Considered by many cinema buffs to be director William Friedkin's underappreciated third straight masterpiece following the one-two punch of The French Connection and The Exorcist, 1977's long-lost Sorcerer starring Roy Scheider has finally gotten a widescreen Blu-ray release this month. Inspired by the Georges Arnaud novel The Wages of Fear, the film focuses on four men—a Mexican hitman, an Arab terrorist, an American hood, and a disgraced French businessman—who are hiding out in an impoverished South American oil town. The quarrelling gang gets contracted as truck drivers to deliver unstable explosives to the site of a raging oil well fire. The story is just as socially relevant today as when it came out.
It is the only film of mine that I wouldn't change." —William FriedkinWILLIAM FRIEDKIN: I think it's the one that most reflects my worldview, which could be described as cynical or jaded. On the other hand, I don't see it that way. I see it as more realistic, which is not to say that I think everything about life is as simplistically difficult and complicated as that, but I think that much of it is. We all wind up the same way, no matter what our goals or ambitions are. We have nothing at all to say about how we got into this world or how are going to leave it. That's what Sorcerer is about. It came closest to my vision at the time. It is the only film of mine that I wouldn't change.
ESQ: Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1953 film version of The Wages of Fear focused a lot more on the character development and personality clashes, and here I feel like the South American backdrop is the main character. It presents this vision of hell as a beautiful, decaying landscape.
LMPC//Getty ImagesSorcerer movie poster, 1977.
WF: No question I had in mind a kind of living purgatory and an attempt, only an attempt, at redemption, which I think is something that we all constantly aspire to. The story was a timeless metaphor for the situation in the world. All the great countries are at odds with one another over something, and yet if they don't cooperate they're going to blow up.
ESQ: I imagine all the crazy truck stunts, particularly driving across a rickety bridge over a raging river, would all be done with CGI today?
The whole picture would be CGI [today]."WF: The whole picture would be CGI. If I wanted to do that film today, I would have to do it CGI because the production of that film was life-threatening. If it was CGI it wouldn't have to be. It could probably be done just as well, but you wouldn't have to build any of that stuff. You could computer-generate everything, including most of the town. Even with some of the best action films like The Bourne Ultimatum, which is a great action film with a great chase sequence, so much of it is computer-generated. But that doesn't bother me. I think it works. It's fantastic.
ESQ: Sorcerer came out at a pivotal time because Star Wars had just been released a month earlier. Do you recall that?
WF: I'm not sure of the exact dates, but I know that Star Wars initially had a limited release. It opened at the Chinese Theater among a few others in L.A., and then they had booked Sorcerer. So they had to throw Star Wars out at its peak, and Sorcerer went in and just crashed and burned. They put Star Wars back in after about a week or 10 days. I'm not sure when these films were actually released, but that was the shuffle at the Chinese. It recently ran there again after 37 years. It replaced Star Wars and was replaced by Star Wars. They moved us to a theater down the street on Hollywood Boulevard.
ESQ: Star Wars ushered in a new era of movies. Whereas many mainstream films in the late '60s through the late '70s dealt with very serious social and political topics — some of them were very dark and had viewpoints that could have been considered nihilistic — there was a big paradigm shift afterward. It's never been quite the same since.
Star WarsWF: Star Wars is one of a handful of films that changed the zeitgeist forever. If Star Wars had failed, you wouldn't have 90 percent of what's out there today. Star Wars gave birth to all the computer-generated superhero films. They're all a result of the success of Star Wars, and many or most of them have even exceeded Star Wars because of the development of the computer technology, and they all do great commercially. That's what people see today from American cinema around the world. It's the biggest shape shift in cinema. I mean, there were other films that changed the way people made films, like Breathless, the handheld cameras and jump cuts. That influence is still out there today, not only in films but television, shows like Homeland, 24, and many others. They came from a shift that was brought about by Breathless, and independent cinema had a big rise after Easy Rider, the fact that four hippies could go out without a script and go across the country and shoot a road movie that people would see in large numbers. Compared to Star Wars, it was a minor shift in the zeitgeist, but Star Wars is what you're watching today. And now they're making three more.
ESQ: How did Roy Scheider and the other actors feel about all the stunts you had them do?
We dumped those trucks many times with guys in them and had to fish them out, which took hours."WF: They got into it, but they knew it was dangerous. I got malaria, and we sent back close to 50 people and replaced them because they got gangrene and various other diseases during the making of it. The conditions were literally horrible, but to me it was an adventure and an education. I had kind of a sleepwalker's security that I could pull it off. I would never attempt anything like that today. No way. I was too dumb to realize how dangerous it was.
Watch the Sorcerer scene for which the filmmakers tipped trucks into the river and fished people out.
ESQ: I heard that the trucks fell into the river.
WF: We dumped those trucks many times with guys in them and had to fish them out, which took hours.
ESQ: It reminds me of when Francis Ford Coppola was making Apocalypse Now. You guys were making films that were dangerous to the cast and crews. Those films would never get made today.
WF: Nor should they. I believe today that there is no film and no shot in a film that is worth a squirrel getting a sprained ankle. We were irresponsible in that regard. Apocalypse Now is a great movie, and when you watch it you don't think about how dangerous it was to make, but it was.
ESQ: So what do you think about the tragic accident on the Twilight Zone movie set back in the '80s?
WF: I know [director] John Landis slightly and I like him, but that was an example of the most out-of-control thing that ever happened in a movie. Starting with the fact that the kids were underage and had no work permits to be there, and they flew the helicopter too low. It's easy to say that in hindsight, but I'm sure that he and all the people on the crew had a sleepwalker's conviction that they could pull it off. Listen, some of the greatest films ever made were much more life-threatening than Sorcerer. The Buster Keaton films, the stuff that he did — the chase scenes, the gags jumping from a moving train car to another, trains uncoupling — those chase scenes amaze me, and they were dangerous. They are far greater than any chase scenes made in the sound era.
ESQ: You were the first film director to give Tangerine Dream a film score. How did you discover them?
Michael Ochs Archives//Getty ImagesFriedkin with Linda Blair on the set of The Exorcist.
WF: I was over there [in Germany] doing promotion for The Exorcist and some young guy told me about this incredible group with this extraordinary sound. They played an abandoned 18th-century church in the Black Forest at midnight with no lights on them, just the light of their electronic instruments, and it was hypnotic and trancelike. I met the leader, a guy named Edgar Froese, and told him I didn't know what film I was going to do next but I was going to come to him to do the score. About a year and a half later I sent him the script, told him the story of the film over the phone, and said, "Just write your impressions of what I've told you and what you read." He mailed me a score about seven or eight months later never having seen the film. On April 3, 2014, I was in Copenhagen where the new Tangerine Dream, which is still led by Edgar Froese, gave a live concert of the score. They played two hours of the music from Sorcerer expanded by stuff I didn't use. They got the old instruments back and played to an absolutely packed house that was mesmerized. They're releasing that as a live album.
ESQ: Last year was the 40th anniversary of The Exorcist, wasn't it?
WF: I'll tell you what's happening with The Exorcist. There's a company that's based in New York and London called CAMI, Columbia Artists Management Inc., that represents classical music composers, conductors, and some singers. On a handful of occasions they've taken films that used classical music exclusively and put them out with a live orchestra. They are going to do that with The Exorcist. They're going to open it at Royal Albert Hall in London, and it's going to go to places like Disney Hall and the Kennedy Center with big orchestras and conductors. I have to add some music here and there because they say there is only 40 minutes of music in The Exorcist. The thing that's most remembered is [Mike Oldfield's] Tubular Bells, which is not classical music but is in the film on three very brief occasions.
ESQ: I've recently heard about the Bel Air Circuit, basically Hollywood A-listers who have movie screenings at their homes. Are you a part of it?
WF: We have our own screening room that seats about 25 people comfortably. We usually have a buffet dinner first and will either run a new film that has come out or hasn't come out yet. Last night we ran Draft Day, which opens Friday. I don't run the classics for our friends, I run them for myself, and only DCP [Digital Cinema Package] and Blu-ray. They look fantastic and sound great. I don't go to the movies much anymore. There's very little that draws me. I watch mostly the older stuff, and I often don't sit through the new films. I can't sit through the superhero films. But I watched Draft Day, and it was kind of sweet in an old-fashioned way. Kevin Costner is pretty good in it, and it's worth seeing. To me, it would be like recommending a fast food restaurant.
ESQ: How large is the Bel Air Circuit?
WF: It can't be more than 100 at the most, and today any number of the people on the Bel Air Circuit have not yet converted to DCP. But if you don't convert to DCP, you don't get a picture because they're not releasing 35 [mm prints] anymore. We have DCP in here, and it looks and sounds great. The film comes in a little cassette, not much bigger than a VHS, and you put it into a server. You push a couple of buttons, a screen comes down, and you have it.
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