With the premiere of The Exorcist: Believer, the 50th anniversary of the original film, AND the recent death of William Friedkin, there is no WAY we could let the year come to a close without covering one of the most notorious horror films of all time.
Long-time listeners of the podcast know and understand why we tend to shy away from covering such iconic films. What can we possibly say that hasn’t already been said about one of the most notorious films of all time? So we ended up with more of a celebration of the legacy of the film (as one of our Patrons put it) than a typical play-by-play review. But oh boy, was it fun to revisit this film after so long, and be reminded of just how good of a FILM it is overall – horror or otherwise. Enjoy!
The Exorcist (1973)
Episode 368, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig. Well, it has come to this, Craig, finally we are going to be doing The Exorcist.
Craig: Finally, since you say you can quit bugging me about it every week.
Todd: I don’t know why you say that. I’ve only been bugging you about it since William Friedkin died.
You, oh god. I haven’t wanted to touch this movie with a 10 foot pole. You know how you and I are. We don’t want to do these movies necessarily. Well, look, we want to talk about these movies. We love these movies, don’t get me wrong. But like, you know, our podcast isn’t generally focused on picking the most mainstream horror movies that are almost mythological and What are we going to say that isn’t already said about it?
And is this episode going to go on for four hours? You know, we can’t possibly squeeze in everything. We’re just going to have to scratch the surface and pick and choose. And, and who knows what the conversation is going to be like, because we don’t plan this shit in advance. So,
Craig: uh. Right. No, you’re right.
We don’t avoid these movies because we don’t like them. It’s because we like them so much. And because so many people do that. Like everything has been said like that. People have said, well, why don’t you do troll 2? Well, because if you want to learn about troll 2 just watch that really fun documentary about it Like I don’t think feel like we have much to add to the conversation.
Yeah, what I will say is You did kind of wear me down on this one. I kind of dragged my feet on it, but Watching the movie again, and it’s been a long time. I’ve seen this movie many times, but it’s been a long time Watching it again. Just reminded me that this is really just an An amazing movie. Yeah. Like, horror or otherwise, it is an excellent film.
Yeah. And, in addition to that, because I know there’s so much to be learned and read about the things that were going on behind the scenes and, um, stuff like that, I really did a deep dive into this one. I’m like, if we’re, if I’m gonna do Well, let’s do it. Right. So, like, I read everything I could get my hands on.
I watched like five hours of documentary footage. And I learned some things that I didn’t know. So… Yeah, me too. Yeah. So maybe, maybe we can share with, uh… Our listeners, some things that they didn’t
Todd: already know. Yeah, we can chip a little, a little bit away at that. I mean, it feels apropos anyway. William Friedkin, the reason why we’re doing it now, or at least the reason why it got on our let’s do it soon list, is because William Friedkin passed away in August of this year.
And so this is our tribute episode to him. He’s the director. Before doing this movie, The French Connection was a very big hit for him just before this. And before that, he was more or less a documentary filmmaker. Right. And that’s Interesting, because now watching The Exorcist with the critical eye, it was a lot more obvious to me how he had some of that sensibility.
I mean, it’s still filmed like a drama, but there is a certain sensibility in it that’s a little bit documentary, and that I’m sure we’re going to talk about when we talk about like, the cinematography and how the visuals are presented. And so that’s why we’re doing it. And also, you know, it is the 50th anniversary of this film.
I think I mentioned on an earlier podcast, or maybe I didn’t, that, uh, I was in Thailand about a month and a half ago, and while I was there, in honor of The Exorcist: Believer coming out, they were showing the extended director’s cut of the original movie on IMAX. And I… Wanted to see it, but I end up seeing three other horror movies instead.
Ha ha ha ha ha. So, what we chose to do today is not the original theatrical cut, but the extended director’s cut, which adds, I think, about, not much, like only about ten more minutes onto it. Interestingly enough, it’s not like ten minutes of gore. You know, that we’re missing. It’s not 10 minutes worth of shocking scenes.
It’s actually mostly 10 more minutes of drama, more or less, fleshing out characters and adding little bits in. This was the first time I had seen that. In fact, gosh, this is the first time I’ve seen the exorcist all the way through in decades. I know that the first time I saw it, I was a kid, I remember it very distinctly.
Because I was, uh, I mean it’s this notorious movie, everybody says it’s the scariest movie ever. So it gets this huge build up. And I think I rented it. And, uh, was in middle school at the time. And at this time I had my own TV in my bedroom. It was such a treat for me. And so I watched it late at night, by myself, on this television in my bedroom.
It utterly freaked me out. And then, coincidentally, about three or four days later, my youngest sister woke up screaming in the middle of the night with night terrors. And I don’t know if anybody out there has experienced this. I’ve only experienced it this one time in my life. But, uh, she woke up and the, my parents ran in the room.
I was like, what’s going on Hillary? And, and she was sort of half awake, half not like her eyes were a little open, but you could tell she was still asleep, but she walked into their bedroom. She stood there. My dad’s sitting on the, on the edge of his bed. He’s, he’s trying to calm her down. She’s kind of calm.
She stopped crying and she’s like, and then she just looks at a corner of the room and says. Daddy, it’s over there. Daddy, daddy, don’t let it get me. And my dad, the only time he ever has done this, laid a hand on her and slaps her in the face. Like, goes, Hillary, wake up! And I was sitting in the doorway watching this go down, having seen The Exorcist a few days before, shitting my pants.
That’s funny. So, uh, yeah, I remember this very well. My, my first, uh, introduction to this. And at the time, I thought, yeah, this is one of the freakiest, scariest things I’ve ever seen. Like, it just felt very real, like it could happen. It had the whole religious, uh, angle. I was very religious as a kid. So, like, it just kind of brought things to suburbia, in a way.
You know, it’s not these fantasies of monsters and Freddy Krueger who I was obsessed with, but this ordinary girl in this ordinary family who suddenly becomes possessed with a demon and none of the adults know how to handle it. And, uh, it’s pretty freaky as a
Craig: kid. Yeah, I don’t remember my first experience with it.
I, I I think my parents showed it to me when I was, I don’t know, not, not young, but early teens. No, I would guess early teens, probably. Yeah. And I do remember telling them, or I remember them telling me, this is the scariest movie. It’s the scariest movie ever. And I did think it was really scary. I grew up Catholic.
I still attend Catholic services. That’s a whole other can of worms. But, um, yeah, I think that, again, just what you said, the fact that evil can infiltrate in the most unlikely of places where, you know, this, this little girl who, we will talk about Linda Blair’s performance, which I just think is great, because she’s, So sweet, almost cloyingly sweet, but Linda Blair can pull it off.
I I’m not annoyed with her. I find her very sweet and cute and, and for, for darkness and evil to be able to find her. And one of the, one of the things that I was. I don’t remember which, uh, I, I watched several documentaries. I watched the episode of Cursed Films on Shudder. I watched The Fear of God, 25 Years of the Exorcist, which came out in 1998.
You can find the festival cut of that on YouTube, and it’s like an hour and twenty, hour and forty minutes, something like that. I think it’s the most comprehensive. And then something else that just got released was there’s this guy who had been teasing on YouTube for like all of October that he had this special treat at the end of the month.
And what he had was somehow he had found a whole lot of unused footage. Like, almost an hour’s worth, and he cut that down to, I think, 40 minutes or something. And I watched that, and there’s a lot of never before seen stuff. You
Todd: mean, like, behind the scenes footage? What do
Craig: you mean? Yeah, behind the scenes footage.
Oh, no way. Yeah, some, but also mostly just footage that they didn’t use for whatever reason. Hmm.
Todd: Alternate takes and things.
Craig: Yeah, right. And they were also, like, editorial decisions. You know, some things that were cut. Because, you know, for whatever reason, to serve the story or whatever. But then when they, when they went back to do the, the version that we watched, the director’s cut, the version you’ve never seen, there were a lot of scenes that Freekin wanted to put back in.
But they, either the video quality or the auto quality wasn’t up to par, and they couldn’t fix it. Digitally, and he re if, if they couldn’t fix it, he didn’t want it in. Yeah. So, there were scenes that he wanted in, but that they didn’t put back in. And like you said, it’s mostly like dialogue, like there was an extended scene in the beginning of Chris and Regan touring Washington D.
C. Like looking at different monuments and stuff. Not in what
Todd: we saw, but in what you’re talking about. Right. Yeah, more stuff. Right,
Craig: right. Exactly. And, and there were other dialogue scenes, and yes, things shot from different angles. There were multiple versions of the ending. Um, the one that we see, which itself was originally deleted and has now been restored.
Um, there was even more of that. Oh, wow. So there was a lot going on, but Anyway, my whole point was, I heard a lot of really interesting perspectives about the movie, and one of them had to do with the religious element, and they, I heard somebody say that horror and religion really go hand in hand, and that’s why they work so well together.
He argued, That horror counteracts the secularization taking place in modern society because horror affirms the existence of good and evil and therefore the existence of God and the devil. And I had never thought of that, but that makes So much sense.
Todd: Yeah, at a philosophical level it really does, right?
And, and also even, even if you really drill down, you know, so much of horror deals with the supernatural, so.
Craig: Right. And we, and many people look to their religion for the answers to those scary things. Um, and so, these scary stories kind of keep religious, they, they, fuel the fire of, of religious faith.
That’s fascinating. Especially a movie like this. Because that’s another thing about a movie like this is the world had never seen anything like this. People didn’t know what an exorcist was.
Todd: It’s really impossible to overstate what a, a bomb this dropped on the film world and just on society in general at that time in the U.
S. Uh, the movie was a phenomenon. Yeah, I
Craig: mean, histo I mean, if you look into ancient cultures and stuff, you’ll see, uh, talk or imagery of, uh, possession, but it wasn’t a mainstream thing in modern society, and this was the first time anybody ever saw it. And, for many people, Catholics in particular, but potentially Christians and other faiths as well, they could look at this and believe it, like, this could really happen.
My religion tells me… That the devil exists. So that makes it tenfold scary. Right. If it’s something that really could happen to you. Cause this, these, yes, the mom’s a movie star. But, they have a very normal, you know, they’re presented as normal people. They love each other. The daughter is sweet. She likes ponies, and to draw, and to make things out of clay.
Um, she’s playful. And they’re playful together. And if it could happen to them…
Todd: And you know what? It wasn’t until this viewing of it that I really internalized, because I was a lot younger when I really was paying attention to this movie. And so I think there was a lot in the movie that I didn’t pick up then, that I absolutely was glaring now.
And one of the interesting things is, this is I mean, a very upper class family, right? I mean, we say they’re normal, you know, whatever. Yes, they’re normal because they’re relatable. But, the mother is a movie star. They’re in They’re not in their home. They’re in, uh, D. C. They’re in Georgetown, um, in a rented place.
That I hadn’t realized until I watched it this time. And, you know, they’ve got people there to help them. They’ve got, like, an assistant. She has, like, a Cause movie stars have these, right? personal assistance. And sure, there’s a guy coming in to fix things. She’s got a whole staff. And so this is a woman with pretty much limitless resources, right?
Right. And that’s so important for the story, I think, because it really got to me like this time around, all of the build up to the actual decision. Maybe we need to look to an exorcism. And she exhaust. I mean, she convincingly exhaust Pretty much all of her other possibilities. Because she has the means to.
Right. I mean, A, because she cares about her daughter. But B, she has the means
Craig: to. There’s so much I want to talk about. Yeah, the fact that she did have limitless resources. But, the idea She didn’t even know what an exorcism was. The idea of The idea to pursue an exorcism came from medical professionals.
Yeah, that was crazy. When they had nowhere else to turn. God, the movie is just so smart. It’s so well written because the medical professionals, they don’t believe. In the spiritual power of exorcism, but they very much believe in the psychological power of suggestion, and that is fascinating, too. It is.
Because I believe that. I, I totally 100 percent believe that some people can convince themselves that they are possessed, and that it would take some sort of outside suggestion To rid them of that delusion. Yeah. Does that make sense? It,
Todd: yeah, it has to meet the delusion where it is. It has to kind of like say, okay, yes, alright, so you’re possessed, so here, we’re gonna come here, and we’re gonna do this ritual.
It’s rooted in belief, right? If the patient believes it, then you’ve gotta… Uh, use that belief to convince their mind that, uh, you’ve cured them. In a way, it’s kind of like a, in cold stark medical terms, like a placebo. You know, why they actually work, right? Right! And so, it actually makes perfect sense. And it’s so interesting that it’s brought up by the psychiatrist.
Do you have any religious beliefs? No. What
Craig: about your daughter? No. Why? Have you ever
Todd: heard of exorcism?
Well, it’s a
Craig: stylized ritual in which the, uh, rabbi or the priest try to drive out the so called invading
Todd: spirit.
Craig: It’s been, uh, pretty much discarded these days except by the, the Catholics who keep it in the closet as a sort of an embarrassment. But, uh,
Todd: it, uh, has words. In fact,
Craig: although not for the reasons
Todd: they think, of course, it’s, it’s purely a force of suggestion, the, uh, the victim’s belief in possession
Craig: is what helped cause it, so in that same way, the
Todd: belief in the power of exorcism can make it disappear.
The other thing I thought was interesting since we’re on this topic, this is a particular time period, and I think we’ve talked about this before because we’ve seen this in other horror movies. Where psychiatry is still kind of looked at very skeptically. People are called shrinks. In this movie, instead of jumping right to the mental and the psychiatry, they are first going to the medical.
Even when the medical isn’t showing results and isn’t giving them the test results they expect to see, like they’re getting no evidence, still, like, the doctors want to medicate her and try that. first before going to psychiatry, whereas it seems like today the attitude is almost flipped, right? We don’t want to prescribe, like, the doctor prescribes Ritalin for her, which was kind of funny, uh, to hear that coming out in the 70s.
I didn’t even know Ritalin was a thing back then, honestly.
Craig: I know, it surprised me too. I thought it was a thing that came around in like the 90s, or
Todd: the… Hey, correct me if I’m wrong, but nowadays, you know, a person’s going through like a tremendous psychological change, which she goes through. It’s almost like a complete personality change, as her mother describes it anyway, and they’re beside themselves as to what to do with it.
It seems like going and talking to a therapist or psychologist would be the first step, and medication would come as a kind of last resort, in a way. Don’t you think? I don’t know.
Craig: I think we’re big pill pushers in America. I do think that, I do think that there’s more focus on counseling, but I think that…
Medication is often a first.
Todd: Maybe I’m just an idealist. Yeah, I
Craig: think you are. You might be right. You are. But I wanted to just briefly, because that, what the doctor says, and ultimately the the church confirms it just using different words, the church says you have to have faith for it to work. If you don’t believe it won’t work.
What the doctors and the priests are saying are the exact same thing. Mm hmm. If you believe it, and she believes it, it can work. And that just, uh, it just kinda had my head spinning. Again, I’ve seen this before, I’ve thought about these issues before, but I wrote this down because I didn’t want to forget.
To talk about it, I personally believe in God. Now, I have very conflicted feelings about organized religion, but again, different show. But, though I believe in God, I honestly don’t think that we as human beings have the capacity to conceptualize what that really even is. So… Because of that, I think that faith is super, super powerful, and I think that they’re right, they’re all right.
I think that if you believe something enough, then that can have actual, potentially even physical consequences or manifestations.
Todd: I think it’s more or less scientifically proven to a certain extent this is possible, right? It’s
Craig: wild. The concept for this story even, William Peter Blatty was the author and he wrote this story out of desperation.
He was a comedy writer. That’s so funny. The work dried up and he couldn’t find work. He said, well, I guess I’ll try something else. He attended Georgetown and had heard a story. of, uh, an event nearby that he was inspired to write this book by. Uh, apparently, uh, a 14 year old boy in a nearby town had started acting strangely.
Uh, there was some poltergeist, uh, activity. The same kind of stuff you see… And his parents weren’t Catholic. I think they were Lutheran, and so they originally, you know, tried one of their own religious leaders to help, and that went terribly wrong. And so eventually they turned to the Catholic Church because, I guess, Catholics are the exorcist du jour.
Todd: Right. They give it gravitas. It worked
Craig: then. Yeah. And so he was inspired to write this story. He did. Yeah. And have you read the book? I have
Todd: not, and I’ve always been curious to read it, but no, I haven’t.
Craig: Have you? Yeah. It’s been a long time ago, um, and I don’t remember a lot. I, I, I feel like the movie is pretty faithful.
There were side characters that you learned more about, um, like, for example, At the party, the one that Regan comes down. By the way, what is her name? Is it Regan or Regan? Because I feel like different people called her different names throughout the whole movie. It’s
Todd: true, as somebody called her, yeah.
Everyone, I can’t remember what her mother calls her, but yeah. One of the doctors very specifically calls her Regan. Other people calling her Regan. It’s R E G A N, but yeah. How do you pronounce that? Either way, I guess. She probably answers to both.
Craig: Probably, and that’s kind of a real life thing when you have a name like that.
And maybe that’s why they didn’t correct it. Maybe they wanted it to feel authentic. I would believe that. But that, that scene where Reagan… Comes down her mom’s having a party and she comes downstairs and she says to a man you’re gonna die up there in the book There’s a whole story about that guy That guy’s an astronaut and he’s gonna be going up into space in the next couple days And you may even find off some payoff about that.
I don’t remember But that’s the only reason I knew who that guy
Todd: was There was a blink and you miss it line at the party was there where it was alluded to that Yeah, he that he was uh, he was an astronaut. Yeah,
Craig: gotcha So he wrote it, and then, I think that part of the reason that the book is, or the movie is so faithful to the book, is that Blatty wrote a screenplay, but he felt like within the confines of a movie, he was gonna have to do a lot of compressing.
And so he said that he compressed the first third of the book way, way down. And he delivered the script to Friedkin, who, by the way, he picked because… Of his documentarian background and I believe that Friedkin, uh, he, if I remember correctly, I was looking through my notes. I can’t find it. I have six pages of notes.
I think Blatty specifically wanted a director who was not only not catholic but agnostic. He wanted there to be a balance. He wanted it to be presented like a documentary, not leaning into the mysticism or the agnosticism too much either way. And Freeking got the script, and he was like, bro, what did you do?
Like, I wanted to film your book. Like, when I was reading your book, I was… my head. That’s what I want. And so they got back together and they started working at it and Friedkin would say, let’s take a look at this scene. What can we do with this scene? And they would flush it out and they ended up reinstating a lot of what he had originally excised.
Some of it stayed out, like doing the, you know, touring DC, that stayed out, but. A lot of it got put back in. Let it be known,
Todd: like, like, movie productions are never that simple, right? There’s always other people being considered and things like that. I think Arthur Penn, Stanley Kubrick, Peter Bogdanovich, all those people were at one point considered for directing this.
The studio even hired a guy, Mark Rydell, but Blatty really pushed for Friedkin and, and, and got it. Because, like you said, and he, they were already acquainted. And I think something that I really enjoyed from watching the documentaries… Where it has interviews both with them and with them together. Such a treasure to have these kinds of things.
Just to see the process, you know? The collaborative nature of this work and where people agree and disagree. It seems like, on the whole, these two guys were… True collaborators, like, sometimes a director will just take a script and just make it his own and go off, and the writer’s hardly ever involved again, and then the writer can be frustrated if things don’t turn out the way they do.
In this case, there were instances that, uh, you know, choices that, um, Friedkin made that Blatty did not agree with. But, made peace with over time, or are part of the restored extended cut. At least they talked about it, and they both have convincing arguments, you know, why this should or shouldn’t be in there.
You just do get the sense that, despite these two guys probably having some, some flat out fights and some bickering during the creative process, you look at them now, and, and they seem to be genuinely pretty happy with what…
Craig: Yeah, oh yeah. I mean, and this was a, a hot ticket. The book had been really popular and, and I think that, you know, they started work on the film soon after the success of the book.
Big name people were interested. Like, um, Blatty wanted Shirley MacLaine. for Chris, which I can actually see. I think she could have pulled it off. The studio wanted, uh, Jane Fonda, Audrey Hepburn. They really wanted Audrey Hepburn, but she would only film if they would do it in Rome. Um, or Anne Bancroft. And I, I think that it came, Jane Fonda basically told them to f off.
She was, you know, right, uh, off the heels. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. She was anti establishment anything. Yeah. She didn’t want to work for some big studio. Ellen Burstyn called Friedkin. She knew him. They were familiar. And she called him and she says, I want that part. And he said, I don’t know. The studio really wants these other folks.
And she said, I just, I really have a strong feeling that this is my role. And they kept in contact and eventually he said, look, it’s down to you and this one other woman. Are you going to see her? And he said, Yeah, I’m gonna see her. I’m going to New York to see her tomorrow. And then he called her back the next day, and she said, Did you see that woman?
And he said, No. I ran into her in the deli last night, and she looked like hell, so I canceled the meeting. And Ellen burst and said, Billy, that’s not fair. I look like hell when I’m at the deli and he said, Well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles. And that’s how Ellen Borsten got the role of Chris McNeil.
And she’s brilliant in it. And I had to look it up. But she was 40, 41 when the movie was filmed. Which I also like. I don’t think that this would, I mean, she’s still very beautiful and glamorous, and she’s a movie star in the context of the movie, but she doesn’t look like a fresh faced starlet. She looks like somebody who’s lived a little bit, and that’s the other thing, something else that I hadn’t considered.
I always remembered that there was no dad around, and going into this movie, I was like, where is Reagan’s dad? And they do address it. I think that they’re at the beginning of Of a separation or a divorce And reagan’s dad is out of the picture. I think he’s in rome. He’s overseas somewhere I assume he’s in the film industry as
Todd: well Well, her mother is still very prominently wearing a diamond ring on her hand.
Yeah, I don’t think they’re divorced.
Craig: I think they’re Getting divorced. Yeah, because it’s also suggested that uh, ellen burston chris Maybe seeing other men At least Reagan thinks so. Right. You can bring Mr. Dennings if you like. Mr. Dennings? Well, you know, it’s okay. Well, thank you very much, but why on earth would I want to bring Burke on your birthday?
You like him. Yeah, I like him. Don’t you like him? Hey, what’s going on? What is this? Huh? You’re gonna marry him, aren’t you? Oh my God, you can’t have me married, Bertennings, don’t be silly, of course not. Where’d you ever get an idea like that? Bet you like him. Of course I like him. I like pizzas too, but I’m not gonna marry one.
You don’t like him like Daddy? Reagan, I love you, Daddy. I’ll always love you, Danny, honey, okay? Brooke just comes around here a lot because, um, well, he’s lonely. Don’t got nothing to do. No, I heard differently. Oh, you did? What did you hear? Hmm? I don’t know. That doesn’t really go anywhere. But she may be or maybe not, but it really struck me this time.
She’s very frustrated. She’s trying, you know, there’s a scene where she tries to get her husband on the phone because he hasn’t even called Reagan on her birthday. And, and she’s so angry at him. But it really struck me this time. This woman is facing this on her own. The only thing that she can do is to reach out for help because she…
And I say alone. Fortunately, she has a staff, a very loyal staff, who stand by her through this insanity. Which is almost unbelievable. She must pay them really well. Yeah, right. Or they, or they really care about Regan, which I could buy. But she’s alone. And what, what a terrifying thing to face alone. And, and it’s her, her child.
But ultimately she says at one point that she knows that that thing up there is not her daughter. And I, I think that the stakes are very high. I think that she’s fully aware that she might lose.
Todd: Well, I felt this way even when I was a young kid seeing this movie. I still feel this way now. I feel like this movie’s really about her.
I think the emotional center of the film is her. It is her struggle with, uh, what’s going on. Her looking and searching for answers. Her at the end of her rope. You can see the frustration and the fear in her face, and so much of this movie there’s no exercising going on. Right. In fact, the exorcism is, is almost like a footnote at the end.
It’s the last
Craig: 20 minutes. It’s so small. I paid attention because I had said when we did Exorcist Believer, I had said, I thought that this exorcism went on for days, and it does not. No. It only goes for maybe like an hour, but I do stand by that Reagan’s This progression is more disturbing. But also more gradual.
Yeah. And, uh, I think that that’s more effective. Those girls in Believer just, boom. They were, they were possessed.
Todd: Well, I don’t know. I mean, I think if you were to, like, take a frame by frame, like, second by second, minute by minute comparison, they’re pretty close. Like, you take the amount of time we spend with Regan, and the amount of time we spend with those other girls, Well, the one girl particularly.
It’s kind of about the same, like the amount of time we spend with them before they get to the exorcism. The difference here is that the time that we do spend with Regan in the beginning, she’s with her mom. True. Like, we see the mom and, and, uh, Regan dynamic, uh, very deeply. In fact, it’s kind of an interesting choice, but smart, where I would, I think about half of that.
We’re going to be seeing a lot of Reagan in bed later possessed. Even
Craig: when she’s healthy, she’s in bed most of the time.
Todd: Exactly! That’s my point, right? So it provides a really great contrast. In the beginning, we see this sweet girl who’s like laughing at her mom and kind of joking with her about this guy that she thinks maybe she’s dating or whatever.
Asking just little silly little girl questions. Not silly, but little girl questions. Typical stuff. She makes some art downstairs and shows it to her mom, and that’s about it. There’s not a lot. Like you said, they did shoot more. They didn’t end up including it, but it’s effective enough.
Craig: Yes, but I don’t know.
I just, uh, She is, I think a lot of it comes down to Linda Blair’s performance. By the way, I agree with you about it being Chris McNeil’s story. However, I find it ironic that they bench her almost completely in the end. Oh, right. For
Todd: the
Craig: exorcism. For the third act. And, remind me to come back to Linda Blair.
I really want to talk about her for a second. But, they shouldn’t have benched her, because they set out to present this exorcism in the most true to form way possible. Like, the rite that they read from is the actual Catholic rite of exorcism. But, they didn’t do it correctly, because there never should have been only two other people in there with…
The demon. Oh, yeah. Well, I don’t know this from my Catholic school. We never talked about exorcism in Catholic school I hope not. I’m taking I’m taking the word of internet sleuths Apparently there should have always been at least and maybe exorcist believer got this more, right? There should have been at least four other people in the room.
There should have been the two priests There should have been a medical doctor Who would be there to monitor her medical health and to administer sedatives as necessary. And a member of the possessed’s family of the same gender. To help restrain.
Todd: Well, it kind of makes logical sense. It does. Like, why did they shut her
Craig: out?
Well, maybe she If I were her, I couldn’t do it. She sees the worst of it anyway. But, I don’t know if I could do that. I mean, to see By the end, Regan, her body is ravaged. It’s just It’s
Todd: horrible. Yeah. Well, I don’t know if I could be outside of the room, honestly. Like, I would, no matter what, I mean, as disturbing as it is, I would want to be in there with those guys, seeing what’s going on.
I guess. I don’t think I could live with myself if something happened and I wasn’t there to witness it or be able to potentially intervene. Yeah, that’s a good point. It was hard enough for me to sit out in the hallway while my wife was giving birth. I did not expect to be put in that position and, uh, and I didn’t like it one bit, so.
Craig: Sure. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Going back to Regan, I really think that part of the reason that it works so well is that Linda Blair is just so good in the role. Oh yeah. Whoever was speaking on the documentary, I don’t remember if it was Friedkin, I think they said they looked at hundreds if not thousands.
And, uh, Linda Blair’s agency that represented her didn’t even put her up for it, but, uh, her mother, uh, knew, took her there, and, um, she got, she had to read, and she said they took her away from her mother and put her in a room and handed her a script and told her to read, and she said it was the most vulgar, filthy, cringey.
Language she had ever heard in her entire life. She was like 15. She said she walked out of the audition thinking, What am I going to tell my mother? I can’t tell her what they made me say in there. But, uh, but they loved her and they did a screen test with her and Ellen Burstyn and… They cast her, and she’s great.
She’s a beautiful young girl, uh, and just so fresh faced and young, looks younger than she is, especially in the face, and just has the most radiant smile. She just has a glow about her. And then beyond that, she can act. Yeah. I mean, some of the stuff that they ask her to do is crazy, and acting under makeup like that is not easy.
It’s, in fact, really challenging. She has some subtlety of movement in her facial expression that is absolutely haunting and terrifying. She’s great. She’s absolutely
Todd: great. Before and after the exorcism, honestly, I thought that the acting with her mother just seemed very off the cuff and very genuine. Oh yeah!
Almost as though it were improvised, you know? There’s that
Craig: scene, like you said, before she’s possessed or is showing any… Signs of it. Chris is putting her to bed and they’re talking about, you know, what should we do for your birthday? And it’s, you know, they are nose to nose. They’re speaking in very, very quiet, almost whisper tones, and it’s just so intimate and so believable.
I 100% believe them as mother and daughter and, and the love and and comfort between them is just. Completely genuine. It’s fantastic. I
Todd: believed it. I do think that a modern audience might look at that and say, it was a little too sweet. Yeah. , you know, it, it, it was very cloying and sweet between the two of them.
Almost like the, you know, they’re really, really pumping it up so that, you know, the, the possession is, is so much worse by contrast. That’s,
Craig: I think that’s fair. I don’t think that it’s. We have sweet moments
Todd: with
Craig: each other. Yeah, my sister has kids that age and they still snuggle and, you know, I, I, I think in real life that happens.
You know, we don’t do it in public, it’s considered, you know, for the kid, it’s, you know, it’s embarrassing for the kid, like they’re too big for that. But in intimate moments at home, I think that those, I know, I have friends my age who have, Teenage sons, 15, 16, 17 year old sons and their sons still want to snuggle with their moms on the couch.
Like, I know that this is a real thing. Yeah. So anyway, I get it and I, I don’t disagree with you. I think some people might think it’s a, a step too far. Um, but I didn’t and, and I think Ellen Burstyn is, everybody’s great in it. I mean, I could go on and on. Ellen Burstyn said in one of the interviews, she said, I knew we were trying to make a good movie and I knew we were trying to make a scary movie, but I don’t think any of us knew how good.
it would be. Um, I, I thi of one of those lightening where everything, the dir like there was a lot of s With this kind of material. Right. I’m still Shocked that any studio would put this out because they wouldn’t today. No, no way. Maybe A24,
Todd: maybe. Well, it’s also shocking that this got an R rating and that is another reason I think a lot of people could I’m sure Robert Roger Ebert had some something to say about this, about how could the same studio that rejected XYZ have put an R rating on The Exorcist at that time.
It seems like it was almost an inside job, where the president of the MPAA kind of saw it and more or less assured Warner Brothers that they would make sure that it got an R instead of an X, which was the only other. Option at the time and would have obviously killed the movie’s chances with the public.
It probably
Craig: deserved an x Like to call this movie vulgar and blasphemous I think is fair. I don’t think that it disrespects religion. In fact, I think it champions
Todd: religion. Although, this was the same, I mean, this era, this is Watergate, it’s happening right now, it’s 1973, Deep Throat was out around this time, actually a pretty exciting time for American cinema, but also just a flashpoint for culture as far as, like, there were Vietnam War protests going on, the president’s under investigation, and these movies are coming out like people are, Are just questioning everything, everything feels extreme and uh, and cinema was really starting to reflect that and get extremely experimental.
Um, and what mainstream audiences were getting exposed to at this time and going out and seeing in droves and talking about incessantly is pretty shocking even to hear now. You know, down the street, grandmothers and people going to see Deep Throat and chatting about it, you know, lining up around the block to see that.
This movie, people were supposedly fainting in the theaters and throwing up and running out, and it was just all over the news. I mean, what a time period. Yeah. Some of that lightning in a bottle, I think, came from this moment when it was released. And then, like you said earlier, like, the things that this girl has to do, and you know, we can’t watch a movie without…
Also sort of thinking about the actors and, and sometimes being a little worried for them, you know, in the background when it comes to kids anyway, right? This girl’s, you know, masturbating with a crucifix and saying all these horrible things. And actually, even in retrospect, listening to all the interviews with the people and reading stuff, I am not entirely clear on how all that went down and who did what, because there’s a lot of contradictory information from the mouths of the people involved.
Craig: Right. There was, uh, another woman, there were some things that they felt like they couldn’t have a young girl do, and so they hired a young woman who was approximately the same stature as Linda Blair. Her name was Eileen Dietz. Under the makeup, you can barely tell that it’s a different person. In fact, had I not known, I don’t think that I would have questioned it.
But you’re right, there is some kind of contradictory things, because some things that I read said that she did the masturbation scene. But, in that new footage, uh, thing that I just watched, there’s footage of Linda Blair doing that scene.
Todd: Yes, and Linda Blair herself says she did it.
Craig: Right, she says that she, uh, she didn’t know what masturbation was.
That wasn’t something that she had come to understand as a young person yet. Um, and the way I, the footage of her doing it, it really just looks like she’s stabbing down. I would guess that maybe that’s the direction she got just stabbed the cross. Down as far as you can
Todd: yeah Well, she she said in the interview that she had a box between her legs with a sponge in it That was filled with the red, you know blood or whatever stabbed it into it So she says she did it but then they said that they had this deets duke
Craig: gal do it.
Maybe she did the lines Because the lines are pretty vulgar. And, and Linda Blair was a Christian, and still is, I assume. Um, but she said that her, and I have no, I don’t have any idea what denomination of Christianity she is, but she said that in her religious faith, there just was no talk of the devil. So, the devil wasn’t something she was scared of.
It was a, a character, like, Frankenstein. Um, nothing to really be frightened of. She wasn’t troubled. Emotionally or psychologically in the making of this movie at all. Again, I don’t know. I don’t know what Eileen Dietz did. She, uh, you know, is featured in the interviews and the documentaries and stuff, and she talks about it, and she claims that she did some of the parts that they felt were inappropriate for Linda Blair to do.
Um, but what parts those are exactly remains… The footage of Reagan in that scene that I saw, the newly uncovered footage, she was in a very different makeup look. So, I think that, um, they probably shot it with different looks, too. Ah. I don’t know.
Todd: It’s possible. Uh, I don’t know. It’s, it’s so contradictory and I think more than anything it just reflects that they were nervous about how the public was going to take it too because Linda Blair straight from her mouth says, I didn’t know what masturbation was at this time, yada, yada, yada.
However, Friedkin tells a story that gets pushed around a lot. Said that when he interviewed her, she, he asked her, you know, Do you know these things? And do you know what the Exorcist is about? And she told him she’d read the book. Oh,
Craig: I didn’t read
Todd: that. Yeah, apparently he says she told him she read the book.
Well, how could she read the book and not know that? And then… He says that he asked her what she meant, and she, he says that she says to him, This girl was possessed by the devil and did a whole bunch of bad things, like pushing a man out of her bedroom window, hitting her mother across the face, and she masturbates with a crucifix.
And then Freed can ask her, Do you know what masturbation is? And then she says, It’s like jerking off, isn’t it? And then giggles a little bit. And then he says, Have you ever done that? And she goes, Sure, haven’t you? So like, I mean, that’s a cute little story to tell. But it could also be a cute little story he made up, you know, to like, get people off his back.
It’s a little too perfect.
Craig: Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, there was so much controversy after because she faced so much, she, the actress, Linda Blair, faced so much scrutiny afterwards because people believed that she had been really spiritually or psychologically traumatized by this and she was asked about it incessantly and in the most pleasant way would say no.
So I’m perfectly fine. It’s just a movie. I was, I was acting. But not only did they think that she was nuts, but they also thought that because she had participated in it, she was evil. And the studio had to hire bodyguards for it. And in one of the documentaries I watched, the documentarian asked, did they have to hire bodyguards for you?
And she said, I don’t talk about that. I won’t talk about that. Next question. Wow. So I have no idea what kind of Okay. violence or threats that she may have experienced, and for how long? That’s nuts.
Todd: Oh, crazy people can come out of the woodwork, man. Something like this. And yeah, she
Craig: wasn’t psychologically harmed, but both she and Ellen Burstyn were seriously, physically harmed, and sustained injuries that they have had to deal with for the rest of their lives.
Hmm. Linda Blair said in one of the documentaries, she said, let me get this, let me put this out there first and foremost. Uh, Billy Friedkin is a genius. He is an absolute genius. Um, she said, but sometimes, when you’re working with a genius, Things can get crazy. The most, for her, the effects in this, of course, are all practical.
There were three different beds built to perform different functions as far as levitation and shaking and all that stuff. All of, uh, the stuff like the levitation, Um, her insane body movement, her impossible, physically impossible body movement, her spider walk, all of that was done with mechanics and, and wires.
But anyway, there was one scene in particular where Regan basically is just bending at the waist, flopping up and down on the bed. And… It looks amazing, because it’s so fast, it’s, it’s impossible, it’s humanly impossible, no person could do that. But the way that it worked was she was built, she was strapped into a contraption, that she said was a mold of her back, a hard metal mold of her back, that she was then strapped into and it laced up on the sides.
And when they were filming the scene, the lacing came loose, so she wasn’t secured, she wasn’t, You know, tight against that brace and so what it kept doing every time it would go up and down It was smacking her on the back repeatedly over and over again this hard metal plate. Well her lines were Stop it.
Stop it. It hurts. Please it hurts So as she was literally screaming in pain and begging for them to turn it off They thought that she was just acting And at one point she said, she said, I think I said, no, really, it hurts, but. She said somebody thought they heard her say Billy, the name of the director, so they stopped it, and you can see the footage.
I mean, she just is sobbing, and clearly in excruciating pain, and that’s the footage they used. Ugh, it’s wild. And she’s, she cracked her spine. They didn’t even take her to the doctor.
Todd: Yeah. And there’s a scene where Ellen Burson’s characters thrown against the, uh, window by the force of the kind of poltergeist type forces in there.
So they actually interviewed the guy who did these effects and, uh, he was the one who, you know, was basically yanking that cord back. To pull her and after the first take the guy said look it was a it was a perfectly great shot He thought it was fine Well, william freekin said no I want to do it again Allen burst and said I really don’t want to do this again.
It really hurt. I could really injure myself
Craig: She specifically said he’s pulling
Todd: too hard. Yep And so, after some argument, Billy just kind of looks at her and goes, Okay, well, you know, keep it softer, do it softer next time. And then she said, as he walked away, she could see that they exchanged a glance.
Like William Friedkin was telling the stunt guy, Just go ahead and, just go ahead and pull it. Hard, really hard this time. Harder. And he did it. He says he did it. He admitted it. He says it on camera. And of course he pulled her back. And according to him in the interview, he’s like, and then, you know, of course she was in pain.
But then she went to her chiropractor and got checked out and everything was, uh, he said everything was fine. But no. Ha ha ha ha. She, didn’t she fracture her tailbone or something?
Craig: Something. I mean, I think it caused her chronic pain for the rest of her life. Were she and Friedkin dating? I never heard anything about that.
There were a couple of things that she said in the, in some of the interviews that made it sound like they were, but I don’t know. But they, you know, more than one of the actors said that he was just kind of… Crazy, and he would do things that we would probably consider completely unethical today.
Todd: He would shoot guns off
Craig: near them.
Right, to elicit responses out of them. The guy that played Father Charis said he shot a shotgun off within inches of my head. Which is just…
Todd: Bad like you don’t do that. You can kill someone’s hearing like right. I just it just blows me away and Max von Sydow I’ll mentioned it to about how he would shoot these guns off to try to get startled reactions for him And he kind of rolled his eyes.
He said look I’m an actor. I don’t need this just Don’t. Right, but he was
Craig: also so diplomatic about things. Like he said, do I think that William Friedkin, uh, is a brilliant filmmaker? I do. I was entirely unfamiliar with his methods. Like, like, he’s a lunatic. Um, but he makes a good movie. At the
Todd: end of the day, it doesn’t seem like anybody hates William Friedkin for anything that he subjected him to.
But they’re all, they are all saying, look, he did subject him to some stuff. And maybe not all of it was necessary.
Craig: Right. Certainly questionable. But I think they’re all proud of the final product. So, you know, what are you gonna do? Trash talk your own movie?
Todd: I mean, you get it with a lot of directors, right?
Stanley Kubrick is probably the biggest example. James Cameron. You know, these guys, uh, people love to work with them, they fight to work with these guys even, even though they know, you know, that they’re, might, they might end up crying half the time, you know, because of so called abuse. Ha ha ha ha, you know.
Craig: Right. Yeah, and then, you know, other, suppose, this is one of those films that they say, you know, is cursed or whatever, it’s, it’s the first episode of Cursed Films on, Shudder, which I had seen before, but I re watched for this, and in re watching it, really, there’s not, they don’t divulge, it’s only, it’s less than 30 minutes, and they really don’t go very deep into it, and in fact, they spend a good portion of the time talking about modern day exorcists, which made me very uncomfortable, because it seemed like charlatans who were taking advantage of people, uh, I didn’t care for that.
So, supposedly it’s cursed. Now, Ellen Burstyn said in the interview that up to nine people in some way connected to the film died, um, either during shooting or immediately thereafter. Now, some of those connections were really tenuous, like
Todd: Yeah, somebody’s uncle, you know somebody’s
Craig: father. Right, right.
Exactly, like, uh, Linda Blair’s grandfather died. Von Cito’s, uh, brother died on the first day of shooting. Uh, the special effects guy who cooled the room for them died. Um, she said there was like a cameraman or an assistant whose wife was pregnant and the baby died. And, and she listed off a bunch of others too.
I was really, I thought it was very insightful when Vansito said, you know, if it had happened on a two week shoot, sure. That would be, you know, some pretty amazing coincidence. He said, but when you’re shooting like a six month, nine month shoot, things are going to happen. And he said, it makes for good publicity, but.
Things are going to happen over a six to nine month
Todd: period. Even Peter Blatty, William Peter Blatty at one point kind of said look, I, I, I think that, um, the studio and in particular Friedkin were really sort of playin