RIP William Friedkin

My favourite Friedkins were not The Exorcist or The French Connection. I've seen both multiple times, but my top three remain Sorcerer, Cruising, and The Hunted. Just in terms of personal pleasure I receive from the films, you understand -- not asserting the greatness of The Hunted over The French Connection, or anything ridiculous like that. Though Sorcerer is one of the best films made by anyone anywhere, a remarkable piece of cinema. See if if you haven't. And The Hunted -- while I've read people dismiss it as a First Blood knockoff, and can sort of see their point -- has some great work from Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro, some amazing Pacific Northwest locations, and some very fresh bits of filmmaking. There was a blu-ray release of it awhile back, if you've missed it. Great knife-fight choreography, too. 

There was a brief window where I was getting Friedkin posts in my feed on FB. It's possible we interacted once, around the theatrical re-release of Sorcerer, but I forget. I left a few comments. I was really glad that film got reconsidered and restored. 

Have his book, too, which came out around that time. It's a good read. Amusingly, he makes no mention of The Guardian at all -- his evil tree film. It's one of those few horror films Erika has seen but I haven't; what I did see of it -- the first five minutes or so -- was, how to put it politely, unconvincing. I turned it off so as to spare myself the embarrassment; presumably he didn't write about it for similar reasons.

I felt bad for him that he ever had, because of The Exorcist, his arm twisted to make other horror films, which is what The Guardian feels like (those first few minutes, anyhow). I never did watch that exorcism documentary he made -- his previous film -- for just that reason. Is it worth seeing?

Killer Joe was certainly fun. Does everyone realize that the guy who Matt Damon takes for a traumatizing drive in Ford vs. Ferrari is the author of the play that film is based on? Bug, too. Two other very enjoyable Friedkins.

TBH I have mixed feelings about exorcism movies in general. I am almost always entertained by them, but the whole idea of demonic possession is so, uh, goddamn backwards that I don't know what to do with it. I mean, I was raised Catholic, right? There are things I think useful and interesting about Christianity, but the concept of demonic possession is not among them. Exorcism movies ultimately are like movies about global voyages where the threat of falling off the edge of the earth is taken seriously. 

But though I will watch the odd exorcism film, I don't actually care much for The Exorcist, these days. The opening stuff with Max in Iraq is great, but once the pea soup starts flying, I tune out. It seems like some sort of conservative political pornography ("kids these days," yadda yadda). Jason Miller is great in it and there are nice moments throughout but overall I just can't stick with it, the feeling of my eyes hitting the back of my head gets too distracting (though not because of the concept of exorcism, but because the subtext is just so fucking right-wing/ conservative). And it's not the only film of his that is politically suspect: Rules of Engagement is well made and interesting but it's ultimately so over-the-top in its Islamophobia that, bonk, there go your eyes again, better get that checked. 

But the fact of his having made a few movies I consider kinda politically contemptible on some level somehow only serves to underscore how remarkable a filmmaker he was. He contained multitudes. 

BTW if you wonder about Cruising, which got attacked as homophobic, you should read Robin Wood on the film in Hollywood From Vietnam to Reagan (a noted queer film critic who greatly admired the movie). There's a PDF of the whole book, in its expanded later edition, on Google Drive that I was able to find online; if that link works, start around page 42, where the film is first mentioned, then keep going for about 20 pages. I guess the hope that an extended cut of that would surface is dashed with Friedkin's death, but it was never a very big hope. It's still very worthy of re-consideration.  

Trivial note, speaking of queer cinema and Friedkin: Ryszard Bugajski, director of Clearcut, admired Friedkin's gay-themed The Boys in the Band quite a bit. We talk about that on the commentary on the Severin box set, though I forget now if the comments that I recall were apropos of that or Midnight Cowboy, which we also talked about; they could apply equally to both films. But Bugajski was impressed to see American filmmakers making films about America that were both accurate and CRITICAL of their own country, which was not really done in Communist Poland (but which he himself would do, of course, with The Interrogation and later with General Nil, The Closed Circuit, and Blindness). If you have the box set and are a Friedkin fan, maybe you'll find that part of the commentary interesting to listen to? (Not sure where it is, but listen to the whole thing! I have yet to hear of anyone who has).

I am very glad Friedkin completed one more film, and what sounds like a major one. 

RIP, Mr. Friedkin; thanks for the movies.