William Friedkin

One of New Hollywood's most successful wunderkinder in the early '70s, William Friedkin suffered a precipitous fall from the box-office firmament in the late '70s, punctuated by the controversial cop film Cruising (1980). Nevertheless, Friedkin managed to keep his career alive, while the lasting impact of seminal horror film The Exorcist (1973) was confirmed by its enormously successful reissue in 2000. Raised in a Chicago slum, the young Friedkin fell in with a bad crowd, but his mother set him straight and Friedkin finished high school. Unable to afford college, Friedkin got a job in the mailroom at Chicago's WGN TV station. A budding cinephile who especially loved Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear (1952), Friedkin's ambition to become a director was stoked by his first viewing of Citizen Kane (1941) while working at WGN. By his early twenties, Friedkin was directing live television and making documentaries. After spending the '50s helming, in his own estimation, over 2,000 TV programs, Friedkin made a splash on the film festival circuit in the early '60s with his documentary The People vs. Paul Crump (1962), garnering several festival prizes and the eventual commutation of the title subject's death sentence. Producer David L. Wolper offered Friedkin a job in Hollywood and Friedkin headed west in 1965. After making several documentaries for Wolper and directing episodes of TV's The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Friedkin broke into fiction features with the Sonny Bono and Cher vehicle Good Times (1967). Though Good Times was not a success, the brash tyro was tapped to direct the Norman Lear-scripted vaudeville period piece The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968). Despite moments of charm, The Night They Raided Minsky's did not popularly justify its then-generous budget. Nevertheless, Friedkin forged ahead with adaptations of Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party (1968) and Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band (1970). While neither lived up to Friedkin's movie prodigy reputation, The Boys in the Band distinguished itself as the first Hollywood movie exclusively about gay men. On the verge of never living up to his press, Friedkin took to heart his then-potential father-in-law Howard Hawks' comments about making crowd-pleasing action pictures rather than arty, psychological studies. Cutting any scenes that slowed the pace, and returning to his documentary roots, Friedkin adapted the true crime best-seller The French Connection (1971) with streetwise élan. Shot on location in New York City with documentary-style mobile cameras, The French Connection was at once a timely story about cynical cops as brutal as their drug dealer prey -- complete with star Gene Hackman's Popeye Doyle mercilessly shooting a man in the back -- and a thrilling action movie. The French Connection became a critically acclaimed hit, influencing the look of cop movies and TV series for years to come. Earning eight Oscar nominations, The French Connection went on to win the awards for Best Editing, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Picture, and Best Director, turning age-fudging Friedkin into the youngest winner to date. Friedkin's documentary experience, as well as the infamous attitude that prompted more than one wag to call him "Wild Billy," also convinced author William Peter Blatty that he could do justice to the potentially difficult adaptation of Blatty's best-selling Satanic possession thriller The Exorcist (1973). Though the production went over schedule and budget, and was plagued by mysterious accidents, The Exorcist handsomely rewarded the effort when it debuted during the 1973 Christmas season to long lines and eager crowds. Combining a starkly realist view of the supernatural with unprecedented, stomach-churning special effects and a barely veiled terror of feminine sexuality, The Exorcist reportedly caused audience members to wretch and faint, going on to break box-office records and spawn a horror revival. Though The Exorcist earned ten Oscar nomi