the William Friedkin poll

Sarris was def not a fan of Sorcerer

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1299&dat=19770718&id=5PZNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=OYsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5900,1064206

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/04/nyregion/crime-scene-chasing-down-a-gps-blip-to-a-stolen-iphone.html

“I honestly have never thought the idea that these were ‘gay movies made by a straight director.’”

http://flavorwire.com/394993/flavorwire-interview-william-friedkin-on-the-controversial-legacies-of-the-boys-in-the-band-and-cruising

!!!
thx

Keep forgetting he made Blue Chips.

He should have stuck w/Shaq up through Kazaam.

Sorcerer is a good, visceral spin on its great predecessor.
― Pope Rusty I (Dr Morbius), Friday, May 3, 2013 3:55 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's even better. More suspenseful, unflinching.

noooooooo. I couldn't believe hauling out the sentimental watch the second before Fate takes a hand.

even if it was just a product of the time, Wages has more cheese and softheartedness in it, while Sorcerer is as dark and creepy as the story should be. Also they put sand in the trucks.

I love pretty much every change they made, kind of my standard for a great remake.

He say things:

“There were some really fine films in the Seventies, like The Parallax View, that dealt with the human condition and moral complexity. That’s disappeared. Now, it’s all about guys in spandex suits flying around saving the world. There are a number of good films around today. [Pause.] I can’t name them… But it’s no longer for me, I can tell you that.” He presses an electronic clicker and a houseboy appears in a Union Jack T-shirt and silver shorts to take orders for coffee and croissants.

Sure that's not about Michael Cimino?

lol

He just wants his damn croissants, is all.

watched rampage - is like an overlong & really muddled law & order. 1st ~10 mins are kinda scary

http://www.thespinningimage.co.uk/cultfilms/images/7493.jpg

unfortunate, cuz it looks like there was some good facts 2 work w/ from the guy it's based on wiki

Once alone in the apartment, Chase began to capture, kill, and disembowel various animals, which he would then devour raw, sometimes mixing the raw organs with Coca-Cola in a blender and drinking the concoction. Chase reasoned that by ingesting the creatures he was preventing his heart from shrinking.

Chase granted a series of interviews with Robert Ressler, during which he spoke of his fears of Nazis and UFOs, claiming that although he had killed, it was not his fault; he had been forced to kill to keep himself alive, which he believed any person would do. He asked Ressler to give him access to a radar gun, with which he could apprehend the Nazi UFOs, so that the Nazis could stand trial for the murders. He also handed Ressler a large amount of macaroni and cheese, which he had been hoarding in his pants pockets, believing that the prison officials were in league with the Nazis and attempting to kill him with poisoned food.[5]

o plus grace zabriskie is p good in it

Deal of the Century is a 1983 American comedy film directed by William Friedkin and starring Chevy Chase, Gregory Hines, and Sigourney Weaver.

The film follows the adventures of several arms dealers that compete to sell weapons to a South American dictator

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, July 27, 2012 4:52 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

after years of asking I've literally met no one who's seen this.

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, July 27, 2012 4:52 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i watched this, mostly mediocre but 1 good wallace shawn scene and chevys dimple is in full force. plus its prescient abt unmanned drones. for the life of me, i cant figure out y 'santa claus is coming to town' plays over the closing credits

Friedkin directing Pinter's The Birthday Party onstage in L.A. this winter.

Cast includes Tim Roth and Steven Berkoff.

A certain critic wrote on FB about Cruising, "It's amazing what you notice if you watch this movie without huffing poppers the entire time."

Sorcerer Blu-Ray coming in April. I've already pre-ordered my copy.

I'll finally get a chance to see Sorcerer in the spring. Not sure if it'll be one screening (in which case I'll work hard to show up on the right night) or a few. Hoping Friedkin's there at least once, even though (or maybe because...) some of the quotes on this thread point to something of a disconnect with regards to his own place in film history.

Sorcerer is well done--hard-nosed without being silly--and I can see why people advocate for it. (Putting aside Friedkin's deluded claim that the film's failure was Star Wars' fault.) I just watched and appreciated it--never really cared where it was going, only felt the tension viscerally maybe once, on the bridge. Scheider's really good, so are Bruno Cremer and the guy who hires them all. (Spotted Joe Spinell--I think he was complaining that someone was trying to bust his chops.) Until the end credits, less Tangerine Dream than I thought there'd be. (The Tangs, I think Lester Bangs called them.) I fully expected a Huston/Kubrick ending, but I didn't think it would happen off-camera and seem like an afterthought.

Good 30-min interview with Alec Baldwin:

http://www.wnyc.org/story/htt-william-friedkin/

this is brilliant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmihQf9WmDk

Finally watched The Boys in the Band today, which I'd always assumed was one of those things that I should see more for historical reasons than anything else, and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. A time capsule, obviously, but one whose portrayal of queerness as a social, emotional and political state feels far more vital, to me, than something like the watchable but ultimately frivolous Looking (the first season, anyway; haven't seen the second). Only Kenneth Nelson's showy final act breakdown grates a bit.

on an emotional level. I think it's somewhat less of a time capsule than it appears on the surface; people still are trapped in forms of self-loathing... shameless archiving:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/the-boys-in-the-band

The Brink's Job is wildly uneven, but damn is Warren Oates great in his two big scenes.

Second watch of TLADILA is great value

So many....moments

Sorcerer on limited reissue in the Uk this weekend and out in a fancy pants 4K Blu in a week or 2. Some people go MENTAL for this film.
Not ilx clearly tho..

I love it. Bought the US Blu-Ray when it came out either last year or earlier this year.

sorceror is fucking amazing

I finally watched Cruising; it is a mess o' shit

I suppose I'd find out in Friedkin's commentary track why he had multiple actors play the killer(s)?

I do approve of using Willy DeVille and The Germs in the bar sequences instead of disco

perceptive essay imho

https://www.cineaste.com/fall2013/from-the-archives-cruising/

Sorcerer rules.

I suppose I'd find out in Friedkin's commentary track why he had multiple actors play the killer(s)?

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius)

Because he was cheating?

I saw this for the second time - and first time on a big screen - last summer and it struck me as far more superficial than it seemed on first viewing. The ambiguity that pops up suddenly in the final scene is entirely unearned.

I never think dance club scenes in movies look authentic, and this film is no exception, even though the leather bar scenes were supposedly filled out with their real-life patrons. There was just too much going on at the same time, when in reality (I'm educatedly guessing) those places would be boring most of the time.

well, drama is life w/ the dull bits excised etc

tbf they go 'ambiguous' in Cruising way b4 final scene.

Friedkin also said Pacino wanted to get the 'fashionable gay haircut' of '79, and it turned out so badly they delayed production for a month. I'd like to see a still!

see, James Franco wouldn't make that mistake

he'd make others, tho possibly not as many as Friedkin did.

re ambiguity, supposedly the specific ambiguity you get full-on in the final shot is something that was better supported in the 40 minutes that had to be cut out of the film to avoid an X rating. Yeah, it's not hard to see where Friedkin was going wrt that idea much earlier on, but there's kind of a lack of hard evidence I'd say.

Wikipedia quotes Friedkin as saying the excised 40 minutes would have made the film both more and less ambiguous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqdlmJXZGsU

!!!

what the hell

I caught Bug a few weeks ago and thought it was terrific. Shannon & Judd were an unholy mess.

Thinking about Killer Joe still makes me smile.

I hope that in the future, when someone is talking about "The Church", a bystander's first assumption will be that you're talking about the rock band, but their second guess will be Thomas Hayden Church.

i finally saw sorcerer last week. for a minute i'm like, why on earth do they launch this hare-brained scheme to retrieve this ancient nitro. they're an evil oil company, it can't be too hard for them to scare up something else to blow up the well with! and then i'm like, actually, that's exactly the kind of bone-stupid short-sighted greedy corner-cutting decision that an evil oil company would make - fair dos friedkin, fair dos

have you seen The Wages of Fear?

i don't remember if Clouzot was more 'plausible'

i have! on a terrible .avi file downloaded from somewhere nefarious. i need to see it for real.