William Friedkin

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

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

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

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

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

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

xp

from iMdB trivia re casting:

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

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

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

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

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

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

aw shit, that’s awful :(

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You pulling my dick???

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

there are still gay men like that btw

Omar so, so otm

really enjoyed seeing The Exorcist again after so many years

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

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

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

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

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

That said, Cruising is a malignant masterpiece.

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

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

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

That said, Cruising is a malignant masterpiece.

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

quite a messy masterpiece also. ending is quite fudged

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— . (@realsagarbhat) August 29, 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There's your cocaine noir