[granville1]

Also note the “err” in Mary Jo Perrin's name – different in only one letter from hero Merrin's name.

Blatty named characters that have an “AIR” sound in their pronunciation, e.g. “Merrin/Perrin” = “mAIRen/pAIRen”.

There's also “Jerris”, Chris' manager, and, of course, Damien Karras.

[granville1]

Welcome 🙂

 

I hope you find “everything Exorcist” here, and more.

[granville1]

Justin said:

Just checked my copies of both TVYNS and Extended Director's Cut and that shot is most definitely still there.

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Man, am I sloppy :)  You are correct – I must have been distracted or something but yes, the cross-debris shot is there.

I am happy about that, but mad at myself for spacing it.

[granville1]

Yes, thanks, that's it. Sorry, I meant “inverted” from Merrin's POV, not the audience's.

Nice capture 🙂

[granville1]

I love it :)  Ya know, that gunshot ALWAYS startles me, even when I remind myself it's coming. I liked the enhanced soundtrack but I'm not too hot on the new music which was played during the “Chris calls Howard” scene. I think it worked better in the “Kinderman tells Karras about the details of Dennings' death” walkabout scene – it's grim and a bit uncanny. But I think it plays too early in the Chris/call scene and delivers a sense of weirdness, when the scene – if it needs any music at all – seems to call for tonal pathos (mother angry FOR her child's feelings, daughter feeling abandoned)…

[granville1]

Yes, the sound design terrified me in early viewings, then with TVYNS in the theater, the sound was incredibly enhanced, and all the more frightening – Friedkin did so much magic just with the soundtrack 🙂

[granville1]

Father Bowdern said:

Ah, got you … I will definitely look for this. BTW, I love those scenes in the Iraqi dig. Of particular note, whether by “nature or nurture,” I find it very unique that a fly lands on Merrin's hand when he inspects the Pazuzu amulet.

Father Bowdern

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Yes, like you say, whether by design or not, the sound engineers crank up the bee-buzzing around that moment, iirc – I thought it was flies buzzing until I found out it was really bees… first time I saw the Merrin fly and heard the bee-buzzing the thought popped into my mind, “How clever – suggesting Beelzebul, the 'Lord of the Flies'.”

Looking forward to more conversations, right now I need to head for bed.

[granville1]

Father Bowdern said:

gran, could it be possible that it's Merrin's shadow (or perhaps that's what you're saying)? I don't doubt you a bit because Friedkin was so meticulous with every scene.

Father Bowdern

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Could be his shadow, but it's not his shadow that I ever noticed :)  Rather, it's the intersection of the wall-tops where he walks down the “upright” beam of the “cross” …

[granville1]

Father Bowdern said:

I'll look for that, granville, when I watch the film again. The one thing I've always noticed in the Northern Iraq scene are the men with their pickaxes hammering away at … nothing. Some will swing and hit dirt, while a small group never touches. I can never figure that one out because Friedkin was so meticulous. Of course, the actors could have been on a particular sacred ground where destruction was not allowed. I wish I had never noticed it …

Father Bowdern

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Thanks for that bit of data, Fr.  Yes, next time I watch the movie, I will look for the hit-and-miss pickaxing. Thanks for the heads-up.

(Let me reiterate that you may not find the “cross-trampling Merrin” very credible. It's just that once I saw it, I keep looking for it, and it's always “there”.)

[granville1]

Father Bowdern said:

Wow … that's a great symbolic I never noticed … smart, smart, smart!

Father Bowdern

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Ya know, I notice more potential symbolisms almost every tiime I watch it. Here's a stretch – in Iraq when Merrin heads to the Pazuzu amulet cavern, he walks down the wall of one of the excavated chambers. He “crosses” (sorry) an intersection of the walls and, so help me, it looks like he is “trampling on an inverted cross”. This impression was especially intense in full screen editions in which the “arms” of the “cross” are somewhat shortened; it is somewhat attenuated in widescreen, but (to my eye) it's still there. Like I said, it's a stretch, but it would be an interesting resonance with Merrin's pride … and it might darken the museum curator's words to Merrin, “Evil against evil” … i.e., Merrin as a prideful cross-trampler 😉

[granville1]

Yeah – I thought, that placed under such constraints by MC, Blatty still did a creditable job with Karras-Miller (luckiily Miller became available for the film so Blatty was able to bring him back as Karras), Morning, and the exorcism scene. The rewrite was probablly something of a rush job, but to me this only shows up in a couple of places, e.g., I would have wished that Kinderman and Morning could have had a conversation, that Morning could have had a bit more dialogue, and that the final graveside shot would firmly establish what was going on (some viewers interpret it as the coffin being opened in order to remove the corpse of old Brother Fain, whiile I assumed – based on the scene's implication of “closure” – that all that had already been done, and that the body of Damien Karras was finally, properly, being laid to rest). But yes … the exorcism scenes, though a tack-on, were handled poetically (all the visionary, symbolic material) – and with restraint (no foul language, sexual gestures, vomiting, etc.) Blatty gave MC what they wanted, and saved his dignity at the same time.

[granville1]

Justin said:

Just checked my copies of both TVYNS and Extended Director's Cut and that shot is most definitely still there.

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Thanks, Justine, I will definitely check again :)  I'd swear it was missing from the DC, but it might be some other version I saw … thanks.

EDIT: Of course, that s/b: “Thanks, Justin”.  SHEESH, sorry about that.

[granville1]

Thanks, Fr. … yes, Rennyo 01 is my blog, all the stuff is mine except where indicated. Thanks for visiting there. … Actually, The Exorcist book/movie and Legion book/movie are the only films I go into in depth on the blog.  They are also probably the only two films I've ever analysed with much attention – I keep coming back to them because the whole Blatty “Exorcist” world speaks to my personal beliefs as well as the nostalgia of my Catholic upbringing (12 years of RCC education, was an altar server, had a nun aunt and cousin priest).

The closest other stuff on the blog to The Exorcist is probably a few articles I've written on H.P. Lovecraft, but they are few and far between. I didn't know how to react to the recent collapse of Del Toro's planned filming of At The Mountains of Madness … heard both good and bad about the script, and then there was the hooplah about Tom Cruise being the star, which made me uncomfortable, because the novella doesn't really have a central character, other than the narrator … it's almost an “ensemble” tale with the weirdness being the story's real “star” …

[granville1]

I was thinking of a real friendship that goes beyond a common interest in amateur film criticism, something that might move from a hobby-based camaraderie to a “best friend” status. In The Exorcist it appears that Kinderman has no real friends – he loves his wife, of course, but “Mrs. K, she gets tired” so he has to go the the movies alone. This idea seems fleshed out a bit more in Legion, where beneath the banter, Fr. Joe Dyer and Det. William Kinderman do seem to have developed the potential Karras-Kinderman friendship into an actual, warm Kinderman-Dyer friendship. It's more now than just going to see films like “It's a Wonderful Life”, it's an ongoing, caring relationship. Of course, then the demon/the Gemini step in and cut it short.

[granville1]

Well, Sof, how kind of you, it's so nice to hear from you. Hope all is well with you. Guess I'll be stopping by now and then, though most of my, errr, “creative writing” these days is devoted to the imdb movie discussion boards 🙂

Hope you have a great week.

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