One—On—One with William Peter Blatty
When I asked Blatty about the possibility that his movie was blasphemous or could be viewed as such, he replied: “No, it's the opposite with The Exorcist. I cannot be responsible for rip-offs, but I would be happy to see a continuation of a trend that suggests there is a transcendent force in the universe and that spirits exist — that we are something more than molecular structures. I embrace that.”
Graphic though it may seem, and be, at times, The Exorcist may be one of the most religious films that has come out of Hollywood. How many movies have you seen lately with a moral core — other than, that is, an unabashed devotion to a woman's right to choose abortion?
One look at Blatty's 1971 novel and you'll realize nothing — including the horrific “crucifix scene” in the 1973 movie — is included for mere shock value. Much more from the book, in particular a vivid description of a Black Mass, could have been included in the screenplay if that were the goal.
Recently, A 19-year-old woman in the congregation for Sunday Mass at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome was said to be possessed. Pope John Paul II prayed with her privately after Mass, but reportedly failed to vanquish the demon. While the chief exorcist of Rome confirmed the story, the Vatican later denied that an actual exorcism took place.
In the wake of the alleged papal exorcism story there has been a renewed interest in exorcisms of late. Reverend James Lebar, a priest from the Archdiocese of New York who says he is the chief exorcist for New York (a claim the archdiocese will neither confirm nor deny), has utilized considerable airtime — on ABC, Fox, and the pages of national newspapers and magazines — asserting that as many as 30 exorcisms are performed on the possessed in New York each year. Brill’s Content, the media magazine, also ran a piece recently that questioned the validity of the 1949 Washington Post news accounts about a possessed Maryland boy that became the loose basis of William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist.
The Movie
Ironically, given all the recent attention on exorcism, the classic film The Exorcist was re-released in U.S. theaters last weekend. After a 27-year-long struggle, the movie's scriptwriter and author of the original book, William Peter Blatty, has succeeded in having his entire film see the light of day. Blatty explained to me in an interview last week in Manhattan that while doing promo work for the movie, key scenes were cut out of the original, leaving a movie that has been interpreted in some of the most off-base and immature ways by the American public ever since. The re-release is about 12 minutes longer than the original, and includes the never-before-seen complete ending, which according to Blatty, raises the film to another level.
Bring up the movie The Exorcist, as I did to several colleagues before interviewing Blatty, and you will likely hear a lot of “You like that kind of movie? Are you actually into that stuff? Isn't that blasphemous? And, my personal favorite, “What’s a nice girl like you doing watching movies like that?” Perhaps you might be wondering the same thing.
The Triumph of Good over Evil
What The Exorcist does is present a clear picture of man’s struggle with evil — in the most dramatic and ugly and overt form it can take. To the faithful, the movie can be an unpleasant watch, but, by the movies end (especially in the re-released version) viewers leave theaters knowing that good, i.e, God and faith, triumphs over the evil demon who has invaded Linda Blair's young character.
As for exorcisms themselves, Blatty, a Catholic and graduate of the Jesuit Georgetown University, where some of the film was shot, is a believer. In our interview, Blatty told me:
“I tried so hard to find someone who knew anyone who had ever performed an exorcism. I tried all my Church and Jesuit sources and could not come up with anyone, until I finally located the exorcist of the 1949 case. So where was most of my research done? In the Library of Congress. I got absolutely everything that's there, but there isn't a lot there. What is there, what helped persuade me even before I started corresponding with Father William Bowdern, the 1949 exorcist, was that it reached all the way back to ancient Egyptian chronicles in which there are accounts of possession and rituals of exorcism through today in each and every part of the world, and with a common symptomology. I had to give some credence that there is some authentic phenomenon; whether or not this case or that case is the real thing, I don't know. But, yeah, there is something going on. Definitely. The phenomenon in general is authentic.
“But then, I located this exorcist, and his first letter was clear, he wanted to help me. He told me, 'I think it would do a great deal of apostolic good for the details of this case to be widely known. I went to the Archbishop and he said no, that the family of the boy involved still insisted upon total secrecy, which of course in itself helped persuade me that this was the real thing — these were not a bunch of kooks.' And in his last paragraph he said that I can tell you one thing: The case that I was involved with was the real thing. I had no doubt about it then, I have no doubts about it now.
“It was only when I received that letter from this obviously rational, reticent, decent, common-sense person that I finally had what I felt was my one authentic case that gave me the energy now to plunge into the novel, because now I fully believed. I was as doubtful as [Father] Karras [a priest in The Exorcist].”
The Universal Acned Brain
With the re-release of The Exorcist and continued and renewed interest in such matters, “the universal acned brain,” as Blatty calls the mind of the pop-culture-infested American, may continue to simply be voyeuristic and watch The Exorcist as just another movie, and maybe even laugh at the pea soup. For the rest of us, though, hopefully we'll watch the re-release of The Exorcist with renewed hope in the triumph of good over evil.
To read Kathryn Jean Lopez’s complete interview with William Peter Blatty, visit http://www.nationalreview.com/weekend/movies/movies-blatty091600.shtml.
