Special Report: David Kittredge on Boorman and the Devil (2025)

at festivals. Just played the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, has played at Beyond Fest, played at Venice, and is coming to hopefully a neighborhood near you very soon. Is great finally sitting down and talking about the movie. I've seen it. It's fantastic, had a lot of fun with it. I would highly recommend it to everyone out there. And of course I asked David when he first got the idea of starting to work on.

lot of work. You take a normal narrative film and you multiply it by another normal narrative film, and that's what a documentary is. And he was on me to do a documentary about Exorcist too, because he knew I loved the film so much, and you'd have been obsessed with it since my twenties. He basically said to me one night I was over at his place. We were watching a movie or something, and he said, if you don't make this documentary, no one ever will. And I

was really irritated because I knew he was right. I knew that Borman was getting up there. Louis and Ross Bo and other people, they were all getting up there, and I knew it. I knew they were approaching their eighties or in their eighties, and Borman's case, he was well into his eighties. And so he said, if I could get you contact with Borman, would you consider making this documentary. I was just like, I get to talk to John Borman. Sure, I'm a fan. I think ex

Caliber is a masterpiece. I think Point Blank is an insanely amazing film. The general hope and glory I could go on at any rate. What happened was Jeffrey had made a documentary involving Paul Verhoven. And there's an author who wrote a book about Paul Verhoven, but he also wrote a book about John Borman. So Jeffrey knew this guy. Well. I think he's in Ireland, and I wrote him an email basically saying can you forward this to John Borman?

He did. John Borman wrote me back and I was just I was like, what John Borman just wrote me an email? And basically what happened was we started talking and we had a Skype call where we were like zooming that old thing called Skype that doesn't exist anymore, things to Microsoft. Basically at the end of it, I said, would you be okay with me coming to Ireland and shooting you for an interview? And he said yes. And then that was when I knew, okay, I had to

do this. Why I could not live with myself if I didn't do this. And I had a friend of mine named Carson Gaspar who's been my friend for decades, literally like we were a little I need something gay boys running around New York at one point in the nineties, and he let me a little money which I still have to pay him back, and I will pay him back that this movie gets distributed that I really wanted to and yeah, I went to Ireland, we got a crew.

I shot John for a day. It was a full day, and I left with an interview that I knew that interview was important and special. I was like, this is one of the great filmmakers. And it wasn't just talking about the Heretic. We were talking about all of his other work. We were talking about how we came up, we were talking about his views on cinema today. He gave me anecdotes on all of these filmmakers, most of which did not make it into the cut because there was just so much, and I knew that I needed

to tell the story. I literally felt like I could make a documentary just on Bormann's interview, but we were lucky enough to The next one was Linda Blair, and she said yes once she heard that we got and I had to reassure both of them that this was not some kind of an exorcist Oh look at the bad movie. We get to make fun of people movie,

this snide golden turkey bullshit. And I think what convinced John was I brought up Black Narcissus, the Palm Presburger movie, because one of the things that Exorcists two did very consciously was he shot almost the whole movie on sound stages, including exteriors, including African exteriors like this African village. These were all in sound stages and it's this weird vibe that it's not realistic, but you're in that reality anyway.

And the movie that reminded me the most of was The Black Narcissus Biden Pressburger and I mentioned that and he was I did not know this. He was a huge and Pressburger fan, and I guess I could have put that together. He's a British filmmaker and they were huge, one of the most important filmmaking duos in British films. I think, possibly the most underrated filmmakers that have ever

been behind a camera. They had a run of those four films that were just unlike Blife About the Colonel Blimp, Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death, just those. They also made other good movies, but those four films are such bullet proof, honest to goodness, top one hundred masterpieces. There are almost no directors that I think have done anything like that. Kupri Hitchcock, we're talking

about the greats. Anyway. He vibed on the fact that I got the Black Narcissus reference because it was something he was inspired by. That film, Black Narcissist. Once we got Linda, we got Louise Fletcher, and then we got Roswell Pallenberg and then the pandemic happened and we were unable to shoot anybody for almost two years. So it was just a long process. So all in all, going back to twenty seventeen, we didn't shoot Boorman until early

twenty eighteen. But it's over seven years. It's almost eight years. They say documentaries take a long time. I thought it was gonna take like maybe two or three years when I was starting, but the double whammy of the pandemic and the fact that I basically had to take edit jobs just keep the lights on. I'm not rich, and this money was coming from mostly me. We had a couple of donors from wealthy friends because we set up a film collaborative and one of the things it offers

to sponsor a film for finance. So theiry nonprofit. The Film Collaborative is a nonprofit. So what this person with money would do was they would give money to the Film Collaborative for my movie. The film Collaborative has to approve it first, because there's this whole thing where they have to make sure it's for real. They have to make sure it's a worthy project because their mission is to help make films that are worthy, He'll think. And I had to submit a lot of stuff, but I

got approved. And then these people, so they would donate to the film collabors then assign ninety five percent of that money to the film, and they keep five percent for overhead for their nonprofit. In this way, these people, because it's always a crapshoot whether anything's going to pay back. Most independent films, almost all independent films do not make their money back, especially documentaries. They get a tax break because they donated to a charity and then the movie

gets the money and everybody's happy. So we got some money that way. But yeah, it just took a really long time because I had my producers, Jim Fallen, Travis Stevens, who were helping, but I was the only editor on this film. I was the only director, the only writer, the only editor. Ninety something percent of the work came from me. And I don't feel bad about saying that. I think Travis and Jim would agree, but they were invaluable partners in this too. They helped me so much

because the journey of this film. The last two years was the most difficult because in August of twenty twenty three, we had our first rough assa. I had cut a first rough assembly. I think he even told you that, Mike, And it was one hundred and ninety six minutes. This was the version of the movie with everybody's stories in it. Everybody had stories like the thing with this movie. When we talked to the s crew members and we talked to the actors and we did all this. These people

have had huge careers, all of these people. The Heretic was a very early film for a lot of these people that I talked to, but they remembered it like it was yesterday. This was a shoot, and these are people who have done so many movies and TV shows you just can't even count. Like you look at their it's like it scrolls forever, you know. But they remember The Heretic and they remember John. This was a very special and particular production and shoot, and everybody remembered it

like it was yesterday, Like it was unbelievable. And I got such amazing stories, like such detailed, amazing stories. And so the one hundred and ninety six minute version was the version but with all of the stories, and I tested it with a few friends and basically the response was very surprising because everybody said, at no time were they ever bored ever and one hundred ninety six million movie. I'm like, Wow, that's a that's an achievement. Wow, I

must be a good editor or something. I don't know, but it was like the equivalent when we got back. It's like the equivalent going to a really good restaurant and getting three or four amazing entrees and it was just too much. It was like, it's all great, but this needs to be we need to be shaping this.

And I felt a real responsibility, especially after the interview with John, I felt a real responsibility to tell the story of this film and kind of the milieu around it that allowed it to happen the way it did, which was very particular and significant, and that is a lot of the crux of the movie. I think you and you and I Mike talked about this. It's like, this movie is not really about Exorcist too. It's about it.

We have there's all the stories and this is like the foundation that the movie is, but it's about It's really about the insanity of making movies, how much it takes to make a movie, and this period of Hollywood that an auteur like Borman could be given the biggest budget in Warner Brothers history. Just think about that. It is the biggest budget in Warner Brother's history to make a sequel to the biggest movie in the studio's history, and the third highest grossing movie of all time. The

Exorcist was iconic. It rewrote the book on horror, and John Borman did this movie, which is so different. It's not even a horror movie. It's a different genre. That kind of audacity is I don't know if I've ever seen it in any other movie. And it's not just the movie, it's the fact that it was made and made out a big studio on a huge budget, and was a big summer release. This is an art movie. This is like a surreal art movie and a sequel

to The Exorcist. It didn't fit and that's why it was infamous and rejected and people were throwing stuff at the screen. The whole story of this movie is, I feel, just one of the most amazing Hollywood stories and no one had told it, which is why the last two years of cutting it down from one hundred and ninety six minutes to one hundred and eleven minutes, which is the final cut. Was just so hard. It made me a better editor, but I went way past my own limits.

I think back to all the work I did on this, it's like I can't even wrap my head around it now here we are. The film played at the Venice Film Festival, which is a dream. I could only dream that it would have gotten into the Venice Film Festival. And we had a big premiere out here in La for Beyondfest, which was the North American premiere, and I'm about to next week. I'm flying to New York to be at the Brooklyn Horror Festival, which is the East

Coast premiere, and bouncing around the world. I think it played in France and Norway, and it's going to play in Poland. So I'm really I feel like I can say without arrogance, so like, I really feel like this is a great movie, and I don't feel like I can completely take credit for it. So many things fell into line on this movie I had nothing to do with, and the most you could credit me with is identifying

them and making sure they were in the cut. That's really it Borman to be that vulnerable and that open and talking about his life and as an artist and cinema. If you love movies, you need to hear this. I'm not just saying that to promote my movie. I feel like it's important. I feel like this is a great artist talking about one of the newest art forms in human history, and I think what he says is really valuable, and what he says about living as an artist really

moved me and shook me to my core. And I think that the people who watched the film, a lot of people feel the same way. There were people crying at the end of screenings, and one of them came up to me. If you ever told me I was going to be crying at the end of a screening about the making of Extorsies too, I'd have thought you

were crazy, because it's not really about that. It's about this man, this great artist, making this vision and it absolutely is just a catastrophe, but something comes out of it. It redefined how he made movies, eager to find how he viewed movies, and the movie he made after it ex caliber. I genuinely think is John Borman's finest work.

And it's a work of fury. It's a work of a man who has something to prove, who made one of the most publican catastrophic studio releases in history, and he really wanted to show people that he can make movies like he made Deliverance. He called all the names in the book.

you've been there. The man almost died and they shut down this major studio production for five weeks, which was a huge deal because they were locked into a release date for reasons that are totally different and comes down to how the movie was finance, which is a whole nother story, but the way that this movie was financed, this movie literally was one of the things that led to it being legislated out of existence. That was the impact of this movie. It was like a neutron bomb.

It was just like everything in its wake suffered the.

love Extorsses Too so much. It's not even the movie, because I understand the shoes this movie has. I don't disagree Bornman would agree that this movie doesn't work at least totally. But the audacity and the fact that they took these risks, these crazy risks with this project on such a huge scale. It's either gutsy or stupid. I prefer to look at it as gutsy. But my god, I don't know if you know a lot of artists, but I know a lot of artists, and there's always

these things where they're afraid to do this. They're afraid to do this project. Oh how will this get made? Oh if I do this, then no one will try to finance it or whatever. And it's just I wanted to make this movie be for those filmmakers who were just despondent and dissatisfied. I'm like, they don't know what

the answer is. You got to do that thing that you need to do, and it doesn't fucking matter what you think is going to happen or not happen, whether it's gonna get bought or like you're gonna be able to raise money, that you have to do it anyway. That's what an artist is like. There are just some things that you just need to do in life, and this, for me was one of them. And I'm still trying

to decompress from it. I'm not quite there. It was a lot just to get it ready for Venice, and then we had to tweak some stuff and go back in the mix before Beyond Fest and right now where I'm cutting teasers and stuff for our sales reps to pitch the distributors and stuff. But yeah, it's ongoing. I'm still busy working on it, hoping that it's over.

this film. And basically the point was it was always Heretics colon something, Heretics brushed by the wings of Extoris Too, Heretics the brilliant Disaster of extorsis Too, or Heretics John Borman, whatever. It was always that. But changing it from Heretics did

two things. One is we got away from the Hugh Grant movie at least, but in a lot of the test screenings, people who were expecting a making of movie were really thrown by the first I don't know, like thirty minutes, because the first thirty minutes of the movie really is about John and the movies he made going up to the Heretic, and so people were like, why are we seeing all this? We just want to see

Exorcist too. I'm just like, Yeah, it's not about that, it's about all of this, and it really it's about Borman making it. It's not about the movie itself, it's about Borman and the journey through to make it. So when we changed it to Borman and the Devil, and we had a really long list by the way of titles, and I was not sold on Borman and the Devil for a really long time. I was just like, oh, sounds like a like people are telling me to do The Devil and John Borman, and that sounded too much

like The Devil and Daniel Webster. And I was just like, which is a great movie, by the way, but it has no bearing, just no similarity between this movie and that movie. And I just liked Borman and the devil. I was like, all right, and I started kicking it around. And then when we showed it to a test audience with that title, we immediately lost all of the snotty notes from people about like why it's my bad exorsis fair, and we lost all of them simply because we changed

the title. And I was like, that was nice, that's good. I thought it was gonna have to do some kind of editing jiu jitsu because we were trying to figure out, like, oh, so do we do it so that we just start with Harry taking then we Pepper ran his stuff and I'm like, no, that doesn't make any sense and it's going to be confusing, and yeah, we trust me. We

tried every sort of edit. We tried to address all of the significant notes, which was like the notes that we would get more than once or twice, and it was just a lot. It was a lot of tests and we tested it. I got probably sixteen or seventeen times over those two years, different cuts everything from the

first one hundred ninety six minute cut. I think the lowest cut we did was one hundred and two minutes, and it was just it was a lot of taking stuff out putting stuff back, condensing stuff, re arranging stuff, changing the order of stuff. It's surprising, though, the vast majority of the movie that's in there was pretty much

in there in the first cut. Like the sections, they were all longer, like we have a section on Zardas and your first cut was like four minutes or something, and it was just like, there's no way you can do that in this movie. Four minutes is a very long time, even if it's something if I love Zardaes and I love Zardas, but I think the final version, I think it's like a couple of minutes instead goes

through that whole thing. And Rose Portillo, who plays the actress who burns up in the first scene of Exorcist Too, has a very funny story. But in the first cut she had I think three stories, and of course they were all in there. They were like, okay, which of these three stories, and we kept the one where she was freaking out because she was set on fire. It's a very funny scene. She was protected. I didn't intentionally set her on fire in a bad way, but it was still a pretty dangerous stunt.

she's unattractive or whatever. There were six or seven of these, like really repellent, not I'm sorry, she was seventeen, she was a minor. There is no justification for any of that shit. And all of those critics, really I had them big bold in the lower third. I was like, and I'm sure, but because some of them are not around anymore, but I'm like, fuck these people, this is not a fucking review. You are mocking a seventeen year old actor's appearance, and if you look at her in

the film, she's radiant. I don't know what they're talking about. She has a little bit of like baby fat in her face, but it's ridiculous and she had to deal with that along with everything else. She had to deal with that. And basically it was her saying people were very mean and we just see these reviews come up on the screen, no music, it's dead silent, like just the reviews like she's ugly, she has chipmunk fat, whatever.

And then I cut back to Lynna and she goes and that was my life at seventeen, and it was really powerful, and every single test audiance, all of the women in the testandians were like, it was like very powerful. And it absolutely killed me to cut that because it was like, film criticism is really important, and film critics right now are in a lot of trouble and that sucks.

But I think there was a time in the seventies where they were almost all straight, almost all white, almost all male, and you know what, a lot of them were not terribly kind people. It feels did not know these people personally, but just reading their reviews, I don't know how you can love cinema and take delight in ripping apart in a movie. You know, and there are a lot of movies I dislike, but I'm not gonna

run around and be like that person. Can'tna thank God, because those guys, those people who do that, I doubt if any one of them did a one fucking thing in their life to put themselves out there as much as any of those people who made that movie. And that killed me. And then there were a few other things.

I hit a little bit where, you know, because Ross po Palenberg, the man that the writer that John brought onto the project, and John worked on an adaptation of Lord of the Rings in nineteen seventy one or nineteen seventy and condensing all three books into one four hour script is gonna be a four hour movie with an intermission. And what Boorman wanted to do was to get around

the Hobbit thing. He wanted to pass like nine or ten year old boys, put fake beards on them, dubbed them with male adult voices and that would be the Hobbits, and put hair on their feet and hands. And even Bormann telling the story, starts laughing because he's this wouldn't have word in a calamity, but that was the idea. And so that's a very funny moment. But it just we just had to lose it because the whole thing about cutting down this movie to its length, which is

I think the right length. It's just a little under two hours, so it's not like it's a short The last section of this movie is very moving, and it's bornman talking about his life and Bornman talking about art, and he's talking about it somewhat in the past, tense, and it moves me a lot when I see it. Louis Fletcher also has a bit at the end where she talks about how life is like one big spaghetti dinner.

There's good and bad and it moves everybody. And the idea in cutting it down is I needed the audience to not be exhausted by the time all of this happened, so when they're watching it, they're still engaged and moved and they're not just exhausted and want to go home. And it's very moving, but I wanted to end it. Just took a lot to get to that point. You need to do a lot of streamlining and making sure

things move. Most of my editorial background, or at least most of the bills that I've been paying for the last twenty years, have come from short form which is like trailers and promos and commercials and like stuff that aren't features like. So that is a very specific kind of editing at very varsity level, and it's very hard to do well, which I'm very happy to say that

is how I got paid these years. I basically wanted to cut this movie not like a commercial, not cut that fast, but it had to move, and because there's just so much in it, it has to move quickly. And the editing style that I used in this film I think I couldn't have done had I not had all that experience and had the experience with Brian Fuller on Queer for Fear for Shutter, which I was lead editor on, and that was like a two plus year project that I was working with him on to make

those episodes, and that made me a better editor. So it was really all about not exhausting the audience and keeping the pace up. You can think it's not some kind of a what do they call Max Hedroom blip vert. I know I'm dating myself by saying Max Hedgroom nobody knows. Does anybody know what Max Hendrim was? Yeah? You do, we do, but it is whatever. It's the eighties. It was actually a really cool show. I have the DVDs in the other room. It's not some kind of like

add cut home, Miss, but it had to move. I have a thing about documentaries that are little naval gayzy. I don't like them, and I find that a lot of them are not all but too many, and I feel like you gotta entertain the audience. You got to take them on a ride.

know where we're at with that. I do know that they should do it because I think he is ideal for this and I think he understands it so well. In the conversation I had with him, I heard the basic just the basic hitch of the plot of this sequel, and I was like, I would see that. Now, Please let me see that now. I want to see that. He had an appreciation of Exorcist too, similar to mine, which is that it doesn't work completely, but it's really cool.

There's some stuff in it that's really cool, and it's audacious and it's different, and I would actually say it's never boring. That movie is just bonkers, but it's visually so stunning, and the music is so insane by anyone Morriconey,

the soundtrack is phenomenal. You just have to divorce yourself from thinking that it's actually a sequel to The Exorcist, which is hard because they keep referring to it, including like a beyond the grave performance from Max Foncito's father, Maren and Sharon, the caretakers in In and of course Linda, and it's all about what happened in that room, and it's just if he's not the first movie what happened in that room, but then we have to get there.

And Richard Burton plays the priest and he's his own thing, he's in his own movie in this movie. I actually personally think that he's probably the biggest liability in the film. Like, if there's something that doesn't work in this film, that's And I like Richard Burton a lot. I think he's a great actor, but there's a disconnect here that I don't know if the movie can get past.

he finished without him. And then Louise Fletcher learned years later that he pulls this every time they do a read through because he just hates he resents the fact that he has to be there so much. My own personal view is that if you're going to get paid seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in nineteen seventy six to be in the sequel to The Exorcist, the least you can do is sit your ass down and read the lines. But you know, I don't know, I don't

I don't know. I feel like the ghost of Richard Burton's going to just snap me at some point. I do love Richard Burton. That he was, It just was not a He was not a really good contributor to this film, and I think the film suffers as a result.

it's just it's extremely low. Sometimes producers no programmers. My producer Travis Stevens has had several movies running around, and he knew a programmer at Toronto, but we knew nobody at Venice, and we submitted for Venice and I did not think we had chance in hell. And that's not to put me or the movie down. It's just the fact that after you're at a certain quality level, it really just depends on whoever's watching it. And they only

have a few slots. Our lineup was in the Venice Classic slot, which is basically movies about movies, So they have I don't know how many dozens and dozens of movies about movies for us to get one of the I think the six slots or whatever it was is Okay, that's a lot. And I think only four of them were American and then there were a few from other countries. I didn't see many films in Venice, so to get

into Venice was tremendous. So we get there. All of the Venice Classics titles premiere at the end of the festival because they get it. I think they just do all the other premieres, the big movies, The with Julia Roberts and Jake kell A, George Clooney and Smashing Machine with the Rock These are all big, splashy things. So we premiered on I think the second to last day of the festival, and it was a sold out show.

I think the theater had three hundred something seats and I go out there and maybe two thirds to three quarters of the seats are filled and sold out. But it's so late in the festival that only the diehards are there. And I could look at the audience and there was this exhaustion and these people had obviously seen twenty seven movies in the last week and they're here

for another way. But the response was really good. It was a little bit muted, but like people laughed and people were with it, and a lot of people came up to me after and that was really nice. But the beyond Fest screening in La We sold out the Arrow in Santa Monica, which is a beautiful historic theater. If you ever saw Danny Darko the interior of the theater, that was the Arrow, and to have that screening. It was programmed with a double feature of Exorcist to the Heretics,

so our doc came first. Then there was a Q and A. Then they screened a thirty five millimeter print, Martin Scorsese's thirty five milimeter print. Because Martin Scorsese loves Exorcist to the Heretic. I'm dying for him to see my movie. If anybody knows how to get to him, please let me know. I think you'd really like it. But that crowd laughing all through it like reacting. There were people in tears at the end. It was the

kind of reaction that every filmmaker just dreams of. And for me to get it after having worked in this industry for decades as editor and all the stuff, and just seeing a lot of my friends have movies at sun Dance and have movies at south By and have big whatever, and they have agents and little I'm just doing my thing, and I'm editing for me to be suddenly in that position is really it's crazy, and I am so grateful. I'm so grateful that and I'm grateful

not only to the people who love the film. I'm grateful just for the people who helped me make it and the people in it. There was just so much of this film that was not in my control. It just happened or people were just they chose to be open and vulnerable and share things that it was a gift. It's just a gift. And it's funny, like I was working with Brian Fuller. Of course, Brian Fuller is huge

the Hannibals show. He has this movie dust Bunny, which is really great, and I worked for him for Queer for Fear for two and a half years, and suddenly our movies are going to the same festivals all over the place and it's crazy like Brooklyn Horror Fest like next week, and I think Dust Bunny is playing the day after and went to tell Your Righte Horror and we're both playing in Ireland and it's like crazy, like everywhere that Borman and the Devil's playing, Dust Bunny seems

to be playing, and Brian's like texting me like we're festival buddies. And I'm just like, I mean, Brian's a friend, but it's wow, I'm like up here now, that's like crazy to me, And it's a weird mind shift. And I would be lying if I told you I completely

have processed it. I haven't. I'm still in a very weird and somewhat burnt out but very vulnerable place with regard to all of this, because I was like everybody, like, I'm getting emails from Edgar Wright and Sean Baker about how much they love this movie and yet, to be completely honest, I'm gonna pay my bills in six months, like every filmmaker. But that's the way it is. You get a gig and then on that and whatever. But

I don't know what's next. I have projects I can be pitching and trying to put stuff together, but who knows. It's a weird time in the entertainment industry. That's a whole other podcast we can to talk about. But I know an awful lot of people who haven't worked for a while or who have not worked enough, mostly since the strikes. But it's really it's not a product of

the strikes. The strikes just precipitated it. It's because the streamers stopped growing with that exponential growth, and every week saw a ceiling. And once you see a ceiling to these products, it's okay, how much can we spend? And I don't think any of the big media companies expected it to hit it ceiling at this point or as low as it was. They all had projections that it was because before the strikes, it was like everything was

in production. Everybody was working because they were trying to refill their coffers and they were trying to get as much shot as possible, get as much written as possible. And the industry hasn't recovered, and it's very scary. There are a lot of very gronted people who find themselves, like after multi decade careers, unable to pay the bills, which is not a place that anybody in that world

thought they'd ever be. Because when you're a key grip or when you're a second as assistant camera, these are very specialized fields, and these are very specialized jobs. They don't really translate a lot to a lot of other things, and they've spent years and years getting to their point, getting to their stature, and they make decent money. All of these below the line people, including me, Me along with everybody in the entertainment industries like looking, okay is

production and to come back. It's starting to, but we're still nowhere near the point we were before the strikes.

there's Louise. Oh there's Linda, Oh there's Rospo. Whatever. So who was the most difficult to get? Honestly, it was current Joe Dante was difficult to get, but that was only because we couldn't find a way to get to him. We tried through social media, and we tried through this, or we tried through that, and the way that we

finally got to him was my downstairs neighbor. Ed Herrera, who ended up shooting the last two interviews, knows producer John Davidson, the legendary producer of Airplane and RoboCop and a lot of other movies, and he and Dante are friends and they would screen stuff because they're total filming. And so Ed saw a cut of because Dante was a later I forget when it was, but he was one of the later ones. I want to say he was like twenty twenty four and Ed saw a cut.

I think he was in a test audience and he was just like, Joe Dante should be in this. I'm like, dude, I would love Joe Dante to be in it, because he literally went into Film Comment eighties and said Exorcist too. The Heretic is actually a good movie and it should be taken seriously. The only two filmmakers who did that it was Scorsese and Joe Dante. And we tried for Scorsese and he was impossible to get, which was a bummer because I really really wanted Martin Scorsese to be

in this. Who wouldn't You're doing the documentary, Why would you not want Martin Scorsese, especially if it's a movie he has said, he has gone on record and said this is underrated so much so he has a print of it. But Joe Dante, we finally did get to him, and he was really sweet and he basically let us shoot him for a few hours and we got some fantastic lines from him, which really helped the bits because

that was the point. It was. Later we only had carn Kusama as a filmmaker, and it was just like, we need more filmmakers. We need more like established name filmmakers. And once we got Joe and then we got Mike and and that feels right, that's okay, We're good on the filmmaker justifying what we're doing kind of moment. And we had it like the same way we had a

trio of critics. We had a Greek chorus of critics with Bilga Ibiri of New York Magazine, Simon Abrams, and Stephanie Zacharic of Time, and they walk us through the beginning part with the Hollywood New Wave and how Extorsist Too is more like a Hollywood New Wave movie than the sequel. One of the most annoying criticism of Exorcists too. And the one I want my documentary to upend the most is people say that it was a cash grab.

A lot of the critics at the time, we're just like, oh, it's a cash in the studio made them do this cashion. Exorcist to the hairtic is literally I feel the opposite of a They could have so easily John Kelly and Ted Ashley and Warner Bros. Easily could have made a movie without Linna Blair, with another possessed kid, or even with Lenna Blair she gets possessed again, or somebody else

gets whatever. It would have been so easy to do that, and they very purposefully and consciously went as far astray from that as possible. They wanted to do a much bigger thing. They wanted to do a prestige movie. The Exorcist was nominated for Best Picture. They wanted Exorcist the Heretics to be nominated for Best Picture. That was the mentality, like,

they wanted to make something great. So it's like, all the people who like piss on this movie and say it's a cash grab, you can say it's awful, like whatever. If you just want a movie that's like the Extorcist. You're not gonna like this movie ever. It's absolutely the opposite of all of it, but as a piece of art, which I think cinema is watching it on its own terms, in its own logic and its own weird dream logic that is arched and heightened and sometimes laughable a little bit,

but it's very consistent. I think it's a worthy It's a worthy film for anybody who loves cinema, and especially anybody who wants to learn about Hollywood in the seventies.

I couldn't get through it, and I rewatched it. I'm like, Okay, it's good, but like the Missouri Breaks, Arthur Penn's movie, Sorcerer, Friedkin's movie, Sorcerer costs way more than Exorcists two and grossed way less than Extorsist Too. And yet everybody thinks Exorcists Too is the biggest bomb in existence. No, actually,

Sorcerer lost. Everybody will lot more money than Exorcists Too. Ever, did nineteen forty one Spieldberg's movie Again not a huge financial bomb, and I think it broke even but certainly it's considered one. And it led all the way to Heaven's Gate. And Heaven's Gate was the bomb of all bombs. It was the mother of all bombs because it was a bomb that literally destroyed a studio like United Artists

was literally basically destroyed by this film. The name still stood, but all of the people who had anything to do with it to make it United Artists left and had to leave or they were fired. It's been a while since I've read Final Cut, the Stephen Bach book about the May of heavens Gate. It's a great book, but basically United Artists after Heaven's Gate was a different thing.

It was not under Arthur Krim and all those guys and United Artists like the Rocky just so many movies and so many great films, and that one movie just destroyed it, like utterly destroyed it. And so all of the studios from basically from then on were like, Okay, that whole thing's done, and that it was the one two punch of that. And years before it Star Wars, which really changed everything. Star Wars which literally came out three weeks before Extorsist two did, and we're battling for

the same box office money. It's just such an important time. The Hollywood New Wave, which started basically in nineteen to sixty seven ish with Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie and Clyde was the thing that kind of kicked it off. The Graduate came out, I think the same year. There's a wonderful book by Mark Harris called Pictures of a Revolution.

If you're interested in cinema, you need to read it. Basically, all it does is it takes the five Best Picture nominees from nineteen sixty seven, which were I'm going to fuck this up, but I'm going to try. It was The Graduate, Bunny Clyde, then The Head of the Night, Guess Who's Send Me There? And Doctor Doolittle, And basically it's a deep dive on all five of those movies in the heat of the night. I ended up winning.

But it's basically like how there was this radical shift because the number one movie of nineteen sixty seven it's The Graduate. Now, The Graduate's a great movie. We can all look at it and me like, oh, it's a great movie. But it's like, watch that movie that is not like a mainstream quote unquote movie that is a very edgy, subversive whoa what is this movie? And one of the reasons that I so wanted to do this documentary, it's like, that's what we need now. I want to see movies

that are interesting. I was interviewed for The Guardian. There's a piece up on the Guardian on this whole thing, and I told the guy, I was just like, there are ways to look at any piece of art, and cinema is art, so you can either see is it good in the sense, does it do the things that it sets out to do in the way it sets out to them, and is it interesting? Is it trying to do things different or is it subverting your expectations? Is it doing something interesting different? Is it taking a

different point of view? Exorcist to the Heretic does not succeed as being quote unquote good under this definition, but it is so interesting. And to me where I'm at with cinema and where I think I've been at, it's like it is so much more important for a movie to be interesting than it is to be good. I just last week saw a film that's an Oscar bait film out here in la in the theater, and it was good, but it was really not interesting. I never

need to see this movie again. I can see that it's going to get good reviews, or it did get good reviews. It's perfectly effective at what it's trying to do, but there's nothing new. We're interesting, it's not taking any different anything like. It was exactly what one would expect from the thing. And I don't want to see any

movies like that anymore. I just don't. You can take ten movies that are fine shoot for a base hit, I want to see the one that tries to swim for the Grand Slam, and I don't even care if it connects or not. I want to see that swing. That's what I feel is interesting and valuable about cinema to me, and I think there are a lot of people who have just been anesthetized over the last ten years with these extremely similar like Marvel movies. Now I

don't want to dump on Marvel. I actually don't dislike Marvel movies, but they are very formula. They all do follow a pattern, and after you've seen like twenty seven of these, it's just, dude, like, maybe something different. Maybe go to Criterion Channel, which is the best streaming nerves service in the world. By the way, if you don't have it and you love movies, you're missing out. Watch a brand to Palmer movie. Watch Three Women by Robert Altman.

That's a logic movie that like, you can't even explain what that is. It's amazing. There's so many amazing movies and they're so entertaining, and it makes me sad when I talked to especially younger people who are like, they don't know that there's this whole universe of fantastically amazing films that some of them don't work, but they will broaden your mind. Like I've always argued, and I'm gonna lose everybody that I'm talking to when I say this,

but south Land Tails is a great film. It doesn't work, It really doesn't work. There's so many problems with it. But I love Southland Tails because it is just one scene with a big swing, after one scene with a big swing, after one scene with a big swing, and half of them don't work. But at no point in that movie was I not on the edge of my seat won and where that hell this was going. There's so many movies like that. They're just dismissed, and yet those are the movies that I keep coming back to

for inspiration. And again, they don't have to be good, but they have something. They tried something. That's what the documentary is about. That's what I believe. I want more people to try more stuff, not just in art, but in their lives. We're all hemmed in by like fear of what will happen, or what's practical or what's not practical, and it's just I think so many people. I know,

I've got to get a little more bold. So much of our life is about dealing with fear its I don't feel like you can give into it, and once you do, it's what's the point. Like you can make the decision right now to do that artistic project that you want to do right now. You can make that decision, and you know what, it doesn't have to be good, but it has to be sincere, and it has to have your energy, and it has to be the thing that you want to make, you need to make, And

it doesn't matter if people laugh at it. It doesn't matter if the critics don't like it or whatever, it doesn't matter. We're here. That's what this is about. Make the thing that you most want to make. And honestly, I wish I could sometimes follow my own advice, like Lord knows, like I could have given this speech to twenty four year old me and I would have been like, yeah, but a lot of excuses, and it took me, I

feel too long to get to that place. And I know a lot of people that I know who are artists aren't in that place now, and they're in their like fifties and sixties. I'm just like, dude, what's left? What do you have to lose? Just do it? Do that thing, Write that script, write that crazy script, do that low budget movie or no budget movie, like you can do a no budget movie. Now, write the book, do the graphic novel, write the piece of music. Whatever

doesn't matter. The Internet gives us eternal distribution if you want that. You're an example of this. You started this podcast. This is something you wanted to do and you felt it strongly. You've been at this for years. You have been doing amazing work looking at these movies that nobody except for film there it's like me know about and people listen. It's like you. You can't predict what this is going to do or not do.

about King Kong. But I want to say, yeah, you were a huge help. Like you were a huge help, and not a lot of people knew I was doing this documentary. I told you, I told a few other people, and I want to thank you. You are thanks in the movie too, but I want to thank you and this podcast for just being such a wonderful inspiration to me and I think other filmmakers too. It's not a little thing, it means a lot.