William Friedkin

William Friedkin

William David Friedkin (August 29, 1935 – August 7, 2023) was an American film, television and opera director, producer, and screenwriter who was closely identified with the "New Hollywood" movement of the 1970s. Beginning his career in documentaries in the early 1960s, he is best known for his crime thriller film The French Connection (1971), which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and the horror film The Exorcist (1973), which earned him another Academy Award nomination for Best Director. Friedkin's other films in the 1970s and 1980s include the drama The Boys in the Band (1970), considered a milestone of queer cinema; the originally deprecated, now lauded thriller Sorcerer (1977); the crime comedy drama The Brink's Job (1978); the controversial thriller Cruising (1980); and the neo-noir thriller To Live and Die in L.A. (1985). Although Friedkin's works suffered an overall commercial and critical decline in the late 1980s, his last three feature films, all based on plays, were positively received by critics: the psychological horror film Bug (2006), the crime film Killer Joe (2011), and the legal drama film The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (2023), released two months after his death. He also worked extensively as an opera director from 1998 until his death, and directed various television films and series episodes for television. Description above from the Wikipedia article William Friedkin, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Known For: Directing

Born: Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1935-08-29

Died: 2023-08-07

No.	Year	Title	Role	Vote Average
1	1975	Conversation with Fritz Lang	Self	70
2	1986	Putting It Together: The Making of the Broadway Album		100
3	1991	Fear in the Dark	Self	100
4	1997	Howard Hawks: American Artist	Self	58
5	1997	Hollywood Halloween	Self	60
6	1998	Billy Wilder: The Human Comedy	Self	60
7	1998	The Fear of God: 25 Years of The Exorcist	Self - Director	73
8	1998	Without Limits	TV Director	65
9	2000	The Poughkeepsie Shuffle: Tracing 'The French Connection'	Self	83
10	2001	Making the Connection: Untold Stories of The French Connection	Self	70
11	2003	A Decade Under the Influence	Self	80
12	2003	Narc: The Friedkin Connection	Self	0
13	2003	Filming “The Hunted”	Self	0
14	2003	Pursuing “The Hunted”	Self	0
15	2003	The Cutting Edge	Self	0
16	2003	Counterfeit World: Making 'To Live and Die in L.A.'	Self	80
17	2004	A Little Solitaire	Self	0
18	2005	Shadows in the Dark: The Val Lewton Legacy		95
19	2006	Shadows of Suspense	Self	0
20	2007	The Man Who Shot Chinatown: The Life and Work of John A. Alonzo	Self	60
21	2007	Tatort Oper - Wie Filmemacher Oper machen	Self	0
22	2007	The History of 'Cruising'	Self	77
23	2007	Exorcising 'Cruising'	Self	65
24	2007	The History of 'Cruising'	Self	0
25	2007	Great Bolshy Yarblockos!: Making 'A Clockwork Orange'	Self	60
26	2007	The Visions of Stanley Kubrick	Self	69
27	2007	View from the Overlook: Crafting 'The Shining'	Self	74
28	2007	Vision of a Future Passed: The Prophecy of 2001	Self	60
29	2008	The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn't	Self	65
30	2008	Pure Cinema: Through the Eyes of Hitchcock	Self	0
31	2008	Breaking Barriers: The Sound of Hitchcock	Self	0
32	2008	In the Master's Shadow: Hitchcock's Legacy	Self	70
33	2009	Anatomy of a Chase	Self	40
34	2009	Victor Fleming: Master Craftsman	Self	75
35	2009	The Master's Touch: Hitchcock's Signature Style	Self	68
36	2009	North by Northwest: One for the Ages	Self	63
37	2009	Fasten Your Seatbelt: The Thrilling Art of Alfred Hitchcock	Self	0
38	2010	Raising Hell: Filming the Exorcist	Self	60
39	2010	The Exorcist Locations: Georgetown Then and Now	Self	0
40	2010	Godard Made in USA	Self	0
41	2011	Miller's Tale	Self	71
42	2011	Making the Boys	Self	51
43	2012	Michael Curtiz: The Greatest Director You Never Heard Of	Self	70
44	2012	Casablanca: An Unlikely Classic	Self	65
45	2012	Stanley Kubrick in Focus	Self	60
46	2013	Tales from the Warner Bros. Lot	Self	57
47	2013	Don't Say No Until I Finish Talking: The Story of Richard D. Zanuck	Self	61
48	2013	A Fuller Life	Self - Reader (segment "My Ballsy Yarns")	66
49	2013	The Making of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz	Self	100
50	2014	Henri Langlois vu par...	Self	0
51	2014	Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles	Self - Filmmaker (archive footage)	67
52	2015	Sorcerers: A Conversation with William Friedkin and Nicolas Winding Refn		45
53	2016	Return to the Genre		0
54	2018	The Devil and Father Amorth	Self	50
55	2018	Friedkin Uncut	Self	70
56	2020	Fellini of the Spirits	Self	66
57	2021	I Am Alfred Hitchcock	Self	71
58	2021	Algren	Self	60
59	2022	The Lost Print: The Making of Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons	Self	0
60	2023	Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist	Self	73
61	2023	The Exorcist Untold	Self (archive footage)	0
62	2024	Fear and Love: The Story of The Exorcist	Self	0
63	2024	Peter Lorre : Derrière le masque du maudit	Self (archive footage)	75

No.	Year	Title	Role	Vote Average
1	1989	The Simpsons	Dr. Kenneth Humphries (voice)	80
2	2002	Through the Night with...	Self	80
3	2004	Leçon de Cinéma	Self	70
4	2023	100 Years of Warner Bros.	Self	78

William Friedkin

Film

Television