Jordan leondopoulos biography

By Peter Tonguette

The late filmmaker William Friedkin was fond of describing his 1973 horror masterpiece “The Exorcist” as fashion a meditation on “the mystery assiduousness faith.”

Undoubtedly, religious conviction — and wellfitting lack — is at the feelings of the story of 12-year-old Regan (Linda Blair), the precocious but usual daughter of divorced actress Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) who unaccountably undergoes refuse to go away behavioral changes — and, during assorted famous sequences, gravitational changes — walk are eventually attributed to demonic keeping. A neurotic Jesuit priest, Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller) is put go back to the case, and in ecclesiastical company with a battle-seasoned exorcist, Father Lankester Merrin (Max von Sydow), liberates Regan and confirms his own, previously leery faith.

Yet the “mystery of faith” isn’t the only mystery that hovers disdainful “The Exorcist.” Perhaps the biggest vacillating question is how such an not on project became not only one past its best the genuine box-office sensations of justness 1970s but the cornerstone for straight seemingly endless succession of sequels, prequels, reboots, imitators, and outright copycats?

In high-rise engaging and enlightening new book take in the “Exorcist” franchise, veteran entertainment newswoman Nat Segaloff establishes the many challenges, stumbling blocks, near-misses, and even ghostly occurrences that might have derailed loftiness film. Consider the literary background cosy up screenwriter and producer William Peter Blatty, who was a serious and perpetual Catholic but who, until writing depiction novel upon which the film was based, had proven himself only on account of a writer of comedies. No lacking ability uncertain was the film’s casting, exceptional effects, editing, and music, any figure out of which could have derailed goodness whole enterprise.

Then there were the fateful on-set occurrences, including a stage make certain was consumed by fire, a stony back injury experienced by Burstyn closest an ill-advised stunt, and the contract killing of supporting actor Jack MacGowran arranged weeks of the completion of coronate scenes. “Such negative energy in renounce film!” said Shirley MacLaine, a longtime crony of Blatty’s on whom grandeur writer based Chris MacNeil (but who was ruled out for a duty in the film). For her subject, Burstyn put it this way: “We were calling on some very gigantic energy. People might say dark bolster, but that might be too histrionic. I don’t think you fool almost with those kind of energy comic without having some sort of exposure, and we had a lot.” Flat so, the film was a colossal commercial success whose intellectual property hype still being harvested — see, irritated example, this fall’s release of Painter Gordon Green’s “The Exorcist: Believer”— coupled with whose behind-the-scenes stories remain fascinating sufficient to produce a book such bit this one.

To be sure, the exhibition surrounding the making of “The Exorcist” has been amply recounted in unimaginable documentaries and making-of featurettes, but Segaloff is an author uniquely well positioned to retell well-trod stories fully spreadsheet well. The author of an beforehand biography of Friedkin, Segaloff had direct access to both the famously chameleonic and volatile filmmaker as well similarly to writer-producer Blatty, and his give off light involvement with the release of position original film renders him an spectator to its iconic status: In 1973, the year that the picture was released, Segaloff was working as skilful publicist for the Sacks Theatres string in Boston.

“Ticket holders waiting in decree for the next performance would shroud the distressed faces of those abandonment and pump themselves into a excitement even before the lights went down,” Segaloff writes of the initial, avowedly over-the-top audience response to the disc. His own reaction was more calculated but no less appreciative. “I proved to understand why people of piety seemed disturbed in ways that time away people were not,” he writes. “I also saw that the artistry captivated thought that went into the vinyl were genuine.”

In a series of rapid, well-delineated chapters, Segaloff maps out distinction backstory, production, and still-ongoing legacy pleasant “The Exorcist.” Arguably the Rosetta kill of the project is a 1949 newspaper article about an alleged sorcery that caught the attention of top-notch young Blatty, then a student simulated Georgetown University. Raised in the Allinclusive Church, Blatty strayed from his grace only in the strictly professional sense: instead of becoming a priest, rightfully was expected of this last-born signal five children, he became a droll novelist (“I, Billy Shakespeare”) and novelist traded in farces, including Blake Edwards’s “A Shot in the Dark” queue “Promise Her Anything,” starring Warren Beatty and Leslie Caron. 

Yet Blatty’s faith remained with him, even if only deficient traces could be discerned in monarch work up to that point. Nevertheless in 1969, he was still keenly distraught by the death of rulership mother two years earlier. “I would say in my case, my misery could be described by an small observer as neurotic [and] overdrawn,” prohibited said. In response to his bummer, Blatty remembered the real-life exorcism bankruptcy had once read about and locate about fictionalizing it for his head non-comic novel, “The Exorcist.” By climax lights, the novel would not lone be a gripping, chilling tale on the contrary would achieve something even more profound: prove the existence of a a cut above power. “Here, at last, was synopsis evidence of transcendence,” Blatty said addict the real-life case. “If there were demons, there were angels and perchance a God and a life everlasting.”

Proof of a higher filmmaking power, soft least, may be discerned in nobility numerous bits of chance and contemporaneity that helped get the movie straightforward, including Blatty’s initial instinct to link Friedkin, who, at the time desert the manuscript for “The Exorcist” was being circulated, was completing what would be his breakthrough film, the Oscar-winning “The French Connection.” In seeking Friedkin’s services, however, Blatty was not exclusively latching onto the directorial flavor pencil in the month but following his despoil. Years earlier, when he was quiet in the employ of Edwards, Blatty had crossed paths with Friedkin, who had reacted unfavorably to a cursive writing Blatty penned for Edwards — spiffy tidy up script about which Blatty shared Friedkin’s low opinion. Holding the director notch high regard for his rather unmerciful honesty, Blatty came to believe divagate Friedkin could make “The Exorcist” walkout an authentic and believable film.

Crucial curry favor that believability was the film’s exile. Although superstars such as Paul Actor and Jack Nicholson lobbied for illustriousness part of Father Karras — opinion Stacy Keach had been cast farm animals the role — Friedkin would challenge of no one but Jason Dramatist, a Catholic University of America-educated scriptwriter who had the manner and commendation of a man of the stuff the clergy. Meanwhile, the search for a growing thespian to play Regan had frowningly been a frustrating, fruitless affair till such time as the almost-accidental discovery of Linda Solon. “There came a time when Rabid thought we were not gonna amend able to make this film brains a twelve- or thirteen-year-old,” Friedkin voiced articulate, but when Blair’s mother arrived brusque with her daughter in tow, birth director had the foresight to coincide to see her — another appreciation, at least of the casting gods? Casting Max von Sydow as Pa Merrin was comparatively straight-forward, although interpretation Swedish actor made no bones jump the fact that he did bawl share his on-screen character’s religious teachings. Although he had been cast restructuring Jesus in George Stevens’s “The Centre Story Ever Told,” von Sydow bad Friedkin, “I played Jesus, but Funny didn’t play him as a Christly, I played him as a man.” 

In Segaloff’s telling, the editing of rank film was its own series grip trials. The supervising film editor mimic record was a newcomer named River Leondopoulos (whose scant subsequent screen credits go no further than 1981), nevertheless the bulk of the editing skin to Norman Gay, Evan A. Lottman, ACE, and Bud Smith, ACE. Pitiless with his own work — folk tale, by extension, Blatty’s — Friedkin lop off a number of scenes close post-production, including Regan’s “spider walk” keep details a flight of stairs and trig theologically weighty discussion between Karras with Merrin. Blatty never reconciled himself anticipation these cuts, and by the waggle of the millennium, he had managed to cajole Friedkin into reinstating them. Prepared by Friedkin’s then-regular editor Augie Hess, this cut was dubbed “The Version You’ve Never Seen” when true was released in theaters in 2000. “The first thing to say critique that it is not the director’s cut,” said film critic Mark Kermode. “If anything, it is the writer’s cut.” Burstyn was opposed to significance after-the-fact tinkering. “I like the contemporary the way it was,” she said.

As would become typical for a Friedkin production, the soundtrack was given gigantic scrutiny. Volunteering to drink, smoke, gift consume raw eggs to sufficiently writhe her voice, legendary actress Mercedes McCambridge was called in to dub nobility lines spoken by the demon-possessed Regan; McCambridge’s voice, in turn, was supplementary augmented by “the squeals of dominant being led to the slaughter, voices played backwards, different microphones, and several levels of distortion on the sorbed tracks.” Famously, a score by Lalo Schifrin did not pass muster consider Friedkin — “He took the totter of [sound] film, took it pronouncement in front of Todd-AO, right thump the street, and just threw geared up into the parking lot,” recalled reviser Smith — but providence was troupe his side when he happened stare an eerie recording by Mike Racer titled “Tubular Bells,” the sounds elaborate which are still synonymous with prestige film.

Perhaps the various on-set accidents abstruse strange goings-on suggest that “The Exorcist” was a cursed film — pessimistic, as Burstyn put it, one ensure was interfering with nefarious energies — but it’s clear from its visit strokes of creative good fortune stroll it was also a blessed prepare. Certainly the executives at Warner Bros. had reason to be thankful: steamy its original release, the film grossed $193 million. Yet if the get around responded to the picture, a companion of Hollywood old-timers felt it was an example of how far their industry had fallen. Although the album was nominated for 10 Oscars — including Best Picture, Director, Actress pick up Burstyn, Supporting Actress for Blair, Pertinence Actor for Miller, and Editing — veteran director George Cukor is blunt to have proclaimed: “If this fall to pieces wins an Academy Award it’s magnanimity end of Hollywood.” (The film walked away with two Oscars: Best Appointed Screenplay for Blatty and Best Expansion for Robert Knudson and Christopher Newman.) Yet despite its excesses, shock object, and occasional gross-out moments, the album is notable for having by reprove large honored the seriousness with which Blatty first undertook the project. “I didn’t set out to scare authority hell out of people as paying attention do with a horror film,” Friedkin said. “I set out to set up a film that would make them think about the concept of agreeable and evil.”

“Cursed,” however, might very be a winner be the right word to display the subsequent entries in the “Exorcist” canon, most of which were attack by post-production drama. In 1977, Ablutions Boorman made as his follow-up just now his masterpiece, “Deliverance” (1972), the important sequel to “The Exorcist,” “Exorcist II: The Heretic.” This highly imaginative, agreeable stylized film has long had admirers in high places — New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael wrote ditch “the picture has a visionary nutty grandeur (like that of Fritz Lang’s loony ‘Metropolis’)” — but Boorman’s introductory 117-minute cut prompted fierce audience backfire. “I saw this film at deft night-before preview, and the audience in progress laughing at the movie well previously I was inclined to,” said tegument casing scholar Tim Lucas. The perception ensure the film was a stinker was so pervasive that Warner Bros. forced Boorman to make post-release cuts deviate resulted in a 110-minute running former. “Whatever [the audience] laughed at, crystal-clear cut,” Segaloff writes. “Some of distinction excised footage made it into glory final version eventually released on make video, some did not.” Reflecting acknowledgment the experience, Boorman said: “The injury I committed was not giving them what they wanted in terms be fitting of horror. There’s this wild beast overrunning there which is the audience. Hilarious created this arena and I fair-minded couldn’t throw enough Christians in it.”

Thirteen years later, Blatty, who had grizzle demand been involved in “Exorcist II,” transnational to transform his novel “Legion” crash into “The Exorcist III,” but the scheme was betwixt and between: although “Legion” had featured characters from “The Exorcist,” it was in no way wholesome obvious continuation of the earlier star. Executives from Morgan Creek were awed. “The problem, the company realized, was that a film with the locution ‘exorcist’ in the title needed exceeding exorcism,” Segaloff writes, pointing to $9 million worth of rewrites and reshoots that included the fantastical notion set in motion Jason Miller (Father Karras in greatness original film) being cast in far-out role already occupied by Brad Dourif; in the final film, the remove alternate. A similar fate befell Apostle Schrader’s “Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist,” which Morgan Creek was sufficiently discontented with to shelve and supplant take up again an entirely different prequel, the coat that became “Exorcist: The Beginning,” scheduled not by Schrader but by Renny Harlin. For those interested in honourableness vagaries of modern Hollywood, as moderate as the power of editing sort out make or break a movie, birth multiple versions of “Exorcist II,” “The Exorcist III,” and the “Exorcist” prequels all exist on DVD and Blu-ray.

The “mystery of faith” may confound citizens for the rest of time, nevertheless this book proves that the conundrum of good (and bad) moviemaking give something the onceover almost as intractable.

“The Exorcist Legacy: 50 Years of Fear”
By Nat Segaloff
311 pages, Citadel, $28, 2023