Posted on 10/31/2013 3:02:21 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Ignore, for a moment, the pea soup. Forget the head swivel, the crucifix, those 75 stone steps that tumble from Prospect to M Street. Forget that demonic voice and what your mother may or may not be doing in Hell. The creator of the scariest movie of all time would like very much if you’d remember that he wrote the Peter Sellers caper “A Shot in the Dark,” that his early collaborator in Hollywood was the comedy director Blake Edwards, that an esteemed book critic once wrote that “Nobody can write funnier lines than William Peter Blatty.”
This career in punch lines was hurled out the window when Blatty started clacking away on his green IBM Selectric in a cabin near Lake Tahoe during the summer of 1969. For nine months, starting around 11 each night and working through darkness, the unemployed screenwriter wrote in seclusion about the demonic possession of a girl, the troubled priest from Georgetown University who is assigned to her case and the brooding brick Colonial on Prospect Street NW where the nightmare unfolds. Even as he typed out the vilest of passages, Blatty never thought his novel would frighten anyone, or that it would become and remain (adjusting for inflation) the top-grossing R-rated movie in history.
The comic writer’s legacy is a horror film.
And now it has brought him to the corner booth in the lowest level of the Tombs for a meatball lunch, a short walk from the AMC Loews Georgetown, where “The Exorcist” begins a one-week engagement Thursday night in honor of its impending 40th anniversary.
“As I say, every Halloween I’m dragged out of my burrow like some demonic Punxsutawney Phil,” says Blatty, a hale and hearty 85.....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
He was on WMAL this morning for a whole hour. Silvie was on too!
I agree with him a thousand percent!!
ping
The money quote:
” The last straw, he says, was Georgetown’s invitation of Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, to be a commencement speaker in May of last year. Sebelius has a record of supporting abortion rights, and abortion is the issue that really sets Blatty’s nerves on fire.
He describes, his voice trembling, a particular abortion procedure in graphic detail.
He pauses. His voice is nearly a whisper.
“That’s demonic.”
(and of course, the writer doesn’t give the details of the demonic procedure)
Good man, that Blatty.
Even though some of the scare of the Exorcist was cheating (infrasound, made some of the first audiences ill).
There were also death skulls between frames that could only be picked up subliminally.
huh?
In the original run, there were extra frames showing a skull added between the movie frames. It wasn’t there long enough to be seen by most people, but long enough that it still registered in your mind, helping to create a sense of fear.
http://www.eeggs.com/items/3204.html
Scariest book I’ve ever read. Good movie, too. Ellen Burstyn was excellent, as were Jason Miller and Max Von Sydow.
They weren’t that subliminal because I remember seeing that white face picture in the frame to the left.
I’ve never liked that film. Crude as all get out.
It was more horrifying than I was even aware of.
The Ring is scarier but The Exorcist was a bigger phenom.
Ironically, I went to high school with the person who played Anna Morgan in The Ring and I remember her telling me about being frightened by The Exorcist
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Friedkin#Filmography_.28as_director.29
Two songs I play this time of year. Theme from “The Exorcist” and “Monster Mash” by Bobby “Boris” Pickett.
IIRC, Billy Graham not only warned people off going to it, but going near a theatre showing it.
Yes, with The Planteman!
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