The Friedkin Connection

April 15, 2013
Ever want to know how they shot that amazing subway/car chase scene in The French Connection, or how Linda Blair won the part of Regan, the possessed young woman in The Exorcist? This memoir by the director of both films reveals all of this and much more. There's enough in those two chapters alone to keep film buffs happy for a long time, and Friedkin's account of his early days as a floor manager at a Chicago television station who rose to prominence in Hollywood in the late 1960's is worth a read, as well. Friedkin writes briskly and remains focused on his workâthere's no mention of his four wives nor much else that's personal. Later chapters focus on other projects such as Cruising and then dwindle down to his account of directing the television version of Twelve Angry Men, which just can't compete with The Exorcist. But Friedkin's memory for the process of filmmaking elevates this book above the usual score-settling Hollywood memoir; film buffs will be pleased with what he offers here.

March 15, 2013
Much has been written about the second golden age of Hollywood during the 1970s. Friedkin, who got his start in Chicago directing documentaries and live television, rocketed to the head of the class alongside such heavyweights as Scorsese, Coppola, and Polanski after the success and acclaim he received (including the Academy Award for Best Director) for helming the 1971 classic The French Connection. As Friedkin recalls in this durable and intermittently enthralling memoir, such universal praise came too soon, and he became deeply concerned that his career had peaked after only his fifth film. He never could have predicted the frenzied reaction to his 1973 follow-up, The Exorcist, which broke box-office records and redefined the horror genre. On the page, Friedkin never comes across as arrogant, and although he shares candid anecdotes about working with Sonny and Cher, Gene Hackman, and Al Pacino, this is no venomous tell-all. The reflective chapters devoted to his critical and commercial failures are the most insightful. Hardcore film geeks will salivate over this time capsule from a grateful and still-brilliant legend.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

April 1, 2013
The Oscar-winning director of The French Connection and The Exorcist looks back at his life and work. Friedkin writes that his career began accidentally, interviewing for the wrong job but landing a spot in the mail room at WGN in Chicago ("By the way, kid, are you stupid?" his interviewer asked), and from there working his way from one job to the other, learning the crafts necessary to make a show--and then a film--through trial and error: "Will the floor manager please keep away from the camera?" he was once asked. Lessons learned, he moved west to Los Angeles, where he fell into friendly competition with his contemporaries, foremost among them Francis Ford Coppola, and steadily built a resume as a reliable filmmaker able to coax the best performances out of actors. There's plenty of inside baseball here, but Friedkin is more interested in discussing the technical details of his films; we learn, for instance, that "there was not a lot of dialogue looping" in The French Connection, for all the noise on the New York streets, and that Max von Sydow was so tall that he "had to develop a slouch and arthritic movement" for the character he played in The Exorcist. A surprise, given Hollywood's secular nature, may be the revelation of the depth of Friedkin's religious faith--even though William Peter Blatty, who wrote the story of that spooky flick, accused him of "having undercut the film's moral center." For aspiring directors, a glimpse into the school of hard knocks, but there's plenty of good stuff, lean and well-written, for civilian film fans, too.

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