The Exorcist (1973) | Archive

0:03 What kind of a show are you guys putting on here today?

0:06 You're not interested in art?

0:07 No. Well, look, we're going to do this thing.

0:09 We're going to have a conversation.

0:13 It is Halloween week, Josh. Where does Halloween rank for you among the holidays?

0:18 You a big Halloween guy?

0:20 Yeah, love Halloween. Always have. But, I mean, I'm sappy. Like, I really get into the Christmas cozy, you know, season, Advent, all of that. It's going to be hard to topple it. But Halloween, I mean, since I used to dress up as Indiana Jones every year and go out trick-or-treating, it's like, it's a big one. It always has been.

0:43 Well, we are honoring Halloween with this archive drop this week. Going all the way back into the archive, can you believe it, to 2013 on this show, we discussed the fourth film in our contemporary Korean auteur's marathon, Na Hung Jin's The Chaser from 2008.

0:59 But the main review.

1:02 in honor of Halloween that year, was our discussion of 1973's The Exorcist. So two things I want to bring up. One, and I may be off on a couple of the details here, so this is where you can also jump in and correct me. This is a sacred cow review, as we call them. Movies that are widely acclaimed, beloved classic films, usually beloved by us as well, And that's why we're revisiting them to see if they are indeed sacred cows or false idols. We have probably, I don't know how many we had done in 2013, but by now in 2026, we've done 60 to 80 probably of these, at least 60, I would say. I do know for a fact that if you just go by a simple rating, the simple letterboxd rating of three to five stars, for me,

1:59 three to five stars, do you like it?

2:01 Did I give it the heart or not?

2:03 Yeah. I have liked, liked to love every single movie we have given the sacred cow treatment. So either all those, except for one. Now that means either all of these movies are good to great as they quote unquote should be, or I'm a terrible critic or both.

2:27 Okay.

2:28 And you know, take, take, take door one, two or three.

2:32 Love that construct.

2:34 Yeah.

2:35 Now the one, the one that got a negative review and I stand by it is the movie that never should have beaten Halloween in our recent movie death match.

2:47 It is.

2:48 Yeah.

2:48 I mean, I don't know why you're even bringing this up.

2:51 I think it's your, I think it's your favorite horror movie. A Nightmare on Elm Street.

2:55 Nightmare on Elm Street.

2:56 So here's where I'm going. Am I correct? Is it a Blair Witch or is it Nightmare that you put as your favorite horror movie?

3:02 Nightmare's one, Blair Witch is two.

3:03 Okay, so there you go. So here's my point. Here's where I'm going. Your favorite horror movie of all time.

3:08 I think I know where you're going.

3:09 You know where I'm going is A Nightmare on Elm Street, and it's the only Sacred Cow movie I've ever given a negative review to. In the history of the Sacred Cow reviews you've given, because at least one just popped into my head. I know that– and I'm not going to say it because I don't want to get listeners against you. You've given at least two movies, maybe three.

3:30 Well, I'll say it.

3:32 Yeah.

3:32 The 12 Angry Men.

3:34 Oh, no.

3:34 We've never discussed it, Josh. We've never discussed it. It just came up in bonus content. We've never discussed it.

3:41 Okay.

3:42 Wow.

3:42 Yeah.

3:42 No.

3:43 But it's sort of from that period. Close. So anyway.

3:49 Okay.

3:50 It's beloved way more than 12 Angry Men.

3:52 To Kill a Mockingbird. To Kill a Mockingbird. I'll stand by these.

3:56 I reject your entire construct.

3:57 No shame in your game. I believe in critics going against the consensus.

4:04 When did I say that was a construct?

4:07 I thought that's what you set this up with. Go ahead.

4:11 Well, that's why I admitted I'm potentially a terrible critic.

4:14 This is a long way around to saying that I don't like The Exorcist.

4:19 To be clear, I'm not suggesting critics shouldn't go against the grain. I'm bemoaning the fact that I never do, in fact.

4:25 Gotcha. Okay. Okay. Wait, what was yours? Oh, Nightmare. Okay.

4:29 It was Nightmare.

4:30 So I know that there are at least two movies you've gone against the grain.

4:34 Yes.

4:34 And one of them is my favorite horror movie of all time, The Exorcist.

4:40 Yes.

4:40 That's just kind of weird.

4:42 So The Exorcist has been a journey for me, and I'm looking, as you were recounting all that history, through one nice thing about Letterboxd is you can see movies you've had a long history with. What does it look like? You're right. Not the first time I saw it. The first time I logged it was for this Sacred Cow review, 2013. Oh, you're going to love this if you're already a little distressed.

5:07 I gave it two and a half stars, but I did give it a heart.

5:10 Oh, okay.

5:11 Gosh, you know how much I enjoy that.

5:14 So revisited it about five years later, 2019. No. So yeah, six years later, same rating, still trying to struggle with it. 2022, went back again, got a little bump, Adam, got a little bump.

5:31 Ooh, the devil wants you to struggle, Josh.

5:33 I'm up.

5:33 Yes, exactly. I'm up to three out of five. So all of that to say, okay. let my objections that the listeners are about to hear, take them with a bit, like the tiniest grain of salt.

5:47 Because- You've gotten wiser over the years. I've gotten a.

5:51 Bit wiser though. I do, I think my root difficulties, which I won't go into now, largely remain the same. I'm sure those are expressed in this review.

6:03 Okay.

6:03 We will hear that in a second.

6:05 The other thing I wanted to say was simply, I recently caught up with on Amazon prime Borman and the devil, the documentary about John Borman and the making of the exorcist to the heretic. And it's really good and fascinating. I've never seen the heretic, the exorcist to though. Now that I've watched the documentary, I effectively have. And if you haven't caught up with it yet, you should John Borman still alive, still very much lucid talking from his home, somewhere, I think in Wicklow, actually, Ireland, where I visited when I visited Ireland back when I was a student studying abroad in London. And the most interesting part might be, Josh, that he doesn't seem to fully understand that he made

6:54 a terrible film. He still is clinging to this notion that the audiences just weren't ready for what he made because they were coming in wanting to see a pure Exorcist sequel, and he didn't give them that. So the audiences just weren't ready for his movie. And what the doc shows you is that what he made was an incredibly fascinating film with a lot of artistic intention behind it, and it deserves some respect for that. But then when you also see the finished product on the screen, it's not that the audience thought, it, it should have been the exorcist too. There's more going on than that. So that's also really a matter that you have to consider.

7:42 There there's whole, there's a bunch of stuff in there about, about audience expectation and matters that you, you can really wrestle with that the movie poses.

7:53 Hey, some of us stubbornly cling to our opinions for many, many years, Adam.

7:58 Yeah, maybe.

7:59 And I, I went to your website, Larson on film.com and you know not surprised you often like sequels more five stars for the heretic crazy.

8:09 I wish we'll we'll see if i get to that someday.

8:12 At long last here is from 2013 here is that sacred cow review of william friedkin's the exorcist.

8:20 Is there someone inside you.

8:23 Sometimes who is it.

8:28 I don't know is it captain howdy I don't know. If I ask him to tell me, will you let him answer? No.

8:42 Why not?

8:43 I'm afraid. If he talks to me, I think he'll leave you. Do you want him to leave you? Yes. I'm speaking to the person inside of Reagan now. If you are there, you too are hypnotized. I must answer all my questions. Come forward and answer me now.

9:10 Josh, as you know, back in April, I had the opportunity to interview Exorcist director William Friedkin at a Chicago Public Library event to promote his memoir, The Friedkin Connection. In the chapter on The Exorcist, Friedkin is unequivocal when it comes to the topic of how to label The Exorcist. He does not want you to call it a horror movie.

9:27 No? No.

9:29 Keeping that in mind, as I was setting up a question for him about The Exorcist, I acknowledged that he doesn't think of the movie as a quote-unquote horror film, but I was curious if he conceived any of the scenes with the notion of trying to scare anyone. Did that ever cross his mind that he would scare people or that he was deliberately trying to scare people? His answer, quick, to the point, not at all. He said he knew the material was disturbing, that it was based on the actual case of a possession that took place in Silver Spring, Maryland in 1949, but he was never out to frighten anyone.

9:59 He Well, Friedkin may not have been trying to scare anyone, but he did succeed in scaring a lot of people, including me. I've long contended that The Exorcist is the scariest movie I've ever seen, still traumatized from just hearing Mercedes McCambridge's demonic voice from the living room. As I was in my bedroom, my parents were watching it in the other room on TV. Over the years, Josh, I'd seen parts of The Exorcist but could never really force myself to sit down and watch it because every time I saw poor Reagan McNeil's face, I got terrified. All I wanted to do was run upstairs and cuddle with my parents. I was so scared as a young kid.

10:36 This was all based on overhearing it from the next room.

10:38 Yeah, overhearing it, and then occasionally over the years I would see it on TV. I'd be flipping channels and it would be on, and I'd see parts from it, and it would absolutely terrify me. So when I finally sat down and watched it as an adult in its entirety, it still freaked me out. I was in my early 20s.

10:53 I re-watched it in anticipation of that interview with Friedkin.

10:57 And guess what?

10:57 It still kind of scared me. So Josh, on the third viewing, setting up this Sacred Cow discussion, I can report that it never really freaked me out. I never got, this time, that visceral kind of scare where you're kind of pulling up the covers around you or you're getting chills or you have to pause the movie. Now, mind you, I did watch this film laying next to my wife, so she was there to protect me. I wasn't down in the basement alone. It might have been a different experience, but I never had that kind of freak-out moment watching it this third time that I had as a child or a really lame adult, where you just respond to the voice, the eyes, everything about poor Reagan's face and her behavior. I'm curious, Josh, how much The Exorcist scared

11:41 you when you saw it originally, and whether it scared you this time, but more importantly, how much do you think being scared plays a role in your overall enjoyment of the film.

11:49 Well, we had very different viewing experiences of this movie, actually. I don't remember the very first time I saw it in its entirety. I may, as a matter of fact, have not seen it in its entirety until the re-release, which I think was about 98 or so. I certainly remember seeing snippets of it. It had such a reputation, even if being born after it originally came out, you were still aware of it and it would be on TV, as you said. So Certainly aware of it. I can't remember sitting down and engaging with it until I was actually an adult. And as a matter of fact, pretty much working as a critic as well. So that's how I first came upon it. And, you know, this question of did it scare me? In a sense, it's the

12:29 most fair question to ask of a horror movie. And, you know, Friedkin can call it what he wants. He made it. But in my mind, it's a horror movie. It's at once the most fair question to ask of a horror movie and the most unfair question because it's so personal, right? The sort of things that's going to scare one person will not scare another. That is no measure at all of the artfulness of a movie, at least to that degree. But on another level, it's the most fair because scares that are just out to scare, and that's why that's such an interesting question you pose to him, those can in many ways be easy. And if I have a problem with The Exorcist is that it ultimately strikes me as a cheap An easy film

13:15 when it comes to those scares, completely. And this was my initial impression of it when I saw it. And it was even furthered, this second viewing that I recently gave it, second full viewing at least, in that this is a film that seems completely disconnected from anything except for wanting to shock its audience. And so for Friedkin to say that he didn't even really set out to do that, that's a huge disconnect for me. from the filmmaker's point of view and goals to what I experienced at least as a viewer. And the moments here that everyone remembers, the reason it got those reactions, the reason it has the reputation, are its shock moments. And so the question for me when I watch a movie like

13:59 this is what is the movie most excited about? Despite what Friedkin or any of the people involved in making it might say, what do I sense in my gut? Is it the shock moments themselves or is it the way the shock moments served the larger story? And in a sense, this is the same question we often ask in regards to special effects or something like a soundtrack.

14:19 Even we got into this a little bit on a recent show about movie themes is, are these elements simply there for the sake of themselves? And if they are, in my experience, they will often take me out of the narrative and specifically getting to the exorcist. I think that the moments with Reagan, whether she's spewing vomit or stabbing herself or spinning her head around, Those are very much at another visual and tonal volume level than anything else in the film, which I agree feels separate from a horror film, those other parts of the movie. These are also the least well-crafted moments, I would argue. They're not foreshadowed. They're jarringly staged and edited. And a very odd thing I noticed this second viewing, they're very abruptly abandoned.

15:05 So we cut away from them to these expository or narrative moments that On a couple of occasions, I think of the one where something awful is happening. And before that action even finishes in any way, we get this shot of the priest, Damian Karras, played by Jason Miller, jogging. Now, this happens repeatedly, so there's probably some intentionality behind it.

15:24 Yeah, no doubt.

15:24 But for me, it just set these moments so far apart from the film. And again, because of its reputation, it became the film's reason for being. And that doesn't give me much as a viewer.

15:35 Yeah, we had completely different experiences with this film. Over the course of me now seeing it three different times, that's not at all how I see The Exorcist. I agree that those scenes are shocking and they are jarring, but I would say that I think you're right. It's quite by design. And I think ultimately what was most interesting to me this time, as I said, Josh, that it didn't really scare me. That's not entirely true. There were aspects of it that frightened me, but you know what they are? And I think this just speaks to how we evolve or how we get older and the things that frighten us. Again, it's no longer just seeing her scary face and her eyes and those kind of things.

16:12 For me, the real terrifying part of The Exorcist now was watching the mother, was watching Ellen Burstyn as Chris McNeil, the actress, dealing with her daughter and going through this scenario where she has to basically sit there and be helpless as something takes hold of her child that she cannot find an answer to.

16:34 We still think the temporal lobe.

16:36 Oh, what are you talking about, for Christ's sakes?

16:39 Did you see her or not? She's acting like she's out of her mind, psychotic, like a split personality.

16:48 And just think about how, as a parent, nothing could be more disturbing or troubling or scary than that. That's what really stuck out to me this time. That's what bothered me, is watching that mom in that predicament as she tried to figure this out and was willing to do anything to try to figure out what was wrong with her daughter, that was really effective.

17:05 Okay, and I agree. That is an interesting entry point for a film that certainly you would appreciate after you become a parent. But again, I think it's representative of what this movie is interested in, and it's in these sadistic elements. Because even take that character, for example. What is the scene we get of her that's going to communicate this feeling of, of distress that she has, because I would argue that would be a way this movie... Well, think about the defining one, at least for me, when I watch it again. It's the surgery scene early on where the doctors subject Reg into a brain scan that involves having a needle injected into her neck during surgery.

17:41 This movie is so sadistic. It not only makes us watch that scene for no real purpose, but it makes us watch the mother watch that scene. So it's doubly sadistic, and it has this sensibility of being more interested in the blood spurting out of that needle and across the surgery sheets than it really is in Burstyn's reaction or response to that. We see her freak out from behind the window because, again, that cranks it up for us.

18:10 But does this movie really explore Burstyn's character at all? I found on this viewing it didn't. Part of that is because Burstyn is so hysterical in this film. There are ranges, notes of hysteria she hits almost from the beginning.

18:23 Because she's a really good actress, you mean?

18:26 No.

18:26 Well, she is.

18:27 Notes of one emotion, which is, I think she is a very good actress. I mean, I'm not writing her entire career off here, but in this film, it is different notes of one emotion that just get increasingly heightened until, for me, it didn't engender any sympathy for me, for her.

18:43 I think that there's no doubt if you're not on board with the film, which you clearly weren't, then you're going to see moments like that involving the trip to the doctor's office and think that Friedkin really is just trying to up the shock factor. I think it's all about the reaction.

18:58 I think it's all.

18:59 About her reaction. I think it's all about her reaction.

19:01 I think, Josh, it's all about the emphasis on the horror that this girl is experiencing and us having to watch it too. And I think that one of the big strengths of this film, and I especially noticed it this time around, is that Friedkin, who got his start as a documentary filmmaker, I think there are a lot of elements to this film, and this is where it really stands out, from a lot of conventional horror movies.

19:20 The reason it's so scary in a way, the reason it really starts hitting you, I think, in that last half of the film, is that Freed can take such care in not setting up a lot of traditional frights in that first hour of the movie. It really isn't until about the hour-ten-minute mark of this film that the really gross stuff that The Exorcist is known for starts.

19:37 He spends that first hour and ten minutes setting up all these storylines and these characters. The way we meet Father Karras and his relationship with his mother. Chris and her job, Chris McNeil.

19:48 Those are really good scenes between Karras and his mother.

19:50 We even meet the lieutenant or the cop, the detective, Kinderman, and probably spend more time with him than we really need to. Just crafting these relationships, Father Marin, how about that amazing opening to this film where it all takes place in Iraq and it really sets this whole tone for the fact that this is evil they're dealing with is something that has gone on since the beginning of time.

20:11 I love that opening, and a lesser filmmaker might have taken the studio's notes and cut that out as they wanted Friedkin to do, but I just love the fact that a lot of this is shot very matter-of-factly. If you took out, Josh, that trip to the doctor, if you took out those scenes from this movie, didn't tell someone it was part of the exorcism, they'd never seen it before, and just put it on a screen, I think you could very easily convince them that they were watching a documentary about what mental illness and trying to figure out what caused some of these problems, these unexplainable abnormalities, what that trip to the doctor would be like, this could be a document showing you that. That's what it

20:47 feels like in those scenes. So I think the authenticity of that and getting that blood spurt and seeing that needle, that's crucial. Friedkin isn't someone who's just doing that to push buttons. He's doing it because it adds to the overall horror of this tale of this girl and what she's going through.

21:03 You look at that surgery scene. I mean, I didn't do this, but I bet if you go back and just give it screen time, how much screen time is emphasized on the physical gore and awfulness of what the girl is being subjected to and the screen time to Burstyn's reaction, which is why you originally brought it up as being a strong point of the film. I guarantee you very little time is spent on Burstyn because, again, it's the shock things that this movie is most interested in.

21:32 But let me get to a couple of things I did like, because I think you're right that the scenes with Miller as Father Karras and his mother, who is suffering from old age and the implication is mental illness herself. I think those are good. Those are really strong. And I generally do appreciate a horror film that builds in the way this movie does. It takes its time to set atmosphere. I actually think this could have used a little more of that so that it wasn't so jarring when we do get to the big scenes, how those would work a little better with the opening part. I also think, and this is why those scenes don't work for me, because they are so haphazard in a way, because Friedkin has a lot of nice camera work in

22:11 the other half of this movie, you know, the more subdued half of this movie. Some great tracking shots, some good camera pans. I think of the one where there's a shot of the priest entering the church and We're up above. There's a blurry statue in the right foreground of the scene. And then he's kind of entering in the left background and he's in focus, comes down the aisle.

22:29 There are just some nice touches in there. And here's where this movie is scary for me in a way that I'll give it credit for. And maybe scary isn't the right word. Maybe disturbing is the better word because I actually would not count The Exorcist as among one of the more scary horror films, not just because I don't like it in general, but just for the way it works. I do think that dream sequence that Father Karras has is one of the creepiest moments in the movie.

22:55 It's very brief, and I actually had forgotten about it until I watched it again. His mom in the subway, right? His mom coming out of the subway station looking kind of confused, and he's yelling at her. And there are some quick shots in there, too, of a necklace, the fighting dogs, which we see in that opening you talked about.

23:09 I think also later, there's a very effective insert shot that does take place in the famous bedroom where Karras comes back into the room and... And he sees his mother sitting there on the bed. That's the sort of psychological stuff that is so much more effective in my mind than having the girl spew vomit again or something else outrageous like that, which seems like it comes from a different movie.

23:33 The fact is that you may be right in saying those are the most famous aspects of The Exorcist, but that's not what I think of when I think of The Exorcist. I think of the moments you're talking about. I think of those more subdued moments. That's what really appeals to me.

23:45 So there's only two of them, I guess, is my point. I'm holding these out as an example of what I.

23:50 No, I think there's a ton of quiet... interesting moments like that that stand out.

23:55 That are disturbing too?

23:56 Yeah, yeah.

23:57 I think disturbing too. I would go back even to, you want to talk about great shots. My favorite shot in the film, just a single moment of cinematography comes in that Iraq sequence where we see Father Marin as he discovers the Pazuzu statue. And that's where we see the dogs that are being hostile off in the distance as if the statue is sort of urging them on.

24:15 But there's this amazing Friedkin shot where he kind of allied space and time a little bit, and we actually see Father Marin sort of on an equal plane with the Pazuzu statue and the suns between them.

24:25 There's a lot of great.

24:26 Shots like that.

24:26 There's another great shot, you're talking about how careful he is with the camera, where Reagan is in another room as her mom is on the phone calling her father. And the way the camera tracks out of that room till eventually we're back with Reagan kind of hiding behind the door as her mom is making this really terrible phone call. And there, Ellen Burstyn's pretty hysterical and maybe didn't need to be quite so hysterical in that moment but what really stuck out to me especially this third time seeing it josh is how big of a factor and how many times the word guilt comes up over and over again and i think that has to do with some of the larger questions of faith that are being explored in the movie a little bit but i

25:05 also think it maybe just gets to what i ultimately do like about this film josh in the way i talked about that sort of documentary style the way i think he tampers down the horror by making it seem like you really are almost watching a movie where you're just in the kitchen with this family in Georgetown seeing how they live, but then all these horrible things start to happen and you see how everything unravels. And so one of the ways it's grounded is in this notion of guilt. It makes it seem, Josh, almost as if even though this is supernatural and we think that maybe this possession is just coming out of nowhere, Friedkin doesn't let us just chalk it up to that. There's a point, for example, where one of the doctor's says to Chris,

25:47 they've kind of given up. They don't really have any more tests to run. They think maybe, you know what, something else is going on here. But he does say that this sort of split personality thing that he's trying to chalk this up to, he says it starts with a conflict or a guilt. And if you go back and watch the movie, and especially that scene I mentioned where the mom's on the phone talking to the father, and we see Reagan kind of hiding in the room as clearly her parents went through some kind of split.

26:13 And we see them even at one point have a conversation about that. that clearly is sort of weighing on her mind, I think, is maybe what role that she had in that and her mom's happiness and her ultimate happiness. So that's there sort of just in the background. But then think about Father Karras, how much guilt plays a factor in his life with his relationship with his mom and how he feels as if he didn't properly take care of her. At one point when we meet him early on too, Josh, he of course points out that he feels like a fraud as a priest, that he thinks he lost his faith. He feels guilty about that.

26:44 And later we even find out that Reagan's guilty of a crime. She may have had something to do with someone's death. So I could go on and on, actually. There are a ton of examples of this, and I just think that what that does is it, again, sort of grounds this movie in the sense that, you know what, this didn't just come out of nowhere. This is kind of this bubbling up of resentment, this bubbling up of fear, of trauma. of guilt in people's lives that eventually manifests itself in something horrific like this.

27:10 I think Karis is a very fascinating character, actually. I don't think the movie cares a bit about Burstyn's character or Reagan at all. I just don't. I don't get that from it. But especially how Jason Miller plays him to the undertone he brings to the performance. I think it's very good. And I think there's a lot there.

27:26 That said, the whole faith thing is a bit of a red herring to me. Because the movie just gives us dollops where it seems like it wants to put that out there so that we have something to kind of grasp onto and take this more seriously than a horror exploitation film that it really is. It gives us the line, Karras even says, how he's, I think I've lost my faith. I mean, how on the nose can you get it? It's a little bit like To the Wonder, a weakness of that film where we have Javier Bardem's priest who's going through a similar thing and he keeps talking about it on soundtrack. We don't need that. And we don't really need it here unless it was woven in a little bit more subtly. Instead, it's just kind

28:08 of thrown out there as this is what the theme's going to be. And I feel like the phrase Pauline Kael used for this is that it's a shallow seriousness. And I kind of get that sense to this picture, is that it knows it's dealing with these religious elements. It uses iconography, rights, imagery for easy associations, but not really compelling implications to me.

28:57 I think it's very compelling, not just obviously as a movie that had that immediate kind of frightened response to it, but it is a movie that over the years.

29:11 Has as I've seen it again and again, I see different elements in it. Whether or not they have to do with faith is kind of irrelevant, Josh, for me. I see things like the guilt that comes in. I see things like this time I noticed the whole aspect where I think the movie is... largely dealing with, again, this notion of the unknown and trying to, as we take control of our lives, trying to be able to come up with a scientific explanation for everything. And then you're faced with something in modern life that can't be explained and how that then causes a conflict that that can't be matched.

29:57 You know what explores that in a really interesting way? A film from this year, Beyond the Hills, actually, the Christian Munju film.

30:03 Yeah, you're exactly right. It does.

30:04 But I guess I saw some of those elements in this movie as well. For example, the Kinderman character, he says at one point something like, probable, not for certain. You know, there's that emphasis on things being probable, but it isn't necessarily the way it absolutely happened. And she even says, the Chris McNeil character, to Father Akaris at one point, tell me for a fact... that she isn't possessed.

30:28 Tell me for a fact that that's my daughter up there. And this is all just some made up thing in her head. That idea is reinforced again and again. And obviously it's reinforced in those scenes with the medical professionals where they think they have some kind of obvious explanation and they really don't. So I think ultimately, Josh, even though I do see what you're saying, I could see how someone like Pauline Kael would say there's kind of a shallow seriousness to the film. But I guess when you try to take the whole film in, and you certainly see it in those scenes with the medical professionals as they're trying to come up with their diagnoses, and they think that there's some rational, sensible explanation and scientific

31:02 explanation for everything that's going on. But I think that, again, just gets back, Josh, to this sense the movie has. Maybe it's not so much about religious faith in particular. I think it's a manifestation of faith where, of course, what faith is, is believing in something, even if you don't have any evidence to back it up. And what we see in this movie is sort of a flip side of that, where We have tons of evidence to back up that there's something really wrong with this girl, but you still can't explain it. There's still a lack of faith in what's actually happening to her as you seek some kind of explanation. So I feel like the movie as a whole is this larger kind of exploration of guilt in dealing with the conflict that happens when

31:40 something in their lives, in this modern age we live in where we think everything can be explained away, when something clashes with that that can't be explained. I think that's fascinating, and I'm fascinated by that watching this film. in addition to being kind of horrified by it.

31:52 So let me ask you then, these threads that resonate with you, how do they work hand in hand? Or better yet, how are they enriched by the shock moments that the movie is famous for? Because I don't think you can just set those aside and say, well, that's not really what the movie is about. And I can understand if you found more interesting things in the film.

32:12 Yet those are the dominant elements of this movie in terms of tone, And just where they're positioned in the narrative. And this is a sacred cow. So in the enduring reputation. So I'm just wondering how those work for you in concert with these other things or are they separate in your mind?

32:30 No, I think they work because, as I said, I think they reflect a larger sense of the true horror of what is happening to Reagan. It wouldn't be enough if it was just sort of ugly and sort of disturbing. I think it really needs to be. And actually, we're going to get into this a little bit more when we talk about the chaser here in a minute. And there is a connection, I think, between the two films a little bit. I think we need to see those kind of truly shocking things to really understand the sort of depth of depravity that's happening to her. But this also gets to the conflict, Josh, that I think is interesting.

33:02 And I wonder how you kind of feel about this. You may not be aware of it at all, but there's been, for a long time, I think they've now gotten over it, but there was a conflict for a long time between Friedkin and William Peter Blatty, who, of course, wrote the.

33:12 Book and wrote the screenplay.

33:14 He was someone who was much more a man of faith and had a little bit of a crisis of faith, but went through this process and wrote the book and the screenplay and has now come out the other side of that. But he hated Friedkin because Friedkin, among other things, cut out a key scene that eventually played in the director's cut or an extended cut later. Friedkin finally decided, okay, you know what? This bothered Bill Blatty for so long.

33:39 I'll go ahead and put this back in. And the scene, Josh, is a scene In the middle of the exorcism, where what we get in the cut we both watch, the original theatrical cut, is just them taking a break. And they're on the stairs, and we see Max von Sydow as Father Marin and Father Karras, and they're sort of facing opposite ways, and they're just having this respite before they go back in to wrestle with this devil. In the cut Blatty really wanted, they have an exchange where pretty much Max von Sydow's character puts it right on the nose.

34:09 He says.

34:10 The girl is not the target of what the demon's trying to do. The girl is us, every one of us in this house, and the purpose is to make us feel vile, bestial, rotten, and corrupt, so that even if there were a god, he could not possibly love us. That was a blatty line that, as I said, he was really attached to, because for him, that was the whole film. That's what the whole film was about. I like the lines, too, but I love that Friedkin just thought, I've already shown that. And I'm going to show that.

34:37 I don't need to actually put that right on the nose. That vileness, that rottenness, that corruption, that comes through in those shocking moments. And I think we didn't need a character to underline that, how that challenges the people in that house, how it challenges the viewer to question your own faith. Do you believe that something like this could really happen? I think that Friedkin was actually smart to kind of take that back a little bit and cut that out because he shows us. And I think that's why those shocking scenes are important.

35:05 Yeah, but there's a line between where the movie goes in those scenes. And I completely agree. You don't want that spelled out in a line of dialogue. I mean, that's going to do the opposite. You're not making a movie then, right? You're just delivering a speech. But to the degree of vileness or whatever you want to call it that we see on screen, sometimes that can become so dominant that it loses any other implications and it becomes solely violent. solely about what's being depicted. And metaphors, illusions, those sorts of things get blasted outside because the sole point becomes that awfulness in that exact moment.

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36:10 This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.