The Big Picture · Interview
April 23, 2018/ 38 min/ Sean Fennessey
Sean Fennessey sits down with William Friedkin, who made a documentary about a real Vatican exorcism and insists his own Exorcist is still 99.99% fiction.
16 films across 1 segment.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
William Friedkin on 'The Devil and Father Amorth'
Friedkin's documentary, shot alone with a small handheld camera. It shows the ninth exorcism performed on a woman named Christina by the Vatican's Father Gabriel Amorth. He took the footage to neurosurgeons and psychiatrists afterward, and none of them could explain it.
His most famous film, and the reason Amorth agreed to meet him at all: the priest had written that the special effects were over the top but the movie helped people understand his work. Friedkin insists it's fiction, loosely drawn from a 1949 case, and that the head-spinning and levitation were invented for the screen, not real exorcism symptoms.
The film he says came closest to his original vision and one of the few of his own he can still watch. He'd recently seen it projected for the first time and called it an amazing experience.
His first film, a documentary about a man on death row in Chicago. He says it saved the man's life.
Something he'd recently caught and called terrific, and different from the rest of the horror genre.
His pick for the last great thing he'd seen: original premise, constant dread, and a lead he identified with.
One of the films he says young viewers now watch on an iPad without minding. He thinks that misses how it was meant to be seen.
The one he calls his peak, directed by Vincente Minnelli with Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. He calls watching Astaire a reason to live.
Alan Pakula's film, which he says is still as relevant now as it was in the '70s.
Also mentioned raised along the way
In passing Avengers: Infinity War
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