I’ve known this for decades, but it just came into my head again when The Exorcist was mentioned in another thread.
The Exorcist (the movie) is actually mistitled. It should be called The Exorcised, because it’s mostly about Regan, not Father Karras. In other words, the movie is about a little girl who undergoes an exorcism performed by a priest who’s going through a crisis of faith.
The Exorcist (the book) is actually about the, you know, exorcist. Father Karras is the main character, not Regan. In other words, the book is about a priest who’s experiencing a crisis of faith, who performs an exorcism on a little girl.
I think there’s room for debate about the degree to which the film favors Regan as the main character over Father Karras, but in my head canon the movie is about Regan, not Father Karras.
Even more so because the exorcist is Father Merrin and we don’t really know squat about him except he and Pazuzu are old buddies. I mean, Karras is just the wingman in case Paz has a friend.
Similarly, the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory has Charlie as the main character, while the later Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has Willy Wonka as the main character.
For me, the interesting thing about the movie The Exorcist is that I’ve a few times walked or driven past the house where all the exterior scenes were filmed. (The interior scenes were filmed in a movie set.) It’s easy to figure out where the house is in Washington, D.C. You should have no problem doing a little research and finding that our yourself. I’m going to avoid mentioning the address myself because it is and always was a private house. I’m afraid someone will decide to visit the house and pound on the door and demand to be shown around the house, and then I’ll get blamed for invading their privacy.
Seems iffy, to me. You need some pretty extreme distortions to the state shapes to get that match, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen similar artwork of the head-and-shoulders of other (non-Carolina) predators.
Some quick research shows that you were right to be skeptical.
To clear up a common misconception, the shape of the panther’s head and neck is not supposed to resemble the two states together, though many people have claimed it does. Any resemblance to the geographical boundaries of the Carolinas is merely coincidental, as nice of a thought as it would be.
Google tell me that “The initial occurrences took place in Cottage City, Maryland, before the family moved briefly to St. Louis, Missouri, where the final Catholic rites of exorcism were performed by Jesuit priests at the former Alexian Brothers Hospital.”
The exorcism didn’t take place there, but the house they stayed in when they went to St. Louis is in Bel Nor, not too far from where I used to live in Overland.
I also teach at SLU, with which at least one of the priests was affiliated, and which ran the hospital in question.
Interesting. I saw it for the first time a few years ago and I don’t remember it being the girl’s story at all. It was framed at the start as a tale about the horror of having something wrong with your kid and you don’t know what it is and you’re powerless to stop it. Which is very affecting as a parent.
And then it’s about this priest.
But mostly I just remembered the parent part.
I honestly don’t remember - were we let into the girl’s world at all? I recall for the most part she was just a plot device.
I am notorious for forgetting movies moments after I’ve watched them. Like the time I watched A Beautiful Mind for the second time and was surprised by the big plot twist both times.
I recently complained on Twitter that The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013) - the Ben Stiller joint - was mistitled as well as he spent most of the movie on a bunch of adventures. Walter Mitty is meant to sit at a desk and dream about adventures not actually go on them. It should have been called The Exciting Life of Walter Mitty.
Now that I think about it, the true main character is Chris MacNeil (Regan’s) mom. Discounting the expository opening seen in the Middle East, she’s the first character we get invested in. It’s she who deals with the police detective, she arranges for Father Karras to meet with Regan, etc.
In This is Spinal Tap, when they talk about the band’s early days when they were called The Originals (and then The New Originals and then back to The Originals), we see clips in which the band looks very much like The Beatles. It just hit me that simply copying The Beatles’ look and sound wasn’t very original, was it? I assume that was an intentional joke.
I don’t know whether this counts as a creative work or as a millionth time, but today I suddenly saw the extraordinary resemblance between H.P. Lovecraft
and Mark Zuckerberg
May Cthulhu have mercy on my soul!
