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But the audience is right. They're always, always right. You hear directors complain that the advertising was lousy, the distribution is no good, the date was wrong to open the film. I don't believe that. The audience is never wrong. Never.

William Friedkin

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William Friedkin
Age: 89
Born: 1935
Born: August 29
Film Director
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Television Director
Chicago
Illinois
Vilijam Friedkin
Film
Date
Right
Complaining
Believe
Advertising
Good
Directors
Always
Hear
Never
Open
Lousy
Audience
Distribution
Wrong
Complain

More quotes by William Friedkin

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With The Exorcist we said what we wanted to say. Neither one of us view it as a horror film. We view it as a film about the mysteries of faith. It's easier for people to call it a horror film. Or a great horror film. Or the greatest horror film ever made. Whenever I see that, I feel a great distance from it.
William Friedkin
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And it was only a week later that I realized a close up of Steve McQueen was worth the greatest landscape you could find.
William Friedkin
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I don't think sexuality defines a person. It's one small part of who you are, in my view. You are many things, and I never felt that people were defined by their sexuality solely.
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I can't sit through the superhero films. But I watched Draft Day, and it was kind of sweet in an old-fashioned way.
William Friedkin
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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.
William Friedkin
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Every time you run a 35mm print, it picks up scratches. It picks up dirt. Sometimes it breaks, and you have to re-splice it. You lose frames. This doesn't happen with digital or Blu-ray. I think that's great. Because I love the new media.
William Friedkin
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If you're a movie star, the studios don't want you to act. They just want you to show up and look good and chase girls and have a lot of laughs.
William Friedkin
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One of my themes is that there is good and evil in everyone. I was not out to make these guys heroes. I really don't believe in heroes. The best of people have a dark side and it's a constant struggle for the better side to survive and to thrive.
William Friedkin
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Directing is a nice job. It's the best job for me. If I had to pay money to do it, I would do it... Directing is playing. Acting.
William Friedkin
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I had absolutely no focus as a kid. I never paid attention at school, I never went to college. Not because we were too poor we were. But if I wanted to go to college, I would have found a way.
William Friedkin
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You are always cheating for the audience.
William Friedkin
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In the case of a film like The Exorcist or To Live and Die in L.A., I saw the whole movie in my head before I went to shoot it. I never did storyboards, or anything like that. I had the film in my head.
William Friedkin
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God knows, as a minority, gay people have taken serious lumps for their sexual preferences. As has every minority.
William Friedkin
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Violence is not funny.
William Friedkin
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There is a thin line between the policeman and the criminal. The best cops are always crossed. The best cops are the ones who are able to think like criminals. But for a quirk of fate, they might have been criminals.
William Friedkin
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The first work of the director is to set a mood so that the actor's work can take place, so that the actor can create. And in order to do that, you have to communicate, communicate with the actors. And direction is about communication on all levels.
William Friedkin
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The studios are making fewer films. They are making more expensive films. Profits are tougher to come by. Not only because of the expense of production. But also because of the expense of promotion and hype. To boil that all down, it's more about hype than it is about filmmaking.
William Friedkin
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When you go to a studio with something you want to make, or they come to you with something they want to make, more often than not, it's a tent pole. Not something one single person is really passionate about on a creative level.
William Friedkin
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There are many untalented people making millions of dollars in the film business.
William Friedkin
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Edgar Allan Poe is considered the great writer of horror stories, perhaps the greatest - I will say the greatest
William Friedkin