The great William Friedkin passed away today, and he is mourned by not only horror fans, but cinephiles everywhere. According to Variety, "Director William Friedkin, best known for his Oscar-winning The French Connection and blockbuster The Exorcist, died Monday in Los Angeles. He was 87. His death was confirmed by Chapman University dean Stephen Galloway, a friend of Friedkin’s wife Sherry Lansing."
Friedkin was a pioneering voice in American cinema, bringing a raw, gritty, and queasy quality to filmmaking that was often unheard of prior to the 1970s. His incredible crime thriller The French Connection (1971), which won Best Picture and earned Friedkin the Academy Award for Best Director, changed the landscape of action films and helped bring them into the modern era, what with its emphasis on fast cutting, extended and realistic chase sequences, realistic violence, lovable antihero, and gritty urban setting. But that was just the beginning of his acclaimed career.
William Friedkin Did More Than The Exorcist
Friedkin is perhaps best known for helming what is often considered the scariest movie of all time, The Exorcist. The 1973 classic was revolutionary for mixing extreme content (which we still shouldn't describe in detail 50 years later) with arthouse filmmaking and highly respectable stars (Ellen Burstyn, Max Von Sydow). When it premiered, there were numerous instances, some fabricated, of vomiting, fainting, and even a miscarriage suffered by audience members. Now, 50 years later, David Gordon Green is rebooting the film, the same way he did with Halloween. That movie, The Exorcist: Believer, is out Oct. 13.
While The Exorcist ranks extremely high on our list of the best horror movies of all time, Friedkin's career shouldn't be pigeonholed by that one film. He continued to break boundaries with films like To Live and Die in L.A., a 1985 crime masterpiece featuring one of Willem Dafoe's greatest performances. The film continued his merging of the arthouse aesthetic with more mainstream subjects and elements, and would inspire a range of similarly stylish '80s and '90s crime pictures.
Friedkin continued to direct masterpieces almost all his life, and never stopped pushing the boundary. He set Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon inside a dingy motel in the paranoid classic Bug, and his 2011 film, Killer Joe, actually received an NC-17 rating when it was released. It featured Matthew McConaughey in one of his best roles, an extremely dark and sadistic detective who doubles as a contract killer. With an incredible cast that also included Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple, Gina Gershon, and Thomas Haden Church, Killer Joe was a late reminder that Friedkin still knew how to infiltrate Hollywood while busting down whatever obstacles stood in his way.
Friedkin's final film (and first narrative feature film in a dozen years) is currently in post-production. It's titled The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, and stars Kiefer Sutherland, Jason Clarke, Jake Lacy, Lewis Pullman, Jay Duplass, and the recently passed Lance Reddick. William Friedkin is survived by his wife, Sherry Lansing, and two sons. He will be dearly missed.
You can check out our breakdown of the new Exorcist reboot below: