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William Friedkin: Movies
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Coming to DVD this week is the 1980 movie “Cruising,” a film that William Friedkin made with a little known star – Al Pacino. The film had a rocky road from its inception, as the subject matter didn’t exactly lend itself as an easy sell. In the film Al Pacino plays a cop who has to go undercoverin the gay S&M scene in New York City to try and stop a serial killer of the gay community.
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(From left) Jeffrey Haupt, William Friedkin, Ruby Haupt and Gregory Black take a break during the filming of Friedkin's upcoming movie "Bug." Jeffrey Haupt, location sound mixer, chose all Lectrosonics wireless gear for recording.
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Born in Chicago, IL on Aug. 29, 1935, William "Billy" Friedkin was the son of Louis Friedkin, a semi-pro softball player turned clothing salesman; and his wife, Rachel, a nurse. Growing up exceptionally poor, Friedkin escaped his harsh surroundings by sneaking into the movies. One of the first films he saw, in particular, "Citizen Kane "(1941) with Orson Welles, made a profound impact on the future auteur. After graduating from high school, Friedkin got a job at Chicago's WGN, where he directed television and made documentaries. In 1962, Friedkin made his film-directing debut with "The People vs. Paul Crump" (1962), a narrative documentary about an inmate who was put on death row after giving a confession which was forcibly beaten from him by police. While "The People vs. Paul Crump" never aired, it won the Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco Film Festival and paved the way for future work for the filmmaker.
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The studio wanted Marlon Brando for the role of Father Merrin.[3] Friedkin immediately vetoed this by stating that with Brando in the film it would become a "Brando movie." Jack Nicholson was originally up for the part of Father Karras before Stacy Keach had been hired by Blatty to play the role. Friedkin then spotted Miller in a Broadway play. Even though Miller had never acted in a movie before, Keach's contract was bought out by Warner Bros. and Miller was cast in the role (Blatty would later give Keach the leading role in The Ninth Configuration). Other actors considered for the role at the time included Gene Hackman.
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After a brief foray into television in the mid-1980s, Friedkin returned to features. Hoping to recapture some of his early mojo, Friedkin returned to the genre that made him a household name - namely, horror. Inspired by personal experiences with people hired to look after his son, Friedkin wrote and directed "The Guardian" (1990), a dopey thriller about a baby in supernatural danger from a new nanny. Panned by critics, the film died quickly at the box office. Friedkin returned to deliver some scares (with a comic twist), by helming an episode of "Tales From the Crypt" (HBO, 1992). The next year, Friedkin reached a career low point by helming the made-for-cable television movie, "Jailbreakers" (Showtime, 1994) starring Shannen Doherty and Antonio Sabato, Jr. He ... directed one installment of Showtime's "Rebel Highway" (1994), a series of re-made 1950s and '60s teen drive-in movies.
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Even during the heyday of the American paranoia thriller, there was never a performance quite like the one given by Michael Shannon in William Friedkin's take-no-prisoners adaptation of Tracy Letts's off-Broadway play about fear and loathing in an Oklahoma motel room. As Peter Evans, the blandly named, seemingly innocuous drifter who appears one evening at the doorstep of Agnes White (Ashley Judd), a battered wife terrified of her ex-con husband's return, Shannon has either officially arrived onscreen or carved out a memorable cult niche. It was a sly move on Friedkin's part to have Shannon reprise his stage role; largely unknown to movie audiences, Shannon makes for a persuasive blank slate, an unknown entity. The plot trajectory of "Bug," though originating from Agnes's point of view, relies upon the slow peeling away at Peter's psychosis, and it functions best when you don't know where it, or Peter, or Shannon, is going. Eyes set so widely apart he looks like a praying mantis, the actor moves gradually and unrelentingly from possible savior to frenetic phantasm; and as he strips himself down, he achieves something like grace - his performance feels like an authentic inner howl, a splattering of soul, at once unwieldy and intimidatingly in control.
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