William Friedkin, the Oscar-winning director of Nineteen Seventies cinematic classics “The Exorcist” and “The French Connection,” has died in Los Angeles. He was 87.
The legendary filmmaker’s passing was confirmed by his wife, former producer and Paramount Pictures studio head Sherry Lansing.
Friedkin also helmed the groundbreaking gay-themed 1970 drama “The Boys within the Band,” in addition to boundary-pushing movies akin to “Sorcerer” (1977), “Cruising” (1980), “To Live and Die in L.A.” (1985), “Rules of Engagement” (2000), “Bug” (2006) and “Killer Joe” (2011) amongst others.
Although his box office and demanding acclaim was often hit and miss, his popularity as an auteur was undisputed within the industry.
“I never considered myself the good American anything. Not then and never now. I consider myself just one other member of the crew, the very best paid member of the crew,” he once told The Los Angeles Times. “Winning the Academy Award [and the Directors’ Guild Award for 1971’s “The French Connection”] was an unlimited honor. But I believed I had won it prematurely, that I hadn’t paid enough dues at that time.”
![1971: Producer PHILIP D'ANTONI [Best Picture, THE FRENCH CONNECTION], GENE HACKMAN [Best Actor, FRENCH CONNECTION], JANE FONDA [Best Actress, KLUTE], WILLIAM FRIEDKIN [Best Director, THE FRENCH CONNECTION], 4/10/72](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/10/french-oscars-four.jpg?w=1024)
His most up-to-date production is a remake of the Herman Wouk stage and screen drama “The Caine Mutiny-Court Martial,” which stars Kiefer Sutherland and has been accepted into the 2023 Venice Film Festival.
He was a part of the acclaimed generation of ’70s filmmakers who virtually reinvented the normal Hollywood studio system with rule-breaking, genre-defying projects that challenged the studio establishment.
Several of its members — which included Francis Ford Coppola and the late Peter Bogdanovich — joined forces to create The Directors Company in an try and retain their individualistic independence, but infighting quickly led to its dissolution, not long after that they had collectively turned down the George Lucas blockbuster “Star Wars” in 1976, in accordance with The Hollywood Reporter.
Born in Chicago on Aug. 29, 1935, Friedkin was the one child of a nurse he declared a “saint” and an often unemployed father who he once said “appeared to don’t have any sense of purpose except day-to-day survival.” Each of his parents hailed from Jewish families that had fled Ukraine within the early twentieth century.
Friedkin grew up poor on welfare — he said his dad never earned greater than $50/week in his whole life and died indigent — but Friedkin claimed he “never knew it. All my friends lived the identical way … The blokes I hung with, like me, had no moral compass,” he wrote in his memoir “The Friedkin Connection” in 2014. “I literally didn’t know the difference between right and fallacious.”
Friedkin began his directorial profession in television with a 1965 episode of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and a number of TV movies. His big screen profession launched with a snow burn with the late Sixties B-movies akin to “Good Times” (1967), “The Birthday Party” (1968) and “The Night They Raided Minsky’s” (1968).
The iconoclastic filmmaker’s profession declined because the a long time wore on, but his rebel spirit remained strong.
“I haven’t made my ‘Citizen Kane,’” he admitted in his autobiography, “but there’s more work to do. I don’t know the way much, but I’m loving it.”
He’s survived by his wife Sherry Lansing, 79, whom he married in 1991, and two sons: Jack Friedkin and film editor Cedric Nairn-Smith. He was previsional married to actresses Jeanne Moreau and Lesley-Anne Down and newscaster Kelly Lange.
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