William Friedkin, Director of ‘French Connection’ and ‘Exorcist,’ Dies at 87

William Friedkin, a filmmaker whose gritty, visceral fashion and fascination with characters on the sting helped make “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist” two of the largest box-office hits of the Seventies, died on Monday at his residence within the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles. He was 87..

The trigger was coronary heart failure and pneumonia, mentioned his spouse, Sherry Lansing, the previous head of Paramount Pictures in Hollywood.

Mr. Friedkin was a promising however not well-known director with a background in documentary movie when he teamed up with the producer Philip D’Antoni to make “The French Connection,” based mostly on the true story of two swashbuckling New York City law enforcement officials, Sonny Grosso and Eddie Egan, who broke up a world heroin-trafficking ring in 1961. The script was tailored from a e book by Robin Moore.

Working with a modest finances, Mr. Friedkin and Mr. D’Antoni relied on a forged of relative unknowns. Roy Scheider, an Off Broadway actor, took the function of Mr. Grosso, referred to as Buddy Russo within the movie. Gene Hackman, whose modest credit included a small half in a giant movie, “Bonnie and Clyde,” and a giant half in a small movie, “I Never Sang for My Father,” was employed to play his associate, Popeye Doyle, based mostly on Mr. Egan.

By sheer accident, Fernando Rey performed Alain Charnier, a personality based mostly on the worldwide drug kingpin Jean Jehan. Mr. Friedkin had wished Francisco Rabal, from the Luis Buñuel movie “Belle de Jour,” however his casting director confused the 2 actors.

Filmed on location in New York for lower than $2 million, or about $15 million in immediately’s cash (the typical Hollywood movie value $3 million on the time), “The French Connection” delivered gut-wrenching drama, documentary realism and edge-of-your-seat thrills. Popeye Doyle’s pursuit, in a commandeered automotive, of a hijacked elevated practice in Brooklyn has typically been referred to as the perfect car-chase scene ever filmed.

“The French Connection” was launched in 1971 and dominated the Academy Awards the following 12 months, profitable the Oscar for greatest image and incomes Mr. Friedkin a greatest director award. Mr. Hackman received for greatest actor in a number one function. The movie additionally received within the tailored screenplay and enhancing classes.

Mr. Friedkin adopted up a 12 months later with “The Exorcist,” based mostly on William Peter Blatty’s best-selling horror novel concerning the demonic possession of a 12-year-old woman. Filmed largely on location within the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, it was a suspenseful, typically ugly, cinematic research of evil at work within the trendy world — evil conceived in nearly medieval phrases.

Linda Blair, because the possessed woman, gave a terrifying efficiency enhanced by eye-popping particular results. In a cinematic second that entered into legend, she spewed a jet of inexperienced vomit — truly a mix of oatmeal and pea soup — straight into the face of a priest performed by Jason Miller. Later within the movie, throughout the exorcism, her head spun full circle on her shoulders, lifting delicate viewers straight out of their seats.

The movie, launched in late December 1973, grew to become an exceptional hit, one in every of Hollywood’s top-grossing films up to now, with ticket gross sales of greater than $200 million (the equal of about $1.3 billion immediately). It was additionally the primary horror movie to be nominated for a greatest image Oscar. (It misplaced to “The Sting.”)

In New York, audiences lined up for hours within the freezing chilly, whereas scalpers offered tickets for 3 times their face worth. Vincent Canby, in The New York Times, dismissed the movie as “claptrap” however pronounced it “the biggest thing to hit the industry since Mary Pickford, popcorn, pornography and ‘The Godfather.’”

The ripple results from each movies lasted for many years. “The French Connection” injected realism and violence into hard-boiled thrillers just like the “Dirty Harry” movies and tv police collection like “Hill Street Blues,” whereas “The Exorcist” modified essential attitudes towards horror movies.

“Horror was a disreputable genre, but Friedkin elevated it with the A-list treatment,” Peter Biskind, the writer of “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ’n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood” (1998), mentioned in an interview for this obituary in 2016. “‘The Exorcist’ was so successful that it paved the way for the gentrification of B movies that has given us ‘Star Wars,’ the ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ cycle and the comic-book movies we have today.”

William Friedkin, identified to his buddies as Billy, was born in Chicago on Aug. 25, 1935, to Louis and Rachel (Green) Friedkin. Both dad and mom have been Jews who had left Ukraine early within the century with their households to flee the tsarist pogroms. His father labored quite a lot of low-paying jobs; his mom, who was generally known as Rae, was an working room nurse.

After graduating from Senn High School on Chicago’s North Side in 1953, Mr. Friedkin took a job within the mailroom of the native tv station WGN. Within a couple of years he had labored his approach as much as director, turning out a whole lot of exhibits, from “Bozo’s Circus” to dwell performances of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and documentaries.

His documentary work coincided with the appearance of moveable cameras, a decisive affect on his fashion. “I learned on equipment that almost begged for you to get up and move around,” he advised Gene Siskel, the movie critic for The Chicago Tribune, in 1980.

After his documentary “The People vs. Paul Crump,” a few death-row prisoner within the Cook County Jail, received the grand prize on the San Francisco Film Festival in 1962, Mr. Friedkin went to work in Los Angeles for David Wolper, a producer of documentaries for all three tv networks.

Mr. Friedkin’s first project as a feature-film director was a Sonny and Cher car, “Good Times” (1967), which inspired critics with its cheery bounce and ingenious digital camera work. He adopted with “The Birthday Party” (1968), a movie model of the Harold Pinter play, with Robert Shaw within the lead function, and “The Night They Raided Minsky’s” (1968), an odd knockabout interval piece concerning the burlesque period. He returned to theatrical supply materials with “The Boys in the Band” (1970), Mart Crowley’s Off Broadway hit about seven homosexual buddies reflecting on their lives and loves.

“The French Connection” was rejected by each studio on the town earlier than Richard Zanuck, in his ultimate days at twentieth Century Fox, gave it the inexperienced gentle. Convinced that the movie required a street-level documentary really feel, Mr. Friedkin spent weeks on the beat with the 2 law enforcement officials who had damaged the French Connection drug case. He mentioned he paid an official on the New York Transit Authority a $40,000 bribe to miss the principles and permit the well-known chase sequence to be filmed.

After “The French Connection” received 5 Oscars and “The Exorcist” grew to become an infinite box-office success, Mr. Friedkin discovered himself probably the most sought-after administrators in Hollywood.

A turbulent interval ensued. He remade “The Wages of Fear,” Henri-Georges Clouzot’s basic 1953 thriller about drifters driving truckloads of nitroglycerin over rugged terrain, as “Sorcerer” (1977), with Mr. Scheider within the half initially performed by Yves Montand. Most critics discovered it lengthy, labored and never notably thrilling. It was launched across the similar time as “Star Wars,” and died a fast demise.

He later referred to as it, in an interview with Indiewire in 2017, “the only film I’ve made that I can still watch.”

The lurid “Cruising” (1980), with Al Pacino as a New York City detective who goes undercover within the metropolis’s homosexual S-and-M bars to unravel a homicide, aroused the fierce opposition of homosexual activists, who objected to the movie’s portrayal of homosexual males and who picketed the placement shoots, a lot to Mr. Friedkin’s dismay.

That movie was the primary in a collection of flops that included “Deal of the Century” (1983), a farce about arms sellers with Chevy Chase, Gregory Hines and Sigourney Weaver, and the critically reviled “Jade” (1995), a homicide thriller with a script by Joe Eszterhas and with Linda Fiorentino and David Caruso within the starring roles. Along the way in which, Mr. Friedkin managed one thing like a return to type with “To Live and Die in L.A.” (1985), an atmospheric noir a few Secret Service agent in search of to avenge the demise of his associate.

“The paradox of William Friedkin is that he made only two really good films, ‘The French Connection’ and ‘The Exorcist,’” Mr. Biskind mentioned. “There are others that are interesting but deeply flawed. But those two films had an outsize influence.”

Mr. Friedkin married Ms. Lansing in 1991. She was the chairman and chief govt of Paramount Pictures from 1992 to 2005. His first three marriages — to the actresses Jeanne Moreau and Lesley-Anne Down and the tv news anchor Kelly Lange — resulted in divorce. In addition to Ms. Lansing, he’s survived by two sons, Jackson and Cedric.

After years within the skilled wilderness, Mr. Friedkin received constructive critiques for 2 courtroom dramas: a 1997 tv remake of “Twelve Angry Men,” with Jack Lemmon, George C. Scott and Hume Cronyn; and “Rules of Engagement” (2000), with Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson.

He went on to direct a number of well-received small movies, two of them based mostly on performs by Tracy Letts: “Bug” (2006), a research in horror and delusion, and “Killer Joe” (2011), the sordid story of a murder-for-hire plot that takes an odd flip when the hit man, performed by Matthew McConaughey, enters the image.

In 2013 Mr. Friedkin was awarded a Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement on the Venice Film Festival. That similar 12 months, Harper printed his e book “The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir.”

Late in his profession, he returned to acquainted territory with “The Devil and Father Amorth” (2017), a documentary account of an exorcism carried out in an Italian village by the Vatican’s chief exorcist.

“I don’t see myself as a pioneer,” he advised The Independent in 2012. “I see myself as a working guy and that’s all, and that is enough.”

Ashley Shannon Wu contributed reporting.