Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
This interview was original published in 2013.
We are recirculating it again in light of Friedkins recent passing.
Where does he think he succeeded?
Where does he think he went wrong?
Vulture got some answers.
He and I became friends, and he told me about the French Connection case itself.
I went back to New York with him and met the two actual cops.
I mean, just look at how many timesThe Exorcisthas been ripped off.
Many people, especially younger people, dont even know which is the original film.
Now I see they want to do a series based on it!
Ive never seen a good sequel toThe Exorcist.
The audience didnt take to it, and the critics didnt like it.
Now theres almost been a complete critical turnaround.
It hasnt gone in front of a large audience yet, but attitudes change.
Its getting restored and rereleased, so well see.
Certainly my film was inspired by Clouzots film, which I consider a masterpiece.
But then-contemporary audiences in the English-speaking world did not knowWages of Fearthat well.
Now, did some critics have their knives out?
I think that would be to undervalue the nature of film criticism.
I would hope not, but youre posing the question, so it has to be possible.
I do know that I very much thought I was the center of the universe at the time.
And a lot of people probably were waiting for me to crash.
It varies with various people.
Im not saying that they completely disregard quality, but their main concern is financial success.
It is a business.
Its called showbusiness, not showart.
It alsocame out around the same time that AIDS was given a name.
But the timing of it was difficult because of what had been happening to gay people.
Now its reevaluated as a film.
It was a metaphor for how Vietnam continues to haunt us.
Its one of the most watched things Ive ever done, and so it restored my confidence.
But Id always dabbled in TV, so this wasnt an attempt to get away from film.
To me it was no different from film, really.
Hed written a novel, and his stories were fascinating.
We did things that, you know, we could be arrested for.
That was something that Id also done for the chase scene onThe French Connectiontoo.
We were very lucky that nobody got hurt, injured, or killed.
When I was younger, I never let things like that get in my way.
Did that limit its commercial possibilities?More likely it did.
But well never know that.
you’re able to only speculate about it.
I love the film, and I value my films or dont value them in a different way.
The two films where I came extremely close wereTo Live and Die in L.A. andSorcerer.
Which films were the farthest?Many.The GuardianI dont think works.
He finally went bankrupt, after a long career as a producer.
And so literally by the time it came to releaseRampage, he didnt have the money to do it.
And he was not only the financier, but the distributor.
His company went bankrupt, and the film went to black for about five years.
Eventually,the Weinsteins company Miramax took it out of bankruptcy and rereleased it.
But this was among the lowest points in my career.
But you dont stop, unless you lose interest in it, and I had not lost interest.
I just worked on another script.
Now, the films, obviously, became much less mass-oriented.
Well, thats the direction I was heading anyway.
I didnt like the mass-produced films.
But theZeitgeistis always changing.
My idols are Vincente Minnelli and Stanley Donen.
But by the time I started, the popular music of America had changed.
It was no longer the Gershwins and Cole Porter and the Great American Songbook.
It was rock and roll.
I couldnt make those films anymore.
There was no audience for them.
So I went a different direction and achieved some critical and financial success in this other direction.
And have stayed closer to that over the years.
But I would have preferred to have made films like that.
In the late nineties, you started directing opera.I still do almost one a year.
I got into it quite accidentally, but I love it.
It very much feeds my film work.
The only difference between directing an opera and directing a film is with an opera theres no camera.
Provide different moods for each scene.
You learn how to work simply on the stage to achieve an effect.
They want to give a performance; they dont want to give a concert.
I hadnt thought of it that way.
But now that you mention it.
But in 2000,The Exorcistwas rereleased, to much fanfare and box office.
Hed say, Youre only as good as yourbestmovie.
And Billy had to believe that, because he was still making movies in the seventies.
Were they as good asDouble Indemnityor Some Like It Hot?
Maybe not, but he kept working.
So I dont know if the rerelease ofThe Exorcisthelped me.
Ive always been able to keep working.
Many people viewed it as American jingoism and as a tribute to the American military.
That never bothered me.
ButRules of Engagementis actually about how the American military are treated like cattle.
We depicted a Middle East conflict in that film, before the Iraq War.
I lived in Iraq for three months when I madeThe Exorcist.
We shot up in Mosul, in the north.
Saddam wasnt the president then.
A lot of the people who were still living there remembered me and the crew.
So, the 101st Airborne gave a $5,000 donation to students at Mosul University.
They built a tour, a parking lot nearby, and a police station.
They had a food stand where they would serve kebabs.
I think it was two or three dinar for a tour that they called The Exorcist Experience.
I said, Ill be on the next plane, just tell me when.
It was a most wonderful place.
Id go back today in a minute.
Your last two films,BugandKiller Joe, have gotten you some of the best reviews of your career.
In a way, youve reinvented yourself as an independent filmmaker.
Did your approach change at all when you started making these smaller films?My approach, no.
Certainly my tastes went more in that direction.
And these last two films I made were written by Tracy Letts, whose worldview I share.
I think hes probably the best American playwright today, as well as being a terrific actor.
But theyre going to find a smaller niche audience thats open to these ideas.
But as always, I went for the material: the story and the characters.
I was able to put together a dream cast for bothBugandKiller Joe.
Otherwise I dont think they would have worked at all.
