William
Friedkin directed the scariest film of all time and he also survived some of the
scariest flops in Hollywood history. Two of the latter, Sorcerer and Cruising have
enjoyed an appreciative critical reappraisal in the years since their release
(but Jade, not so much). All in all,
it is quite a career for the filmmaker and his colleagues to reflect on throughout
Francesco Zippel’s Friedkin Uncut,
which is currently playing in Los Angeles.
When
Friedkin first sits down with Zippel and a cup of black coffee, he offers up an
extended riff on how Jesus and Hitler are such intriguing characters because of
the extremes they represent. This is the sort of material we would expect from
a pretentious English major, but once he settles down, Friedkin has plenty of
entertaining anecdotes to relate. Wisely, Zippel devotes the most time to The Exorcist and The French Connection, for obvious reasons. Both films were
blockbuster hits in the early 1970s, whose power remains utterly undiminished
with the passage of years.
Sorcerer and Cruising probably get the next most
screen time after his Oscar-winning classics, partly because of the colorfully
chaotic stories making-of stories and partly because so many critics and
colleagues have come to respect them, especially the former. Again, this
totally makes historical and aesthetic sense. To Live and Die in L.A. also gets its due, since it is a good film
and introduced most movie-goers to Willem Dafoe and William Peterson. Plus, we
see a fair amount of Friedkin promoting his latest, the real-life exorcism
documentary The Devil and Father Amorth,
but that gives the film an opportunity to revisit his 1973 masterwork again.
Strangely,
Rampage and the financial
misadventures that kept in shelved for years go unmentioned. Likewise, the
roundly reviled Jade is scrupulously
ignored, even though Friedkin himself has defended in the past. Frankly, it is
always disappointing when these filmmaker profile-docs do not have its subject
dish on the dogs in their filmography (seriously, Friedkin probably has some
interesting things to say about Deal of
the Century).
Regardless,
Friedkin is sufficiently candid and animated to hold the audience’s interest,
even if they aren’t already fans or friends. Quentin Tarantino is enthusiastic,
as always, but somewhat less annoying than usual in his talking head sequences.
We also hear quite a bit from Francis Ford Coppola, which is impressive. Dafoe,
Peterson, Ellen Burstyn, and Matthew McConaughey all have good stories or
relevant insights to add.
Uncut really is a
tribute film, but that is not necessarily bad.
Arguably, a wider ranging examination of his films could have led to
fuller understanding of his career, but more to the point, there are probably a
lot of cult movie fans out there who would like to hear the inside dope on The Guardian and the C.A.T. Squad TV-movies co-starring the
late, great Steve James (or maybe that’s just me). On the other hand, most
genre connoisseurs could easily watch an entire documentary on The Exorcist—and there is indeed a lot
of Exorcist in Uncut. Mostly brisk and amusing, Friedman Uncut is recommended for devoted cineastes. It is now
playing in LA at the Arena Cinelounge.
