R.I.P. William Friedkin

[Big Magilla]

Rewatched Friedkin's version of 12 Angry Men.

I didn't find it claustrophobic at all. It ends with a scene outside the jury room as Lemmon and Cronyn wait for the elevator in the New York courthouse to take them down.

Reginald Rose updated his teleplay for this version to include four Black men and a Hispanic, and tailor some of the dialogue to their ethnicity which was a good thing, but still did not feature any women on the jury. Women had been allowed on juries in the U.S. since 1898. The 1932 film, Ladies of the Jury, based on a 1929 play, stars Edna May Oliver in more or less the same role as Henry Fonda had in the 1957 film and Jack Lemmon has in the 1997 version.

Rose's omission of women seems extremely odd with a woman judge giving instructions to the jury at the start of the film. His answer to the criticism was that if had included women, the title would have to be changed and he wasn't comfortable with that.

Contemporizing the jury discussion may have made the film more meaningful to audiences of the day, but it also dates the film in at least one reference point. The teleplay references a film that one of the jurors has just seen but gets the title backwards and can't recall the name of its star. The film was Secrets & Lies which immediately dates it to late 1996-early 1997.

The acting is fine across the board. I thought Ossie Davis and Dorian Harewood in the roles previously played by John Fiedler and Jack Klugman were more nuanced. If anything, Tony Danza was less annoying than Jack Warden while Mykelti Williamson was more annoying than Ed Begley as the characters that were almost as obnoxious as Lee J. Cobb's, toned down considerably in George C. Scott's Emmy-winning interpretation.

Both versions deserve to be seen.

[Big Magilla]

Heard an interesting point about Friedkin today. He was really interesting adapter of plays. Most people adapt plays and try to expand them outward. He does the opposite. He did the opposite. He went out of his way to make them more claustrophobic.

That's interesting but I never heard that before.

Friedkin got his start on TV in the early 1960s before TV movies really opened up, so he could have an innate tendency to do that but most of his films have been highly cinematic.

How many stage plays has he adapted? I count five - The Birthday Party (1968) which I've never seen or if I did, don't remember, The Boys in the Band (1970), Bug (2006), Killer Joe (2011), and the upcoming Caine Mutiny Court-Martial.

The Boys in the Band takes place mostly in an apartment but does open up beginning with scenes of the characters making their way to the party. It is not stagnant. It deftly moves between several rooms and the balcony.

I'm not familiar with the stage versions of Bug, a film I didn't like, and Killer Joe, one that I did. Bug might fit the scenario as it takes place mostly in a hotel room, but Killer Joe, though it was intense did not seem to be claustrophobic to me. I need to see it again.

12 Angry Men (1997), which I also need to rewatch, is more claustrophobic than Lumet's 1957 version as I recall, which makes it truer to Reginald Rose's original teleplay than the theatrical version which he also wrote.

I will be rewatching To Live and Die in L.A. today and will try to squeeze in Killer Joe, his last good movie, as well.

[dws1982]

His Twelve Angry Men, which wasn't a play originally, but of course has been staged many times since the Lumet film was released, never leaves the courthouse, unlike Lumet's film which ends on the courthouse steps. He makes good use of that juror room. I prefer his film to Lumet's, although I do like both. I think Lemmon's juror is more complex--he's not as heroic, there's doubt and question in the character and in the way we see him--and George C. Scott really blows Lee J. Cobb out of the water as Juror #3. Really good movie, and it seems like some people seem to be giving it a watch over the past few days. Very much worth watching.

[Sabin]

Heard an interesting point about Friedkin today. He was really interesting adapter of plays. Most people adapt plays and try to expand them outward. He does the opposite. He did the opposite. He went out of his way to make them more claustrophobic.

[dws1982]

In my research on Coppola (now the earliest surviving Best Director winner), Friedkin has emerged as an interesting supporting character/antagonist to Coppola through that 70's run. Their careers paralleled each other's in interesting ways. He was considered for the directing job that Coppola ultimately got on Finian's Rainbow, and both he and Coppola hit it big commercially and with the Oscars at a young age. Then he partnered with Coppola and Bogdanovich on the Directors Company, the short-lived filmmaker's production company at Paramount. Friedkin was the only one who didn't produce anything for the Company, partially, I guess because of other obligations, because it was formed right around the time he as making/releasing The Exorcist, but he also didn't produce anything for them after that, and then he killed the company. He didn't like The Conversation (he probably didn't like that it didn't make money, and since there was a clause in their contracts to share profits, he wouldn't get any) and Daisy Miller (fair enough), so he walked away. I think he and Coppola did ultimately reconcile, but their relationship certainly hadn't recovered by the late 70's when they both made their jungle movies, Friedkin's Sorcerer possibly as a response to what Coppola was doing(although he would've denied it) and since Sorcerer bombed long before Apocalypse Now ever saw the light of day, they never quite seemed like competitors. Both movies were bloated epics that have been redeemed with time (Coppola's almost immediately) and then after those films both of their careers went downhill, although they both had highly-regarded films after that. For late-era Friedkin, I like Bug a great deal, and his Tommy Lee Jones thrillers are great fun. HIs 12 Angry Men is also very good, with a really good cast: good at the time, with Lemmon, George C. Scott, Hume Cronyn, and Ossie Davis, and even better in retrospect; it has James Gandolfini just before The Sopranos, William Petersen a few years before CSI; even actors like Edward James Olmos, Armin Meuller-Stahl, Mykelti Williamson, and Courtney B. Vance are probably more recognizable now than they were in 1997. But Jade, at least in the theatrical cut (which is the only version I've seen) is as bad as any sex thriller of the 90's. I haven't seen To Live and Die in L.A., but it seems to be having a moment right now. I know he was a good interview and from what I've read he was willing to interact with fans and critics, sometimes just from reading what they had wrote about his films.

[Sabin]

Friedkin for me has always been something of a historical footnote. I wasn't there in the 1970's for his highwater mark, so I've never held the same reverence. The sense that I get from that era is that the first half (or so) of the decade was full of bright spots that married new cultural and film sensibilities to great box office returns that would give one hope for the future of the medium. If Coppola hit the zeitgeist with The Godfather, Friedkin might be the era's exemplar with the bummery Nixon era one-two punch of The French Connection and The Exorcist. Then famously his moment was done when Sorcerer debuted opposite Star Wars. Recently I was given a copy of Sorcerer for my 1977 rewatch. I've more reason to watch it now.

I have nothing to add to this conversation that others who were there can't say better. We're closing the book on the 1970's, an era that is bifurcated into great American films and great American blockbusters. Though not by his own doing choice, Friedkin's output straddled the lines with sequels to both his high water mark films released soon after. I wonder how long it will be until that decade is remembered more for the birth of the cinematic IP, or maybe we're already there.

[Reza]

Even many of the subpar thrillers Friedkin directed later in his career had great actors and perverse thrills - the trashy Jade, Rules of Engagement, The Hunted, Rampage, and Killer Joe. He also directed a superb group of actors - led by Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott in the tv remake of 12 Angry Men.

The French Connection was lauded at the Oscars but it has lost quite a bit of its power today. Too many subsequent cop thrillers have overshadowed it. His masterpiece remains The Exorcist which even today packs a huge punch despite all the imitations that came in its wake.

R.I.P William Friedkin

[Mister Tee]

He obviously lived long past his time at the tippy-top, but he kept working, at least intermittently, right up to the end -- his new version of The Caine Mutiny Court Martial is just about to screen at festivals.

His early efforts -- The Night They Raided Minsky's/The Boys in the Band -- in no way prepared audiences for his double-barreled high-octane smashes The French Connection and The Exorcist (though I did like both those initial works). And he never matched that extraordinary box-office and Oscar success of 1971-73 -- Sorcerer and The Brinks Job are both likable achievements, but didn't get near the attention.

Cruising was more a controversy than a movie by the time it opened, and it hobbled his career for a time after (along with the financial failure pf Deal of the Century). To Live and Die in L.A. got him back in critics' good graces, but wasn't embraced by audiences to the same extent as a decade before. In later years, his most notable successes came with filmizations of Tracey Letts' plays.

Apart from Spielberg and Scorsese (maybe Coppola), most directors from that exciting 70s era had brief times at the top: Bogdanovich, Ashby and Friedkin all suffered top-of-the-world-to-has-been trajectories as Hollywood changed in the 80s. But it doesn't erase what they produced in their primes. I'm mixed on The Exorcist, but I think The French Connection holds up as a pretty sensational police thriller with a great performance at its center. A salute to the man who made that happen.

[Big Magilla]

Another shocker.

What do we know about his production of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial?

It's going to be shown at Venice, but then what? It was made for Showtime. Is it going to have a theatrical release?

[Mister Tee]

https://variety.com/2023/film/news/will ... 235689676/