2023 FAREWELLS: behind the camera

Gene Hackman in the car chase in William Friedkin’s THE FRENCH CONNECTION.

Director William Friedkin, one of the most significant filmmakers of the past 50 years, has died at 87. Friedkin is best known for his two great films, The French Connection and The Exorcist, each groundbreaking in its own way. The French Connection, despite an anti-hero with off-putting characteristics and a setting in NYC at its grimiest, had audiences on the the edge of their seats, and its car chase (before CGI) is still the gold standard. The Exorcist was the first horror movie to be nominated for Oscar (a recognition previously unthinkable).

Robbie Robertson (front center) in THE LAST WATZ.

Robbie Robertson was justifiably famous as a musician and a songwriter, fronting The Band with its many hits and backing Bob Dylan’s transition from acoustic to electric. In fact, I was introduced to Robertson on-screen as a subject of Martin Scorsese’s documentary The Last Waltz, still one of the greatest concert films. But Robertson also became a significant force in the music of cinema, amassing almost 300 screen credits on IMDb as a composer, music supervisor or contributor to the soundtrack. Robertson’s behind the screen work included many collaborations with Scorsese, the last being the heralded Killers of the Flower Moon. Robertson identified as an indigenous Canadian, whose mother was Cayuga and Mohawk from the Six Nations Reserve. 

Director Hugh Hudson’s FIRST FEATURE won the Best Picture Oscar – Chariots of Fire. He never approached that level of achievement with feature films again, although he had a successful career directing commercials. He was one of the very few directors to attempt to make a movie about the American Revolution, Revolution.

Writer Bo Goldman won an adapted screenplay Oscar for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and an original screenplay Oscar for Melvin and Howard.

Documentarian Nancy Buirski directed The Loving Story in 2011 and Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy in 2023.

THE CAINE MUTINY COURT-MARTIAL: just what, not who, is on trial here?

Photo caption: Kiefer Sutherland in the THE CAINE MUTINY COURT-MARTIAL. Courtesy of Showtime.

William Friedkin died in August at age 87, leaving us his final film, the gripping courtroom drama, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. It’s a fine film, and a suitable way for Friedkin to go out.

Friedkin chose not to remake the iconic Edward Dmytryk film The Caine Mutiny, starring Humphrey Bogart. Instead, Friedkin went straight to the original source material, Herman Wouk’s novel, and left out the scenes on the ship itself, leaving the courtroom scenes. Friedkin also reset this film in the Persian Gulf in place of WW II, which also allowed for diversification of the cast.

You’re probably familiar with the basic of the story: Lieutenant Maryk has seized command of a naval vessel foundering in a storm from his superior, Captain Queeg, alleging that Queeg’s mental and emotional condition has put the ship and its crew at risk. Back on shore, Maryk faces a court-martial for mutiny, and his lawyer has to prove that Queeg is dangerously unbalanced. You’ll enjoy this movie, even if you know what will happen at the trial and its epilogue.

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is a showcase for Jason Clarke who plays the defense counsel, a role more central to this film than that of Maryk or even Queeg. Clarke plays the role as a fierce advocate who never warms to his client.

Kiefer Sutherland is no Humphrey Bogart, but he does a fine job as Queeg, a man who, in the end, just can’t control his impulses. Monica Raymund is especially good as the driven and relentless prosecuting attorney, with the capacity to gather herself after an unexpected development. The prolific Lance Reddick is excellent as the judge; (Reddick died a few days after filming, and the movie is dedicated to him).

Jake Lacy (White Lotus) is good as Maryk, as is Lewis Pullman as Maryk’s fellow officer and friend of uncertain steadfastness.

I love William Friedkin, a master filmmaker and a superb raconteur, whom I once got to hear spinning tales in person after a screening. Besides The French Connection and The Exorcist, his work included To Live and to Die in L.A.Bug and Killer Joe, all of which I’ve recently featured.

Because of Friedkin’s age, the film’s insurers required a back-up director to sit at Friedkin’s side through the film shoot – just in case; that understudy director was actor Benicio del Toro.

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is now streaming on Showtime, which is now available with Paramount+.

KILLER JOE: you sure ain’t gonna be bored

OK, this is NOT FOR EVERYONE.  Here’s a movie that will either thrill or disgust you. Either way, you sure ain’t gonna be bored.

It’s William Friedkin Week at The Movie Gourmet, and we’re looking at three of the director’s more overlooked films. We’ve covered the neo-noir thriller To Live and to Die in L.A., and the psychological horror movie Bug. Today’s Friedkin classic is another neo-noir, that paragon of perversity, Killer Joe

In Killer Joe, Thomas Haden Church, Gina Gershon and Emile Hirsch play a white trash family with a get-rich-quick scheme.  They give a hit man (Matthew McConaughey) the teen daughter (Juno Temple) as a deposit.  They’re all as dumb as a bag of hammers, so what could go wrong?

Killer Joe was directed by William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist) and shot by cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (The Right Stuff, The Natural) in just 20 days.  These guys know how to tell a story, and Killer Joe pops and crackles.

Emile Hirsch, Gina Gershon, Thomas Haden Church and Juno Temple in KILLER JOE. Photo credit: KillerJoeTheMovie.com.

Killer Joe is rated NC-17 for good reason and Friedkin accepts the rating without complaint.  Indeed, Killer Joe has its share of Sam Peckinpah-style screen violence and an unsettling deflowering scene.  But the piece de resistance is an over-the-top sadistic encounter between McConaughey and Gershon involving a chicken drumstick,  at once disturbing and darkly hilarious.   But Sam Fuller and Quentin Tarantino would have loved it, and so did I.  Nevertheless, some viewers will feel like they need a shower after this movie.

Matthew McConaughey in KILLER JOE. Photo credit: KillerJoeTheMovie.com.

The cast does a good job, but the picture really belongs to McConaughey and Temple.  McConaughey was recalibrating his career a la Alec Baldwin – he had just started his move from playing pretty boys in the rom-coms to taking meatier, more interesting roles.  He is both funny and menacing as Killer Joe (and I liked him in Bernie and Magic Mike, too).  Killer Joe preceded his roles in Mud, The Dallas Buyers Club, True Detective  and The Free State of Jones.

The movie slowly makes Juno Temple’s character more and more central, until she takes command of the denouement.  Temple is always sexy (Kaboom and Dirty Girl), and here she is able to ratchet down her intelligence to play a very simple character, always exploited by others, who is finally empowered to take control.

I saw Killer Joe at a screening where Friedkin said that the screenwriter (famed playwright Tracy Letts) saw Juno Temple’s character as the receptacle for all feminine rage.  Friedkin himself sees it as a Cinderella story – just one where Cinderella’s Prince Charming is a professional killer.  That’s all pretty deep sledding to me – I see Killer Joe as a very dark and violent comedy – kinda like In Bruges with twisted sex.

Killer Joe is available to stream from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Hulu.

BUG: the “paranoid” in paranoid thriller

Photo caption: Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon in BUG. Courtesy of Lionsgate.

It’s William Friedkin Week at The Movie Gourmet, and we’re looking at three of the director’s more overlooked films. We’ve examined the neo-noir thriller To Live and to Die in L.A., and today’s choice is the psychological horror movie Bug. We could also describe Bug as a psychotic horror movie.

Ashley Judd plays Agnes, a woman who seems well-balanced but has been made vulnerable by circumstance. She has been shattered by the most profound family tragedy. She’s justifiably terrified of her monstrous estranged husband Jerry (Harry Connick Jr.), and she’s unsettled by being on the run from him and in an unfamiliar environment; there are signs that Jerry is closing in on finding her. She’s found herself living so far from a regular, stable life that’s she’s become profoundly alienated.

Ashley Judd and Lynn Collins in BUG. Courtesy of Lionsgate.

Agnes is street-wise and, in normal times, she could handle herself, but she’s just being overwhelmed by too much shit. She needs some comfort and acceptance, some of which she finds in a new pal R.C. (Lynn Collins), although R.C. enables Agnes’ tendency to get too wasted.

But Agnes could also use some male companionship and physical security and protection. She meets Peter, who, in contrast with Jerry, is civil, kind and not abusive. He’s socially awkward, but he seems really safe and non-threatening.

As soon as they bond and start sharing the same motel room, Peter believes that he has found, first one aphid, and then a slew of them. More alarmingly, Peter is attaching the bugs to a conspiracy theory. Is Peter paranoid, delusional, hallucinating, or is it really a conspiracy? Friedkin and the Tracy Letts screenplay start to play with movie genre conventions.

Agnes is in a place where she is inclined to join Team Peter, and she starts seeing thing Peter’s way. Unfortunately, the two become ever more unhinged, begin deploying vast quantities of aluminum foil and, finally, go to EXTREME LENGTHS.

Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon in BUG. Courtesy of Lionsgate.

Friedkin’s final shot messes with us one last time. Memorably.

What happens in this story is a real thing, called folie à deux, shared psychosis or shared delusional disorder. The person whose delusions become shared by the second person is called the inducer, which gives a new, chilling meaning to the phrase “he drove her crazy“.

Michael Shannon is an actor with an uncommon gift for projecting creepiness. He shot Bug just a year before he broke through in Jeff Nichols’ brilliant indie Shotgun Stories and five years before Nichols’ Take Shelter. Writing about Take Shelter, I described Shannon’s character’s behavior “which starts out quirky, becomes troublesome and spirals down to GET ME OUT OF HERE.”

Ashley Judd in BUG. Courtesy of Lionsgate.

But Bug really depends on Ashley Judd’s performance as Agnes. After all, we can accept that Shannon’s Peter is just balls-out wacko, but Judd has to make us believe that an absolutely sane person can become completely insane on 48 hours. She’s dazzling here. I also recommend Mick LaSalle’s fine review of Bug, focusing on Ashley Judd’s performance

Bug can be streamed from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.

TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A.: obsession without an iota of redemption

Photo caption: William L. Petersen in TO LIVE AND TO DIE IN L.A. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

It’s William Friedkin Week at The Movie Gourmet, and we’re looking at three of the director’s more overlooked films. First up is his 1985 neo-noir To Live and Die in L.A., now a cult fave of noir fans. It’s a study of amoral obsession without any iota of redemption. Along with directing, Friedkin co-wrote the screenplay.

The secret service agent Chance (William L. Petersen) is consumed with tracking down the counterfeiter Masters (Willem Dafoe). Both are very dangerous men, and it’s pretty clear that no more than one of them is going to survive. Chance’s new partner Vuckovich (John Pankow) has to go along for the ride – and it’s a doozy.

Friedkin begins To Live and Die in L.A. with a thrilling set piece, involving terrorism in a highrise, that introduces Chance as a nervy stud. Then we meet Masters, and learn that he is anything but an ordinary criminal. Just when we have caught our breath, Friedkin toys with us in a scene that establishes that Chance is a reckless adrenaline freak.

The stage is now set for a manhunt, and Chance unleashes all his ruthlessness. Poor Vuckovich stands in for the audience as he and we are repeatedly shocked by Chance’s amorality, even corruption.

The car chase in Friedkin’s The French Connection remains the gold standard, but the one in To Live and Die in L.A. is also extraordinary. This one careens through LA’s freeways (including wrong way on the freeway), industrial areas and the cement channel of the Los Angeles River. The LA River has since been the site of countless movie chases, but it first was prominently featured in Point Blank and To Live and Die in L.A. may have been the river’s first car chase in a mainstream movie. All of the action is photographed by master cinematographer Robby Mueller.

Of course, along with the thrills of the chase and Chance’s astonishing behavior, we also get a counterfeiter procedural as Masters combines art, craft and greed as he prints his own faux money.

Willem Dafoe in TO LIVE AND TO DIE IN L.A. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

This was Willem Dafoe’s first major film role, just before Platoon and The Last Temptation of Christ. Dafoe, in an understated performance, oozes menace as the smooth, but very lethal, Masters.

William Petersen inhabits Chance with none of the gruff lovability he would show on CSI. It’s a balls-to-the-wall performance. Interestingly, Petersen didn’t get high profile jobs for the next fifteen years until CSI.

Dean Stockwell is perfect as a shady lawyer. Debra Feuer, John Tuturro and the renegade filmmaker Robert Downey, Sr., also appear in supporting roles.

William L. Petersen and John Pankow in TO LIVE AND TO DIE IN L.A. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

The ending is so dark that the studio insisted that Friedkin shoot an alternative ending, in which a main character improbably survives. Fortunately, that alternative ending was not affixed to the final cut of the film. You can view the alternative ending on YouTube, with the comments of Friedkin, Petersen and Pankow.

To Live and to Die in L.A. is available on Blu-Ray from Shout! Factory and in 4K from Kino Lorber. I’ll let you know when you can stream it or if it shows up again on TV.

William Friedkin: master of gripping cinema

Gene Hackman in the car chase in William Friedkin’s THE FRENCH CONNECTION.

Director William Friedkin, one of the most significant filmmakers of the past 50 years, has died at 87. Friedkin is best known for his two great films, The French Connection and The Exorcist, each groundbreaking in its own way. The French Connection, despite an anti-hero with off-putting characteristics and a setting in NYC at its grimiest, had audiences on the the edge of their seats, and its car chase (before CGI) is still the gold standard. The Exorcist was the first horror movie to be nominated for Oscar (a recognition previously unthinkable).

Friedkin also made two LGBTQ-themed films well before other Hollywood mainstreamers – The Boys in the Band and Cruising (the latter controversial in the LGBTQ community).

Friedkin also had a gift for neo-noir, and his To Live and Die in L.A. has become a noir cult favorite. Perhaps burdened by the outrageousness of writer Tracy Letts’ perverse and taboo-centric story, the delicious neo-noir Killer Joe has never received its due. Less colorful than those two, The Brink’s Job is a solid and entertaining crime film.

And The Exorcist wasn’t Friedkin’s only foray into foray. The grievously overlooked Bug still stands up today.

For some reason, Friedkin’s own favorite work was the disappointing slog Sorcerer (although it doesn’t deserve to be reviled as much as Jade, the only really bad Friedkin movie I’ve seen.) 

At 87, Friedkin just completed his final film, The Caine Mutiny Court Martial.

Like another of my favorite directors, Sam Fuller, Friedkin was never too high-minded to embrace the lurid, which was manifested in The Exorcist, Bug, Cruising and Killer Joe. He enjoyed seeing himself as a bit of a rascal, and claimed to have bribed a NYC transit official $40,000 to permit staging the The French Connection car chase.

Friedkin was also a delightfully irascible raconteur, which I got to appreciate in-person at a San Francisco preview screening of Killer Joe in 2011.

Linda Blair in William Friedkin’s THE EXORCIST.

2012 in the Movies: most fun at the movies

William Friedkin's KILLER JOE

1.  This year I attended over ten screenings that were followed by Q & As with the filmmaker.  My favorite was the rip-snorting Killer Joe, followed by an hour with one of the great raconteurs, director William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist).

2.  Sitting with other film geeks at the San Francisco International Film Festival, only to be surprised and delighted by the hilarious Norwegian comic thriller Headhunters.

3.  Watching the three-hour director’s cut of Margaret with The Wife and our friend Paula.

4.  Watching Bill W. (about the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous) in an audience that contained over 200 AA members,

5.  Enjoying the  classic Italian comedy Big Deal on Madonna Street for the first time.

6.  Discovering the political satire The Dark Horse and the workplace drama Employees Entrance from the early 1930s, both starring  Warren William, the King of Pre-Code.

7.  Revisiting classics like M, the 1979 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Exorcist and finding that they all hold up well today.

Killer Joe: OMG

Here’s a movie that will either thrill or disgust you. Either way, you sure ain’t gonna be bored.

In Killer Joe, Thomas Haden Church, Gina Gershon and Emile Hirsch play a white trash family with a get rich quick scheme.  They give a hit man (Matthew McConaughey) the teen daughter (Juno Temple) as a deposit.  They’re all as dumb as a bag of hammers, so what could go wrong?

Killer Joe was directed by William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist) and shot by cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (The Right Stuff, The Natural) in just 20 days.  These guys know how to tell a story, and Killer Joe pops and crackles.

Killer Joe is rated NC-17 for good reason and Friedkin accepts the rating without complaint.  Indeed, Killer Joe has its share of Sam Peckinpah style screen violence and an unsettling deflowering scene.  But the piece de resistance is an over-the-top sadistic encounter between McConaughey and Gershon involving a chicken drumstick,  at once disturbing and darkly hilarious.   But Sam Fuller and Quentin Tarantino would have loved it, and so did I.  Nevertheless, some viewers will feel like they need a shower after this movie.

The cast does a good job, but the picture really belongs to McConaughey and Temple.  McConaughey is currently recalibrating his career a la Alec Baldwin – he’s moving from playing pretty boys in the rom coms to taking meatier, more interesting roles.  He is both funny and menacing as Killer Joe (and I liked him in Bernie and Magic Mike, too).  I’m really looking forward to seeing him in Mud and The Paperboy.

The movie slowly makes Juno Temple’s character more and more central, until she takes command of the denouement.  Temple is always sexy (Kaboom and Dirty Girl), and here she is able to ratchet down her intelligence to play a very simple character, always exploited by others, who is finally empowered to take control.

I saw Killer Joe at a screening where Friedkin said that the screenwriter saw Juno Temple’s character as the receptacle for all feminine rage.  Friedkin himself sees it as a Cinderella story – just one where Cinderella’s Prince Charming is a professional killer.  hat’s all pretty deep sledding to me – I see Killer Joe as a very dark and violent comedy – kinda like In Bruges with twisted sex.