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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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William Friedkin
Age: 89
Born: 1935
Born: August 29
Film Director
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Television Director
Chicago
Illinois
Vilijam Friedkin
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Horror
People
Faith
Distance
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Mystery
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Exorcist
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More quotes by William Friedkin

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You don't need great actors to do a 3D picture. All of this condescending stuff that they put out? Oh, we will always need actors. Bullshit! They are able to take anybody and put some markers on them, and have them walk through an empty room. Then they paint in the background.
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'Star Wars' gave birth to all the computer-generated superhero films.
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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.
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I have to see the whole scene in my head before I go out and do it. Which I do. I will envision the entire scene before I shoot it.
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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.
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You don't leave the film alone. You have a new audience, and you have a new medium. Why would you leave it alone? Film is not an antique. It's not a relic. It's not a Leonardo da Vinci. I don't want someone painting over a da Vinci or Rembrandt. But these movies aren't that.
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I don't believe that Citizen Kane or Gone With the Wind, or any damn picture that you can name, would be better off in 3D. I think it's a gimmick. I find 3D distracting.
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If Star Wars had failed, you wouldn't have 90 percent of what's out there today.
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I don't like 3D. I don't believe there is any film that I have seen and loved that would have been improved by a scintilla in 3D. To me, it's just a gimmick.
William Friedkin
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If you call yourself a non-believer, you're referring to disbelief in something, and you're acknowledging that there is something to believe in or not.
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.
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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.
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With all of my films that are on DVD and Blu-ray, I have spent weeks with them in a color timing room. Just changing or enhancing them. I have been desaturating the color. Sometimes I will make a scene bluer or redder. I do use the new medium. I believe in it.
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Star Wars is one of a handful of films that changed the zeitgeist forever.
William Friedkin
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I don't go to the movies much anymore. There's very little that draws me. I watch mostly the older stuff, and I often don't sit through the new films.
William Friedkin
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I have seen lampoons of my work. And I have really enjoyed them. But I would never do another version of The Exorcist.
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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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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Violence is not funny.
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I've seen my own films close to a thousand times in one form or another. When you edit them. When you shoot them. Then you run them over and over again for sound and music. Then you'd go to premiere screenings, and have to do promotional screenings in other cities. I can't watch any of my old films.
William Friedkin