Oscar-winning director William Friedkin dies at 87
Los Angeles, August 8
William Friedkin, the Oscar-winning director of ‘The French Connection’ and ‘The Exorcist’, passed away in Los Angeles on Monday, Variety reported. He was 87.
Dean of Chapman University Stephen Galloway, a close friend of Friedkin’s wife Sherry Lansing, confirmed his demise.
The Venice Film Festival will host the world premiere of his last movie, ‘The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial’ starring Kiefer Sutherland.
In the 1970s, Friedkin achieved A-list fame alongside Hal Ashby, Francis Ford Coppola and Peter Bogdanovich as a member of a young, daring group of filmmakers.
Friedkin brought a lot of energy to the horror and police thriller genres, which he specialised in, by fusing his experience in television, particularly in documentary film, with a cutting-edge style of editing.
Friedkin began his career in the WGN mailroom in Chicago, where he quickly worked his way up to directing television programmes and documentaries.
During those early years, he claimed to have directed about 2,000 TV programmes, including the 1962 documentary ‘The People vs Paul Crump’, which followed the release from the death row of a man.
He received a Golden Gate Award for it at the San Francisco Film Festival, which helped him land a position overseeing the documentary division at WBKB and later a position helming documentaries for producer David L Wolper.
Friedkin, a Chicago native, attended Senn High School, where he struggled academically but worked hard to advance his basketball skills to the professional level. But because he was never taller than six feet, he decided to switch to journalism, as per Variety.
