Revisiting the Horror with William Friedkin

by Gina McIntyre

Most people remember the first time they saw The Exorcist. As well they should. The tale of young Regan McNeil's experiences in the throes of demonic possession, adapted by William Friedkin from the best selling novel by William Peter Blatty, stands as one of the most intensely frightening films ever made. Even 17 years after its original theatrical release, the movie's then-unknown star Linda Blair is still a household name, and let's face it, pea soup has just never been the same.

On September 22, an entirely new moviegoing audience will be introduced to The Exorcist, albeit an enhanced edition of the original featuring digital surround sound and 11 minutes of never-before-seen footage. Academy Award winner Friedkin explains why, in the wake of the film's successful reissue overseas, he finally decided to unleash a new version of his masterpiece on American audiences.

McIntyre: William Peter Blatty had for years been interested in revisiting the film. What convinced you that now was the right time to release an updated version of The Exorcist?
Friedkin: It was based on Blatty's desire to have the whole film seen as it was once conceived. Over the years, he'd always felt that all of this footage that I had cut originally made the film a less full experience. I cut all this footage because of two things only. One was pace, and the other was length. It was going to take the film well over two hours, which was not a good idea, and I also felt it was going to slow down the pace. I had no idea--no one had any idea at the time--what the film would become or how much interest in it there would be. We were just looking at it as you would look at the average film going out in 1973 and saying, "It's too slow," or "It doesn't move fast enough." I had just done The French Connection, which was a 100-minute movie. It was fast-paced, and it succeeded on a tremendous level. I thought why should The Exorcist drag? That's how it came about.

McIntyre: What changes did you make to the original print?
Friedkin: There's 11 minutes of film added. I went back and added some things digitally. I remixed the soundtrack into six-track digital stereo, so the audience is in the middle of the film. I made new sound effects. We did some new vocal things. We added some new music. Sound is so much more significant today than it was when the film was released, yet sound is so important to the overall experience of The Exorcist. The soundtrack did win the Academy Award, and it was a monoaural track.

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McIntyre: In interviews, Blatty mentioned that what he called "the moral center" of the film has now been restored. Could you expound on that?
Friedkin: There were some sequences where the moral center was underlined. I felt originally that it didn't need to be underlined. In the 1970s the film audience was a lot hipper. They would accept ambiguity. They were willing to put together the meaning of films themselves. They didn't need to be told what they were looking at or what it meant or whether this was a triumph of good or evil. People took from the film what they brought to it. It is a much different film audience today. They are much more concerned about clarity, closure, the triumph of good over evil. You can't leave that stuff ambiguous anymore and have a success. You can do it and maybe have it admired critically and have a few people like it. But on a mass scale, which is the way they're re-distributing The Exorcist, you have to be very clear about what you're trying to tell people today.

McIntyre: Why do you think the audience has changed?
Friedkin: I think they've been dumbed down by television and by a lot of stupid pictures that have been successful where everything is spelled out. The background of young people today is not literature, it's television and the Internet. The Exorcist comes out of a literary tradition. It comes out of a tradition like Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft and even Dickens. When the novel was first read, it was appreciated not because it was a schlock horror story. It was well written and came from a literary tradition. The movie was made in a classical way. It's a serious examination of good and evil in the same person, in an innocent child. It's based on the records of not only an actual exorcism but the observations of doctors and nurses who were in attendance at that actual exorcism in '49. It does have a solid foundation, but today the young people who make up the bulk of the moviegoing audience do not have the same reference as they did back in the '70s when they were not so influenced by television. There was no MTV.

McIntyre: If The Exorcist were to be released for the first time now, what do you think the reaction would be?
Friedkin: I'm not very good at "if"'s. I can tell you this--nobody has ever seen a film like this. We'll have to wait and see. People's idea of a frightening film now is also something that's a million laughs. The Exorcist wasn't a rip off. It wasn't a piece of garbage like Scary Movie or a send-up like, with all due respect, the Nightmare on Elm Street stuff, which is really just hype and jolts for jocks. The Exorcist is not that.

McIntyre: Do you find it gratifying that after all this time the film is still revered as a horror classic?
Friedkin: I never really referred to [The Exorcist] as a horror film. To me, it's a film about the mystery of faith. It's about the eternal struggle between good and evil, and it's handled seriously and respectfully.

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