Artist Spotlight: William Friedkin

Perhaps most famous for his 1973 horror film “The Exorcist,” Academy Award-winning director William Friedkin has been pushing the boundaries of mainstream filmmaking for nearly 50 years. Friedkin was on campus to present Houghton Library with the original manuscripts for his recent memoir, “The Friedkin Connection.” The Crimson had a chance to catch up with him on Sep. 27 before the screening of his 2011 film “Killer Joe.”

The Harvard Crimson: Last night at the [Harvard Film] Archive, your film “Sorcerer” was screened, a movie which unfortunately is remembered as a financial flop. How did your experience with that failure change the way you approach film?

William Friedkin: It didn’t at all. I’ve kept the same goals, desires, ambitions, and type of film that I love that I started out with. It hasn’t changed my approach at all. Now, the films that are made today have changed radically from the kind of films we made in the ’70s and before, and a little bit after. The films have changed, but I haven’t changed. I haven’t changed since high school. I’m the same guy that I was in high school. I find the same things funny, the same things tragic, the same things interesting.

THC: When you’re making a film, do you have to think about the financial outcome?

WF: No. You have to think about the budget going in. And, I don’t make big blockbuster films. You know, I don’t make films that cost more than $5 to 7 million, but that’s what I’m interested in—character and story, not computer-generated spectacle.

THC: Last year, your memoir [“The Friedkin Connection”] came out. How was…writing a book, especially a very personal book, [different] from directing a film?

WF: It’s not dissimilar; you’re telling a story, with words on a page, or film, or a digital camera. I wrote the book in longhand, and I make films in longhand too; they’re handmade. I didn’t have an outline, as I would have for a film. I just sat down every day and wrote what came to mind in a Moleskine book. I filled 13 Moleskine books. When I’d get about 50 pages handwritten, I’d record them in a micro-cassette recorder and have them typed. And they’d come back as about 30 pages, and I’d correct those pages eight or nine times and I’d send those pages to my editor…and she’d make comments, and we’d have a little back and forth until I got the whole thing together…. But I started in longhand, and that’s what I’ve given the Houghton Library, the longhand books.

THC: When you say your films are handmade, do you mean that symbolically?

WF: No, I mean they’re all very personal. I choose every shot. I choose every actor. I choose the entire crew. I don’t just come in and do a piece of work. I’ve only done about 15 films, I’ve done some television, but I think in over 50 years I’ve done about 15 films. I’ve abandoned a lot of things, but for the most part, with the exception of when I first started, I’ve done stuff I wanted to do, right or wrong.

THC: [Your film] “Killer Joe” is showing tonight—can you say anything about your decision to keep its most graphic scenes, even though the film was going to be given an NC-17 rating?

WF: I made the film I wanted to make, and the ratings board is a censorship board. They used to be a ratings board; they were created for the sole purpose of advising parents about the material in a film so that parents could decide whether the material was appropriate for their young children. That was their original purpose. Now they’re a censorship board, and they wanted to censor the crap out of “Killer Joe.” The phrase I’ll use when I introduce the film is that they wanted me to destroy it in order to save it, which is what the generals used to say in Vietnam. We had to destroy it in order to save it, and I wasn’t prepared to do that. So I took the most extreme and severe rating, which limited the audience, of course.

THC: Do you feel the environment of filmmaking—the MPAA and everything else—do you think it’s gotten worse since the beginning of your career?

WF: Well, it’s changed. It’s changed in a way that I don’t think I could flourish as I did in the ’70s.