As “The Exorcist” hits the 50-year mark, what’s remarkable is how, long after the sequels and a TV series are gone and forgotten, it remains fresh.
“‘The Exorcist’ remains powerful,” said Nat Segaloff, whose “The Exorcist Legacy: 50 Years of Fear” (Citadel Press) goes on sale Tuesday, “because it did its job in ways that no other film like it has ever done. It isn’t necessarily a horror film. I think it affects people because it does a very good job in ways the audiences don’t expect it to do.”
Adapted from William Peter Blatty’s best-selling novel and directed by William Friedkin who had just won the Best Director Oscar for 1971’s “The French Connection,” ‘Exorcist,’ an immediate if controversial smash hit, was nominated for 10 Academy Awards including Best Picture, winning for Blatty’s screenplay and its innovative sound design.
Segaloff, a Boston Herald veteran, sees two reasons why it worked. “The first,” he said in a phone interview, “is turning the book into the movie. The first draft Blatty gave Friedkin was flashbacks, flash forwards and all sorts of fancy things to keep it going.
“Friedkin said, ‘No, I don’t want to ‘correct’ this. I want you to write the script based on your book.’ That paid off. The other thing Friedkin wanted was to shoot in New York. Because he didn’t want his actors driving to the set, which was supposed to be in Georgetown, Washington, DC, and see the mountains of the San Fernando Valley when they went to Warner Brothers. He wanted to give the cast some actual things to hold on to and not have to walk into the studio door thinking, ‘OK, I’m going to pretend now.’”
To that end, in an era without CGI, all the amazing events we see were real. “The physical effects slowed down production. Friedkin, who came out of documentary, wanted everything that you see happening in the film actually happen in front of the camera. Not for the reasons that occur in the story, but for reasons that occurred on the set: the levitation, the breath coming out of people’s mouths, the moving of the furniture, the cracking of the doors. All of those things were done right in front of the camera with physical effects.
“To get the set to cool down to the point where actors’ breath shows in front of the camera, it might take four hours of air conditioning. That means they can only get three shots a day. As a result, the film feels real because it is real. It’s not because the devil made anything happen.”
