Few filmmakers embody both the glory and the chaos of New Hollywood as fully as William Friedkin. A man of uncompromising temperament and ferocious energy, Friedkin was both a craftsman and a provocateur. His films—ranging from the gritty realism of The French Connection (1971) to the metaphysical terror of The Exorcist (1973), and the existential despair of Sorcerer (1977)—are united not by genre, but by intensity.
Friedkin was not a director who played it safe. He approached filmmaking as a kind of battle, often against studios, actors, and even himself. His career arc mirrors that of New Hollywood itself: a meteoric rise, a near self-destruction, and an unpredictable later period filled with flashes of brilliance. To explore William Friedkin’s life and work is to confront not only one of cinema’s most daring directors, but also the volatile nature of creative genius itself.
Early Life: From Chicago Streets to Television
William Friedkin was born on August 29, 1935, in Chicago, Illinois, to a working-class Jewish family. Growing up in a tough urban environment would shape his lifelong attraction to gritty, realistic storytelling. Friedkin often described himself as a “street kid,” someone who learned about life not in classrooms but on sidewalks and in alleys.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Friedkin was not a cinephile child who grew up obsessed with movies. Instead, he discovered cinema later, through television. His first major exposure to the medium came when he took a job in local Chicago TV. By his early 20s, Friedkin was directing documentaries and live television productions for WGN.
This documentary background is crucial to understanding his later style. Friedkin learned to work quickly, to value realism over polish, and to improvise when necessary. His 1962 documentary The People vs. Paul Crump—about a man on death row—was not only powerful, but also credited with helping save the subject’s life. It revealed Friedkin’s ability to combine moral urgency with cinematic craft, a duality that would define his career.
Hollywood Beginnings: From TV to Feature Films
Friedkin moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1960s, determined to break into feature films. He began directing episodes of TV series, including The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, before making his feature debut with Good Times (1967), a musical comedy starring Sonny & Cher. It was, by most accounts, forgettable.
He followed it with The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968), a period comedy about burlesque. The film had its admirers, but Friedkin himself was unsatisfied. His true breakthrough came with The Boys in the Band (1970), an adaptation of Mart Crowley’s groundbreaking stage play about a group of gay men in New York.
The Boys in the Band remains a significant cultural artifact. Though divisive, it was one of the first American films to portray gay characters with complexity, however flawed. Friedkin, himself not gay, approached the material with both rawness and discomfort, qualities that mirrored society’s tensions around the subject. For a director still finding his voice, it was a daring choice.
The French Connection: Grit and Revolution
Everything changed with The French Connection (1971). Based on a true story about New York narcotics detectives pursuing an international heroin smuggling ring, the film electrified audiences with its raw style and relentless pacing.
What set The French Connection apart was Friedkin’s documentary-influenced approach. He shot on location in New York, often without permits, using handheld cameras and natural light. The film’s most famous sequence—the car chase under the elevated train—was filmed dangerously, with real traffic and near accidents. Friedkin pushed his crew to extremes, famously firing a gun to startle actor Gene Hackman into more authentic reactions.
The result was a thriller that felt alive, dangerous, and immediate. The French Connection won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and transformed Friedkin into one of the most celebrated filmmakers of his generation. It also became a blueprint for gritty, urban crime cinema, influencing everything from Serpico to modern television dramas.
The Exorcist: Terror and Transcendence
If The French Connection made Friedkin a star, The Exorcist (1973) made him a legend. Adapted from William Peter Blatty’s bestselling novel, the film tells the story of a young girl possessed by a demon, and the priests who attempt to save her.
Friedkin approached the material not as fantasy but as documentary realism. He cast respected actors like Ellen Burstyn and Max von Sydow to ground the story in credibility. He used restrained camerawork and naturalistic performances to make the supernatural elements all the more shocking.
But Friedkin was also notorious for his brutal methods on set. He would fire guns near actors to elicit startled reactions, pull Burstyn violently during a stunt (injuring her back), and push his crew to the breaking point. While some criticized these tactics, others argued they contributed to the film’s raw intensity.
The result was nothing short of a cultural phenomenon. The Exorcist terrified audiences worldwide, with reports of fainting, vomiting, and mass hysteria in theaters. It grossed over $400 million (an astronomical figure for the time) and became the first horror film nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.
More than just a horror movie, The Exorcist was a meditation on faith, evil, and the fragility of human belief. Friedkin tapped into cultural anxieties of the 1970s—about religion, family, and the unknown. Even today, it remains one of the most influential films ever made.
Sorcerer: Ambition and Collapse
After The Exorcist, Friedkin could have done anything. What he chose was Sorcerer (1977), a remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s French classic The Wages of Fear. The film follows four desperate men transporting nitroglycerin across treacherous South American terrain.
Sorcerer was, in many ways, Friedkin’s ultimate statement: an intense, existential journey about fate, risk, and survival. Shot on location in the Dominican Republic, it was plagued by logistical nightmares, accidents, and budget overruns. Friedkin insisted on authenticity, building enormous sets in the jungle and nearly killing his crew in the process.
The final film is breathtaking—harrowing sequences of trucks crossing collapsing bridges, mudslides, and jungle chaos—all shot without CGI. Yet when Sorcerer premiered, it was a disaster. Released just weeks after Star Wars, it flopped at the box office. Critics were baffled by its bleakness.
For Friedkin, Sorcerer marked a turning point. The lavish budgets and excesses of the New Hollywood era were over, and the blockbuster age had begun. Though now regarded as a masterpiece, at the time it derailed his career.
The 1980s: Controversy and Reinvention
The 1980s were a tumultuous period for Friedkin. He directed Cruising (1980), a thriller starring Al Pacino as a cop investigating murders in New York’s gay S&M community. Even before its release, the film was protested by gay rights activists, who feared it would stigmatize their community.
Friedkin defended the film as an exploration of identity and violence, but the controversy overshadowed its artistry. Today, Cruising has been reevaluated as a daring, if flawed, portrait of repression and subculture, but at the time, it damaged Friedkin’s reputation.
He rebounded somewhat with To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), a stylish crime thriller about Secret Service agents pursuing a counterfeiter. The film combined Friedkin’s documentary grit with slick 1980s aesthetics, including a pulsating soundtrack by Wang Chung. Its car chase rivaled The French Connection and proved that Friedkin still had his edge.
Other projects, like Deal of the Century (1983) and Rampage (1987), were less successful. Friedkin seemed caught between the radicalism of his past and the commercial demands of Hollywood.
Later Career: Unpredictable and Unapologetic
In the 1990s and 2000s, Friedkin’s career took unexpected turns. He directed Blue Chips (1994), a sports drama starring Nick Nolte and NBA players, exploring corruption in college basketball. He also helmed Jade (1995), a much-maligned erotic thriller written by Joe Eszterhas.
But then came a late-career resurgence. Bug (2006), based on Tracy Letts’ play, was a claustrophobic psychological thriller starring Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon. It explored paranoia, conspiracy, and mental breakdown with startling intensity. Critics hailed it as a return to form.
Even more acclaimed was Killer Joe (2011), another Letts adaptation, starring Matthew McConaughey in one of his most chilling roles. The NC-17-rated film was shocking, violent, and darkly comic, proving that Friedkin had lost none of his edge.
These films revealed a director who, even in his seventies, remained fearless—willing to provoke, disturb, and confront audiences.
Style and Themes
Across his career, certain qualities define Friedkin’s work:
- Documentary Realism: Rooted in his early TV work, Friedkin favored handheld cameras, natural light, and real locations.
- Moral Ambiguity: His protagonists are rarely heroes—often flawed, desperate, or morally compromised.
- Intensity: Whether car chases, exorcisms, or psychological breakdowns, Friedkin’s films push situations to extremes.
- Existential Despair: Especially in Sorcerer and Bug, his characters face not just danger, but the void.
Friedkin himself described his approach as “capturing truth at 24 frames per second.” He believed in immersion, in creating situations so real that audiences could not help but feel them viscerally.
Personality: The Volcano Behind the Camera
Friedkin was as infamous off-screen as on. Known for his temper and uncompromising vision, he clashed with actors, producers, and studios. His on-set tactics—shooting guns, berating performers—would be considered abusive today, but reflected his obsession with authenticity.
Yet he was also fiercely intelligent, articulate, and self-aware. In interviews, he could shift from arrogance to humility, from storytelling bravado to philosophical reflection. He saw himself not just as a filmmaker, but as a truth-seeker.
Legacy: The Last of the Dangerous Filmmakers
William Friedkin died on August 7, 2023, at the age of 87. His death marked the end of an era. With him, one of the last great figures of New Hollywood was gone.
His legacy is immense. The French Connection and The Exorcist remain landmarks of cinema, endlessly influential. Sorcerer, once dismissed, is now regarded as a masterpiece of existential cinema. His later films remind us that he never lost his daring spirit.
Friedkin’s career is a study in extremes—triumphs and failures, genius and chaos. But through it all, he remained true to his vision. He was never a director who played safe, never one to pander. He was, in every sense, dangerous.
And perhaps that is what cinema needs most: not safety, but danger. Not predictability, but risk. William Friedkin gave us that, in abundance.
Conclusion: Why Friedkin Matters
To love William Friedkin’s films is to love cinema at its most visceral and uncompromising. His work reminds us that movies are not just entertainment, but confrontations with reality, morality, and fear.
He may not have had the consistent career of some of his peers, but when he succeeded, he changed the language of cinema. His films still pulse with urgency, still shock with their rawness, still haunt with their ambiguity.
In a world of increasingly sanitized blockbusters, Friedkin’s legacy endures as a reminder of what cinema can be when guided not by caution, but by obsession. He was flawed, volatile, and brilliant—and in those contradictions, he gave us some of the greatest films ever made.
William Friedkin was, above all, a believer in the power of cinema to disturb, enlighten, and transform. That is why, decades from now, people will still watch The French Connection, The Exorcist, and Sorcerer—and still feel the danger that Friedkin put on screen.