In 2003, I briefly worked at Paramount Pictures. I was a temp in the story department, and occasionally I would have to literally run things to Sherry Lansing’s office. One day I ran coverage to her. While speeding down the staircase of the Preston Sturges building, I nearly collided with an older gentleman whom I immediately recognized as the great William Friedkin. I don’t remember exactly what he said first but it was a combination of fucks, but when I told him I was a fan, he simply nodded. Then I asked him about Sorcerer and he smiled and said, “You have good taste, kid…”
He noticed the coverage in my hand and said, “You better run that to Sherry, I’ll be here when you get back…” I ran to her office, dropped off the coverage, then went back and chatted with Friedkin, who was waiting for me. I was in awe of him, he was a legend but was also very real and relatable—a man of the streets, who fully lived life before becoming a director. We made lunch plans, but due to the volatile nature of temping, I would never see him again.
After he passed last year, I read “The Friedkin Connection,” his autobiography. He opens the book with his beginnings. He had no entertainment experience and responded to a newspaper ad for a local TV station, and somehow, went to the wrong station but the guy there liked him and hired him anyway.
Friedkin worked in the mail room and observed people working on shows, taking notes and eventually worked his way up to director. It was during this time that he saw Citizen Kane and sparked his interest to become a filmmaker. He went on to become one of the great directors of the 1970s and beyond with films like The French Connection, The Exorcist, To Live and Die In L.A., and Killer Joe, to name a few.
Here are some of the countless filmmaking lessons from his book:
Camera Placement
“Camera Logic. The instinctive choice a director makes on where to place the camera to best tell the story. The camera’s not jiggling or wandering around or being seduced by something else in the frame. It’s exactly where it should be. Hitchcock, John Ford, Sidney Lumet, and others achieved this. Would that Camera Logic applied to life, everything would be framed just right. Not only what’s in the frame but who.”
Selling Yourself
“From their beginning, the movies developed as an entertainment medium, and its objective has remained profit. A director gets to make a film only because a studio executive or a financier thinks it could make money. It’s almost impossible to choose a project with no eye to the marketplace. Ingmar Bergman, Fellini, Godard, and Akira Kurosawa had to sell tickets, and when their films stopped working at the box office, they couldn’t get them made. You can have shelves of trophies and citations, appear on countless critics lists, be honored at film festivals all over the world, but you still have to take a meeting with a young studio executive who’s never produced, written, or directed, and sell yourself all over again.”
Finding New Life
“A film is made three times: first when you prepare the script. When you shoot it, with contributions from the cast and crew, it becomes something else. Then in the cutting room, during editing and sound mixing, it acquires a new life. The film changes and evolves, and only coalesces when these stages are complete.”
Feel The Sound
“Sound is added after the picture is cut. I like to layer sound, not only using vehicle noises but mixing in interpretive sounds like a jet engine roar or a shotgun reverb, so some sounds aren’t simply heard but felt.”
Thank The Movie Gods
“I don’t give much credibility to the auteur theory. A director’s intelligence can inform a film, the films of Fellini, Antonioni, Bergman, and many others attest to that but film, like theater, is the most collaborative of art forms. To become a director you must have ambition, luck, and the grace of God. Talent counts, but without luck and ambition, opportunities won’t occur.”
