Boorman and the Devil (2025) Movie Script

1
I always said that you take
all these elements...
...sets and landscapes
and money...
...it all goes into the camera
and it goes into light.
And at the end of the day,
you're just left with
a light flickering on a wall.
And that's so ephemeral.
People are...
very nervous about
turning their money into light,
because you're then faced with
the problem of turning light
back into money,
and very often...
you can't do it.
Paul Rassam, the very gloomy
French producer,
I, I said to him once,
"Have you actually analyzed
how many films succeed
and how many fail?"
And he said,
"Well, it's like this,"
he said, "In human births,
95% of human births are healthy,
4% have a minor flaw,
and 1% die.
With films,
it's the other way around."
It's a very precarious business,
but it has a romance about it.
It's, it's-- A sort of spell
is cast over people
to make movies.
I mean, David Lean
said to me once,
he said, "John, you know,
we all make failures.
Try not to make a famous one."
And this became
one of the most famous failures
of all time in the,
in the cinema.
This is the life of a filmmaker
is that you're always challenged
between the--
what you want to make
and what they want you to make,
and how you can, uh, ma--
uh, live with yourself.
I've often described filmmaking
as a kind of joyous slavery.
In some respects,
it's completely ruined my life.
I'm always at its beck and call.
I'm always waiting
for the actors
to read the script,
or the studio to consider
whether to make it,
and there are always
so many reasons
why a film should not be made,
and only very rarely
a few reasons why it should.
The elements you have
in your hand, you have a screen,
a light falling on a screen.
And you try to get
the audience to forget
that it's two dimensional.
And with a movie, you're allowed
to stare at people.
In life, what do you do?
You look and then you look away.
You know, you can't stare
unless you're in love.
- This notion of identification
comes into it.
The leading character,
you become that person.
To some extent you experience
their experiences,
and you go through things
with them
that you wouldn't be allowed
to do in real life.
So this is the part
of the film experience.
This is what we're trying to do.
At least,
some of us are.
In the early 1960s,
the Hollywood film industry
was in a state of crisis.
Nothing like this
has come in to Rome
since Romulus and Remus.
Hollywood is starting
to struggle.
Their box office
starts to plummet
and studios make bigger
and bigger and bigger movies.
A legend that sweeps
across the screen!
They start to spend
extravagant amounts of money.
Big titles, big budgets,
huge stars.
Barbra Streisand as "Dolly."
Julie Andrews.
It's the once-in-a-lifetime
entertainment!
And those films started failing.
You've never seen anything
Like it in your life
By the time the low-budget
youth comedy The Graduate
- became the number one movie
of 1967...
Mrs. Robinson,
you're trying to seduce me.
-No!
-...Hollywood knew
it had to change.
Studios didn't understand really
how they were gonna get
an audience
back from television.
We don't want nobody
telling us what to do.
We don't want nobody
pushing us around.
And they thought
these young directors
might have an idea about it.
This is grass.
You mean marijuana?
They were giving chances
to filmmakers
- who they didn't
really understand.
And it led to a lot of really
interesting movies.
Hey! I'm walking here!
These films pump fresh blood
into Hollywood.
- Younger filmmakers who had
radical new perspectives,
it's this explosion
of incredibly inventive,
distinct,
and original filmmaking.
No!
Really imaginative filmmakers.
They took chances.
But the chances that they took
made money.
If they move, kill em!
Let's take the day off!
- You want to?
- Yes!
- You sure?
- Yes, sure, quick!
John Boorman's
directorial feature debut
was a film called
Catch Us If You Can.
And it was
to The Dave Clark Five
what A Hard Day's Night
was for The Beatles.
We're trying to shoot
a TV commercial
-for meat.
-Very surrealist.
It was about
the packaging and the selling
of The Dave Clark Five
and the way
that they were being treated
like a commodity.
Advertising is total war.
That's actually kind of
a more bleak media critique
-than A Hard Day's Night.
-But is she selling meat?
- You know,
it just wasn't as fun.
And I gotta be honest,
The Dave Clark Five
are just not
the most charismatic stars.
One of the things to come out
of this new wave in Hollywood
was that you didn't
have to tell a linear story
the way Hollywood always did.
Point Blank presents a story
in a completely
non-linear fashion.
It was a wild experience.
It's a revenge picture,
but it's highly stylized,
incredibly violent,
incredibly intense.
Walker.
It's basically Lee Marvin saying
"Give me my money!"
You're a very bad man, Walker,
a very destructive man!
Why do you run around
doing things like this?
What do you want?
I want my money.
Lee Marvin had cast approval,
script approval, final cut,
and he defers it all
to John Boorman.
He basically gave Boorman
total power,
- which is why John Boorman
is able to make...
...such a crazy movie.
Point Blank
was my first color film.
I really would
like to have made it
in black and white,
but it had to be in color,
and I, I had to struggle
to develop a relationship
with color.
And so, I, um, shot
each scene in one color.
It was monochromatic.
And the head
of the art department at MGM
wrote a memo to the head
of the studio saying,
"This film
will not be releasable."
- You've got a scene here
in a green office
where you've got seven men,
all in green suits
with green shirts
and green ties.
He said it would be
laughed off screen.
The girl
was Walker's sister-in-law!
Of course,
nobody objected to it
because some of those greens
merged towards yellow
and others merged towards
brown, uh, shades.
What it does is it gives you
a harmony, a strength.
You're a pathetic sight, Walker,
from where I'm standing.
Chasing shadows.
Film is much closer to dream
than it is to reality.
So after Point Blank,
Boorman makes
Hell in the Pacific
with Lee Marvin
and Toshiro Mifune.
It's an intense, beautiful film,
almost wordless.
It was an incredibly
difficult shoot.
It was shot on location
in the Pacific.
The film
is not all that successful,
but winds up becoming
kind of a dad classic.
Leo! Leo!
Leo the Last
is a very peculiar,
almost fairy tale kind of story
starring Marcello Mastroianni.
I want to help you!
All of you!
It's an essential pivot
for Boorman.
It was his way to go
even more out there
than Point Blank.
- Leo the Last wound up
not being financially successful
or even at the time,
critically successful.
People just saw it
as kind of a flop.
It was Boorman's next film
that really changed everything.
Deliverance
was this meteoric event.
This is gonna be fun!
Four friends go on a backwoods
canoeing adventure
and are waylaid by the natives.
- He got a real pretty mouth,
ain't he?
- It's a movie about fear,
male fear,
and that the potential
for violence
is possible in all men.
Boorman went to great lengths
to make this terrain
look as vivid and as hostile
as possible.
They created
this kind of desaturated look
to make it look otherworldly.
Deliverance is
ultimately a horror movie.
I would say Deliverance
is a horror movie.
It's a relentless horror movie.
Even its ending
is a horror movie ending.
No!
One of the final shots
of the movie
has been ripped off
by horror movies.
It's one of the first
shock endings.
It was nominated
for three Academy Awards.
Best Picture,
Best Director, Best Editing.
Deliverance
is a financial smash,
a critical smash,
and it puts John Boorman
on the A-list.
I'd just made Deliverance
for Warners.
Then John Calley,
who ran Warners,
asked me to read the book
of The Exorcist
- to decide
if I wanted to make it.
I read the book.
I was rather horrified by it.
As a father of daughters,
it seemed to me to be a book
about torturing a child.
So I s-- declined.
Instead, John Boorman
used his newfound clout
-to write and direct
a totally original film.
-Zardoz!
The gun is good.
The gun is good.
The penis is evil.
I don't really know
how to describe
the plot...
of Zardoz .
Your aim
is to destroy me, isn't it?
Yes.
Would you kill God?
Sean Connery goes
from a group called The Brutals
who have nothing except...
- ...raping and violence
to keep them occupied.
He's lured
into the highly advanced,
- highly intellectual group
called The Vortex.
- And he's there
into fulfilling
their own subconscious
death wish.
-What is your purpose?
-I'm just an exterminator.
Zardoz, I made that picture
for $1 million
and with lots of effects,
and of that million,
$100,000 went to Sean Connery.
- You are the one.
- -So I didn't really have quite enough money to make it,
but I succeeded in getting Fox
to make
a $1 million negative pick-up.
In other words,
I had to borrow the money,
and when I delivered it,
Fox paid me back the million.
Zardoz is absolutely
one of the most out-there
studio releases of the '70s
or any decade, really.
The image that everybody knows
is Sean Connery in the man-kini
with the long braid, which is--
It, it looks totally stupid,
but when you see it in the film,
somehow it works.
- I want the truth.
- -You must give the truth if you wish to receive it.
That's part
of the Boorman magic,
is that he just invites you
into this fully imagined world.
This place is built on lies.
This has a big
"fuck you" energy.
The Tabernacle is indestructible
and everlasting!
In France, it did well,
- but in most other territories
it failed miserably.
So that was a disappointment,
but I was very fortunate
to make Zardoz.
It was very much the film
I wanted to make
and I got away with it.
In my experience,
successful movies
have one thing in common.
And that's luck.
Is there someone inside you?
Sometimes.
The original Exorcist
is, I think
one of the more frightening
films ever made.
It had a unique presence.
It's a brilliantly
manipulative movie.
Who are you?
It tapped into a fascination
with the devil
and with the concept
of demonic possession.
None of these are new ideas,
but none had been
displayed like this.
It felt so real.
Friedkin had managed to take
a deeply supernatural story
and make it feel
utterly grounded.
- I'm Damien Karras.
- And I'm the devil!
- Well, I thought
it was well made.
The swiveling heads
and the vomit and everything...
...was, uh...
...a bit excessive.
-Amen.
-But it was made well.
I cast you out!
And then, of course,
it was a huge success
and made oceans of money
for Warners,
but I didn't enjoy it.
The Exorcist scored
the biggest opening-day gross
for a single theater
in the history
of Los Angeles motion picture
houses.
The Exorcist was a juggernaut.
The word-of-mouth created lines
around the block.
I'm Harry Francis,
manager of the National Theater
here in Westwood.
I've been in this business
40 years now,
and I have never gone
through anything like this.
I don't think you can even
really convey to people today
nowadays, not everybody
goes to see the same movie
to the degree
that everybody saw The Exorcist.
Movies would start
in a handful of theaters
in the big cities,
- and then spread out
throughout the country...
...and that's what happened
with The Exorcist.
The impact
of The Exorcist was huge.
The New York Times
said the United States
is going to the devil.
Some psychiatrists
are calling The Exorcist
"a dangerous movie."
It wasn't just
a box-office smash.
It wasn't just
a critical smash hit.
People were passing out
in the theater.
And once they fainted,
they don't go back
into the picture.
It broke
into the Academy Awards.
It was up for best picture
of the year.
This isn't something
that horror films typically did.
The very idea of following that,
to make a sequel to that...
...is a radical thought
in and of itself.
- Say what?
- Your momma eats kitty litter!
Oh, nobody talk about my mom!
For the longest time,
sequels are seen
-as basically a rehash.
-Now, where were we?
You make one movie,
it's really successful,
you make another one,
that's basically the same thing
but the situation
is slightly different.
See Son of Blob!
- But audience tastes
were changing...
...and sequels to big movies
were looking more attractive.
Magnum Force,
the sequel to Dirty Harry
out-grossed its predecessor
and became the second-highest
grossing movie of 1973
for Warner Brothers,
behind The Exorcist.
Suddenly, sequels are being made
from the biggest movies.
I know it was you, Fredo.
When Francis Ford Coppola
makes The Godfather Part II,
it's one of the first times
a movie has had
a "two" behind it.
Still, sequels to The Godfather
and The French Connection
only grossed a fraction
of what their predecessors made.
Making a sequel to The Exorcist
was by no means
money in, in the bank,
it was this incredible risk.
Leave her body and go!
I'm not going anyplace!
But one of the biggest arguments
Warner Brothers had
- to make a sequel
to The Exorcist...
...was the avalanche of rip-offs
and exploitation pictures
that were cleaning up
at the box office.
The Exorcist
had been such a smash,
I think that Warner Brothers
felt, "Well, you know,
we just can't go
wrong with this."
But the question was,
"Who would come back to do it?"
Ellen Burstyn doesn't wanna
have anything to do with it.
She actually had a not
great time with William Friedkin
on The Exorcist.
-But why are they tearing
the building down?
-Shall we summon the writer?
Writer and producer
William Peter Blatty
and director William Friedkin
were both publicly battling
Warner Brothers
over profits they were owed
from the film.
I was asked to write
a sequel. I declined
because I didn't have
an idea that was,
uh, classy enough
and interesting enough.
My dad said,
"Why would I do a sequel?
I've already written
everything I wanted
in The Exorcist.
The story is over."
And I was thinking at the time,
"Well, for the money?" You know?
But I didn't say that.
You know?
But that's what I was thinking.
I mean, don't you do that
for the money?
That left it to Linda Blair.
- There.
And if you think that I wanted
anything to do with that,
you would be wrong.
Were you ever nominated
for an Academy Award?
-Yeah.
-Linda Blair.
Linda Blair!
You realize
I really was a normal kid.
Nobody could have understood
that kind of fame.
Hello, Linda.
How's the head, all right?
- Oh, yeah.
- No horns?
No horns.
It launched me into a,
a world that I had...
Do you have a boyfriend?
Hmm, not a permanent one
right now.
And to be so young,
no matter where I went,
you felt like
you were the Beatles.
I did several movies.
We, we did Airport '75.
- We're happy to have you aboard, Janice.
-Thank you.
- Then from there,
I did Born Innocent.
They held me down
and they hurt me!
We did Sarah T. -
Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic.
Oh, come on, you make me sound
like some major alcoholic freak.
And I did Sweet Hostage
with Martin Sheen.
-Where are you taking me to?
-Xanadu!
So I'm always the victim. Kinda.
You see? Hmm.
And then Warner Brothers
kept talking to me
about The Exorcist Part Two,
and I wanted nothing to do with,
like, "Uh, no."
Linda's team told the studio
she wasn't interested
in a retread of The Exorcist.
If they wanted her for a sequel,
it would have to be
something different.
And Warner Brothers agreed...
...and came back with an offer,
a big offer...
...rumored to be around
$1 million,
which at the time would make her
one of the highest-paid actors
in history.
And Linda tentatively agreed,
but only if she approved
the script.
At the time, Boorman
was working with John Calley
to develop Merlin Lives,
a three-hour epic
passion project
about King Arthur
and the Knights
of the Round Table.
But that fall,
Calley called Boorman
to come to Los Angeles
to read a short treatment
of a different project.
Calley came back to me
with a two-page idea
that was proposed by,
uh, Bill Goodhart,
and it was about, um...
...what followed.
Unlike the simple battle of good
versus evil in The Exorcist,
much of which took place
in a single room,
The Heretic would be an epic,
globetrotting thriller
about the next phase
of human evolution.
It's four years later,
and Regan MacNeil
is having nightmares...
- ...which she's working through
with her therapist,
-Dr. Gene Tuskin.
-It's okay.
Father Philip Lamont
and Lieutenant Kinderman...
- ...are investigating
Father Merrin's death
-from the first film.
-What happened here?
Dr. Tuskin has invented
a machine called
which puts two people together
in a hypnotic state
where they can see each other's
thoughts and memories.
Before too long,
Father Lamont and Regan
are hooked up together,
and visions of Father Merrin's
first exorcism in Africa
show that the demon,
named Pazuzu...
-Oh!
-...is still around and impeding
Reagan's spiritual growth.
It all ends in a climactic,
locust-filled confrontation
between good and evil
- at the Georgetown house
from the first film.
But the inspiration
for the central concepts
in the script
came from the writings
of a French theologian.
It had this idea
about Teilhard de Chardin,
the French theologist,
who proposed
that evolution would
bring people together,
connecting them
in the subconscious,
and that this
coming together of people
would eventually affect
the whole human race,
and the whole human race
would merge into oneness,
which would kind of
become God in a sense.
- And so,
that piqued my interest.
I started to think about it...
...and it was
an opportunity to make a film
about, really, metaphysics
and to express
those metaphysical ideas
in images and sound
and character.
So we read the script.
It was awesome.
It was awesome.
So it was so tempting that I...
...said I would do it.
I recognized that there was...
...dangers in this
because it was
a sequel to The Exorcist,
or seen as such.
I understand
the studio offered it
to Stanley Kubrick.
- Did you ever speak
to him about it?
- Oh, Stanley. Yeah.
He said to me,
"Well, if you want to do
a sequel to The Exorcist,
you just give them
more blood and gore."
And he was right, of course.
With John Boorman
and Linda Blair on board,
the film was scheduled
for the summer of 1977,
and the reported budget
was $8 million.
The clock was ticking.
- I always say that screenplay
should be badly written.
It has to be the starting point.
A screenplay is a guide.
It's a blueprint
that you throw away
when you've made the film.
Writer William Goodhart
was an established playwright,
but his only screenwriting
credit at the time
was an adaptation
of his own play, Generation.
Well, I started
working with him.
He had very narrow focus.
He wasn't a visualist.
His scripts were
all dependent on the dialogue.
We worked together quite a bit,
and it wasn't really
going anywhere.
So I got Rospo in.
I liked it.
But I knew it had to change.
Rospo Pallenberg
had worked with Boorman
on an unproduced adaptation
of The Lord of the Rings,
as well as
on the crew of Deliverance.
Goodhart screenplay
was very intelligent
in a sort of
a intellectual sense,
but needed some jolts.
We really dug into it in a way
that was very forceful
and maybe unexpected.
We finished the script
and I took it up
to Bill Goodhart
and I said, "Look,
this is what I want to do."
And he said, "Okay,
that's what you want to do,
but it's nothing to do with me."
So we parted company
at that point.
I never saw that we had a duty
to overcome the first film,
but I could see
how some people might have.
Like John?
Could be, yes.
I could see that.
Then, the question
of casting came up.
I wanted Jon Voight.
He was in a Jesuit seminary.
He was gonna be a priest.
So he had very deep feelings
about religion.
When I was persuading him
to do Deliverance, you know,
he has great difficulty
making up his mind
and went on and on for weeks
flirting with his part,
and in the end, I got so fed up,
I got him on the phone
and I said
"Look, Jon,
I can't go on like this.
-You either wanna do it
or you don't."
-Agh!
I said, "Look,
I'm gonna count to ten.
And if you haven't
said yes by ten,
I'll take the answer as no
and I'll get somebody else."
And I start to count,
"One, two--"
He said "Wait, wait, wait.
Stop! Why, why, why ten?
Why not 30? Give me 30.
Will you give me 30?"
"No," I said
"No, no, I'm giving you ten!"
- I got to eight.
He said "Wait, wait, wait!"
I said "No, no, no! Nine."
"Wait. John.
John, this is ridiculous!"
"Ten!" Boom!
Put the phone down.
So...
...then, a few minutes later,
he called back
and said, "I'll do it."
And then, when it came
to The Heretic,
I had the same problems.
God damn it!
He was very conflicted.
And he again
couldn't make up his mind.
He wanted to do it,
but at this particular time,
he was thinking
about becoming a Jew.
'Cause his researches
into Christianity
led him to the belief
that Christianity
was a heresy of Judaism.
So, finally, he said no.
Warner Communications CEO
Ted Ashley
argued that the film
needed a star.
He proposed Jack Nicholson.
Jack. He was a friend of mine,
and we did talk about it a bit.
- But, uh, completely wrong for this.
-Wooh!
My candidate
was Christopher Walken
all along.
I thought he would be perfect.
You must be one
of those hardened criminals
that corrupts
the younger offender.
But the studio
was insisting on a star,
an old-school movie star
who seemed to be
on the precipice
of a major career comeback.
Do what you will,
Caesar's done it first
and done it better,
ruled better, loved better,
fought better!
Run while you will,
as fast as you can,
you can't get out.
There's no way out.
By the end of the 1960s...
...Richard Burton was one
of the most written-about,
talked-about,
and highest-paid actors
in the world.
-What do you want?
-Your death!
He'd been nominated
for the Oscars six times...
- ...never winning.
But by the mid-1970s,
tabloid coverage
of his hard drinking,
extravagant spending,
and divorce, remarriage,
and divorce again
to Elizabeth Taylor
eclipsed his acting.
Burton was an old-school actor
trying to survive
in a rapidly changing landscape.
-Bonzai!
-He winds up
in a number of films
that aren't very good
or very successful.
No!
He's in a steep decline.
He was barely 50.
I was up to about, uh,
two and a half to three bottles
of, uh, hard liquor a day,
which is a lot.
So he went back to his roots.
Burton had just done a,
a very successful Broadway play.
So he was very hot.
And they wanted him.
They wanted him very much.
When the studio tells Boorman
he has to have Richard Burton,
it becomes a completely
different movie.
We were slightly in shock
and we had to grow into it.
Burton was much older.
So these notions of his crisis
in his priesthood
were not as potent
as they would have been
to a younger man.
On the other hand,
he had a gravitas
which helped to anchor the film.
And I met with him
and we talked about it.
And so,
we got Richard Burton.
Richard Burton. Really?
Are you kidding me? What?
T-- For me, that will always be
one of the most
incredible moments of my life.
Uh, Mrs. MacNeil?
-Yes?
-I'm Father Merrin.
Max Von Sydow was
very reluctant to come back on.
It's actually only after
Boorman says
"I was not a fan
of the first film,
and I actually think
that we can do something
to almost counteract
the effects of the first film."
I talked a lot with him
about what I was trying
to do with the story.
He saw that, and the ideas of it
and so he came along.
The supporting cast included
Academy Award nominee
James Earl Jones,
Deliverance co-star Ned Beatty
and legendary actor Paul Henreid
who had been in numerous
Warner Brothers classics,
including Casablanca.
But then tragedy struck.
William F. Kinderman, homicide.
Lee J.
Cobb, who played Lieutenant Kinderman in The Exorcist
died suddenly of a heart attack
at the age of 64.
He was always very much
part of it
and his death meant
that we had to change
a lot of things.
The loss of Lee Cobb
is a pretty substantial one.
Instead of recasting,
the decision was made
to write out the character
of Kinderman completely
and expand the role
of a different
supporting character.
- Hello?
- In here!
The filmmakers wind up
returning to Kitty Winn
who played Sharon,
this assistant character
to Ellen Burstyn.
- And also you got an invitation.
- What's this?
-Dinner at the White House.
-You're kidding me.
And that really changed
the script quite a bit.
But they were
still missing the pivotal role
of Regan's therapist.
I was at a party.
At the top of the steps,
I see this woman seated,
and I look at her.
Oh, I recognize her from, uh,
Somebody Flew Over
the Cuckoo's Nest.
She'd just done
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
you know, Nurse Ratched.
Your hand is staining my window.
So she'd scored heavily there
and the studio
were very anxious
to bring her in.
Well,
it was a very exciting time
after Cuckoo's Nest.
I was more bankable,
or I could get a part easier.
You know,
I was not used to that ever.
First thing I mentioned
to John in the morning,
I said, "I've seen Dr. Tuskin!
And she's this woman!"
My agent said
would I be interested
in playing a part
that was written for a man?
And so, I read the script,
but I didn't really
understand it.
My part was self-evident.
You know, I was the professional
in the room.
I was interested
in working with John Boorman,
being a Deliverance fan,
although I couldn't really
put those two movies together.
I probably had the same reaction
that a lot of people have
when they're making a sequel.
You know, "Oh, it's the sequel.
Why didn't I make
the first one?"
I would have been better
in the first one!
One of the elements
in Boorman's contract
was that he could shoot
the film anywhere he wanted.
The script called for scenes
in Rio de Janeiro, Ethiopia,
the Vatican, New York City,
and the original house
in Georgetown,
and Boorman wanted
to shoot the studio work
near his home in Ireland.
- But Ethiopia was
in the middle of a civil war.
- The Vatican would have
to approve the script.
They were having
a difficult time
getting permission
- to shoot at the original house
in Georgetown.
And shooting in Ireland
would keep the studio
- from overseeing
the extensive project.
I know that John
was a great admirer
of Michael Powell.
- Famous
for its startling visuals,
almost all of Black Narcissus
was shot
- on soundstages
at Pinewood Studios in England.
All the things
that were done with sets
are done specifically
for their unreality,
because there's
a level of unreality
that is dreamlike.
It was a created world.
It wasn't "the" world,
it was "a" world.
And that made sense with us
'cause we were creating a world.
So instead of fighting
with the studio,
Boorman decided to embrace
recreating nearly everything,
including African cliffs,
locust swarms
to the famous Georgetown stairs,
all on soundstages
at the Burbank Studios
in Los Angeles.
It takes film out of reality
into a sub-reality.
It doesn't live
in the real world.
It lives in the
world of film.
The chilling realism
of William Friedkin's
The Exorcist would be followed
by a fantastical,
otherworldly environment
in John Boorman's The Heretic.
How involved
was the studio in the script
and the development
of the project?
Not at all.
Y-- You know,
the way the studios were run
then was so different.
It was always
by the seat of the pants,
you know,
it was just how they felt.
When Rospo and I
finished the script
and gave it to Calley,
and, um, I don't know
if he ever read it actually.
But he, he, uh, certainly
had no comments to make.
One of the attractions
of making The Heretic
was that I would have
a very substantial budget,
and I would be able to do
all kinds of things.
Now they're giving me
everything that I want,
the cars and the thing
and the house in Beverly Hills,
just all of the goods.
My first big paycheck
of my life.
It was thrilling.
I was earning money
for the first time
with zeros!
It, it may be
the biggest production
I ever did.
I think I just wanted
to be in a big studio movie...
...where they were gonna spend
a lot of money.
Make me believe in you
Make me believe in you
Show me your love
Can be true
-Show me your love is true
-Anything you...
There was a press conference
before we started the film.
- There was, like,
500 people in a room.
You got Linda Blair,
you got Richard Burton,
you got John Boorman, and so on,
and we're talking
about The Exorcist II.
- It was a big deal.
- The 15-week schedule
was the longest
of Boorman's career,
with a projected
September wrap date
and a national release
of June 17th, 1977,
just over one year away.
So Richard and I are,
are there answering questions.
What I remember from it
was just laughing my butt off.
Rospo Pallenberg's wife, Barbara
was hired to write the film's
making-of book.
This was completely original.
Taking Regan
in a whole new light
and all of these
different things,
I just remember
that it was like, "Wow!"
This is really good.
This is really good!
This is awesome!
- Instead of this girl
obsessed by a ghastly evil,
- she's made into something
greater, better.
And after months
of pre-production and rewrites,
Boorman and his team
gathered in Burbank
to commence
principal photography
on The Heretic.
I think that precision
and planning
is the key
to ambitious filmmaking.
- You have to plan
very carefully,
because there isn't
time to experiment
when you're on the set.
You've got to have it
all worked out.
The way I work is that I give
the cameraman and the AD
- a list of shots
on the first day of the week...
...and so it allows
everybody to plan.
They see what they have to do
and what's involved
- so when we come to shoot it,
everyone's ready.
And when they're not,
that's when I do get
a little upset, don't I?
Boorman chose William Fraker
to be the film's
director of photography.
I saw some things Bill Fraker did at that time.
I quite liked his work.
And Richard MacDonald,
who worked on Day of the Locust
and Jesus Christ Superstar,
was hired as the film's
production designer.
He had some interesting ideas
of excluding blues and greens,
the colors of life,
of optimism really.
So the whole film
is in these yellow and grays.
It has a visual harmony.
If I wanted to wear
a blue dress,
it would have to wait
until another time.
We were all very enthusiastic.
Everybody's attitude
on the show,
everybody's spirit,
was really positive.
I'm working on a huge show,
my first show
as a first assistant cameraman
with John Boorman
and Bill Fraker.
It was intimidating.
The idea that I could be
behind the scenes,
support the director
was just so appealing to me
at that time of life.
When I read the script
for The Heretic,
I thought,
"It's a sequel to The Exorcist
and we have all these
great elements.
Well, this could be
just as good or better."
The first memory
I have of John Boorman
is at the read-through.
We did it at some place
at Warner Brothers,
and Richard Burton was late.
And he didn't arrive
and he didn't arrive.
And finally, they decided
we'd just start without him.
And we were halfway through
when he did arrive.
He apologized profusely
and said he had an upset stomach
that he always got
when he traveled.
So he sat down
and he began to read with us...
...and then he would jump up
and run out of the room
to go to the men's room...
...and come back and apologize.
We finished without him,
as I recall.
- And then about
five years later...
...we went out to dinner.
He said that he just had
his read-through that day
and he managed to be there
only like a third of the time...
...that he always
pulled this thing
of being sick at his stomach
when he had to go
to a read-through
because he hated read-throughs.
He didn't see the point of them.
"What do they wanna see?
That we can read?"
Debbie.
Debbie. Can you hear it?
No?
I'll turn it up.
Last few years, there's been
an explosion of research
into these areas of ESP
and thought transference.
In our script, we have, uh,
what is really
a logical extension
of this research.
Very close
to what is being done.
It's called
synchronized hypnosis.
You see this? This is
a machine we can use together.
It can put us
in a deep state of hypnosis.
And you'd be very relaxed.
And then we could look
at those bad dreams together
and understand them...
...and dissolve them.
One of the objects
of making a film
is to put the audience
into a light hypnosis.
And you use sound and music
and movement to do that.
One of the great moments
when you're watching a film
is that you lose yourself.
You lose who you are.
The film seduces you.
You enter the film.
The film absorbs you.
And so, I always try to find
a way to hypnotize the audience.
It started off as a concern.
Would this strobing
create an hypnotic effect
in the audience
and then there could be
some bad events
that could come from it?
We spoke to various hypnotists.
They were utterly baffled,
I think, and said, "No,"
but I don't think they knew
what they were talking about.
But we decided
that it would not create
mass hysteria.
When we got into the room
I realized--
I'm thinking, you know,
"This is gonna be nothing
like the original Exorcist.
It wasn't going to be
as scary as the first one."
It was a different concept.
was like a joke to me.
I-- It looked like a kid's toy.
I expected something
more interesting looking.
I was amazed by it
because it looked sort of
homemade as it should have.
It did take a lot of hours
to set up some of the shots
and there were times
when we wouldn't
roll a frame of film
until after lunch.
A big part of the problem
is that
because of union demarcations,
the man who constructed
is not allowed to operate it
on the set.
So, I mean, this process,
this movie started off...
...with not a bang.
At the end of the first day,
production is already
behind schedule
by a quarter of a day.
Deliverance, Zardoz
and The Heretic were all
heavy effects pictures really.
Gene? Wake up.
And they all
came about before CGI.
Help me to find her.
John Boorman and Bill Fraker
decided to do
visual effects in camera
because they had more control.
Figuring out
how to get that done,
wow, it was an amazing
technical accomplishment.
- Watch the light.
- -When you make an optical in the lab,
you take two scenes
and you put them together
as best you can.
But when
you can adjust them both
before shooting them,
you can get a marvelous effect.
Ghost glass
was a device that people
used a lot in the past.
I kind of revived it.
No!
Always.
You use the ghost glass
at an angle to the camera.
One set is at right angle
to the camera
and one set
is facing the camera.
Fundamentally,
it's making a live optical.
Father, please bring her back.
I storyboarded it
with Richard McDonald
to work out the way in which
the images melded together.
So you are able to adjust
the position of those two sets,
- and you can rehearse it
until it just looks perfect.
- The illusion
that it creates is so complex...
In God's name!
...it's just
one of those moments
in the film where you feel like
you really have entered
this realm of imagination.
What happened?
Technically,
it's an astonishing movie,
and that many of the techniques
that he uses are...
...techs-- I've never seen
repeated again.
You're in Louise Fletcher's
office, and then...
- How do you feel?
- All right.
...the lights go on
and you reveal
the rest of the space behind.
...effects of syncing
with another mind
lasts a long time.
It's very powerful.
He's working overtime to create
these psychological effects
in the audience.
There was a commitment
to get it right.
And not just by the director,
but by everyone involved in it.
Everybody was a perfectionist,
I think, on this movie.
The sequence where Max von Sydow
is crumpled against the wall
in the Georgetown house,
and then all of a sudden
the camera rises
and you realize
that you're seeing
the stone church
that we've seen earlier.
You had grips pulling things
away really quickly.
And it's a really simple effect.
You almost don't even
register it.
And yet, you know, the movie
is filled with things like that.
By week three,
the production had moved
to Stage 16 to shoot
some of the most technically
complex shots of the film.
I'll never forget
when we turned one of the stages
into the desert.
It was an incredible set.
They build this corner
of Ethiopia.
They design every rock,
every crag, every hut.
It was immense.
It was a giant stage.
You felt like
you were in a village.
What I wanted to do
was bring the light level up
to where you could shoot
at a f/5.6 or 8,
which, if you were
in the desert,
that's what you'd have to do.
We used 123 arc lights,
more than had been used
on any other movie at the time
in one stage.
I had never seen so many arcs,
so many that there weren't even
enough electricians
to monitor each arc.
They actually brought over
power from the stage next door,
so we could have enough juice
to run all the lights.
Thirty feet below the rooftop
was just a huge cloud of smoke,
and sometimes
they would have to stop filming
for a short while
and turn off the lights
so the smoke could actually exit
the top of the stage.
We had so much light going on
that at one point...
we had to stop
because of the fear
of setting fire
to the whole stage,
it was a wooden stage.
Many of the shots
that were designed
to sell the locations
worked out very well.
We had the stone funnel
where Burton climbs
up the mountain.
It was on its side.
We had the dolly
along the side of it.
And then I do remember
there was some vertical stuff
as well,
where we had the crane,
and the crane had to go
up and down with the actors.
John was tough on camera.
If you didn't do your job
exactly the way
John wanted it done,
he, he'd let you know about it.
Bill Fraker used to have
a bottle of Mylanta
or Pepto-Bismol on the dolly,
and then by midday,
he'd be swigging away at it
because...
John had beat him up so badly.
They went and tried to find
actual Ethiopians in Los Angeles
to cast for this film.
A lot of retakes,
a lot of retakes,
because these people
aren't established actors
and they need more direction.
So it takes
a take after take after take.
I love moving the camera,
but I did not want the--
my results
- to be anything
but Hollywood smooth.
But I thought,
"There has to be some way
to isolate the camera
from a moving person,"
and I started chasing that.
Kubrick sent us
a telex immediately, you know,
I was reading this telex
as if it had arrived
from Valhalla, you know?
Amazed!
John Boorman hired
Garrett Brown and his Steadicam
for not just one or two shots,
but several major sequences,
including one
near-impossible shot.
What do you have to do
mentally to become a locust?
It's a Pazuzu point of view.
Just running through
the African village,
Garrett's got
that Steadicam tight
- and people are jumping
out of the way.
All bets are off
when you're a creature
like a locust, you know?
Who the hell knows
what a locust sees?
Uh, I concluded that a locust
would bank around corners
and that a locust
would look at stuff
with a great deal of decision,
you know?
And we go right into Kokumo,
and he opens his mouth.
- Pretty good locust POV,
you know?
- Close-up of a locust.
How are we gonna do that?
Well, Oxford Scientific Films,
what they discovered was
that if the locust's feet
are not on the ground,
it automatically flies.
All they did was put a pin round
and attach it to the wall
and they would fly away happily.
And so, we'd get
these great close-ups
of the flying locusts.
Albert Whitlock, he was one
of the greatest SFX men
that's ever been.
I said, "Well, I'm trying to do
this swarm of locusts
and I don't know how to do it."
That sort of piqued
his interest.
He was the one who devised
putting these iron filings
on a piece of glass,
and then with a magnet
underneath the glass,
he moves them around
in an impression of a swarm.
He was incredibly inventive.
African locusts were
an important part of the film.
I had just gotten
my master's degree
from Cal State Long Beach.
I had never worked
on a movie before,
and this was a huge movie.
Initially there were
3000 African locusts.
They contracted for 10,000.
They only got 3000
so I don't think
they could get any more.
The locusts were shipped
in little vials.
-I found myself looking
at 3000 locust butts...
-Hmm?
...one at a time to make sure
that there were all males
'cause male and females
looked different.
We found nine females.
- And the reason
that is important
is because if the females
got out and laid eggs,
we could have locust swarms
in Beverly Hills
and I don't think that
that's a good idea.
We put them in 8-by-8-foot cages
in the Warner Brothers gym
and we had to grow
80 flats of ryegrass.
- So every day, I would go in
with trays of grass
- that the locusts
would mow down.
That was kind of mind-blowing
for somebody
who just got their degree
in entomology.
So...
...in the script...
...John has written in
that "Regan tap dance."
Well, that wasn't anything
that I was interested in doing.
Did ballet,
modern dance, gymnastics.
It was the only art form
of dance that I didn't like.
So that was war.
I personally didn't think
that it needed to be in there.
So that was the only thing
that John and I were like
"Don't you just love it?"
And I'm like, "No!"
She was fun!
You know, the crew loved her!
Especially the boys.
She was pretty good
with her lines.
She knew what she was doing.
She did a terrific job.
Oh, she was easy.
Always cheerful.
Telling secrets?
Very professional.
Linda came prepared.
What you got with Linda
was "late."
Late.
Linda Blair was late.
-You're right on time.
Go on in. For once!
-Yeah.
This is one thing you don't do.
Even Richard Burton was on time!
I mean, come on, man.
Don't you trust me?
But I do. I do.
She's very sweet.
And during the day, I'd forget
how mad I was at her.
I didn't hold a grudge
after about
nine o'clock in the morning.
But at 7:00?
You know when I had to get up?
I had no intention
of making this movie.
So it's on my terms.
One of the stipulations
of her contract
was Linda would not be featured
in any extensive makeup
like she was
in the original Exorcist.
She had top billing
and would be the face
on the poster.
It's an incredible
pressure position to be in.
'Cause truly,
as an artist, you better
have your shit together.
You better do your, your work.
What's the matter with you?
I think Linda Blair's
performance is good.
You know, I think
she doesn't get
the credit she deserves.
I'm autistic.
How do you mean?
A lot of people
l-- look at that performance
and, and kind of laugh at it.
I was possessed by a demon.
Oh. It's okay.
He's gone.
- You know...
- "Oh, ha, ha." Like it's, it's,
it-- The line doesn't quite,
you know,
maybe it doesn't quite hit.
But she brings something to it
that I just find
so fresh and moving.
- What did you do?
- Nothing.
I just started talking to her.
First she was talking inside,
and then she started
talking outside.
When you set out to make a film,
you look at the problems
that it poses
and decide
how you can solve them.
These problems can be effects,
it can be the, uh,
the acting.
It was horrible.
Utterly horrible.
And fascinating.
What disappointed me was
that the whole time
we shot that picture,
Burton never made
a single suggestion
or contribution
but he always did
exactly what I asked him to do.
Evil is a spiritual being.
His voice
was the great thing with him.
He couldn't act
from the neck down.
He didn't have
that kind of balletic feeling
that Lee Marvin had.
Today, wherever I look,
I see only evil.
God has fallen silent.
There was limitations
with Burton.
So I had to tailor his scenes
to those limitations.
Leave her alone!
She belongs to me!
Because he was not happy,
Richard, he didn't really
bring himself to the role.
He'd tell me ditties
and, you know,
keep me entertained
but I never really felt like
I was performing with him.
I'm sorry, doctor,
I won't intrude any longer.
Oh, it's, it's okay, Father.
You can stay if you'd like.
He brought his manner,
which is kind of
always the same.
I saw him in a vision.
I saw his power over evil.
It's still
a little over the top...
...for film.
Evil overwhelms us.
He came unprepared, uh,
and h-- he would,
he would be unreliable.
I've flown this route before.
When was that?
It was...
It was on the wings of a demon.
Richard was well known,
you know, for liking
to, to partake.
Silencio! Silencio!
Came on the set
completely sober.
He invited me to lunch
at that restaurant
across from Warner Brothers
- And...
- "I'll have a Tom Collins.
I'll have another one
of those Tom Collins.'"
After lunch, it was always bad.
He would come disheveled.
He didn't match how he looked.
The grips set up a seat for me
under the lens
so that I could feed him lines
without throwing his eyeline.
- So he would say to me,
"Give me the first word."
- And I'd say, "I hear."
He's, "No, no,
you don't have to give me
the se-- just the first word."
"I."
And then roll.
And then,
he'd stop after "I hear."
"What's after 'hear'?"
But then around four o'clock,
and-- He began to perspire.
- And that's why
he had that six o'clock rule.
At six o'clock,
it was in his contract,
whether he was on camera,
in the middle of a scene,
or off camera...
- ...he would just
get up and say...
..."Okay, see you tomorrow!
Good night, folks!"
And we'd just be left.
I saw a lot of things
on that movie
that I'd never seen before
in my life.
And that was one of them.
We've got to fight that demon
that's inside her!
I felt that in the end,
his performance was
a bit limited.
Don't you ever need
a woman, Father?
Yes.
So...
...there we are.
- By the end
of the fifth week,
production had fallen
almost a week behind schedule.
But Warner Brothers was firm
on the June 17th release date
of The Heretic,
not only because it was
their big summer movie,
but also because
of how the film was financed
through a process
called "blind bidding."
With blind bidding,
a studio could present theaters
with a title, director,
a list of stars,
and a short description
of the film.
And if theaters
wanted that film,
they'd have to pay up front.
Most of the time,
blind bidding would happen
a year or more in advance
before the movie was finished,
and in many cases,
before it was even shot.
These guarantees
effectively paid for the movie
in advance
and made the studio's risk
on its investment
basically nil.
So in 1976, when theater owners
were offered the chance
to book the sequel
to one of the highest-grossing
movies in history...
...they jumped at the chance,
despite steep terms
from the studio
and an extremely long 12-week
minimum guaranteed run
in their theaters.
But The Exorcist
had played on screens
in some cases for over a year,
and with Linda Blair,
Richard Burton, Louise Fletcher
and the director
of Deliverance,
it seemed like
a very, very good deal.
Over 700 theaters booked
The Heretic,
making it one of the largest
releases in history.
Warner Brothers' investment
was already paid for.
All they needed now
was a film to release
on June 17th, 1977.
Did Father Merrin
ever name the demon?
This movie was definitely
the most challenging
as far as
the different sets we had,
the conditions we had,
the wind blowing.
They were shooting
on a soundstage
where they had a lot of earth
that they brought down
from another place
in California,
and they used wind machines.
And I know
that John was not happy
with the color of this earth,
- and he had more earth
brought in.
I remember him sitting
on the back of the crane
- and yet he had to communicate
with the actors.
So while we were wearing
masks and goggles,
he had to take
his mask down a lot.
John Boorman, he was
the busiest man on that set.
And I just had
terrible, terrible fear
that something bad
was gonna happen.
You realize what you're up
against, don't you?
What am I up against, Father?
Evil.
The steroids
the Warner Brothers' doctor
prescribed
can help back pain...
...but they weaken
the immune system.
Over the bicentennial weekend,
John develops
an extremely high fever
and a rash all over his body.
He's given a battery of tests,
but all of the results
come back negative.
I went to the UCLA A&E.
I got such a high temperature
that I was in hospital
taking ice baths
to stop my body from exploding.
From our point of view as crew,
he simply disappeared.
Oh, my God. We were terrified
because he was so sick.
- They couldn't figure out
what in the hell
was the matter with him.
And that closed
the picture down.
And it was something
called "Valley Fever."
John got sick
because of all the wind
we were blowing
in the scenes to create Africa.
- Valley Fever,
it lives in the sand.
When you stir up the sand,
it gets into the lungs.
Valley Fever can attack
your organs one by one
until you-- none of them
are working anymore.
I remember hearing
how he's even sicker.
It was something that I think
shook everybody's world.
We were just all keeping
our fingers crossed tight
that John was gonna be okay.
That's when people began
to make jokes about,
"This movie has a curse on it!"
I am Pazuzu.
It almost killed him,
this movie.
We had to shut down
for five weeks.
Five weeks.
What advice would you give
up-and-coming filmmakers today?
Find a better job.
There are always signs
that a production
is entering a period of chaos.
The thing is, chaos is
kind of part of the recipe.
So, how do you recognize
the difference
between the normal chaos
of a movie
and the chaos of a disaster?
I don't know.
Even without
the five-week shutdown,
the original
15-week shooting schedule
was looking very unrealistic.
So while he was recuperating
from his near-fatal illness,
Boorman allowed Pallenberg
to cut and condense
several scenes.
But the one section
they worked on the most
was the ending.
The whole idea
of alternate endings
was because of this hiatus.
- And so, I just
drew up alternatives.
"I'm gonna write one
in which this person dies.
I'm gonna write one--
Let's see, see what happens.
See what it gives us."
Just basically to keep busy
'cause it was boring.
Yeah. Mm.
- I met Rospo Pallenberg
probably on day one.
He hung out at my chair.
So I sensed that
he was going to be somebody
that I would be working
with a lot.
He was the number-two guy.
He was very intense.
He was a character.
Absurdly confident.
The only one who used
to have conversations a lot
with John was Rospo.
I didn't know what his title was
when he was on the set,
except for writer.
Who are you?
It was very informal.
I had the right to go up to him,
to talk to him
whenever I wanted.
There were no rules.
I didn't dislike him instantly,
but it was shortly after that,
that I stopped liking...
him.
I don't think
Rospo had a lot of fans
from the crew side.
They all thought Rospo
was a meddler
that made things
more complicated.
I don't know you
and I don't like you.
Most people couldn't figure out
what in the hell
I was doing there.
'Cause I didn't have a title.
I said, "What does
your name stand for?"
He said, "Look it up!"
And I went home
and I looked it up
and "rospo" means "toad."
Now...
...tell me,
is that his given name?
They started making changes
in the script.
Kind of didn't see
this coming right away.
That was, yeah, winging it.
That's what working on a film
is all about.
Write to the strengths
and, uh...
...disappear a bit
from the weaknesses.
I know that Rospo had to do
with rewriting the dialogue,
and of course,
it could only get better,
but instead
it would sometimes get worse.
It's about five scripts later,
we, we were pretty upset.
I never felt that anybody else
other than John and I
knew what we were doing...
...and, uh,
we didn't really care.
"We have also have made
the ending much stronger.
We have been able
to strengthen the ending."
At that point,
it came like throwing the dice.
Let's have this person die,
let's have that person die,
let's see what happens.
You know,
-it was an experiment.
-They just kept rewriting it.
So you've got Warner Brothers,
you've got John Boorman,
you got this Rospo Pallenberg,
don't know where he is,
don't know who he is,
still to this day.
- It had to build up
to something huge.
"A sort of black hole that yawns
under the Georgetown house.
The Void should be dark.
The walls become rubbery..."
We were on a train ride
and we had to deliver.
The power.
It's getting nearer.
Even with the expanded ending,
because of the cuts
and the rewrites,
when Boorman returns to work,
the film is nearly back
on schedule
and has a new wrap date
of October 20th.
When John came back,
he was not quite the same
force of nature he was
at the beginning of the movie.
- He was thinner.
You know, he looked like
someone had knocked the starch
out of him.
There's a feeling
that some filmmakers
have to confront
in their careers
with certain films,
which is, "Is this
the movie that kills me?"
We were shooting up
on the top of--
It was actually
Warner Brothers building.
666 oddly enough,
was the number.
The shots on top
of the Warner Brothers building
in New York
were some
that I'll never forget.
Okay, so you're gonna
stand on the side,
there is a net down there,
you know,
and I'm thinking to myself,
"That's, that's, that's
the edge of the building."
I had no safety harness on.
Underneath, I remember netting
and that somebody was supposed
to be down there catch--
But we were very high up.
The skyscraper was, like,
for real, a very dangerous set.
I don't remember exactly
how we made it safe.
I don't think we did.
It was Linda on her own,
being brave.
I mean, it was as safe
as is possible,
but you can look back
and say, "No,
if something had happened
or anybody can have anything
where you just lose
your balance for a minute..."
I'm kind of stunned
that they actually
had her do that.
I mean, they didn't fake that.
I, I wouldn't have done it
myself.
Dangle me off the side
of a fucking building.
I had a harness on
because I was walking
backwards in there,
I don't wanna--
And at the end of the day,
I noticed that the end,
it was supposed to be anchored,
wasn't.
I didn't have any s-- security
that I thought I had.
I could have flown off
that building very easily
and landed in the street
37 stories below,
and I wouldn't have had
to suffer all that...
...misery
of The Heretic's release.
Back in Burbank,
the film's production issues
kept escalating.
The Heretic
is my first movie ever.
- I'm told
that a stunt coordinator
was coming in to speak to me.
And says,
"So when we put you on fire,
we want you to be protected."
And I'm like...
..."Yes."
Then he explains
that I need to be wrapped
in a asbestos bodysuit.
"Okay."
- Then I'm walked
through the set.
"So now we are going
to light you on fire, Rose,
but we're going to put you out
before it gets very high.
There are six men squatting
with fire extinguishers,
so don't worry!
You just tell us
if you get hot."
And that was when I discovered
that when I panic,
I cannot make sound.
Fortunately, someone said,
And I got my head to go...
- And six fire extinguishers
go out...
...and I'm put out.
And then we hear...
"Who put her out?
Who in God's name?
Fire that son of a bitch!
Who put her out?"
And I'm like this,
and I went...
And the very same voice goes,
"I'm sorry, dear.
What happened?"
"I got hot."
Silence.
Mr. Boorman says...
"All right, then,
let's get ready to go again."
Obviously, we thought
we'd get it on the first day.
And then I got the call
to come back.
And then I got the call
to come back.
And then I got the call
to come back.
And I'm not really sure
how many times I went back.
But, but it even shocked
Mr. Burton.
Things were going wrong.
There were just so many things
that could happen
on a highly technical set.
"Rospo Pallenberg
had been in an accident
shooting second unit in Africa.
They were filming in a motorboat
and..."
The editor, John Merritt,
quit the movie
with no notice
and went back to London.
And Kitty Winn fell ill
with a gall bladder infection
and checked into Cedars-Sinai.
Louise Fletcher sent her
a note that said,
"There is no Pazuzu."
I thought,
"Oh, my God," you know...
..."this picture is beset
with a bunch
of really difficult problems."
And other things happened.
Producer Richard Lederer
has a coronary bypass
two weeks after being
assigned the film.
My husband
had open-heart surgery.
Yeah. People got sick,
and I blamed it all
on the devil.
People said it was
"Oh, well, you know, you're,
you're playing around
with, uh, evil and..."
But I-- To me, that was,
was all nonsense.
I never had any feeling
that that was connected.
The last two months
was a frenzy of activity
as cast and crew came together
to finish principal photography
on The Heretic.
I've really got to use
This is not
an official investigation.
-My imagination
-Father. Father. Father.
To think of good reasons...
Bill Fraker very cleverly
matched the light
between the studio
and the location.
That's very hard to achieve.
The cliffs were 200 feet high,
and we'd have to put cameras
on the top and shoot down.
He didn't fall there.
He bounced on that ledge
and fell there.
I tell you, that's
a shot I will never forget.
It looked extraordinary.
It didn't look like
any other film.
- I've really got to use
- I got to use
My imagination...
I had everything going
in my favor.
To think of good reasons...
It had its own identity
and its own style and imagery.
I had a big budget,
lots of facilities,
and I could make
something special.
As they were heading
into the final weeks
of principal photography,
Richard Burton informed
the production
that he must leave for Toronto
to shoot the film of Equus
on November 1st.
Boorman announced
to his team...
There was just too much,
too much to attend to.
Rospo Pallenberg came to me
when the changes came through.
Said, "What did
you think of them?"
And I said, "They're awful."
It's not right.
It's not good. It's like a joke.
We've just slipped
into another whole level
of people
being able to laugh at this.
Warner Brothers approved
an overage of $600,000
to shoot a new ending
without The Void,
but it had to wrap
in early November.
The ending of this film
was the biggest
destructive scene
I think I've ever worked on
in my career.
The doors fly open.
They had a stunt person
and yanked him back
against the wall,
and then a close-up
with locusts on his face.
His skin was rough.
I think Richard Burton's face
was a perfect place
to put locusts.
This movie!
At least help Regan!
To do what?
Did I say "Pazuzu?"
-To fight this thing!
-Name it.
I think I remember
I had to say it once.
Pazuzu!
I'm surprised
that I could get through it
and say it without laughing.
Pazuzu's Regan
is the only Regan.
So they turn me
into this sexy demon.
Be joined with us, Father.
The sexy Regan
tries to seduce the priest.
- The windows fly open,
it's like an explosion.
- The set was made
to come apart...
...and they had to reset it
through all the takes.
Then, the ground
starts splitting.
It's moving and tipping
and kind of like being
at Universal theme park.
It did take a lot of hours.
Stunt people
used to fall down stairs.
There's a lot of dust.
There's a lot of smoke.
There's a lot of painted peanuts
and cellophane blowing
through the air.
The climactic shot of the movie
involves...
...while spinning
on a turntable.
They are throwing
friggin' locusts at me.
-Can't even imagine.
-So, of course,
we were behind schedule.
We had to move faster
to get things done.
There was a rush to finish.
Will this movie ever end?
This movie won't die!
The time has come.
An enemy of the human race...
...is subdued.
...and be transmitted
across distances.
Here he is seen
causing a spoon to bend.
So we wrapped.
I went to a dinner party.
I had the best time.
I laughed all night.
At two o'clock in the morning,
I woke up with a violent pain
in my middle.
Like somebody
is putting a knife through me.
And I drove myself to Cedars.
I was in the hospital
a week before they figured out
that I needed
to have my gall bladder removed.
In the hospital,
Kitty Winn sends Louise a note.
Exorcist II: The Heretic
shot for 89 days,
over 24 weeks.
Its original budget
of $12.5 million...
...had ballooned to almost 15,
far and away
the most expensive film
ever produced by Warner Brothers
to that date.
But the studio was convinced
their gamble would pay off.
It was a tough picture to make.
It certainly achieved
some of the best work
I've ever done.
And despite Rospo Pallenberg's
request for a writing credit,
the Writer's Guild,
through arbitration,
awarded William Goodhart
sole writing credit
on The Heretic.
Boorman returned to Ireland
to supervise the miniature
and insert shoots,
as well as the edit.
It really came down
to working night and day
on the post-production
to get the edit
and the sound mix in
to make all these prints.
In December,
new editor Tom Priestley,
who had worked
with Boorman on Deliverance,
presented him
with a two-hour-and-20-minute
first rough assembly.
Boorman remarked,
"There's not an ounce of fat."
There was quite a lot
to be done. And, of course,
the music with Ennio Morricone.
Ennio Morricone's score,
it's kind of mind-blowing.
It's experimental. A lot of it
doesn't even sound like music.
And there's a lot of
locust wings beating and stuff
that are kind of folded
into the music
that make it very disorienting.
But then,
that beautiful theme kicks in.
He recorded
all the instruments separately.
So you had 60 or 70 tracks.
You could mix it
in all kinds of ways.
I'd say, "No, it's,
it's too thick," you know.
"Pull all the strings out.
Try, try it
without the strings." You know.
And, and it was fantastic.
Marvelous guy to work with.
As editing
and miniature shooting
continued in Ireland,
the Warner Brothers'
marketing team
was just getting started.
Originally, I said
it should be called The Heretic
and should not be referred to
as a sequel.
But as time got close
to release,
Warners insisted on calling it
Exorcist II: The Heretic.
My name is Jeff Kanew.
Uh, I directed
a number of movies in the '80s
but in the '60s and '70s,
I was a trailer maker.
There was one particular year
where I got to work...
- ...on Exorcist II: The Heretic
and at the same time, Sorcerer,
which was William Friedkin's
follow up to Exorcist one.
The dialogue stuff
from Exorcist II
was a little strange
and didn't come out of context
well, like, f--
you know, for a trailer,
but the visuals were great.
Four years ago,
The Exorcist shocked the world.
Now, the struggle
between good and evil goes on.
Exorcist II: The Heretic.
And then, hard cut
to the Morricone...
Lots of fast cuts, no, no cut
was longer than ten frames.
That fast coming at you.
No dialogue for two minutes.
And it was exciting
and maybe exhausting.
The music and the visuals
built and built and built
to a climax.
- And it was good.
It was a good trailer.
- In 1974,
he directed The Exorcist.
It made history.
Since then, Friedkin has spent
over two years
in five countries
on three continents,
creating his latest film.
Then we cut...
into the Tangerine Dream music.
- And lots of cuts
of Roy Scheider,
and then this truck
called the Sorcerer,
which is loaded with explosives.
And then, two minutes
of Tangerine Dream's music.
Sorcerer.
So that was great.
I had two good trailers
that were almost identical.
That's okay.
Except that they had
their world premiere
side by side
at the Grauman's Chinese Theater
the same night,
with William Friedkin
sitting in the audience.
Okay. I thought, "Probably
they're gonna love Sorcerer,
- even though it's just
about four guys in a truck."
And it didn't work out that way.
The Exorcist II trailer
played like gangbusters.
Sorcerer.
And the Sorcerer
was a respectful "ho-hum."
And so,
William Friedkin was upset
and I got this phone call
thinking that it was somebody
from Universal saying,
"Hey, the trailer played great,"
but it was, "We're taking
the trailer off the screen...
...because William Friedkin
saw it and it didn't
play as well
as Exorcist II: The Heretic."
Dialogue looping
would continue through March.
The score was recorded in April.
And the first finished
answer print
of Exorcist II: The Heretic
was delivered on May 30th,
just two and a half weeks
before it opened
on over 700 screens.
Days before the film opened,
there was one sneak preview
in Pasadena.
Exorcist II: The Heretic
was, hands down,
the craziest film screening
I've ever been to.
I'm gonna to tell you the story
of the first screening
of Exorcist II,
and it was told to me
by an executive
of Warner Brothers.
I went with our older friend
named Dave,
who was like a really
hardcore film fan.
These Warner Brothers executives
drove out to Pasadena
in their big limousines,
and they went into the theater
which was packed,
turn-away crowds,
and they went
and sat in the last row.
- And the lights
go down very slowly.
Everyone is being
very respectful,
it was very quiet
and for the first few scenes
I was drawn into it.
As the film progressed,
I was a little bit confused
and by the time we got
to the synchronization scene,
I was totally lost.
Now, Regan, I want you to relax
and make your tone go deeper.
I'm wondering, "What does it got
to do with the first movie
that I saw as a kid?"
The theater was really,
really silent.
Try and remember Father Merrin
just before he died.
I think there was a sort
of vibe of astonishment.
Is he casting out
the unclean spirit?
He is praying.
The vibe changed
from respectful and quiet
to...
- People were
beginning to chuckle
and they were popping up
all over the theater.
And I was like, "This is
gotta be like a sendup."
- This can't possibly
be by design.
- And everyone around me
seems to be having
the same reaction...
...but it hit a crescendo.
No!
Always.
At some point, my friend Dave,
he stands up.
-A guy stood up...
-Looks around.
...and he looked around.
And starts looking for people
who might be associated
with the film.
- And when he thinks
he's got them spotted,
-he points
his arm out and says...
-And he said...
"The people who made
this piece of shit...
...are in this theater!"
The people in the back
of the theater,
they're moving towards the lobby
- and Dave's
moving out after 'em.
The heads of the studio,
they got up,
they ran out of the theater.
They get outside. No cars!
The cars are all down
at McDonald's!
- And they were chased down
the street.
Hundreds of prints
of the film were in the process
of being struck and shipped.
The studio was out of time.
And on Friday, June 17th, 1977,
Exorcist II: The Heretic opened.
People were lining up to see it.
It was almost a national event.
You had this huge
want-to-see quotient.
The Heretic was a must-see.
There's a huge hit movie,
you love it.
The sequel is being directed
by a big director,
a famous director.
You see a trailer for it,
and the trailer is unbelievable.
It is four years later.
What does she remember?
Where will it lead her?
We wanted to be there,
first show, day it opened,
and we were.
We were.
I saw the picture
in Westwood the week it opened.
There was a tremendous
amount of anticipation.
We are in New York.
"Come to the opening!"
- It was a full house.
- Yeah.
-Sold out.
-I don't know-- Yeah. Sold out.
There's the titles,
you know, and it begins.
I pretty much
had one expression, I think,
on my face
throughout kind of like...
I think
they were kind of numb...
...and disappointed.
There were no spinning heads,
it wasn't an out-and-out
simple horror movie.
And I'm like, "Oh, my God."
- We were in shock.
- -Are we really seeing this?
Did James Earl Jones
just spit a tomato...
- Yeah. Yes!
- ...out of his mouth?
The problem with the film
I presented to them
was it wasn't
what they had a right
to expect from a sequel.
We didn't give them more
of the same shock and horror.
There's a point in a movie,
particularly a horror movie,
where if you lose the audience,
you won't get them back.
And the stories start
coming back
that there are some problems.
The audience starts jeering.
And then they start laughing.
And my sister-in-law is like,
"Oh, my God, what's going on?"
It was hard to process.
It was kind of like
a hallucination.
-It was chaos.
It was a disaster.
-Truly insane.
-Literally booed off the screen.
-What was that?
- People were angry.
Talking back to the screen.
There was a palpable
sense of, uh, betrayal.
Audiences hate this film.
They are demanding refunds.
They're throwing popcorn
at the screen.
They're throwing things
in the aisle.
They hate this movie.
My dad and I took seats
in the middle of the audience
because we just wanted
to be in, in the thick of it.
- A few people started laughing
and it just built.
- Why is she tap dancing?
Why is she walking off the roof?
What's going on?
Afterward, on the way out,
it's one of the rare movies
that I've had attended
where people were telling
people on line, "Don't go in."
And when the reviews came out,
they were among
the most devastating
of any major studio film
in Hollywood history.
I was very disappointed
that the film was received
the way it was,
because I just viscerally knew
what had gone into it
and how much effort and seeing
John Boorman every day...
...how much it meant to him.
I saw it in a theater
full of people
that commenced laughing at it.
They were yelling,
talking out loud,
you know, uh, laughing.
It was, uh, it was hard.
No.
No, I didn't want to.
I mean, it devastated
all of us, I think.
There are so many people
who would have adapted it
in the more
conventional sequel way,
and this didn't go
anywhere near that.
-A--
-The direction it went in
was almost surreal.
It was not "almost"! It was--
It was absolutely surreal!
John Simon
of New York Magazine wrote...
That it was considered dumb
when in fact
it was so over-intellectualized
- is one of the tragedies, I think, of it.
- -And Gene Siskel
of the Chicago Tribune wrote...
The audiences expected
more of the same
and I wasn't giving it to them.
It wasn't a sequel.
It was a riposte,
an answer to The Exorcist.
It wasn't what
they were expecting,
which is a horror film.
It didn't fit.
Here was a sequel
which wasn't a sequel.
Blatty, the author of the book,
disowned it.
There was a riot in Westwood.
They were deeply disappointed.
I mean, they threw things
at the screen.
They demanded their money back.
- People felt
utterly cheated, angry,
and all that anger...
...and bitterness
was directed at me.
I made a film about goodness.
And that was a film about evil.
I did my part.
Exorcist II: The Heretic
opened huge,
breaking studio records.
But the drop-off
from its negative word-of-mouth
was so severe,
the film came in second
to the undersea thriller
The Deep
in its opening weekend.
To try to make it
more palatable,
what we did
it was a mistake, really,
but, make some cuts.
Using edge code numbers
from his own print in Ireland,
Boorman had the studio
edit out the happy ending
and send a new, truncated
final reel to theaters.
Warner Brothers informed
irate theater owners
they were shipping out
a new ending
as soon as possible.
It was a harrowing time.
On Tuesday, June 21st,
Boorman was back in Los Angeles
watching the film
with an audience
for the first time.
Pazuzu,
Prince of the Evil Spirits
of the Air...
...take me to Kokumo!
- Kokumo.
-I spent a lot of time with John Boorman
in the aftermath of the opening,
when he was desperately
recutting the film.
The poor man
was really distraught
with the audience reaction.
He was saying,
"I've got to cut this scene out!
I got to cut this scene out!"
The film is about goodness.
It just doesn't deliver the gore
and the evil spectacle
that the first one delivered.
It's, it's poetic.
It's visionary.
It's a dreamlike film.
But that's not
what audiences in 1977
wanted to see at all.
Five days later,
Boorman switches
the print at the Village
for a new version of the film
that's seven minutes shorter,
with a new beginning
and a new ending
with Burton's character dying.
-But I am not worthy!
-You are a soldier of Christ.
You must make yourself worthy!
Ted Ashley was there.
Calley was there.
Boorman, Lederer.
It was very dramatic.
We went back
and saw it a week later.
A lot of moments
that we had found funny...
- Yes.
- ...during the first take
were gone.
- Were snipped.
- Get going!
The girl has to get home!
Boorman had re-edited the ending
so Richard Burton disappears
during the destruction
of the house.
It was a different film experience.
It wasn't great.
- Yeah.
-But it certainly didn't play as an unintentionally
- funny film anymore.
It was just strange.
- Odd.
It actually went pretty well.
Some people even applauded.
Boorman, Calley,
and Ashley and Lederer.
I remember seeing them
huddled in the lobby afterwards.
They were all shell-shocked
and they didn't know what to do.
Boorman was trying
to persuade them
to take his cut version
and put that out domestically.
But that would have cost
"X" amount of money
to make new prints.
But the word-of-mouth
was getting around.
In its second weekend,
Exorcist II dropped
a disastrous 57%.
The theaters were freaking out
because they were gonna lose
a fortune on this film.
I vividly remember
seeing, on the news...
-David Sheehan. Yeah.
-David Sheehan, that's right,
interviewing John Boorman.
Towards the end
of the interview,
Boorman got fed up
and he turned
and he said to him,
"What would you like me to do?
Immolate myself
on Hollywood Boulevard?"
I was shocked
by what happened to John.
Just what happens
to a great filmmaker
when, when it all collapses
under you, you know?
My heart went out to him.
Totally went out to him.
Every single person
on all the movies I worked on
did it with all their heart.
They loved making these movies.
I did too.
I was proud of my job,
I'm proud of my work.
Nobody was out to make anything
but a great sequel
to a great film.
My heart and soul
went into this movie.
It broke all of our hearts.
I, I think I'm safe to say
it broke my heart.
We were probably too daring.
Maybe we had committed
the sin of hubris.
It was a mistake... for me.
A mistake in terms
of the audience.
I should have known better
that an audience would feel
frustrated by The Heretic.
It was shattering for me.
I... I, I lost my nerve.
I felt that
what I'd done with the film
was of high quality,
and that I'd made it
with heart and soul,
and that it could be
so... so rejected
was extremely painful.
- Boorman continued
to recut the film.
By the time
of its European premiere
in September of 1977,
there were about
125 alterations,
and the runtime
was 16 minutes shorter.
Warner Brothers
released theaters
from their 12-week
minimum-run obligations,
and even before
its European release,
Exorcist II: The Heretic
had ended
its North American
theatrical run.
What is success for a filmmaker?
This is an impossible question.
Success for a filmmaker
is whether or not,
for the most part,
the story that existed
in your head and in your heart
made it to the screen.
So, what is failure
for a filmmaker?
There are way more answers
to that question.
One after another,
celebrated filmmakers
from the '70s
were given enormous budgets
to realize their visions...
...and one after another,
they failed.
Even Francis Ford Coppola's
epic Apocalypse Now,
which was a box-office hit,
barely broke even
due to its immense
cost overruns.
And in 1980, Heaven's Gate,
Michael Cimino's Western epic,
which was initially budgeted
at $7.5 million
- and ended up costing the studio
over $44 million...
...all but destroyed
United Artists.
Exorcist II
was one of those movies,
along with Heaven's Gate,
and a few others
that probably
put an end to a certain era.
I'm not one of those people
that says
the good old days
were always better.
But I will say that there was
more of a willingness
to take risk back then.
Part of art is taking risks.
Perhaps studios will realize
that the focus groups
and the market testing
and the algorithms
aren't predictive
of audiences' real desires,
and that perhaps
the solution to that
is to empower the filmmaker.
It was a marvelous time
for great films
and for great attempts,
you might say.
But one film from the summer
of 1977 did not fail.
Star Wars
just cost $11 million,
and it ended up redefining
the Hollywood studio movie.
It changed everything,
Star Wars. Changed everything.
I'd forgotten how much
I hate space travel.
To me, I always felt
it was kid stuff, you know,
it wasn't serious cinema,
but it turned out
to be what people wanted,
particularly young people.
And they're still making them,
aren't they?
In the next few years,
several states
passed legislation
making the practice
of blind bidding illegal.
One of the movies
they often used as an example
of being misled by studios
was Exorcist II: The Heretic,
a movie so hated,
it inspired legislation.
Well, see, he was ambitious
to do something so...
I almost gave up filmmaking
and, and it took me
a couple of years.
Talking to you about it...
...and how it was made, and,
uh, has a-- There's an element
of pain in that,
because it was
such a painful experience
to have that work
rejected so completely,
and it almost destroyed
my career.
And so, when we talk about it,
I remember the pain,
and the, I remember the scars.
I suppose to a large extent
I've tried
not to think about it.
But we're now, you know,
talking of, what, 50 years ago,
there's is a line in Excalibur
where Lancelot says
"It's the old wound.
It's never properly healed."
And, uh, so, that's true of me
and The Heretic.
Then the obvious question,
I guess, is,
do you regret it?
Well, when it came out
and was, um,
was, uh...
...such a failure,
yes, at that time,
I did regret it.
I thought, "Oh, well,
I'd, I'd made a mistake."
Because I'd had this opportunity
and the budget to make a film
that was very, I thought,
very powerful and beautiful,
but in the wrong context.
Had that film been released
as separate from The Exorcist,
I think it might have had
a very different reception.
But it was linked to it
and that was the mistake.
And so, all the great work
that we put into The Heretic
was lost, really.
My attitude changed
after The Heretic.
I became probably
more respectful of the audience.
The films I'd made
before The Heretic,
I had no thought
of the audience.
You know,
"Who you making it for?"
was often the question asked
and I thought,
"Oh, I never
had to think about that."
I'm making it to please myself.
You know, I remember
David Lean saying to me,
"Make your pictures
to please yourself.
And if they don't please
an audience...
...give up."
So I had to ask myself
the question
whether, you know, I should take
David Lean's advice
and not go on making 'em.
And then, of course,
after my fallow period there
for a couple of years,
I launched into Excalibur.
After the success of Star Wars,
studios were looking
for mythic tales
with iconic heroes.
And John Boorman had one.
Once I started shooting it,
I felt I was falling
into the same trap.
I'd made these two failures
and here I was
making another bold
and foolish venture.
Ride!
It was huge.
I mean, you had horses
and armor and lots of extras,
and there were times
I lay in bed at night thinking,
"I've done it again.
This is gonna fail."
It was a huge struggle.
So I was, if you like,
not learning my lessons.
Perhaps it says
something about me,
about my recklessness.
With Excalibur,
I just about pulled it off.
That restored my confidence.
And I thought,
"Well, maybe I've got
another couple of pictures
in me somewhere."
And I went on.
You know, so many films fail.
You know, endless reasons
why a film doesn't succeed and--
But somehow, a few do,
and that's what
keeps us all going.
Sounds somewhat masochistic.
Yeah.
But you're not a masochist,
are you?
I suppose I must be, you know
otherwise I wouldn't
be making movies.
In 2022, Sir John Boorman
received a knighthood
for his contributions to cinema.
He is regarded by many
as one of the greatest directors
of all time.
But even after hearing
all the stories
about this one movie
in his career
that nearly destroyed him,
there's one question
I've never been able
to fully answer.
Exorcist II: The Heretic
is a fascinating film.
It could have been
a great movie.
It is not a great movie.
Exorcist II: The Heretic
is a great movie.
I don't think it's a good movie,
but I think, uh, it was, uh...
...it was a...
...good effort.
I think it's just a great film,
a masterpiece.
Uh, it works on every level.
I love seeing a film
that is a work of visual poetry,
but there's an emotion to it.
Profound emotion
radiates through every frame
of that film.
There was wildness to it.
There was ambition to it.
I would call it a brave movie.
Is it a perfect movie?
Certainly not.
Uh, is it a movie that works
with an audience? No.
Uh, is it artistic
and accomplished and,
and like being
in someone's dream? Yeah.
He was putting some
terrific ideas on the screen
in a way that is truly art,
whether it connects or not.
It was full
of little grace notes.
And I think you could look
at that film more than once
and you could find
other things in it.
And so, it was rich.
I think that's how
I've described it.
It was--
It had a richness about it.
What made working
on The Heretic special?
John.
Working with John.
Well, I love directors,
you know...
if they're good.
And he was a special director.
It was an incredible gift
to be able to work
with John Boorman.
It was one of the greatest
experiences of my career.
It was brilliant.
Regret's a bad word.
It's a bad word.
Everybody in life has a journey.
Whether you know
where it's gonna go, sideways,
up, down, roundabout,
you do not know.
You will make a choice
and you live with that.
Regret it?
No, I got to work
with Richard Burton.
I have no regrets in my career.
The bad movies,
the good movies, the rejection,
it's just like one great big
spaghetti dinner.
I loved it, every bit of it.
Lots of pain,
lots of pleasure.
All goes together.
I miss filmmaking.
On the other hand, I'm 85.
Maybe is-- it would be foolish
of me to do another one.
- You think?
- Yeah.
I would love to see
another John Boorman film.
Okay, I'll do one.
He's a real creative genius.
Even if they were
on a tiny budget,
he'd be working on something
that we'd never seen before.
He was just innovating
and playing.
I have this theory
that everyone has at least
one John Boorman film
that they love.
The older I get,
the more I value
people who just go for stuff.
I am much more engaged
by a flawed work of imagination
than I am by something designed
to give an audience
more of what it got last time.
And I feel grateful
that there's somebody
who would just put
these things out there.
Like, I wanna put
Sean Connery in a man-kini.
Yeah, who would-- you know--
How many people
in the universe would do that?
Apparently, there's only one.
My family, my seven children,
and the films I made
are the most important things
of my life.
I've often felt
that I've been braver
in my filmmaking
and more cowardly in my life.
Perhaps there's only
so much bravery you can muster
and I put mine into the films.
I love to play.
And in all the stresses
of filmmaking,
you can lose the joy of play.
Regan? I'm sorry.
I understand now.
The world won't.
Not yet.
It seems to be in my nature
to try and explore
and go deeper
and try to make my films...
...messages of hope and sharing
the experience of life.
I think that my failure
is probably
to be overambitious
in the films I've made.
I'm always trying
a bit too hard.
Whereas, so many
great filmmakers
like Antonioni...
...Bergman...
...Hitchcock...
...Billy Wilder...
...David Lean...
...Powell and Pressburger...
...Stanley...
...Fellini,
even 8 1/2 where
he was trying to express
all these elements
and trying to hold them together
into a work of harmony,
turning money
into light, into spirit.
I think the great filmmakers
have that ability...
...to turn film into spirit.
Are you one?
I've tried to be.