Shortly into his feature-filmmaking career, William Friedkin won the Best Director Academy Award for 1971's The French Connection. He followed it up with another Oscar-nominated directorial effort, 1973's hugely influential modern classic The Exorcist. Like many titans of '70s cinema, Friedkin has subsequently had a career filled with peaks and valleys, but he's currently experiencing a late-period renaissance with 2003's spare, haunting The Hunted and this year's creepily intense psychological horror film Bug.
His mid-period films have found a second life on DVD, especially the underrated 1977 thriller Sorcerer, a box-office flop that has attracted a cult following; the superb 1985 action masterpiece To Live And Die In L.A.; and 1980's Cruising, a dark drama about an undercover cop (Al Pacino) who goes undercover in New York's leather bars to smoke out a serial killer targeting gay men. Gay-rights activists attacked the film extensively throughout its production and release, but it's gotten a much warmer reception upon its DVD release and limited theatrical re-release. The A.V. Club recently spoke with Friedkin about casting The Exorcist and The French Connection, the controversy surrounding Cruising, and Sonny Bono.
The A.V. Club: You've said that when you read the novel that Cruising was based on, you felt it was dated. What did you mean by that?
William Friedkin: I just felt that the novel was not really accurate to what the scene was at the time.
AVC: In what respect?
WF: Well, the scene had shifted to the leather bars, and what [author Gerald Walker] was writing about was sort of upper East Side things, and it was all pretty polite. There was a polite side of gay society. What I was observing, for the most part, was the culture of the leather bars. And that's what was getting written about. That's what was happening in New York City at that time. A lot of things were happening. Mysterious deaths in the gay community, there were some brutal killings that had occurred, and I just don't think the atmosphere of the novel reflected that, or the early steps of the gay-liberation movement.
AVC: Would you say the novel took place more in the mainstream of gay culture?
WF: I don't know what the mainstream is. I was never talking about the mainstream. It just didn't seem to me to be relevant, the way the novel was written. The foundation, the story, I found interesting enough, but not the backstory.
AVC: Apparently Steven Spielberg flirted with the idea of directing Cruising.
WF: Well, the guy who originally produced The French Connection, Phil D'Antoni, had originally bought the rights, and he brought the novel to me, and I said, "I just don't think this is something that would interest me." So he latched onto Steven Spielberg, who had just done The Sugarland Express. It was before Jaws, it was before the rest of his career. And Spielberg and D'Antoni tried to get it made for, I guess, a few months—I'm not sure how long—but they could never get it financed. And the rights lapsed, and Jerry Weintraub got the rights three or four years later and brought it to me again.
AVC: Did you ever talk with Spielberg about his conception of the project?
WF: No, we never spoke about it.
AVC: You'd done The Boys In The Band about a decade earlier. Did you do much research for those films?
WF: No, I didn't do a lot of research. I mean, certainly not for The Boys In The Band. [That] was a terrific piece of writing, and it had everything it had to say. It was a very successful Off-Broadway play, and I thought it was funny and touching. Extremely moving and a terrific love story.
AVC: In the '80s, before AIDS and the gay-rights movement, there were very few Hollywood movies about homosexuality—
WF: There are still very few Hollywood movies that deal with that in any way.
AVC: Right, but there are kind of more independent films—
WF: The one that comes to mind, I guess, is a picture I didn't see, Brokeback Mountain.
AVC: Why didn't you see Brokeback Mountain?
WF: I don't see a lot of the films that come out. You know, I've lost the habit of going to contemporary films.
AVC: Why is that?
WF: They don't—I watch a lot of older films that have been re-mastered on DVD. I'd rather see Singing In The Rain or The Band Wagon or Treasure Of Sierra Madre or Citizen Kane 10 times in a year than any of the things that are out today. There are exceptions. Rare, rare exceptions. Sometimes there'll be an incredible—like I saw Ma Vie En Rose, which I thought was incredible. Great movie, great performance. And it's what you're drawn to, or not drawn to.
AVC: Your first movie was a musical, wasn't it? Good Times?
WF: You could call it that. But not with a straight face.
AVC: How did William Friedkin end up directing a Sonny and Cher movie?
WF: Well, I didn't end up—it was my first picture. Sonny and Cher were basically the hottest act in show business at that time, and I had just come out of documentaries, and the only thing that I had done on a sound stage was the very last Alfred Hitchcock Hour. And then I met Sonny Bono and we became friends and I went down and heard him record some pieces and I thought the guy was an absolute genius, and the way he literally created and directed Cher, I thought was fascinating. And the opportunity to make a film came up, and he asked me to do it.
AVC: Was he still sort of hanging out with Phil Spector?
WF: No, he'd kind of broken away from Spector, but he was a gofer for Spector for years. That's how he got his start, and that's how he learned to make his music.
AVC: It seems that as a producer, Bono had his own version of the "wall of sound."
WF: "Wall of sound" was created kind of accidentally. All of the songs and backgrounds that were created for the wall of sound were done at a very small studio called the Gold Star Studio, which at the time was on Western and Santa Monica. It's gone now. It was low ceilings and no separation. You know, the idea of a recording studio prior to that was very large rooms, tall ceilings, and separations for each section. You could have a 50-piece orchestra playing, but you'd have the brass separated off from the strings and from the flutes and from a piano. You had them basically isolated. But when you put 35 or 40 musicians in the Gold Star, there was no separation possible, and the sound just bounced up into the low ceiling and came back as a kind of wash.
AVC: A lot of great things happen by accident.
WF: The Beach Boys recorded all their early stuff at Gold Star. Carole King and Sonny and Cher and all Phil Spector's stuff: "River Deep, Mountain High," The Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling." So yeah, I guess Spector could be credited with the wall of sound, but I think it started for economic reasons.
AVC: Orson Welles said that a director is someone who presides over accidents. It seems like certainly something you've been open to, opening yourself up to moments. How much do you think that was influenced by coming out of the documentary tradition?
WF: Well, I've tried to impose documentary techniques on a lot of the films I've done. I actually started in live television, but the first films I made were documentaries. But if you look at Citizen Kane, that's no accident. Nor is Touch Of Evil, so I don't know that I agree with that. There are certain things that happen during the production of, I think, every film, that you didn't plan, and often it's better than what you did plan. There's the question of either going with it or not, but I think Welles' films are the least accidental of almost any American director's.
AVC: Let's talk about French Connection, an action film that employs a lot of documentary techniques. Apparently, writer Jimmy Breslin was up for the lead role.
WF: He wasn't cast. He was a guy I auditioned. We weren't sure who to cast, and Gene Hackman was about the fifth choice. He was nowhere near anyone that we thought about initially to make that film.
AVC: Who was your top choice for the Popeye Doyle role?
WF: When Fox first said it was interested in making the film, we said "We really like Paul Newman," and they said, "Well, you're not going to be able to get Paul Newman." Our budget was a million and a half dollars, and Paul Newman at that time alone cost $500,000. And so then I said, "Well, you know, I think Jackie Gleason," because Gleason was what they called the black Irish, heavy drinker, big oversized guy in every way. But Fox had just made a film with Gleason, and it was the biggest disaster in the history of Fox.
AVC: Skidoo?
WF: No, it was a silent comedy. No words, called Gigot. He played a clown. And it was an experimental film, it was a silent comedy, and it was a disaster.
AVC: So he experimented in losing all of Fox's money.
WF: Well, Dick Zanuck said, "There's no way we're gonna do this with Jackie Gleason." He'd spoken to Gleason, who wanted to do it. Then we went to Peter Boyle, who had just made a film called Joe, and Boyle said, "Well, I really only wanna do romantic comedies after Joe." That's what he tried to do. And recently, I met this guy Phil Rosenthal, who produced Everybody Loves Raymond for nine seasons, and Peter Boyle was on it, and Phil told me, "There wasn't a day on the set that Peter Boyle didn't say, "The biggest mistake I ever made was not doing The French Connection." We offered it to him, and he turned it down. It was an agent who suggested Gene Hackman. And we met with him and we had to start the movie or not, so we sort of backed in with Gene Hackman.
AVC: Which obviously turned out pretty well.
WF: Well, I thought he was great. He's sort of the centerpiece of it, and you know he was terrific. But no, I didn't have him in mind at all when we started.
AVC: A lot of your protagonists aren't conventionally likeable. For a lot of big stars—
WF: Some of their mothers like them, and often their wives—often not—but there are some people that like them.
AVC: They do tend to be on the dark side.
WF: The thing that interests me is the good and evil in everybody. I don't have conventional heroes in the films that I directed, because I believe there's good and evil in everybody.
AVC: They're all inextricably interlinked. Like for example, Bug— playing a role like that has to be psychologically grueling. Is that kind of a challenge? Is it hard to convince people—
WF: Well, it's psychologically grueling for the time you're shooting it. Then I say "Cut, that's a wrap," and everybody goes home and lives lives that are not psychologically grueling.
AVC: Everybody has a piña colada and laughs off the day's shooting?
WF: Well, it's a job, you know? I'll tell you, the guy who plays the lead in that, Michael Shannon? He's a guy that really doesn't give it up. He lives the role. And I think this guy's gonna have a very interesting career.
AVC: Well, when it's that kind of a role and it's that intense—
WF: It's not like a jacket that you can take off at the end of the day. He—that's the reason I cast him and not a bigger star, because I found him so dedicated, so focused on everything that he had done on the stage, and now he's got something of a film career going.
AVC: Ashley Judd had been typecast in romantic comedies and very slick thrillers, so it was good to see her have an intense role where she's actually called upon to act a great deal.
WF: Oh, I knew her socially. I had never worked with her. But she had the quality that I most look for in an actor: intelligence. She's much more intelligent than a lot of the roles that she's played, and I knew that she understood this character in all of its subtleties. So she was the only actress I ever went to.
AVC: Let's talk about the casting of The Exorcist.
WF: I had no difficulty casting The Exorcist at all. Paul Newman wanted to do it. Jack Nicholson wanted to do it. After I had cast Ellen Burstyn, who is I think the first person I cast, Nicholson showed up at the restaurant where we were having lunch, and he said "Why haven't you thought about me for this?" And I told him, "You know, you've worked with Burstyn already, and I don't want this to be about an acting team or something." I gave him a silly excuse. And he said, "Have you ever heard of Tracy and Hepburn?" I said, "Yeah, I have, but I don't wanna go that way. I want a guy who appearing in priest's garb is gonna be totally believable, and not be thought of as an actor dressed as a priest."
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