He died Monday at age 87 apparently. Most will remember him for The Exorcist, but I think his outstanding remake of Wages of Fear “Sorcerer” is his best work.
I’ll second this. Although I liked The French Connection and The Exorcist, I wouldn’t feel drawn to re-watch them. But I’d re-watch Sorcerer in a second. And I’ve seen Wages of Fear, which I’ll agree is overall the better film, but Sorcerer is much better visually.
Not to mention The Boys in the Band, The French Connection, and To Live And Die in LA.
A week or so ago I heard someone on Youtube - I don’t recall which talking head it was - speculate that the current problems Hollywood is having with business in general might lead to a collapse of the n$250 million comic book movie wave and result in a new era of true filmmakers, the way the studio system gave way to the likes of William Friedkin in the late 60s and 70s (along with Kubrick, Scorsese, Coppola, Allen, and yes, Spielberg and Lucas.)
Of course we’re now seeing two movies by real directors, Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan, kick a lot of ass, but hopefully we’ll get more William Friedkins in the future. Or, I guess they’re out there, but they’ll be more visible after the constant stream of CGI fests dies down a little.
Sorcerer has been in my top ten since it came out. I understand the stupid title cost it a lot when people assumed it was some kind of fantasy and not the gritty, lowlife, white-knuckle ride it was. Wages of Fear kept me on the edge of my seat but Sorcerer moved me.
To Live and Die in LA was remorselessly brutal. Exorcist and French Connection? You already know.
@RickJay, I hope you’re right. Surely Hollywood owes us a renaissance by now. Hopefully the '20s is to movies what the early sixties was to pop music. Something to react against and thereby create something great.
I’m one of those people. Haven’t seen it but I’ve heard about it. I’ll be looking for it now.
That’s the one I was going to mention here. Saw it two, maybe three times 30+ years ago and loved it but haven’t rewatched it since then.
I’d like to say something about him, but I haven’t seen enough of his filmography to form an opinion. The trivia section of the IMDB entry for To Live and Die in L.A. has some interesting information.
The Sorcerer soundtrack, by Tangerine Dream, is boffo, too. I put it on in the mini-van and pretend I’m driving nitro down to Yulee.
It feels more dated in some ways than Friedkin’s earlier masterworks. It’s just an 80s thing. A lot of those movies had a very distinctive aesthetic. I mean, they got Wang Chung to do the soundtrack. I think “Wang Chung” is Mandarin for “Miami Vice.” Still, it’s great.
I somehow feel responsible. Something I read reminded me of William Friedkin last week and I checked Wikipedia to see if he was still alive. Apparently that’s the equivalent of opening the box lid and collapsing the wave function.
Thanks for nothing!
Put me down as another person who absolutely loved Sorcerer.
As for Tangerine Dream, they also did the soundtrack for Legend, another movie famous for the soundtrack.
But holy crap, Sorcerer really is the kind of movie that makes you tense up, it’s like being on a roller coaster, if you just noticed that the tracks are getting wobbly and it’s making weird noises like it’s going to collapse.
That name again is Mr. Plow.
I remember seeing Sorcerer a few times on cable back when it first came out. I read a few years ago that someone wanted to show it at a Friedkin retrospective, and no one knew who owned the rights to it anymore. They must have figured it out because I saw it at a revival theater some time later.
I’ve seen The Wages of Fear once; like the remake better.
The Sorcerer rights must have got sorted out in the end - for years the only copy you could get was a bad DVD transfer which was pan-and-scan almost looked like a VHS transfer. Then about five years ago a beautiful blue-ray became available with a transfer supervised by Friedkin containing a full colour booklet.
As a kid I got into Tangerine Dream when I was about 10, for years the only thing I knew about Sorcerer was the music and the pictures on the soundtrack LP, plus a cryptic poem printed on the back. I think there was a quote from Friedkin that said something about he wished he’d known Tangerine Dream earlier as he would have had them score The Exorcist too. I finally saw Sorcerer on DVD about age 30 was incredible despite the pan-and-scan.
Fun quiz: Sorcerer is the name of one of the trucks, can anyone remember the name of the other?
I saw it last night (it’s on youtube) and I thought I knew but I was completely wrong.
Serrano
I watched The Exorcist the other night, after hearing about his passing, with the BluRay commentary track by Friedkin turned on. It’s not the most illuminating audio, not much in the way of behind-the-scenes stuff. He also just breezes past the scene where he gave Ellen Burstyn permanent back damage with a stunt gone wrong, and he seems to really believe that demonic possession is real. That said, watching the movie without listening to the dialogue made me realize just how it moves like a freight train. He’s moving the camera much more in that flick than was common in most early-seventies movies, even horror/action ones. I find movies from that decade painfully static, too often locked down in medium shots. But he shot that like Scorsese shot Life Lessons or After Hours, with a constant sense of momentum. It’s really dynamic.
Sorcerer is absolutely the best truck movie of all time. Tractor trailer drivers have a decent repertoire of their trade represented in movies and films, but straight-truck drivers (of which I was for a time between 2021 and 2022) don’t have much besides Sorcerer and The Hell Drivers (which is also a great movie and which accurately represents the life of a dump truck driver, though I did not have an evil boss forcing me to make suicidal speed runs.) But back to Sorcerer, those trucks are basically characters in the film, we are shown them being cobbled together from various donor vehicles, abused on the horrible trails, fixed with improvised repairs, we see endless close-ups of their operation both inside the cab and outside, and they even have “faces”. The trucks have as much of an air of desperation as their drivers.
Another Friedkin movie which I liked, but which was not very well received, is Jade. I’m not sure why this movie was so hated by critics and audiences alike. I found it to be an engaging thriller with a moody atmosphere and memorable characters, and it’s absolutely beautiful to look at. The scene design and cinematography was on point. There’s another great bit of “car casting” in Jade, a wild San Francisco car chase where David Caruso’s character is terrorized by a '92 Thunderbird. While the T-bird has gone through many unfortunate iterations, I find that generation of Thunderbird (at least the performance versions) to be Ford’s coolest car of its era - FAR cooler than the Fox-Body Mustang. The one in Jade is black with a louvered rear window and it just looks evil.
We were in a movie theater to see, of all things, “Exorcist II,” and they showed the trailer for “Sorcerer.” My friend and I immediately decided we HAD to see that film!
Saw it in the theater the day it opened and it blew us away! It was my first exposure to Tangerine Dream as well.
Obviously the trailer was the best thing we saw in the theater that day, because “Exorcist II” absolutely sucked!
Incidentally, regarding Tangerine Dream, if you’ve never seen the James Caan film “Thief,” by all means do so. It was Michael Mann’s debut film and Tangerine Dream does a killer score!
“Sorcerer” finally got Blu-Ray treatment a few years ago and it’s well worth acquiring.
Have you seen They Drive By Night?
Labdad: Please cite source for Serrano name. The Preparing the Trucks clip shows LAZARO on the hood of one truck (at 0:24).
I have only the VHS version of the flick (which, yes, I can still play and watch). Is it available on DVD? Blu-Ray is overrated and overpriced.
I have a lobby poster of the truck crossing the bridge.