The Exorcist: A rather lame Pitting of VH1

The BBQ Pit
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Last weekend VH1 did a two-hour show about the making of The Exorcist. I believe it was called The Curse of The Exorcist. In this post I hope to Pit a) VH1, b) Idiots on VH1, and c) Idiots in movie theatres who eventually end up on VH1.

a) It wasn’t enough to do a documentary about the making of this classic film. No, they had to suggest that the film, set, and crew were quite possibly posessed by some demon. That so many things went wrong on the set is surely a sign that Satan’s at play, right? It couldn’t possibly be, oh, say, that Jason Miller’s son was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that Max von Sydow’s brother was hitting the lutefisk a little too much. And that William Friedkin was a psychotic asshole. Naw, must be the supernatural. Satan just loves making films go over budget. There can be no other explanation. Unless, just possibly, VH1 was pandering to the morons that just can’t get enough woo in their daily lives.

a1) Friedkin, here’s a clue: If you build a crazy contraption and strap a preteen girl into it, and she begs you to stop violently shaking her, that is not your cue to start filming. Sure, seeing a minor getting her spine cracked on film makes for great drama, but next time strap your own sorry ass in. Inflicting a serious back injury is not directing, it’s abuse.

c) This comes before b), and it’s pretty mild. Before 1972 nobody even heard of exorcism, or posession. Seeing a little girl spit up soup is no excuse for you to start believing in demons. IT’S A MOVIE, PEOPLE!

b) This one was just so odd that it’s had me going “Gah?” all week. And it’s not limited to this movie, or movies in general. It’s an attitude that seems to run rampant in religious and woo circles. I can’t remember who it was, but one of the film makers said something like “This was scarier than most horror movies, because for once the premise was about something real.” Real? Sorry, no, even the Catholic Church dismissed posession as woo centuries ago. Just because some author wrote fiction about some half-remembered newspaper article he read a decade before, that does not make it “real.” Just because you paint a minor’s face green, it does not offer proof of Satan.

And I guess that cuts to the heart of this rant. People make up the wildest fantasies, then label them “real”, or “truth.” I often hear people say things like “The ninth level of Heaven is a manifestation of Rover’s love for cosmic dog poop, and that’s REAL! This material world is illusion.” The fuck? No. That which you call “real” is a product of your fevered and impaired imagination. And you need to be hit upside the head with an “illusory” two-by-four.

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Without commenting on the rest of your rant, the above is factually incorrect:

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I can only assume that my coding error was the result of demonic possession and pray that a Mod will exorcise it.

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The thread. Is on. My foot.

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Well first you have to get a young Mod and an old Mod…

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JESUS COMMANDS THAT OTTO"S CODING ERROR BE FIXED!!!

did it work?

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Re: point (a), it’s not VH1’s pandering–the on-set “problems” on The Exorcist set have long been a part of the production history’s folklore. VH1 wasn’t creating something out of nothing, it was merely repeating what has been oft-repeated already. For them to exclude it would be more conspicuous than to sensationalize it (especially with 2 hours to fill).

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Well, yeah, that works in this forum. You’ve got Giraffe. It’s like saying,
JESUS COMMANDS THE YANKEES MAKE THE PLAYOFFS!!!, or,
JESUS COMMANDS THAT WEDNESDAY NIGHT’S LADIES DRINK FREE!!!

Try making a coding error in my forum and see how far you get.

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Respectfully disagree. The narrator mentioned the weird, supernatural curse at every commercial break. In all of the interviews with the cast and crew, not one mentioned a curse of any sort. With one notable exception – one man said something like “If there was any curse on The Exorcist, it was that all of the sequels sucked.” And that was clearly tongue in cheek.

The narrator’s comments felt extremely out of place and contrived. Now, had he said “Folklore has it that…”, then that would have been pretty neat. Had he explained it the way you just did, that would have added a nice touch to it all. Instead, it was all this mysticism bullshit. It felt like an episode of Sightings.

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It was my understanding (perhaps incorrect) that while the rite of exorcism is part of the Catholic faith even today, that the church almost never invokes it, and really doesn’t like to admit that it even exists. It’s like one of those silly archaic laws that states that it’s illegal to put a banana down your trousers after sunset on Wednesdays. Still on the books, but no one cares.

Am I wrong about that? How common are exorcisms today? Before 1971, did the general public even know what the word meant?

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tdn, I think *you’re * possessed. Or you’re a beast, anyway. :wink:

Right…no flirting in the Pit.

In reference to the actual OP, I hate things like that myself. “So-and-so raided this tomb - and they all died.” Well, yeah, humans do that. It’s a failing. Or “there was a curse on this movie, and look, you can see a ghost.” D’oh!

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The penalty being a spanking.

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And you think that’s going to *stop * me and not, say, encourage me?

Right, I’d better go before everyone yells at me. Then again, it is *your * thread we’re hijacking.

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JESUS COMMANDS tdn TO SPANK Anaamika. JESUS FURTHER COMMANDS THAT YOU SEND PICTURES OF THIS TO vetbridge. THAT IS ALL.

Wow. I’m chanelling Jesus!!!

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Well, geez. I’d sure hate to disappoint The Lord.

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Wikipedia article (with standard Wiki-disclaimers on accuracy, although it jibes with what I recall reading elsewhere):

The same article also talks about the decline of exorcism’s overall importance in the wake of The Enlightenment and especially in light of greater understanding of psychology and mental illness. I would imagine that hard data on the number of Catholic exorcisms performed in a given time period would be nearly impossible to obtain, but considering that the most recently deceased Pope performed exorcisms during his pontificate and the current Pope delivered a speech at an exorcists’ convention, I don’t think the ritual can be resigned to “banana in the pants” territory just yet.

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Just like Linda Blair!

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So I guess what’s in question is exactly how much of a decline it suffered. Blatty based his story on a real event from (I think) 1947, but I got the distinct impression that it was a pretty isolated story, and certainly not common in every corner church every Sunday. In the movie, Father Damien states that the church keeps it around as “sort of an embarassment.” I wonder if that notion was made up of whole cloth, or if Blatty got it from the priests who were on the set.

At any rate, that movie certainly moved the idea of Exorcism to front and center of American pop consciousness. For instance, when we talk about someone’s head spinning, we know exactly what that means. Prior to the book’s release, I wonder how many people on the street could have told you what an exorcism is. I don’t really know, as I was pretty young at the time. I’m sure it was not part of my world, at any rate.

I also wonder if the movie had any effect on how the church deals with it now. It would be interesting to find out that Linda Blair had some direct or indirect effect on Papal policy. I guess we can only speculate on that.

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Or like that show, I think it was on MTV, a while back, where they took some people out to the woods, flashed lights around and rustled the underbrush, and the subjects ran back to the van screaming. “This proves that ghosts are real.” No, putz, it proves that people react to stimuli.

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Rilchiam, what show was that? Was it the people in the woods that said ghosts are real, or was it the producers? That is, was it all a goof, or were they serious?