INT: Your full name?

WF: William Friedkin. [INT: Was that your name at birth too?] Yeah. [INT: And did they--you have nick--I don’t--] I don’t have a middle name. People call me “Billy.” [INT: Got it.] Or “Bill.” [INT: Nicknames? Those are--] “Schmuck.” You know, something like, but otherwise no. [INT: Birthdate?] August 29th, 1935. [INT: And city and state and birth?] Chicago, Illinois, United States. [INT: Do you still feel Chicagoan?] I love Chicago, yeah, and I feel that the atmosphere of the city as I was growing up is what shaped me more than anything, which is not surprising.

INT: Do you remember the first film you ever saw?

WF: I actually do, but I didn’t really see it. My mother took me to a movie for the first time, it was a Saturday afternoon in Chicago, on the north side where we lived. It was the Uptown Theatre [Pantheon Theatre] and no longer there. But it was a very large neighborhood theater and I had never seen a film or even knew what the experience was like. We came in and sat down, it was dark and there were, I guess a couple of people there in the afternoon. I had no idea what to expect. And then all of a sudden, the curtains parted, all the lights went down, it was black and an image came on the screen; probably the title card and sound, probably music and I remember being scared out of my mind. I just screamed. I screamed so loud, I had to be taken out of the theater and that’s all I saw of that film and that’s about the last time I went for about three years. But the film was, it was called NONE BUT THE LONELY HEART, I learned later. It was from a screenplay by Clifford Odets. I don’t recall who directed it [Clifford Odets]. Cary Grant was in it and there was--it was black-and-white and there was--[INT: So you got to see it another time?] Later, much late, but not then. [INT: Now, if that was a scary experience why would you go back to the movies? Or were you too young to sort of say no?] Well, I got to be a little more educated about what they were some years later. But at the age of four, I didn’t know what the hell it was. And then, when I started going at around six or seven to these young people’s matinees that they used to have with cartoons and serials and short features, at that point, I thought the Actors came out of the back of the theater and my friends and I, from the neighborhood, we used to go round to the back of the movie house to see the Actors come out on their horses or whatever. And that lasted with me for a long time. I had no idea that they were shadows projected on a screen.

INT: When did you get the idea that somebody actually made these things?

WF: Many years later, when I saw CITIZEN KANE. I must’ve been 19 or so, 20, when I saw CITIZEN KANE. By then, I was working in live television in Chicago. And someone suggested--but before that, I only saw movies like what I just described. Saturday afternoon cartoons, serials, WILD BILL HICKOK [THE GREAT ADVENTURES OF WILD BILL HICKOK], THE GREEN HORNET, stuff like that. [INT: Were there favorites of those? Like, for example, were there favorite cartoons? Like, I remember, because I did the same thing.] Yeah. [INT: Where there one that you looked forward to that you wanted to see either in the serials or--] Well, Donald Duck, then there was a series called DON WINSLOW OF THE NAVY that I thought was totally believable and realistic. And I used to wait for that. There was a new one every week. They ran about 20 minutes. And when I was working in live television, which I started to do right out of high school., I was about 16 years old and I went into an entry-level job in the mailroom of a very large television station in Chicago called WGN [WGN-TV], and they were like the largest local independent station in the country. They were owned by Chicago Tribune. [INT: Now was this a job-job? I mean--] Yeah, I was in the mailroom, and I never went to college. I went right into the mailroom out of high school, Senn High School in Chicago. [INT: With ambitions too?] Well, it said--I--there was an ad in the newspaper, I had no idea what I wanted to do when I left high school and I never took it seriously, and I never read a book through, any book in high school. But I happened to see an ad in the newspaper that said there were opportunities for young men, and they specified young men not women, to start at an entry-level job and then work your way up in live television. Of course, I had seen a lot of live television. As I was growing up, it was fairly new and expanding rapidly. And had no interest in film at that time, but live television really excited me. But someone suggested I see this film called CITIZEN KANE. Someone I remember respecting at the time said, “You’ll really enjoy this. This is really a great movie.” “Great mo--Better than DON WINSLOW OF THE NAVY? How could this be?" So, I went to see it. It was a theater called the Surf Theatre on the near north side of Chicago. It was at the corner of Dearborn and Division Street and I went to see it at about noon on a Saturday. It was the first show. And I stayed through about six straight performances of it. I stayed there virtually all day and watched it over and over again. And then, I went back a couple of days later and I was completely overcome by the idea that this was in fact an art form. That it was possible for a single intelligence to inform the entire picture. Even though I knew from working in television and I sort of suspected that it took a lot of people to do it, but this was clearly the vision of one person with a lot of help, of course. And it had never occurred to me before. Before all the films seemed to me, I don’t know, I thought they were done like in a factory. DON WINSLOW OF THE NAVY; I mean, there was no directorial flourish or anything let alone such a plethora of ideas. And the use of camera and sound and editing and music. The performances were larger than life. Later, as I began to direct operas, which I also do now, I realized that these performances were at an operatic level. They were elevated above just somebody walking into a room sitting down and saying lines.

INT: Now, here you see this masterpiece. Were you interested, because you said literature at this time was not something you were interested in, in terms of any art form, for example, was painting or music, were either of these things something that you had thought of as art forms? ‘Cause here you are seeing clearly a piece of film as art. But had you ever, up to this time, sort of say, “Well, you know, I like this painter or I like these or--"

WF: No, no I mean, I used to--because, I grew up in Chicago, and Chicago was a very important center of jazz music, I used to go around and listen to jazz in the clubs. And I didn’t realize it was great art, but at the time I could go to a place like the Sutherland Hotel on the south side of Chicago, 47th and South Parkway, and listen to the Miles Davis Sextet which had John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderely, Bill Evans, Philly Joe Jones and Paul Chambers. And the--it was incredible, the music was magnificent. And, but I didn’t realize it was the American culture on display there. Or I--many I would go to a club called The Blue Note, which was a famous jazz club, and as I worked at WGN [WGN-TV] longer, I became a Director there after about a year and a half out of the mailroom. And I used to sign off the station. In those days, the stations wouldn’t stay on all night as they do now; 24 hours. The station would sign off around midnight and I would cue the sign off and then leave and then go to The Blue Note and hear The Duke Ellington Band, Artie Shaw, Stan Kenton, Benny Goodman even was still around, and Jimmy Smith; the great jazz artists of that day and yesteryear and I loved it, I thought it was fantastic, and did not realize it was an art form. But when I first became conscious of performance art as art, was, of course, CITIZEN KANE. But then I used to listened to the radio a lot. Jazz music on the radio and there was a guy called Daddy-O-Daylie, who was a great disc jockey, who would introduce me to a lot of these sounds. And one evening, leaving WGN, driving home, I lived on the North Side of Chicago with my parents, I was--I turned to another station, I think accidentally, and while I was driving along the outer drive, I heard something that sounded other worldly to me. I’d never heard sounds like this before. And it was--I pulled the car over, because it was a long piece, and I stopped and just listened to it straight through, and it was Stravinsky’s [Igor Stravinsky] “The Rite of Spring.” And I was just flabbergasted by what a great piece of music this was without knowing it was the premier music of the 20th century. Really, the music that ushered in modern music in the 20th century. First introduced in 1913 as part of a ballet by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and choreographed by Nijinsky [Vaslav Nijinsky]. All this I found out later. But it was that door that opened for me in sound that made me realize that performance art was really an art form. I don’t mean just performance, I mean composition. There was an idea and a vision behind this composition and the--Stravinsky was unique to anything else I’d heard. I never studied music.

INT: You mentioned two things here and they’re interesting. One of them is the word, “accident.” How much does accident play in what we do?

WF: Everything, but you can call it something else. You can call it, “God, the grace of God.” I’ve always said that, and believed, that in order to do what we do--in order to like direct or write or act or paint or whatever, compose, you need equal parts of ambition, luck and the grace of God. And I didn’t mention talent, because I think that’s almost “by the way.” “Oh, by the way, you also have talent.” But you need extraordinary amounts of ambition, luck; you have to be in the right place at the right time. You have to be open to all these signals that we’re getting all that time that are leading us even blindly toward some conclusion or some beginning. And you need the grace of God. You’re not--you know, it’s not going to happen if someone is born in a third world country for the most part. Or if you were born in 1884 before movies were invented. You’re not going to have a career like that. I have a career, not because I’ve studied, I’ve never gone to school, I never went to college. I’ve never had one real lesson in filmmaking either in the camera or sound. I did have one when I rented a camera to make my first film. But I was led there by the grace of God. And I do believe that one must be open to these influences that are around us all the time, sensitive to them, and ready and waiting for God’s will. And I strongly believe that today more even than ever.

INT: When you were a kid was the concept of, ‘cause it’s of the word god, was that a concept that you got in your house?

WF: I was raised in the Jewish faith. I was Bar Mitzvah, you know, when I was 13-years-old. But I have never felt close to God in either a church or a synagogue. I think they’re--I think they’re sort of man-made institutions that have exceeded the principles a little bit. I mean, the concept of the great figures who created all of the religions is not something that I think goes directly to the worshippers in the church or the synagogue or the mosques. A lot of, for example, Christianity is the product of many hands. It’s the product of the Emperor Augustine in the third century in Rome who declared Christianity the official religion and made some changes in the earlier precepts. And it’s also the product of the Apostle Paul, who was very quick to indicate in his missives and in his letters to the Corinthians and the Romans and other peoples where he preached that a lot of ideas that he’s putting forth are his own interpretation and not directly from Jesus. [INT: But for you since you’ve used the word, and it’s interesting because you’ve said luck and the grace of God and the idea that--I mean, do you feel to some degree that your life is directed by an other or do you feel that you need to recognize that there’s energy, and I don’t know how you would define that, that is outside it, that influences and if you’re closed to it, you’re not going to be able to receive it, and if you’re open to it, you are. That drive when you pulled over to listen to “Rites of Spring” [“The Rite of Spring”]. I mean, do you follow me, there’s this--] I believe that I was directed to pull over and listen to “The Rite of Spring.” I believe--it was an accident that I turned the radio to another station. I always had it tuned to the jazz station. I believe it was WJJD and now--there was very little classical music on the radio as there is now. It’s probably a little more now, but not much. [INT: No.] And I, of course, couldn’t read music, didn’t know anything. I mean, I couldn’t tell you about who Beethoven was in relation to let’s say the line up of the Chicago Cubs. You know, if you’d have said Beethoven was a third baseman--[INT: You would know exact.]--I was, “Oh, really,” ‘cause I didn’t know who the hell Beethoven was.

INT: Now, you talked here about the fact that you didn’t quote “study” film. I’m curious, knowing that Welles [Orson Welles] was alive, did you get to meet him? [WF: No, I’ve never met Welles.] Wow. [WF: I never met Welles. I’ve met some of the other great Directors and became friendly with them.] And were they able ever to be, in one way or another, besides friendly to you, teachers? Did you learn something from some of these people that either whose films you may have studied or actually in person, did you learn stuff?

WF: I knew a lot of people very well. I knew Billy Wilder well, socially, Richard Brooks but--I don’t remember--I knew Elia Kazan. I was president of the New York branch of the Directors Guild [DGA] when Kazan and Joe Mankiewicz [Joseph L. Mankiewicz] were on the board along with many other distinguished Directors. I was the president; they were on the board. But I never really--they never really imparted anything to me directly although their films did. Early on in my career, since I was so interested in live television, the strongest influence was John Frankenheimer and his live programs, dramatic programs, specifically on PLAYHOUSE 90, and there was a program called CLIMAX!, which was an hour live drama, PLAYHOUSE 90 was an hour and a half. I still remember vividly a lot of Frankenheimer’s work. It’s still unique for television. And so I would learn by watching the work of these guys, not only Welles, but then a number of other influences crept in and then films beget films and you started being exposed to more and different influences and so then later on came the great foreign films of the ‘60s [1960s] into my life; the Italian, the French.

INT: If you were to put a pantheon, and I’m sure this changes from day to day, but if you were to pick 10 filmmakers or 10 films that you say, “These definitely influenced me. These stick--stay with me.” Obviously, CITIZEN KANE’s one.

WF: Well it’s--the list had pretty much stayed the same for 40 years. [INT: Okay.] And I would say CITIZEN KANE, ALL ABOUT EVE; Mankiewicz [Joseph L. Mankiewicz] largely for the script and the performances and it’s one of those films that they say, you know, “Direction should be invisible,” and that’s one of the films where the direction is invisible and brilliant; genius invisible. TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE [THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE], SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN, THE BAND WAGON, 2001 [2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY] and PATHS OF GLORY. You know, then I have--well, many others; SHANE, GIANT, which I thought was absolutely great. The French Film, Z, and, of course, the early films of Fellini [Federico Fellini] like 8 1/2 and LA DOLCE VITA, have profound influences on me, because of the different doors that they opened; the different possibilities. This is something I’m not as conscious of anymore. I still love films, but I don’t learn from them as I used to. I don’t see the unique paths that some of these people took being constantly repeated. I mean, there are many good films that come out and probably as many bad films as used to come out then too. But the question was when you’re younger and interested in this profession, it’s a harvest and you have to pick and choose from the harvest; you can’t take in everything. [INT: Impossible.] There were many more great films of that era that we’re talking about, which is largely the ‘40s [1940s], ‘50s [1950s], and ‘60s [1960s] of American and European film, but I could only harvest so many. I mean Jean-Luc Godard’s BREATHLESS was stunning influence and then I realized later that the reason for it’s style, quick cuts that didn’t match, was because they didn’t have money when they made the film to buy full rolls of film. They were getting short ends from other pictures that were where the cameraman would only say let’s say 800 feet out of a thousand foot roll and Godard was--[INT: Picking up the next 200.]--gaging the 200 feet here. They actually took 35MM still film and spliced it in. They had short ends--movie was made up of short ends, therefore these fast cuts that seemed to break all the rules. And I thought that was very interesting that a style developed out of necessity, that’s still influencing filmmakers today.

WF: Of course, if I were going to cite the work of one filmmaker, it would be Hitchcock [Alfred Hitchcock], who just basically invented the language of the modern sound film. Griffith [D.W. Griffith] invented the silent film, and for me Hitchcock really perfected the sound film. [INT: Now, did you get to meet him?] I did meet Hitchcock; a very unusual situation, I must say. I was very young and I had come out here to do documentaries for the David Wolper Company [David L. Wolper Productions] and the ABC Network out of Chicago, because I had begun to do documentaries in Chicago; they were winning awards and Wolper invited me to come out to California, which I did. At the same time the Producer of THE HITCHCOCK HOUR [THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR], a man named Norman Lloyd, who was a great Actor for Hitchcock; he played the saboteur [in SABOTEUR]. He was producing the HITCHCOCK series then. They had been on, I think, about nine years and they did 10 years and this was in the last year. And Norman Lloyd had seen one of the documentaries that I had made, in Chicago. And he asked for a meeting with me through the William Morris [William Morris Agency] office that were my agents then. I didn’t even know what that meant, but I was with the William Morris office. I went out to see Norman Lloyd, and he told me that my little documentary that was made for $6000 had more suspense in than anything they did on THE HITCHCOCK HOUR that year, which it was very flattering. Obviously, not true, but extremely flattering. And he invited me to do the very last HITCHCOCK HOUR. And I had never done anything on a sound stage. This was all to be done on the Universal [Universal Pictures] backlot. [INT: And you’ve never worked with Actors right? This was the first time with--] Not really. [INT: Non-Actors, yes.] You know, well, I had directed by then some Second City live theater. I had written some plays and directed them by then. And in some of the documentaries that I was doing by then in Chicago, for this television station [WGN-TV], I would have people play parts to recreate certain situations. So I had directed Actors while knowing nothing about how to do so. Other than the osmosis of the films that I had seen. So I had to--I think the script was by Jim Bridges [James Bridges]; it was called “Off Season” [written by Robert Bloch]. It was on recently. A month or so ago; I see it advertised. And the lead Actor was John Gavin, who I knew from PSYCHO and other films. And John Gavin had to approve me. We met, I was young enough to be his son. And he saw the documentary I had made in Chicago that Norman Lloyd had seen, and he said, “Okay, let’s give this kid a chance.” We’ve been close friends ever since.

WF: So we shot at the Universal backlot [referring to the final episode of THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR], including the Bates Motel set, and on a stage, and it was a five-day shoot for a one-hour show. It was very much by the numbers, it was nothing special at all. But on the third or fourth day, Hitchcock [Alfred Hitchcock] came down with a retinue of guys in black suits from the black tower at Universal and he come--Hitchcock used to come in one day a week to read his introductions off an idiot card, we called them, you know, where you have what you’re going to say held up right next to the camera. Cue cards, I guess, they’re also called, but, in television, they were idiot cards. And Hitchcock came in to do a series of introductions and the retinue of black suits brought him over to me where I had been rehearsing a scene for the show. And I was, like, overwhelmed. I turned around and there’s Hitchcock. And he looked at me strangely and he offered his hand like this as though I was supposed to kiss it, I guess, and, you know, I took it hand and it was like a limp fish. And I said, “Oh, what an honor it is to meet you.” And he said, “Mr. Friedkin.” “Yes, sir.” He said, “Usually, our Directors wear ties.” And I had no tie as I don’t at this moment, but I don’t often wear ties. And but I didn’t know what to say, I thought Hitchcock was putting me on so I said, “Well, I forgot, sir, and I left it at home.” By then he was gone. That’s all he ever said to me. He didn’t say you’re doing a great job or how can an idiot like you be standing on my set or anything. He just said, “Usually, our Directors wear ties,” and he turned and left and the retinue followed like the Red Sea closing. [INT: Did you the next day?] What? [INT: Wear a tie?] No, I never wore tie. I mean--

INT: And you never heard from him again [Alfred Hitchcock]?

WF: Well, the next time we met was about three or four years later. It was the night of the Directors Guild Awards and I was wearing a tuxedo and a snap on black tie and I had received the Directors Guild Award for THE FRENCH CONNECTION. And it was--the awards were held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. So there were tables for dinner and then on the stage they start presenting the awards when dessert comes around or whatever. And I looked down while I’m accepting this beautiful Directors Guild Award from John Huston, and there in the--at a table right below me is Hitchcock with his family and another retinue. And as I left the stage, you could walk down, you could come up and walk down either at the sides or the center. I went down the center and I had this enormous gold-plated award from the Guild and there’s Hitchcock and I showed him the Directors Guild Award and I snapped my tie at him. And I said, “How do you like the tie now Hitch?” [INT: Great.] And he just looked at--he didn’t remember, but, of course, I did, you know, for four years and I would’ve remembered for forty and I still remember it. [INT: Yeah.] Because it was such an icy reception, however one of the greatest of all time; in a class by himself. And I learned so much from just watching his films and reading about what he said about film. How, for example, what is the difference between shock and suspense. Hitchcock’s definition of suspense versus shock is, let’s say you have a scene with two people they’re sitting a table, they’re having a cup of coffee, and it’s a five minute scene. And perhaps, it gets boring after a while, but all of a sudden a bomb blows up and they’re both killed at this table, which is, more or less, how it happens in war zones in life. But in film, that’s shock. Suspense is when the two people are sitting at the table, having a cup of coffee, and a long conversation, and the audience is shown and is told that there’s a bomb under the table. The audience knows there’s a bomb; the people in the scene don’t, the audience is on edge throughout the scene. [INT: So for you then, looking at the SORCERER, that whole movie is a suspense movie then, based on that one concept, because you’ve got the bomb?] Well, I learned how to try and carry out Hitchcock’s precepts. There are other similar precepts; for example, he shows you a scene where someone got murdered on a street. Someone’s walking along a street or let’s say, take PSYCHO, this woman is murdered in this--in the shower of this motel room. And then later, another character, her sister, goes into that same room, not knowing that her sister had been murdered there prior. Well, the audience is so scared with nothing happening really except the expectancy that something is going to happen. So what he was talking about was creating an expectancy; that’s suspense. And it’s a--later, you know, I’ve learned that it’s a very clear cut psychological precept that he was acting on that he, I’m sure, discovered because the early films of Hitchcock don’t even hint at what’s to come, or how skillful and creative and inventive he had become.

INT: But this interesting concept of sort of laying the ground for something [referring to the influence of Alfred Hitchcock]? So that you--I mean, and I think, you’ve become a master of this as well, were you--and I don’t know, because we want to talk about script in a little minute, to see whether you are already saying, “I know, I need, we need this here, so that I can carry through to here.” Because, I mean, you know, you feel it in your films. I mean, particularly, I think, to me, I think, you feel it as it, obvious from THE EXORCIST on, in terms of that particular style, because I think the other films are of another kind of genre. But I’m fascinated that you clearly learned something from this guy--I mean, whether--not, obviously, besides ties, you learned some specific stuff about, you know, what really are essences of the kind of storytelling that filmmaking is.

WF: You can learn how to make a film by watching Hitchcock’s [Alfred Hitchcock] films. That’s all you need to do. Watching them carefully. The work of others as well, because as I say, “Films beget films and films inspire filmmakers.” And you can learn, for example, how to write a novel by reading THE GREAT GATSBY or let’s say Joyce’s [James Joyce] ULYSSES, which is a quarry for Writers. Now there are many others. It doesn’t mean you’re going to have the genius of Joyce or Fitzgerald [F. Scott Fitzgerald] or anyone else. But you can learn the techniques, you can eventually find a style, and you learn by at first copying. You first learn from the masters; I imagine, which is how the masters teach philosophy or any other subject in a school. You learn by being in their presence. And if you go into a theater where there is a Hitchcock film, you will learn how to make a movie by being in his presence.

INT: The idea of understanding, you know, now as a Director from when you began as a Director, if you sort of step back and say one of the qualities that a Director has; now, obviously every Director is different, but there may be some things and you’ve seen some and you’ve met some. I mean, some that are tough guys, like Richard Brooks; some, that I suspect are gentle souls as well. But there maybe something in general that you feel or at least you feel about yourself in saying, “I know these qualities that I have, have allowed me to function as a Director.”

WF: Well, Richard Brooks said often when he was asked this question and I was there when he said it to a group at a film school, because we had become very close. When asked this question, Richard Brooks said, “You have to learn how to eat shit.” And I always thought that, you know, that was sort of a harsh ironic comment, but there’s a lot of truth to it, which we can go into. But in my own case, I would say the most important quality that you need to direct is the ability to communicate, because film is a collaborative art. If you’re a painter, you don’t need to talk to anybody. except to go somewhere and buy a set of paints and brushes and a canvas. Same thing, if you’re a Composer or even a Writer. You can be a recluse, you can be a son-of-a-bitch, you don’t need to relate to people at all if you have within you something to say and a vision of how to say it. But if you’re going to be in any of the collaborative media, let’s say a film Director, you need to be able to communicate first of all with a cast and a crew. Now, you have to have a vision of what you’re doing. So when I go to make a film and either get a script from somewhere else or I write the script, I see the whole film in my minds eye before I do it. I can see everything about it that needs to be seen at that stage. And then I’ve got to go out and get it done. And it was Orson Welles who called a film set, “the biggest electric train set a boy ever had.” And it is really is but--and it was someone else who called it, I forget who called it, “the one-ton pencil.” But you have to be able to communicate with the cameraperson and the sound person, the Actors, the Script Supervisors, the Prop Man [Prop Master]. You can’t be remote or reclusive. You’ve got to be able to try and, A) Impart your vision to these other people who are going to carry it out, and B) you have to have the vision to be able to impart. But you can’t be a son-of-a-bitch on the set really. You can pretend to be if that’s--if you want that image or you can be sort of gruff, but you’ve got to be able to communicate first with a crew and a cast to get--to have the camera put where you want it. To have the sound sound like it’s supposed to. To have the film edited the way you see it. You’ve got to be able to say and verbalize what you want, so that you can ultimately communicate with an audience, because that’s where communication for a filmmaker ends; with the audience. You’re always trying to communicate with other people who are going to watch this vision. Now, even if your work is relatively obscure and unique and individualistic, you’ve got to find some way that it’s going to communicate to some people. You can’t be non-verbal. You can’t say, “Well, do whatever you want to the Actor or the gro--" That’s been done and a lot of people have had the luck or the grace of God to be able to get away with it. But overall to have a long and lasting career, it’s about communication.