‘The Exorcist’ Director William Friedkin Has Never Seen the Sequels or Series, but He Loved ‘It’ — Q&A

On the 28th edition of the annual Halloween-themed “Treehouse of Horror” episode of “The Simpsons,” baby Maggie is possessed by a demon, and the voices of those tasked with exorcising it sound familiar to diehard horror fans: One of them is Ben Daniels, star of the FOX show “The Exorcist,” and the other is William Friedkin, who directed the 1973 movie.

Friedkin’s legacy extends far beyond that movie; two years earlier, he swept the Oscars with “The French Connection,” and later delivered “Sorcerer” and “To Live and Die in L.A.” The past decade found Friedkin continuing to produce edgy work, including two Tracy Letts plays (“Bug” and “Killer Joe”), numerous operas, and now a documentary, “The Devil and Father Amorth,” which premiered this fall at the Venice International Film Festival and explores the real-life context that inspired “The Exorcist.”

While visiting Lyon to deliver a masterclass at the Lumiere Festival, the 82-year-old filmmaker sat down with IndieWire to talk about his relationship to the horror genre, struggles with the studio system, and the battle to bring diversity to Hollywood.

The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

IndieWire: How did your voiceover work on “The Simpsons” come about?

William Friedkin: I just have a couple of lines. I don’t know what the character that they’ve drawn to illustrate me looks like. It’s a doctor who examines Homer for some kind of extraordinary symptoms. The writers turned out to be fans of mine. And they asked me if I wanted to come down to a cast reading. I was having lunch with the archbishop of Los Angeles, who is a “Simpsons” fan, and I brought him to this “Simpsons” reading. He loved it, he was in heaven. I enjoyed it very much as well, because it was funny around the table. Then they asked me if I could do a character. I went in and did it in like two takes.

The very decision to call you up for that episode speaks to your reputation as a horror director, although technically you only made one horror movie.

I’m not interested in the genre, per se. To me, there are good films and bad films. I don’t think in terms of genre. I don’t like a lot of westerns, but I love “Shane” and “High Noon” and the “Wild Bunch.” There are several films that are part of the horror genre that I love: “Psycho,” “Onibaba,” “Les Diaboliques” — but is that a horror film or a psychological thriller about murder? It doesn’t matter. To me, characterizing the picture is of no use whatsoever. I don’t know how you characterize “Citizen Kane,” the films of Alain Resnais or Fellini, but I like them.

What did you make of all those stories surrounding “It” breaking box office records? Some reports said it replaced “The Exorcist” as the highest-grossing horror movie of all time.

I thought it was a little bit over the top, but “It” was really good. The clown was pretty scary stuff. I really like it. But here’s the thing. It will never have as many admissions as “The Exorcist” in terms of people who came to see it. The price of a ticket when “The Exorcist” came out was probably on average less than two dollars; I think today it’s closer to nine. Neither “The Exorcist” nor any of the other films that made a lot of money will ever have as many viewers as “Gone with the Wind” or “Birth of a Nation.” I think it cost 15 cents or a quarter to see. So you can’t talk about how many people saw this more than something else because of the difference in the value of money.

But it’s kind of unusual for Warner Bros. to get behind a story like that because “The Exorcist” has been such an important film to them. It’s the gift that keeps on giving. Still, I liked “It.” I thought it was terrific.

How do you feel about “The Exorcist” franchise as a whole?

I never saw any of the Exorcist films, not even Bill’s [William Blatty, author of “The Exorcist” novel]. I saw a few minutes of “Exorcist II,” but that was only because I was in the Technicolor lab timing a film that I had directed — I forget which one — and one of the color timers at Technicolor said, hey, we just made a print of “Exorcist II,” would you like to have a look at it? I said OK. I went in, and after five minutes, it just blasted me. I couldn’t take it. I thought it was just ridiculous and stupid. But that was only five minutes, so I can’t make an ultimate judgement about it. It just seemed to me to have nothing to do with “The Exorcist.”

Paul Schrader’s film had some potential.

Which one was that?

“Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist.”

I have no idea about that. I know Bill [Blatty] did one, which was not meant to be called “Exorcist III.” It was from another novel he’d written called “Legion.” I had no interest. I loved Bill Blatty. I dedicated my documentary to him and we remained close friends to his death. But I know that he had to make a lot of compromises — he had to put an exorcism scene in there, which he never intended, so that the producers could call it “Exorcist III.”

And what are your thoughts on the TV show?

I haven’t seen it, either. They bought the title from Blatty, and I don’t disrespect that. I know this: Before he died, he had never seen an episode of it. He died during the first season of it and he called me. The last call he made to me, shortly before he died, was, “Billy, have you seen it?” And I said, “No, Bill.” He said, “Neither have I.” And that was the extent of our conversation about it.

Aside from “It,” what films are you watching these days?

I loved “Get Out.” I thought it was terrific. But I don’t go to a lot of films because I’m not the audience for most films.With rare exceptions, the theaters certainly in America are dedicated to blockbusters, which means sequel after sequel after sequel of a superhero movie. Occasionally, somewhere, there will be a serious film.

When I was younger and starting out in the film business, we could see all of the great films from Europe, from Italy, France. We hardly see any now. I don’t know who the current crop of French directors are. There’s one Italian director who I admire very much, Sorrentino. That’s the only name I’m aware of. When I grew up, you could see a whole crop of European and Asian directors, but not now.

You were a young filmmaker when your career took off in the studio system. These days, young filmmakers who land studio gigs often seem to struggle with the authority there.

I know that’s true, but I’m not aware of the circumstances. It seems to me that before a studio is going to hire a director, they ought to be on the same page. When I was directing, it was not necessary to be on the same page as the studio. Every film that I made was a struggle to get made. For more than two years, nobody wanted to make “The French Connection.” It was turned down twice by every studio, including Fox. Then one day I got a call from Dick Zanuck, who said, “You know, I’m going to be fired over here in about six months. I don’t what this crazy cop film you’ve got is, but I’ve got a hunch about it. If you guys can make it for $1.5 million, I’ve got that hidden away in a drawer over here.” They only had one other picture in production called “The Salzburg Connection” from a book by Helen Macinnes, who wrote thrillers.

They made that and the only other film they had was “The French Connection.” They were going out of business, getting taken over by a prominent brokerage house in New York and were going to be sold. They reluctantly made that after turning it down for two years. Our budget was just under $3 million. We said we could do it for $1.5 million, knowing that we couldn’t.

Those are the kind of budgets that smaller entities like Blumhouse work with now.

Unless the studios just let Jason Blum do his thing and then pick it up, they have all these expenses that need to be made up — the rental on the studio space, the premium they put up on the equipment that you use, and everything else. Then the advertising and publicity. By the time you get through with a studio film, they have many more added costs than a sharp independent like Blum, who operates out of his hat and works with a lot of new filmmakers who come in under the radar. The point is, whether a film is over or under the radar, if the audience likes it, that’s it. They don’t care what it costs. I’ve never seen an ad for a movie that says, “See this picture, it cost $150 million.” Or, “See this film, it only cost $400,000.” Who cares? The audience doesn’t give a damn; the industry and trade publications are the only ones that do.

When did you start paying attention to that side of things?

When I started in the ’60s and then into the ’70s, we absolutely did not know the cost a film or how much it took in. We did not know. Even when I had films in profit, I basically had to sue each time to get the profit. We’d always settle on the courthouse steps because we had accountants who said we weren’t getting paid enough on backends. But I never saw box office information in trade press or the LAT or the NYT. There was no IndieWire. We had no idea about the cost of a film. We knew if a film was successful or not by how long it stayed in the theaters.

The industry has changed so much. Now it’s dominated by headlines about the Harvey Weinstein scandal and rampant sexual assault in the film industry. What are your thoughts on all that?

I think it’s very sad for everyone involved. I never knew about Harvey or about what the moguls did. I have seen certain stories printed some of which are really shocking — Shirley Temple’s story about Arthur Freed, who was one of my idols. The MGM musicals are to me as a body the best American films. So Arthur Freed is a guy I admire tremendously, like Vincent Minelli. I knew nothing about their private lives. The movies I watch over and over again are “Singin’ in the Rain,” “Gigi,” “An American Paris” and — more than any of the rest — “The Band Wagon.” That was also an Arthur Freed production. So what do you do? Not watch it?

What do you make of conversations surrounding diversity in Hollywood today?

I tried to hire more women on “To Live and Die in L.A.” in key positions because I did not want another pure macho film like “The French Connection.” So my production designer, art director, costume designer, editors, and others were women that I consciously sought out so I didn’t fall into that trip. There is a kind of asexuality to the picture that I consciously wanted in there. For the casting, I was mostly attracted to making pictures with men, aside from the lead character in “The Exorcist.” I can’t deny the validity of stories from people who claim they were discriminated against.

Certainly, when I was working, there were very few African Americans in any meaningful positions. There were only a few women. I happen to believe that Kathryn Bigelow is one of the two or three best American directors, male or female. She struggled for a very long time, but she did get films made before there was any talk of diversity. I don’t know why there aren’t more women in positions of authority, or directors, or cinematographers. I did a video a number of years ago for the French singer Johnny Hallyday, and I worked with a great woman cinematographer in New York. She was fantastic. It was not a matter of her being a woman; she was just good.

There have been women greenlighting film and TV for quite a while — Donna Langley, Dana Walden, Amy Pascal, Stacey Snider, and others who are in positions of power and authority. Of course, my wife Sherry Lansing was the head of Fox for a number of years and then Paramount. She did a lot of women’s films, but she also did “Chariots of Fire” for Fox, which is particularly not a film about women.

Moving beyond all that, how do you feel about the impact of political correctness in our current climate? Many of your movies have pushed buttons.

Political correctness is like being within the grip of a vice. Or it’s like being in prison. If you must tell a story that’s politically correct, then we wouldn’t have “Lolita,” and I can’t accept the argument that we shouldn’t have “Lolita,” or “The Confessions of Nat Turner,” or many other works.

Or “Cruising”?

I never intended “Cruising” to be any kind of statement about gay life. To me, it was an exotic background for a murder mystery that had never been seen in a mainstream film.

Did you ever see “Interior. Leather Bar,” the James Franco movie in which they recreated the missing scenes from your film?

Let me tell you about that. I have a young Filipino woman who has worked with us. She brought her nephew in to work with us and he goes to a film school in LA. He told me one day that James Franco and another guy were around the film school and others looking for people to be in a movie that was about the missing 40 minutes of “Cruising.” I thought that was interesting. I had never talked to James Franco. Then, from this young man, I heard that a lot of the students in the film school went off to be in it! It was in production. I think it was a month or maybe two months into when I heard it was in production. I got a call from James Franco. How he got my number I have no idea.

He introduced himself on the phone. He said, “Hey, you know, I’m doing a film about the missing 40 minutes of ‘Cruising.'” Then he laughed and said, “What were the missing 40 minutes of ‘Cruising’?” I said, “It was nothing but male pornography that I shot because I could.” I had access to this particular S&M club, which I think was a one-of-a-kind private club, Mind Club. He said, “Oh,” and then the conversation drifted off. I’ve never seen the film. I don’t know what they’ve done with it. I was never invited to a screening. I probably would’ve gone, but I no longer search out films.

You started your filmmaking career with the activist documentary “The People vs. Paul Crump,” which helped exonerate a man on death row. Do you see documentaries having that kind of effectiveness now?

“Making a Murderer” did enter the cultural discussion about the criminal justice system. It was never, ever possible to do it in a theater, to make something enter the mainstream like that. That didn’t exist when I made my documentary.

You co-sponsored a Hillary Clinton fundraiser last year. Why have you never made a political film?

I wouldn’t know what to do about it. “The Candidate” was the best political film I’ve seen — the last line, when he’s got elected, he’s sitting with his advisers and says, “What do we do now?” I thought that was spot-on. That says it all.