By Graham Hill
Last Saturday night I attended the L.A. double-feature screening of The French Connection and To Live And Die In L.A hosted by the man himself, legendary director William Friedkin. Presented by American Cinematheque, it was as you might expect, a sold-out event at the four-hundred-seat Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, California.
This being the fortieth anniversary of the Academy Award-winning The French Connection, it was nice to see it up on the big screen again, with a newly struck pristine print. After the showing, William Friedkin was introduced to the audience, many members of which were not even born when it first came out in 1971. Still, they were just as mesmorized by the film as the older hard-core fans were. Friedkin was introduced… and right from the start, the seventy five year-old director owned the room, as they say in show business. Never one to be accused of being boring, Friedkin was certainly full of energy talking about his movies, whilst offering up humorous, salty anecdotes of how he made them and what he had learned from the classic masters like Alfred Hitchcock and his close personal friend Billy Wilder. Friedkin, who had started out making documentaries, had by 1965 progressed to television and had been chosen to direct one of the last of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents shows at Universal. He proceeded to tell us that, whilst directing the episode, some studio executives and Mr. Hitchcock himself visited the set, all fully attired with dark suits and ties as was the practice of the day. Friedkin recalled he was clad in jeans and a casual shirt, looking completely under-dressed and unworthy in their eyes. Hitchcock, who was always seen in a dark suit years after all the other Hollywood directors stopped dressing so formally, apparently just shook his head. A few years later, Friedkin was to get his revenge, as it were, when he accepted the Best Director Oscar for The French Connection. Adding to Friedkin’s sense of satisfaction was the fact that Hitch was seated in the auditorium to witness his triumph- though Friedkin admits that the legendary director apparently did not recall ever having met him before.