William Friedkin, director of The Exorcist, has been pretty busy in the past year. While his classic horror movie is being adapted into a TV series starring Geena Davis, Friedkin is reportedly working on a TV adaptation of another one of his movies, To Live and Die in L.A. for WGN. And last month he may have filmed an actual exorcism at the Vatican, though the Catholic Church is denying this.
According to the AFP (via Yahoo), Friedkin told a master class at Cannes about how the Vatican invited him to film a real-life exorcism, and that it turned out to be similar to the one he staged in The Exorcist. He bragged about how he was the first person to ever photograph something like this, and said of the similarities to the film, “I was pretty astonished by that. I don’t think I will ever be the same having seen this astonishing thing.”
This has got to be some BS, right? Almost too perfect to be believed (but to be blogged about, for sure). On their end, the Vatican denies that any of what Friedkin said happened actually happened. In fact, the Vatican doesn’t even have an exorcist on staff! “People often confuse any Catholic initiative/organisation/person with the Vatican. Perhaps this is the case here,” a Vatican spokesperson said, throwing some excellent shade.
But Friedkin says he believes that the story he based The Exorcist off of is true, coming around to the possibility when he researched the diaries of everyone involved in the actual story. That could be why his film so closely resembles the exorcism he supposedly saw at the Vatican. Someone adapt this into a movie, please.
(via AFP)
