On Christmas Day in 1973, some twenty Boston journalists ditched their households for a top-secret, ultra-exclusive 12:30pm screening of probably the most hotly anticipated movie of the yr: William Friedkin’s The Exorcist. Then an worker of the theater, Nat Segaloff’s job was to protect the door.
Audiences’ visceral reactions to the movie—vomiting, fainting, storming out of sold-out theaters in protest—at the moment are the stuff of cinematic legend. It’s these photographs that normally outline what’s typically referred to as “the scariest movie ever made.” However nobody puked at that screening of The Exorcist, recollects the Los Angeles-based Segaloff—who grew as much as turn into a journalist and writer, most not too long ago of The Exorcist Legacy: 50 Years of Concern, out July 25.
Then and now, even for consultants like Segaloff, the movie defies simple classification. Although it’s mostly referred to as a horror film, The Exorcist has solely a single soar scare (a not-so-scary flaring candle). It’s a status undertaking—the one horror movie ever nominated for greatest image nomination—and a supernatural whodunnit, in accordance with Friedkin and author William Peter Blatty. (Or as Segaloff calls them, “the 2 Payments.”) Segaloff himself classifies it as a psychological drama, though with this massive caveat: “Like all nice artwork, individuals take from it what they convey to it. And folks introduced loads to The Exorcist.”
Half a century after its monumental launch, Self-importance Truthful talks to Segaloff about The Exorcist’s little-known roots in comedy, whether or not it’s actually based mostly on a real story, why the Catholic Church grew to become a shock fan of the movie, and the various the explanation why the zeitgeist chosen The Exorcist for a everlasting place in our collective psyche.
Self-importance Truthful: Can you are taking me again to that scary Christmas Day? Had been you conscious of the significance of what you have been seeing?
Nat Segaloff: Most of us had learn the guide, as I had. [The film is based on Blatty’s novel of the same name.] However no person actually knew what to anticipate from the movie. No person knew we have been alleged to throw up, as a result of there was no lore surrounding it but. I used to be a publicist with the theater in Boston, and we had satisfied William Friedkin to do a pre-screening, so it was actually delivered moist from the lab. As you most likely know, critics are very stoic. We’ve what we name “the two-block rule,” which implies you don’t converse concerning the film for 2 blocks after leaving the theater. This isn’t for discretion, it’s for maintaining your colleagues from stealing your wisecracks. Clearly we have been impressed although, as I’ve been possessed with it—when you’ll pardon the apparent pun—because the day earlier than it opened on December 26, 1973. All these years later, this guide is form of my exorcism from The Exorcist.
Definitely not each movie’s anniversary nonetheless issues fifty years later. What’s it about The Exorcist that has us nonetheless caring half a century later?
It’s nonetheless as efficient now because it was then, as a result of there are nonetheless people who find themselves too afraid to see it. Horror motion pictures are a really unusual style…when you see Frankenstein’s monster or the Wolfman or Dracula, you possibly can depart them on the movie show. That’s not true of the satan, who could also be ready for you within the closet once you get residence. It’s a distinct form of monster. However the fact is, I don’t know. I did film publicity for 5 years, and if I might bottle no matter made The Exorcist successful, I might do it and make a fortune. I’d be operating a studio as an alternative of writing about individuals who run studios. Some movies are simply of the zeitgeist, although definitely you possibly can theorize concerning the specific second in time to attempt to clarify.
