Saturday Evening Movie Thread 07/06/2024 [TheJamesMadison]

William Friedkin

Who is William Friedkin as an artist?

It was the question I started out with when I turned on his first narrative feature film, Good Times, the first film featuring Sonny and Cher, and I was hit with comedy and fakery and artifice. This was the introduction of William Friedkin, director of The French Connection, The Exorcist, and To Live and Die in L.A. to the movie going public. I was already having trouble predicting who he was, and his first film threw me such a curveball that it took me about a dozen movies before I really recovered my line of thinking. You see, I didn't understand what connected his best known films, and a silly, not very funny comedic vehicle for a glorified vaudeville act was a weird way to start the path towards those famous films, especially when anything you hear about his early career is his work as a documentarian.

He started his career for WGN-TV in Chicago where he rose to directing live television and documentaries. He rode that success to Hollywood where he and the singing duet had the same agent leading to his first directing job of a feature film. As a hungry young filmmaker, he took the job he could, especially when matched with a famous couple like Sonny and Cher, and he had a good time making it. He went on to make an adaptation of The Night They Raided Minsky's, a botched production that he abandoned in editing, and jumped at the opportunity to adapt Harold Pinter's play The Birthday Party for the big screen, reportedly the first of his three early projects he had any actual passion for (it was released second because the editor of Minsky's spent almost a year in editing trying to fix it, delaying the release of Friedkin's second produced film).

I think the opening three kind of perfectly encapsulate his whole career, though. It was a mixture of things he signed onto just to work (the C.A.T. Squad television films, The Guardian, Deal of the Century), and projects he was passionate about (Sorcerer, Killer Joe, The French Connection). It's not a particularly unusual pattern for a film director (the whole, "One for them, one for me" pattern), but with Friedkin's output it really does seem to fall in a way that obfuscates where one begins and the other ends.

There end up being a few major threads appearing through it all as the decades went on, Friedkin never finding the kind of unalloyed success outside of the early 70s that would allow him to just make whatever he wanted for the rest of his career. The movies for him, as I see them, tend to have the stronger thematic elements that connect his work. The movies for "them" are more workmanlike with less of a clear stamp on them from Friedkin, allowing writers in particular to come out more fully.

Themes

So, this isn't a distinction between his better movies and his worse ones. It's just kind of obvious where the thematic ideas are more prominent and where they're less. For instance, The Exorcist is arguably one of the greatest films ever made, but I'd argue that it's really just Friedkin in workman mode doing his best to get William Peter Blatty's novel to screen form as cleanly as possible. It feels like Friedkin doing his best on the technical side while trusting in the script by Blatty, based on his novel, to be strong enough on its own. However, that being said, even when it just comes down to Friedkin's choices of which projects to usher to the screen (keep in mind for this particular example that he made The Exorcist the follow-up to his Best Director win on The French Connection), you can see the seeds of the ideas that he was pursuing overall. So, what is it?

I've seen it described as obsession in the main characters, but I don't think that's really correct. It can fit easily with William Peterson's character in To Live and Die in L.A., but does it really fit Blue Chips or The Exorcist or The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial? I don't think it does. I think a better way to summarize the themes that are most present in his work is to say that the pursuit of something changes the pursuer. I was going to phrase it as the pursuit of evil, but there's stuff like Blue Chips that otherwise fit that aren't about pursuing evil but victory, diluting the object of pursuit a bit.

So, how does this manifest? Well, starting with his most famous film, The Exorcist, Father Karras, in having to partake in the exorcism of Regan MacNeil, has to embrace the faith that he's been questioning in order to fight the demon within the girl. He has to completely give himself into it in order to effectively fight it. To Live and Die in L.A. is the portrait of the downfall of an incorruptible federal officer in the face of pursuing a hellishly presented counterfeiter. Rampage is the story of an assistant district attorney who personally opposes the death penalty being forced to pursue it in a heinous trial and coming to defend its use in that particular instance. It's a common thread, and it's interesting when it comes. However, in retrospect, it doesn't quite feel as prominent as something like the idea of identity within in-groups evident so prominently in the works of Martin Scorsese. It might be more of a motif than a driving theme for Friedkin in comparison.

Finding Work


As previously noted, Friedkin's high water mark was the early 70s when his combination of technical skill, pessimism, and thematic focus aligned well with the overall cultural trend of wallowing in realistic misery. His downfall that he never really recovered from was the film Sorcerer which is alternatively the most Friedkin and least Friedkin film he ever made (that whole thematic idea is there, but it's presented in this minimalistic way that he never really came around to embracing again). It was an expensive movie that got completely swamped by the release of Star Wars and its sudden reinvigoration for an appetite for fun escapism. He bounced from smaller project to smaller project, trying to keep his vision of cinema alive, but he increasingly got the reputation as a has-been (Joe Eszterhas really didn't want him for Jade because of that, reportedly, but Friedkin got hired anyway).

This search for work led to a decreasing amount of say Friedkin had in his own projects. By the time he got to Deal of the Century, it really felt like he was there to make sure things were in focus while Chevy Chase exerted total control over everything else. To Live and Die in L.A. feels like something of an aberration in the middle of his downfall, not because it was some huge great success either artistically or commercially (it was the former, not too much of the latter). It's something he really tried to get together, but the director of The Exorcist was only able to pull together $6 million for the production, and it might have made its money back (Hollywood accounting makes it unclear if $17 million at the box office is actually a profit or not).

So, this period is pretty much just Friedkin going from projects he cobbled together with great difficulty and quick hiring jobs he just managed the sets of. In none of them did he meet great financial success, leading to the impression that he was a has-been with his best days behind him. This actually leads me to what might be the most interesting contrast in his career: To Live and Die in L.A. and C.A.T. Squad.

Authority


So, both To Live and Die in L.A. and C.A.T. Squad were written by Gerald Petievich (only the former co-written by Friedkin which, I think, is important). They both have government agents who play by their own rules at the core, but they have vastly different outlooks on that fact. The first is a tragedy as one man becomes a monster. The second is how government agents are completely justified doing absolutely anything anywhere. The first is a feature film that Friedkin obviously worked very hard on, even going so far as to have a writing credit on it (something he had on only six of his twenty-four films), and his thematic concerns come out. The second is a made-for-TV movie with a smaller budget that Friedkin obviously just managed quickly (he also made the sequel, which is honestly a better experience).

As a small case study in how Friedkin's career played out, especially after the failure of Sorcerer, it's an interesting contrast because To Live and Die in L.A. is the film of an artist really trying to make the most of things while C.A.T. Squad is the work of a former federal agent who thinks that he's the hero and can do no wrong. It shows how the director can have all of the power on a set if he so chooses. The first feels like Friedkin working hard to take a starting point and make it his own while the former is just Friedkin using himself to help a writer he liked.

Now, I did make mention of the sequel to C.A.T. Squad, C.A.T. Squad: Python Wolf, and it's okay. The first film is a boring slog where the badass central character is actually a complete screw up and monster, but the second is more of a straight-forward rescue mission that works decently well. I wouldn't call it good, but it's decent.

Theater


To Live and Die in L.A. represents some kind of turning point in his career. It feels like the last time he could pull together a relatively big production on his own terms (or as close to his own terms as one can have in that world) while he went from even smaller films that he could manage to pull together (something like the courtroom drama Rampage) to hired hands on productions that needed his name (The Guardian and Jade). It's not that his output was lesser artistically than it had been before (well, it was, he was never getting close to The Exorcist again), but the fire in him seemed to have gone out. He was becoming an older man, increasingly divorced from the passion that drove him to seek out Harold Pinter to make an adaptation of his play The Birthday Party.
Out of Friedkin's twenty-four feature films (including his four made for television films), six are based on stage plays with five of those being adapted from play form to their screenplays by the original authors of the plays (I imagine he would have gotten Herman Wouk to do the adaptation for The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial in 2023, but Wouk died in 2019). He has four courtroom dramas to his name (well, one's pretty much just in a jury room). However, it combines to tell me that Friedkin not only loved theater, but he loved actors in particular. Looking up his extra-cinematic activities, he actually directed more than a dozen productions of opera on stage, too. How does that combine with stuff like Sorcerer which is almost purely cinematic?

Most of those stage adaptations end up happening in the latter part of Friedkin's career, though, and they feel like cheaper ways to make what he was interested in making. He was still somehow getting funds for the larger picture here or there like The Hunted which cost $55 million, but each big bet was a big loss (The Hunted only made $46 million at the box office). He was increasingly sidelined, and he found a way to keep doing the kinds of films he wanted to make.

The big focus of the very tail end of his career was two adaptations of plays by Tracy Letts, Bug and Killer Joe. The former has the distinction of being one of only a handful of films with an F Cinemascore (I also don't like it) while Killer Joe is this deeply black comedy that I get into. However, despite their low cost, they were still financial duds (especially the second), and it seemed like Friedkin's filmmaking career was over. He increased his time talking about his movies like Frank Capra in his later years (the best is Friedkin's interview with Nicholas Winding Refn where Friedkin just will not let Refn's ego pass). He somehow got the funding in the final year of his life to make an adaptation of the play The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (with the added interesting bonus that Guillermo del Toro was the backup director on set everyday for insurance purposes). It's an accomplished, actor-focused film that sent Friedkin out on a high note, though he died shortly before the film's streaming release (as did co-star Lance Reddick).

Legacy


Out of everything mentioned, I still assume that the only films people will equate with Friedkin will be The French Connection and The Exorcist. To Live and Die in L.A. is simply not widely known enough while his other stuff like Blue Chips or Rules of Engagement or The Hunted. It makes you wonder if there is some strong authorial streak there at all, much less one to mention in great detail. Well, I do think it's there. I think it got undermined by the fact that Friedkin kept making financial bomb after financial bomb from the late 70s onward. That sidetracked his ability to command larger budgets and to exert command over a filmset (playing second fiddle to Chevy Chase, for instance).

He saw Francis Ford Coppola as his main rival, of a sort, at his height, and Coppola went through a similar crash and burn, but I see more overall command from Coppola over the different aspects of production. Friedkin's writing is questionable (To Live and Die in L.A. is the best of them, but it's unclear how much is him and how much is Petievich). His efforts at experimentation in films like Cruising are never huge successes. His strongest ability is the purely technical side of directing, managing a set and working with cinematographers to get effective and sometimes even very beautiful imagery while getting strong performances from actors.

He was really more of a classical machine director, I think. There was what some would call the auteur in him (I still hate the term, but it's useful), mostly in the running theme that came up time and time again, but ultimately he ends up feeling more like the guy who's there to shepherd the script as it is through production before handing it off to the editor. Would it have been different had Sorcerer been a financial success? If he had been able to go from victory to victory, exerting more control over his films as he got older? Impossible to say, but as his career continued downward, it really did feel like his films were going to be good or bad based purely on the scripts, like he was disengaging to a degree and just managing sets.

The ultimate question, though, is this: Is his career worth discovering beyond the most well known films? I think there are gems. Killer Joe for those who can find humor in the worst of humanity. Rule of Engagement for those looking for a solid legal/military courtroom drama. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial for a very good final go from a director who's best years were well behind him. Sorcerer for one of the great, depressing, nihilistic thrillers of the 70s. But, that being said, his career is shockingly uneven. I haven't seen a filmography this uneven since John McTiernan released Rollerball.

Still, he was pretty good.

Movies of Today

Opening in Theaters:

Despicable Me 4

MaXXXine

Movies I Saw This Fortnight:

The Guardian (Rating 2.5/4) Full Review "There's not enough story without that mystery to justify the runtime, and it's mostly just a well-filmed and kind of boring film. With the final five minutes, though, it's all of that but ends with a real bang." [Library]

Blue Chips (Rating 3/4) Full Review "However, it's the best movie Friedkin had made in years, the first since To Lie and Die in L.A. that feels fully his (though Rampage is honestly kind of close), and anchored by a wonderful central performance from Nolte." [Personal Collection]

Jade (Rating 1/4) Full Review "At least Friedkin knew how to frame a shot through it all, though. It's nice that the nonsense was in focus and well-composed as it played out." [The Criterion Channel]

Rules of Engagement (Rating 3/4) Full Review "Friedkin had what could have been one of his best films of his career, but he (or his producers, I dunno) gave into the demands to make things cleaner in a story about messiness." [Library]

The Hunted (Rating 2/4) Full Review "I don't think I've wanted to rewrite a movie more." [Library]

Bug (Rating 1/4) Full Review "It's ugly, comes to pretty much no point (paranoid delusions are bad, I guess), and doesn't actually feel like it uses the tools of cinema to drive its point home." [Library]

Killer Joe (Rating 3/4) Full Review "This movie is trash. It's about stupid, terrible people being awful, plotting murder, doing it badly, inviting the devil into their home, and then paying the consequences when everything goes pear-shaped. It's also deeply, darkly humorous in a way that connects with my own sense of humor." [Library]

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (Rating 3.5/4) Full Review "It's an accomplished, late-stage movie from a filmmaker who understood filmmaking after decades of practicing it, using his final go as a celebration of actors, a look into how pursuing something can change the pursuer, and the murky space of morality in the face of extreme duress." [Paramount+]

Contact

Email any suggestions or questions to thejamesmadison.aos at symbol gmail dot com.
I've also archived all the old posts here, by request. I'll add new posts a week after they originally post at the HQ.

My next post will be on 7/27, and it will talk about the films directed by Preston Sturges.