INT: Casting, the process, let’s talk about Jason [Jason Miller for THE EXORCIST].

WF: Well the--another example of the movie god at work, and nothing to do with my own prescience but just openness to what--there were a lot of people who wanted to play Father Karras in THE EXORCIST, like Jack Nicholson. Ellen Burstyn had made a film with Jack Nicholson, I had cast Burstyn, which is another story, and now I cast her, and one day, I’m having lunch with her and she told Nicholson, who came over to the lunch and Ellen had been pushing for Nicholson and Nicholson says, “Hey, you know, I’m a hot Actor,” and blah, blah, blah, and I said, “Jack, I think if you put on a priest collar there will be a round of laughter in the theater, because of your life image.” He said, “Have you ever heard of Tracy [Spencer Tracy] and Hepburn [Katherine Hepburn], wise guy?” I said, “Yeah, you know, bring me Tracy and Hepburn and maybe that’s another story.” But Paul Newman wanted to play the part, Nicholson. I couldn’t find any--I wanted to have someone in the role who would be totally believable as a priest and with no personal baggage. And so I met a lot of different Actors for it, but I wanted to have somebody who was a priest really, and I cast a lot of priests in the film who were not Actors. Now Roy Scheider wants to do it and I was about to go with Roy, I had made THE FRENCH CONNECTION with him, and Bill Blatty [William Peter Blatty] said to me, “I don’t think he’s right, I don’t think Roy is--No, he’s not.” It later turned out that Blatty wanted to play the part himself, because I would have cast Roy, but now again we’re going down to the wire, we have to shoot and so we cast Stacy Keach, who was a very hot young stage Actor who had made some films, he’d made DOC I guess, where he played Doc Holiday, I think he had made that, but he was a hot young stage Actor, and after all the people I met, because he was little-known but upcoming, we cast him and they were negotiating with him, and then I went down to the public theater in New York, Greenwich Village, and to see a play that was about basketball, and I am a basketball fan, and the play was called THAT CHAMPIONSHIP SEASON and it was written by a guy called Jason Miller who I--no idea who he was, but I see the play and I think it’s fantastic. It’s a wonderful play about the whole sport ethos and cheating and how you have to live with it, and it had a lot of lapsed Catholicism in all of the characters, ‘cause they were all Catholic boys from Pennsylvania and their claim to fame was they won a high school championship, but they all cheated, including the coach. The play is written by a guy named Jason Miller and I--so, I said to my Casting Director on that, who was a woman called Juliet Taylor, and I said, “Who’s Jason Miller?” She said, “Oh he--this is his first play, he’s married to Jackie Gleason’s daughter, Linda [Linda Miller]. He’s an Actor, but he’s never done anything but like road companies or summer stock, stuff like that, usually not the lead, but he--this is his first play and it is great isn’t it?” Because she had told me to see it. I said, “Well, I’d like to meet him,” just because he understood lapsed Catholicism so much.

INT: Now, were you thinking--you had not seen the guy [Jason Miller], you were seeing the guy’s work. Were you thinking the possibility that he might be at--[WF: No.] You just wanted to meet him because he--

WF: It was someone to talk to. I had talked to priests and a lot of people, and now I’m wondering what is the--it’s like reading about a disease but not from a doctor, from a patient. I had spoken to priests and high-ranking members of the church, but never to guys who had actually gone out for the priesthood and couldn’t cut it. I didn’t meet any of those and now all of a sudden that’s who he is it turns out. He had studied for three years at Catholic University [The Catholic University of America, CUA] in Washington [Washington D.C.] for the priesthood, and had a crisis of faith like the character in the film and dropped out. So I learned this about him, and then I was staying at the Sherry-Netherland [Sherry-Netherland Hotel] at the time, and I had him come up to meet with me and I had the flu or something and I had all these pills, and he thought at the time that I was a pill freak, and he was very uptight and very short. He was about 5’6” or 7”, maybe he was 5’8” but short. And we’re talking and he was very uncommunicative and I’m talking to him about his play and the origins of it and his own life and what he had done and he was very guarded, uptight, and we have this meeting and I thanked him, said goodbye, and I went back to California and told those guys, “How are you doing with the Stacy Keach negotiation?” They said, “Fine, we’re done. We’ve hired him.” I get a phone call back in California from Jason Miller. He says, “Hey, I read that book that you told me about that you were going to make a film of?” Now, he’s never been in a film or played the lead on the stage anyway. “Yeah?” He said, “That’s me, that character is me, Father Karras.” I said, “Yeah, well, it’s not you anymore, I mean it’s Stacy Keach now.” He said, “No, no.” He said, “That is me.” I said, “Yeah?” he said, “You got--you ever do anything like a screen test?” I said, “I just told you we hired another Actor, and no, I have never shot a screen test.” He says, “You got to test me.” I said, “For what?” I said, “Do you understand what a contract is?” He says, “I’m telling you,” he said, “I’ll pay my way out there myself and you have to test me for this part.” So I went to John Calley who was head of production at the studio [Warner Bros.] and I said, “Look, I respect this guy’s work and I think he’s going to be an important Writer and what do I have to lose to do this?” He said, “Go ahead.” I had cast Ellen Burstyn, I tell Ellen. I tell Bill Blatty [William Peter Blatty] I’m doing it, and I say to Jason, “Okay, today is Monday. You can be here Wednesday morning?” He said, “Oh no,” he said, “No, I can’t be there for a week.” I said, “Why not?” He said, “I don’t fly. I’m not going to fly on a plane.” I said, “Well, how are you going to get here?” He said, “I’m going to take a train and we can do it--today’s Monday? Do it next Monday.” “Okay,” I said, “but I have told you that the role is cast, you understand that?” “Yeah I…” so now I said--[INT: And Ellen’s willing to play with you in this?] Yeah, oh sure, and I got Bill Fraker [William A. Fraker], we went into an empty stage, totally empty stage at Warner Bros. and I said to Ellen, “Let’s improvise the scene where you tell Father Karras that you think your daughter’s possessed, and then I want you to just interview him. I’ll put the camera over your shoulder and just talk to him about himself, and then I’m going to have him say the mass in a big, tight close-up.” “Okay.”

INT: Now why are you doing this [entertaining Jason Miller for THE EXORCIST]?

WF: The movie god, I was led against my will to do it. A voice, you have to hear the voice. I cast the other guy. [INT: I know, and a good Actor.] I could, looking back, say I respected his writing so much that I thought this guy is foolish enough to do this and I have enough juice to have Warner Bros. let me play around, and I thought it would give me a look at Ellen [Ellen Burstyn] too. I was just as much interested in that, because she had never played the lead in a picture either, and that’s another story. So I said, “Ellen, we’re going to do this.” “Okay.” He comes in, no makeup. Bill Fraker [William A. Fraker] lights a path where they can--and puts up a dolly track so I can see them, just as I shot the scene in the movie, a long walk through a park but there’s no scenery, no nothing, and I have them improvise that scene, which is largely Ellen’s scene, and we shoot that, a couple of takes. Not that impressive. And then she interviews him and I had the camera over her shoulder and zooming in here. He’s talking about himself and his background and it’s fairly close to the guy in the novel, and then, I put the camera on him like this saying the mass quietly and softly, and it was--I wasn’t knocked out. [INT: Now, I’m curious in the process, were you giving any directions? Any adjustments that you remember?] A little, not when he’s talking about himself, and not when he’s saying the mass. I just told him to say it quietly, just say it very quietly as though to yourself, not to a congregation, and hear the words, because a priest usually runs through those words. I said, “Hear them and say them meaningfully, and react as though it’s the first time you’ve heard them.” That’s all. [INT: That’s a lot actually when you think about it, but okay.]

INT: Go on. So he [Jason Miller] does this… [on THE EXORCIST]

WF: So he does it and Ellen Burstyn comes to me after the shoot’s down and I go to her dressing room. She says, “You’re not going to hire this guy are you?” I said, “Well, no.” She said, “Well, why are you wasting my time, because he can’t do this part.” She said, “First of all,” she said, “I need a big guy that I can melt in his arms when I tell him my daughter’s possessed.” Bill Blatty [William Peter Blatty] was there, watched this going on. I introduced them, Blatty wants to play the part himself. That night, he lived on the Malibu Beach and my Agent at the time lived down the beach from him, and Blatty went over to my Agent’s house at 9, 10 o’clock and knocked on the door and said, “You know I have total faith in Bill Friedkin, but this is wrong. Tell him don’t even think about hiring this guy. He’s just wrong,” so the next morning we look at the rushes and the guy looks incredible, which I didn’t see live, I didn’t see what the camera does to him. I look at his close-up; I look at him with--his voice, which had a very interesting quality. I look at it and I say to myself, “That’s Father Karras. That’s the guy.” So now, I’ve got to go and be my--by myself for a while and think this out, and the movie god says to me, “That’s the guy,” so I go to Blatty and Warner Bros. and everybody else and I said, “I want to get out of the Stacy Keach deal and hire this guy.” [INT: They must have thought you were nuts.] Oh yeah, Ted Ashley called me himself, he said, “You are crazy. What is wrong with you? We’re not going to do it.” And I tell Burstyn. She says, “You’re nuts.” Then I--this went on for days with everybody saying--[INT: Did you have any ally at all?] No, no, except the movie god. [INT: Yeah, but they don’t always have a parking space at Warner Bros.] [LAUGHS] That’s wonderful. I just fought for it because I believed it, and we paid off Stacy Keach, who will not speak to me to this day. It was a terrible thing to do. [INT: Now who said finally yes? I mean did you threaten?] Well, John Calley--they had reached a point where they didn’t even know what they had bought in this thing. Blatty convinced them to let me direct it. It had been turned down, first by Stanley Kubrick, Mike Nichols, and Arthur Penn, all of whom thought you could not cast it, couldn’t find a 12-year-old girl and so they all passed. They were in negotiation with another Director who I will not name, and he was negotiating to direct it, and this is before all this, and then THE FRENCH CONNECTION comes out and Blatty told them--Blatty had approval and he said, “I am exercising this approval and I want Friedkin to direct it,” and he fought for me and Frank Wells was there, who was a tough guy. Tough and, you know, Frank thought I was completely insane but I am Blatty’s choice and they had reluctantly put their faith in me as being crazy enough to understand how to make THE EXORCIST, which they couldn’t find anyone else, well they found somebody but Blatty knocked that guy out. They figured we were both nuts, and what are they going to do? They all told my Agent not to do it, talk me out of it, this and that but I went ahead and we cast him.

INT: Now you--so I’m really curious, ‘cause this is a major decision here [on casting THE EXORCIST]. I mean this is--you know, obviously Ellen’s [Ellen Burstyn] part and her part, but he’s essential, this is not like a minor role that we can say, “Oh well, what do we care who Friedkin puts in this role.” My question now is did you just--I mean did you threaten, did you say, “I’m not…” I mean, how do you convince all of these people who are your supposed associates, “Get rid of Stacy [Stacy Keach], I want to carry this unknown that none of you believe in?”

WF: I just held out and sometimes belief and faith is stronger than where it does not exist, where there’s no belief or faith in anything except the value of the dollar. This guy wasn’t going to cost a lot of money and they figured I knew what I was doing by then, or at least looked like I did. Before that is the Ellen Burstyn story. When Warner’s [Warner Bros.] finally reluctantly hired me to do the picture, Ted Ashley, who was the head of the studio, told me that they wanted either Audrey Hepburn or Jane Fonda or Anne Bancroft, who were big stars then, to play the lead and I said, “Great, that’s wonderful.” Meanwhile, I get a call from Ellen Burstyn who I’ve never met and only seen in THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, and she says to me, “I am under--that’s my role. I understand this, that’s my part, I have to play it.” I said, “Not going to happen, this is who they want...” She said, “Well, I believe that you will come around to me. You were talking to me earlier about parapsychology…” And so now the studio goes to Audrey Hepburn, who was still, you know, in her prime, but she was living in Italy, married to an Italian doctor, Dr. Dotti [Andrea Dotti] and she said, “Okay, I’ll do THE EXORCIST, but you’ve got to come to Rome and shoot it,” and I--instinctively, I said to Warner’s, “I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to do Rome hours; I don’t want to try to communicate with a crew where I don’t really speak their language. I think that’s dangerous. I--you know, the rest of the cast you have to fly everybody in to be an extra you know, who has speaking parts.” I said, “I don’t want to make a foreign film out of this,” and I said, “Just tell her to come here for a while,” you know, it was scheduled as a nine week shoot, which was a joke. I said, “Tell her to come here.” “No, she’s not coming there,” so now it becomes a battle of wills, and I said, “Let’s go to Anne Bancroft then, you liked her.” They go to Anne Bancroft, she says, “It’s a great part and I’d love to do it, but I have to tell you I am pregnant, I am a month pregnant and if you guys will wait for me…” well, cut to long--no one was going to wait, and then you’d figure she’d be so in love with her son that she’d say, “Well, I can’t go act,” you know, so that fell apart. They go to Jane Fonda who reads the script and says, “Why would I want to appear in a piece of capitalist bullshit like this?” And she turns it down.

WF: Now, I go toward wildly divergent paths, I meet at a party Carol Burnett, and I’m very impressed by Carol Burnett and I said to her, “Would you be interested--” She--“Oh yes.” I go to Warner, “No. Carol Burnett is a television comedian,” and they didn’t want her and I would have done it with her, just instinctively, like Jackie Gleason, you know, just instinctively there was--and there were so many others and finally the start date is approaching. I kept telling Burstyn this person bombed out and that person bombed out, she starts losing the weight and we come to a couple of weeks before shooting and she was the last woman standing, and they didn’t have anyone else they felt strongly about. [INT: Did you--you didn’t screen test her except for the thing that you did with--but she already had the part by then.] Right, she had--nominated for Supporting Actress [Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress] in the last--that was it. [INT: So did Ted [Ted Ashley], you know, kill himself, I mean--] They reluctantly went ahead. Bill Blatty [William Peter Blatty] reluctantly went along with me, because by then they believed I knew what I was doing. I convinced them that I knew what I was doing, and to a certain extent, I did.

INT: Was this on the basis, interesting enough because--[WF: Of THE FRENCH CONNECTION Oscar.] And I was going to--something else. Is it also on the basis of the way you were dealing with, let’s say, the script, the production, everything else, because all of that stuff had been going on, and for them to get--obviously you’ve won the Academy Award, you made a number of pictures, made a really--[WF: Not that many.] Exactly, but--and you made a really interesting picture that’s different from everybody else’s, but that’s not this kind of film, so--[WF: No, but they had tried to get Kubrick [Stanley Kubrick], Arthur Penn, you know, they ran through their list, Mike Nichols--] So my question is while you’re in this casting process, trying to you know find the right person, you are also in production process. [WF: Yes.] Design stuff, I mean, are they gaining confidence about you is what I’m asking?

WF: It was something else and I don’t know if this would still work today but they really thought I was crazy and didn’t want to fuck with me. Bill Blatty [William Peter Blatty] was a like-minded spirit as I--we both loved practical jokes and all kinds--and we both understood the psychology of the people at Warner Bros. and we basically both felt that, in spite of the fact that they had all these high positions, they really didn’t know what they were doing either, and they were very dependent on the Directors, and so Blatty and I used to do certain things like at one point there was a guy named Ed Morey [Edward Morey Jr.] who was head of--assistant to the head of production at Warner’s, who was a guy named Charlie Greenlaw [Charles F. Greenlaw]. Those were--they were very experienced hands, they were in the production department and--but they would come up with nutty suggestions like there was a lot of night shooting in the film and they wanted me to shoot it on the back lot at Warner’s and I said, “No, I’m going to Georgetown [Georgetown, Washington D.C.] to shoot it where it’s set, and I’m going to Iraq and all of this and they thought, “Well, he’ll never get to Iraq,” but finally I convinced them it should be done on the locations where it was written because they were so iconic, these locations. So Ed Morey comes to me one day and says, “Well, on the night scenes you’re going to do ‘day for night’ right?” I said, “What do you mean? You mean, I’m going to tarp over a couple of streets of Georgetown, like four or five blocks?” “Well…” and I said, “No, I…” Now they keep persisting that I should shoot “day for night” and tarp the streets and I tell Blatty, and I--

WF: Blatty [William Peter Blatty] and I were great practical jokers in those days and I said, “Bill, will you go along with me on something?” Said, “I’m going to suggest something way out at this meeting we’re going to have and I want you to disagree with me, I mean, adamantly disagree with everything that I say.” He said, “Got it.” We have a meeting now with the production department [on THE EXORCIST]. They bring up this idea again of “day for night” on location and I said, “Ed [Edward Morey Jr.], Charlie [Charles F. Greenlaw], I’m gonna--I’m not going to tarp in the streets, I have a better idea. I’m going to paint all the buildings black. Everything you see across the street or down the block, I’m going to paint them black and that’s your night shot.” “Well, I don’t think that will work…” “You don’t? Well that’s my solution,” I said, “And by the way, I do have a way to save this picture money.” “What’s that?” I said, “You know, when we feed the crew, when we have to feed the crew, we have only one kind of salad dressing. We don’t have a variety of salad dressings to feed the crew or the cast on location. We have only one,” and Blatty pipes up and says, “Well, what kind of salad dressing Bill?” This is known as the "salad dressing meeting", and I said, “Well, green goddess,” I said, “That’s my favorite salad dressing,” and Bill says, “What?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Bill, you’re not going to convince a whole crew or a cast to have green goddess. You got to have some oil and vinegar, you got to have some thousand island--” [INT: This is now…] This is in front of the heads of production at Warner Bros., every word I’m saying to you is the truth. And so now Bill says, “Well, you know--” now these guys are looking at us and Bill says, “You know I have to tell you something but I don’t like green goddess. I don’t like green goddess salad dressing.” I said, “Well, I’m the Director and that’s what we’re going to have, and I figured out that over the course of the film, if we have only this one salad dressing, we can save $1,487.92 and here it is,” and I’ve got it all worked out and Bill looks at it. He says, “Yeah, that’s admirable,” but he said, “I’m the Writer and I’m the Producer and I’m not going to have green goddess.” Now, we’re standing up and shouting at each other. They’re not saying a word and at one point Blatty says, “Well, fuck it, I’m not going to do it,” and he walks out of the room and I sit down and they are looking at me and each other and throats start to get cleared and I said, “Look this is my plan and I have other plans too and, you know, we’re going to do this and we’re going to--that’s $1,400 here, $1,400 there, it adds up,” and I said, “And think about painting all the buildings black.” I left the room and never heard from them again. They--we shot the film in New York; they always figured that Blatty and I were nuts, that we’d be fighting all the time. They’d pass the word around that we hated each other and couldn’t even agree on the right salad dressing, and they never bothered us again. At one point we fell way behind schedule, off the charts behind schedule and Charlie Greenlaw came to New York to see why and he said, “It’s obvious why, your cameraman’s too slow.” It was Owen Roizman, who had just done FRENCH CONNECTION [THE FRENCH CONNECTION]. He said, “He’s not getting--”

WF: The setups were difficult [on THE EXORCIST]. You had to show breath in a room, which you couldn’t optical in. We had to freeze the room, which in the old days used to be done at the Glendale Ice House. They’d build a set in the ice house for films like MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS [THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS], but in those days there was no more Glendale Ice House; they used to make it in a box. So we found out that the only way to get this room to freezing was to build the bedroom set in a gigantic refrigerated cocoon with restaurant-size air conditioners over four walls, and we’d turn the air conditioning on all night after a day’s shooting, come in in the morning, it would be 40 below zero. [INT: Are you here or in New York? You’re in New York.] In New York, on the west side of New York in a place called Manhattan Sound where we built the set. [INT: By the way, do you think they would have ever shut you down if you had been here?] Who knows? But so they came to New York, the film’s way behind schedule, but they like the dailies and Greenlaw [Charles F. Greenlaw] says, “It’s the Cameraman.” I said, “Yeah, okay, we should fire the Cameraman.” And he says, “Well, let me get a list of who’s available here.” I said, “Oh no, not who’s available here. I won’t work with any other New York Cameraman.” I gave him a list that had Vittorio Storaro and Carlo Di Palma and Conrad Hall, you know, and the leading Cameraman in the business, I said, “Get me one of those guys and we’re on,” I said, “Otherwise, you know, get out of my face,” and he said, “Well, they can’t work in New York. We could never get a work permit for--” I said, “That’s not my problem. We have a New York Cameraman,” so they didn’t fire Roizman, they didn’t do anything and I did some things that I’m not really proud of, but I have to say that the picture worked and to a great extent, I think, it was because of my tenacity, that’s all. I mean, I wanted a shot--[INT: This is important, the story.] I wanted a shot on a griddle--in the morning scene in Georgetown [Georgetown, Washington D.C.], of bacon on a griddle. Black griddle, bacon frying. The Prop Man [Prop Master] had overheated the griddle before we started shooting, so you’d put four strips of bacon on it, it would shrivel up like that. Shut the thing down for two hours of no shooting, let the griddle cool off, put the bacon back on, not enough heat. I get--well, to make a long story short, we shot about six hours for one shot of bacon sizzling evenly on a griddle. That’s all we did that day. [INT: That is tenacity and chutzpah [Yiddish word for “supreme self-confidence”].] It was chutzpah. I used to order in steaks for the crew because there was no place really you could go out to lunch. I’d order in the most expensive steaks from Lobel’s, charge it to the picture. I was extremely arrogant and I had no respect for the guys who ran the studios. [INT: Now, you were giving them good dailies.] Well, they liked the dailies, if not for that they would have fired--if they didn’t like the dailies, any of the stuff I did, I would have been completely out of the business. You know my name would have been on a hit list.

INT: Is there a logic, by the way, this is jumping into shooting a bit, but about what you want to--if you’re working for the studio, what you want to shoot first in your mind, does that ever occur to you? Saying, “hmm, I want to dazzle them with this sequence or this performance so that they’ll--”

WF: No, in fact, I went the other way. Like when Norman Lloyd produced THE HITCHCOCK HOUR [THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR] I did, he gave me one piece of advice, he said, “You’re a young man,” he said, “the crew is always going to be thinking you don’t know what you’re doing.” He said, “Choose the simplest shot you can make as your first shot and get it in one take.” Armed with that advice, I start--I did the exact opposite. The Cameraman on that picture was an Academy Award-winning Cinematographer named Jack Warren, John L. Warren [John F. Warren], and he had won an Academy Award for THE COUNTRY GIRL, Grace Kelly, and he was a DP [Director of Photography; Cinematographer] and you know, an old-timer, and I set up this shot that went through three rooms with John Gavin and the Actress, whose name was Indus Arthur, and it was a long complicated shot where the camera went in and came out and followed them, and Warren said, “This is going to take too long kid, you don’t want to do this. It’s going to take forever.” I said, “That’s the shot I want, Jack.” It’s the first thing I ever did on a soundstage, and I’m not saying this to brag. This is what happened, this is what I did, and what I was, and I’m certainly not defending it or saying I would do it again today, but maybe I would. I don’t know. [INT: It’s interesting enough, maybe without that, this picture could have never been the picture it became.] That’s possible but--[INT: I mean, ‘cause this is--come on this is--I mean--] But here’s the lesson I learned from the HITCHCOCK experience. We make this shot; it takes four or five hours. By then, the suits start coming down, “What’s--” THE HITCHCOCK HOUR, it’s five hours, they don’t have a shot in the can. They all start appearing in the dark. The next morning, the rushes come out and Norman Lloyd comes down to the set, and I’m rehearsing with the Actors but I hear behind me, I have sort of peripheral hearing and I hear--Norman comes up to Jack Warren, who’s standing behind me, watching the rehearsal, and Norman says, “Jack, that shot was incredible. It’s just beautiful, congratulations. It’s wonderful.” Jack said, “You liked it?” He said, “Oh, it’s great,” and Jack said, “It was my idea, I told the kid.” Now, I hear this and I realize that he’s won an Academy Award, and he’s an old-timer, and it was like a life lesson. This place is all bullshit. This is about bullshit, it’s built on bullshit. A man with that talent and reputation has to say that, so now I get this idea about the way things work in this environment and it’s something that’s stuck in my mind right up to THE EXORCIST experience, and guys who are Talent Agents running a studio and trying to do it on the basis of dollars and cents, and what I realized without knowing was that it isn’t--really isn’t about dollars and cents, it’s about getting it right and believing in what you’re doing and fighting for it, and being open to have a belief. You have to believe in yourself and in something and this system here will crack you down. They will--if you’re at the height of your career or off the slide, they will grind you into the ground, that’s what this is. Perhaps other industries are like that as well, but it’s about schadenfreude, a great German word that does not exist in the English language but loosely translated means, “to take great pleasure in the failure of others.” Schadenfreude, which I guess literally translated as like “shadow delight, shadow happiness.”