wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

GUEST: William Friedkin

RECORDINGS:

Igor Stravinsky Le Sacre du printemps. (Excerpt - concluding minutes) The London Philharmonic, Kent Nagano. Virgin Classics VCK791511.

Dimitri Shostakovich Symphony No. 11 in G minor, Op. 103 'The Year 1905'. (Excerpt from Second Movement) London Symphony Orchestra, Mstislav Rostropovich. LSO Live LSO0030.

Serge Prokofiev Toccata, op. 11 Martha Argerich, piano. Deutsche Grammophon 447 430.

Johann Sebastian Bach Cantata No. 147, "Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben," BWV 147. (Choral: "Jesu Bleibet Meine Freude" ["Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring"]) Dinu Lipatti, piano. "Great Recordings of The Century". Angel Classics 67003

Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 (Fourth Movement) Vienna Philharmonic, Carlos Kleiber. Musical Heritage 514501M.

TRANSCRIPT:

Kaplan: Academy-Award winning film director and music lover William Friedkin on today's edition of Mad About Music.

[Theme Music]

Kaplan: When he was just a little over 30, he became the youngest person ever to win an Oscar for the best director, for "The French Connection." He has gone on to direct more than 20 films, scaring us half to death with "The Exorcist." William Friedkin, welcome to "Mad About Music."

Friedkin: Thank you, Gilbert. Nice to be here today.

Kaplan: Let's start with the significance you attach to music. I'm told by friends that you practically never miss a concert or an opera in Los Angeles where you live. Now, there are others in Hollywood who are seen at concerts or opera, Mel Gibson, Paul Newman, Dennis Hopper, but by and large I think it's fair to say that Hollywood stars are not known for their addiction to classical music. How do you explain that?

Friedkin: Well, Hollywood stars are usually of a younger generation. You've just named three actors who are certainly not of the younger generation. And I suspect, I have no facts to back this up, but that the younger generation is not as exposed to classical music as we were who grew up, say, 20 or 30 years ago.

Kaplan: Now, has music always played such a dominant role in your life?

Friedkin: I don't think so, no. I sort of discovered classical music when I was in my early 20s, when I was in Chicago. I can remember the night, not the day, the date, but I used to work at WGN Television in Chicago, I was a director, I started as a floor manager, then became assistant director, and then a live television director. And I used to sign the station off. In those days, the station would sign off at 2 o'clock in the morning, now they go 24 hours. But we would sign the station off and then I would either go home or go to a jazz club or something, and I lived on the north side of Chicago, the television station was downtown and I used to go along the outer drive. I'd be virtually alone at night, along the beautiful outer drive next to Lake Michigan and I used to listen to jazz on the radio and one evening I turned past the jazz station and there was something very strange emanating from the radio that I had never heard before. It sounded otherworldly. It sounded like it was coming from the planets or somewhere else. And it was a performance of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. And it just completely captivated me. And I pulled over to the side, I stopped driving, I pulled over to the side and listened to this, and it was an absolutely life-changing experience.

[Music]

Kaplan: The riveting, concluding moments of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, the London Philharmonic led by Kent Nagano, the first selection of my guest on Mad About Music,Academy Award-winning director, William Friedkin.

Now The Rite of Spring really gripped you. Did you later find a use for it in any of your movies?

Friedkin: I used an excerpt of The Rite of Spring, the very beginning, in a film I made a few years ago called "Jade," which was a murder mystery. And there are other connections I have to it still as well. The conductor of this particular version you heard is Kent Nagano, who I've worked with at the L.A. Opera Company, we just did Bluebeard's Castle together and Gianni Schicchi and in 2004 we're doing Tannhäuser together and so I've worked with Nagano and love his version of The Right of Spring. And in the future, I'm planning a film called "Coco and Igor," which is about the love affair between Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky that took place after she had heard the first night performance of The Rite of Spring at the Theatre des Champs Elysee in 1913.

Kaplan: That's where supposedly fistfights broke out over the controversial nature of the music.

Friedkin: Well, Stravinsky has said that he never really heard that first performance beyond the opening bars of the prelude. He said riots started to break out in the theater. People were yelling and screaming and laughing derisively, and he just got up and left. He thought the choreography which was by Nijinsky, who was also the principal dancer, was ludicrous and I guess the audience did as well.

Kaplan: Well, let's transition from that into the role of music in the movies. Now, to begin with, how important is a soundtrack to a film's success?

Friedkin: Well, it depends on the film. I know some films that use very little music, some almost none; use just natural sounds, as Hitchcock did with "The Birds," for example. But then take a film like "A Man and a Woman," or "Chariots of Fire," and turn the score down, just watch the images, and it will produce no emotions whatsoever. The emotions are produced in the audience because of the music's sort of cueing them how to feel.

Kaplan: Now, unlike some directors who simply go out and engage a composer to write a score, you at least in "The Exorcist" used snippets of already composed classical music - some avant-garde music, Penderecki, Webern, Henze. I mean, is that because you don't have a high regard for composers of film music today?

Friedkin: I have a very high regard for composers of film music, and especially the two people that I initially contacted to do the score, but we just didn't have a meeting of the minds. What I did in both instances was, I played for them excerpts of the contemporary classical music that I was listening to and influenced by before I made the film. And that included works by George Crumb and the composers that you mentioned. But, the first composer was one of the legends, one of the great composers of all time; he didn't see it that way. He wanted to use a church organ to do the score for "The Exorcist," and I frankly felt that that was a cliché.

The second composer completely disregarded the ideas I had and went out and wrote an enormously percussive and bombastic score, so I just threw it out. Because what I had in mind was not "big score," but quiet music that was almost imperceptible, that was like a cold hand on the back of your neck. And that's what the music of Webern is like, and some of Penderecki and Crumb. So I just took excerpts from well-known recordings of their music, and I wove my own score into that film.

Kaplan: Well, you used a lot of classical music in that film and some of the greatest classical composers, Prokofiev and Shostakovich have also written film scores. I know when we talked earlier, before the show, you mentioned that of all composers, Shostakovich is the one you listen to the most, and yet I don't think you've ever used him, his work, in any movie? Have you?

Friedkin: I haven't made a film that could encompass the power or the complexity of that music, of any of the Shostakovich quartets or symphonies or preludes. But I listen to them all the time. Possibly it's something, you know, deep in my Russian heritage, I don't know. I also admire Shostakovich as a person, but I find his scores to be absolutely riveting, and I listen to them over and over again, almost like someone gets hung up on a pop tune. Certain symphonies, especially the Fifth, the Eighth and the Eleventh.

Kaplan: Do you have a favorite among the symphonies?

Friedkin: Well, favorite may be too strong a word, but the one I think is a good introduction to Shostakovich is the Eleventh Symphony because of its beautiful textures and the dynamics. There are passages of this symphony that you almost can't hear, they are so ethereal, and they just float in the atmosphere above you somewhere, and then all of a sudden, it will burst out in tremendous percussive and brassy sections that are as riveting as the best march music ever written. Of course, the Eleventh Symphony was written, I think about the first Russian revolution in 1905. And so there is the calm before the dawn, and then there's the depiction of the battles and the tragedy of the war itself. The section you're going to play is one of the most dynamic and powerful pieces I've ever heard.

[Music]

Kaplan: An excerpt from the Second Movement of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 11, titled "The Year 1905." The London Symphony Orchestra led by Mstislav Rostropovich, a selection of my guest on "Mad About Music," Hollywood director of such classics as "The French Connection" and "The Exorcist," William Friedkin. You can learn more about William Friedkin or listen to any of our prior shows by logging on to wnyc.org. When we return, I'll ask my guest for his list of his favorite film scores.

[Station break]

Kaplan: This is Gilbert Kaplan with my guest, Academy-Award winning director, William Friedkin. We were talking before about film music, and I promised our audience you would now reveal the scores you admire the most.

Friedkin: Well, I mentioned earlier two films, "A Man and a Woman" and "Chariots of Fire." But a very great film which is enhanced by a great score would be "Citizen Kane" by Bernard Herrmann. That happens to be the most influential film in my life as well, but the score is unbelievably diverse. Herrmann wrote classical music, he was a student of classical music, and as did many of the Hollywood composers, at that time, and before, and since, he borrowed greatly from the great classical composers.

Another score of Herrmann's that I would rank as highly, though it is quite a bit different, is the score for Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho," which is, again, anyone who hears those chords, the shrieking violins, automatically conjures up the most horrific images from that film. There are others. There's a score by Alfred Newman for "All About Eve," which is, I think, quite beautiful and evocative.

Kaplan: How would you put Bernstein's score of "On The Waterfront?"

Friedkin: One of the very best. A great score. Very percussive, also very tragic. I think influenced by Mahler and Shostakovich, as I know Bernstein was. That is a great score. Absolutely.

Kaplan: Now, I see that you've stayed with the Russians in another selection, of Prokofiev. Did you discover him about the same time you heard The Rite of Spring?

Friedkin: Well, yes, I mean, Stravinsky leads to Prokofiev because, you know, Prokofiev, I think, was probably very influenced by Stravinsky. And there are similarities in their scores, where you have the Fifth Symphony of Prokofiev, which is his personal favorite, can tend to remind you of the best work of Stravinsky. But I chose this particular piece because of the soloist. It's the Toccata, No. 11 by Prokofiev. It's a tour de force for the piano, and the woman who's playing this, I've had the good fortune to see in performance several times, Martha Argerich, which - you can buy a ticket to hear Martha Argerich, but that doesn't mean you're going to hear her. She very often doesn't show up. And I was fortunate at three different concerts where she showed up. This selection is from her very first recording, in about 1961 or '62, a wonderful recording by the young Argentinean pianist, Martha Argerich, and I think in itself the playing of this piece is a great tour de force.

[Music]

Kaplan: Prokofiev's Toccata for solo piano performed by Martha Argerich in her debut recital in 1961. A work chosen by my guest on "Mad About Music," film director William Friedkin.
We were talking about your musical passions. How would you rate the music being composed today?

Friedkin: Well, I like some of it. I like John Corigliano's First Symphony; I like the work of Penderecki, and George Crumb. Then I have to start to stretch and reach. I mostly go back to the classics, but you know, there are a handful - I like certain of the American composers, John Adams, but I think in the minds of many people, Adams and Reich and Phillip Glass are sort of linked. I don't really link them. I have greater appreciation, I think, for the great variety of Adam's work than I do for the other two.

Kaplan: You know, so far, all of your selections have been from the 20th century, the ones we played on this show, and next, I see, you've jumped way back and picked Bach. And you picked one of his very best known works, the Cantata, "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring". Is this just a work you love or do you have some personal connection to this music?

Friedkin: Well, certainly I don't think any selection of music is complete without something by Bach. This particular piece and the way it's played by Dinu Lipatti, who died very young, he died at about the age of 37 years old, but he had a simplicity of touch that I find to be very spiritual. And this piece is about as simple as you can get. It is simply a quiet, solo piano playing nothing but the notes, simply and with great reverence. Anyone who can read the simplest musical score can play this piece. But there is something in the way that he plays it that I find so emotional that it reduces me to tears.

[Music]

Kaplan: An arrangement of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," performed on the piano by Dinu Lipatti, a work chosen by my guest, Hollywood film director, William Friedkin. I suppose film director is too narrow a description anymore. When we return, we'll explore William Friedkin's recent move to become an opera director. In the meanwhile, mark your calendar now for Sunday, December 1st, at 9 PM when my next guest will be William Buckley, Jr.

[Station break]

Kaplan: This is Gilbert Kaplan with my guest William Friedkin, who has directed more than 20 films, including "The French Connection" and "The Exorcist." Now recently, you moved cross-town to the L.A. Opera to direct a program of Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle and Puccini's Gianni Schicchi. A few years earlier, you made your opera debut in Florence with Wozzeck. Now, critics and observers who looked over your work in L.A. say you're not a director who brings a "big idea," a completely fresh approach, like, say, Patrice Chereau or Robert Wilson. How would you characterize your own approach to directing opera?

Friedkin: My approach to directing opera would be the surgeon's credo for performing surgery, which is "First, do no harm." I don't approach these great operatic works with an idea to put my stamp on them, or to use them for some other purpose. I try to interpret them, hopefully as close to what I can discern the composer's intention to have been.

Kaplan: In a few years, though, I understand, you're going to take on Wagner for the first time, as you mentioned before, in Berlin, Kent Nagano. This is an opera of which there is an enormous interpretation done already. Everyone will have an opinion about it, you'll be in the place of Wagner. Don't you feel you need to therefore, put your stamp on this one in some way lest it be felt you're just producing another Tannhäuser, in this case?

Friedkin: Well, let's put it this way. I don't know what sources you're referring to, but what I've seen written about the operas I've done, there's no question that I've put a stamp on them. But the stamp is not one of having people hang nude upside down, you know, or do the whole thing with a flashing light, or some idiotic idea of just bringing in a hip, contemporary audience. I very definitely interpret the works and put my own stamp on them per se, but I try not to distort their intention. And I feel a lot of contemporary opera that I've seen, very clever, very interesting, but is often, a director's vision and not the composer's. I would like to think that I try to bring to the audience the composer's vision. But it's not going to be something in the case of Tannhäuser that they could have seen in Bayreuth, you know, 50 years ago.

Kaplan: Well, what is the difference between directing an actor and directing a singer?

Friedkin: Almost none. I mean, I start out staging the works like plays, without music.

Kaplan: But you don't have the experience of a singer saying to you, "It's a very interesting idea, Mr. Friedkin, I'd love to do it, but I have to sing this, and it doesn't work for me as a singer to try to do that."

Friedkin: Well, I'm conscious of the needs of the singer and the conductor. I can't have the singer turn her back on the conductor and the audience and go far upstage and sing into the wall, or something stupid like that. But I have seen productions where they've hung them upside down, for some reason, God knows why!

Kaplan: I've actually heard some pretty good singing in some of those!

Friedkin: Well yes, when I say it's a collaboration with the conductor, the conductor is the musical interpreter of the piece, and it's his tempi, it's his emphasis musically. And I have to make the staging really coincide with that, and enhance it.

Kaplan: Well, speaking of opera, I see that for your final selection, you have a recording which features perhaps the greatest conductor living today, Carlos Kleiber. Tell me about your interest in him.

Friedkin: Well, when I directed Wozzeck in Florence, three years ago, and of course I had worked with some German singers in that, and two or three of them had worked with Kleiber. Everywhere that I've gone in the musical world, especially in the opera world, you will hear conductors and you ask them who their favorite conductor is, and it's Kleiber. And you wonder why is this because there are so few recordings of Kleiber. Very few. The Beethoven Fifth and Seventh, the only ones he recorded that I know of, are live recordings. He did a couple of Schubert symphonies; he did a handful of operas, but he not only hates recording and has stopped doing it, but he doesn't like performing very much, either, and like Martha Argerich, he doesn't show up more than half the time. He is a very unusual personality in the musical world, but you listen to something as familiar as the Beethoven Fifth Symphony, and for me, it's as though I had never heard it before. He can make the orchestra skip and leap and jump around and I think it's a perfect conveying of the spirit of this music, which is, for me, a totally unique interpretation.

[Music]

Kaplan: The final movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, the Vienna Philharmonic led by Carlos Kleiber and the final selection of my guest on today's edition of "Mad About Music," Hollywood and now we can say, opera director, William Friedkin.

You mentioned earlier that Shostakovich is the music you listen to the most. Are you someone who reaches out for music at difficult moments in your life, and if you are, what is the music you turn to?

Friedkin: I turn to music when I'm feeling high or low. It completely engulfs my life and it's the principal influence on my work. I'm not so much influenced by other films - I'm influenced by music and by painting, for the most part. And music is with me constantly, and fortunately, we live in an era where you can literally take the music with you. If you had lived in the 19th century, you couldn't pop a CD into your portable player and walk around and listen to Beethoven. Today you can. And so there's freer access to it - the sound track of my life is classical music.

Kaplan: Well, it's been wonderful having you on this show. I mean, what a superb example you are of the power music can exert on our lives. From a chance encounter with The Rite of Spring in your car in your twenties, soon to be directing Wagner in Berlin. We wish you great success there. This is Gilbert Kaplan, saying goodbye for "Mad About Music."

[Credits]

About William Friedkin

William Friedkin began his career in the mailroom at WGN-TV, Chicago and within two years was directing live television. In eight years he directed more than 2,000 live programs. His first work in film was "The People Vs. Paul Crump", a documentary about a man who spent eight years on death row in the Cook County Jail. With it, Friedkin won his first award, The Golden Gate Prize at the San Francisco Film Festival. More satisfying than the award was Crump's commuted sentence due to the attention the film garnered.

The project so impressed station management that Friedkin was appointed head of a newly created documentary film unit. He continued to make documentaries, including several for producer, David Wolper: "THE THIN BLUE LINE", "MAYHEM ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON" and "THE BOLD MEN".

Friedkin's first feature film, "Good Times" (1968) also marked the screen debut of Sonny and Cher. This was followed by "The Night They Raided The Minsky's" (1968), "The Birthday Party" (1969), and "The Boys In The Band" (1970).

During the late 60's and early 70's with the youth movement, Woodstock and the Vietnam War, using drugs became an integral part of the counterculture. "The French Connection" (1971), a sharp, gritty exposé of the drug world, won Friedkin a Best Director Oscar and was voted Best Picture.

He followed that with "The Exorcist" (1973), one of the most horrifying pictures of all time. It received ten Academy Award Nominations. As with all moments that stand out in life, audiences still vividly remember the terror they felt watching the demonically possessed Linda Blair.

Other Friedkin pictures include: "Sorcerer" (1971), "The Brinks Job" (1979), "Cruising" (1981), "Deal Of The Century" (1983), and "To Live And Die In L.A." (1985).

In 1986 Friedkin returned to television with a two hour Movie of the Week titled, "C.A.T. Squad". NBC ordered A Second "C.A.T. Squad-Python Wolf" which aired in May of 1988.

Between the television shows Friedkin directed "Rampage" (1987), a feature film for which he also wrote the screenplay. The film deals with the death penalty and the complexity of the insanity plea. This picture was released in 1992.

In 1990, Friedkin returned to the horror genre with the release of "The Guardian". This was followed by an episode of HBO's "Tales From The Crypt", which Friedkin directed in 1992.

In 1993, Friedkin directed "Blue Chips" for Paramount Pictures starring Nick Nolte, Shaquille O'Neal and Mary McDonnell. "Blue Chips " was released after positive reviews in February, 1994.

Friedkin followed this by directing another Paramount Pictures feature, "Jade" (1995), written by Joe Esterhaus.

In early 1997, Friedkin directed a Showtime/MGM television remake of the clasic courtroom drama "Twelve Angry Men" which included legendary stars such as Jack Lemmon, George C. Scott, Armin Meuller-Stahl, Hume Cronyn and Ossie Davis. The DGA nominated Friedkin for Outstanding Directorial Achievement for Best Dramatic Special. It was also nominated for six Emmy awards.

On May 26, 1998 Friedkin made his remarkable operatic debut by directing Alban Berg's "Wozzeck" in Florence, Italy. Zubin Mehta conducted. It was a widely acclaimed critical success.

In May of this year, Friedkin finished principle photography on a military courtroom drama filmed on the East Coast and in Morocco. The film stars Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel Jackson and will be released sometime next year.