Hey, guys. Quint here with some words on the late, great William Peter Blatty.
One of my very early highlights of working for AICN was getting to be in the room with William Peter Blatty when he brought the Exorcist extended cut to Austin in 2000. Tom Joad interviewed him after the screening and I tagged along, which meant I got to chat a little bit with the man who literally wrote the book on modern horror.
My memory of that encounter is vague after all these years, filled mostly with impressions instead of solid tidbits of conversation, but I remember that he was warm, humble and more than happy to talk about his work, even to young punks like me and Tom Joad.
It would have been easy enough to roll his eyes at a couple of fanboys, but instead he welcomed our silly questions and enthusiasm with a smile.
Blatty might be known for his horror work (and rightly so), but that's not how he began his film writing career in comedy. He was Blake Edwards' go to guy, starting with A Shot in the Dark (one of the first and best Inspector Clouseau films) and continuing on with What Did You Do In The War, Daddy?, Gunn and Darling Lili.
Before being tempted into the Hollywood machine he was a published author, again working mostly in comedy with books like John Goldfarb, Please Come Home and I, Billy Shakespeare. After his work with Edwards, Blatty decided to rent a cabin near Lake Tahoe and write up a sweet little story about a 12 year old girl, the demon that possesses her and a priest wrestling with his own faith.
You gotta love that a guy known for his funny bone was able to write the single scariest work of fiction in a generation. If The Exorcist only lived as a novel it'd still be a career high, but he wasn't done with this property by a country mile.
When it came time to turn this book into a film Blatty took on screenwriting duties and in the process made cinema history. The Exorcist still stands today as not only one of the best horror movies ever made, but one of the best films period.
One of the reasons that original film works so well is the beating, troubled heart of Father Karras, played so excellently by Jason Miller. He's not your average hero, no badass Superman. Karras is a regular Joe with an remarkable life that is called to greater things by a God he only half believes in.
From what I know of Blatty there's a good deal of himself in this character. He was brought up in a very Catholic family and, like all great writers, took much of his own personal faith and experience and imbued his fiction with it.
Once more, Blatty wasn't content to be not only a great screenwriter, producer and novelist. He had to show that he was a hell of a director as well.
In 1980 he directed an adaptation of his novel Twinkle Twinkle Killer Kane called THE NINTH CONFIGURATION, a film that didn't hit as huge as The Exorcist, but was still nominated (and won) the Golden Globe for writing, beating out Raging Bull and The Elephant Man.
His real legacy as a director, though, is The Exorcist III, the real sequel to The Exorcist, based on his novel LEGION. I've always liked this movie, going back to my young video-store crawling days. I liked it for its creepy tone, perfect jump scares (the hallway shot of the nurse about to get snipped is an all-timer) and crazy effects (ceiling crawling nuthouse granny, anyone?).
Watching it now I appreciate more from a storytelling perspective. How do you make a legitimate sequel to one of the most iconic horror stories of all time without just remaking that movie? Blatty found a way, both in the novel and in the film by structuring it around a rather unusual serial killer story that ties fascinatingly into Father Karras' story.
It's nearly impossible to follow up William Friedkin kicking ass in his prime, but Blatty was able to make a worthy follow-up that seems to finally be getting the fandom it has deserved since it was first released.
There's no question that William Peter Blatty was a one of a kind voice. His impact on film, literature and pop culture on the whole is immeasurable and I, for one, will miss his unique voice. My thoughts are with Mr. Blatty's friends, family and fans.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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