William Friedkin

One other thing I like about TLADILA is how Chance and Jim are dispatched by Masters' shitkicker nobody henchman in the exact same extremely undignified manner, just the disgusting end to a pointless quest for justice. The Departed might owe something to that film as far as the ending goes but that one's not as shocking, and it winds up with a sense of justice Friedkin doesn't entertain as a possibility. The world is cold and bleak, and all people are corruptible.

With the original music ("The Disco Strangler"!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2-zyD48qCg

Here’s my favorite Friedkin story. (I wasn’t ready to do stories yesterday.) Actually, it's 90% set-up and 10% story. Bear with me.

I worked as an assistant editor on all of his films at Paramount in the 90s and early 00s. These were generously budgeted movies, [..
.]

— Darrin Navarro, ACE (@dnavarro_ace) August 8, 2023

People without twitter accts can't read threads anymore.

This worked for me : https://nitter.net/dnavarro_ace/status/1688979670698717184

(Stolen from the Criterion Forum)

Also copied from that forum:

When I was in film school, Friedkin visited. The Guardian was about to be released and he screened it for us. It is a terrible film(*) and after it had finished there was polite the-filmmaker-is-here applause and then awkward silence. This was from the same person who’d made The Exorcist and The French Connection? Friedkin immediately launched into a story about the first time he’d met one of his film gods, how he’d acted a blithering idiot in the face of greatness, how all he could do was blurt compliments a la Chris Farley . His hero told him, “You should see my new one!” and invited him to his house for a screening; feeling chosen, he braced himself for a new masterpiece. Two hours later when the lights came up, he couldn’t think anything but, “How did such a talented guy make such an irredeemable piece of shit?”

It was a masterful clearing of the air, and for the rest of the night he regaled us with possibly apocryphal making-of stories about his greatest hits that have either since been recorded for posterity or have been shelved for shinier or more legally acceptable tales. How the former head of the MTA now owned a bar on a Caribbean island that he’d bought with the bribe they’d paid him to sign off on the train chase in French Connection. How he’d brought in El Topo’s Gonzalo Gavira to foley on Exorcist and watched as he went about jumping on sleeping people and literally wringing their wallets. You’ve probably heard those. Friedkin talked far longer and far better than the feature he’d brought.

One memorable bit particular to that screening: During the Q&A one boy asked if, after he graduated, he should hold out for his dream project (film students, ha ha) or just take any available work. Friedkin boomed. “Take anything! Take whatever, if you’re lucky enough! If someone comes to you, if you meet someone, and they say, ‘We’re making a movie called Two Donkeys Fucking,’ you say, ‘I’M YOUR MAN!’”

My friends and I made “I’M YOUR MAN!” the response to any shit detail that came our way, and Two Donkeys Fucking became the go-to working title for just about everything.

And what he said about the end credits to Killer Joe:

I’ve been listening to Clarence Carter for years, and I was always hoping to be able to use “Strokin’” in a movie. “Strokin’” is one of the great American songs. To me, he was the Mozart of Southern music. You can almost never hear “Strokin’” on the radio, not in this politically correct world. So I thought I should give this to the audience — it has nothing to do with the picture.

There’s a disc jockey in all of us, and I just wanted to share “Strokin’” with all of you. Why not? Where are you gonna go and hear “Strokin’” in this day and age? Where? Nowhere! Here, that’s it!

I mean, if I were doing a movie about the life of Beethoven, I would use “Strokin’” on the end credits. Or Shakespeare! You know, if I was doing Hamlet, imagine ending it after Hamlet’s death, and the funeral oration by Horatio or Fortinbras, then you hear “Strokin’.” And that sends you right out of your chair – YES! It’s not about a guy who got killed in a duel, and killed his uncle because his father’s ghost told him that his uncle was sleeping with his mother and he had to kill his uncle… what a stupid plotline that is.

Now if you end it with “Strokin’” you have a whole other kettle of fish. The audience goes out bopping. Strokin’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTbglsNi5xA

Lock thread lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6kTGFDhPKI

he sounds like a Trump imitator

He was on the Bret Easton Ellis podcast - last year I think - and his voice was so similar to Trump’s that I couldn’t really enjoy the episodes.

huh I don't think he sounds anything like Trump

He did do a lot of Respect The Office Of The President bullshit in defense of Trump, as described in this thread. But not like his art was ever about being society's moral voice of conscience anyway.

I can't remember the title of the work in question, but he did a '90s interview for a Toronto alt-weekly where he was promoting his newest film (TV movie?), with a very definite pro-capital punishment agenda

Wild, given how he started:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrSnv2z2ZGs

xp Can't say I'm surprised - watch the extras to The French Connection where they discuss the scene where Doyle shoots his would-be assassin in the back. One of the technical advisers (an active veteran police officer) saw them film that and ran over to berate Friedkin, telling him "that's murder" only to be blown off. When they previewed the movie, the audience erupted in applause at that moment, and Friedkin apparently ran over to the same adviser and told him "THEY don't have a problem with it, so YOU should not have a problem with it." Making that moment the poster was like rubbing his face into it.

It's one of the sad things about the movie to me, at least how that moment was digested in pop culture - it genuinely reflects how much American culture values revenge. It reminds me of a similar scene in L.A. Confidential, which I've seen twice - once with a large, younger crowd who cheered at what happened, and once with a small group of arthouse patrons who remained stone quiet. The latter seemed to get the tragic implications of that scene, especially the way it called back to Ed Exley's very first scene with Captain Smith.

And yes, I've heard some argue that Friedkin's best work is actually that documentary.

L.A. Confidential endorses the police vigilantism, I'd say.

L.A. Confidential endorses the police vigilantism, I'd say.

James Ellroy is a fascist.

xxp (Forgot to add that in later years, Friedkin no longer believed in Crump's innocence, so yes, pretty wild how much he changed.)

xp Re: L.A. Confidential, it never felt like an endorsement to me, but one reason I grew to like it less was that it seemed like cynical defeatism to me. (Referring to Hanson's film and his interpretation of Ellroy's work.)

FWIW, Ellroy absolutely hated Hanson's film but wasn't forthcoming until after he died.

Re: L.A. Confidential, it never felt like an endorsement to me, but one reason I grew to like it less was that it seemed like cynical defeatism to me.

I don't wanna derail the thread, but I'm glad you mentioned this scene. I've been meaning to watch L.A. Confidential again, in part to see if my impressions were correct. Unless my memory's wrong, Exley and Bud White don't reckon with any moral qualms about dangling the Evil Gay D.A. out the windows: the camera framing and the editing whip the audience up; we're on their side. Then the film moves along to the next plot point.

It's one of the sad things about the movie to me, at least how that moment was digested in pop culture - it genuinely reflects how much American culture values revenge.

I don't want to push back against this too much because I do agree copaganda has a real effect on ppl's opinions, but at the same time as someone who consumes a lot of Italian and Hong Kong action cinema I'm pretty confident in saying revenge is appreciated by audiences around the world, as is violence in general. Depending on time period and geographical area, I imagine the audiences would have cheered equally loud if the same exact scenario had played out amongst cowboys or post apocalyptic road gangs or, perhaps most tellingly, criminals. Likewise I wonder how much of that advisor's objection was genuine moral disgust and how much was "this makes the cops look bad". Anyway I've heard quite a few defenses of French Connection as a film that shows cops being the violent, racist pieces of shit they are - but I guess it's still up to the viewer whether that then registers as "yeah this seems bad" or "hell yeah it's great they are like that" and Friedkin may have believed the latter.

No worries, and apologies for the multiple posts, various distractions keep popping up and that ended up breaking up my response into these very brief posts I'd have to spit out really fast.

I was actually talking about a different scene - when Exley shoots Smith in the back. Looking this up, in their first scene together, Smith asks him: "Would you be willing to plant corroborative evidence on a suspect you knew to be guilty, in order to ensure an indictment?" "Would you be willing to beat a confession out of a suspect you knew to be guilty?" "Would you be willing to shoot a hardened criminal in the back, in order to offset the chance that some... lawyer..." etc. Of course Exley's responses to all of these is "no" and then schematically, Exley betrays all of these principles one by one. Shooting Smith in the back was like the final betrayal of these principles, and the tragic implications seemed to be clear. Even if one justified it because it was how they took down Smith's cartel, one would have to ignore how they successfully framed the African-American characters for a previous massacre by using the same tactics of planting evidence, physical interrogation, and killing a suspect. (Exley is guilty of that, much to his horror, earning the nickname "Shotgun Eddie.") It suggests a thoroughly corrupt system that's unavoidable and inescapable, and it feels apiece to the future that's off-screen: it can only lead to the LAPD detailed in OJ: Made in America. I've got mixed feelings about how much merit the film has for putting that across, and Alfred raises an excellent point too - IIRC being gay in the film (and I imagine the novel too) isn't defined as anything but aberrant and shameful.

dangling the evil gay DA out the window was a cousin to Longshanks throwing his son's gay lover out the window in Braveheart. i don't remember the novel well enough to know this for sure, but i'm pretty sure the DA wasn't gay in the novel, nor did Dudley Smith die. the novel is less streamlined noir and more an overheated ambitious Ellroy narrative; he was moving towards his Underworld USA trilogy style fast.

related: TLADILA is almost comically homoerotic in parts, and with zero gay panic. the two main dudes are vv comfortable w/teasing each other.

James Ellroy is full of shit and will say anything to get ink in the press. He knew he couldn’t have written a script as good as Helgeland & Hanson’s. Also, he hasn’t written anything of note in at least 20 years

i'll give him 14 years, Blood's a Rover was vv good. i don't know about his books since, but their cultural impact has been zero.

Watched To Live and Die on YT yesterday. Really great, and just has a slight edge on French Connection.

"you're working for me now" - cut to credits with Wait playing over the magic hour freeway driving footage - is my favourite ending to any film ever, I have to watch the credits all the way through every time

Blood’s a Rover? The novel-length version of A Boy and his Dog? #onethread

I felt sure that there was a Robin Wood review of To Live and Die where he talked about it being a progressive critique of capitalism - money as a fake object etc - but I couldn't find it on a google hunt just now. Wood does offer a tentatively positive review (from a gay liberation perspective) of Cruising in his 'The incoherent text' essay, where he concludes:

Cruising, shot in 1979, already seemed an anachronism when it was released in 1980: in the midst of the parade of demoralising 'moral' reactionary movies heralded in the late 70s by Rocky and Star Wars, it sticks out like a sore thumb.

I took a film class at Brown called “Forgery and Simulation” and To Live And Die was on the curriculum, along with Body Heat, F is for Fake, and Badlands

Sounds good. Am also reminded of Noel Burch's essay 'Notes on Fritz Lang's First Mabuse', where among other things he notes that "Mabuse uses real bank-notes for writing paper, and counterfeit notes for money."

Friedkin used to tell the story — it might be on the TLADILA commentary track — about Treasury agents coming to him and asking that some shots be taken out of the counterfeiting montage, and others be re-sequenced, because he'd basically shown people how to counterfeit money. Probably bullshit, but who knows?

"I felt sure that there was a Robin Wood review of To Live and Die where he talked about it being a progressive critique of capitalism - money as a fake object etc - but I couldn't find it on a google hunt just now."

As one of the characters points out he has no idea why he is selling his skills, when those skills are to make cash.

xpost

"William Friedkin, in his memoir "The Friedkin Connection," says that the fake money they made was so good that, after some of it left the set, he eventually heard from the Secret Service and a US Attorney. After he avoided a confrontation with them, Friedkin states, "When the film came out, there were news stories about people trying to make counterfeit money after seeing the step-by-step process in our film. I took some of the twenties, those printed on both sides of course, put them in my wallet, and spent them, in restaurants, shoe-shine parlors, and elsewhere. The money was that good."

The news prompted me to finally watch Sorcerer last night, what a blast.

Yeah. It's too bad there's no oral history of it. This is a serviceable piece on how they did the bridge scene though. https://filmschoolrejects.com/how-they-shot-the-bridge-scene-in-sorcerer/

Seeing "Sorcerer" in a theater (2014, after its digital restoration) is one of my favorite movie-going experiences - that bridge scene is SO tense, lots of people were audibly freaking out (but aware of the nervous humor in such an over-the-top tense situation)...I love that I got to share that feeling with a theater full of strangers.

I later made a friend because of "Sorcerer" - I was checking out at a record store, and the cashier was commenting on a Tangerine Dream album I was getting, mentioning how they also did the "Sorcerer" soundtrack. And I was like, "I love that Friedkin movie" - then we chatted about "The Wages of Fear" - ah, two music/film nerds, nerding it out...

...and thanks for that article about the bridge scene! Holy crap!

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/aug/13/my-friend-billy-mark-kermode-remembers-exorcist-director-william-friedkin

Can't say I like Kermode much but this is a pretty nice tribute.

Reading the Devil’s Advocates monograph on Cruising and it’s quite good, as (obv) is the film itself

Just looked it up--would definitely read that, although Amazon copies are a little pricey.

I managed to snag it when the price dropped significantly a few weeks back. But yeah, the books in that series are way spendy (but often great)

I always forget Touch of Evil's Valentin de Vargas plays the judge in TL&DILA.

I saw Sorcerer last week, and yeah, the bridge scene is incredible. Going to a Cruising screening tonight.

Just saw TL&DILA for the first time this weekend. What a wicked, lurid, amoral movie. After 1994, these kind of movies seemed to have ceased to exist as they all became Tarantino-ed.

Good point, you might be right.

Yeah you know that is a good point, everything after a certain era got really jokey and a bit more gleefully, winkingly amoral rather than simply matter of fact. These guys aren't reveling in their respective schemes, Peterson is this pathologically overconfident psycho and Dafoe is all business (tho he's extremely sexualized obv), and there's nothing spelled out and no audience handholding. I'm trying to think of a movie from the last 20 years that tries to mine similar territory, and I can't really think of it. A cop thriller where it's not even that the leads are antiheroes, and you side with them because they get the job done, they're presented fully as the good guys (maybe Dirty Harry types to the extent that they're on the edge) and you wind up realizing they are the true villains and destructive forces.

Keeping in mind that I really like Tarantino a lot, but he's one of those who is virtually impossible to successfully emulate and so he's the only one who's truly good at that specific thing he does. And his influence resulted in almost exclusively trash.