William Friedkin

dvd release reviewed by slate
http://www.slate.com/id/2173734/

Mark Harris demurs:

I'll grudgingly celebrate the movie's return to visibility, since it represents the flashpoint at which gay people learned to fight homophobic stereotypes in pop culture with everything in their arsenal — to be out, loud, proud, pissed-off, and media-savvy. If the film, now frozen in its historical moment, scarcely seems worth the anger it generated, that's only because we've come a long way, not because anybody judging the movie got it wrong the first time. The Cruising protesters were not anti-First Amendment fascists, nor were they (as some younger gay moviegoers might imagine) sex-phobic prudes who wanted to hush up anything that might make us look bad to straight folks. They were fighters — and some were also non-fighters who suddenly discovered the fighter within. Cruising's technical adviser Sonny Grosso claims, somewhat incredibly, that he had ''never seen…ferociousness'' like that expressed by the film's picketers (really? This from the NYPD detective on whose life The French Connection was based?) If that's true, bravo to the haters. Over the decade that followed, that ferocity ended up mattering far more than anything in Cruising. ''What you've done in New York,'' a Paramount executive told the late journalist Arthur Bell, who helped to spur the protests, ''is raise consciousness.'' That's worth commemorating, even if Cruising isn'

Bug has a pretty terrific Ashley Judd performance and a very solid first 40 minutes, staginess and all -- but when it goes from paranoia to arty-exploitation in the last 20, it lost me.

Great Friedkin interview on the DVD tho -- he talks about The Exorcist opening in a mere 26 theaters nationwide for a months-long engagement, and how he checked out each of them individually for projection and sound, and then phoned them each night to monitor quality control.

Edelstein sez he heard snickering and booing at a critics group meeting (NSFC?) when he mentioned Ashley Judd.

well, when she's required to become a scream queen at the end it melts away a lot of what she earned earlier (kinds like Day-Lewis in his bowling alley).

I guess it speaks to something in my character that I had no problem with either film's ending.

Does Bug have any actual entomological features?

some in the film are convinced so

One of my work journals ran an article about the delusional bug-infestation disease.

The stories/rumors of his behavior on the "Exorcist" shoot are crazy: Firing guns on the set, slapping actors immediately before takes, verbally abusing Linda Blair, etc.

he's generally a douche, but a smart one: his DVD commentaries are invariably better than the movies; and his utter lack of humor helps him.

bug needed a glenallen hill cameo

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1199/896757272_f602ae9148.jpg

I hold in my hand the imminent DVD of The Boys in the Band, campers.

so Friedkin utterly redid the look of French Connection for the BluRay disc, and his DP Owen Roizman is pissed:

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/02/atrocioushorrif.php

Sounds awful.

I didn't think twice about the Bluray transfer for French Connection when watching it recently. It's always looked like shit, and it still does.

Anyway, SORCERER IS THE SHIT.

SORCERER IS THE SHIT.

uh huh

well, cuz it's true

The music's good

the scene with the hanging bridge gave me nightmares.

I'm halfway through Cruising, first time since the year it came out. Talk about lurid--The Exorcist is like Merchant-Ivory by comparison. I still haven't seen Sorcerer.

I started this thread 4 years ago wanting to see Sorcerer... and still haven't seen it.

Thing is, I've been holding out to see it in a theatre; I've always had the feeling that whatever's good about it could only be appreciated in that setting. But I'm pretty sure it hasn't screened at any of my city's rep theatres for ages. Cheap new and used copies are readily available on Amazon.

There might be a good print availible. According to the imdb, Universal is the current rights holder (it was a Universal/Paramount co-production), and IIRC they had a fire in one of their warehouses a few years back that destroyed many of their rep prints. And probably most of the surviving release prints aren't in that good of shape. The thing is--bar some major Friedkin retro--I'm not seeing why a rep house would want to show it, but obvs. as demonstrated by this thread there's some interest.

the dvd is pan-and-scan i believe. a shame.

[x-post]

that should read "There might NOT be a good print available".

wonder if friedkin himself has one. but yeah, it's exactly the kind of film for which universal is unlikely to retain good screenable prints. it's unlikely to be revived, original prints are certainly faded, etc.

I hadn't even considered that there wouldn't be good prints around...I always figure that if a film costs millions of dollars to make (many, many millions in 2011 dollars), it would occur to someone to put a copy or two away for safekeeping. But that would indeed explain why it's never screened here.

I finished Cruising. Good: 1) For the most part, Pacino's as quiet as he is in the Godfathers; 2) Nicely ambiguous non-ending. Bad: Hard to know where to start, but I'll limit myself to that ambiguity--what is Pacino's confusion and torment towards the end supposed to mean? Is this actually the opposite of one of those lunatic Christian groups that tries to recruit gay people so they can be "made straight"? Has Pacino journeyed in the opposite direction? The world he enters into is presented so sensitively and thoughtfully by Friedkin, you can see where that would happen.

I hadn't even considered that there wouldn't be good prints around...I always figure that if a film costs millions of dollars to make (many, many millions in 2011 dollars), it would occur to someone to put a copy or two away for safekeeping. But that would indeed explain why it's never screened here.

Universal probably kept a video master along with the o.g. elements (maybe) and that's it. The problem nowadays is that studios are cutting down there rep libraries to just their most popular titles and--get this--recycling the materials of the stuff that gets retired. And that's if they are still running a rep library--I read in Film Comment that as part of their restructuring deal, MGM shut theirs down (although take that with a grain of salt--Blue Velvet is playing here in a couple weeks and it's an MGM title).

I read that FC article, I think? Contrary to Roger Ebert's fantasies, old films are gonna keep vanishing.

Well, as recently as January Friedkin did a Q&A after a screening of a new 35mm print of "Sorcerer," so there's that. Personally, I don't like it nearly as much as "Wages of Fear," but it's a ripping, cynical adventure all the same.

He's shot an adaptation of Tracy Letts's Killer Joe, probably opening this year or next, with Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, and Thomas Haden Church. Letts wrote Bug, too.

Reading this thread quickly makes me think there's a good short film to be made of Cruising Sorcerer.

Some more snooping revealed loose confirmation of a 30th anniversary edition, which would be ... next year? But of course a lot of people expected a 25th anniversary edition back in 2007, too. Still, clearly there are workable "Sorcerer" materials. It may just be Friedkin (who is also apparently to blame for the film being pan and scan and DVD, though even then there's some debate as to the original aspect ratio, 1:66 vs. 1:85 - apparently Friedkin almost never worked in 'Scope).

all it takes to strike a new print is

a) somebody who wants to screen it
b) who has a good connection with
c) a receptive person at the studio
d) that person's boss approving a few thou for the new print

so it happens. but if i just called up swank (who handle non-commercial distribution of major studio titles) and asked for a good print of the brinks job? uh-uh.

that film btw is my favorite friedkin.

oh man, Swank. We used to rent from them in college back in 198X.

Peter Falk, right? I think we ran that when I worked as an usher in high school.

I read Eric H.'s DVD review of Cruising (linked to above), and that was helpful in trying to make sense of it. This'll make me sound really stupid, but I don't think I'd considered the possibility that it was Pacino who killed his neighbour--maybe for a second or two. That would definitely make sense in terms of Pacino's "confusion" at the end. I guess I discounted it because it doesn't make as much sense simply in terms of how the narrative unfolds; there's no suggestion of when Pacino would have done this (he's busy trying to bait the other guy), and for all the ambiguity of his expression right at the end, I didn't see the look of someone who just committed a grisly murder. I don't know--if it wasn't Pacino, I don't really have a good alternative. (Doesn't seem like it would have been the guy's prodigal boyfriend.)

http://i.imgur.com/yjYTIN3.jpg

i wonder what he has to say about exorcist 2: the heretic?

lol

Sorcerer is incredible

It really is.

Killer Joe the series?

http://www.indiewire.com/2017/10/william-friedkin-killer-joe-tv-series-matthew-mcconaughey-1201890168/

Five-film mini-program in July at the Lightbox--the four you'd expect, plus To Live and Die in L.A..

http://www.tiff.net/#series=filmmaker-in-5-william-friedkin

Sorcerer is def worth a watch if you haven't caught it before.

I have--thought it was pretty good, somewhere between its poor reception at the time and the revisionist praise today. I think I'll catch The Exorcist and To Live and Die in L.A.. Wondering if they'll get him to town for a screening.

Shame they couldn't find room for The Hunted in that series.

BTW, the Sorcerer Blu-Ray that came out a few years ago is fantastic.

Had no idea Friedkin did Cruising. I got it this past Xmas but still haven't watched it.

Interesting that its reputation has been reformed enough that it is now one of the obvious picks for a Friedkin retrospective, particularly given that the more “positive” The Boys in the Band is not on there.

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.

Abel Ferrara has a similar vibe to TL&DILA, but he obviously predates Tarantino. Trying to think of something else post 1994.

End of Watch had it both ways: All Cops Are Good and They Are Also The Biggest Street Gang In LA

Listening to Siskel & Ebert episodes from the early '90s, I was shocked to think that this was my world for a long time: choosing from forgettable thrillers and shit SNL comedies. Stuff like Malice and Guarding Tess hit #1 at the box office.

Also one year before Tarantino: Mike Figgis' Internal Affairs.

Disclosure, With Honors, On Deadly Ground, The Specialist

There's a Friedkin program going on here at the Waterloo rep: The Exorcist/French Connection/Sorcerer. Hour-long drive, not sure if I'll rouse myself for anything.

All those Joe Eszterhas things.

Maybe I'm misremembering how the storyline goes, but I recall Q&A maybe having some very very superficial similarities with TLADILA. Just in terms of the nolte character, and how his storyline plays out. I forget if he was quite obviously a villain at the very start.

I took a date to see a preview screening of Jade. That one didn't go as well as I hoped.

xp - my favorite tidbit about With Honors was where they had to dress up the University of Illinois campus to look like Harvard:

The exterior of Winthrop House appears, but the interiors pictured are not that of actual Harvard houses, and the last scene of the movie was shot at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The buildings and surroundings were dressed up to look as if it were Harvard and many of the people in the final scene are Illinois students. The graduation scene was shot while the local climate in Illinois had not allowed for the trees to bloom leaves and so artificial branches and leaves were stapled on.

I think Q&A--which didn't hold up all that well last time I saw it; some of it is really heavy-handed--is closer to Internal Affairs, with the Gere/Nolte characters very similar.

Yeah obv TLADILA is more of an action film, which maybe makes the story arc even more startling to an extent.

I think the Johnnie To film Drug War shares its cynicism and bleakness and brutality, and the ostensible hero being a destructive force is there too. But it's not the same type of movie at all, it's more an indictment of the system and the drug war.

Watched The Exorcist for the first time this weekend. It was quite an achievement from a technical standpoint but I didn't find it scary at all; I guess I'm 100% not a Catholic anymore. (The scene where the doctors tell Ellen Burstyn that Catholics still believe in exorcism, like they're trying to keep from laughing in her face, was pretty amazing.)

think sicario attempts some level of the amoral ambiguity of TLADILA?

There's a Friedkin program going on here at the Waterloo rep: The Exorcist/French Connection/Sorcerer. Hour-long drive, not sure if I'll rouse myself for anything.

― clemenza, Monday, 18 September 2023 17:16 (fifty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

id drive an hour and back for any one of them on the big screen tbh

My local theatre's doing Sorcerer, Cruising, TL&D, Killer Joe, The Guardian, and The Exorcist - I'm hoping to go to them all.

They also showed The Wages of Fear the same week as Sorcerer, which... cool idea, but I couldn't fathom wanting to watch that story again so soon.