William Friedkin, director of ‘The Exorcist,’ dead at 87
nypost.comtold the Los Angeles Times. “Winning the Academy Award [and the Directors Guild Award for 1971’s ‘The French Connection’] was an enormous honor.
But I thought I had won it prematurely, that I hadn’t paid enough dues at that point.”His most recent 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 part of the acclaimed generation of ’70s filmmakers who virtually reinvented the traditional Hollywood studio system with rule-breaking, genre-defying projects that challenged the studio status quo.
Several of its members — which included Francis Ford Coppola and the late Peter Bogdanovich — joined forces to create The Directors Company in an attempt to retain their individualistic independence, but infighting quickly led to its dissolution, not long after they had collectively turned down the George Lucas blockbuster “Star Wars” in 1976, according to The Hollywood Reporter.Born in Chicago on Aug.
29, 1935, Friedkin was the only child of a nurse he declared a “saint” and an often unemployed father who he once said “seemed to have no sense of purpose except day-to-day survival.” Both of his parents hailed from Jewish families that had fled Ukraine in the early 20th century.Friedkin grew up poor on welfare — he said his dad never earned more than $50/week in his whole life and died indigent — but Friedkin claimed he “never knew it.
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