William Friedkin

William Friedkin
Friedkin at the 2017 Sitges Film Festival
Born	(1935-08-29) August 29, 1935 (age 86) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Education	Senn High School
Occupation	Director producer screenwriter
Years active	1962–present
Spouse(s)	Jeanne Moreau ​ ​ (m. 1977; div. 1979)​ Lesley-Anne Down ​ ​ (m. 1982; div. 1985)​ Kelly Lange ​ ​ (m. 1987; div. 1990)​ Sherry Lansing ​ ​ (m. 1991)​
Children	2
Signature

William Friedkin (/ˈfriːdkɪn/; born August 29, 1935)^[1] is an American film and television director, producer and screenwriter closely identified with the "New Hollywood" movement of the 1970s.^[2][3] Beginning his career in documentaries in the early 1960s, he is perhaps best known for directing the action thriller film The French Connection (1971), which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director, and the supernatural horror film The Exorcist (1973), which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director.

His other films include The Boys in the Band (1970), the suspense thriller Sorcerer (1977), the controversial crime film Cruising (1980),^[4][5] the action thriller To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), the psychological horror film Bug (2006), and the dark comedy Killer Joe (2011).

Early life[]

Friedkin was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Rachael (née Green) and Louis Friedkin. His father was a semi-professional softball player, merchant seaman, and men's clothing salesman. His mother, whom Friedkin called "a saint", was an operating room registered nurse.^[1] His parents were Jewish emigrants from Ukraine.^[6] His grandparents, parents, and other relatives fled Ukraine during a particularly violent anti-Jewish pogrom in 1903.^[7] Friedkin's father was somewhat uninterested in making money, and the family was generally lower middle class while he was growing up.^[1] According to film historian Peter Biskind, "Friedkin viewed his father with a mixture of affection and contempt for not making more of himself."^[1] According to his memoir, The Friedkin Connection, Friedkin had the utmost affection for his father.

Friedkin attended public schools in Chicago. He enrolled at Senn High School, where he played basketball well enough to consider turning professional.^[8] Friedkin was not a serious student and barely received grades good enough to graduate,^[9] which he did at the age of 16.^[10] According to Friedkin, this was because of social promotion and not because he was bright.^[11]

Friedkin began going to movies as a teenager,^[8] and has cited Citizen Kane as one of his key influences. Several sources claim that Friedkin saw this motion picture as a teenager,^[12] but Friedkin himself says that he did not see the film until 1960, when he was 25 years old. Only then, Friedkin says, did he become a true cineaste.^[13] Among the movies which he saw as a teenager and young adult were Les Diaboliques, The Wages of Fear, and Psycho (which he viewed repeatedly, like Citizen Kane). Televised documentaries such as 1960's Harvest of Shame also were important in his developing sense of cinema.^[8]

He began working in the mail room at WGN-TV immediately after high school.^[14] Within two years (at the age of 18),^[15] he started his directorial career doing live television shows and documentaries.^[16] His efforts included The People vs. Paul Crump (1962), which won an award at the San Francisco International Film Festival and contributed to the commutation of Crump's death sentence.^[15][17] Its success helped Friedkin get a job with producer David L. Wolper.^[15] He also made the football-themed documentary Mayhem on a Sunday Afternoon.^[18]

Career[]

As mentioned in Friedkin's voice-over commentary on the DVD re-release of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, Friedkin directed one of the last episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1965, called "Off Season". Hitchcock admonished Friedkin for not wearing a tie while directing.^[19]

In 1965, Friedkin moved to Hollywood and two years later released his first feature film, Good Times starring Sonny and Cher. He has referred to the film as "unwatchable".^[20] Several other "art" films followed: The Birthday Party, based on an unpublished screenplay by Harold Pinter, which he adapted from his own play; the musical comedy The Night They Raided Minsky's; and the adaptation of Mart Crowley's play The Boys in the Band.

His next film, The French Connection, was released to wide critical acclaim in 1971. Shot in a gritty style more suited for documentaries than Hollywood features, the film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Friedkin followed up with 1973's The Exorcist, based on William Peter Blatty's best-selling novel, which revolutionized the horror genre and is considered by some critics to be one of the greatest horror movies of all time. The Exorcist was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. It won for Best Screenplay and Best Sound.

Following these two pictures, Friedkin, along with Francis Ford Coppola and Peter Bogdanovich, was deemed one of the premier directors of New Hollywood. In 1973, the trio announced the formation of an independent production company at Paramount, The Directors Company. Whereas Coppola directed The Conversation and Bogdanovich, the Henry James adaptation, Daisy Miller, Friedkin abruptly left the company, which was soon closed by Paramount.^[21] But Friedkin's later movies did not achieve the same success. Sorcerer (1977), a $22 million American remake of the French classic The Wages of Fear, co-produced by both Universal and Paramount, starring Roy Scheider, was overshadowed by the blockbuster box-office success of Star Wars, which had been released exactly one week prior. Friedkin considers it his finest film, and was personally devastated by its financial and critical failure (as mentioned by Friedkin himself in the documentary series The Directors (1999)).

Sorcerer was shortly followed by the crime-comedy The Brink's Job (1978), based on the real-life Great Brink's Robbery in Boston, Massachusetts, which was also unsuccessful at the box-office. In 1980, he directed an adaptation of the Gerald Walker crime thriller Cruising, starring Al Pacino, which was protested against even during its making and remains the subject of heated debate. The film was critically assailed, and was a financial disappointment.^[22]

Friedkin suffered a major heart attack on March 6, 1981. He had a genetically-caused defect in his circumflex left coronary artery, and nearly died. He spent months in rehabilitation.^[23]

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Friedkin's films received mostly lackluster reviews and moderate ticket sales. Deal of the Century (1983), starring Chevy Chase, Gregory Hines and Sigourney Weaver, was sometimes regarded as a latter-day Dr. Strangelove, though it was generally savaged by critics. However, his action/crime movie To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), starring William Petersen and Willem Dafoe, was a critical favorite and drew comparisons to Friedkin's own The French Connection (particularly for its car-chase sequence), while his courtroom-drama/thriller Rampage (1987) received a fairly positive review from Roger Ebert despite major distribution problems. He next directed the horror film The Guardian (1990) and then the thriller Jade (1995), starring Linda Fiorentino; the latter film received a somewhat favorable response from critics and audiences. Friedkin even said that Jade was the favorite of all the films he had made,^[24] as is Sorcerer.^[25]

In 2000, The Exorcist was re-released in theaters with extra footage and grossed $40 million in the U.S. alone. Friedkin's involvement in 2007's Bug resulted from a positive experience watching the stage version in 2004. He was surprised to find that he was, metaphorically, on the same page as the playwright and felt that he could relate well to the story.^[26] The film won the FIPRESCI prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Later, Friedkin directed an episode of the TV series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation titled "Cockroaches", which re-teamed him with To Live and Die in L.A. star William Petersen. He directed again for CSI's 200th episode, "Mascara".

In June 2010, author William Peter Blatty, promoting his latest novel, revealed that Friedkin had committed to direct the feature film adaptation of his thriller, Dimiter.^[27] This would mark almost forty years since their previous collaboration, The Exorcist, not counting the failed collaboration between the two on The Exorcist III. The idea for the book itself actually came to Blatty while sitting in Friedkin's office in 1972 during the first film's production, as he read an article concerning the then atheist-run state of Albania executing a priest for baptizing a newborn infant.^[28] He had worked on it on and off ever since 1974, and, upon its completion, sat down with Friedkin for a one-on-one interview in The Huffington Post a few days after Blatty named Friedkin as attached to direct. According to the author, his friend and director had been eager to adapt the story.

In 2011, Friedkin directed Killer Joe, a black comedy written by Tracy Letts, and starring Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple, Gina Gershon, and Thomas Haden Church. Killer Joe premiered at the 68th Venice International Film Festival, prior to its North American debut at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. It opened in U.S. theaters in July 2012, to some favorable reviews from critics but did poorly at the box office, possibly because of its restrictive NC-17 rating.

In April 2013, Friedkin published a memoir, The Friedkin Connection.^[29] He was presented with a lifetime achievement award at the 70th Venice International Film Festival in September.^[30]

Unreleased projects[]

Friedkin has had an array of unrealized projects, including The Ripper Diaries, about the manhunt of Jack the Ripper; a film about the account of the Florence Maybrick murder trial, titled Battle Grease;^[31] an adaptation of the Frank De Felitta suspense novel Sea Trial.^[32] A film about the murder of Gianni Versace and the killing spree of his murderer, Andrew Cunanan, titled The Man Who Killed Versace which was written by Frederic Raphael and to be produced by Cruising producer Jerry Weintraub was to have Sergio Castellitto as Versace and Freddie Prinze, Jr. in the lead role as Cunanan. A horror thriller A Safe Darkness, the cop thriller Bump City and the UFO thriller The Devil's Triangle.^[33] It was also reported that Friedkin is to direct an HBO movie about the life of the provocative entertainer Mae West starring Bette Midler, titled Queen of the World as West based on her memoirs written by Harvey Fierstein.^[34] Friedkin was once in discussions with executive producer David Kirschner to direct the 1988 horror film Child’s Play, which initiated the Chucky franchise, and also intended to direct The Exorcist III before leaving from creative conflicts with William Peter Blatty.^[35][36][37] Also, Friedkin is in talks to direct Don Winslow's crime novel The Winter of Frankie Machine.^[38] Friedkin was slated to direct a film adaptation of Robin Cook's novel Brain.^[39]

Archive[]

The moving image collection of William Friedkin is held at the Academy Film Archive. The material at the Academy Film Archive is complemented by material in the William Friedkin papers at the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library.^[40]

Personal life[]

William Friedkin has been married four times:

• Jeanne Moreau, married February 8, 1977 and divorced in 1979.^[41][42]
• Lesley-Anne Down, married in 1982 and divorced in 1985.^[43][44]
• Kelly Lange, married on June 7, 1987 and divorced in 1990.^[45][46]
• Sherry Lansing, married on July 6, 1991.^[47][48]

While he was filming The Boys in the Band in 1970, Friedkin began a relationship with Kitty Hawks, daughter of director Howard Hawks. It lasted two years, during which the couple announced their engagement, but the relationship ended about 1972.^[49] Friedkin began a four-year relationship with Australian dancer and choreographer Jennifer Nairn-Smith in 1972. Although they announced an engagement twice, they never married. They did, however, have a son, Cedric, born on November 27, 1976.^[50] Friedkin and his second wife, Lesley-Anne Down, also had a son, Jack, born in 1983.^[44] Friedkin was raised Jewish, but called himself an agnostic later in life.^[51][52] However, during an appearance and Q&A at a 40th anniversary screening of The Exorcist at the 2013 Dallas International Film Festival, Friedkin revealed that he "believes strongly in God" and "the teachings of Jesus" and other religious figures, and that we are "in God's hands."^[53]

Filmography[]

Film[]

Year	Title	Director	Writer	Producer	Notes
1967	Good Times	Yes	No	No
1968	The Birthday Party	Yes	No	No
	The Night They Raided Minsky's	Yes	No	No
1970	The Boys in the Band	Yes	No	No
1971	The French Connection	Yes	No	No	Academy Award for Best Director Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement Golden Globe Award for Best Director Nominated – BAFTA Award for Best Direction
1973	The Exorcist	Yes	No	No	Empire Movie Masterpiece Award Golden Globe Award for Best Director Nominated – Academy Award for Best Director Nominated – Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement
1977	Sorcerer	Yes	No	Yes
1978	The Brink's Job	Yes	No	No
1980	Cruising	Yes	Yes	No	Nominated – Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Director Nominated – Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Screenplay
1983	Deal of the Century	Yes	No	No
1985	To Live and Die in L.A.	Yes	Yes	No	Festival du Film Policier de Cognac Audience Award
1987	Rampage	Yes	Yes	Yes	Nominated – Saturn Award for Best Direction Nominated – Deauville Film Festival Critics Award
1990	The Guardian	Yes	Yes	No
1994	Blue Chips	Yes	No	No
1995	Jade	Yes	No	No
2000	Rules of Engagement	Yes	No	No
2003	The Hunted	Yes	No	No
2006	Bug	Yes	No	No	FIPRESCI Prize Quinzaine des Réalisateurs Nominated – C.I.C.A.E. Award
2011	Killer Joe[54]	Yes	No	No	Venice Film Festival Golden Mouse Award Nominated – Filmfest München Arri Award for Best International Film Nominated – Saturn Award for Best Director Nominated – Venice Film Festival Golden Lion Award
2017	The Devil and Father Amorth	Yes	Yes	No	Documentary
2018	Friedkin Uncut	No	No	No	Documentary about William Friedkin

Television[]

Year	Title	Notes
1965	The Alfred Hitchcock Hour	Episode "Off Season"
1985	The Twilight Zone	Episode "Nightcrawlers"
1992	Tales from the Crypt	Episode "On a Deadman's Chest"
2007-2009	CSI: Crime Scene Investigation	Episodes "Cockroaches" and "Mascara"

TV movies

Year	Title	Notes
1986	C.A.T. Squad	Also executive producer
1988	C.A.T. Squad: Python Wolf
1994	Jailbreakers
1997	12 Angry Men

Documentary films

• The People vs. Paul Crump (1962)
• The Bold Men (1965)
• Mayhem on a Sunday Afternoon (1965)
• The Thin Blue Line (1966)

Awards[]

Year	Award	Category	Title	Result
1972	Academy Award	Best Director	The French Connection	Won
	Directors Guild of America	Outstanding Directorial Achievement		Won
	Golden Globes	Best Director		Won
1973	BAFTA Award	Best Director		Nominated
1974	Academy Award	Best Director	The Exorcist	Nominated
	Directors Guild of America	Outstanding Directorial Achievement		Nominated
	Golden Globes	Best Director		Won
1981	Razzie Awards	Worst Director	Cruising	Nominated
		Worst Screenplay		Nominated
1986	Cognac Festival du Film Policier	Audience Award	To Live and Die in L.A.	Won
1988	Deauville Film Festival	Critics Award	Rampage	Nominated
1991	Saturn Award	George Pal Memorial Award		Won
1993		Best Director	Rampage	Nominated
1998	Directors Guild of America	Outstanding Directorial Achievement	12 Angry Men	Nominated
	Primetime Emmy Awards	Best Director		Nominated
1999	Saturn Award	President's Award		Won
	Empire Awards	Movie Masterpiece Award	The Exorcist	Won
2000	Palm Beach International Film Festival	Lifetime Achievement Award		Won
2006	Cannes Film Festival	FIPRESCI	Bug	Won
2007	Munich Film Festival	CineMerit Award		Won
	Sitges - Catalan International Film Festival	Time-Machine Honorary Award		Won
2009	Locarno International Film Festival	Leopard of Honor		Won
2011	Venice Film Festival	Golden Lion	Killer Joe	Nominated
		Golden Mouse		Won
2013	Belgian Film Critics Association	Grand Prix		Nominated
	Saturn Award	Best Director		Nominated
		Lifetime Achievement Award		Won
	Venice Film Festival	Special Lion		Won

Friedkin was made Honorary Associate of London Film School^{[citation needed]}.

See also[]

• List of earliest surviving Academy Award winners

Bibliography[]

• Friedkin, William. The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir. New York: HarperCollins, 2013. ISBN 978-0-06-177512-3
• Friedkin, William. Conversations at the American Film Institute With the Great Moviemakers: The Next Generation. George Stevens, Jr., ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012. ISBN 978-0-307-27347-5

References[]

Further reading[]

• Biskind, Peter. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-And Rock 'N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998. ISBN 0-684-80996-6
• Claggett, Thomas D. William Friedkin: Films of Aberration, Obsession, and Reality. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 2003. ISBN 0-89950-262-8
• Derry, Charles, ed. Dark Dreams 2.0: A Psychological History of the Modern Horror Film From the 1950s to the 21st Century. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2009. ISBN 978-0-7864-3397-1
• Edmonds, I. G. and Mimura, Reiko. The Oscar Directors. San Diego: A.S. Barnes, 1980. ISBN 0-498-02444-X
• Emery, Robert J., ed. The Directors: In Their Own Words. Vol. 2. New York: TV Books, 1999. ISBN 1-57500-129-2
• Hamm, Theodore. Rebel and a Cause: Caryl Chessman and the Politics of the Death Penalty in Postwar California, 1948–1974. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2001. ISBN 0-520-22427-2
• Segaloff, Nat. Hurricane Billy: The Stormy Life and Films of William Friedkin. New York: Morrow, 1990. ISBN 0-688-07852-4
• Stevens, Jr., George, ed. Conversations at the American Film Institute With the Great Moviemakers: The Next Generation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012. ISBN 978-0-307-27347-5
• Wakeman, John. World Film Directors, 1945–1985. New York: Wilson, 1988. ISBN 0-8242-0757-2
• Walker, Elsie M. and Johnson, David T., eds. Conversations With Directors: An Anthology of Interviews From 'Literature/Film Quarterly'. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-8108-6122-0

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to William Friedkin.

• William Friedkin at IMDb
• William Friedkin at the TCM Movie Database
• William Friedkin at the Internet Broadway Database
• "From 'Popeye' Doyle to Puccini: William Friedkin" NPR's Robert Siegel interviews Friedkin, September 14, 2006
• EXCL: Bug Director William Friedkin
• The Reeler interview with Friedkin
• William Friedkin papers, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences