“Let’s watch a scary movie,” KM said to me on All Hallow’s Eve eve.
‘Great,” I answered back, and began my Apple TV search, which always drives her crazy. It’s understandable, as I spend much more time searching for movies than actually watching them.
“How about ‘Paranormal Activity’?” I began.
“No.”
“Well then, a slasher, like ‘Halloween’?”
“Uh uh.”
“The Grudge” or “The Ring”?
“Never again!”
“OK, something with a zombie … but a slow zombie, not one of those Usain Bolt types.”
“I don’t like zombies, and what’s a Usain Bolt?”
But by now she had lost interest and stared down at her phone, so I quietly found something I wanted and selected “Rent and Watch Now” on the screen.
The sound was still down but KM looked up in time to see the large red letters on the black screen that read, “From the novel by William Peter Blatty.”
“Ohhhh, this is OK,” she at last agreed.
I don’t know how many times I’ve seen “The Exorcist,” but when it ended that night I felt the same as KM, who said, “What a great movie.”
We saw it first at the old Center Theatre back in 1974. (It was released on Dec. 26, 1973.) We waited in a long line outside, which wound half way around the entire city block.
I was reading some trivia about it the other day, and discovered a few interesting things I’d not heard. For instance, Warner Bros. bought the film rights and offered it to several top directors, who all turned it down, including Stanley Kubrick, Arthur Penn, and Mike Nichols, who said he doubted he could find a 12-year-old girl who could carry the movie. But the author, Blatty, wanted little known William Friedkin, who became a shoe-in after “The French Connection” came out around that same time.
The model for Chris MacNeil, Regan’s film-actress mother, was Blatty’s friend Shirley MacLaine, who expressed an interest; however, Friedkin didn’t want her.
Audrey Hepburn was offered the role, but she didn’t want to leave her home in Rome. Anne Bancroft wanted it as well, but she was pregnant. Jane Fonda declined, in a profanely worded telegram. Finally, Ellen Burstyn, then best known for her supporting role in “The Last Picture Show,” insisted to Friedkin that she was right for the part. (Among other things, she was a lapsed Catholic and the mother of a teenager.) With much persistence, she was given the role.
The model for Father Damien Karras was Blatty himself, a Catholic undergoing a crisis of faith. The filmmakers signed Stacy Keach, but then they met Jason Miller, the playwright, whose play, “That Championship Season,” was about to win the Pulitzer Prize. Miller, who’d dropped out of a Catholic seminary before becoming an actor and playwright, insisted he should be cast as the doubtful, tormented priest Karras. He persuaded Friedkin to let him screen test with Burstyn; Friedkin agreed, and Warner Bros. was forced to buy Keach out of his contract.
One small but key role in the film was the drunken beggar who accosts Father Karras in the subway (“Something for an old altar boy, Father.”), and whose voice is later heard coming from Regan’s mouth as a demonic taunt. Friedkin’s casting director found Vinny Russell, an actual New York barfly, whose only known address was the White Rose Tavern. Friedkin says Russell was drunk and wearing his own clothes when they shot the scene, and was still drunk months later when they brought him back to the sound studio to re-record his one line, which was the extent of his film career.
Jay Edwards is editor-in-chief of the Hamilton County Herald and an award-winning columnist.
Contact him at jedwards@dailydata.com
Source: Moviefone