LYCOS RETRIEVER 
William Friedkin: New Hollywood
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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.
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FILM William Friedkin, like it or not, has contributed so much to mainstream queer cinema that it's remarkable his name primarily calls up images of projectile vomiting and Gene Hackman running a lot. The Boys in the Band (1970) and the more high-profile Cruising (1980) are bookends to a decade of comparatively unencumbered gay sex that is legendary to gay men of my generation (I was alive for a gloriously unencumbered two months of it), yet there was almost no mainstream representation of gay men in pop culture between the two films that didn't involve guest spots on Match Game or The Hollywood Squares.
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On top of the world, as one of Hollywood's most successful and powerful, with the industry and audiences waiting anxiously to see what he'd come up with next, Friedkin's time in the sun ended with his next film. Sorcerer (1977), a remake of The Wages of Fear, that opened during the summer of 1977 and (he claims) was ignored by audiences stuck on Star Wars. The truth is that audiences hated the film, which, despite the title, wasn't remotely supernatural but a long, ethereal, and murky adventure film. Starring Roy Scheider as one of a handful of criminals for hire, who agree to drive trucks loaded with nitroglycerine through a treacherous jungle. Much of the film is visually wondrous and thrilling, but Friedkin gives the story a long prologue that should've been dropped. Also, Friedkin's self indulgences overwhelm a gripping story.
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As in The Exorcist, Friedkin employs an unconventional situation for the narrative and uses mood and atmosphere to gradually turn reality into a nightmare. Unlike the narrative in The Exorcist... this story of a yuppie couple who hire a nanny that feeds newborns to trees is told on a much smaller scale, but still is not consistently interesting. Jade, Friedkin's most recent feature, has been criticized not only for unsuccessful attempts to establish mood that bog down the narrative, but also for unoriginal dialogue and stale action sequences. The screenwriter of Jade, Joe Eszterhas, is equally credited for the film's flaws, along with Friedkin, in many critical reviews.
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The project so impressed station management that Friedkin was appointed head
of a newly created documentary film unit. He continued to make documentaries,
including several for producer, David Wolper: "THE THIN BLUE LINE",
"MAYHEM ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON" and "THE BOLD MEN".
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Opening this week is Bug, a frightening new film by William Friedkin (The Exorcist). Ashley Judd and Mike Shannon are electrifying as two damaged souls in a seedy Oklahoma roach motel in Friedkin’s nightmarishly brilliant film version of the acclaimed play by Tracy Letts.
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