, literature, and photography, the most important part of a director’s work is to help the actors realize their performances, to create an open atmosphere on the set, where the cast and crew can make creative contributions and not feel as though they are being judged. With Cruising, I failed in this. Because of my own insecurities, I was of little help to Pacino, who somehow managed, in a hostile environment, to achieve a focused performance in what was an unfocused story. On reflection, I’ve come to appreciate his work, something I was unable to do during production.
Films are constructed one shot at a time, but directors have to keep the whole film in mind every step of the way.
I don’t give much credibility to the auteur theory. A director’s intelligence can inform a film—the films of Fellini, Antonioni, Bergman, and many others attest to that—but film, like theater, is the most collaborative of art forms.
To become a director you must have ambition, luck, and the grace of God. Talent counts, but without luck and ambition, opportunities won’t occur.
The Waiting Room
Only when time has passed do events begin to make sense. Harold Pinter told me a wonderful line from L. P. Hartley’s novel The Go-Between: “The past is a foreign country. They do things differently the
re.”
In many ways I’m still the same insecure kid I was in high school. My emotions are flammable and can be set off by a random spark. My failures line up before me each day like soldiers at attention while my successes play hide-and-seek like fireflies.
I embody arrogance, insecurity, and ambition that spur me on as they hold me back. And while I’ve been healed of physical wounds, my character flaws remain for the most part unhealed. There’s no point in saying I’ll work on them. I spend part of each day acting out my worst instincts while I try to conceal them from those I care about. Every one of my films, plays, and operas has been marked by conflict, sometimes vindictive. The common denominator is me, so what does that tell you?
Good and evil co-exist in me as in all of us, and I believe it’s a constant struggle for our better angels to prevail. This is a theme in all my films and remains a personal struggle, but I’ve been blessed with a loving, devoted wife and two wonderful sons I dearly love and they constantly help me suppress my darker impulses.
In spite of all the gifts God has given me, I still occasionally harbor anger and resentment. My salvation is to channel them into my work.
The kind of films I once loved and still do are rarely made now. The action sequences for which my colleagues and I were celebrated now seem relics of another age. Computer wizards have rendered them old-fashioned. The heroes of today’s films are superheroes. The villains are super-bad. The world explodes every day on a movie screen. After total destruction and annihilation, what’s left? And yet cinema is about illusion, and the illusions have never been more graphic or convincing. If I were to make The Exorcist today, I’d use digital technology.
I used to ride my three-wheeler bike as fast as I could along Sheridan Road past the furniture outlet, the little grocery store, the movie theater, a scarf wrapped around my nose and mouth, faces blurring past, legs pumping, scattering pigeons. My world always ended at the shore of the frozen Great Lake, watching the ice floes, jagged pieces of a big white puzzle breaking in the sun. No worries then about what lay ahead. Everything would be fine. And soon I’d be in the warmth of our one-room apartment, drinking the hot chocolate my mother made, listening to one of my favorite radio programs, waiting for my father to come home from work.
Before long I wasn’t scared of the movies anymore. I couldn’t wait to enter the safe darkness of a theater and become lost in another world. The films I once loved are still old friends. I visit them often and discover something new about them each time. Occasionally a film moves me in the same way as those that inspired me and this gives me hope there will be others. Someone will surely come along and use the new technology in as innovative a way as Orson Welles did with what was available to him in 1940. I don’t fall into the misguided trap of thinking that my generation made masterpieces, and today’s filmmakers are making garbage. That’s what old Hollywood said about the films of my generation.
Just when you learn how to do it, you’re too old. Except in your dreams. Lately I’ve been remaking my movies, reshooting scenes in greater detail than I did originally. Several times in the middle of the night I awake and think, Well that was a dream, and it’s over. Then I fall back to sleep but the work continues. At this rate I’ll be shooting forever. The scenes aren’t from one film, they’re from many, but somehow they seem to connect, to make dream sense. I’m relaxed and in control. No anxiety, no sense of dread.
I haven’t made my Citizen Kane, but there’s more work to do. I don’t know how much but I’m loving it. Perhaps I’ll fail again. Maybe next time I’ll fail better.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Richard Pine, of Inkwell Management, suggested I write this book. Jonathan Burnham, my publisher, suggested how I might go about it. Gail Winston had the formidable task of trying to make sense of it. My assistant, Marcia Franklin, worked tirelessly on its completion. I’m deeply grateful to them for their patience and guidance.
FILMOGRAPHY
2012
Killer Joe
2007
Bug
2003
The Hunted
2000
Rules of Engagement
1997
12 Angry Men (TV movie)
1995
Jade
1994
Blue Chips
1990
The Guardian
1987
Rampage
1985
To Live and Die in L.A.
1983
Deal of the Century
1980
Cruising
1978
The Brink’s Job
1977
Sorcerer
1974
Fritz Lang Interviewed by William Friedkin (documentary)
1973
The Exorcist
1971
The French Connection
1970
The Boys in the Band
1968
The Night They Raided Minsky’s
1968
The Birthday Party
1967
Good Times
1966
The Thin Blue Line (TV documentary)
1962
The People vs. Paul Crump (TV documentary)
PHOTO CREDITS
The Boys in the Band
Stills © 1970 Leo Productions Ltd. Courtesy CBS Broadcasting Inc.
Boys in the band (black turtlenecks), photo by Irving Penn © 1970 Leo Productions Ltd. Courtesy CBS Broadcasting Inc.
The French Connection
Stills © 1971 Twentieth Century Fox.
The Exorcist
Stills licensed by: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved.
Cruising
Stills licensed by: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved.
To Live and Die in L.A.
Stills © 1985 by METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER STUDIOS, INC. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of MGM Media Licensing.
Los Angeles Opera
Photographs by Robert Millard/Los Angeles Opera © 2002–2008. Artists from the LA Opera productions of Suor Angelica, Il Tabarro, Gianni Schicchi and Duke Bluebeard’s Castle courtesy of the American Guild of Musical Artists.
Bug
Stills provided through the courtesy of Lionsgate.
Killer Joe
Stills © 2012 LD Entertainment.
Photo of Sherry Lansing by Jenn Munkvold + Taylor Peden.
All other photographs courtesy of the author.
Endpaper Images
Photograph of William Friedkin directing on the set of The Exorcist © Condé Nast Archive/Corbis.
Photograph of Director William Friedkin looking through the camera on the set of The Exorcist © Bettmann/Corbis.
INDEX
The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific entry, please use your e-book reader’s search tools.
Abbott, John Henry, 386
Abrahams, Irv, 157
Adams, Lee, 118
Adderley, Cannonball, 20
Adelson, Merv, 365, 375
Affleck, Ben, 405
Albee, Edward, 134
Albright, Lola, 111
Alda, Alan, 117
Allen, Bob, 68–71
Allen, Woody, 348, 445
Alonzo, John, 83–85
Amidou, 325, 330, 431, 432
Anderson, Lindsay, 328
Andrews, Harry, 118
Andrews, Julie, 225
Angelvin, Jacques, 146, 183
Antonioni, Michelangelo, 28, 473
Archer, Anne, 431
Archerd, Army, 213
Arfons, Art, 74–76
Arnaud, Georges, 321
Arnold, Newt, 337
Arthur, Indus, 90
Ashley, Ted, 231, 237, 274, 299
Auerbach, Larry, 150, 156
Auerbach, Red, 355–56, 357, 409
Augustine, Saint, 231
Bacall, Lauren, 286, 413
Baden, Michael, 369
Bailey, Pearl, 58
Bailey, Tommy, 19
Baker, Rick, 262, 274, 282
al-Bakr, Hassan, 276, 282, 283
Balaguer, Joaquin, 328
Bancroft, Anne, 237–38
Barr, Richard, 134
Bartók, Béla, 424
Basquiat, Jean-Michel, 1
Bass, Linda, 384
Bates, Tyler, 466
Bateson, Paul, 268, 358–60, 361, 371
Battiste, Harold, Jr., 107–8
Baumgarten, Craig, 412
Beckett, Samuel, 118, 127
Bedig, Barry, 352, 392
Bedig, Sass, 177, 178
Beer, Harry, 294
Beetley, Sam, 191–93, 196, 197, 203
Behrend, Jack, 39
Bell, Arthur, 257, 360, 361, 366, 375–76
Bell, “Ding,” 13
Bell, Mary Jean, 13
Berg, Alban, 417, 419, 420
Berger, Sandy, 434
Bergman, Ingmar, 4, 271, 398, 473
Bermingham, Rev. Thomas, 236, 296
Biehn, Michael, 398
Bigelow, Kathryn, 462
Bird, Larry, 357, 411–12
Bishop, Father Raymond, 235
Blair, Elinore, 244
Blair, Linda, 244–45, 249, 250–52, 252, 253, 256, 262, 267, 285, 305, 358
Blair, Nicky, 215–16
The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir Page 44