The Exorcist is one of the greatest horror films ever made and it was amazingly successful with the home rental market raking in well over $400 million worldwide. It also earned ten Oscar nominations and provoked a great deal of controversy. In the UK it was banned during the moral crusade of the 1980’s over so called “video nasties”. Reviews from the critics were mixed but nothing could prevent it from being the must see movie of the year and it has never really fallen from grace amongst horror fans. The film is based on the book of the same name which was written by William Peter Blatty in 1971. The author worked as Producer despite having no experience of the movie business and he also penned the screenplay. Although the film was to be a massive success, beyond the wildest dreams of the studio execs, the production was anything but plain sailing and there were problems with casting and clashes with the demanding director William Friedkin. The story, for anyone unfamiliar, tells the tale of a young girl called Regan who begins to act very strangely. Her worried mother, Chris, takes her to see doctors and psychiatrist but no one is able to determine the problem and Regan’s behaviour gets increasingly disturbing. Chris eventually comes to suspect her child is possessed by a demon and calls in Father Karras to help. Karras is a priest who specialises in psychology but he is unable to help Regan on his own and the exorcist, Father Merrin is summoned to rid the girl of her demon. Friedkin was not the first choice director. The job was actually offered to John Boorman who turned it down because he thought the storyline was cruel and felt uncomfortable about the character of Regan. The film called for a number of disturbing scenes featuring the child. He would later end up directing Exorcist II: The Heretic. Apparently a number of other directors were approached or showed some interest including Stanley Kubrick, Peter Bogdanovich, Arthur Penn and Mike Nichols. The studio eventually hired Mark Rydell but Blatty insisted on Friedkin and after a lengthy argument they gave in. The casting was a difficult process and various actresses were considered for the role of Chris MacNeil including Audrey Hepburn, Anne Bancroft, Shirley MacLaine and Jane Fonda. Ellen Burstyn eventually got the role. There were also problems casting Regan, the part demanded a talented child actress and countless kids auditioned. Friedkin could not find the right girl for the role and reportedly joked about auditioning adult dwarfs until he found Linda Blair who was virtually unknown at the time. Her agency had actually sent over 30 other candidates and it was only when her mother took her in that she got to audition. The male roles were equally tough to cast. Father Karras was going to be played by Stacey Keach, Blatty even hired him but when Friedkin saw Jason Miller in a Broadway play he insisted that he was the man for the job. Miller had never acted in a movie before but Warner Bros. bought out his contract and he was cast in the role. Apparently Gene Hackman was considered for the part as well and even Jack Nicholson was in the running at an early stage. Father Merrin presented the last casting conundrum. The studio wanted a big name for the eponymous exorcist and they suggested Marlon Brando for the role. The Godfather had just come out and Brando was hot which was exactly why Freidkin argued against him, he said he didn’t want it to become a “Brando movie”. He was able to persuade them that Max von Sydow would be ideal. The film began shooting on August the 14th 1972 and got off to an immediate bad start. They were filming a shot of some bacon cooking in a pan on the sound stage and the set had to be rebuilt to accommodate the camera angle Friedkin wanted. He then complained about the bacon curling, he wanted it to lie flat and in the end he spent three days on the scene. The shooting schedule had originally been 105 days but it took well over double that and Friedkin refused to cut as he shot so the editing processes all had to be done after the shooting wrapped. Early on in the production Freidkin established his absolute power in an argument with Blatty. When Blatty jokingly fired him Freidkin returned with lawyers and got extremely ill until he was allowed his own way. He was obsessive about attaining perfection and during the course of the production the budget crept up from the original $4 million to over $12 million. Freidkin was essentially taking on the role of director and producer and he frequently fired people and rehired them on a whim leading to his nickname on the set of “Wacky Willy”. He was hard on his cast because he was determined to get it right on camera. Father Dyer was played by a real priest called Father William O’Malley and during the scene where he is giving the last rites to Father Karras after several takes Freidkin turned to O’ Malley and said “Do you trust me?” O’Malley replied that he did and Friedkin slapped him hard across the face and then got him to do the scene again so his hands would be shaking. Ellen Burstyn also suffered because of Freidkin’s drive for perfection and she actually ended up with a permanent spinal injury. Regan was supposed to knock her off the bed with demonic force and so they used a harness around her and had a stage hand pull her off the bed violently, Friedkin insisted on multiple takes and ignored her protestations it was too sore. On the last take she landed on her coccyx and screamed in genuine pain, Freidkin just panned the camera in closer to capture it. Friedkin didn’t hire a proper editor until the shoot was finished and insisted on maintaining control over the film. He also threw out the score which had been composed and insisted it was done again from scratch. The studio execs were furious but they couldn’t sack him so close to the end and despite his difficult nature it did eventually get finished. The studio execs were frightened to release it, fearing a backlash and indeed the film sparked a great deal of revulsion and criticism. All of the sensationalism surrounding it just made more people want to see it and in the end contributed to the extraordinary success. It had been a hard slog getting there but the end result was perhaps the greatest horror film ever made.