Shock Value - Jason Zinoman [124]
93 Directed by the Maysles brothers: Vincent Canby, “Making Murder Pay? Gimme Shelter,” The New York Times, December 13, 1970.
93 “If I had been writing”: Lucretia Marmon, “Hal Lindsey Says the Wave of the Future Is Armageddon, and 14 Million Buy It,” People, July 4, 1977.
94 “It won’t get made”: AI with Peter Bogdanovich.
95 “He made a deal!”: AI with Blatty.
95 “Crime does pay”: Ibid.
95 It was, he said: Peter Travers, The Story Behind The Exorcist (New York: Crown Publishers, 1974), p. 24; AI with Friedkin.
96 When Father Merrin: AI with Friedkin.
96 “That was the moral context”: AI with Blatty.
96 “Without these scenes”: AI with Blatty, Friedkin. The Story Behind The Exorcist, pp. 26–39.
97 “I’m not doing”: AI with Blatty, Friedkin.
97 a mystical centuries-old: H. P. Lovecraft, The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories (New York: Penguin Classics, 2004), p. 309.
97 When the movie was released: Mark Harris, Pictures at the Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood (New York: Penguin Press, 2008), pp. 183–85.
98 “When I saw The Birthday Party”: AI with Friedkin.
98 “He must have never”: Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema,” The New Yorker, November 8, 1976.
99 He told Friedkin: AI with Friedkin.
99 “Let’s face it”: AI with Blatty.
99 Industry trade publication: The Story Behind The Exorcist, pp. 129–30.
100 Blatty agreed: AI with Friedkin.
100 “That’s what I thought happened”: AI with Blatty.
101 Pauline Kael attacked: Elizabeth Peer, “The Exorcist Frenzy,” Newsweek, February 11, 1974; James Marriot, Horror Movies (London: Virgin Books, 1997); James Baldwin, The Devil Finds Work (New York: Laurel, 1990); Travers, The Story Behind The Exorcist; John Kenneth Muir, Horror Films of the 1970s, Volumes 1 and 2 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002); Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema,” The New Yorker, January 7, 1974.
101 It appeared in The New York Times: Chris Chase, “Everyone’s Reading It, Billy’s Filming It,” The New York Times, August 27, 1972.
102 The director obfuscated: Castle of Frankenstein, January 23, 1974; Travers, The Story Behind The Exorcist; AI with Blatty, Friedkin, Joe Hyams.
103 Rolling Stone’s Jon Landau: Rolling Stone review reprinted in Travers, The Story Behind The Exorcist, pp. 158–62.
103 “Not acceptable ugly”: Chase, “Everyone’s Reading It, Billy’s Filming It.”
103 “We needed to open”: AI with Hyams.
105 “Hence the sympathy”: Stephen Farber, The Movie Rating Game (New York: Public Affairs, 1972); Jack Valenti, This Time, This Place: My Life in War, the White House, and Hollywood (New York: Crown, 2007); Wayne Warga, “MPAA Film Ratings Go Into Effect,” Los Angeles Times, November 1, 1968.
106 “It was the best”: AI with Roger Corman.
106 The earliest version: Variety, October 16, 1968.
106 In a pan in Variety: Roger Ebert, “Just Another Horror Movie—Or Is It?” Reader’s Digest, June 1968, p. 128.
106–7 In The Movie Rating Game: Farber, The Movie Rating Game, p. 88.
107 In a rare move: AI with Friedkin.
107 “But when a movie”: Pauline Kael, For Keeps: 30 Years at the Movies (New York: Penguin, 1994), p. 537.
107 In The New York Times: Jack Valenti, “Letter to the Editor,” The New York Times, February 24, 1974.
108 “My little spot”: AI with Lewis.
108 “With Stern”: AI with Immerman.
108 Sure enough: Farber, The Movie Rating Game.
109 “And it got an R?”: AI with Richard Heffner.
109 An article in: Gerald Jonas, “The Man Who Gave an ‘X’ Rating to Violence,” The New York Times, May 11, 1975.
110 “They are household pets”: AI with Heffner.
CHAPTER SIX
111 As the buzz: AI with John Landis, Jack Harris.
112 “So what?”: AI with Dan O’Bannon.
112 “This is my deal”: AI with Harris, O’Bannon.
112 “If this was the way”: AI with O’Bannon.
113 No matter how monstrous: Stephen King, Danse Macabre (New York: Berkley Books, 1981), p. 110. I learned an immense amount about horror from reading the thoughts of King, but in particular, my understanding of the Monster Problem was clarified by his account of a speech by William F. Nolan at the 1970 World