The Friedkin Connection A Memoir by William Friedkin

Author:William Friedkin [Friedkin, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, Film & Video, Performing Arts
Publisher: http://xilobooks.com/

7

EMPIRE OF LIGHT

The image that most inspired me and the one that became iconic comes from a painting I had seen at the Museum of Modern Art: René Magritte’s Empire of Light II. Magritte made several variations of this painting over eight years, but the one that most compelled me is the one he painted in 1954 that’s in the Beaux-Arts Museum in Brussels, Belgium.

The painting is that of a dark house on a quiet street at nightfall. The bedroom windows on the second floor are warmly lit from within; other windows are visible but shuttered, and there’s no front door. Overhead is a daylight blue sky with floating clouds. On the street in front of the house is a single lamppost, but the 1954 version shows rainy reflections of the house and lamppost. There are no figures in the painting. I began to recompose this image in my mind’s eye. I saw a powerful light shining from Regan’s bedroom window down to a silhouetted figure standing near the streetlamp. The man would be Father Merrin arriving at the Georgetown house. Magritte’s painting is an example of how he juxtaposed realistic but unrelated objects. In the film it became a real house, on a real street, an upstairs bedroom in which a young girl is possessed by a demon.

To achieve the effect of the light from the bedroom window, we had to construct a platform behind the extension built onto Mrs. Mahoney’s house. On the platform was an arc light aimed directly at Merrin as he emerged from a taxicab. Prospect Avenue was wetted down, and we used fog machines to enhance the mood. We put our own streetlamp in front of the house. I had a taxi come down Thirty-Fifth Street, make a U-turn on Prospect, and pull up in front of the house. This meant Owen had to light two streets and produce the surreal effect from the bedroom window. We set aside a full day and night to light this one shot and photographed it the next night in one take.

On the morning of the pre-light, Max von Sydow arrived from Sweden. Our wardrobe supervisor had his measurements, so his priest’s clothing, black overcoat, and hat had been fitted. Dick Smith had previously made a mold of Max’s face, and he and Rick Baker spent the day applying his makeup. Dick applied several layers of latex to Max’s face, and dye to whiten his hair, while Rick painted liver spots on his hands. Max was in his forties, playing a man in his seventies. He was about six-eight, lean and with perfect posture, so he had to develop a slouch and arthritic movement for his character. I’ve never worked with an actor more dedicated. His makeup took four hours a day to apply and an hour to remove, and had to be reapplied each day. In addition to Linda’s makeup, this meant that Smith and Baker would be working ten straight hours on just these two characters,

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