by Guest Contributor Oscar Harding

William Friedkin, the Academy Award-winning director of such films as The Exorcist and The French Connection, is arguably one of the most interesting and unpredictable filmmakers currently working today. Friedkin has had to constantly reinvent himself in order to survive.

Whether you appreciate his filmography or not, every writer can learn something from the highs and lows of this filmmaker’s career. He doesn’t hide his mistakes, he personally takes the blame for his more spectacular falls from grace, detailed in his excellent memoir The Friedkin Connection.

Friedkin first gained attention for his debut documentary in 1962, The People vs. Paul Crump.  The film played a key role in saving a Crump from the electric chair. After a huge learning curve directing TV documentaries as a work-for-hire director, he used his friendship with Sonny and Cher to score his debut feature film, Good Times.

After a critical mauling, and failure of his second film, he adapted two stage plays. They received a better reception. The Boys In The Band got people’s attention when gay subject matter was taboo. Then he risked everything and made an unconventional little film called The French Connection. Next came a commercial block-buster.

High on the monumental success of The Exorcist, he then made his magnum opus Sorcerer.  This film has since been re-evaluated as a masterpiece when at the time was a significant flop. It couldn’t withstand the box office tidal wave of Star Wars. It is 30 years later it got it’s due.

Many filmmakers would have called it a day, rested on their laurels or quietly gone into a self-imposed exile. Instead, Friedkin kept himself in the game with a mostly forgotten bank heist caper, then made Cruising, a film which provoked vilification and outrage.

Even today it elicits extreme reaction both good and bad- it is a flawed film on many levels.  But Friedkin created a story with as lasting an impact as his best films. Cruising‘s reception and box office relegated Friedkin to director’s jail. On top of that, he barely survived a massive heart attack.

Friedkin kept working on the occasional TV episode and a string of films that either underperformed at the box office or met with underwhelming reviews. Yet somehow, he was still able to make films.  In the middle of the wilderness years, he did achieve success by capitalizing on the style-over-substance movement of cop dramas sparked by Miami Vice.

He was aware of the trends of the time and sought to contribute to the conversation, as opposed to remaining rigid in his thinking. Friedkin has always been willing to learn and to adapt, which is why even when people weren’t paying attention, he was still able to find work and tell his stories. No film is the same, but with filmmakers like Spielberg or Terence Malick, some of their films can “feel” similar. It could be argued these filmmakers are stuck in a rut, but achieve financial success. Friedkin clearly isn’t interested in that approach.

Instead of becoming bitter and frustrated, he received widespread acclaim in a different medium- Opera. Friedkin, like many of the filmmakers who continue to endure, looked beyond one type of art and found creative stimulation in another.

This is a move other directors like Terry Gilliam- an equally fascinating filmmaker who has been met with failure and bad luck yet endures– would follow. Some filmmakers in Friedkin’s situation would have continued to fail because they kept struggling in a medium that didn’t want them.

It wasn’t until 2006 that Friedkin achieved the kind of notoriety and success he hadn’t had since the days of Cruising and The Exorcist. Coming across Bug, a play by Tracy Letts, Friedkin directed an adaptation that has proved to be a big success amongst audiences and critics. He kept it cheap, shot quick and utilized the tools of filmmakers much younger. Instead of becoming an elder statesman of Hollywood, he did exactly what the emerging filmmakers of today are doing. He has never looked down on the young, instead learning from them. In adapting to survive, he got his groove back.

His next Tracy Letts adaptation, Killer Joe, incited the kind of controversy and attention he hadn’t seen in decades. It was one of the films responsible for Matthew McConaughey’s career renaissance as a dramatic actor, and the film became part of the Awards season discussion in 2011/12. Friedkin took a trick from his own book- back in the late 60’s, when he and his career were stuck in a rut, he adapted stageplays that really evoked emotion in him, that he had an intense emotional connection to and he truly felt he could to justice to on screen.

He hasn’t directed a film since Killer Joe, not for lack of trying. So he has learned from his past, returning to Documentaries and the subject matter of his biggest film. The Devil and Father Amorth played this year’s Venice Film Festival, has ignited a discussion about the relationship between science and religion, and we’ll no doubt hear more about it when it gets a theatrical release.

The point of telling Friedkin’s story? There are some key lessons we can take from it- Keep it personal. Risk everything. Adapt to survive. Never get complacent. And keep people’s attention. Something people always seem to forget is that we learn more from our failures than our successes. No filmmaker demonstrates better than William Friedkin.

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I chose this film because it was available on Watch Instantly on Netflix.  It’s a French thriller and the title appealed to me.  I didn’t really know much else about the movie. It turns out to be a classic.

The Wages of Fear (the French title is: Le Salaire de la Peur) is a directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot and stars a young Yves Montand.  It is based on a novel by Georges Arnaud.

Alfred Hitchcock had an intense rivalry with Clouzo and also tried to purchase the rights to the novel but was unsuccessful.  It is a Hitchcock worthy film with its own very distinct French identity.

The premise of the film is incredibly simple.  A large American oil company has several oil rigs in an unnamed South American country.  The workers have their own town behind the company gates– houses, cafeteria, stores, etc.  The nearby village exists on a meagre hardscrabble hand-to-mouth basis. Undocumented workers (from a variety of countries) who are no longer needed or were fired for cause by the company can’t get back to their homelands because airfare is too expensive. Their boredom and desperation are palpable.

A thuggish French grifter, Jo (Charles Vanel), flies into their midst (it was as far as $50 would take him).  Mario (Yves Montand) a young down-on-his-luck Frenchman is immediately entranced by his fellow countryman’s swagger.  Jo is a bully and takes it upon himself to humiliate Mario’s genial Italian roommate Luigi (Folco Lulli).

Jo pushes and pushes Luigi until finally Luigi threatens Jo with a broken bottle.  Jo raises his gun, Luigi backs down saying Jo is a big man because he has a pistol.  Jo hands the gun to Luigi and taunts him challenging Luigi to shoot him.  Luigi can’t and Jo slaps him and taunts him again.  Luigi gives the gun back and leaves saying that he is not a murderer.  This establishes Jo even more strongly as someone who fears no one and nothing.

When one of the large company oil wells explodes and catches fire several hundred miles away, the company offers to hire four men at an exorbitant $2000 each to drive two trucks over mountain dirt roads.  They will be carrying the nitroglycerine needed to blow up the well and extinguish the fire.  Mario, Luigi and Bimba (Peter van Eyck) are chosen.  Jo disposes of the other driver selected and takes the forth spot himself.

The company doubts that any of the men will make it alive but it’s the only chance to stop the fire.  The drilling boss says: “They don’t belong to a union, and they don’t have any relatives, so if anything happens, no one will come around causing trouble.”

The nitro is unstable and liable to blow at any hard jolt, the trucks lack adequate suspensions and the roads are third-world horrible.  The ride is an unrelenting journey of nail-biting suspense.  The direction, editing, psychological make-up of the men and the simple road hazards that could take their lives in an instant make the film much more suspenseful and nerve-wracking than any Hollywood extravaganza about the whole world ending.

Although the film is almost 60 years old it is amazingly contemporary.  The perils of the oil industry, how easily all things petroleum go terribly bad, how simple it is to exploit desperate people and how the same qualities that make men/women heroes (boldness, brashness and taking incredible risks) are the same qualities that also doom them.  It’s as urgent and compelling as it would be today.  It’s shocking how little we have learned from the various catastrophic oil disasters over the years– and how we keep making the same mistakes, are filled with the same hubris and have so little desire to change our ways.

Yes.  Those are all problems in my own life.  I’m looking at how my greatest strengths are also my greatest weakness, what mistakes I keep making repeatedly and where my own hubris has often blinded me.  It’s a nerve-wracking ride in its own way.  The answers (and solutions) aren’t far away.  And I have another 29 days.