Interviews
’78/52′ Director Working With William Friedkin On an ‘Exorcist’ Documentary! [Exclusive]
At the introduction to the Sundance opening night screening of Memory: The Origins of Alien, director Alexandre O. Philippe announced that he had already shot a documentary about The Exorcist. Like Philippe’s other movie subjects – Alien, Psycho and Star Wars – The Exorcist is one of the most well-covered films of all time. So we asked him how he found a new take on The Exorcist.
“So, on The Exorcist, I’m working with William Friedkin. I’ve been working with him now for a year, a little more than a year actually. It’s very different. This is just going to be him and it’s basically about his very personal process. The approach was to do a film on The Exorcist using the Hitchcock/Truffaut model of interviews. I said to him, ‘I just want to sit with you for days and crack open The Exorcist and get into your process as a filmmaker. We’ve had four and a half days of interviews. As you can imagine, we went pretty much in depth.”
The making of The Exorcist has been well documented, so Philippe didn’t ask Friedkin the same old questions.
“There’s no talk at all about special effects, about the cinematic tricks,” Philippe said. “Instead we talked about art. We talked about music, about opera, about movies from Citizen Kane to Ordet by Dreyer, to 2001, The Third Man.
“It’s a very intimate chamber film about William Friedkin as an artist and his process in the making of The Exorcist.”
Friedkin had pretty eclectic taste, and Ordet (pictured below) may have been most significant.
“It is the one film that had the most profound influence, believe it or not, on The Exorcist,” Philippe said. “That’s all I will say.”
In his run from The French Connection to The Exorcist to Sorcerer, Friedkin became a notorious legend in Hollywood. Philippe wants to show his softer side.
“I think we all know him as this maverick filmmaker,” Philippe said. “Obviously, he was that. The guy was shooting guns on the set, slapping his actors across the face and almost broke Ellen Burstyn’s back. There’s a lot of drama and a lot of outrageous things about the making of that film. There’s a lot of myth also. I don’t think many people know the quiet, reserved Friedkin who thinks very much in nuance, who is obsessed with art, who will go to Chicago and spend hours in front of the Monet painting Morning on the Seine near Giverny, who goes to the Kyoto Zen Gardens and cries because he finds it so beautiful. That’s what this project is going to be about. He’s very excited about it.”
Philippe is now in the process of culling a feature film out of the four and a half days of interviews. He’s shown a bit to Friedkin.
“I sent him an 11-minute short version of it,” Phillippe said. “He sent me an e-mail. He’s very, very touched by it I think. I told him I really want to do something that’s very special.”
As the inaugural season of Apple TV+’s stellar new series “Widow’s Bay” barrels toward its finale in two weeks, the latest episode gives Kate O’Flynn the spotlight as her character revisits her trauma with the Boogeyman.
“Your Baggage“, directed by Andrew DeYoung (Friendship), sees O’Flynn’s scene-stealing Patricia once again renew her fight with the Michael Myers-like stalker that slaughtered her peers during her adolescence. Thrillingly, it makes for one extended chase sequence that sees Patricia trying to warn others, while evading the undead killer.
In short, this episode’s incredible riff on Halloween and the slasher subgenre transformed Patricia into a fierce Final Girl.
“Well, that felt like a bucket list that I didn’t know was on my bucket list until I did it, but when I did it, I just lapped up every minute,” O’Flynn tells Bloody Disgusting of her triumphant turn this episode. “It felt fantastic for her to get that moment where she is becoming a badass. That was amazing.”
The actress turned to a few notable references for her performance. “Horror-wise, I go back to my youth, which was referenced in some of the episodes: Wicker Man, Carrie, and Rosemary’s Baby, that sort of thing is my kind of vibe.”
O’Flynn also notes how the series’ unique tone allows for so much creative freedom to make bold swings. “There’s something very freeing about it. Every moment is up for grabs, so it’s like we don’t have to totally land in one direction or another. It keeps it alive.“
Patricia is the eccentric assistant to Matthew Rhys‘ Mayor Tom Loftis, who’s at the forefront of trying to solve the island’s pesky curse predicament. Rhys felt the same about “Widow’s Bay” and its rare ability to make you laugh and scream in equal measure, stemming from series creator Katie Dippold.
“The mandate was, ‘It’s a real world with real people. You play for real.’ There’s no playing for comedy or horror,” Rhys echoes O’Flynn’s sentiments on how freeing the series’ tone has been.
New episodes will release every Wednesday through June 17 only on Apple TV+.
Kate O’Flynn in “Widow’s Bay,” now streaming on Apple TV.
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