William Friedkin

Born in Chicago (Illinois), on August 29, 1935, William Friedkin was the son of a merchant marine and a nurse. As a child he discoveredCitizen Kane , by Orson Welles , and was so fascinated that from then on it was very clear to him that he had to dedicate himself to the movies.

As soon as he graduated from high school, he began working for a television network. Little by little, he worked his way up until he ended up directing different programs. His documentary From him The People vs. Paul Crump , about a man sentenced to death, won some prize, and was of fundamental importance when it came to getting the prisoner’s sentence commuted.

He also directed the episode “Off-Season” of the series Alfred Hitchcock Presents . He remembers that the master of suspense gave him a huge scolding, curiously for not wearing a tie while he was acting as director. He then settled in Hollywood, making his filmmaking debut with Good Times , which starred popular singers Sonny and Cher. he followed himThe Birthday Party , correct adaptation of a text by Harold Pinter .

When he was offered to adapt the novelFrench Connection (Against the drug empire) , by Robin Moore , William Friedkin did not know whether to accept, because the script did not convince him at all. At that time he was involved with a daughter of teacher Howard Hawks , so on one of the occasions when he met the director ofRío Bravo could not resist asking him what he thought of his films. “Awful,” answered the sincere Hawks. But he gave her a good recommendation. “There is a chase. Strive to make it the best that anyone has ever shot”. Friedkin took the advice, accepted the project, and excelled in a sequence in which detective ‘Popeye’ Doyle ( Gene Hackman ) runs after a drug dealer, played by the Spanish Fernando Rey . Friedkin was given the Oscar for best director, and the film got another four: film, actor (Gene Hackman), screenplay and editing.

One of the viewers who was most impressed by the central persecution of the film was the writer William Peter Blatty , who had sold the rights to his novel to Warner.The exorcist , based on a true event, which had been a bestseller. Although the studio was considering the names of Arthur Penn and Stanley Kubrick (who turned the project down), the author insisted that he wanted the energy of Friedkin’s previous film in the film.

The story of a priest in a crisis of faith, Father Karras ( Jason Miller ), who with the help of a veteran priest, Father Merrin, tries to help a girl possessed by the devil, was quite an event, a cultural phenomenon with few precedents, and is considered today a horror classic. One of the keys to success is undoubtedly Friedkin’s effort to be realistic, especially with regard to the Catholic ritual of exorcisms. It earned 10 Oscar nominations, though it had to settle for two, adapted screenplay (Blatty’s own work) and sound.

At the time, Friedkin was considered one of the industry’s hottest directors, and was considered by critics to be one of the most important filmmakers in New Hollywood, along with Francis Ford Coppola and Peter Bogdanovich (another ill-fated filmmaker). But then his cursed film came over him, precisely titled Cursed Charge , a remake of the FrenchThe Wages of Fear with Roy Scheider . Although it is an excellent film, it had the misfortune of being released shortly afterStar Wars , which was such a phenomenon that it relegated to failure what could compete with it.

After crashing with this film, Friedkin went bankrupt and suffered a huge depression. In unforgiving Hollywood, everyone is worth what his last movie is, and Friedkin only got himself cast to direct low-budget films likeThe Greatest Robbery of the Century , minor comedy with Peter Falk . He tried to return to the front line withOn the hunt , a powerful thriller in which Al Pacino plays a policeman who poses as gay, and goes to dating venues to find a dangerous murderer. Once again eager for realism, Friedkin filmed in real settings, with characters taken from the sordid world he portrayed, but the film was another flop at the time, despite the impeccable work of Al Pacino.

Nor did it have much impact at the box office, although today it is practically considered a cult film,Live and die in Los Angeles , where William Petersen (later star ofCSI: Las Vegas ) does some of his best work as an agent willing to bend all the rules to capture Eric Masters ( Willem Dafoe ), a counterfeiter who has killed his partner.

Since he shot that film, Friedkin seems somewhat disillusioned with the world of Hollywood, and limits himself to shooting very conventional productions, sometimes of a certain quality, as in the case ofrules of engagement orThe Hunted (The prey) , but in which it is impossible to detect the trace of the author. Perhaps he was more interested in developing a new facet as an opera director, his direction of works by Bartok and Puccini have earned praise from Plácido Domingo himself. In any case, and despite being in his seventies, he is still in the cinema gap and has recently tried to make up for it withKiller Joe , a tough film in the Tarantino style, that is, parodic violence and black humor to sing, about a contract killer, which he has described as a different version of the Cinderella tale.

After divorcing actress Jeanne Moreau , two years after their wedding, Friedkin has been linked to fellow performers Lesley-Anne Down (with whom he had a son), Kelly Lange and Sherry Lansing.