Sorcerer

You're listening to They Shoot Films with Ken Mercer and FT.

Kosempa.

Hey there, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of They Shoot Films.

My name is Ken Mercer, and I'm joined here, as always, with the great FT Kosempa.

FT, how are you today?

I'm doing pretty well, again, there, Ken.

How are you doing, buddy?

I'm jealous of you, because every time I ask you how you're doing, you're doing well, and I've always got some problem.

And yet again, since the last time I talked to you, two weeks ago when we recorded the last episode, I've had a very, and I'm not making this up, I've had a very rough two weeks.

And without going into details, I don't want to go into details, I'm trying to forget it.

But then I watched Sorcerer, and that was helpful because it reminded me that no matter what's happening, things could always be worse.

So what did you do with the dynamite in your house?

Is that what you're trying to get at?

Yeah.

Like I said, I don't want to talk about it because then I'll be moping Morose for the whole show, and that's your job, FT.

That's your character.

Okay.

So as I said, we are here to talk about the 1977 film directed by one William Friedkin and titled Sorcerer.

And as you're no doubt aware, FT., the film was a critical and financial failure when it was released in 1977, and languished in obscurity.

There were some people who were fans of it, but it basically was ignored until its 40th anniversary when it got a reissue on Blu-ray and had a critical resurrection, and is now considered one of the great films of the 70s, maybe one of the great films of American cinema, and has had accolades from people like Quentin Tarantino, who's called it one of his favorite films.

Stephen King, it is his favorite film.

Really?

Yeah.

And it's interesting.

For a film that at its time had nothing but negative reviews, when you go on Rotten Tomatoes now, it's got an 84% critics rating, which is quite good on Rotten Tomatoes.

So somehow the negative reviews have kind of been erased from Rotten Tomatoes and just got a re-release by the Criterion Collection in Blu-ray and 4K and a new mastering that was supervised by Bill Friedkin before his death last year.

The film Sorcerer 1977 also has what's probably arguably one of the greatest sequences ever put on film.

The bridge sequence and I'm sure we'll be talking about that as we get into the film.

Would you accept that?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's part of the great sequence within the whole larger sequence of the entire, you know, the transport, you know, Ebert even said that.

It's one of the greatest large long sequences in the history of cinema.

And then within that, they have that bridge business.

Oh my God.

Yeah, something else.

Yeah.

FT., I always like to, as you know, kind of start with the origins of the film and how it came to be.

Would you indulge me on that once again?

I've been waiting all week for it, buddy.

Yeah.

I don't want to go too much into it because there's been a lot written about Bill Friedkin, about this film, about his career.

But I think we should go over it for those who may be unaware, or some who might have missed some of the details.

But as you know, or maybe you don't know that Friedkin came out of documentary filmmaking.

First, he worked for a TV station in Chicago, then he started directing documentaries, then moved to LA and got the chance to start directing features.

His first, well, not his first feature, but he had a meteoric rise to fame with, and I think his third feature was, which was a film called The French Connection.

Yes.

And he won best director over Bogdanovic, and I forget who else was up for it that year at the 1972 Academy Awards.

And The French Connection was a huge financial success because it was done on a pretty slim budget.

The chase scene in French Connection, much like the bridge scene in Sorcerer, is one of the greatest scene sequences in all film.

The chase sequence in French Connection is regarded as being the greatest chase scene ever put on film.

Although I might disagree with that.

What do you think, FT?

There's a copycat scene in To Live and Die in LA, which is pretty damn good.

It sort of follows.

Is that where you're going?

Well, that's where I was gonna go.

So Friedkin directed a film later in his career called To Live and Die in LA, which sadly is not available anywhere streaming.

And I had to buy a Blu-ray that was like from Europe or something to be able to get it.

I think now there is a domestic Blu-ray that you can get, but not easy to see.

And I like that movie a lot.

And there's a chase scene in that that I think tops the chase scene in French Connection, which is what Friedkin actually set out to do.

I mean, they're both fantastic, but to live and die in LA., they're actually, the character has to drive on the LA freeway the wrong way.

He's in the wrong lane, on the wrong side of the LA., going against traffic.

And it's just, it's so tense.

So, probably known as being the greatest chase scene director ever, but that takes us to our next film, which is The Exorcist in 1973, which was a runaway financial, critical success and runaway financial success.

To give you some idea of the numbers involved for The Exorcist success, it was shot for $12 million in 1970.

Well, it came out in 73.

And its current box office is $430 million.

Jesus.

So if you do the math on that, if you're a studio executive trying to keep tallies on these things, basically you've earned 36 times your production budget.

And to put that in contrast, everybody thinks of the James Cameron film Avatar as being the huge modern success story.

And it's interesting, Avatar, when you do the numbers, only is 12 times its production budget.

So it's really hard to fathom just what a success the Exorcist was.

And did you see it when it came out in 73 FT?

I did not.

Oh, wow.

How come?

I just, you know, I was uninterested.

I said, I don't want to see a movie about, you know, I thought it was going to be a bunch of bullshit, you know.

And ask me another question, Ken.

Ask me when was the first time I did finally see it.

Sorry, we don't have enough time for another one.

When did you see The Exorcist?

I watched a little bit of it on TV, but it was hacked.

Right.

And I was like, whatever, you know.

The first time I really saw it was last week.

I'm not lying.

Wow.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

I just thought, you know, I just thought like it was going to be a horror movie.

Yeah.

Forty-two years after, right?

Yeah.

After the fact.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

I have The Exorcist is a formative film in my life.

And I'm not making this up.

My mother took me to see, my mother would often take me to go to the movies.

It was one of the things we did together.

And she took me to The Exorcist.

So that was 73.

So I was, why are you laughing?

Did you get popcorn?

Oh stop, FT.

I'm sorry, man.

I know this is traumatic for you.

You didn't use that word, but come on.

Yeah, no, it is.

Yeah, I thought I did use it.

I know, yeah.

I thought I did use the word traumatic.

We'll check.

So this was 73.

So I was either 10 or 11 years old.

And my mother takes me to see The Exorcist.

And I'm scared shitless.

But not like, oh, I gotta leave this.

I think I was sort of scared in the theater, but okay.

But then I'm not making this up.

Then that night, I'm screaming in my bedroom.

My parents run in the middle of the night.

My parents run in.

What's the matter?

What's the matter?

And I'm saying, my bed is off.

My bed is rising off the floor.

If you remember in The Exorcist, there's scenes where Linda Blair's bed is lifted off the floor.

And I was convinced that that was happening.

Not like, I was convinced that was happening to me.

And that happened to me for many nights.

Really?

Yeah, so I was literally traumatized by it.

And to this day, I have not been able to bring myself to rewatch it as much as I want to.

Interesting.

The only explanation I can give for you being able to watch it as an 11 year old, let's say, is that there's so much trigger and release in that.

There's so many scenes where it's not the horror, it's not the possession.

That's what I was surprised about.

When I finally saw it, I was like, Jesus, all these years I should have just watched this thing because it's a really fine film.

I mean, the acting is great, the writing is great, everything is great in that thing.

And I just thought it was going to be one after the next of like, you know, just horror because I hate horror films basically, you know?

And I wasn't, it was so well placed and it was so incredible for the time.

I mean, you know, seamless, holds up today, which is I think is the trademark of Billy Friedkin's work.

Oh, French Connection holds up, this holds up and I felt Sorcerer holds up and they're contemporary.

Yeah, that's incredible.

Yeah, but kind of hard to imagine now the runaway success of The Exorcist.

I mean, lines around the block at theaters, people wanting to see it.

It's a sensation.

And Bill Friedkin, because of that, Bill Friedkin's at a juncture where he can do anything.

You know, first of all, it's the new Hollywood, it's the 70s, it's Coppola, it's Bogdanovich.

And yeah, and at one time you probably heard Bogdanovich and...

Coppola and Bill Friedkin.

And Bill Friedkin had their own company at Finance My Paramount called The Director's Company.

So he could have done anything he wanted, but he wasn't sure what he wanted to do.

So he's kicking around, enjoying his money, enjoying his cars, but not knowing what to do next.

And he has the idea of doing something with the Wages of Fear, which the movie by HG.

Clouseau from the 50s, that was one of Friedkin's big influences.

And he wanted to do something with it, but didn't want to do a remake of the film.

Because obviously, he felt that was going to be beneath him.

So he wanted to go back to the novel that Wages of Fear was based on.

And FT., I know you were trying to search for that.

Were you able to find the novel anywhere?

I was not.

I was only able to find it.

Well, you can buy it, and I forget the details, but I think I saw it.

Well, no, you can get it on Amazon, but it's a paperback translation.

And it looks like a pulp novel.

It's a noir, it's basically a noir.

It's short, it's 158 pages, but it's incredibly expensive, just for a crappy paperback.

It's like 80 bucks.

Oh wow, really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Knowing you, and I hope I'm not speaking to school, because your family has called you cheap many a time, so I hope this is not.

No, no, not cheap, 50.

Okay, so when you were saying, wow, it's really, you know, it's a paperback, but it's really expensive, I thought when I was, you were gonna say 11.99 or something, but yeah, 80 bucks for a paperback, I agree, is kind of space.

Wait, you ever thought I was gonna say, like, it's really expensive, five bucks?

Yeah, I did.

Crazy, you're a crazy guy, yes.

No, but I was able to read a little synopsis where somebody did read it and, you know, talked about it, and you know, that was helpful.

What's the plural of synopsis?

If you have multiples.

I don't know, probably synopsis is these days.

Not synopsi?

I don't know.

I doubt it.

Yeah, I can't go on with this podcast until I know we have to stop and get the answer to that.

So his idea is to do something with the book, and you can see why, you know, he's interested in the idea of it, the cinematic nature of it, but he sees it more.

Friedkin has talked about it more.

And by the way, I should say at this juncture, anybody interested in more about this or knowing where a lot of our background for this podcast came from.

Bill Friedkin wrote a memoir before he died, which is one of the best film autobiographies written, in my opinion, and it's called The Friedkin Connection.

I'd recommend that to anybody.

But in The Friedkin Connection, he talks about it.

It's more like doing a, people do new productions of plays all the time.

You know, Streetcar Named Desire, you do new productions of it.

Operas too, yeah.

Yeah, and by the way, Friedkin, before he died, actually became an opera director and was directing operas.

So yeah, restaging, doing a new production of The Wages of Fear was his idea.

And he always bristled at the idea, when it was called a remake and the critics, when it came to all said it was a remake and he bristled at that.

There's some connections to The Departed, the Marty Scorsese film we did a few episodes back, same deal.

Marty claimed when he signed on to do The Departed, which was based on Infernal Affairs, the Hong Kong film, he claimed he'd never, he didn't even know there was a, he had just read the script and didn't know.

So he was very against the idea of making a remake and said he refused to see Infernal Affairs when he was making The Departed.

Right, exactly.

So coming back to Bill Friedkin, he has a very lucrative production deal at Universal Studios.

He had been, the deal with Coppola and Bogdanovich had been at Paramount, but now he's over at Universal with a big signing bonus and he can do anything he wants.

And he says, okay, I'm going to, I want to do, I've got this Wages of Fear idea and he hires a screenwriter to develop it.

The screenwriter is a guy named Waylon Green, who had written The Wild Wondage.

Peckinpah, yeah.

Yeah, and I think had won an Academy Award for it.

So he brings Waylon Green on, writes a script.

I think it takes four months.

They write a script and they send it out to a little known, the biggest movie star in the world at that time, a guy named Steve McQueen.

Steve McQueen gets the script, calls up and says, this is the best script he had ever written and he loved it.

He had ever read.

He had ever read, yes.

Okay.

Sorry.

I said written?

Yes.

Take two.

Well, I think it's both.

It's probably not only the best script he had ever read, but probably the best script he had ever written.

It's both.

Thank you for sharing that.

Sometimes there's a whole theory that when you read well, you're basically rewriting anyhow.

So that's-

There is that.

But thank you for correcting.

Like I said, I've had a tough couple of weeks, so there are probably going to be many more slip-ups ahead.

So your job is to try to catch them, FT.

Okay.

So McQueen says, I'm there, and Friedkin says, great.

We're, you know, this is a go.

And-

He wrote it for him, though, didn't he?

That's what I had heard.

I think so.

And it was interesting because Friedkin was determined to shoot it in Ecuador.

We're somewhere in South America on location.

Lou Wasserman, the head of Universal said, no way.

You're not shooting in South America.

But Friedkin figured, and he was probably right, if he could get McQueen to sign on, then Wasserman say, well, okay now.

So he gets-

Anywhere, yeah.

Yeah.

So he gets McQueen to sign on, you know, not the papers, but McQueen's on board.

And he says, okay, we're going to shoot in Ecuador.

And McQueen had just married Ally McGraw.

And he said, so if you can't, I can't just bring her with me on what's going to be a long journey.

You've got to write in a part for her.

And I said, you just told me it was the best script you ever read.

There is no major role for a woman.

I'd have to rewrite the script to write a part for your wife.

It's not that I don't like her.

I like her very much, but there's nothing in the script for a woman.

A very small part for a French woman.

And he said, okay.

He said, make her an executive producer so she can come with me, and she's got a job on the film, not just my wife.

And I said, executive producer, that's a bullshit title.

I don't believe in that title, and I'm not going to give her any authority over anything.

You know, so I'm not going to have somebody around who's got a phony title.

He said, okay.

He said, shoot the entire film in America.

Now, I had chosen these other locations, in part because of Gulf and Western and Blue Dorn and his basic ownership of the Dominican Republic.

So you had a great deal in place.

I had and I love the locations.

And I said, Steve, I can't find stuff like that in America.

He said, I'm sure it exists.

And Friedkin and his autobiography is pretty amazing.

BC so, you know, he's very self-critical and he, you know, he talks about what a friggin idiot he was to not just say, sure, I'll put Allie on as a producer.

I'll put her, I'll give her a part, anything.

But he's like, no, I'm not going to do that.

So he loses Steve McQueen.

And along with that, he loses for the other characters, the foreign characters.

He had cast these international stars.

I forget who he had.

Marcello.

Yeah.

He had all these international stars.

They all leave.

Well, Marcello because of Deneuve.

Deneuve saying that, you know, you're not going to leave a newborn baby.

They just had a kid.

You're not going to leave for six months in a jungle.

No way.

Right.

And there was something I think she almost like threatened custody issues.

So Marcello really wanted to do it also because that part was written for him as well.

That's what Friedkin says in that one interview.

And again, it's the autobiography is so, the memoir is so self-critical.

And he, he talks about, you know, he was just so full of himself and so stupid.

Because for me, I don't, we'll get into this.

I don't, you know, the setting is so oppressive and so dark.

And the final sequence, he did shoot in New Mexico.

I think he could have shot it somewhere closer with McQueen, with the stars he wanted.

And, you know.

Maybe.

Definitely would have ended up with a more successful picture, box office-wise, with McQueen.

Let's leave it at that for now.

Yes, absolutely.

Yes.

So, he loses McQueen.

He's like, okay, who can I get now?

And do you know who his next pick was before he got to Scheider?

No, no.

Oh, this is a good story.

So, he says, ah, Bob Mitchum would be good for this.

Get out of here.

No, for the Roy, for the Scanlon part, the Roy Scheider part.

He's like, oh, what about Bob Mitchum?

Mitchum is washed up at this point and will take any role for money.

So Friedkin goes and meets with Mitchum and it's during the day and Mitchum's there with a bottle of booze already and Friedkin feels like he's got to keep up with him.

So they're day drinking in the morning, going over the part and Mitchum says, turns to him and says, let me ask you this.

Why would I want to go to Ecuador for two or three months to fall out of a truck?

I can do that outside my house.

And Friedkin in the book says, it was vintage Mitchum and I had no answer.

How old was Mitchum then?

Seventy?

Or maybe not.

I'm trying to see where he was.

What year was the friends of Eddie Coyle?

I don't know, 72, 73?

Maybe 73.

So it's not that far away.

Yeah, 73.

And what about the Yakuza?

I think it was right after.

It was maybe a year or so.

Yeah, it's close.

So this was probably two years after the Yakuza, which he's very good in.

So not a crazy pic, but I thought it was a good story.

And then of course he...

Oh, the studio says you got to do it with Roy Scheider, because Roy Scheider is a big star because Jaws had just come out, I think a year or two before.

So the studio pushes Scheider on him, but it's problematic because Scheider is super pissed at Billy Friedkin.

Do you know why, FT?

I think because he said he didn't push for him as the part of the priest in The Exorcist, is that right?

Yeah, or turned him down.

Scheider wanted to be Father Karras in The Exorcist, and Friedkin did not cast him.

So he stuck with Scheider, and apparently the relationship was very tense on set.

Although not so bad in French Connection, obviously, right?

Because he's great in French Connection, and they seem to...

Oh, no, sorry, French Connection is way better.

So yes, they worked together on French Connection.

Right.

But then Friedkin does Exorcist next, and won't cast Scheider as Father Karras, which Scheider is dying to do.

Right.

It would have been good.

Yeah.

So Friedkin now has Scheider, he's got his cast of the international character actors, is that fair for me to say?

I would say that's true, yeah.

International character actors, and he's got a budget to go shoot in Ecuador, and Universal says, no fucking way.

We're not going to come up with this budget for you to go to Ecuador.

And so he's stuck.

And I forget if Friedkin gets a call or he called Charlie Bluthorn, Bluthorn who's the CEO of Gulf and Western, which owns Paramount.

And again, this deal of the director's company, the company that is a production company of Coppola, Friedkin, Bogdanovich was put together, directly with Charlie Bluthorn without bringing in Bob Evans.

And now Bluthorn is talking to Friedkin about this film and says, Oh, I'll put up the production budget for this film under one condition.

FT, do you know what the condition was?

I sure do.

I own half the island.

Yeah.

The Dominican Republic.

He basically owns the Dominican Republic.

He's Gulf and Western is first and foremost an oil company.

It's an agglomerate.

It's an oil company.

He owns the Dominican Republic and says, Hey, if you shoot in Dominican Republic, I'll put up the money.

So it becomes a co-production with Universal and Paramount with a condition that Friedkin shoots in Dominican Republic.

So now we've got a go picture.

And by the way, obviously, irony, you could probably point out here of an oil conglomerate financing a film that's about what oil conglomerates do in third world countries.

They were diversified, right?

Because I think the thing was really sugar there.

That's the whole Cuban Dominican Republic.

And they grew the cane and they processed the sugar, which was the monopoly.

Whoever in the hell that was.

And yes, and there's my hand slapping my knee.

That's a real knee slapper.

It's a real knee slapper.

Bob Midgem.

Just a couple of other production notes.

Friedkin brings in John Box as the production designer.

Are you familiar with John Box?

I am not.

No, no.

Yeah, so he had done Lawrence of Arabia for David Lean and also Dr.

Shavago for David Lean.

So obviously a good pick for-

Was this, let me ask you a question there, Ken.

Is this a case where he took a village and ruined it and then in the camp that he destroyed it or they built it?

I don't know what they did with the camp.

I know there was a lot of existing infrastructure in the Dominican Republic, which Friedkin said he liked, you know, from the Gulf and Western stuff, which of course, they had full access to all the Gulf and Western.

Okay, there you go.

You know, but so I don't know if that town was built.

It looks like, you know, if it was designed, I don't love the design of it.

So hopefully it was just found and kind of dressed.

Yeah.

You know, the posters.

Yeah, probably the Cantina.

They did some stuff in the Cantina.

Yes.

Yes.

So the production begins in the Dominican Republic and FT., would you say it was all gravy from there?

It was all smooth sailing from there?

Well, you avoided the gravy metaphor because of Thanksgiving in the last podcast.

Was it all smooth sailing?

My guess is that it was not so smooth sailing, but not tremendously horrible either, like other filmmakers had issues with.

Your guess would be wrong.

It was terrible?

Yeah, the production was plagued by disasters from the beginning.

Really?

Yeah.

Friedkin says, if it had been another director without his box office record and his power, or another director that would just ignore the studio, he would do what he want, the thing would have gotten shut down.

Never gotten done.

Again, rather than go through it blow by blow, I'd refer people to the Friedkin connection.

But should I give you just a couple of stories?

Sure, absolutely.

Why don't we start at the beginning?

So when they're shooting in the Dominican Republic to see the dailies, so when you shoot on film, you shoot, get the day's footage processed at the lab, and then you screen dailies that night so you can make corrections to see how things are going.

Well, in the Dominican Republic at that time, there is no Technicolor lab to send their film to, so the film needs to be shipped, flown to Hollywood, processed, and then shipped back to the Dominican Republic so they can look at their dailies, and the round trip time was one week.

Oh my God.

So they're shooting for a week, and then they get their first week's dailies back, they're unusable because the stuff in the jungle is so dark, so underexposed, and Friedkin talks to his Director of Cinematography, his DP, he's a guy named Dick Bush.

Bush.

Yeah, Dick Bush, and Friedkin says, what the hell's going on?

And Bush, instead of saying, gee, I'm sorry, or anything, he said, I told you we should have shot this on a sound stage.

If we shot it on a sound stage, I could have lit it perfectly.

And Friedkin had an earlier experience, I think, on one of his first films, a similar experience, and he had learned from it.

So he just canned Dick Bush on the spot and brought in a director he had worked with at the Chicago TV, or sorry, I think the LA TV stuff he was doing.

He brought in a cinematographer from there whose name was?

Whose name was?

John Stevens.

Yeah, John Stevens.

Thank you, FT.

Sure, my friend.

And just continuing on some of the tales of woe.

Can I just make one remark about that, though?

Sure.

It was interesting when I had read about that, that's in the Wiki article.

It was one of the things that really dawned on me is that when I first watched it, I watched a really bad print, right?

And I'm sitting there going, this thing is just like, it's so ugly, it's just terrible.

Yes.

And like, and when it came to the jungle stuff, I said, this is unwatchable.

I mean, this is terrible.

It's so dark, it's rotten.

Right.

And then I was like, you were watching dailies.

It was just like that.

And then when I saw, when you put it up on the library, and I saw the final version, or at least a decent transfer, I'm like, oh, no wonder what freaked out Billy Friedkin.

It freaked him out.

And it freaked me out.

I said, I'm not going to watch this.

Remember when I even told you, I don't like this movie.

It's just too damn, it was ugly in both senses.

It's assorted, squalid and poorly done.

And you went, I doubt if it was poorly done, in terms of cinematography.

And you were right, but I had the experience.

So just to be clear, you didn't like it because you were watching an unwatchable print.

A very bad, bad transfer.

I did.

Oh, sure.

I did like it a lot, yeah.

Okay.

You did like it.

You did like it a lot.

You did like it a lot.

He did like it.

Just back to the Tales of Woe quickly, almost half the crew ended up in the hospital with either malaria, gangrene, food poisoning or a combination of the three.

Read about this place in the travel brochure?

I heard it had a healthy climate.

Now what did you expect?

It was exactly what I expected.

Yeah.

I like a southern exposure.

Yes.

I thought about it myself.

Then of course, you know about the issues with the bridge, right?

The bridge scene?

I do not.

Why don't we save that for when we get to the bridge scene so we don't bog down on what production was?

Because of what he...

And he keeps falling farther and farther behind schedules.

The studio keeps calling.

He just shuts them out.

He's not talking to anybody.

He's just pushing ahead.

In the end, he went fully 50% over his budget, which was already a big budget.

The budget was 15 million.

And by the time production was done, he was at $22 million.

And again, these are 1975, $76.

Allow me to put that in perspective for you, FT.

How much do you think Jaws, which was shot a year before, how much do you think that what was the production budget for Jaws?

8 million.

3.5 million.

So yeah, Jaws came in at 3.5.

This thing comes in at 22 million.

Jesus.

Let me ask you another question.

Star Wars, which came out right the same time, what do you think the budget for Star Wars was?

What did I say before?

3.5, 5.3?

No, no, 2.1.

Just Star Wars was 11 million.

So, yes, Sorcerer is double Star Wars.

Can I ask you a favor in the future?

When you ask the question, if it's more-

Give you the answer.

No, no, no.

Just use your tone of voice.

Go, do you think it's more or less?

I could go like, hmm, it's more.

I heard you could do it this way.

Frank, FT, the budget for Star Wars was 11 million dollars.

Would you agree?

No.

Yes, I think so.

Star Wars.

As part of this, again, he's just going out of his way to ignore, to burn the studio and there's a really good story here, which he talks about his hubris and what a jerk he, you know, how bad he was.

So there's a story, he shows the rough cut to the studio and the studio, and it's not showing, he's showing it to Lou Wasserman, Sid Sheinberg, Ned Tannen, the top brass at Universal, not like production development.

He's showing it to the top people and they're saying they love it.

They're saying great job, but we have a suggestion for you.

We have some notes.

We have some notes.

And you got to read them.

In the book, it's insane what he does.

He shows up to take the notes and it's at a luncheon in the Universal dining room, executive dining room, and they said, you know, they take drink orders and people order, you know, water, soda.

And Friedkin says, I want a bottle of Smirnoff's No Glass, please.

And he just sits there at this meeting slugging.

Guzzling?

Yeah, from the bottle of Smirnoff's.

And then I think the atribe, he says he didn't drink much, but he could hold his liquor.

He falls face down on the floor during the meeting.

And I think he did that deliberately.

But what they ask him for in this meeting is-

Ali McGraw.

No, they say this is great, but I think it would be helpful for the audience.

If we got to see-

how many miles do they have to drive the dynamite?

218 miles.

Why not have something at the beginning?

It's got to be 218 miles and then show like an odometer because right now we have no sense how close they are, how far they-

and so it's a really good suggestion.

And he incorporated that in the film, but he says to the-

Friedkin says to them, I don't shoot in-

so to do that is he would shoot insert shots, which if everybody-

If you don't know insert shots, it's basically, you know in a movie if you cut to a shot of a clock on the wall or a shot of a character's wrist watch, those are insert shots.

And Friedkin says, no, I'm not going to do that.

I don't shoot insert shots.

And they're like, well, I think it would really be helpful.

It'd be good.

And he says, well, the only way I would do it, you know, the only way I would do it, you'd have to pay for me to go back to the Dominican Republic to shoot it.

Oh, get out of here.

Yeah, no, I'm serious.

And I forget who was at Universal.

Scheinberg says, you're shooting a speedometer.

Why do we have to go back, a shot of a speedometer?

Why would you have to go back to the Dominican Republic?

And he says, I already told you, I don't do inserts.

Oh my God.

So that's the way he's treating them.

And then, but nevertheless, he then says, you know what, it's not a bad idea.

So he gets Scheider back on a set at Universal and shoots the truck, you know, and it's great.

You know, the members, you see Scheider right there.

The 218 in chalk.

And then you keep cutting to the speedometer.

It works great.

It is, it's a good idea.

But he's pissed off the studio people so much, as well as other people in Hollywood.

The movie comes out and Friedkin had gotten used to nothing but great reviews, especially from the LA Times, Charles Champlin, who is the head reviewer at the LA Times.

And Friedkin talks about walking down to the bottom of his long driveway, as he does every morning, picks up the papers as he's walking up the driveway, he opens the LA Times and sees the first line of Charles Champlin's review.

It starts, What went wrong?

I thought it would be a great review because Champlin loved everything I ever did, as I say, excessively.

So, my first reaction was one of surprise and then shock because he completely took the picture apart.

I couldn't believe it.

I was really surprised because I felt I had made the best of all my films.

And those were the days when a critic for a daily newspaper meant a lot in America.

It was the difference between success or failure.

That's a blow.

That's a blow.

But every review was negative.

Adding to his problems, the film comes out the same week, basically the same month, June 1977, as a little known art film.

Do you know what that is, FT?

Yeah.

I think it's called The War of Stars.

Yeah, so dancing with this.

It comes out the same month as Star Wars in 77.

So it's got stiff competition.

And what happened, so at Grohmans Chinese Theater, the famous theater in Hollywood, kind of a, you know, it's a prestigious, at least it was a prestigious theater to have your film at, Star Wars had been playing.

They pulled it to put up brand Sorcerer.

That was the schedule.

After a week at Sorcerer, they said, fuck this.

They got rid of Sorcerer and brought back Star Wars.

Jesus.

Yeah.

Did you see Star Wars when it came out in 77 FT.?

You guessed the answer to that, my friend.

Take a guess.

I'm going to say no.

That's correct.

Yes.

Because you felt it was beneath you.

I just wasn't interested.

No, no, no.

Don't put it that way.

It wasn't beneath me.

I just did put it that way.

I did.

I did put it that way.

You put it that way.

Do not put it that way.

Take it back that way.

All right.

I take it back.

I'm sorry.

It wasn't beneath me.

I just wasn't interested, you know?

It wasn't until I read something about his stay in France, Lucas' stay in France with boning up on Joseph Campbell's Hero of the Thousand Faces.

And then I said, oh, okay.

And then the Campbell series on PBS, he talked about it was in Lucas Ranch, you know?

So anyhow, that's where I said, well, maybe I should look at it.

But it's a comic book movie.

We started this beginning at the end for me, you know?

So I was probably 14, 15 when Star Wars came out in 77.

And like every other kid, I went to see it.

Like a lot of kids, I was, I forget what kind of drugs I took before I saw it.

But I either passed out in, while I was playing or just was so stoned.

I was like walked out.

I had no idea what happened.

I didn't like it.

And I think I went back two or three times after that and never liked it.

Yeah, me neither.

I just never, you know, the first time I was like, oh wow, you know, bad drug experience, better try it again because everybody loved it.

And I just, I never, it never clicked with me.

So I thought you were going to say bad drug experience.

And then I went back again, good drug experience.

I still didn't like it.

That's the way we should do this with the time machine.

Anyhow, yes.

So I think let's turn to some bigger issues surrounding this film if we could, since we've gotten, you know, interesting origin story, but let's get to some bigger pictures, bigger topics.

I feel, and other people have commented that Sorcerer, you know, blowing, you know, this director having this kind of unparalleled power and control and spending so much money and costing the city of so much money was the end of the new Hollywood era, the era of Paramount and Polanski and Coppola and Bogdanovich and name some more FT, you know, the new Hollywood directors.

Yes, it's fine.

It really brought that era to a close.

Would you agree with that?

I never thought of it that way, but now I'm pondering.

Interesting, because Star Wars then comes out.

Yes.

And that's the coinciding event, right?

Wow.

Yeah, good point.

That's the big bang, because on the one hand, you know, the new Hollywood, which again, they went from the old Hollywood to the new Hollywood, which were these auteur directors making personal films and they were working at the box office.

So that's the new model, but now, you know, the Misfires of Sorcerer and by the way, I think the final nail of the coffin was what happened three years later in 1980.

Do you know what that was, FT.?

No, Chimino.

Chimino, you got it.

I did, right.

Yeah, so Heaven's Gate comes out in 1980.

So that's the final nail in the coffin, and probably the little cherry on top of the coffin is Coppola's One from the Heart, which came out, I think, a little after that.

I like that movie, though, but didn't know.

No, people do like it, but it was a bomb.

I mean, it bankrupted Francis for the-

But that was also the period of Spielberg, too, so it's not just Lucas.

It was the whole start of that whole thing, right?

Whatever, ET and all that shit started coming out.

Right, but your point about Star Wars was the correct one.

So on the one hand, they start to see that the new Hollywood thing, the new Hollywood directors, which they're probably glad to be rid of, having to work with directors who basically are going to fuck you, I'm going to do whatever I want.

They're probably not digging that to begin with, but now that they start losing money on it and people aren't showing up, and they see Star Wars become a huge success, then leads to basically the same place we are today, where movies are these special effects, spectaculars, remakes, sequels, reboots, but not five easy pieces, not badlands, not Chinatown.

Yeah, right, right.

There's exceptions.

Name one.

Last week, Whiplash.

But that was not a studio film.

Okay, well, whatever.

But it was put together, it wasn't, in Billy's sense, an independent either.

I mean, nobody mortgaged their house on it, you know what I mean?

Well, no, that was independent.

Well, Billy talks about, no, no, no, he chastises that fellow.

He says, only when you pay for it yourself, like Cassavetes, like Cassavetes did, you know, mortgages house.

Who else did that?

A couple other people.

Frankenheimer did that.

He said, you know, when you mortgage your house, Coppola did that.

That's independent, you know.

Otherwise, there's some finances coming somewhere.

Doesn't have to be the studio, but it's from some hunk of money.

But I think you would agree, the studios, they turned their attention to sequels, remakes, special effects.

Oh, totally, totally.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Turning on to a new subject, I want to give you my take on this film and see if you agree or not, okay?

Okay.

Well, not my-

You're talking about Sorcerer now.

We're gonna talk about the film.

Yeah, we're talking, yes.

Thematic, yes.

Well, yeah, I guess this is sort of thematic.

I think Sorcerer is amazing in that it's a film that succeeds against its own obstacles, which I'm gonna enumerate in a second, just because of the mastery of the director.

Okay.

One is, you know, in terms of the script, there's no one to root for.

Right.

And you could say, oh, no, no, no, you root for Scanlon, you root for Roy Scheider.

And I call bullshit, because Roy Scheider is a guy who rips off churches and is involved in a gang who shoots a priest.

Saint Dominic, $2,712.

Bill, what do you have on St.

Balthamuels?

$5,800.

George, what about Loyola?

All right, all you humps, up against the wall!

What is this?

What is this?

Oh my God.

Get that money!

What are you doing here?

You know whose parish this is?

A few and a horse you rode in on.

Shut up, you zippin.

Leave the change alone.

Beautiful.

Come on, bro, we've been hit.

He's clearly not set up as somebody you want to root for.

And I think it's tough on the audience because the audience needs somebody to root for.

So you do root for Scanlon to get through.

And then when the end happens, and again, the ending, he gets shot, you feel like you've been duped because you have been rooting for him.

And then you're like, oh yeah, this guy did deserve to die because he ripped off a church and was involved in the shooting of a priest.

So the audience is really untethered in terms of having somebody to root for.

Go ahead.

No, no, no.

I mean, he was a driver.

He never carries a gun.

I mean, I think you just took it too far.

I don't think robbing a church is justification for shooting somebody.

But I get your point.

What about robbing a temple, a synagogue?

That's a whole other story, my friend.

It's bingo money.

I mean, up in my neck of the woods here, that's the biggest bingo game around.

It's at the temple, apparently.

Okay.

Let's not get too bogged down here.

So let's just throw a color on the Scanlon character.

Would you consider him a black character, a white character or a gray character?

No, I don't want to use those colors.

No, no, I would say he's a villain.

He's totally, he's not a good man.

Okay, good.

We're done.

I agree.

I was going to give you gray.

No, it's very little.

Let's move on.

So here again, the obstacles that I think only through the mastery of the direction this film overcomes, the atmosphere that Friedkin went to such great lengths to go on this location.

The atmosphere, which he wanted to be unpleasant.

Guess what?

It's so unpleasant.

Do you remember we did a film called Once Upon a Time in Hollywood on an earlier podcast FT?

I love it when you ask me if I remember.

Do you remember?

Yeah, I do remember my friend.

All right.

So we talked about, or I talked about how I love that film because I just love being in that.

You know, I love being, you know, it takes me back to Hollywood at that time, the way it looks, the feel.

I like being there.

And I think for films that I go back to over and over again, I'm like, I want to be in that environment, that mise en scene as the French sometimes will say.

This film, Friedkin succeeds so well, that it's such an unpleasant, you don't like being in the environment.

No, I agree, I agree.

But I have something to say about this, which is, you know, what is, and here I'll compare it to Wages of Fear, or, you know, Le Celer.

What I found interesting was, is that, you know, the difference of 20 years, from the 50s to the 70s, let's say, in Clouzot's film, you know, it's a cleaner camp, and the whole thing, so it's sort of like there's a history here in two senses.

It's the way the film is made, it looks more like a Hollywood movie.

It looks like more of a sense, rather than this.

Sorry, you're talking about the Wages of Fear.

I'm talking about Clouzot, Wages of Fear, Clouzot's film.

More like a Hollywood movie, it's cleaner, it's beautiful, black and white, you know, versus, you know, whatever happens, you know, in the Hollywood 70s with Friedkin, you know, this is a gritty, sordid, filthy film looking, you know, although it looks well.

In the second sense, it's also historical in that I started wondering and go, wait, did the oil business, did the international oil business change?

I mean, was it more like, you know, nicer camps, that the security was, you know, they circumvented the government in Wages of Fear.

It's a private security company of the oil company, right?

But in Sorcerer, the security is the corrupt El Presidente, you know, so the oil companies gave up the security.

So I'm going like, and then I saw this documentary from industrial, as they say, from Aramco called Desert Venture.

Sorry, Aramco is?

Is an American oil company, an American Arab oil company, you know, for Saudi Arabia.

It's a documentary about venture in the desert or something like that, Desert Venture.

And it does exactly show this.

We'll build schools, there'll be these nice communities.

And I'm going like, wow.

As rapidly as possible, the company is getting rid of this type of temporary housing hastily built for the Arabs in the early stages of development and replacing it with modern well-built quarters like these.

Among the more important undertakings for the benefit of the Saudi Arabs wholly unconnected with oil operations is the full-scale agricultural experiment project that is underway at Al-Khaarj.

Wow, that's interesting.

And one little note that's, you know, when I was watching a movie, Sorcerer, I'm like going, is that the exact same DC-3, the airplane that is bringing people in and out?

Because this is 70s.

You mean, is that the exact same DC-3 as Wages of Fear?

Well, yeah, from Wages of Fear, because it's interesting.

In Wages of Fear, it's not run down.

It's a newish plane.

And, you know, is this sort of like Friedkin's sort of like homage where he's gonna say, we're gonna make an airplane look like it's been in service for 20 years.

Right.

Yeah.

And I love that.

I love that, you know.

But anyhow.

You got me thinking, I wanna keep going.

We're gonna get lost in, I was trying to go through a list of what I thought were the obstacles, but I'm gonna interrupt it again.

This oppressive atmosphere, you know, this unpleasant atmosphere to be in, you had mentioned to me, and you did a deep dive into basically looking at all the Friedkin films over the past couple weeks, and you watched Bug.

Would you say it's the same thing there, that the atmosphere is just really unpleasant for the viewer to be in?

Worse.

Bug was worse.

Yeah.

You know, it's because it's closed.

It's another Tracy Let's Play that is so tight in, you know.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, I guess we'd have to call that a hallmark of Bill Friedkin.

He's such a...

Uncompromising.

Yes.

He's such an uncompromising director.

He basically follows the 10, you know, Hitchcock would always say, you know, the audience will go where I want them to go.

So I don't think Friedkin is really thinking about keeping the audience.

He believes he's always going to have the audience.

And so he creates these environments that are so, so bug, you're saying is like that.

I haven't seen it.

Killer Joe.

Totally.

If you watch Killer Joe, you feel like you got to take a shower after watching that movie.

Obviously, the exorcist same way, you know, it's been in that room, the freezing cold room.

It's just.

Yeah.

So I guess it's kind of a hallmark of Friedkin.

Anyway, I was running through a list of the obstacles for this.

The only thing I want to say about all those films you just mentioned, it's also interesting that he's always dealing with some sort of taboo.

You know, there's always some taboo that, you know, and that's what he's going to like.

I love that when you said that Hitchcock said he'll take you anywhere.

Friedkin is going to force you to go there.

You know what I mean?

Because he's such a good filmmaker that he's going to force you to look at these weird, you know, demonic possession.

You know, four bad guys were going to watch a movie about four criminals.

I mean, you know, people that haven't seen the film.

I mean, one's an Arab bomber, a terrorist.

You know, there was an embezzler and the other one's a hired assassin, you know, and top of this.

I mean, you know, so, yeah, I find that really amazing, you know.

Sounds like a good setup for a joke.

Terrorists, embezzlers walk into a park.

The back part of my brain.

So anyway, I was going through, I was giving a list of all the things that I think make this film kind of hard to like that Friedkin kind of is able to push ahead through with his, the capability of his direction.

So continuing with my list, it's unrelentingly dark and bleak.

Yes.

It's got a cast other than Scheider.

It's a cast of unknowns.

Yes.

Foreigners too.

Foreigners, right?

Yes.

Yes.

It's got a misleading title.

Yes.

What do you think of the title?

Viewed through the lens of time, do you like the title Sorcerer or do you think it could add a better title?

That's a really hard question.

I mean, one tries to wonder what title would be.

I could say yes, and then the next question is, well, give me a title.

But I think this title meant something to Friedkin.

Okay.

When you said give me a title, was that rhetorical or should I give you some titles?

Give me some titles.

Dynamite, three exclamation points.

Dynamite, you mean?

Dino-mite.

Dino-mite.

The Long and Winding Road.

Roads, right?

The bridge over the river.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now, I think you could have come up with a better title, and I think the problem was, as you know where the title was derived from, he was listening to Miles Davis' album Sorcerer.

So he named it Sorcerer.

So not the best way, but I think it was better than the original title.

Do you remember the original title?

I mean, that's the working title?

No, I never knew it.

What is it?

I'm not, you're going to think I'm making you stop.

The working title that he changed to Sorcerer because he had listened to a Miles Davis record, the original working title was Ballbreaker.

Get out of time.

No, I'm totally serious, I thought you would know that.

No, I did not know that.

Yeah.

Oh my God.

So Sorcerer is not a great title, but especially at the time it was a terrible title because it was, the film was marketed as from the director of Exorcist.

And now it's called Sorcerer, so everybody's thinking, oh great, this is going to be another supernatural movie.

Really bad idea.

And sorry, I was getting through the end of my, to the end of my list of all the self-inflicted obstacles this film had.

And I want to, and we're going to have to discuss this a little bit more, but I feel the structure is problematic.

They starting with the four separate stories, then coming together and then it slows down and builds again.

I know you might have a separate opinion, but let's hold that.

Do you basically agree with my idea that there were a lot of obstacles that only were overcome by the sheer power and mastery of Bill Friedkin's directing?

Yes.

Okay.

So should we turn to the opening four stories and whether that is a good...

And as you're well aware, that's not the way the Wages of Fear begins, correct?

Right.

That's correct.

But are we going to talk at all about the title, why it is called Sorcerer at some point?

I thought it was called Sorcerer because of the Miles Davis record.

Do you know something else?

Well, why did he, you know, yeah, yeah, why he called it, you know, the thematic reason why it's called Sorcerer.

You know, fate is the evil wizard, he keeps saying.

And, you know, it's a story about fate and how it's the Stoics business again.

Once again, we run into the Stoics that you have no control over what's going to happen.

You know?

Well, I mean, I think you have control, but it's Trump by fate.

Clearly, clearly the character, Scanlon has control about where he goes, whether he takes this job, what road he takes.

But, but fate trumps all the best laid plans.

Yeah.

Well, but, you know, he keeps saying to fate or what necessarily happens.

I mean, he says, well, you know, yeah, they had some control.

They made a choice.

And that's usually what's said about Wages of Fear.

You know, it's an existential film because there's a choice that's being made.

You know, but it was interesting because I found that it's not to be so much thematically about fate, but about chance.

Because, you know, they all took their chance.

And when you say, I'm going to do this, you know, I'm going to do this horrible thing, this difficult, you know, drive, this transportation, it's like, why would they call it us?

It's, you know, it's called the Suicide Mission.

You know, so I think that, you know, fate, yes, the necessary yes, but I think it was also a lot of chance.

So anyhow, that was just my take about why, his defense of why it's called Sorcerer, the wizard, you know, it's like, you can't predict.

It's a hidden power, sort of like faith in the exorcist, you know, which is what he talks about.

I want to get to the theme in a second, but I want to try to get at the, again, the structure of the opening of film, but I can't help but ask a question, which I hope I'm not going to be sorry to ask, and if we can keep it very brief.

I remember one of the films you directed was called Choice and Chance.

Was that by any chance on the same theme or not?

Pretty much, yeah.

It was?

Yeah, yeah, yes.

Yes, it is.

It's pretty much you make a choice and then chance occurrences happen.

I mean, and so in this movie, the chance occurrences are the map says go to the left, they follow the map, and then they don't mention that there's a bridge there, of going to a rickety bridge.

And you make the choice there, and then you keep going, and then the chance element was there's a tree in the middle of the road, and then the avalanche and the gorillas show up.

Of course, I think the biggest point of chance is when the second truck gets a blown out tire.

Yes, absolutely.

I met my wife when I first came to Paris.

The day she gave me this was the last day I saw her.

It's five minutes before nine in Paris.

If we can, what do you think about the, again, so Wages of Fear did not start with the four stories all over the world about the backstory of the characters.

It just starts with the characters in the forlorn town, the dead end town, right?

Where they get the mission, correct?

I would call it the camp, yes.

Okay, so what do you think about Friedkin's big, which is basically kind of his real big reworking of it, to add these, start with these four separate stories.

Was that a good move or a bad move?

Great move for me because there's always something that bothered me about the Cluesos.

I thought it was great.

There's a case where I wanted the backstory and when I started watching them, going, all right, this is good because I felt, I think Cluesop had at the beginning more with just comradery and stuff at the camp.

I liked it, what Friedkin did.

He gave backstory, here's who these people really are.

We're not going to hear rumors, we're not going to draw some conclusion from what they look like, or how they minimally behave in the Cantina.

We're going to see who they are, how bad they really are.

Then we have the Cantina scene or the camp scene, and then we move on to the hazards, you know, the transportation.

I liked it, you didn't?

I did not like it, because I just felt it really destabilized the rhythm of the film.

Well, first of all...

How do you know it destabilized if you didn't see it before?

I mean, you know, because there's four vignettes?

Well, no, I think the first problem is having these four disparate vignettes, and you're sitting there and you're definitely caught on your back foot as an audience trying to piece it all together, but that's okay, I can live with that.

But then, you know, you have excitement, tension, explosions, you know, suicides, you know, blown out bloody windows.

And then we're in this town and the clock has to restart on tension and slowly rebuild again.

And you could argue, oh, that's good, you know, we got tension and release.

I would have preferred, you know, again, I just felt the release of tension is too great.

You know, it's not like tension and release, it's like tension build up and then start the movie, basically start the film all over again.

Interesting, because you know, what I'll counter with that is, had it gone to a cleaner place, yes, maybe.

But what I found the tension that, you know, I didn't find, it was so sorted there at that camp, you know, the first shot, the first, the mud, the filth.

I was just like, that just went like, this is where they all ended, you know.

So I just felt like, wow, it was making me tense just watching it.

And I mean, how, what the hell is going on here?

Yeah.

My other, I'm sorry, I do have somebody backing me up on my take on it, that it destabilizes the rhythm.

So, well, you can ask, who's in my camp on this?

Who's my backup on this?

Well, who's your back?

Who's your authority?

Which is a fallacy.

What authority are you appealing to?

I would not call him an authority.

Friedkin himself.

Watch.

No, Christopher Nolan is on record.

And he's on film saying that he feels like the opening, the way Friedkin did it is problematic in terms of rhythm, the things I've talked about.

The other problem I have, which Christopher Nolan won't back me up on or listen and say it is, I don't think you need the backstory of these characters.

I think the backstory, you know, again, for Scanlon, the backstory, actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I think it might have been better.

Yeah, sorry.

Wow.

Here's what I'm thinking, FT., and you're not gonna like it, but I'm gonna say it anyway.

I think it would have been better to start the film in Elizabeth, New Jersey with Scanlon with that thing.

And he's got to leave town and we follow him to this town.

We don't need the backstories of the other three.

I think it would have been enough to have the Scanlon backstory.

Could have been.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, you know, but remember one thing.

You know, from I read the synopsis of the one fellow that said, you know, I can't sell you the book, but here's what the book does.

Arnaud, he drops it all.

Arnaud starts with the explosion at the, apparently, and I hope I'm right about this, he starts with the explosion at the OLL., the death of a foreman, the death of all the people, and then, and it goes into this long documentary-like sequence in the book about putting the trucks together.

It's like this, it's like a, it's a wrench.

It's a, you know, it's a mechanics dream about how they put, you know, which is what I liked about what, what Friedkin did versus Clouzot, you know.

Friedkin shows that stuff, which is great.

And so all along in the novel, it's a battle between the hazards and the mechanic, and the mechanical stuff, the gear shifts failing, this and that going wrong.

And that's where he has his tension in the book.

So he drops it all.

He drops the camp, he drops the, you know, there's no backstories, but I don't know if he reveals backstories because we haven't read the book, which is why I want to, I do want to read it at some point.

Save up your money.

You save up your money.

Yeah, indeed.

Yeah.

So you, you kind of touched on, you, you said, Friedkin, the theme of it was, I want to talk about the theme of the movie because what Friedkin talks about in his memoir, I think is very interesting for what he, the reason he was drawn to do The Wages of Fear, he saw as an important theme.

Do you know what Friedkin, how Friedkin, what Friedkin identified as the theme of, of this film, Sorcerer, and also Wages of Fear?

Cooperation among people, something.

Yes, yes, he said it was a metaphor that the countries of the world needed to cooperate or the world would blow up.

And so he saw this of these four people having to cooperate or they would blow up as a metaphor for the state of the world, which I think is pretty interesting.

It is interesting, yeah, flawed nations, flawed people.

Right, if you don't cooperate, you don't have to like each other at all, but cooperate in some sense to avoid disaster, you know?

That's a good one, yeah.

Let us try to avoid disaster on this podcast by jumping ahead to two of the scenes we've been teasing, which the first will be the bridge scene, and you've wanted to talk about the tree scene.

So let's get to those scenes, FT.

Yeah.

Talk about the bridge.

What do you want to say about that?

It is just something that has to be watched.

It has to be, you know, watching, you're going to sit there and this is shot in real time, and it's being cut, and it's real, it's not fake.

I think sometimes there were stunt drivers, and sometimes there were really the actors, it was Roy Scheider and all that.

But what struck me about this was the contribution, I think, we're starting to make the film criticism, is that, I think it happened last, the last podcast with Whiplash.

It's interesting, this desire to show some arduous thing, that you're going to watch this horrible thing, the first truck make it through, which is brilliantly done, right?

And then you go, okay, wait a minute, that wasn't enough for you?

Again, like I said last time, about Polanski in The Tenant, he falls out, he jumps out one time and then you gotta go like, oh no, he's gonna crawl back up.

Here, I was shocked that he did the, the second truck has to go through it.

Clouzot, by the way, has it two times on that wooden platform, which is kind of dramatic and it's good, but nothing like what Friedkin does here.

Yeah, although I do like, in the Clouzot film, I do like to touch on the wooden platform with the hook on the side of the truck, catching the cable and pulling on it.

Well, you know, Friedkin sort of quotes that, you know, because you finally do hear the, The tree.

Well, no, with the rope going, you know.

Yeah, I agree, the catching on the hook there.

But, yeah, the double dose.

One time wasn't enough for you.

Hey, let's do it again.

And in painful detail.

Yeah, and here's the thing for me.

And again, we all have our own picadillas.

I hate repetition.

So for me, I loved seeing it the first time.

And then I'm like, it was, it was not more impactful for me the second time.

It lessened the impact of the first truck having to sit through the second truck for me.

No, I understand that.

And it's not, you know, but I find it interesting that we've now uncovered a couple of cases, more than a couple of cases where, you know, I think that's a weirdo technique to torture you.

Yes.

You know what I mean?

Yes.

And yes, and you're right, this could be our contribution to film criticism.

If it's recognized by somebody out there and you win like a hundred dollar film criticism prize, then you can buy, you can buy The Wages of Fear book and have twenty dollars left over.

It probably goes up when somebody listens to the podcast, I'm going to make it one twenty now.

You know what I mean?

Exactly.

Actually, if the bookseller is really smart listening to this podcast, he would send you the hundred dollar reward.

So you're like, I'm going to buy the book now, but then raise the price to $180 on the book and you're like, well, screw it.

I've got a hundred bucks.

So what's another?

You know, you were getting back to this.

The next scene following this is the tree.

You said you wanted to talk about this.

Yeah.

Before you get to the tree, I just want to have one little historical footnote.

This is kind of interesting on the bridge.

Yeah.

So they build the bridge in the Dominican Republic.

So John Box, the production designer, said right from the beginning is most production designers, the good ones are architects.

They're trained and they can know how to get stuff built or in the case of Jack Fisk, he was a carpenter.

But Box came on and said, look, I'm a concept guy.

I can't get stuff built.

I just come up with concepts.

But somehow even with Box as a production designer, they build this incredible bridge rig, which for its time is kind of the equivalent to some of the rigs that Christopher Nolan was building for Inception with the rotating rooms and stuff like that.

Yeah, but this is out of natural materials, though, right?

In this one, you think they're even cutting their logs down.

You know what I mean?

That's what the impression I got.

It was built with it.

Yes, right.

Nolan was on a soundstage doing this stuff here.

Yeah, so they built this bridge and again, it's got hydraulics at the end to shake the bridge and it's got cables to keep so the trucks can be tipping over but not capsized.

Oh, yeah, no, that's an interesting one because the impression of that is that it wasn't that rigged.

You know what I mean?

I really was sitting there going like, this is fucking crazy.

I mean, that truck is almost tipping over one time.

And it's so unlikely, but I'm like, you know what?

I guess that that hemp, this is a push for a hemp.

They say it's strong.

It cost in today's dollars, $6 million to build it and three months to build.

And then they had to pick the whole thing up and transport it to Mexico and start all over again.

And move it?

The river in the Dominican Republic that had never dried up, never gone down for, as far as anybody can remember, when they finally get the rigging for the bridge sequence in place, the river dries up.

There's no water to cross over the bridge.

So they have to move the whole bridge rig and the crew to Mexico, to another river that they claimed had never gone dry.

And they move there and they have to build the whole thing and the infrastructure start all over again and that river starts to dry up.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

Anyhow, the tree, you know what's beautiful about the tree sequence?

I'm sorry, just so people know what we're talking about, so why don't you set it up for us?

Set up the scene you're talking about.

Well, I want to, yeah, I'll set it up in this way.

So during the bridge sequence, people haven't seen it yet, it's raining, it's pouring, the wind is blowing, it's a storm.

The old man is snoring.

It's a monsoon-y.

And then all of a sudden it cuts to sunlight.

Right.

Quiet, beautiful, jungle, lush colors and all that.

And they're coming along and everything.

Which by the way was easy to do because the bridge scene, I forget how many sprinklers, rain machines they had to bring.

But there was definitely, Friedkin was asking for more.

I mean, it's about, that bridge scene is about the rainiest scene ever put on film, other than like, some tornado film or something like that.

Or the scene where rain drops keep falling on my man.

Sorry, there's a movie with George Clooney about the fishing boat that had incredible rain.

Well, see, I thought it was the opposite.

I thought that he put artificial sunlight in for the tree scene.

So you got me all confused here, buddy.

And so you get this finally, this weird feeling of hope.

I did, I'm just how my impression was.

And then all of a sudden, there is a giant, looks like a Sequoia, right?

It's that big.

The size.

It's a huge tree.

It's a crossroad, which in Clouseau, it's a boulder, by the way, which is less likely.

But here in Sorcerer, this is for me, one of the best MacGyver scenes and people that have seen the TV series know what I'm talking about.

They rig up a way to remove the tree, by ding-dong, you know, using the explosives.

And ding-dong, luckily, they have an explosive expert, you know, the Arab bomber.

But before that, everybody's going loco.

Everybody's losing their minds.

This is the last giant straw.

We're going to go around it.

We can hack out eight trees.

If you cut them down, how do you move them?

The witch.

How are you going to clear the stamps?

How are you going to drive through a swamp?

We're going to go through it.

Impossible.

Impossible!

I think I can clear it.

I really did like the setting up of the tripod.

It was so much more believable than Clouzot's.

When I was watching Wages, I was like, nah, no way, this is stupid.

But to blow up a tree with one box of that dynamite, that shitty dynamite, that was absolutely believable.

Interesting thing, after the whole scene happened for me, they had no celebration.

Clouzot, they're jumping up and down, kissing each other, as those Europeans will.

You know, and in this one, nope.

Yes.

Yeah, I mean, as I said, when I set out the obstacle, this film is unrelentingly bleak.

There's not a joke, there's not a hint of humor, there's never, yeah, it's just bleak from beginning to end.

Would you like a little, from the set story about the tree?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right, so here's a live from the set story.

So they're setting up the explosives to shoot the explosion of the tree.

They've got the explosives rigged, which on a film set or whenever you're using explosives, you don't want things jostling or noise.

So they're like, what the, they hear this noise coming and they look up and there's a helicopter that they think is gonna fly over, but then the helicopter starts heading to set down right next to where they've got this tree rigged with explosives.

What?

Yeah, and they don't know what's going on.

The helicopter sets down in the middle of nowhere next to this tree and the door to the helicopter opens and out pops Charlie Bluthorne.

Get the fuck up.

Yeah, the CEO of Gulf Western owns half the island.

I think with his wife and I think with Barry Dilt, one of the executives.

Barry Manilow.

And everybody is looking at and Charlie Bluthorne is like, I want to see how you're doing.

You know, it just wants to stop by.

How's it going?

And Friedkin is like, oh, this is going to be good.

I'm going to show him how he's getting his money's work.

He's going to see this huge explosion that we've rigged up.

Oh my God.

And so he's like, just stand back here, Charlie.

Here's what we're doing.

You know, this is the tree blowing up scene.

Put the sunglasses on.

Yeah, they set up the cameras.

Director, you know, rolling, blah, blah, blah, action.

And explode, you know, they cue the demo, the explosion, and it just goes, boop.

Like a little puff of smoke and nothing blows up.

And Friedkin, it was like, what the hell happened?

And when he turns around, Bluthorn is gone.

The helicopter is just taking off.

Are you kidding me?

Yeah.

And Friedkin is so fucking pissed.

And this is a true story.

And again, the memoir is so amazing with the stuff Friedkin does.

So Friedkin's, through Jimmy Breslin, Friedkin had met this arsonist in New York City.

Like the top, like the big mob arsonist.

A real arsonist.

Yes.

Yeah, professional.

Yeah.

The guy, through Jimmy Breslin, he was in Jimmy Breslin's column under a nickname, you know, like Nick the Torch or whatever was his name.

And he would blow up grocery stores and turn them into parking lots when, you know, they wanted to collect the insurance money.

So Friedkin gets on the phone and calls Nick the Torch, you know, calls Mrs.

Torch, as he puts it, and says, you know, is Nick home?

And she's like, he doesn't do that anymore.

He's like, I know, it's okay, let me talk to him.

You know, it's for a film.

And so he explains to Nick the Torch what he wants.

He says, the next day, Nick the Torch shows up in the Dominican Republic carrying two suitcases and goes behind the tree, rigs something up and says, okay, we're all set.

And Friedkin calls action.

And that explosion, which you see on the screen, no CGI is what Nick the Torch did.

It's a hell of an explosion.

It sure is.

How about that?

Yeah.

You know, it's interesting, you just talk about other weird stunts and things.

You know, one of the things I wanted to point out from a personal story is, back in Elizabeth, New Jersey scene, you know, where there's the car wreck, there's a small chase and all that.

From what I read, it took over 10 days, 12 takes, or 12 takes over 10 days, and Billy still wasn't happy.

And so he calls some other connection and he gets somebody named Joey Chitwit Jr.

Oh, right, the stunt driver, right?

The stunt driver.

Now, my personal, you know, who did it in one take, you know, because he and his father figured out a way to drive a car in two wheels.

You know, I had seen Joey Chitwit and Joey Chitwit Jr.

at the Clearfield County Fair once again when I was a kid.

They held drivers.

Yeah, driving under two wheels and going through like 14 feet of solid ice with dynamite on the fenders that would ignite, blow up the ice and they would go through.

And I'm just like, oh my god, Joey Chitwit, the son of the famous hell driver.

Anyhow.

Yeah, I was going to move on.

But since you brought up Elizabeth, New Jersey, I have to bring up my own personal story, which is that I'm from New Jersey and my grandfather had a sporting goods store in Elizabeth.

So I was in Elizabeth.

Did he sell dynamite?

No, but he had a sporting goods store.

So seeing Elizabeth, New Jersey, where they actually filmed, took me back to my grandfather's sporting goods store, Solomon's World of Sporting Goods, which is not the sponsor of this episode, which we should wrap up here, FT.

I think we've probably had enough fun or not fun with Sorcerer.

You ready to wrap this one up?

Am I ready to wrap this one up?

Let's wrap it up.

So I wanna thank everybody for listening to another edition of They Shoot Films.

We couldn't do this without, well, we could do it without you, but it wouldn't be worth it doing without you.

Please check out our website, our new website.

What's the URL for that, FT?

I believe it is theyshootfilms.com.

That's theyshootfilms.com.

And if you go there, you can send us messages, tell us what you like, what you don't like.

You can find out about what movie's coming up next.

There's all kinds of fun stuff going on at the website.

So please, please head over there, take a look, and we will see you in two weeks with the next film here at They Shoot Films.

FT., I'm going to bid you a good night, sir.

I'll bid you one back, and I'll raise you a morning.

All right, buddy.

They Shoot Films is a production of Film Symposium West, produced by Anne-Marie De Palma, studio announcer, Roy Blumenfeld.