William Friedkin

The revival of Cruising has already gotten one enthused gay ILXor labeled a homophobe.

Point me in the direction of that there thread.

No, this was on a real website! by an irate reader!

this is a real website. It exists.

Bug is good.

How did a thread about Friedkin die so quickly?

I think The Exorcist is pretty great, and on the most recent DVD release there's a kind of hilarious intro by Friedkin from what appears to be his living room, and he's wearing a Cosby sweater. The only other one I've seen by him, To Live And Die In L.A. is kind of dated and awkward, with laughable fight sequences. Also, you see Grissom from C.S.I.'s wang.

I was frankly expecting to be called a homophobe by more than one person. I guess my theory that the gay community has simply forgotten to get offended by Cruising is basically true.

This part – he Larry Craig incident is only the latest example; countless editorials surmised that airport bathrooms will continue to bear the brunt of unwiped spooge trails until homos are allowed the rights intended them by our nation's forefathers to violently thrash the springs of their marital beds, that sex between two men (or two women, though you wouldn't know it even exists listening to media talking points) would be dirty until the act of filing taxes jointly validated it for everyone – is really OTM, and what probably leads fellow faggots to wonder why men like Larry Craig couldn't find his very own Jake Gyllenhaal.

can we get a link to this real website?

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/film_review.asp?ID=3169

Comments on the blog post here:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/blog/default.asp?display=140

Eric, popular memory no longer stretches back to pre-Apatow Canon times. (Or among fags, Margaret Cho's first standup special.)

I have never seen Cruising but remember all the activist rage against it. The Village Voice's pre-Musto gossip columnist, Arthur Bell, was a leader of it, encouraging disruption of the shooting (with ehistles, I think).

Haha, Alfred ... I think that was also one of the things I wrote vaguely tongue-in-cheek. To be fair to the guy who called me a homophobe, I am as skeptical of the marriage-will-validate-homosexuality line of thought as I am of the idea that homosexuality is wrong. I did make a choice to write it both ways, tho.

Yeah, but activists don't understand tongue in cheek – they got their tongues up their asses.

jeez, Morbius, we get it, Judd Apatow is responsible for the decline of Western civilization, you don't have to remind us in every thread.

no, his followers are responsible for symptomatic of it (I haven't seen a single one of his films, even the ones he gets credit for that he didn't make, but he has some of the most annoying acolytes since Jesus's).

oh for fuck's sake.

oh, wrinklemorbs.

anyway, back to Friedkin -- I remember his adap of Pinter's The Birthday Party being very solid.

I saw To Live... for the first time a few months ago...I suppose nex to McG or Brett Ratner the work of Friedkin looks like Fritz Lang.

*next

Assorted other Cruising pieces:

http://daily.greencine.com/archives/004379.html

If they HAD been playing the Germs in those West Village bars, I might've become a leatherboy.

So they were seriously playing shit like the Village People in those bars?

annoyed I missed both this and Massacre at Central High at the Castro recently

oh wait Cruising is NEXT week! hooray!

Shakey, the NYC weeklong theater gig is 'digitally presented,' so you might wanna check w/the Castro and wait for the DVD (later this month?).

I dunno Eric, by the time I wandered that far down Christopher St I think the Anvil and Ramrod were gone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4nAkM-Qm-I&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noWm_IKq5oI&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgWvLkTkTBY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTD06QaeBhE

Does Cruising feature Mr. Tom Cruise?

dvd release reviewed by slate
http://www.slate.com/id/2173734/

Mark Harris demurs:

I'll grudgingly celebrate the movie's return to visibility, since it represents the flashpoint at which gay people learned to fight homophobic stereotypes in pop culture with everything in their arsenal — to be out, loud, proud, pissed-off, and media-savvy. If the film, now frozen in its historical moment, scarcely seems worth the anger it generated, that's only because we've come a long way, not because anybody judging the movie got it wrong the first time. The Cruising protesters were not anti-First Amendment fascists, nor were they (as some younger gay moviegoers might imagine) sex-phobic prudes who wanted to hush up anything that might make us look bad to straight folks. They were fighters — and some were also non-fighters who suddenly discovered the fighter within. Cruising's technical adviser Sonny Grosso claims, somewhat incredibly, that he had ''never seen…ferociousness'' like that expressed by the film's picketers (really? This from the NYPD detective on whose life The French Connection was based?) If that's true, bravo to the haters. Over the decade that followed, that ferocity ended up mattering far more than anything in Cruising. ''What you've done in New York,'' a Paramount executive told the late journalist Arthur Bell, who helped to spur the protests, ''is raise consciousness.'' That's worth commemorating, even if Cruising isn'

Bug has a pretty terrific Ashley Judd performance and a very solid first 40 minutes, staginess and all -- but when it goes from paranoia to arty-exploitation in the last 20, it lost me.

Great Friedkin interview on the DVD tho -- he talks about The Exorcist opening in a mere 26 theaters nationwide for a months-long engagement, and how he checked out each of them individually for projection and sound, and then phoned them each night to monitor quality control.

Edelstein sez he heard snickering and booing at a critics group meeting (NSFC?) when he mentioned Ashley Judd.

well, when she's required to become a scream queen at the end it melts away a lot of what she earned earlier (kinds like Day-Lewis in his bowling alley).

I guess it speaks to something in my character that I had no problem with either film's ending.

Does Bug have any actual entomological features?

some in the film are convinced so

One of my work journals ran an article about the delusional bug-infestation disease.

The stories/rumors of his behavior on the "Exorcist" shoot are crazy: Firing guns on the set, slapping actors immediately before takes, verbally abusing Linda Blair, etc.

he's generally a douche, but a smart one: his DVD commentaries are invariably better than the movies; and his utter lack of humor helps him.

bug needed a glenallen hill cameo

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1199/896757272_f602ae9148.jpg

I hold in my hand the imminent DVD of The Boys in the Band, campers.

so Friedkin utterly redid the look of French Connection for the BluRay disc, and his DP Owen Roizman is pissed:

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/02/atrocioushorrif.php

Sounds awful.

I didn't think twice about the Bluray transfer for French Connection when watching it recently. It's always looked like shit, and it still does.

Anyway, SORCERER IS THE SHIT.

SORCERER IS THE SHIT.

uh huh

well, cuz it's true

The music's good

the scene with the hanging bridge gave me nightmares.

I'm halfway through Cruising, first time since the year it came out. Talk about lurid--The Exorcist is like Merchant-Ivory by comparison. I still haven't seen Sorcerer.

I started this thread 4 years ago wanting to see Sorcerer... and still haven't seen it.

Thing is, I've been holding out to see it in a theatre; I've always had the feeling that whatever's good about it could only be appreciated in that setting. But I'm pretty sure it hasn't screened at any of my city's rep theatres for ages. Cheap new and used copies are readily available on Amazon.

There might be a good print availible. According to the imdb, Universal is the current rights holder (it was a Universal/Paramount co-production), and IIRC they had a fire in one of their warehouses a few years back that destroyed many of their rep prints. And probably most of the surviving release prints aren't in that good of shape. The thing is--bar some major Friedkin retro--I'm not seeing why a rep house would want to show it, but obvs. as demonstrated by this thread there's some interest.

the dvd is pan-and-scan i believe. a shame.

[x-post]

that should read "There might NOT be a good print available".

wonder if friedkin himself has one. but yeah, it's exactly the kind of film for which universal is unlikely to retain good screenable prints. it's unlikely to be revived, original prints are certainly faded, etc.

I hadn't even considered that there wouldn't be good prints around...I always figure that if a film costs millions of dollars to make (many, many millions in 2011 dollars), it would occur to someone to put a copy or two away for safekeeping. But that would indeed explain why it's never screened here.

I finished Cruising. Good: 1) For the most part, Pacino's as quiet as he is in the Godfathers; 2) Nicely ambiguous non-ending. Bad: Hard to know where to start, but I'll limit myself to that ambiguity--what is Pacino's confusion and torment towards the end supposed to mean? Is this actually the opposite of one of those lunatic Christian groups that tries to recruit gay people so they can be "made straight"? Has Pacino journeyed in the opposite direction? The world he enters into is presented so sensitively and thoughtfully by Friedkin, you can see where that would happen.

I hadn't even considered that there wouldn't be good prints around...I always figure that if a film costs millions of dollars to make (many, many millions in 2011 dollars), it would occur to someone to put a copy or two away for safekeeping. But that would indeed explain why it's never screened here.

Universal probably kept a video master along with the o.g. elements (maybe) and that's it. The problem nowadays is that studios are cutting down there rep libraries to just their most popular titles and--get this--recycling the materials of the stuff that gets retired. And that's if they are still running a rep library--I read in Film Comment that as part of their restructuring deal, MGM shut theirs down (although take that with a grain of salt--Blue Velvet is playing here in a couple weeks and it's an MGM title).

I read that FC article, I think? Contrary to Roger Ebert's fantasies, old films are gonna keep vanishing.

Well, as recently as January Friedkin did a Q&A after a screening of a new 35mm print of "Sorcerer," so there's that. Personally, I don't like it nearly as much as "Wages of Fear," but it's a ripping, cynical adventure all the same.

He's shot an adaptation of Tracy Letts's Killer Joe, probably opening this year or next, with Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, and Thomas Haden Church. Letts wrote Bug, too.

Reading this thread quickly makes me think there's a good short film to be made of Cruising Sorcerer.

Some more snooping revealed loose confirmation of a 30th anniversary edition, which would be ... next year? But of course a lot of people expected a 25th anniversary edition back in 2007, too. Still, clearly there are workable "Sorcerer" materials. It may just be Friedkin (who is also apparently to blame for the film being pan and scan and DVD, though even then there's some debate as to the original aspect ratio, 1:66 vs. 1:85 - apparently Friedkin almost never worked in 'Scope).

all it takes to strike a new print is

a) somebody who wants to screen it
b) who has a good connection with
c) a receptive person at the studio
d) that person's boss approving a few thou for the new print

so it happens. but if i just called up swank (who handle non-commercial distribution of major studio titles) and asked for a good print of the brinks job? uh-uh.

that film btw is my favorite friedkin.

oh man, Swank. We used to rent from them in college back in 198X.

Peter Falk, right? I think we ran that when I worked as an usher in high school.

I read Eric H.'s DVD review of Cruising (linked to above), and that was helpful in trying to make sense of it. This'll make me sound really stupid, but I don't think I'd considered the possibility that it was Pacino who killed his neighbour--maybe for a second or two. That would definitely make sense in terms of Pacino's "confusion" at the end. I guess I discounted it because it doesn't make as much sense simply in terms of how the narrative unfolds; there's no suggestion of when Pacino would have done this (he's busy trying to bait the other guy), and for all the ambiguity of his expression right at the end, I didn't see the look of someone who just committed a grisly murder. I don't know--if it wasn't Pacino, I don't really have a good alternative. (Doesn't seem like it would have been the guy's prodigal boyfriend.)

http://i.imgur.com/yjYTIN3.jpg

i wonder what he has to say about exorcist 2: the heretic?

lol

Sorcerer is incredible

It really is.

Killer Joe the series?

http://www.indiewire.com/2017/10/william-friedkin-killer-joe-tv-series-matthew-mcconaughey-1201890168/

Five-film mini-program in July at the Lightbox--the four you'd expect, plus To Live and Die in L.A..

http://www.tiff.net/#series=filmmaker-in-5-william-friedkin

Sorcerer is def worth a watch if you haven't caught it before.

I have--thought it was pretty good, somewhere between its poor reception at the time and the revisionist praise today. I think I'll catch The Exorcist and To Live and Die in L.A.. Wondering if they'll get him to town for a screening.

Shame they couldn't find room for The Hunted in that series.

BTW, the Sorcerer Blu-Ray that came out a few years ago is fantastic.

Had no idea Friedkin did Cruising. I got it this past Xmas but still haven't watched it.

Interesting that its reputation has been reformed enough that it is now one of the obvious picks for a Friedkin retrospective, particularly given that the more “positive” The Boys in the Band is not on there.

I'd argue it's "the four you'd expect, plus Cruising."

haven't seen Cruising yet but I'd swap out LA in favor of Bug

I only became aware of it last year, as a bizarre & offensive curio/time capsule, like that Christina Ricci movie Pumpkin.

Had no idea Friedkin did Cruising. I got it this past Xmas but still haven't watched it.

― flappy bird, Monday, June 18, 2018

"Merry Xmas, son. Here's the lube and DVD of Cruising you asked for. Let's get some egg nog."

ugh jesus lol... actually my brother got it for me haha. along with Pumpkin and Auto Focus

Cruising is also not in print in the US, my copy is region free and Japanese I think

cruising is worth a watch. good soundtrack - jack nitzsche. unintentionally funny in parts. new york in the 70s looking good on screen as usual. bit of a mess of a film tho - as in narratively somewhat unclear - it's going for ambiguity but lands on incomprehensibility, due to being badly edited.

Cruising is also not in print in the US, my copy is region free and Japanese I think

Wow, thought you were wrong about this but searched it up and it's print-on-demand from Warner Archive. Maybe I should throw my copy of the 2007 DVD release up on eBay.

You can get very shitfaced very quickly by watching the Cruising retrospective featurette and playing 'Hi Bob' w/the words "Leather Bar".

The Lightbox series started tonight. Was curious how To Live and Die in L.A. would hold up--well, I'd say. Two or three laughable lines (not that many for the genre) and a long car chase (typically well edited, typically unnecessary), but pretty absorbing most of the way. Brendan Ross talked a lot about William Petersen in his funny introduction to the film, but he didn't mention Dafoe--he's what I most remembered from 30 years ago, and he seemed just as sinister tonight. Tried to answer a question online and just got a link to someone asking the same question: was that John C. Reilly being chased down at one point (one of the film's funnier exchanges: "Why are you chasing me?!" "Why are you running?" "Because you're chasing me!")? Sarris had this third on his year-end list for '85.

when Dafoe opens the $uitcase and coos "You're beautiful"

First film I ever saw Dafoe in (not technically--he's in Heaven's Gate uncredited). With the possible exception of Affliction, I've never liked him better.

yeah that character is one of the best villains ever, & his performance is stunning

Really love the symmetry of Chance’s story ending in the completely exact same, uh, “unceremonious” manner as his partner’s.

Shouldn't fuss over logic with this kind of film, but I didn't understand why Dafoe went ahead with the sale to Petersen and his partner. He openly mocked the fact that they weren't who they said they were (one of his best moments). Was he just so confident in his infallibility that he'd walk away with the money anyway?

Car chases are never unnecessary.

fun fact: the car cahse wasn't in the script, friedkin just decided he needed one once he started shooting and it needed to be better than the one in the french connection

mission accomplished imo, the whole sequence is absurdly intense

lensed by Robby Muller, yes?

yeah, and in typically gorgeous muller style - there's a lot of amazing stuff in this but the one which sticks with me is a scene between william peterson and his girlfriend in her apartment, which has an awesome view over industrial l.a., and the hazy outdoor light is perfectly balanced with really subtle indoor lighting that makes the whole thing look like a painting. it's fucking amazing but it doesn't draw attention to itself

here's one of the shots from that scene:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WkKZJVG5wTk/SM3WAx_Gq_I/AAAAAAABh8U/cwkUnXpLxVk/s400/To_Live_and_Die_in_LA-185.jpg

actually we were talking a bit about this movie a couple of weeks ago on the Wang Chung's "To Live and Die In L.A." soundtrack - C/D Wang Chung's "To Live and Die In L.A." soundtrack - C/D thread

pls excuse messy bbcode there...

the line that sticks in my head from this film is the hilarious "you pulling my dick?"

was that John C. Reilly being chased down at one point

doesn't look like it, Reilly's film debut wasn't until over a decade later. He was 20 in 1985.

the slow shift from a boilerplate story of a law enforcement dude seeking revenge against a psychopathic villain after he killed his partner to the extremely smart narrative reveal that the psychopathic villain is the hero is kind of awe inspiring for this kind of genre film. The fact that it’s done without it ever being explicitly pointed out in any “do you see???” manner is even more impressive. The story is merely told.

otm

spoilers tho

lol I don't remember that at all, mostly I just remember the homoeroticism and hilarious dialogue which seemed to have been written by a 12yo that just learned how to swear. also it looks great.

i mainly remember bill petersen's butt in those jeans

I remember something else *not* in those jeans

yeah the boiling-a-frog atmosphere is great - by the time vuckovich realises his partner is a total psycho he’s in way too deep and has no option but to become him

the equal-opportunities approach to nudity in this feels very european

the car chase where Vukovich is in the back seat correctly freaking the fuck out vs Chance flashing back to bungee jumping is key (and hilarious!)

US film industry gen squeamee about peepee

Worst line in the film (or maybe so-bad-it's-great for some people): "You want bread, go fuck a baker."

I'll grant that this particular car chase did have some thematic importance in terms of Vukovich melting down. I don't think it would been that missed if it hadn't be there--that point had been made in other scenes, too--but clearly I'm just not big on car chases.

"would have been"

Turturro’s “you want a pigeon, go to the park” line was better and less try-hardboiled.

that car chase is fucking insane, and yeah it's earned / not superfluous bc of Vukovich's meltdown in the backseat

is the DVD out of print? bcz the NY library does not have it.

there’s a pretty sweet dvd/blu-ray in print via arrow video in the uk

Shout Factory Blu-ray stateside

yeah the Blu Ray I have is fantastic

well i'll wait for the next rep screening cuz i hardly ever buy discs

the car chase is kinda key in the realisation that we are watching an entire genre being lampooned as well as everything else

this movie somehow is perhaps the origin story for the action cliche, "i'm too old for this shit"

if anything, the fact that the two protagonists are oh-so-excited TREASURY AGENTS kind of signals that up-front. I mean we all know how exciting the Department of the Treasury is, why they're right up there with the FBI and the DEA and ATF when it comes to hottt thrills

oh-so-exciting

I meant to say

this movie somehow is perhaps the origin story for the action cliche, "i'm too old for this shit"

― omar little, Friday, July 13, 2018 2:55 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I noticed that line when I watched it a few weeks ago! and was going to ask itt (or the other one) if that line had appeared elsewhere before. I know Lethal Weapon came out after TLADILA, but I assumed it was a gag. That's pretty amazing if it is the origin.

I would be surprised if there isn't something earlier from some 70s hardboiled cop movie

i mainly remember bill petersen's butt in those jeans

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand),

I can still feel it in my dreams

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCuYg9I5NTg

might be predated by Steve McQueen in the Hunter, it looks like?

it’s nuts that friedkin gave the leads in this movie to basically total unknowns but it for sure pays off

I asked this about TLADILA in another thread, to no avail, but it's still bugging me:

What was the point of the whole subplot with John Turturro's character, Carl Cody? Chance gets him out of jail so Cody will help him get to Rick Masters; Cody tricks Chance and escapes; Chance eventually gets him back... and that's it? Quite a bit of the movie is dedicated to all this, but it doesn't seem to lead anywhere. The person who actually connects Chance and Vukovich with Masters is Masters's crooked lawyer. What am I missing?

cant recall for sure but doesnt taking him out of custody and letting him escape establish both the risktaking nature of chance vs partner and also puts a tension/dependence into play btwn the two, once partner doesnt shop that the fuckup has happened hes on the slide into being 'that cop' himself

i think it also largely ties in with some of Masters' other moves, like when he hires that gang to kill Cody and they blow it. i think his response there is to show his ruthlessness. i think the scenes with Cody and Chance exist to show the latter's recklessness in trying to get Masters. I forget what occurs after he gets Cody, maybe nothing.

the subplot there is that iirc Vukovich is the one who actually is most instrumental in connecting them w/Masters, via meeting with the lawyer? Maybe showing his lack of recklessness paying off. I gotta watch it again ASAP.

xp

from iMdB trivia re casting:

The chain of events that led to William Petersen and John Pankow's casting in the film began when director William Friedkin decided to not bother trying to cast established film stars due to the project's relatively low budget ($6 million). Friedkin was born and began his career in Chicago and was familiar with fellow Chicagoan Petersen's work, and with him in mind for the lead role of Chance, he called Petersen in for a reading of the script and immediately offered him the part. When Petersen came in to accept the role, he brought Pankow because the two men were longtime friends and had acted in many Chicago-area projects, and told Friedkin he thought Pankow would be perfect for the role of Vukovich. The director ran a scene with Pankow and then cast him on the spot.

Remember that Friedkin had laid four box-office eggs following The Exorcist. This was his low-budget sleeper.

yeah, there’s a v engaging interview with peterson on the blu-ray where he talks about the unlikely chain of events which led to his cinematic debut

and also about how blown away he was by friedkin’s absolute confidence in his own filmmaking, eg shooting wide master shots and then not bothering with any other coverage cuz he was sure he knew he’d gotten what he needed

Peterson storming into Darlanne Fluegel's apartment all hyped up chattering on about the Chicago Bulls while she's freaking out about the shootout and car chase. great shit.

also just this moment discovered Darlanne Fluegel died last year of early onset Alzheimer's, fucking hell. :(

aw shit, that’s awful :(

this movie somehow is perhaps the origin story for the action cliche, "i'm too old for this shit"
― omar little

I think you were at last night's Toronto screening! Brendan Ross, who I mentioned earlier introducing the film, said exactly that beforehand. So when the line came up (early, first five minutes), the theatre exploded.

I was looking up Darlanne Fluegel yesterday and discovered the same thing. She was gorgeous.

Fluegel was quite good as Dennis Farina's wife-then-exwife in Crime Story.

I watched Blue Chips the other night it was better than I expected

I don't know if To Live and Die in LA is a good movie, but it is a great movie. Also, possibly the first mention of Michael Jordan in pop culture? Had the events of the filmed played out differently I could see it as a prequel to Heat, with the Peterson character a younger version of the Pacino character. As it is, Mann or not, it would slot well between a screening of Thief and Heat, for lots of reasons.

There are a couple of shots in the car chase that I have no idea how they captured.

i think its good also, i mean theres definitely enough competence and elements that work to argue for it as the tale itself

but yeah its the everything else that make it the magnificent beast it is

JiC otm. lots of this movie is bad, silly, or nonsensical but it also a blast

i think it is good and great. the parts that are bad or silly can often be chalked up to a particular '80s badness (though some particular lines of dialogue should have stayed written down and subsequently crossed off). i'm willing to forgive the silly shit.

it's such a competently crafted film with such a quiet invisible shift from "good guy agent chasing insane crook" to "insane agent chases his own death wish" that the shift has occurred and the movie's walls have closed around you by the time you notice it, it's a frog-boiling-in-water story in that regard. the greatness comes from the unrelenting march towards its goal with no room for anyone the audience can identify with at the end and its very sharp suggestion that action movie heroes are psychos with zero regard for anyone but their own glory, and their righteous mission is just an excuse for really cool action shit. i'm not saying it's a critical take on the genre (though maybe it is???) as much as it's an interesting twist on the genre.

(though some particular lines of dialogue should have stayed written down and subsequently crossed off)

You pulling my dick???

yeah i bet if you listed those lines id be totally in love with each of them tbh

BTW the Michael Jordan reference in the film is one where he disses Jordan by saying Quintin Dailey is better, which is interesting bc QD was mainly notorious as a player for complaining about not getting attention compared to Jordan, being a general shithead, up to and including having committed sexual assault in college and subsequently having been protested by various groups upon his NBA arrival. Dailey was a solid third year player when MJ was a rookie but Jordan was already obviously a guy who was going to change the game and dominate.

He does call Jordan a "great fuckin' ball player."

I mean, have you seen Cruising and Sorcerer? moments of lowbrow craziness are common

not to mention the hideous 10 minutes I saw of The Exorcist

I really enjoyed seeing The Boys in the Band again. I can see why it was dismissed in the late 70s and in the 80s as representing an earlier era of self-hatred, but I think it's easier for someone gay to watch it more dispassionately now. I loved the plot of the clueless straight man dropped into the middle of a gay party. Lots of reviews have compared it to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but the over-the-top self dramatizing jokey quality of it makes it feel less self-serious to me. The set, an apartment apparently on East 65th St, was beautiful. And the acting, from the entire original 1968 stage cast, was for the most part really good I thought

I read somewhere that Friedkin has said it's a favorite, one of the few films of his that he still likes watching

It’s weird to me that saying The Boys in the Band is superior to Cruising is now basically the contrarian position.

there are still gay men like that btw

Omar so, so otm

really enjoyed seeing The Exorcist again after so many years

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dXb5UuRrPA&feature=youtu.be

I hadn’t remembered that the ending of Cruising showed Pacino’s character looking directly, coldly into the camera through the mirror while shaving. Seeing it again, that was chilling

Friedkin on Joe Dante's podcast was fun/depressing times. Dude whining about Japan and Germany having overtaken the US economy and reacting all "you must respect the office!" when Dante let loose with one of his usual boomer Drumpf jokes. Imagine a madman like that, and one who's lived through the 1970's, believing the office of the president of the USA deserves any respect.

from every interview i've seen with him friedkin seems like he was/is a wildly abusive director

Yeah, I think he almost cost Ellen Burstyn a vertebrae or something like that.

That said, Cruising is a malignant masterpiece.

yeah I think he's kind of a master but he's also pretty clearly a nutcase

I remember his adap of Pinter's The Birthday Party being very solid.

Sydney Tafler is great as Goldberg but I'm not convinced by the film as a whole.

That said, Cruising is a malignant masterpiece.

― i carry the torch for disco inauthenticity (Eric H.), Wednesday, June 30, 2021 6:51 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

quite a messy masterpiece also. ending is quite fudged

It's too bad the lost footage has never been recovered.

I just saw Cruising last night and don't know what to make of it. The review in a book called Movies on TV from 1981 is a further puzzle:

The basic narrative idea is that our growing discomfort with Pacino's convincing integration into his new environment and our growing fear that he may be developing some homicidal impulses of his own -- both are inextricably linked to our growing exhilaration of our release from fear as Pacino's savvy and power increase. Lurid, brutal, dehumanizing, but it does succeed in searing the audience.

I'm not even sure that this first sentence holds up as a description of what the film is trying to do, much less what it manages to accomplish. Friedkin seems to make decisions at the individual scene level to increase the audience's suspense, excitement or disgust without taking into account how this affects the film as a whole. Robin Wood called the results incoherent.

I think that first sentence is a pretty good description of what the film is trying to do

Maybe that was the idea, but I never felt either appalled or excited by Pacino's progress through the film - he's not even an anti-hero, he's a null.

Friedkin had a birthday yesterday; he's 87. This clip is amazing.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE LEGEND MR. WILLIAM FRIEDKIN. #WilliamFriedkin

ONE OF MY FAVORITE MR. FRIEDKIN INTERVIEW MOMENT AS HE TALKS ABOUT DIFFERENT ACTING METHODS BY DIFFERENT ACTORS (Tommy Lee Jones, Benicio Del Toro and Nick Nolte)@RufusTSuperfly @firstshowing @coenesqued2 pic.twitter.com/CsefIVehlj

— . (@realsagarbhat) August 29, 2022

I don't like it nearly as much as "Wages of Fear," but it's a ripping, cynical adventure all the same.

OTM. "Wages of Fear" is much, much deeper.

Interestingly, Friedkin denied that "Sorcerer" was a remake. To which, LOL.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mgIDVwdD-M

Can't help but feel bad for the guy having to give up his spankin' new '71 Tempest sedan to Popeye to destroy in the chase.

He did so much remarkable work for television. This music video is unbelievable

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP0_8J7uxhs

Hah -- I was coming here to post the Branigan video.

He also appears at the end of Wang Chung’s “To Live and Die in L.A.” video!

Good interview: https://www.vulture.com/2013/05/william-friedkin-interview.html

It turns out that the only things of his I’ve seen are The Exorcist (when I was far too young) and The French Connection (in the past decade).

I've never seen Deal of the Century, starring that glamourous duo Chevy Chase and Sigourney Weaver.

There's your cocaine noir

Underrated: "The Hunter." Kind of "First Blood"y, iirc. I remember people making a (small) big deal at the time because it was one of the few action movies where characters actually got tired from fighting.

Handful of classics/masterpieces, handful of impressive minor films (like "Bug," maybe the first time people took notice of Michael Shannon on screen?). And then there's "Jade."

right on, The Hunted. That's a good one. i think it's a pretty exceptional thriller, kinda no frills, TLJ and del Toro are both really good.

French Connection gets better over time, Exorcist is still great, Cruising is really something. To Live and Die in L.A. is another masterpiece, I still have friends who haven't seen it and when i convince them to do so they're usually absolutely blown away. they don't make em like that anymore, ever.

I own TLADILA, Cruising, The Hunted and Sorcerer — the first 3 on DVD, the latter on Blu-Ray. They're all amazing. French Connection is solid with a few moments of greatness, but it's not nearly as bugfuck as his best movies. I've never seen The Exorcist. Bug was too terrifying to watch more than once.

Killer Joe is hilarious and brilliant.

Deal of the Century is one of his worst, and surprisingly visually flat. Script is by Paul Brickman, who wrote the wonderful Citizens Band for Jonathan Demme and wrote/directed Risky Business and Men Don’t Leave, and I adore both of those to death

French Connection has the best soundtrack. Even better than Sorcerer. Don Ellis on fire!

French Connection really does get better with repeat viewings, i think it's closer to something like Bullitt in some ways, and Philip D'Antoni produced both. I appreciate how they almost accidentally discover this huge criminal operation. It feels closer to real police work than some other films, something it also partially shares w/Bullitt. It's almost as downbeat as TLADILA, maybe moreso. Feels more tragic.

I was very lucky to see the original 1987 cut of Rampage at the New Beverly a few years ago. Profoundly sad and distressing film

You know, without posting spoilers for those who haven't seen it, I can't think of a thriller that yanks the rug out from under the viewer the way To Live and Die in L.A. does. I mean, the first time you see it, you'll fall right off the couch.

That’s one I’ve meant to see for a long while. Gotta see if it’s streaming somewhere…

Ha, didn't know this re: Rey & The French Connection:

Fernando Rey was cast by mistake; William Friedkin wanted an actor he remembered seeing in Belle de Jour (1967), and the casting director thought it was Fernando Rey - who was hired. Only upon arriving at the airport to meet Rey did Friedkin see that it was not the actor he had been thinking of; he also learned, to his great dismay, that Rey was Spanish and spoke no French. Once at Rey's hotel (the same one he stays at in the film), Friedkin called the casting director, who realized he had confused Rey's name with that of the correct actor, Francisco Rabal. Friedkin considered firing Rey, but changed his mind once it was learned that Rabal wasn't available and didn't speak any English.

French Connection II is astonishingly underrated. The late 10 minutes are like edging to a great, well-deserved orgasm

And Rabal would turn up in Sorcerer.

Rabal's French in Belle de Jour is dreadful fwiw

That’s one I’ve meant to see for a long while. Gotta see if it’s streaming somewhere…

It ain't official but...

https://archive.org/details/7.3-to-live-and-die-in-l.-a.-1985

Yeah it's good, not discussed in that interview. Sadly not seen anything bar the big hits xxxp

French Connection II is a Frankenheimer joint, but it's good, definitely just don't recommend anyone to go in expecting anything like the first film.

Digging into the Friedkin WTF episode from '16: he originally wanted Jackie Gleason or Peter Boyle for Popeye Doyle!

xp

same with the Blatty directed Exorcist 3

hat’s one I’ve meant to see for a long while. Gotta see if it’s streaming somewhere…

― The Triumphant Return of Bernard & Stubbs (Raymond Cummings),

I always tell people to check their public libraries for DVDs and Blu-rays.

Oh, I know it’s a Frankenheimer film. Same screenwriter who wrote his absolutely crazy and hilarious 99 and 44/100% Dead. Hackman is just as good in it.

Friedkin bribing a transit authority guy so he can do The French Connection chase, who took the money, left his job, then retired to Jamaica. No one making dreams come true like Billy Friedkin pic.twitter.com/VmOjtY4UnR

— John Frankensteiner (@JFrankensteiner) April 14, 2022

Took me quite awhile to parse that he didn’t mean Jamaica, Queens.

RIP to an absolute legend. pic.twitter.com/cx0RuPZ44d

— kevin l. lee (@Klee_FilmReview) August 7, 2023

I interview him years ago, and here's what he said about Wang Chung:

I was in England, and the music from their first album was all over British radio. It was a terrific sound, very unique for pop music. I contacted them, Jack Hues, we met, and I told him we were about to make the film. I gave him the script and told him to write the music based on your impressions of the script. I didn’t want him to write the score after he had seen the film. I wanted the score to influence the picture. I would talk to him at length about each scene and the characters, and he went out and wrote a couple of hours of music and mailed it to me. So I cut the movie to the score, instead of vice versa. I think it’s different when you have someone score the film after it’s done. It’s kind of upbeat! It grew on me. They play it now at basketball games, whenever the Lakers play. Even the Chicago Bulls used some of the instrumental music for two or three seasons, as their bumper music, whenever they went to a time out. Whether they were playing the Lakers or not!

Digging into the Friedkin WTF episode from '16: he originally wanted Jackie Gleason or Peter Boyle for Popeye Doyle!

...and Jimmy Breslin, who actually got to read with the just-cast Roy Scheider.

More from my archives, about casting "To Live and Die..."

That was a kind of movie god situation. I didn’t set out to hire two Chicagoans. I had a great casting director, who had cast “The French Connection.” He brought me Roy Scheider and Tony Lo Bianco. He was not really a casting director by profession. He wrote for the Village Voice, a theater critic, so he knew almost every actor and actress who were working around the country. He would go to plays everywhere, and he had a photographic memory. Well, after the "French Connection" he moved to France. When I wrote the script for "To Live and Die," I called him in France and asked him to come back and find all new people. So he went out and found Petersen, who was working at the Stratford Theatre Festival, in Stratford, Ontario, doing "Streetcar Named Desire." I flew up to see it and there were all these young women there, for him! His performance owed absolutely nothing to Brando’s, and I thought the guy was a real original. He had never done a movie. And then there was Johnny Pankow, who was recommended and who had also never done a movie.

"Listen.. I ripped everything outta there except the rocker panels."
"C'mon Irv, what the hell's that?!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8dKnFU5LUE

I called TLADILA the ultimate "frog boiling in water" movie, Peterson becomes the actual villain of the film in such a narratively clever and seamless fashion, it's a real crafty and smart trick. Everyone's used to the "cop/agent/etc who breaks all the rules to get his man" movie but this pushes it into absolute corruption and casts all of this guy's relationships in the film in an appropriately ugly light. You see how he infects everyone around him.

What’s amazing about To Live and Die in L.A. is that it completely flips the conclusion of its source novel but still arrives at essentially the same place. Novelist/co-screenwriter Gerald Petievich hates the opening of the film, as he thought that there was no need to show the job most commonly associated with secret service agents. I do have some reservations about that sequence, though, but they pertain to how Hollywood demonizes Muslims

I'm amazed that so many of you have familiarity with To Live and Die in L.A. when it hasn't been released on streaming in the US. It's recently available through Kino Lorber on DVD for $27, but that is a price I'm not willing to pay.

it's on youtube, at least in the uk. has been up for 2 years so seemingly nobody cares.

It's easy to find in public libraries here; that's how I saw it years ago.

What’s amazing about To Live and Die in L.A. is that it completely flips the conclusion of its source novel but still arrives erat essentially the same place. Novelist/co-screenwriter Gerald Petievich hates the opening of the film, as he thought that there was no need to show the job most commonly associated with secret service agents. I do have some reservations about that sequence, though, but they pertain to how Hollywood demonizes Muslims

― beamish13

I noticed on Wiki and my memories of Friedkin's commentary track that he claims main scriptwriting credit. I tend to forget he had a hand in writing or re-writing most of his material.

"Listen.. I ripped everything outta there except the rocker panels."
"C'mon Irv, what the hell's that?!"

all time! up there with "Picking your feet in Poughkeepsie".

TLADILA was available on a cheap "Special Edition" DVD from MGM for ages, and it was a cable staple for decades.

To Live and Die in L.A. is available in beautiful 35mm prints from Park Circus. Ask your independent cinematheque to screen it

On a shout factory Blu-ray which was released a few years ago.

As far as the opening, it's a little bit awkward and has aged poorly if only for the specific Ronald Reagan aspect, but it's absolutely fantastic as being a bit of audience misdirection regarding the William Petersen character.

The Boys in the Band (1970) was both cringey and exhilarating, and it still seems kind of amazing today.

like Cruising.

This was the post I made about it 4 years ago:

I really enjoyed seeing The Boys in the Band again. I can see why it was dismissed in the late 70s and in the 80s as representing an earlier era of self-hatred, but I think it's easier for someone gay to watch it more dispassionately now. I loved the plot of the clueless straight man dropped into the middle of a gay party. Lots of reviews have compared it to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but the over-the-top self dramatizing jokey quality of it makes it way less self-serious. The set, an apartment on East 65th St, was beautiful. And the acting, from the entire original 1968 stage cast, was for the most part really good I thought

I read somewhere that Friedkin has said it's a favorite, one of the films of his that he still likes watching

― Dan S, Friday, January 18, 2019

I'm still very reluctant to see the 2020 remake of it

TLADILA is bonkers

When I first saw it, I was probably 16 or 17. I had absolutely zero idea what direction it was headed in, so needless to say that final act was totally shocking.

“You’re working for me now.”

This was kind of funny (though not surprising, it's a classic Friedkin move, barely pushing the envelope for him):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmskzjXarYE

The Best of William Friedkin's Cruising Commentary pic.twitter.com/nZLeJew40J

— John Frankensteiner (@JFrankensteiner) June 20, 2023

it's on youtube, at least in the uk. has been up for 2 years so seemingly nobody cares.

― stirmonster, Monday, 7 August 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Lol, so it is!

"For ages [Al Pacino] wouldn't talk about it."

"That's a good thing because he's not very eloquent."

lolz

William Friedkin talks about he works with actors; Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio del Toro in "The Hunted" and Nick Nolte in "Blue Chips". Hilarious stuff as usual. pic.twitter.com/XDBmVzJ9V0

— M.A. Bergman (@John_LeTour) August 7, 2023

Oh, The Hunted! I saw that in the theater, somehow didn’t realize it was a Friedkin joint.

I still stand by defending Cruising but, like with Showgirls, I do hope the strident opposition never evaporates

To Dan's point above, I thought The Boys in the Band held up pretty well when I checked in on it a few years back.

The Ryan Murphy remake is predictably grotesque.

One other thing I like about TLADILA is how Chance and Jim are dispatched by Masters' shitkicker nobody henchman in the exact same extremely undignified manner, just the disgusting end to a pointless quest for justice. The Departed might owe something to that film as far as the ending goes but that one's not as shocking, and it winds up with a sense of justice Friedkin doesn't entertain as a possibility. The world is cold and bleak, and all people are corruptible.

With the original music ("The Disco Strangler"!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2-zyD48qCg

Here’s my favorite Friedkin story. (I wasn’t ready to do stories yesterday.) Actually, it's 90% set-up and 10% story. Bear with me.

I worked as an assistant editor on all of his films at Paramount in the 90s and early 00s. These were generously budgeted movies, [..
.]

— Darrin Navarro, ACE (@dnavarro_ace) August 8, 2023

People without twitter accts can't read threads anymore.

This worked for me : https://nitter.net/dnavarro_ace/status/1688979670698717184

(Stolen from the Criterion Forum)

Also copied from that forum:

When I was in film school, Friedkin visited. The Guardian was about to be released and he screened it for us. It is a terrible film(*) and after it had finished there was polite the-filmmaker-is-here applause and then awkward silence. This was from the same person who’d made The Exorcist and The French Connection? Friedkin immediately launched into a story about the first time he’d met one of his film gods, how he’d acted a blithering idiot in the face of greatness, how all he could do was blurt compliments a la Chris Farley . His hero told him, “You should see my new one!” and invited him to his house for a screening; feeling chosen, he braced himself for a new masterpiece. Two hours later when the lights came up, he couldn’t think anything but, “How did such a talented guy make such an irredeemable piece of shit?”

It was a masterful clearing of the air, and for the rest of the night he regaled us with possibly apocryphal making-of stories about his greatest hits that have either since been recorded for posterity or have been shelved for shinier or more legally acceptable tales. How the former head of the MTA now owned a bar on a Caribbean island that he’d bought with the bribe they’d paid him to sign off on the train chase in French Connection. How he’d brought in El Topo’s Gonzalo Gavira to foley on Exorcist and watched as he went about jumping on sleeping people and literally wringing their wallets. You’ve probably heard those. Friedkin talked far longer and far better than the feature he’d brought.

One memorable bit particular to that screening: During the Q&A one boy asked if, after he graduated, he should hold out for his dream project (film students, ha ha) or just take any available work. Friedkin boomed. “Take anything! Take whatever, if you’re lucky enough! If someone comes to you, if you meet someone, and they say, ‘We’re making a movie called Two Donkeys Fucking,’ you say, ‘I’M YOUR MAN!’”

My friends and I made “I’M YOUR MAN!” the response to any shit detail that came our way, and Two Donkeys Fucking became the go-to working title for just about everything.

And what he said about the end credits to Killer Joe:

I’ve been listening to Clarence Carter for years, and I was always hoping to be able to use “Strokin’” in a movie. “Strokin’” is one of the great American songs. To me, he was the Mozart of Southern music. You can almost never hear “Strokin’” on the radio, not in this politically correct world. So I thought I should give this to the audience — it has nothing to do with the picture.

There’s a disc jockey in all of us, and I just wanted to share “Strokin’” with all of you. Why not? Where are you gonna go and hear “Strokin’” in this day and age? Where? Nowhere! Here, that’s it!

I mean, if I were doing a movie about the life of Beethoven, I would use “Strokin’” on the end credits. Or Shakespeare! You know, if I was doing Hamlet, imagine ending it after Hamlet’s death, and the funeral oration by Horatio or Fortinbras, then you hear “Strokin’.” And that sends you right out of your chair – YES! It’s not about a guy who got killed in a duel, and killed his uncle because his father’s ghost told him that his uncle was sleeping with his mother and he had to kill his uncle… what a stupid plotline that is.

Now if you end it with “Strokin’” you have a whole other kettle of fish. The audience goes out bopping. Strokin’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTbglsNi5xA

Lock thread lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6kTGFDhPKI

he sounds like a Trump imitator

He was on the Bret Easton Ellis podcast - last year I think - and his voice was so similar to Trump’s that I couldn’t really enjoy the episodes.

huh I don't think he sounds anything like Trump

He did do a lot of Respect The Office Of The President bullshit in defense of Trump, as described in this thread. But not like his art was ever about being society's moral voice of conscience anyway.

I can't remember the title of the work in question, but he did a '90s interview for a Toronto alt-weekly where he was promoting his newest film (TV movie?), with a very definite pro-capital punishment agenda

Wild, given how he started:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrSnv2z2ZGs

xp Can't say I'm surprised - watch the extras to The French Connection where they discuss the scene where Doyle shoots his would-be assassin in the back. One of the technical advisers (an active veteran police officer) saw them film that and ran over to berate Friedkin, telling him "that's murder" only to be blown off. When they previewed the movie, the audience erupted in applause at that moment, and Friedkin apparently ran over to the same adviser and told him "THEY don't have a problem with it, so YOU should not have a problem with it." Making that moment the poster was like rubbing his face into it.

It's one of the sad things about the movie to me, at least how that moment was digested in pop culture - it genuinely reflects how much American culture values revenge. It reminds me of a similar scene in L.A. Confidential, which I've seen twice - once with a large, younger crowd who cheered at what happened, and once with a small group of arthouse patrons who remained stone quiet. The latter seemed to get the tragic implications of that scene, especially the way it called back to Ed Exley's very first scene with Captain Smith.

And yes, I've heard some argue that Friedkin's best work is actually that documentary.

L.A. Confidential endorses the police vigilantism, I'd say.

L.A. Confidential endorses the police vigilantism, I'd say.

James Ellroy is a fascist.

xxp (Forgot to add that in later years, Friedkin no longer believed in Crump's innocence, so yes, pretty wild how much he changed.)

xp Re: L.A. Confidential, it never felt like an endorsement to me, but one reason I grew to like it less was that it seemed like cynical defeatism to me. (Referring to Hanson's film and his interpretation of Ellroy's work.)

FWIW, Ellroy absolutely hated Hanson's film but wasn't forthcoming until after he died.

Re: L.A. Confidential, it never felt like an endorsement to me, but one reason I grew to like it less was that it seemed like cynical defeatism to me.

I don't wanna derail the thread, but I'm glad you mentioned this scene. I've been meaning to watch L.A. Confidential again, in part to see if my impressions were correct. Unless my memory's wrong, Exley and Bud White don't reckon with any moral qualms about dangling the Evil Gay D.A. out the windows: the camera framing and the editing whip the audience up; we're on their side. Then the film moves along to the next plot point.

It's one of the sad things about the movie to me, at least how that moment was digested in pop culture - it genuinely reflects how much American culture values revenge.

I don't want to push back against this too much because I do agree copaganda has a real effect on ppl's opinions, but at the same time as someone who consumes a lot of Italian and Hong Kong action cinema I'm pretty confident in saying revenge is appreciated by audiences around the world, as is violence in general. Depending on time period and geographical area, I imagine the audiences would have cheered equally loud if the same exact scenario had played out amongst cowboys or post apocalyptic road gangs or, perhaps most tellingly, criminals. Likewise I wonder how much of that advisor's objection was genuine moral disgust and how much was "this makes the cops look bad". Anyway I've heard quite a few defenses of French Connection as a film that shows cops being the violent, racist pieces of shit they are - but I guess it's still up to the viewer whether that then registers as "yeah this seems bad" or "hell yeah it's great they are like that" and Friedkin may have believed the latter.

No worries, and apologies for the multiple posts, various distractions keep popping up and that ended up breaking up my response into these very brief posts I'd have to spit out really fast.

I was actually talking about a different scene - when Exley shoots Smith in the back. Looking this up, in their first scene together, Smith asks him: "Would you be willing to plant corroborative evidence on a suspect you knew to be guilty, in order to ensure an indictment?" "Would you be willing to beat a confession out of a suspect you knew to be guilty?" "Would you be willing to shoot a hardened criminal in the back, in order to offset the chance that some... lawyer..." etc. Of course Exley's responses to all of these is "no" and then schematically, Exley betrays all of these principles one by one. Shooting Smith in the back was like the final betrayal of these principles, and the tragic implications seemed to be clear. Even if one justified it because it was how they took down Smith's cartel, one would have to ignore how they successfully framed the African-American characters for a previous massacre by using the same tactics of planting evidence, physical interrogation, and killing a suspect. (Exley is guilty of that, much to his horror, earning the nickname "Shotgun Eddie.") It suggests a thoroughly corrupt system that's unavoidable and inescapable, and it feels apiece to the future that's off-screen: it can only lead to the LAPD detailed in OJ: Made in America. I've got mixed feelings about how much merit the film has for putting that across, and Alfred raises an excellent point too - IIRC being gay in the film (and I imagine the novel too) isn't defined as anything but aberrant and shameful.

dangling the evil gay DA out the window was a cousin to Longshanks throwing his son's gay lover out the window in Braveheart. i don't remember the novel well enough to know this for sure, but i'm pretty sure the DA wasn't gay in the novel, nor did Dudley Smith die. the novel is less streamlined noir and more an overheated ambitious Ellroy narrative; he was moving towards his Underworld USA trilogy style fast.

related: TLADILA is almost comically homoerotic in parts, and with zero gay panic. the two main dudes are vv comfortable w/teasing each other.

James Ellroy is full of shit and will say anything to get ink in the press. He knew he couldn’t have written a script as good as Helgeland & Hanson’s. Also, he hasn’t written anything of note in at least 20 years

i'll give him 14 years, Blood's a Rover was vv good. i don't know about his books since, but their cultural impact has been zero.

Watched To Live and Die on YT yesterday. Really great, and just has a slight edge on French Connection.

"you're working for me now" - cut to credits with Wait playing over the magic hour freeway driving footage - is my favourite ending to any film ever, I have to watch the credits all the way through every time

Blood’s a Rover? The novel-length version of A Boy and his Dog? #onethread

I felt sure that there was a Robin Wood review of To Live and Die where he talked about it being a progressive critique of capitalism - money as a fake object etc - but I couldn't find it on a google hunt just now. Wood does offer a tentatively positive review (from a gay liberation perspective) of Cruising in his 'The incoherent text' essay, where he concludes:

Cruising, shot in 1979, already seemed an anachronism when it was released in 1980: in the midst of the parade of demoralising 'moral' reactionary movies heralded in the late 70s by Rocky and Star Wars, it sticks out like a sore thumb.

I took a film class at Brown called “Forgery and Simulation” and To Live And Die was on the curriculum, along with Body Heat, F is for Fake, and Badlands

Sounds good. Am also reminded of Noel Burch's essay 'Notes on Fritz Lang's First Mabuse', where among other things he notes that "Mabuse uses real bank-notes for writing paper, and counterfeit notes for money."

Friedkin used to tell the story — it might be on the TLADILA commentary track — about Treasury agents coming to him and asking that some shots be taken out of the counterfeiting montage, and others be re-sequenced, because he'd basically shown people how to counterfeit money. Probably bullshit, but who knows?

"I felt sure that there was a Robin Wood review of To Live and Die where he talked about it being a progressive critique of capitalism - money as a fake object etc - but I couldn't find it on a google hunt just now."

As one of the characters points out he has no idea why he is selling his skills, when those skills are to make cash.

xpost

"William Friedkin, in his memoir "The Friedkin Connection," says that the fake money they made was so good that, after some of it left the set, he eventually heard from the Secret Service and a US Attorney. After he avoided a confrontation with them, Friedkin states, "When the film came out, there were news stories about people trying to make counterfeit money after seeing the step-by-step process in our film. I took some of the twenties, those printed on both sides of course, put them in my wallet, and spent them, in restaurants, shoe-shine parlors, and elsewhere. The money was that good."

The news prompted me to finally watch Sorcerer last night, what a blast.

Yeah. It's too bad there's no oral history of it. This is a serviceable piece on how they did the bridge scene though. https://filmschoolrejects.com/how-they-shot-the-bridge-scene-in-sorcerer/

Seeing "Sorcerer" in a theater (2014, after its digital restoration) is one of my favorite movie-going experiences - that bridge scene is SO tense, lots of people were audibly freaking out (but aware of the nervous humor in such an over-the-top tense situation)...I love that I got to share that feeling with a theater full of strangers.

I later made a friend because of "Sorcerer" - I was checking out at a record store, and the cashier was commenting on a Tangerine Dream album I was getting, mentioning how they also did the "Sorcerer" soundtrack. And I was like, "I love that Friedkin movie" - then we chatted about "The Wages of Fear" - ah, two music/film nerds, nerding it out...

...and thanks for that article about the bridge scene! Holy crap!

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/aug/13/my-friend-billy-mark-kermode-remembers-exorcist-director-william-friedkin

Can't say I like Kermode much but this is a pretty nice tribute.

Reading the Devil’s Advocates monograph on Cruising and it’s quite good, as (obv) is the film itself

Just looked it up--would definitely read that, although Amazon copies are a little pricey.

I managed to snag it when the price dropped significantly a few weeks back. But yeah, the books in that series are way spendy (but often great)

I always forget Touch of Evil's Valentin de Vargas plays the judge in TL&DILA.

I saw Sorcerer last week, and yeah, the bridge scene is incredible. Going to a Cruising screening tonight.

Just saw TL&DILA for the first time this weekend. What a wicked, lurid, amoral movie. After 1994, these kind of movies seemed to have ceased to exist as they all became Tarantino-ed.

Good point, you might be right.

Yeah you know that is a good point, everything after a certain era got really jokey and a bit more gleefully, winkingly amoral rather than simply matter of fact. These guys aren't reveling in their respective schemes, Peterson is this pathologically overconfident psycho and Dafoe is all business (tho he's extremely sexualized obv), and there's nothing spelled out and no audience handholding. I'm trying to think of a movie from the last 20 years that tries to mine similar territory, and I can't really think of it. A cop thriller where it's not even that the leads are antiheroes, and you side with them because they get the job done, they're presented fully as the good guys (maybe Dirty Harry types to the extent that they're on the edge) and you wind up realizing they are the true villains and destructive forces.

Keeping in mind that I really like Tarantino a lot, but he's one of those who is virtually impossible to successfully emulate and so he's the only one who's truly good at that specific thing he does. And his influence resulted in almost exclusively trash.

Abel Ferrara has a similar vibe to TL&DILA, but he obviously predates Tarantino. Trying to think of something else post 1994.

End of Watch had it both ways: All Cops Are Good and They Are Also The Biggest Street Gang In LA

Listening to Siskel & Ebert episodes from the early '90s, I was shocked to think that this was my world for a long time: choosing from forgettable thrillers and shit SNL comedies. Stuff like Malice and Guarding Tess hit #1 at the box office.

Also one year before Tarantino: Mike Figgis' Internal Affairs.

Disclosure, With Honors, On Deadly Ground, The Specialist

There's a Friedkin program going on here at the Waterloo rep: The Exorcist/French Connection/Sorcerer. Hour-long drive, not sure if I'll rouse myself for anything.

All those Joe Eszterhas things.

Maybe I'm misremembering how the storyline goes, but I recall Q&A maybe having some very very superficial similarities with TLADILA. Just in terms of the nolte character, and how his storyline plays out. I forget if he was quite obviously a villain at the very start.

I took a date to see a preview screening of Jade. That one didn't go as well as I hoped.

xp - my favorite tidbit about With Honors was where they had to dress up the University of Illinois campus to look like Harvard:

The exterior of Winthrop House appears, but the interiors pictured are not that of actual Harvard houses, and the last scene of the movie was shot at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The buildings and surroundings were dressed up to look as if it were Harvard and many of the people in the final scene are Illinois students. The graduation scene was shot while the local climate in Illinois had not allowed for the trees to bloom leaves and so artificial branches and leaves were stapled on.

I think Q&A--which didn't hold up all that well last time I saw it; some of it is really heavy-handed--is closer to Internal Affairs, with the Gere/Nolte characters very similar.

Yeah obv TLADILA is more of an action film, which maybe makes the story arc even more startling to an extent.

I think the Johnnie To film Drug War shares its cynicism and bleakness and brutality, and the ostensible hero being a destructive force is there too. But it's not the same type of movie at all, it's more an indictment of the system and the drug war.

Watched The Exorcist for the first time this weekend. It was quite an achievement from a technical standpoint but I didn't find it scary at all; I guess I'm 100% not a Catholic anymore. (The scene where the doctors tell Ellen Burstyn that Catholics still believe in exorcism, like they're trying to keep from laughing in her face, was pretty amazing.)

think sicario attempts some level of the amoral ambiguity of TLADILA?

There's a Friedkin program going on here at the Waterloo rep: The Exorcist/French Connection/Sorcerer. Hour-long drive, not sure if I'll rouse myself for anything.

― clemenza, Monday, 18 September 2023 17:16 (fifty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

id drive an hour and back for any one of them on the big screen tbh

My local theatre's doing Sorcerer, Cruising, TL&D, Killer Joe, The Guardian, and The Exorcist - I'm hoping to go to them all.

They also showed The Wages of Fear the same week as Sorcerer, which... cool idea, but I couldn't fathom wanting to watch that story again so soon.