William David Friedkin (/ˈfriːdkɪn/; August 29, 1935 – August 7, 2023) was an American film, television and opera director, producer, and screenwriter who was closely identified with the "New Hollywood" movement of the 1970s.[1][2] Beginning his career in documentaries in the early 1960s, he is best known for his crime thriller film The French Connection (1971), which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and the horror film The Exorcist (1973), which earned him another Academy Award nomination for Best Director.
Friedkin's other films in the 1970s and 1980s include the drama The Boys in the Band (1970), considered a milestone of queer cinema; the originally deprecated, now lauded thriller Sorcerer (1977); the crime comedy drama The Brink's Job (1978); the controversial thriller Cruising (1980);[3][4] and the neo-noir thriller To Live and Die in L.A. (1985). Although Friedkin's works suffered an overall commercial and critical decline in the late 1980s, his last three feature films, all based on plays, were positively received by critics: the psychological horror film Bug (2006), the crime film Killer Joe (2011), and the legal drama film The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (2023), released two months after his death. He also worked extensively as an opera director from 1998 until his death, and directed various television films and series episodes for television.
Early life and education
Friedkin was born in Chicago, Illinois, on August 29, 1935, the son of Rachael (née Green) and Louis Friedkin. His father was a semi-professional softball player, merchant seaman, and men's clothing salesman. His mother, whom Friedkin called "a saint," was a nurse.[5][6] His parents were Jewish emigrants from Ukraine, in the Russian empire.[7] His grandparents, parents, and other relatives fled Russia during a particularly violent anti-Jewish pogrom in 1903.[8] Friedkin's father was somewhat uninterested in making money, and the family was generally lower middle class while he was growing up. According to film historian Peter Biskind, "Friedkin viewed his father with a mixture of affection and contempt for not making more of himself."[5]
After attending public schools in Chicago, Friedkin enrolled at Senn High School, where he played basketball well enough to consider turning professional.[9] He was not a serious student and barely received grades good enough to graduate,[10] which he did at the age of 16.[11] He said this was because of social promotion and not because he was bright.[12]
Friedkin began going to movies as a teenager,[9] and cited Citizen Kane as one of his key influences. Several sources claim that Friedkin saw this motion picture as a teenager,[13] but Friedkin himself said that he did not see the film until 1960, when he was 25 years old. Only then, Friedkin said, did he become a true cineaste.[14] Among the movies that he also saw as a teenager and young adult were Les Diaboliques, The Wages of Fear (which many consider he remade as Sorcerer), and Psycho (which he viewed repeatedly, like Citizen Kane). Televised documentaries such as 1960's Harvest of Shame were also important to his developing sense of cinema.[9]
As mentioned in his voice-over commentary on the DVD re-release of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, Friedkin directed one of the last episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1965, called "Off Season". Hitchcock admonished Friedkin for not wearing a tie while directing.[20]
Friedkin's later movies did not achieve the same success. Sorcerer (1977), a $22 million American remake of the French classic The Wages of Fear, co-produced by both Universal and Paramount, starring Roy Scheider, was overshadowed by the blockbuster box-office success of Star Wars, which had been released exactly one week prior.[23] Friedkin considered it his finest film, and was personally devastated by its financial and critical failure (as mentioned by Friedkin himself in the 1999 documentary series The Directors). Sorcerer was shortly followed by the crime-comedy The Brink's Job (1978), based on the real-life Great Brink's Robbery in Boston, Massachusetts, which was also unsuccessful at the box-office.[25]
1980–1999
In 1980, Friedkin directed an adaptation of the Gerald Walker crime thriller Cruising, starring Al Pacino, which was protested during production and remains the subject of heated debate. It was a critically assailed financial disappointment.[26]
In 1985, Friedkin directed the music video for Barbra Streisand's rendition of the West Side Story song "Somewhere",[28] which she recorded for her twenty-fourth studio LP, The Broadway Album. He later appears as Streisand's interviewer (uncredited) on the television special, "Putting It Together: The Making of the Broadway Album".[29]
The action/crime movie To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), starring William Petersen and Willem Dafoe, was a critical favorite and drew comparisons to Friedkin's own The French Connection (particularly for its car chase sequence), while his courtroom drama/thriller Rampage (1987) received a fairly positive review from Roger Ebert.[30] He next directed the cult classic horror film The Guardian (1990) and the thriller Jade (1995), starring Linda Fiorentino. Though the latter received an unfavorable response from critics and audiences, he said it was one of the favorite films he directed.[31]
2000–2023
In 2000, The Exorcist was re-released in theaters with extra footage and grossed $40 million in the U.S. alone. Friedkin directed the 2006 film Bug due to a positive experience watching the stage version in 2004. He was surprised to find that he was, metaphorically, on the same page as the playwright and felt that he could relate well to the story.[32] The film won the FIPRESCI prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Later, Friedkin directed an episode of the TV series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation titled "Cockroaches", which re-teamed him with To Live and Die in L.A. star William Petersen.[33] He directed again for CSI's 200th episode, "Mascara".[34]
In regard to influences of specific films on his films, Friedkin noted that The French Connection['s] documentary-like realism was the direct result of the influence of having seen Z, a French film by Costa-Gavras:
After I saw Z, I realized how I could shoot The French Connection. Because he shot Z like a documentary. It was a fiction film but it was made like it was actually happening. Like the camera didn't know what was gonna happen next. And that is an induced technique. It looks like he happened upon the scene and captured what was going on as you do in a documentary. My first films were documentaries too. So I understood what he was doing but I never thought you could do that in a feature at that time until I saw Z.[42]
While filming The Boys in the Band in 1970, Friedkin began a relationship with Kitty Hawks, daughter of director Howard Hawks. It lasted two years, during which the couple announced their engagement, but the relationship ended about 1972.[51] Friedkin began a four-year relationship with Australian dancer and choreographer Jennifer Nairn-Smith in 1972. Although they announced an engagement twice, they never married. They had a son, Cedric, on November 27, 1976.[52][53] Friedkin and his second wife, Lesley-Anne Down, also had a son, Jack, born in 1982.[46] Friedkin was raised Jewish, but called himself an agnostic later in life, although he said that he strongly believed in the teachings of Jesus Christ.[54][55]
An LA Opera production of Wagner's Tannhäuser was announced by Friedkin, but a spokesperson revealed it had been delayed indefinitely.[67] Friedkin had also been set to direct the premiere of an opera titled An Inconvenient Truth to debut in 2011,[144] but he later departed from it when creative differences arose between him and the librettist.[145] In 2013, it was reported that he would helm a stage production of Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party (which he had already directed as a feature film in 1968), for Geffen Playhouse.[146] A cast including Katie Amess, Frances Barber, Steven Berkoff, Tim Roth and Nick Ullett was assembled, but the production was soon postponed for an unknown reason, and never revived.[147]
Friedkin, William. The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir. New York: HarperCollins, 2013. ISBN978-0-06-177512-3
Friedkin, William. Conversations at the American Film Institute With the Great Moviemakers: The Next Generation. George Stevens, Jr., ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012. ISBN978-0-307-27347-5
^Brent Lang (April 12, 2013). "Director William Friedkin on Clashes With Pacino, Hackman and Why an Atheist Couldn't Helm 'Exorcist'". The Wrap. Retrieved October 4, 2020. My personal beliefs are defined as agnostic. I'm someone who believes that the power of God and the soul are unknowable, but that anybody who says there is no God is not being honest about the mystery of fate. I was raised in the Jewish faith, but I strongly believe in the teachings of Jesus.
^Winkler, Irwin (2019). A Life in Movies: Stories from Fifty Years in Hollywood. New York: Abrams Press. pp. 525–726. ISBN9781419734526.
^"Daily News from New York, New York". New York Daily News. January 20, 1970. p. 47. Production Merger Phil D'Antoni and William Friedkin have joined forces with Milton Berle Paul W. Benson Productions to do the film version of "The Brass Go-between," a novel by Oliver Bleeck. The suspense-thriller will be shot on locations in Washington, D.
^Pinnock, Tom (October 19, 2012). "Peter Gabriel: "You could feel the horror..."". Uncut. Retrieved July 24, 2023. I had written a short story on [the sleeve of] Genesis Live – one of the stories I used to tell onstage – and William Friedkin, who was the king of Hollywood because of The Exorcist, wanted me to work with him. Not as a musician, but as a screenwriter and ideas man. That was very exciting to me. In the end, unfortunately, nothing happened; it was one of many Hollywood projects that bit the dust.
^ abClagett, Thomas D. (August 1, 2002). William Friedkin: Films of Aberration, Obsession and Reality. Los Angeles, Calif.: Silman-James Press. ISBN9781879505612.
^Archerd, Army (May 14, 2003). "Zanuck advises Polanski on next move". Variety. Retrieved July 25, 2024. Friedkin will direct a movie based on an incident in Puccini's life — the pic to star Placido, who will be needed (he'll also sing) for three months on the pic!
^"CONFUSING LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT WITH STAR POWER". Sun Sentinel. February 9, 2000. Retrieved August 13, 2023. Ms. Burke handed over the dais to producer Richard Zanuck (Jaws, Driving Miss Daisy), who would present the evening's first Lifetime Achievement Award to director William Friedkin.
^Aftab, Kaleem (June 7, 2012). "Killer instincts". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved August 12, 2023. Was in competition at Venice, where it won the Golden Mouse (online critics' best film).
^"'Beasts of the Southern Wild' reçoit le Grand Prix de l'Union de la Critique de Cinéma". RTBF.be (in French). January 6, 2013. Retrieved August 12, 2023. Cinq films étaient en lice pour cette récompense: "Beasts of the Southern Wild", de Benh Zeitlin, "Take Shelter", de Jeff Nichols, "Shame", de Steve McQueen, "Ernest et Célestine", de Benjamin Renner, Vincent Patar et Stéphane Aubier, et "Killer Joe", de William Friedkin.
^Friedkin said in a 2012 Reddit AMA that he was working on a thriller from an original story of his to be filmed in Europe in January 2013.[131]
Further reading
Biskind, Peter. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-And Rock 'N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998. ISBN0-684-80996-6
Claggett, Thomas D. William Friedkin: Films of Aberration, Obsession, and Reality. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 2003. ISBN0-89950-262-8
Derry, Charles, ed. Dark Dreams 2.0: A Psychological History of the Modern Horror Film From the 1950s to the 21st Century. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2009. ISBN978-0-7864-3397-1
Edmonds, I. G. and Mimura, Reiko. The Oscar Directors. San Diego: A.S. Barnes, 1980. ISBN0-498-02444-X
Emery, Robert J., ed. The Directors: In Their Own Words. Vol. 2. New York: TV Books, 1999. ISBN1-57500-129-2
Hamm, Theodore. Rebel and a Cause: Caryl Chessman and the Politics of the Death Penalty in Postwar California, 1948–1974. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2001. ISBN0-520-22427-2
Segaloff, Nat. Hurricane Billy: The Stormy Life and Films of William Friedkin. New York: Morrow, 1990. ISBN0-688-07852-4
Stevens, Jr., George, ed. Conversations at the American Film Institute With the Great Moviemakers: The Next Generation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012. ISBN978-0-307-27347-5
Wakeman, John. World Film Directors, 1945–1985. New York: Wilson, 1988. ISBN0-8242-0757-2
Walker, Elsie M. and Johnson, David T., eds. Conversations With Directors: An Anthology of Interviews From 'Literature/Film Quarterly'. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2008. ISBN978-0-8108-6122-0