William Peter Blatty

William Peter Blatty was born in New York, into a large Catholic family of Lebanese origin. He studied with the Jesuits and attended Georgetown University. Before dedicating himself to writing, he held multiple jobs that offered him a rich experience of life, including public relations at Loyola University in Los Angeles, something that he would reflect in the autobiographical and humorous book “Which Way Uncle Mecca, Jack?” He gives proof of his facility for the joke that he participated in Groucho Marx’s television game show “You Bet Your Life”, where he won a prize of $10,000. He would continue this humorous vein by writing books like “I, Billy Shakespeare.”

Thus, it is not surprising that Blake Edwards counted on Blatty for his Pink Panther saga in The New Case of Inspector Clouseau (1964), What did you do in the war, daddy? (1966), Gunn (1967), and Darling Lili (1970). He had previously collaborated with Frank Tashlin on Alone Against the Underworld (1963), a film for the showcasing of Danny Kaye .

But it is clear that the story that has given him his fame and an indelible place in the pantheon of illustrious men in cinema is that of The Exorcist (1973), for which he wrote a novel that was a real bombshell, and which he himself adapted. , to be made into a film by William Friedkin . The idea haunted him for twenty years, before finally taking shape on paper and celluloid. For the first time, a case of diabolical possession was approached realistically, showing precisely the Catholic exorcism rite, and the seriousness with which previously it was investigated if the case could be purely psychiatric. Much of the terror that the plot produced in the reader and viewer was due to the fact that this was not pure fantasy, one had a certain conviction that this could happen. the scenes ofLinda Blair , a girl possessed and saying all kinds of obscenities, became an instant classic. Ironically, such a serious topic killed the writer’s career as a comedian, and no one ever made people laugh on screen again.

During the filming of the film, all kinds of rumors circulated, with “casual” accidents that seemed like actions of the devil. In any case, Blatty always found the film to capture the reality of evil in a spiritual way, the likes of which had never been seen before: “I’ve always thought there’s a mystery to the film, so its effect on people is greater than the sum of its parts.” Faced with some doubts raised by the film about the ending, and the violent death of one of the priests, Blatty asked Friedking for clarification of the triumph of good over evil in exorcism, which would indeed be done in 2000, on the occasion of of a reissue of the film.

Blatty himself wrote the sequel The Exorcist III (1990), based on his novel “Legion”, although it would not have the same impact, Oscar included, of the original; in any case here he was involved, not like in the first sequel, Exorcist II: The Heretic . It was his second and last film as a director, he had previously directed The Ninth Configuration (1980), a curious mixture of terror, comedy and drama in the military environment of a psychiatric center, which started from his own novel “Twinkle, Twinkle, ‘Killer ‘ Kane”, and that somehow investigated the eternal question about the existence of God.

The writer and filmmaker was married four times and had eight children. He saw one of them die, which made him delve into an idea that marked his life, and the film that made him famous, the sense of pain and suffering, even though they have no explanation at first sight. His death at the age of 89 came from multiple myeloma. discovered near the end of his life.