Sorcerer was shortly followed by the crime-comedy The Brink's Job (1978), based on the real-life Great Brink's Robbery in Boston, Massachusetts, which was also unsuccessful at the box-office.
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Friedkin considers it his finest film, and was personally devastated by its financial and critical failure (as mentioned by Friedkin himself in the documentary series The Directors (1999)). Sorcerer (1977), a $22 million American remake of the French classic The Wages of Fear, co-produced by both Universal and Paramount, starring Roy Scheider, was overshadowed by the blockbuster box-office success of Star Wars, which had been released exactly one week prior. But Friedkin's later movies did not achieve the same success. Whereas Coppola directed The Conversation and Bogdanovich, the Henry James adaptation, Daisy Miller, Friedkin abruptly left the company, which was soon closed by Paramount. In 1973, the trio announced the formation of an independent production company at Paramount, The Directors Company. It won for Best Screenplay and Best Sound.įollowing these two pictures, Friedkin, along with Francis Ford Coppola and Peter Bogdanovich, was deemed one of the premier directors of New Hollywood. The Exorcist was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Shot in a gritty style more suited for documentaries than Hollywood features, the film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.įriedkin's next film was 1973's The Exorcist, based on William Peter Blatty's best-selling novel, which revolutionized the horror genre and is considered by some critics to be one of the greatest horror movies of all time. His next film, The French Connection, was released to wide critical acclaim in 1971. Several other "art" films followed: The Birthday Party, based on an unpublished screenplay by Harold Pinter, which he adapted from his own play the musical comedy The Night They Raided Minsky's and the adaptation of Mart Crowley's play The Boys in the Band. He has referred to the film as "unwatchable". In 1965, Friedkin moved to Hollywood and two years later released his first feature film, Good Times starring Sonny and Cher. Hitchcock admonished Friedkin for not wearing a tie while directing. Career Īs mentioned in his voice-over commentary on the DVD re-release of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, Friedkin directed one of the last episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1965, called "Off Season". He also made the football-themed documentary Mayhem on a Sunday Afternoon. Its success helped Friedkin get a job with producer David L. Paul Crump (1962), which won an award at the San Francisco International Film Festival and contributed to the commutation of Crump's death sentence. Within two years (at the age of 18), he started his directorial career doing live television shows and documentaries. He began working in the mail room at WGN-TV immediately after high school. Televised documentaries such as 1960's Harvest of Shame were also important in his developing sense of cinema. Among the movies which he saw as a teenager and young adult were Les Diaboliques, The Wages of Fear (which many consider he remade as Sorcerer (film)), and Psycho (which he viewed repeatedly, like Citizen Kane). Only then, Friedkin says, did he become a true cineaste. Several sources claim that Friedkin saw this motion picture as a teenager, but Friedkin himself says that he did not see the film until 1960, when he was 25 years old. įriedkin began going to movies as a teenager, and has cited Citizen Kaneas one of his key influences. According to Friedkin, this was because of social promotion and not because he was bright. However he was not a serious student and barely received grades good enough to graduate, which he did at the age of 16. He enrolled at Senn High School, where he played basketball well enough to consider turning professional. According to film historian Peter Biskind, "Friedkin viewed his father with a mixture of affection and contempt for not making more of himself." According to his memoir, The Friedkin Connection, Friedkin had the utmost affection for his father.įriedkin attended public schools in Chicago.
Friedkin's father was somewhat uninterested in making money, and the family was generally lower middle class while he was growing up. His grandparents, parents, and other relatives fled Ukraine during a particularly violent anti-Jewish pogrom in 1903. His parents were Jewish emigrants from Ukraine. His mother, whom Friedkin called "a saint", was an operating room registered nurse.
His father was a semi-professional softball player, merchant seaman, and men's clothing salesman. Friedkin was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Rachael ( née Green) and Louis Friedkin.