Okay, time to get personal. If I had a top 10 list of favorite movies (which I defiantly do not), The Exorcist would be on it. I’ve known and worshipped the film ever since I first encountered it – on television, no less – at the age of 13. I’ve seen it probably more times than any other movie, and have watched the final climactic 20 minutes exponentially more. In high school, against my coach’s well-intentioned protestations, I performed a 10-minute selection from William Peter Blatty’s source novel for our speech team and ended up attending the national finals in Dramatic Interpretation. Needless to say, I’ve been…wait for it…possessed by all things Exorcist for nearly three decades now, and even upon revisiting it last year, it still holds up. (The original cut, not the bloated and tricked up Version You’ve Never Seen, thank you very much.) As a result, I’ve known the name of director William Friedkin for a long time now, and while he hasn’t always hit the bull’s eye, he’ll go down in the history books thanks to the one-two punch of The French Connection and The Exorcist.
