Noted for the documentary quality of his dramas, William Friedkin began his career in the mail room of a local Chicago TV station and quickly worked his way up to director, reportedly helming over 2,000 live shows before tackling his first TV film, the documentary "The People vs. Paul Crump" (1962), designed to convince the governor of Illinois to commute the death sentence of an inmate who had his confession beaten out of him by the Chicago police. Although the film never aired on TV, it did accomplish its purpose, as well as winning the Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco Film Festival and paving the way for future documentary work for the filmmaker. After directing segments (including the final episode) of NBC's "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" in 1965, Friedkin graduated to features with "Good Times" (1967), an enjoyable little pic starring Sonny and Cher, which he followed with the more ambitious burlesque nostalgia piece "The Night They Raided Minsky's" and the static screen adaptation of playwright Harold Pinter's "The Birthday Party" (both 1968).

Friedkin fared better with his adaptation of Mart Crowley's Off-Broadway play about gay men "The Boys in the Band" (1970). Sensationally acted by the original stage cast, the film was a rare case where a single, claustrophobic set was an asset, though some critics complained that the little "opening up" of the piece by the director had dissipated its atmosphere. Crowley, who also produced "Boys", had introduced Friedkin to Kitty Hawks, daughter of legendary filmmaker Howard Hawks, who advised the young director: "People don't want stories about somebody's problems or any of that psychological s---. What they want is action stories. Every time I made a film like that, with a lotta good guys against bad guys, it had a lotta success, if that matters to you." The words stuck with Friedkin, and when Fox production president Richard D Zanuck told him he could make "The French Connection" (1971), as long as he kept the price under $2 million, he jumped at the chance. The budgetary restraints forced him to cast relative no-names Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider, and the rest is movie history.

Friedkin instructed his cameraman to eschew traditional lighting and blocking and to film the events before them as if they were news reporters arriving at the scene of the crime. The resultant "induced documentary" style was perfect for the gritty, urban drama, which catapulted him to the front rank of American directors. Perhaps best remembered for its renowned car chase, considered by many to be the most exciting chase sequence ever filmed, "The French Connection" garnered five Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Hackman), Best Screenplay (Ernest Tidyman) and Best Editing (Jerry Greenberg). His next picture, "The Exorcist" (1973), ushered in a new kind of horror film and earned him a reputation as a bully on the set for such antics as slapping a non-actor (a real priest) to get an appropriate line reading and showing open disregard for the safety of his actors, leading to a permanent back injury for star Ellen Burstyn. Still, there was method to his madness, and the powerfully suggestive movie topped $100 million, accompanied by reports that audience members were fainting, having fits and regurgitating their popcorn in response to the ocean of pea soup spewed forth from Linda Blair and the devilish utterings of Mercedes McCambridge. The film received ten Academy Award nominations including one for Friedkin as Best Director.

Fast on the heels of success came the prodigious failures. 1977's "Sorcerer", Friedkin's remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot's "The Wages of Fear" (1952), was a colossal bust, considered by most everybody a pretentious waste of time. "The Brink's Job" (1979) assembled a notable cast (i.e., Peter Falk, Warren Oates, Paul Sorvino) but also lost money, despite its excellent period and location favor. Then came "Cruising" (1980, his first screenplay), which elicited widespread protest from the homosexual community for what was perceived as a negative expose of gay club culture and even louder howls from the MPAA, which refused to rate it until after substantial editing, described by the director in Sight and Sound (November 1998) as "butchery on the scale comparable to 'The Magnificent Ambersons'--we must have lost about 40 minutes of material." Friedkin missed again with his satire of international weapons merchants, "Deal of the Century" (1983), and his attempt to fashion a West Coast equivalent of "The French Connection" as director and co-author of "To Live and Die in L.A." (1985) also fell short. Despite its spectacular car chase and excellent cast, the intense vulgarity of the characters and stylistic overkill doomed the film with mainstream audiences. Perhaps "Rampage" (1987) and its thoughtful exploration of the insanity defense could have restored some luster to his name, but the demise of its production house delayed its release until 1992.

In 1986, Friedkin returned to television to direct Barbra Streisand's HBO special "Putting It Together: The Making of 'The Broadway Album'" and to produce and direct an action adventure series pilot "C.A.T. Squad" (NBC, as well its 1988 sequel). Inspired by personal experiences with people hired to look after his son, Friedkin wrote and directed "The Guardian" (1990), a return to the horror genre depicting a baby in supernatural danger from a new nanny. He delivered scares with a comic twist helming an episode of "Tales From the Crypt" (HBO, 1992) and directed Shannen Doherty and Antonio Sabato Jr in the made-for-cable outing "Jailbreakers" (1994), one of Showtime's "Rebel Highway" remakes of 1950s and 60s teen drive-in movies. After helming the Ron Shelton-scripted basketball pic "Blue Chips" (1994), Friedkin directed "Jade" (1995), the third installment of scripter Joe Eszterhas' series of San Francisco-set erotic thrillers that began in 1985 with "Jagged Edge" and continued with 1992's "Basic Instinct". The convoluted story boasted a solid cast and one of the filmmaker's trademark long, dizzying car chases but died at the box office. His acclaimed remake of "12 Angry Men" for Showtime in 1997 earned another shot at a big Hollywood project, but "Rules of Engagement" (2000) proved he had not yet rediscovered the magic that made "The French Connection" and "The Exorcist" such blockbusters in the 70s.

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