September 29, 2015 • 35 mins
William Friedkin is the director of more than twenty films, among them "The Exorcist" and "The French Connection." For the latter, Friedkin won the 1971 Academy Award for Best Director, based on the film's stunning action sequences and incandescent appearances by Roy Scheider and Gene Hackman.
"I would like to tell you it was all my genius," Friedkin tells host Alec Baldwin at the Turner Classic Film Festival, "but I had nothing to do with casting the two leads in that picture."
Friedkin goes on to explain why he doesn't audition actors, how knowing a Sicilian helps with location scouting, and why learning to play tennis killed his career.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to. Here's the thing,
My chance to talk with artists, policy makers and performers,
to hear their stories. What inspires their creations, what decisions
change their careers, what relationships influenced their work? Thank you
very much. Good evening, Good evening. My guest today is
(00:22):
film director William Friedkin. I spoke with him at the
Turner Classic Movies Festival in Hollywood, where we screened his
picture The French Connection. Film critic Roger Ebert called The
French Connection quote all surface movement, violence and suspense unquote.
Many say it has the best chase scene ever between
a car and an elevated train in Brooklyn. The French
(00:46):
Connection won five Academy Awards, but Friedkin told me it
wasn't a smooth ride to the red carpet. This film
had been turned down by every major studio at least twice.
And my do sir, a guy named Phil D'Antoni. He
and I were going to do Dirty Harry with Frank Sinatra,
(01:07):
and we had prepared that for about six months, and
then Sinatra pulled out and the project was dead. We
left and did The French Connection. But We went to
every studio and they all turned it down. And finally
Dick Zanek, who ran twentieth Century Fox, called us one
(01:29):
day and said, you know, I don't know what the
hell this thing is that you guys are talking about doing.
The scripts not very good, he said, but maybe if
I just have a hunch up about it, if you
can make this thing for a million and a half dollars,
go ahead. And he said, you better do it right
away because I'm gonna be kicked out of here in
(01:50):
about three weeks. And he was now New York. The
New York that's depicted in this movie in the in
the early seven these is a steaming, feated cesspool. Obviously,
it's just so disgusting that there might be a couple
of blocks in the sixties between Fifth and Park that
(02:12):
might be cleaner than might have been cleaned up. But
it was a pretty nasty back then, right. I liked it,
you know, I thought it was I thought it was
very cinematic. And I'm from Chicago, and I used to
ride the subways and the elevated trains all the time,
and I love the streets. I love the streets. And
(02:32):
after this film was successful and I had another successful film.
After that, I moved to California, learned how to play
tennis and ruined my career. Don't ever if you're a
young filmmaker, don't ever learn how to play tennis. Forget it.
(02:53):
And you know you wanna walk the streets the way
you did. You want to ride the subways, you want
to see life. And so that's the way I approached
this film. I came from this world. Did slumming? Did
they give you your way in terms of the casting.
What was it like for you casting actors back then
(03:15):
when you made this film. Well, originally I wanted Jackie
Gleason and the hell is so funny Jackie Gleason, you know,
it's one of the greatest actors who ever lived and
uh he was known as a comedian. But Dick Zanick said, no,
I will never make another film with Jackie Gleason because
(03:37):
Gleason had just prior to this, made a film that
was the biggest disaster in the history of Fox. It
was a silent movie about a clown called gi Go
and it was a disaster. So we went through a
lot of guys and we had um a very short
(03:58):
time left when we had this at and we had
a meeting with Gene Hackman, my producer, and I. We
weren't that impressed. It was one of the dullest meetings
I've ever had. But we had to start the picture,
and so we hired Gene. I hired Roy Scheider immediately
(04:19):
he walked into the room. I had a casting director
who was not really a casting director. He was a
critic for The Village Voice and he uh had. His
name was Bob Wiener, and he had discovered a lot
of interesting people as a critic. He discovered Whoopie Goldberg
(04:40):
a number of other people. And he brought me Roy Scheider,
who had not made a film. And Scheider came into
my office and sat down. He had a resemblance to
the character he played, whose name is Sonny Grasso. He's
in the film too. I never auditioned. I've never have
and never will addition and actor. I think it's embarrassing,
(05:03):
you know, I think you probably know this early in
your career. A lot of actors can read but then
can't act it, or vice versa. So I go on
instinct and Scheider sat down. I said, so what are
you doing now, Roy? He said, well, I'm in an
off Broadway play by Jean Jane and I said, what
(05:26):
part do you play? He said, I play a cigar
smoking nun. And I said, it's interesting. Okay, you're hired.
That was it. He was perfect. He walked in the
room as he was perfect. You know. Hackman had done Bonnie,
done Bonnie and Clyde, but uh, you know, he was
(05:48):
not really a lead. He was a great supporting actor,
but hadn't played a leading role. And I didn't see
him as Ed Egan. Let me say right away that
I believe he became one of the greatest American actors ever. No, absolutely,
(06:08):
but I didn't have him in mind at all. And
I had a shorthand with my casting director. I said
to him, look, let's get that to play the part
of the French guy. Let's get that guy that was
in that movie belde Jure, you know, as a Louis
Bonoel film, wonderful movie, Catherine Di. Let's get the guy.
(06:32):
You know, he had a kind of a beard, um
two or three day growth of beard. And he said,
you mean, uh uh, I forget the name of that
Pierre something. I said, no, not that guy, the other guy.
The So he went out and he hired this guy
(06:53):
and he said, okay, the guy's name is Fernando Ray.
I said, we'll hire him. So I went to the airport,
Kennedy Airport, met his plane and uh, in those days,
you could go right to the gate, and I didn't
see the guys looking for I got paged. I went
(07:16):
to the desk and there's this guy and it's not
the guy from Bell Dejure. It was not at all
the guy from Bel Dejure. But his name was Fernando Ray.
So I meet this Guy's got this little goatee and
he's very sophisticated Spanish. He looked like a Spanish grande.
(07:39):
And the guy who was playing was had been a
longshoreman and a Corsican, you know, a real rough hewn guy.
So I'm driving this guy to his hotel and uh,
I said, you know you you can't have this uh
goatee for this case. Oh, I could never share my goatee.
(08:02):
I said, why not? He said, Oh, I have sores
all over my face. You would never want to see
the sword. He said. By the way, you know, I'm
not French, I'm Spanish, but I can learn enough French.
I said, you weren't in Belle de Jure. No, no,
I wasn't in bell Dejure. I've done other films with
(08:23):
Louis spoonwell, but not Belle de Jure. So I get
him into his hotel and I called my casting director
and producer. I said, you stupid asshole, I said, this
is not the guy. This is the wrong guy. Thank
you very much. This is the wrong guy. And so
(08:44):
he's what are you talking about? I said, this isn't
the guy from Belle de Jure. So he looked it
up and indeed the guy we wanted was named Francisco Ribal.
So he said, well, what do you want me to do.
I said, fire this guy and hire friend Cisco Ribal.
I went back in the office. By the time I
(09:04):
got there, they found that, uh, Francisco Ribal was not available,
did not speak a word of English, so we got
stuck with Fernando Ray. I would like to tell you
that it was all my genius, but I didn't. I
(09:25):
had nothing to do with casting the two leads in
this picture. Now here it was. It was really the
gift of the movie God. And I think you'll bear
this out. There is a movie God. You know that
sometimes smiles upon you an other times I wasna. I
(09:47):
did the movie Hunt for Red October and they offered
it to Sean Connery and he was sick. He had
throat cancer and orient something seriously wrong with him, and
they said he can't do the film. So they cast
uh Klaus Maria and Dour in the lead role. And
he was casting the lead and they called me up
and they said we're gonna get Las Maria. Brand said okay,
and then Connery calls back, like several weeks later, he's
(10:09):
had treatments and he's on the mend and he comes
back and said, I think I can do the film.
So they called Classma Brandon when they say, you know,
what were the dates you said you could work? And BRANDI,
I am directing an opera and I am appearing in
a film in the early window, I can shoot the
film as these six weeks. I have to shoot the
film these six weeks. And they were like, oh, that's
too bad. We're so sorry. We'd get the schedule. We
(10:33):
can't do it during those six weeks. Were so very sorry, Klaus.
And he's gone, and Sean showed up and there you go.
So the casting of films can sometimes be very very
and sometimes it's very strange. It was in this picture.
I can't think of anyone else in that part. Now, Um,
he was just great and an absolutely wonderful actor. He
(10:56):
told me how he got his start in film. He
was actually discover Herd by Louise bun Well. Um. Bun
Well's producer brought Bunwell to see some movie with another actor.
He wanted to look at another actor in that film.
And uh, after the movie, his producer said, well, what
did you think? And he said, oh, I didn't like
(11:18):
that actor. But the guy who plays the corpse, the
dead guy, which is was Fernando Ray. He had no lines.
He was laying in a coffin, and boon Well hired him. Now,
I wrote this down. I have it on a piece
of paper, but I may have left it in my seat.
But off the top of my head, I'm struggling. Who
edited this film? Who cut this film for you? A
(11:38):
guy called Jerry Greenberg? Okay, and what was that experience? Like, yeah,
let's hear it for the editing in this film? Who? Um?
Jerry Greenberg edited The Boys in the Band with a
man named Carl Lerner who was a very distinguished New
York film editor, and Jerry was his assistant. And uh,
(12:01):
when it came time to do this, Carl Lerner wasn't available,
so I asked Jerry to do. What was that experience
like for you? And him? Did it? Was he responsible
for most of the cuts? Who do you get heavily
involved without your song? I I work on every single
aspect of editing. That's where the film is made. You know.
To me, what you shoot is just raw material for
the cutting room. The the when I first made films
(12:25):
in New York, we would, uh, we'd come somewhere and
you know, I think if my memory for years ago,
as we'd stand inside of building and someone would say, man,
this is a great lobby, and I think this is great,
but you know, we can't kind of deal with them.
This location is too expensive. And someone would make a
joke and they'd say, well, we can come in here
and do it Paul Morrissey style, you know. And when
I was younger in the business, I turnus, I go,
(12:46):
what does he mean, what's Paul Morrissey style? He said
that means we run into the building without permits and
we just start shooting till they kick us out. We
kind of we go in, we stage it, and we
go in. We squeeze off a couple of quick masters
and some shots, and then we run out before the
cops come. And I was like, wow, shoot up, miss
people do that? I must say this film. Did you
have permits for everything you did? For this? We didn't
(13:07):
have a permit for for nothing except one thing. We
had no permits to shoot in the streets or any
of that. We just went out. But I had some
actual cops with me who had badges and stuff, off
duty cops and the two original French Connection cops. But
I thought my producer and I thought, well, you know what,
(13:28):
we better get permission from the subway to shoot on
an elevated train. So so we went to see this guy.
First of all, I asked him he was the head
of the transit authority. He uh, it wasn't the CEO
(13:48):
or anything like that, but he ran everything. We got
an appointment with him, and the first thing I had
to ask him was how fast can one of these
trains go? Which I didn't know. I said, if a
train could go at top speed at i'll say a
hundred miles an hour. This chase idea would not work
(14:09):
because the car would not be able to catch the train.
And he said, well, the fastest speed that one of
these trains goes as fifty miles an hour. So I
the great, We've got a chase scene here. He said,
what do you mean great? He said, the way you've
described what you want to do. He said, if I
(14:30):
gave you permission to do this, I would be fired.
He said, we have never had a train crash, We've
never had a guy hijack a train. He said, it's
just you know, it really never has happened, and it
would be extraordinarily difficult for me to approve anything approaching
(14:51):
what you've just told me. So we thanked him, and
I figured, well I'll steal this thing, and we started
on a way out. He said, wait a minute, were
you going? And my producer said, you just told us
it would be extraordinarily difficult. He said, did I say impossible? No.
(15:14):
My producer, who is a Sicilian, said to him how much?
He said, New York He said forty thousand dollars and
a one way ticket to Jamaica. And uh, I remember saying, well,
why a one way ticket? Why don't you just go
(15:35):
down have a nice face, he said, because if I
give you permission, I will get fired and we'll we'll
have to go down there and live live out my life.
And that's what happened. Well, we gave him forty grand
which was a huge percentage of the budget, and he
lived happily ever after in Jamaica. There was no chase
(15:59):
scene in the original script, so Friedkin and its producer
Phil D'Antoni added one they were determined to outdo the
chase scene in Bullet, the Steve McQueen film released a
few years earlier. Take a listen to the Here's the
Thing Archives, Well you can hear Turner Classic Movies host
Robert Osborne talk about his night with Lucille Ball. Where
(16:22):
was the house on Roxbury right next door to Jack
Benning exactly and just down the street from Ira gersh
one and around the corner front celebrity back with me.
You take a listen, and Here's the Thing Dot Org.
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
(16:43):
When The Exorcist came out in it ushered in a
new age of horror cinema. Audience reaction to the film
was so strong that theater ushers carried smelling salts to
revive those who had fainted. My guest, William Friedkin directed
the movie. Warner Brothers did not want me for The Exorcist.
(17:06):
Warner Brothers UH wanted for The Exorcist either Stanley Kubrick,
Arthur Penn, or Um who else? Arthur Pens, Stanley, Mike
Nichols and Arthur Penn turned it down. He said he
didn't want to do any more violence on film he
(17:28):
had done Bonnie and Clyde. And Mike Nichols said, you
will never be able to get a twelve year old
girl to carry this film on her back and do
the kind of things that are required. And Kubrick said, look,
I only UH direct the films that I find and
(17:50):
prepare myself. So all three of them turned it down,
and the guy who wrote the novel in the screen
play wanted me. And finally I was like the last
man standing, and I had just won the Academy Award.
That's how I got the exerci Now the same as
(18:11):
with with French Connection, as with I mean, you do
these two films back to back, French Connection and The
Exorcist to classic films. Um what's it like in terms
of you directing actors? Are you very Do you just
hire them and you bring them in to do what
you know they're gonna do, or do you have some
kind of input with what they're like. Let me tell
you how I work on a film. I I would
(18:31):
not work this way on a play, And I direct
a lot of operas, and I don't work this way
on an opera. But with a film, the films that
I've made, I'm more interested in spontaneity than anything else.
The stuff that I do, the scripts that I've done,
is not Shakespeare, you know. It's mostly street dialect, especially
(18:54):
the French connection. So I want spontaneity, so I don't rehearse.
I would talk to the actors and find the things
that move them, either that caused them to laugh or
cry or be frightened or whatever, and I would use
those things from time to time in the making of
(19:16):
the film to suggest, whenever it was necessary, some emotion.
But I would never tell an actor really how to
do it. The thing I look for more than anything
else in an actor is intelligence. The actor's ability to
perceive what the story is about and a way to
(19:40):
get into it and you can find that out just
by talking to an actor, you know, Roy Scheider. When
I cast and he said, don't you want me to
read for this part? I said, there's nothing to read.
The guy goes, uh, get your hands up, Get what
what is that? Who wants to listen to that? And
a and a goddamn inference room? You know? Uh, He's
(20:03):
so No, there's nothing to read. It wouldn't the Academy
Award for Screenplay too exactly. But when you come, when
you come into the experience of doing I'm only mentioning
this because of it's because you're coming from French connection
and winning the Oscar and having all the success, and
you come into um the Exorcist. Was Jason Miller your
(20:23):
first choice? It wasn't the same thing again where a
whole lot of actors turned down the parts of the content.
Once again, it was the movie God we had cast
another first of all this for The Exorcist. The studio
wanted either Audrey Hepburn, Jane Fonda, or Anne Bancroft, and
I thought, wonderful, you know this is great. After they
(20:45):
hired me, so they offered the part to Audrey Hepburn,
and she was married to an Italian doctor living in Italy.
She read the script and she called me and said,
you know, I this is very interesting. It's different for me,
but I'd love to do it, but you have to
come to Italy to film it. And I said, I'm
(21:07):
not gonna go to Italy. I don't speak Italian and
I wouldn't be able to communicate directly with the crew.
We'd have to bring every actor over to Italy because
you know it's set in Georgetown. And I said, miss Hepburn,
wouldn't you just come over for a little while and
(21:28):
do this. No, so she was out. We then went
to Anne Bancroft, who said, I think this is terrific.
So I love to do this, but I have to
tell you I'm in my first month of pregnancy. And
she said, if you guys want to wait for me now,
I said to her, look, I think when you have
(21:49):
your child, you are not gonna want to go right
back to work. Nor do we want to wait nine months. Unfortunately,
so we had a let her go. We then sent
it to Jane Fonda, who sent us all the same
telegram that said, why would I want to be in
(22:10):
a piece of capitalist rip off? Bullshit like this. Now
I've seen her since and she doesn't remember having sent that,
but I haven't. That was her response. That I don't
know how she really felt, but that was her response, honest. Yeah. Meanwhile,
(22:32):
Ellen Burston was hockeing me all the time. I had
seen the Last Picture Show, but I didn't know Ellen
Burston from Claris Leachman. I didn't know which was which.
But Ellen said to me, do you believe in destiny?
Has anyone ever asked you that before? Uh? Well, she
(22:56):
was the only one who ever asked me that. And
I said, I guess I believe. And she said, I'm
destined to play this part. I said, look, with the
studio wants Jane Fonda and Bancroft or Audrey Hepburn, this
was all going on. She said, I don't care. I'm
destined to play this part. And it came about that
she was the last person standing, and so we cast
(23:19):
her against the wishes of the studio. They did not
they wanted a big star for that um. Then we
cast Stacy Keach to play Father Cares. He was a
great is a great actor. He was the go to
Eugene O'Neill actor on Broadway, and what happened. I went
(23:45):
to New York and maybe it was that No but no,
we cast her. I went to New York and I
saw the opening night of a play called That Championships Season.
And it was written by a man named Jason Miller.
Never heard of him. Uh I thought the play was great.
(24:08):
It was it really reeked of lapsed Catholicism. It was
a play about a group of high school guys who
won a championship under their coach, but cheated to win
and they were suffering this guilt and the stage was
just filled with Catholic guild. I felt so I I
(24:32):
said to my casting director, who was this guy that
wrote this? I'd love to talk to him, just to
talk to him. It turned out that he had studied
for the priesthood three years at Catholic University in Georgetown.
He came up to meet me in and I was
staying at the Sherry Netherlands Hotel and I had the
(24:53):
flu and I had a lot of pills. He thought
I was a pill freak, and uh, I thought he
was a drunk. And he didn't know what the hell
he was doing up there. And I asked him a
lot of questions about studying for the priesthood and stuff,
and I was a horrible meeting. And I went back
to Los Angeles and about two weeks later, as we're
(25:17):
starting to prepare the picture, he called me at Warner
Brothers and he said, hey, you know that that book
you were telling me about that You're going to film
that Exorcist? He said, I said yeah. He said, I
am that guy. He said, I am that character. I said, well,
you're not. Stacy keach is that he's going to play
(25:39):
the part. He said, I'm telling you, man, I am
this guy. And he said, have you ever done anything
like a screen test? And I said no, I've never
shot a screen test. And what's the point. I told you,
we've cast this. He had never made a film, never
been in a movie, only played very small acting roles
(26:01):
in a road road companies. He was delivering milk in Flushing,
New York when he wrote Championship Season, and so he said,
you gotta test me. You have to give me a
screen test. I said, why, what a waste of time?
He said, Man, I'm telling you so. I had great
(26:23):
respect for him as a writer. I said, you want
to shoot a screen test? Okay? You come out here
on your own. You get out here. It was like,
let's say it was a Tuesday. I said him, get
out here by Thursday, and i'll shoot a screen test
with you and i'll take it out of the camera
and give it to you so you can show it
(26:45):
to your kids. And Uh, he said, oh, I can't
get out there Thursday. I said, what do you mean,
He said, I don't fly. He said, I'll take the train.
I'll be out there in a week, all right. So
I set up an empty stage with a great cinematographer
(27:07):
named Bill Freaker, and I had cast Burston and I said, look,
we're gonna do a test to this guy, and let's
do the scene where you first meet him in a
little park in Georgetown and you tell him that you
think your daughter is possessed. And she said, what why
(27:28):
are we doing this? You've got a great actor. I said,
I don't know why we're doing this. And I swear
to God, I didn't We shoot the test, no sets,
just Bill Freaker lighting in an empty studio, and they
did that scene one take. And then I had Ellen
(27:49):
Uh interview Jason with the camera over her shoulder on him,
where she just asked him questions about his life, who
he was, what his background was, his family, everything, And
then I shot a very tight close up of him
saying the Mass, but not saying it the way you
(28:11):
used to hear it. Maybe you still do in church
where the priest just rattles it off. You know the
name of the Father a little book. I said, I
would say the words of the Mass as though you
really mean them, and well, you mean every word, and
and say it, uh, with as much conviction as you can,
(28:32):
and take your time. And I shot that in a
close up. And we did that, and I wasn't sure
about anything. But Burston came over to me and said,
you're not going to hire this guy, are you? And
I said, well why not? She said he can't act.
He said he's not an actor. He can't act. And
(28:53):
she said, when I tell Father Caress this story, worry
about my daughter. I have to break down and collapse
in his arms, and I need a big strong man
to do that. It happened that she had was going
with a big strong man at that time who was
an actor that she wanted me to consider. But uh,
(29:17):
she said, this guy is about five six. I said,
you're probably right. And the next morning I saw the
dailies and the camera just loved this guy. The camera
just loved him. He looked great, he was real. And
I went to Warner Brothers and I said, we're gonna
(29:38):
pay off Stacy Keach and hire this guy. And they said,
you're out of your mind. What is wrong with you?
You're crazy, but you're possessed, Yes, something like that. I
didn't want to do it. The writer didn't want to
do it. Uh, nobody wanted to do it. But I said,
this is what we're gonna do, and that's what we did.
(30:01):
And he was brilliant, incredible. You said that Nichols said,
no twelve year old could carry that film. How did
you solve that problem? You yourself with Linda Blair. Nichols
was wrong because he had not met Linda Blair. We
we had cat We had auditioned several thousand girls. They
(30:24):
were put on tape from all across the country by
casting directors, and I must have looked at five hundred
of them myself, just a minute or two and then out.
And it appeared that there was nobody who could play
this part who was twelve years old. And I had
(30:44):
reached a point where I felt like that we couldn't
make the picture. You could not find a twelve year
old girl who a would understand all this stuff or
be not be scarred by it, maybe for the rest
of her life. And I didn't see that possibility in
any of the audition tapes. We started to look at
(31:07):
sixteen year olds who looked younger, and fifteen year olds,
and one day my assistant in New York said, there's
a woman out here who's brought her daughter. Her name
is Eleanor Blair, and she doesn't have an appointment. Would
you see her? And I said, okay, why not? Because
(31:28):
we were striking out all over the place. In came
this little girl with her mother. She was twelve, and
I knew immediately that she was the girl instantly she
sat down. She had never acted. She had done those
things that you see like in the New York Daily News,
(31:49):
in these newspapers with girls model coats and little dresses
or shoes or something. She had done that, but no acting.
So she sat down with her mother and I am
She was a straight A student in Westport, Connecticut, and
she was had one blue ribbons showing horses at Madison Square. Garden,
(32:12):
but had never acted. But I said to her, Linda,
do you know anything about this story? Do you know
anything about the the Exorcist story? And she said, oh yes,
I read the book as she did. She said yes,
and I looked at her mother. Mother nodded, and I said,
what what is it about? And she said, well, it's
about a little girl who gets possessed by a devil
(32:36):
and she does a whole bunch of bad things. I said, well,
like what and she said, well, she hits her mother
across the face, and she pushes a man out of
her bedroom window, and she masturbates with a crucifix. And
I said uh. I looked at her. Mother was smiling,
(32:57):
and I said you know what that means. She said
what I said to to to masturbate? And she said
it was like jerking off, isn't it? And I said yes.
Her mother was still smiling, and I said to her,
have you ever done that? Have you ever done what
(33:18):
you just said? She said, sure, haven't you? And so
I hired her A kindred spirit. A kindred spirit. When
I look at your career, it said you you make
these films in the early seventies, and by the time
you go to make Sorcerer. The movie business has changed.
Did you feel that that you feel was changing underneath
(33:40):
your face? Yes, I would tell my younger self or
anybody who is starting in the film business at any time,
do not escalate your expectations. Learn as much as you
can from watching the works of filmmakers you admire. For
the most part, they are the masters now. I never
(34:03):
studied film. I never spent one day in a classroom
learning about film technique. I never studied the camera. I
started in live television in the mail room of a
television station and work my way up. In today's world,
if you're of any age, you can go out. You
(34:24):
can buy a little digital camera. You can go out
and shoot your own film and learn from what you're doing.
You don't need to go to a film school or
a film class. I think you just need to practice.
If I was starting today, I would get it together
(34:44):
by a camera, shoot something that represented how I felt
about things, cut it and now. Then you can also
put it on the internet. You can watch William Friedkin's
movie The Exorcist right now on Netflix. X. This is
Alec Baldwin you're listening to. Here's the thing
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to. Here's the thing,
My chance to talk with artists, policy makers and performers,
to hear their stories. What inspires their creations, what decisions
change their careers, what relationships influenced their work? Thank you
very much. Good evening, Good evening. My guest today is
(00:22):
film director William Friedkin. I spoke with him at the
Turner Classic Movies Festival in Hollywood, where we screened his
picture The French Connection. Film critic Roger Ebert called The
French Connection quote all surface movement, violence and suspense unquote.
Many say it has the best chase scene ever between
a car and an elevated train in Brooklyn. The French
(00:46):
Connection won five Academy Awards, but Friedkin told me it
wasn't a smooth ride to the red carpet. This film
had been turned down by every major studio at least twice.
And my do sir, a guy named Phil D'Antoni. He
and I were going to do Dirty Harry with Frank Sinatra,
(01:07):
and we had prepared that for about six months, and
then Sinatra pulled out and the project was dead. We
left and did The French Connection. But We went to
every studio and they all turned it down. And finally
Dick Zanek, who ran twentieth Century Fox, called us one
(01:29):
day and said, you know, I don't know what the
hell this thing is that you guys are talking about doing.
The scripts not very good, he said, but maybe if
I just have a hunch up about it, if you
can make this thing for a million and a half dollars,
go ahead. And he said, you better do it right
away because I'm gonna be kicked out of here in
(01:50):
about three weeks. And he was now New York. The
New York that's depicted in this movie in the in
the early seven these is a steaming, feated cesspool. Obviously,
it's just so disgusting that there might be a couple
of blocks in the sixties between Fifth and Park that
(02:12):
might be cleaner than might have been cleaned up. But
it was a pretty nasty back then, right. I liked it,
you know, I thought it was I thought it was
very cinematic. And I'm from Chicago, and I used to
ride the subways and the elevated trains all the time,
and I love the streets. I love the streets. And
(02:32):
after this film was successful and I had another successful film.
After that, I moved to California, learned how to play
tennis and ruined my career. Don't ever if you're a
young filmmaker, don't ever learn how to play tennis. Forget it.
(02:53):
And you know you wanna walk the streets the way
you did. You want to ride the subways, you want
to see life. And so that's the way I approached
this film. I came from this world. Did slumming? Did
they give you your way in terms of the casting.
What was it like for you casting actors back then
(03:15):
when you made this film. Well, originally I wanted Jackie
Gleason and the hell is so funny Jackie Gleason, you know,
it's one of the greatest actors who ever lived and
uh he was known as a comedian. But Dick Zanick said, no,
I will never make another film with Jackie Gleason because
(03:37):
Gleason had just prior to this, made a film that
was the biggest disaster in the history of Fox. It
was a silent movie about a clown called gi Go
and it was a disaster. So we went through a
lot of guys and we had um a very short
(03:58):
time left when we had this at and we had
a meeting with Gene Hackman, my producer, and I. We
weren't that impressed. It was one of the dullest meetings
I've ever had. But we had to start the picture,
and so we hired Gene. I hired Roy Scheider immediately
(04:19):
he walked into the room. I had a casting director
who was not really a casting director. He was a
critic for The Village Voice and he uh had. His
name was Bob Wiener, and he had discovered a lot
of interesting people as a critic. He discovered Whoopie Goldberg
(04:40):
a number of other people. And he brought me Roy Scheider,
who had not made a film. And Scheider came into
my office and sat down. He had a resemblance to
the character he played, whose name is Sonny Grasso. He's
in the film too. I never auditioned. I've never have
and never will addition and actor. I think it's embarrassing,
(05:03):
you know, I think you probably know this early in
your career. A lot of actors can read but then
can't act it, or vice versa. So I go on
instinct and Scheider sat down. I said, so what are
you doing now, Roy? He said, well, I'm in an
off Broadway play by Jean Jane and I said, what
(05:26):
part do you play? He said, I play a cigar
smoking nun. And I said, it's interesting. Okay, you're hired.
That was it. He was perfect. He walked in the
room as he was perfect. You know. Hackman had done Bonnie,
done Bonnie and Clyde, but uh, you know, he was
(05:48):
not really a lead. He was a great supporting actor,
but hadn't played a leading role. And I didn't see
him as Ed Egan. Let me say right away that
I believe he became one of the greatest American actors ever. No, absolutely,
(06:08):
but I didn't have him in mind at all. And
I had a shorthand with my casting director. I said
to him, look, let's get that to play the part
of the French guy. Let's get that guy that was
in that movie belde Jure, you know, as a Louis
Bonoel film, wonderful movie, Catherine Di. Let's get the guy.
(06:32):
You know, he had a kind of a beard, um
two or three day growth of beard. And he said,
you mean, uh uh, I forget the name of that
Pierre something. I said, no, not that guy, the other guy.
The So he went out and he hired this guy
(06:53):
and he said, okay, the guy's name is Fernando Ray.
I said, we'll hire him. So I went to the airport,
Kennedy Airport, met his plane and uh, in those days,
you could go right to the gate, and I didn't
see the guys looking for I got paged. I went
(07:16):
to the desk and there's this guy and it's not
the guy from Bell Dejure. It was not at all
the guy from Bel Dejure. But his name was Fernando Ray.
So I meet this Guy's got this little goatee and
he's very sophisticated Spanish. He looked like a Spanish grande.
(07:39):
And the guy who was playing was had been a
longshoreman and a Corsican, you know, a real rough hewn guy.
So I'm driving this guy to his hotel and uh,
I said, you know you you can't have this uh
goatee for this case. Oh, I could never share my goatee.
(08:02):
I said, why not? He said, Oh, I have sores
all over my face. You would never want to see
the sword. He said. By the way, you know, I'm
not French, I'm Spanish, but I can learn enough French.
I said, you weren't in Belle de Jure. No, no,
I wasn't in bell Dejure. I've done other films with
(08:23):
Louis spoonwell, but not Belle de Jure. So I get
him into his hotel and I called my casting director
and producer. I said, you stupid asshole, I said, this
is not the guy. This is the wrong guy. Thank
you very much. This is the wrong guy. And so
(08:44):
he's what are you talking about? I said, this isn't
the guy from Belle de Jure. So he looked it
up and indeed the guy we wanted was named Francisco Ribal.
So he said, well, what do you want me to do.
I said, fire this guy and hire friend Cisco Ribal.
I went back in the office. By the time I
(09:04):
got there, they found that, uh, Francisco Ribal was not available,
did not speak a word of English, so we got
stuck with Fernando Ray. I would like to tell you
that it was all my genius, but I didn't. I
(09:25):
had nothing to do with casting the two leads in
this picture. Now here it was. It was really the
gift of the movie God. And I think you'll bear
this out. There is a movie God. You know that
sometimes smiles upon you an other times I wasna. I
(09:47):
did the movie Hunt for Red October and they offered
it to Sean Connery and he was sick. He had
throat cancer and orient something seriously wrong with him, and
they said he can't do the film. So they cast
uh Klaus Maria and Dour in the lead role. And
he was casting the lead and they called me up
and they said we're gonna get Las Maria. Brand said okay,
and then Connery calls back, like several weeks later, he's
(10:09):
had treatments and he's on the mend and he comes
back and said, I think I can do the film.
So they called Classma Brandon when they say, you know,
what were the dates you said you could work? And BRANDI,
I am directing an opera and I am appearing in
a film in the early window, I can shoot the
film as these six weeks. I have to shoot the
film these six weeks. And they were like, oh, that's
too bad. We're so sorry. We'd get the schedule. We
(10:33):
can't do it during those six weeks. Were so very sorry, Klaus.
And he's gone, and Sean showed up and there you go.
So the casting of films can sometimes be very very
and sometimes it's very strange. It was in this picture.
I can't think of anyone else in that part. Now, Um,
he was just great and an absolutely wonderful actor. He
(10:56):
told me how he got his start in film. He
was actually discover Herd by Louise bun Well. Um. Bun
Well's producer brought Bunwell to see some movie with another actor.
He wanted to look at another actor in that film.
And uh, after the movie, his producer said, well, what
did you think? And he said, oh, I didn't like
(11:18):
that actor. But the guy who plays the corpse, the
dead guy, which is was Fernando Ray. He had no lines.
He was laying in a coffin, and boon Well hired him. Now,
I wrote this down. I have it on a piece
of paper, but I may have left it in my seat.
But off the top of my head, I'm struggling. Who
edited this film? Who cut this film for you? A
(11:38):
guy called Jerry Greenberg? Okay, and what was that experience? Like, yeah,
let's hear it for the editing in this film? Who? Um?
Jerry Greenberg edited The Boys in the Band with a
man named Carl Lerner who was a very distinguished New
York film editor, and Jerry was his assistant. And uh,
(12:01):
when it came time to do this, Carl Lerner wasn't available,
so I asked Jerry to do. What was that experience
like for you? And him? Did it? Was he responsible
for most of the cuts? Who do you get heavily
involved without your song? I I work on every single
aspect of editing. That's where the film is made. You know.
To me, what you shoot is just raw material for
the cutting room. The the when I first made films
(12:25):
in New York, we would, uh, we'd come somewhere and
you know, I think if my memory for years ago,
as we'd stand inside of building and someone would say, man,
this is a great lobby, and I think this is great,
but you know, we can't kind of deal with them.
This location is too expensive. And someone would make a
joke and they'd say, well, we can come in here
and do it Paul Morrissey style, you know. And when
I was younger in the business, I turnus, I go,
(12:46):
what does he mean, what's Paul Morrissey style? He said
that means we run into the building without permits and
we just start shooting till they kick us out. We
kind of we go in, we stage it, and we
go in. We squeeze off a couple of quick masters
and some shots, and then we run out before the
cops come. And I was like, wow, shoot up, miss
people do that? I must say this film. Did you
have permits for everything you did? For this? We didn't
(13:07):
have a permit for for nothing except one thing. We
had no permits to shoot in the streets or any
of that. We just went out. But I had some
actual cops with me who had badges and stuff, off
duty cops and the two original French Connection cops. But
I thought my producer and I thought, well, you know what,
(13:28):
we better get permission from the subway to shoot on
an elevated train. So so we went to see this guy.
First of all, I asked him he was the head
of the transit authority. He uh, it wasn't the CEO
(13:48):
or anything like that, but he ran everything. We got
an appointment with him, and the first thing I had
to ask him was how fast can one of these
trains go? Which I didn't know. I said, if a
train could go at top speed at i'll say a
hundred miles an hour. This chase idea would not work
(14:09):
because the car would not be able to catch the train.
And he said, well, the fastest speed that one of
these trains goes as fifty miles an hour. So I
the great, We've got a chase scene here. He said,
what do you mean great? He said, the way you've
described what you want to do. He said, if I
(14:30):
gave you permission to do this, I would be fired.
He said, we have never had a train crash, We've
never had a guy hijack a train. He said, it's
just you know, it really never has happened, and it
would be extraordinarily difficult for me to approve anything approaching
(14:51):
what you've just told me. So we thanked him, and
I figured, well I'll steal this thing, and we started
on a way out. He said, wait a minute, were
you going? And my producer said, you just told us
it would be extraordinarily difficult. He said, did I say impossible? No.
(15:14):
My producer, who is a Sicilian, said to him how much?
He said, New York He said forty thousand dollars and
a one way ticket to Jamaica. And uh, I remember saying, well,
why a one way ticket? Why don't you just go
(15:35):
down have a nice face, he said, because if I
give you permission, I will get fired and we'll we'll
have to go down there and live live out my life.
And that's what happened. Well, we gave him forty grand
which was a huge percentage of the budget, and he
lived happily ever after in Jamaica. There was no chase
(15:59):
scene in the original script, so Friedkin and its producer
Phil D'Antoni added one they were determined to outdo the
chase scene in Bullet, the Steve McQueen film released a
few years earlier. Take a listen to the Here's the
Thing Archives, Well you can hear Turner Classic Movies host
Robert Osborne talk about his night with Lucille Ball. Where
(16:22):
was the house on Roxbury right next door to Jack
Benning exactly and just down the street from Ira gersh
one and around the corner front celebrity back with me.
You take a listen, and Here's the Thing Dot Org.
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
(16:43):
When The Exorcist came out in it ushered in a
new age of horror cinema. Audience reaction to the film
was so strong that theater ushers carried smelling salts to
revive those who had fainted. My guest, William Friedkin directed
the movie. Warner Brothers did not want me for The Exorcist.
(17:06):
Warner Brothers UH wanted for The Exorcist either Stanley Kubrick,
Arthur Penn, or Um who else? Arthur Pens, Stanley, Mike
Nichols and Arthur Penn turned it down. He said he
didn't want to do any more violence on film he
(17:28):
had done Bonnie and Clyde. And Mike Nichols said, you
will never be able to get a twelve year old
girl to carry this film on her back and do
the kind of things that are required. And Kubrick said, look,
I only UH direct the films that I find and
(17:50):
prepare myself. So all three of them turned it down,
and the guy who wrote the novel in the screen
play wanted me. And finally I was like the last
man standing, and I had just won the Academy Award.
That's how I got the exerci Now the same as
(18:11):
with with French Connection, as with I mean, you do
these two films back to back, French Connection and The
Exorcist to classic films. Um what's it like in terms
of you directing actors? Are you very Do you just
hire them and you bring them in to do what
you know they're gonna do, or do you have some
kind of input with what they're like. Let me tell
you how I work on a film. I I would
(18:31):
not work this way on a play, And I direct
a lot of operas, and I don't work this way
on an opera. But with a film, the films that
I've made, I'm more interested in spontaneity than anything else.
The stuff that I do, the scripts that I've done,
is not Shakespeare, you know. It's mostly street dialect, especially
(18:54):
the French connection. So I want spontaneity, so I don't rehearse.
I would talk to the actors and find the things
that move them, either that caused them to laugh or
cry or be frightened or whatever, and I would use
those things from time to time in the making of
(19:16):
the film to suggest, whenever it was necessary, some emotion.
But I would never tell an actor really how to
do it. The thing I look for more than anything
else in an actor is intelligence. The actor's ability to
perceive what the story is about and a way to
(19:40):
get into it and you can find that out just
by talking to an actor, you know, Roy Scheider. When
I cast and he said, don't you want me to
read for this part? I said, there's nothing to read.
The guy goes, uh, get your hands up, Get what
what is that? Who wants to listen to that? And
a and a goddamn inference room? You know? Uh, He's
(20:03):
so No, there's nothing to read. It wouldn't the Academy
Award for Screenplay too exactly. But when you come, when
you come into the experience of doing I'm only mentioning
this because of it's because you're coming from French connection
and winning the Oscar and having all the success, and
you come into um the Exorcist. Was Jason Miller your
(20:23):
first choice? It wasn't the same thing again where a
whole lot of actors turned down the parts of the content.
Once again, it was the movie God we had cast
another first of all this for The Exorcist. The studio
wanted either Audrey Hepburn, Jane Fonda, or Anne Bancroft, and
I thought, wonderful, you know this is great. After they
(20:45):
hired me, so they offered the part to Audrey Hepburn,
and she was married to an Italian doctor living in Italy.
She read the script and she called me and said,
you know, I this is very interesting. It's different for me,
but I'd love to do it, but you have to
come to Italy to film it. And I said, I'm
(21:07):
not gonna go to Italy. I don't speak Italian and
I wouldn't be able to communicate directly with the crew.
We'd have to bring every actor over to Italy because
you know it's set in Georgetown. And I said, miss Hepburn,
wouldn't you just come over for a little while and
(21:28):
do this. No, so she was out. We then went
to Anne Bancroft, who said, I think this is terrific.
So I love to do this, but I have to
tell you I'm in my first month of pregnancy. And
she said, if you guys want to wait for me now,
I said to her, look, I think when you have
(21:49):
your child, you are not gonna want to go right
back to work. Nor do we want to wait nine months. Unfortunately,
so we had a let her go. We then sent
it to Jane Fonda, who sent us all the same
telegram that said, why would I want to be in
(22:10):
a piece of capitalist rip off? Bullshit like this. Now
I've seen her since and she doesn't remember having sent that,
but I haven't. That was her response. That I don't
know how she really felt, but that was her response, honest. Yeah. Meanwhile,
(22:32):
Ellen Burston was hockeing me all the time. I had
seen the Last Picture Show, but I didn't know Ellen
Burston from Claris Leachman. I didn't know which was which.
But Ellen said to me, do you believe in destiny?
Has anyone ever asked you that before? Uh? Well, she
(22:56):
was the only one who ever asked me that. And
I said, I guess I believe. And she said, I'm
destined to play this part. I said, look, with the
studio wants Jane Fonda and Bancroft or Audrey Hepburn, this
was all going on. She said, I don't care. I'm
destined to play this part. And it came about that
she was the last person standing, and so we cast
(23:19):
her against the wishes of the studio. They did not
they wanted a big star for that um. Then we
cast Stacy Keach to play Father Cares. He was a
great is a great actor. He was the go to
Eugene O'Neill actor on Broadway, and what happened. I went
(23:45):
to New York and maybe it was that No but no,
we cast her. I went to New York and I
saw the opening night of a play called That Championships Season.
And it was written by a man named Jason Miller.
Never heard of him. Uh I thought the play was great.
(24:08):
It was it really reeked of lapsed Catholicism. It was
a play about a group of high school guys who
won a championship under their coach, but cheated to win
and they were suffering this guilt and the stage was
just filled with Catholic guild. I felt so I I
(24:32):
said to my casting director, who was this guy that
wrote this? I'd love to talk to him, just to
talk to him. It turned out that he had studied
for the priesthood three years at Catholic University in Georgetown.
He came up to meet me in and I was
staying at the Sherry Netherlands Hotel and I had the
(24:53):
flu and I had a lot of pills. He thought
I was a pill freak, and uh, I thought he
was a drunk. And he didn't know what the hell
he was doing up there. And I asked him a
lot of questions about studying for the priesthood and stuff,
and I was a horrible meeting. And I went back
to Los Angeles and about two weeks later, as we're
(25:17):
starting to prepare the picture, he called me at Warner
Brothers and he said, hey, you know that that book
you were telling me about that You're going to film
that Exorcist? He said, I said yeah. He said, I
am that guy. He said, I am that character. I said, well,
you're not. Stacy keach is that he's going to play
(25:39):
the part. He said, I'm telling you, man, I am
this guy. And he said, have you ever done anything
like a screen test? And I said no, I've never
shot a screen test. And what's the point. I told you,
we've cast this. He had never made a film, never
been in a movie, only played very small acting roles
(26:01):
in a road road companies. He was delivering milk in Flushing,
New York when he wrote Championship Season, and so he said,
you gotta test me. You have to give me a
screen test. I said, why, what a waste of time?
He said, Man, I'm telling you so. I had great
(26:23):
respect for him as a writer. I said, you want
to shoot a screen test? Okay? You come out here
on your own. You get out here. It was like,
let's say it was a Tuesday. I said him, get
out here by Thursday, and i'll shoot a screen test
with you and i'll take it out of the camera
and give it to you so you can show it
(26:45):
to your kids. And Uh, he said, oh, I can't
get out there Thursday. I said, what do you mean,
He said, I don't fly. He said, I'll take the train.
I'll be out there in a week, all right. So
I set up an empty stage with a great cinematographer
(27:07):
named Bill Freaker, and I had cast Burston and I said, look,
we're gonna do a test to this guy, and let's
do the scene where you first meet him in a
little park in Georgetown and you tell him that you
think your daughter is possessed. And she said, what why
(27:28):
are we doing this? You've got a great actor. I said,
I don't know why we're doing this. And I swear
to God, I didn't We shoot the test, no sets,
just Bill Freaker lighting in an empty studio, and they
did that scene one take. And then I had Ellen
(27:49):
Uh interview Jason with the camera over her shoulder on him,
where she just asked him questions about his life, who
he was, what his background was, his family, everything, And
then I shot a very tight close up of him
saying the Mass, but not saying it the way you
(28:11):
used to hear it. Maybe you still do in church
where the priest just rattles it off. You know the
name of the Father a little book. I said, I
would say the words of the Mass as though you
really mean them, and well, you mean every word, and
and say it, uh, with as much conviction as you can,
(28:32):
and take your time. And I shot that in a
close up. And we did that, and I wasn't sure
about anything. But Burston came over to me and said,
you're not going to hire this guy, are you? And
I said, well why not? She said he can't act.
He said he's not an actor. He can't act. And
(28:53):
she said, when I tell Father Caress this story, worry
about my daughter. I have to break down and collapse
in his arms, and I need a big strong man
to do that. It happened that she had was going
with a big strong man at that time who was
an actor that she wanted me to consider. But uh,
(29:17):
she said, this guy is about five six. I said,
you're probably right. And the next morning I saw the
dailies and the camera just loved this guy. The camera
just loved him. He looked great, he was real. And
I went to Warner Brothers and I said, we're gonna
(29:38):
pay off Stacy Keach and hire this guy. And they said,
you're out of your mind. What is wrong with you?
You're crazy, but you're possessed, Yes, something like that. I
didn't want to do it. The writer didn't want to
do it. Uh, nobody wanted to do it. But I said,
this is what we're gonna do, and that's what we did.
(30:01):
And he was brilliant, incredible. You said that Nichols said,
no twelve year old could carry that film. How did
you solve that problem? You yourself with Linda Blair. Nichols
was wrong because he had not met Linda Blair. We
we had cat We had auditioned several thousand girls. They
(30:24):
were put on tape from all across the country by
casting directors, and I must have looked at five hundred
of them myself, just a minute or two and then out.
And it appeared that there was nobody who could play
this part who was twelve years old. And I had
(30:44):
reached a point where I felt like that we couldn't
make the picture. You could not find a twelve year
old girl who a would understand all this stuff or
be not be scarred by it, maybe for the rest
of her life. And I didn't see that possibility in
any of the audition tapes. We started to look at
(31:07):
sixteen year olds who looked younger, and fifteen year olds,
and one day my assistant in New York said, there's
a woman out here who's brought her daughter. Her name
is Eleanor Blair, and she doesn't have an appointment. Would
you see her? And I said, okay, why not? Because
(31:28):
we were striking out all over the place. In came
this little girl with her mother. She was twelve, and
I knew immediately that she was the girl instantly she
sat down. She had never acted. She had done those
things that you see like in the New York Daily News,
(31:49):
in these newspapers with girls model coats and little dresses
or shoes or something. She had done that, but no acting.
So she sat down with her mother and I am
She was a straight A student in Westport, Connecticut, and
she was had one blue ribbons showing horses at Madison Square. Garden,
(32:12):
but had never acted. But I said to her, Linda,
do you know anything about this story? Do you know
anything about the the Exorcist story? And she said, oh yes,
I read the book as she did. She said yes,
and I looked at her mother. Mother nodded, and I said,
what what is it about? And she said, well, it's
about a little girl who gets possessed by a devil
(32:36):
and she does a whole bunch of bad things. I said, well,
like what and she said, well, she hits her mother
across the face, and she pushes a man out of
her bedroom window, and she masturbates with a crucifix. And
I said uh. I looked at her. Mother was smiling,
(32:57):
and I said you know what that means. She said
what I said to to to masturbate? And she said
it was like jerking off, isn't it? And I said yes.
Her mother was still smiling, and I said to her,
have you ever done that? Have you ever done what
(33:18):
you just said? She said, sure, haven't you? And so
I hired her A kindred spirit. A kindred spirit. When
I look at your career, it said you you make
these films in the early seventies, and by the time
you go to make Sorcerer. The movie business has changed.
Did you feel that that you feel was changing underneath
(33:40):
your face? Yes, I would tell my younger self or
anybody who is starting in the film business at any time,
do not escalate your expectations. Learn as much as you
can from watching the works of filmmakers you admire. For
the most part, they are the masters now. I never
(34:03):
studied film. I never spent one day in a classroom
learning about film technique. I never studied the camera. I
started in live television in the mail room of a
television station and work my way up. In today's world,
if you're of any age, you can go out. You
(34:24):
can buy a little digital camera. You can go out
and shoot your own film and learn from what you're doing.
You don't need to go to a film school or
a film class. I think you just need to practice.
If I was starting today, I would get it together
(34:44):
by a camera, shoot something that represented how I felt
about things, cut it and now. Then you can also
put it on the internet. You can watch William Friedkin's
movie The Exorcist right now on Netflix. X. This is
Alec Baldwin you're listening to. Here's the thing
Host
Alec Baldwin
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