For some reason, Hollywood villains always seemed to have a mustache. In silent movie days, it was a handlebar mustache the villain could twirl after he tied the heroine to
films of all time. here he is speaking about the exorcist in 2008. it s realistic. there is no escape from it. it isn t like there s a lot of distance for the audience, like most of the films in the genre today, where you can laugh. i mean, there will be some laughs but they are nervous laughter based on tension. earlier i spoke to film critic siobhan synnot, she met him a few times and shared her memories. he was very charming and, in fact, he charmed my movie hating editor so much that he persuaded him to put his picture on the front page of my newspaper. quite an achievement, if you knew my editor. he was as well, of course, one of the highly regarded directors of the 1970s. up there with spielberg, scorsese, francis ford coppola, and i think his skill was really to treat what other people might have regarded as b movies with the utmost seriousness.
up there with spielberg, scorsese, francis ford coppola, and i think his skill was really to treat what other people might have regarded as b movies with the utmost seriousness. so something like the french connection, a cop movie, could have been a potboiler, but in his hands, it was something far more elevated than that, and he got an amazing performance out of gene hackman despite the fact that gene hackman felt that his character, popeye doyle, was morally referenceable and had to be pushed by friedkin to give his character, popeye doyle, was morally reprehensible and had to be pushed by friedkin to give his character its full weight. and the exorcist, he never regarded that as a horror movie, despite the spinning heads and the pea soup. he regarded it as a serious drama, a moral question. and when he felt the energy on set was not quite as energetic as he would like, he punched one of the characters, one of his