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When director William Friedkin died this week, he left a gaping hole in a Hollywood that had been shaped and reshaped by his films, including The Exorcist, The French Connection and To Live and Die in L.A.
Yet to honor the maverick director, the Hollywood Theatre is reviving one of his most scorned films: Sorcerer, Friedkin’s 1977 remake of the harrowing French thriller The Wages of Fear.
Sorcerer will screen twice at the Hollywood on Sunday, Sept. 10 (and be sure to get your tickets quickly: The first screening has already sold out). It’s a rare chance to experience one of the most ambitious and suspenseful American films of the ’70s on the big screen. It was initially dismissed by critics and a box-office disaster (in no small part because it opened in the summer of Star Wars).
Starring Roy Scheider, Sorcerer revolves around four fugitives tasked with driving a truck packed with nitroglycerin 200 miles through South America. While the characters aren’t as memorable as those in The Wages of Fear, Sorcerer includes some extraordinary sequences, most memorably when the truck is driven over a terrifyingly rickety bridge buffeted by wind and rain.
Friedkin, who died of heart failure and pneumonia at age 87 on Aug. 7, wasn’t just an auteur. He was also one of the most influential filmmakers ever to set his sights on Portland, where he filmed The Hunted, a 2003 thriller starring Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio del Toro.
Friedkin even cast KOIN newscaster Jeff Gianola in a small role. Speaking to WW last February, Gianola fondly recalled his experience working with the director nicknamed “Hurricane Billy.”
“I was thrilled to be in William Friedkin’s presence,” Gianola said. “He puts his arm around my shoulder and says, ‘Jeff, do these lines. But after that, just go, baby!’”