Details, credits, errata: Episode 5, He Died Doing What He Loved, is written by Sam Thielman and Alissa Wilkinson, produced by Sam, and distributed by Alissa. This episode is about William Friedkin’s masterpiece The Exorcist, one of the scariest movies Sam and Alissa have ever seen, and a favorite of our guest Jason Zinoman, who features it prominently in his excellent book Shock Value, which he researched by interviewing both Friedkin and William Peter Blatty, author of the book and the screenplay about their relationship—contentious—their movie—tremendous—and their faith. If you would like to buy all of Jason’s books, you may.
Sam now knows that The Exorcist was neither written nor adapted during the papacy of John Paul II, but of Paul VI, two popes behind JP2. John Paul I, the pope in between, wasn’t the Bishop of Rome for even five weeks before he died, incidentally. Alissa made reference to The Case for Spoilers, her terrific piece at Vox; here it is.
For folks reading this on their favorite podcatcher rather than Substack, the image on our website for this episode, courtesy of the Louvre Museum in Paris, is the 8th-century BCE statuette of the Mesopotamian demon-king Pazuzu, not named in the film but portrayed using a statuette that looks exactly like this one. He’s also in Jacques Tardi’s first Adele Blanc-Sec graphic novel, The Demon of the Eiffel Tower, which you should all read. Sam really liked the Blatty novel, which you can buy here. Sam is perpetually frustrated over the difficulty of linking to an independent movie store and would rather stay away from Amazon, so if any of our brilliant listeners can tell him the name of a movie store with a website containing a search bar into which you can type the word “Exorcist” and come up with William Friedkin’s 1973 film on blu-ray, he would be most grateful and will send it everyone’s business each week. This week he has to settle for eBay again, through which your hard-earned dollars at least go to normal people after eBay takes its cut.
Our theme song is Louis Armstrong and His Hot 5’s Muskrat Ramble, made freely available by the Boston Public Library and audio engineering shop George Blood, LP through the Internet Archive. The Exorcist is copyright 1973 William Blatty and Warner Bros., despite Friedkin’s protestations, which resulted in some interesting court filings, or at least court filings interesting to people with the same brain sickness Sam has. Brief audio clips are used herein for review purposes. All other content is copyright 2020 Sam Thielman and Alissa Wilkinson.
Episode 5: He Died Doing What He Loved