William Friedkin was “there” in my life before I even really put together that movies were a thing made by humans. As a kid, they were just full-immersion stories beyond my wildest dreams. I’m sure that’s true for most people. It wasn’t until later, as a college student, that I put things together, and learned who he was, what he did, the trajectory and timeline. It’s great to acquire context, but something is lost when you gain more knowledge, one of the ironies of life I treasure, rather than reject.
I saw “The Exorcist” at a sleepover when I was a kid. In other words, way too young. My friends’ parents were far more lax in what they allowed their kids to see. As a young Catholic child, the movie rocked me to my core, terrified me so much I couldn’t sleep that night, and I can say, without too much exaggeration, I was never really the same again. Something had shifted, something broke. Looking back on this first viewing, trying to remove the ballast of intervening years and knowledge-gaining, I remember how the camera angles and sudden cuts jolted me, scared me SO MUCH, even if nothing particularly terrifying was happening onscreen. I now know this is a tribute to the power of Friedkin’s filmmaking. I didn’t watch the film. I feared it. I had no no protection from material like this, no distance. It is still one of my most memorable movie viewing memories.
I feel like it’s the best way to see The Exorcist, if possible. Come to it when you are a credulous child, and way too young for the material. Your faith will tremble, your foundation will never be quite so stable again.
Now THAT’S a movie.
Friedkin’s films would imprint themselves on me more times after that. I saw The French Connection in high school as well as Cruising, when I was falling down my Al Pacino rabbit hole at age 13, 14. Similar to The Exorcist, I was not ready for Cruising. I had no protection and/or context to grapple with it. It was so grownup I knew I shouldn’t be watching it, but I couldn’t look away. I didn’t even know it was directed by the same guy who scared me so much as a grade-schooler with The Exorcist.
The things you come to “too early” have a way of sticking. These films set a kind of standard in my head, a bar by which I would judge other films, even though I was a sophomore in high school and much of what was happening to me, the relationships I formed with these films, was in the subconscious.
Once I was in college, I started getting conscious about the films I watched, the artistic figures I felt I needed to know about to understand filmmaking, this “thing” I was immersed in since before I even had a memory. Friedkin was a major part of my development as a movie-goer: he showed me things I wasn’t ready for, things I didn’t really want to see and yet felt I had to experience. He was always in a category all his own. His vision was wide and deep. His filmmaking is energetic and visceral: it’s from the guts.
I imagine the car chase scene in Bullitt holds the top spot for “car chase scenes” and it’s deserved. But Friedkin was responsible for not one, but two, of the car chase scenes by which I judge all other car chase scenes. The first, of course, is the famous one in The French Connection, where Gene Hackman, beneath the elevated train tracks, chases the train above him. Crazy scene. But the second car chase scene REALLY sets the bar: Friedkin tops himSELF with the car chase scene in To Live and Die in L.A..
The chase feels like it goes on forEVER (and also features a car chasing a train). The chase includes a car driving the wrong way on a crowded Los Angeles freeway. The stunt driving in this sequence is second to none.
Not every filmmaker introduces you to the joy of cinema while simultaneously ruining your childhood.
And I thank him for both.
(Linda Blair’s tribute to Friedkin on her Instagram page is wonderful.)
