The Exorcist with Marlena Williams

She wanted national velvet and she got the exorcist.

Good evening.

Welcome to Your Wrong About.

I'm Sarah Marshall

and on this winter's night, we are talking about the Exorcist.

We have already done an episode about exorcisms, which I encourage you to listen to.

Specifically, it's about how they're easier to get than you might think.

But this week, our episode is about the whole over-the-top cultural phenomenon that was The Exorcist.

First, the novel by William Peter Blatty, and then the movie by William Friedkin, which, it is pretty safe to say, changed us in more ways than we perhaps wanted to admit.

My amazing guest for this episode is Marlena Williams, who is the author of the new essay collection Night Mother, a personal and cultural history of The Exorcist.

You may or may not know, The Exorcist came out December 26, 1973.

Incredible timing in my opinion.

So we are now celebrating its half-century anniversary.

And This is a movie that, as you might imagine, is also very important to me in my life in my ongoing obsession with the satanic panic, aka

the reason I began doing this show at all in many ways.

The Exorcist is famously a horror movie.

We'll be talking about its content and its themes in some detail, so that may or may not be the right speed for you today.

But I also want to make sure you know that you don't have to be into horror movies, you don't have to ever want to see this movie to be interested in its themes.

And I think often having that friend who tells you about the media you don't want to consume so that you can learn about what people are thinking about is fun and useful and I would love to be that friend for you.

And if you still want some more conventional Christmas fare, we have got a You're Wrong About audiobook original of Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol over on Patreon and Apple Plus subscriptions.

I read it myself and I had a really great time.

So if you still want to roast some chestnuts and listen to something about tiny Tim, we've got you covered there too.

So thank you so much for being here.

Happy New Year in advance.

Happy travels.

Happy long walks.

Thank you for spending the year with us.

Thank you for everything.

Welcome to your Wrong About Christmas Edition.

And we are talking, of course, today

about the Exorcist.

And we are talking about The Exorcist with Marlena Williams.

Hi.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

I'm so happy to have you here.

I'm so happy we're talking about demonic possession.

It just feels so right.

It really does.

Yes.

The Exorcist is a low-key Christmas movie.

And today there are so many demon movies.

They're really a staple of the horror genre, and I think they're all descended from The Exorcist in one way or another, but none of them are trying to get Oscars.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's what makes The Exorcist a really interesting movie because it's a horror movie, but it's also kind of a product of this early 1970s new Hollywood filmmaking.

And I don't think William Friedkin, the director, or William Peter Blatty, the screenwriter, really even envisioned it as a horror movie.

I mean, that sounds crazy, but.

But there you go.

Yeah, but yeah, I mean, I think William Friedkin wanted to make a movie that was going to be just as good as...

anything Coppel and Scorsese were doing, you know?

And William Peter Blatty wanted to make a movie that was going to convert some people.

So,

you know, it's a horror movie, but the intentions behind it were a little more than that, I guess.

I also, so in terms of, you know, why we're talking to you here on this beautiful Christmas Exorcist episode, what is your relationship to The Exorcist?

And have you written a book about it recently by chance?

So, yes, my relationship with The Exorcist really stems from my mother's relationship with the movie.

So my mom saw saw the movie when it premiered in 1973.

She was quite, she was raised quite conservative, quite Catholic.

And so her mom was just like, don't see this, you know, sacrilegious movie.

And of course, everyone was going to see it.

So my mom snuck out of the house and saw it with her friend and was really, really deeply, deeply terrified by it.

You know, I don't know if she was one of the people who was, you know, crying or fainting or any of that, but she was so scared of it that, you know, 20 years later when she had me, she was telling me the story about how scared she was.

Yeah, The Exorcist was always just a story she would tell me.

And, you know, I accidentally saw a really short clip from the movie when I was a kid, probably I was six or seven.

It really freaked me out too, really messed me up.

I also did not sleep for days on end.

And yeah, it really disturbed me, even though I just saw like 10 second clip.

And so after my mom died when I was 18, I kind of wanted to look back on the movie and try to understand why exactly it scared her so much, why exactly it scared me so much, and why exactly it like unsettled and scared the culture so much.

So I did write a book about it.

And the book is Night Mother, a personal and cultural history of the exorcist.

And that's such a beautifully written book as well.

And I feel like that's such a big part of the experience is that you're not just getting into the history and ideas and kind of sociology behind it, but really it's almost like how people, I feel like, kind of forget that Elvis was a really good singer.

Like

The Exorcist is really a beautifully made, beautifully crafted movie.

And I think that's a big part of what makes it so unsettling and pervasive.

And I feel like you've written a piece of art to answer the original piece of art.

It seems like everyone has a story about it.

I'm actually curious about what your relationship to The Exorcist is.

But from writing this book and from talking to people about this book and like doing a little bit of press around the book, everyone has a story about when they saw the exorcist or why they've never seen the exorcist, you know?

Well, it's so, it's funny also to think about my relationship to this movie through my mom, because I feel like there is such a sort of

often like kind of a matrilineal thing in terms of horror media where like pieces of media become like rites of passage that like you're warned against, but then also you sort of measure yourself against your mother by experiencing them.

And that my mom being the very contrary person that she is, I feel like she did not find the exorcist particularly scary, except

for the scene where Regan, when they're doing all these tests to try and rule out demons and like determine what else it can be, goes in for these very painful, invasive medical tests, including like something where they draw a bunch of blood.

I think they might do a spinal tap.

And like that was the part, that was the only part of the movie that bothered her.

Well, apparently that part of the movie was one of the scenes that actually is noted for disturbing a lot of people, which is interesting because we assume it's, you know, the head spinning around, the projectile vomiting, the masturbating with the crucifix, but a lot of people reported being very, very...

Hey, some of us do that by choice now.

That's millennial culture.

Right.

And what scares us, perhaps, is there's something wrong with your body.

You don't know what it is.

And you have to just submit yourself to medicine, which can be quite a barbaric, brutal, you know, process.

And they do the classic like doctor understatement thing too.

I love this.

They always do this where like you're going to feel a little pinch and then they plunge a giant needle into her neck.

And it's like, I think that it might be more than like, I'm sure they used a local.

I hope they used a local, but like, it's, come on, you guys.

Don't lie to the girl.

So true.

Right.

And I think, you know, in our like the cultural understanding of The Exorcist,

you know, if you haven't seen it before, you haven't seen it in a while, is that it's this movie about a 12-year-old little girl who gets possessed by the devil.

But, you know, there's a lot more going on in the movie than that.

You know, there's the medical aspect, there's the parent-child aspect, there's the crisis of faith aspect that the priests are going through.

Yeah, the hot priest aspect.

Yeah, definitely.

It must be sad.

Pretty hot priest.

Yeah, and

Max von Saidow, who plays the other priest, there's Father Karis, who's the hot priest, I think you're referring to.

And then Max Von Saidow is the slightly older, kind of more haggard exorcist.

But he's pretty hot too.

Yeah.

Without all the

added old rose makeup that he's wearing.

Yes, yes.

And so maybe that's actually a good...

good like place to start like the overall narrative of the exorcist yeah i would love that because

the exorcism that inspired The Exorcist was actually of a little boy, not of a little girl.

Which is really interesting as a king.

Yeah, so I think,

do you want to kind of get into the narrative of The Exorcist?

I would love that, yeah.

And for us to maybe start with, you know, the book comes out and I've read the book, and I have to say, I found it to be quite bad.

Yeah.

But what are your thoughts?

Yes.

So

I also agree that the book isn't that good.

The book, you know, it's been several years since I've read it.

I remember the book being pretty similar to the movie.

Yeah.

Probably because William Peter Blatty wrote the novel and he wrote the screenplay.

So, you know, he didn't want to change his masterpiece too much.

When does this book come out?

And like, is it part of the promotion for it that like it's based on a true story?

Yeah.

So the book comes out in 1971, I believe, written by William Peter Blatty

and inspired by a story he read in the Washington Post in 1949.

The headline of that is, Priest frees Mount Rainier Boy reportedly held in devil's grip.

So, you know, this is the story of a possession in a major newspaper.

The word reportedly is really doing a lot of work.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, yeah.

So the first sentence actually is kind of funny.

It says, in what is perhaps one of the most remarkable experiences of its kind in recent religious history, a 14-year-old Mount Rainier boy has been freed by a Catholic priest of possession by the devil.

Catholic sources reported yesterday.

It's like, okay,

whatever.

Yeah.

So, yeah, that article,

you know, it recounts this story of alleged possession.

It's pretty boilerplate possession, if you ask me.

I mean, I haven't read too much about like the history of, you know, stories of possession, but, you know, it's the story of a young boy living in a suburb of Washington, D.C.,

who slowly

is overtaken by the devil.

It began with his parents hearing like scratching and dripping sounds in the attic,

but they dismissed that as it was rats.

But then, you know, the signs of something else going on just got worse and worse and worse.

He started screaming.

The little boy started screaming, cursing.

I guess he had a knowledge of Latin, even though he'd never taken a Latin class, talking a lot about priests and nuns having sex.

And like, was this child Catholic, by the way?

I believe they were Lutheran.

Okay, because if he were Catholic, I would be like, no knowledge of Latin.

If he's going to church, he knows at least.

True.

I don't know how much Latin is in Lutheran masses, but

he, you know, the way the possessions typically go starts out, you know, maybe there's some other explanation for it, it, such as rats in the attic, but eventually more supernatural things start happening.

Reports of, you know, mattresses flying across the room, an armchair just toppling over for no reason, these gross foul odors filling the bedroom.

Well, it is an adolescent boy in there, you know.

Right, exactly.

Yeah, you know, gross foul odors, the cursing, screaming, talking about sex between priests and nuns, you know.

There's so much behavior you can't get away with unless you're possessed, is one of the problems.

Very good point.

Yeah.

But yeah, so like at first the parents, you know, after accepting that maybe something bad was going on with their son, took him to the Georgetown Hospital and the hospital in St.

Louis where they had some family.

And then after those doctors couldn't have any didn't provide any explanation for what was going on, they turned to a Lutheran minister who tried to figure it out.

And eventually the Lutheran minister was like,

I can't handle this.

You need to bring in the the big guns.

You need to bring in a Catholic.

So they consulted a Catholic priest

who apparently was successful and eventually after two months of constant like work with the boy was able to free him of the devil.

And so that's like the basic story that was reported in the Washington Post and that William Peter Blatty read when he was living in Washington, D.C.

in 1949, attending Georgetown.

Wow.

And then he just like kind of kept it in mind for like 20 years, I guess.

Right, exactly.

Yeah, he was Catholic.

So he was born in New York to two parents who were Lebanese immigrants.

And he was born in 1929.

His dad left when he was eight years old.

And he was raised by his mother, who was a very, very devout Catholic.

raised in what he calls comfortable destitution.

He says

they made their money from his mom selling jelly in the streets.

Yeah, he didn't do anything with it right away.

He kind of had like a bit of a like Quixotic 20s and 30s.

He was in the Air Force for a little bit working for the psychological warfare division, which I don't know.

Okay.

Yeah, I don't know what they do.

Like, I guess it's spies.

I mean, The Exorcist is...

you know, some sort of

psychological warfare as well.

Like that would teach you how to write a horror novel, maybe.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just, I don't know.

The writing to me is just like, it's clunky in a way that makes makes it hard to get through.

But, like, the basic premise of the book is like, clearly, there's something about it.

And it's always so interesting when something comes out that like people disagree on like having quality or being any good.

Or like, you know, you see pundits, I think, often describing media like this in the tone of like, oh no, it's embarrassing that this is what so many people are responding to.

I don't like this, but like all we can do is accept that like

50 Shades of Gray, the mock arena tamagachis god i loved my tamagachi i raised a tamagachi to maturity wow and i feel proud of that still but like you know the stuff that comes along where it's like

there's just like some kind of primal pull towards it that we just have to accept like it really feels like the exorcist is one of those things right yeah he knew what was gonna strike a chord with people perhaps and maybe because it had struck a chord with him because i think any story you remember for that long it's like it sticks to you in a way that means that maybe it's going to be sticky for other people.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, it must have been because, yeah, I mean, it stayed in his mind for literally 20 years.

I guess he moved to Los Angeles and

wanted, it seemed, to be working in Hollywood, or at least working as a writer.

But he had to work.

you know, full-time in another job.

And he tells the story of going onto a game show called You Bet Your Life.

Well, it all went very well for William Peter Black because he won $10,000.

Oh my God.

Which is how much money back then?

Enough for him to quit working and devote his life to writing.

And if you won $10,000 today, you'd be like, great.

Now I got to pay off the debt from getting four stitches.

Yeah.

So this was pretty, I think it was a lot of money for, you know, 60s.

And so he starts writing, writing full-time, writing screenplays, writing novels.

I think everything he's written is really funny because he really likes putting punctuation marks in the titles of his movies and books.

His memoir is called Which Way to Mecca Jack question mark.

He wrote a novel called John Goldfarb, comma, Please Come Home exclamation point.

Another screenplay called What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?

question mark.

So, you know, they're very declarative, inquisitive titles.

I I wish that the exorcist was like, get out of her, comma demon boy, exclamation point.

Yeah.

So they're mostly like comedic spy thrillers in there.

I think he wrote one of the Pink Panther movies.

So he's pretty successful, but he's not having like any runaway hits.

But then in 1967, his mom dies, and he was very, very close to his mom all throughout his life.

And this kind of throws him into a crisis of faith and like a period of reflecting on his past.

And for whatever reason, he thinks about that Washington Post Post story he read in 1949.

And, you know, I've been thinking about it for years and years, but after my mom died, he says he finally decided to turn it into a book.

So he writes The Exorcist.

The Exorcist novel was originally published to like very sluggish sales.

Like no one really was buying it.

I think there's some stories of bookstores returning it because no one was buying it.

But then he got invited on the Dick Cabot show.

So he wasn't even supposed to be on it, but a guest dropped out.

William Peter Bladdy was able to fill in.

And then one of the other guests on the show, Robert Shaw, Shakespearean actor, but also played Quint and Jaws.

Perfect combination of resume and eyebrows.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He was so drunk.

when he showed up at the sound stage that either he went on and it was very, very brief and they told him to get off or he was they didn't bring him on at all.

And so William Peter Blatty essentially had 45 minutes to go on a monologue about his book and about demonic possession.

And after that episode, the book became a runaway hit, sold 13 million copies.

Oh, my God.

He was option for a movie.

It says like everything about what a monoculture with three channels we used to have.

That like Robert Shaw gets drunk and suddenly the entire world is different.

Totally, I know.

Also, you know, he was a really Catholic man.

And he, when he wrote The Exorcist, he definitely viewed it as like

a story that was supposed to show people that God was a real and living entity.

Also, if I were him and I'd had like a couple of miracles now, I'd be like, hey, I really think that this book, that like God wants people to read this.

Yeah.

And so he, you know, after the massive success of the book, he signs a contract with Warner Brothers to write the screenplay, but also to be the producer of the movie.

Oh.

And it all happened really, really quickly.

I think like the book came out in 1971, and then by 1972, they're starting production of The Exorcist.

So, you know, maybe to talk about a little bit about how William Friedkin comes into the scene.

Yeah, please.

Yeah, so because William Friedkin did not like the original screenplay.

The original screenplay apparently was 226 pages long.

Oh my God.

And basically like in screenplays, a page equals about a minute of screen time.

Is that right?

So yeah, so it's a mere three hours and 46 minutes.

Yeah.

So I think it was like definitely a case of William Peter Blatty wanting to make sure that his novel was, or that the movie was like very loyal to his novel.

But then William Friedkin comes in and there's the story of him reading the screenplay and just drawing an X through all the scenes that he thought were unnecessary.

Just the little like ego wars that go into this kind of thing too are like devastating if you're involved in them and very funny to read about decades after after the fact.

Yeah.

So, you know, William Friedkin, he was fresh off his Oscar Wynn for the French Connection, was kind of, you know, a young hot shot.

I don't think he was their first choice as a director for the movie.

I think they approached Arthur Penn and Mike Nichols and a few other directors.

God, Mike Nichols would have been incredible.

Yeah.

And the reason Mike Nichols passed, they say, is because he didn't want to be dealing with a child actor.

Yeah.

And he didn't want the fate of the movie dependent on a child actor, which actually

is a good point.

Yeah.

Like this is, this seems like such an atypical shoot as well, like and the kinds of things that you have to have a kid do or say.

And also like, I mean, to clarify what Friedkin's reputation is at this point, like it feels like the reputation the French Connection had was as

like that, I fully believe the French Connection is like one of the movies that film bros are actually right about, which sucks, but it does happen sometimes.

And that this was like that, he's like an edgy young guy, basically.

Is that correct?

Yes, yes, yeah.

He was born in Chicago.

He was also mostly raised by a single mother, but uh, William Friedkin got his start as a documentary film director.

So, like, he, yeah, he got a start working at a Chicago TV station and then produced several like fairly well-respected documentaries.

Um, one called The People versus Paul Crump, uh, which is about a black man on death row for murder that was the result of a robbery gone awry.

But then obviously he works his way into Hollywood and yeah, has this great success with a French connection and does kind of have this reputation of having a bit of a temper, being a bit of a loudmouth, being a little bit abrasive.

But I think confidence in Friedkin at this time was strong, but also, you know, it did turn out to be quite a disastrous production in a lot of ways.

I mean, not disastrous.

I feel like that's maybe too strong of a word, but

it is, I think it's important to challenge this idea of like, I think we really do see movies as a success as long as they make enough of a profit for the studio to feel justified in the choices they made.

But really like the question,

and it's a very timely question, is like, at what cost, right?

And at what human cost?

Right.

And can you tell us a pre-see of what the movie is about?

I feel like probably writing this book, like you can give, it's like the better you know something, the faster you can describe it.

So I feel like you might be able to do one of the more succinct exorcist summaries that can be done.

You could just say it's a movie about the possession of a 12-year-old little girl who's living with her single mom in Georgetown.

Her mom, Chris McNeil, is a very successful actress who's in Georgetown filming a movie.

And then it's also the story of the two priests who eventually are called

into the scene to exorcise the demon from the young girl's body.

And it's it's about, you know, one of those priests, Father Karis, is kind of in the middle of a really intense crisis of faith.

He's doubting his decision to join the priesthood.

And halfway through the movie, his mom dies and he's kind of thrust into grief and guilt after the death of his mother.

And

his

belief in God and his, you know, his trust in religion is perhaps bolstered by...

the possession and his role in the exorcism.

Yeah, and that it's about, you know, a mother and daughter who have this really lovely, sweet relationship that we get to see a lot of.

And then, you know,

and then a demon comes along merely because Regan found a Ouija board and decided to start playing with it.

And I, I, I, boy, I would love to know how the Ouija, how the Milton Bradley people have felt about all of this for the last 50 years.

I'm sure it's been quite a ride.

Yeah, so

I never feel like the Ouija board is what caused it, you know, I guess.

That's so interesting.

I don't know.

I just,

I feel like that's something that Vladdie and Freed can put in to have a logical explanation, you know?

Well, and it fits in with like the kind of the media of the 70s.

It's like, you know, all this Age of Aquarius stuff is really opening us up to Satan's rule and the idea of like seeing a Ouija board as like a sort of paranormal, witchcrafty tool of divination.

Right.

But I also have like a mental image in my head of like Dwight Schroot being like, you know what I think caused the exorcist?

Menses.

Wow.

I think it's certainly possible to interpret the whole movie as demonic possession called by Menses.

Right, because I mean, there is, you know, I feel like this is a theme we'll be talking about the whole time, but the idea of like parents feeling they don't recognize their adolescent daughters.

And it's like,

no, no, that's not the demon.

That's just your kid.

Totally.

Yeah, I think this movie is very infused with like a panic around young girls, you know, as they turn into young women.

So, yeah, so, okay, so we get to adapt this exciting novel about an adolescent girl who, you know, is possessed by a demon and goes through all kinds of physical transformation because of that and the war waged for her very soul.

Just a walk in the park film to make, really.

Right.

And, you know, the success of this story depends largely on finding the right little girl to play this role.

And so, you know, when we're talking about the production,

the film's premiere and release, and then its aftermath,

I think it could be kind of cool to like talk about it through the lens of Linda Blair's experience.

Because I do feel as if, you know, her character, Reagan, is definitely the most memorable, iconic part of the movie.

But Linda Blair is an actress.

She's kind of obscured by this role.

And this role that she played when she was 12 years old pretty much decided everything about her life that came after.

So I don't know.

I feel a deep personal need to tell her story and maybe like correct some of the narrative that I think floats around about Linda Blair.

That was floating around at the time when the movie was filmed and released, but also that I think lingers to this day.

Yeah.

So she was born in 1959 in St.

Louis on 123 Hollywood Lane.

But eventually her family moved from St.

Louis to Connecticut.

And when she was six years old, her mom decided that, you know, she should start modeling.

She was in some small roles in movies and like a shortly lived soap opera.

The way she's spoken about it, she's kind of said, you know, yeah, I thought being an actress, the idea of being an actress was really, really exciting, but I also would have been fine being a veterinarian or a jockey.

She really loved animals when she was a kid.

And she said, you know, if I am going to be an actress, I want to be in movies about, you know, girls and their dogs or girls and their horses, like Lassie or Black Beauty.

That was kind of her idea of what would happen to her life if she became an actress.

She wanted national velvet and she got the exorcist.

Exactly.

Yes.

So instead, her mom brings her in to an audition for The Exorcist with William Friedkin.

And

Friedkin had really, really been struggling to cast the right little girl for this film.

You know, it is a tricky role to cast.

You definitely want someone who seems stable and grounded.

You know, he didn't want to be responsible for like traumatizing a young little girl.

Like, I do think he was aware of that.

But you also kind of have to find a kid who's somewhat knowledgeable, who, you know, is mature.

Yeah.

And I guess now is a good time to pause and just say, William Friedkin is like,

he's not the most reliable narrator, I feel like.

I think he's a man who just kind of talks.

And whatever he's saying or thinking or wants to say in the moment, he says it.

You know, he's very,

he's very brassy.

He gives the guy in a bar interview style.

So, you know, he says that Linda Blair came into the audition room and he kind of goes over the script with her and her mom.

and they get to the infamous crucifix masturbation scene.

And he says, Linda, do you understand what Reagan is doing here?

And Linda says, yeah, like very eagerly, she's masturbating.

And William Friedkin nods and says, and do you know what masturbating is?

And apparently she responded, yeah, it's like jerking off.

And

he said, and have you ever basturbated before?

Which is like,

no, thank you.

Yeah.

And, but apparently, she responded, sure, of course, I have.

Hasn't everyone?

So that's the story he tells about what inspired him to cast Linda.

She has said she didn't know what masturbation was at the time.

And certainly when you're like a middle school-aged kid, like, I certainly remember spending a lot of time pretending I understood more adult concepts than I actually did.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so maybe she, yeah, vaguely understood what it was enough to say, sure, yeah.

Gosh, the ethics of filmmaking of any sort are just, I think, are so complicated.

And it,

yeah, I don't, I don't know how you would reasonably go about that.

Cause she's, I mean, this movie comes out in 1973.

So she's 14 when it's in theaters.

Right.

I mean,

yeah.

Yeah.

So, you know,

take that story with a grain of salt.

I think, I mean, the story seems believable to me up to the point where he asks her, have you ever masturbated?

Like, that seems so inappropriate.

And, like, with her mom right there with her.

Right.

But, you know.

I don't know.

I think that we have,

as a public, like a relationship to performers where we feel like their mistreatment is less meaningful because we treat fame or being remembered for something as a liquid asset of some kind when in fact it can prevent you from getting your life together.

Right.

Especially when you're so young and you know she probably only had minimal say about wanting to be in this movie in the first place you know or fully understanding what this was going to do to her life and her career.

Yeah.

Maybe I'll just touch really quickly on some of the other people they cast.

Ellen Burston was cast as the mother, Chris McNeil.

Max Monsaidow, we've already talked about him, was cast as Father Mirren, the priest who's like a more experienced exorcist.

Jason Miller was cast as Father Karis, who's the younger exorcist, or yeah, the younger priest, exorcist having a crisis of faith.

So those are the main roles.

So once they're all cast, production begins August 14th, 1972 in Georgetown,

but mostly in New York on a sound stage in Hell's Kitchen.

Friedkin was really adamant that when he was making the movie that all the special effects would be live, you know, there would be no trickery.

There would be no

like fake obstacles.

He wanted all to be real effects.

So he hired Dick Smith, the now famous makeup artist, to like create a dummy head for Reagan when her head spins around and does the full 360.

He also hired Marcel Verkater as a special effects supervisor.

And I think a lot of the

the tough things that happened to both Linda Blair and Ellen Burston on set, and you can kind of trace them back to Marcel.

He was pretty ruthless in

some of the contraptions he designed to achieve some of these special effects and they actually caused like legitimate injuries in people.

So like there's a scene where Linda Blair is strapped onto the bed.

She's on the bed and she you can't tell her but she's strapped into some type of contraption that that is making her body just like thrash around wildly.

And so Marcel was controlling that off screen and she had no control over what was happening.

He was just using essentially a remote control to make her thrash around.

And she's, Linda Blair has told the story.

She says, when I'm yelling, make it stop, make it stop.

That was the dialogue, but it was truly happening.

I'm screaming and I'm thinking I'm the best actress in history.

So From this, she injures her back and they have to bring a massage therapist and like a doctor on set to like care for her.

But the story that Marcel Vukatier tells about that, and again, this is another guy just kind of talking himself up and like telling a wild story.

But he says of the contraption he made for Linda Blair, I was the devil.

I had her strapped in there and I was throwing her back and forth.

When does the acting start and the realism begin?

To say she's being possessed and thrown and picked up, jiggled and bumped, and to get that whore and not going too far, not to hurt her or bruise her.

Up Up to a certain point, it's for fun.

Then it starts to get more violent and she starts to say, okay, I've had enough.

Now that's when you start.

So these were kind of the type of men who were making this movie and that Linda Blair was, you know,

subjected to.

And there is like such a rich tradition of men tormenting women and being like, I'm making a horror movie.

And it's like, okay, if you're hiring actors, you need to just like give them a nice trailer, give them some Peppridge farm cookies, take good care of them, don't make them work crazy hours, et cetera, et cetera.

And then like let them act.

You hired them to be actors.

So you don't actually have to like

whip them around and cause injuries to them.

Just like

let your performers perform.

That's what I think.

Yeah, right.

I feel like that was the attitude, Kubrick with Shelly Duvall and The Shining.

Oh my God, completely.

Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, Linda Blair, the way she talks about the movie, seems the filming of the movie, it seems really real to me that she would talk about it this way.

Cause she was a young girl.

So her memory, like I couldn't like narrate for you a month-long, multi-month-long period of what I was going through when I was 12.

You know, my memories would be blurred.

I'd tell the story differently one day, tell it another way another day, based upon how I was feeling.

So she kind of says, sometimes she says, oh, filming filming was a lot of fun.

Everyone like was really nice to me.

I learned a lot about movie making.

I learned about how the cameras work.

You know, I had a great time.

But she's also said, you know, no one has understood how hard filming was for me.

And, you know, she's told stories about, you know.

William Freakin very famously kept the set at below freezing temperatures in certain scenes to kind of mimic the chilly air.

Harmonic cold spots.

Yeah, yeah.

And he really wanted the actor's breath to be visible on the screen.

So the set was freezing.

There's images of Friedkin and the crew in big puffer jackets, you know, to keep themselves warm.

But Linda Blair's in a nightgown the whole time.

She's talked about being terrified of the dummy made by Dick Smith of her.

And, you know, if you think about it, you're a 12-year-old kid.

There's this dummy version of yourself you made to look like a little devil.

And she had, she said, that was kept in the dressing room with her every day while she was getting her makeup done.

And she said, I would just be getting my makeup done, looking at the dummy in the mirror.

And she said, she really did not like being in its presence.

It really started her and freaked her out.

And it does feel like, I know this is like, you know, I think a very modern kind of recent concept, but it just feels like the obvious thing to do to like try and keep people

physically and mentally healthy while you're working with them because then, and I get why that doesn't happen, because

it's like you're a contractor for any other kind of a job and you have X amount of money, and you're expected to generate X amount of profit.

And it's very easy to start,

you know, ignoring the needs of the human beings you're working with when they seem to get in the way of that, I guess.

Yeah.

But that's why we have unions.

There's this famous scene where Reagan is masturbating with the crucifix.

Her mom walks up to her to try to stop her, and then she kind of flies back, you know, some supernatural force.

Well, actually, what happens is Reagan punches her in the face, and then she flies back.

And that was a

like a device was designed to pull her back and make her like drag her across the floor.

And she says, Ellen Verson has said there was no padding on the floor, so she was just yanked onto the hard ground.

And she says she injured her, like, coccyx and like had serious pain from it for like years afterwards.

And

William Friedkin, like for years, has just kind of refused to acknowledge that she was injured because he's like, well, she was back at work the next day, you know?

But then, but again, it's like, it's not like you have the freedom to choose any of this, right?

Like the reason women have this sort of very

deep socialization to tolerate pain is because we have to and we're not allowed to not and i would love to see what would happen if we just didn't have to do that right or if we demanded to not have to do that i guess to the extent possible

yeah and i think also maybe at play with ellen burston you know not wanting to say i have to take a couple days off to recover or you know linda blair also getting time off to recover after she was injured is the fact that um the production was going over schedule and over budget quite rapidly.

Right.

So because of someone else not knowing how to manage a shoot, you have to just tough it out.

Yeah.

So, you know, these are kind of the famous stories about the Exorcist's cursed production, but the studio set where they had built the replica of the Georgetown house burnt down on a Sunday.

That was really, really played up in the press.

And that was one of the reasons why it, you know, went so far over schedule.

There was, you know, like a two-week delay where they had to just completely reconstruct the whole set because there was a fire.

These are the myths that we hear about the exorcist of, you know, the fire.

I've heard stories that I included in the book of the sprinklers going off one night and completely dousing the entire set, you know, after they had just rebuilt it all.

And there was deaths, you know, like peripheral deaths of people who were involved, you know, dying like shortly after they'd filmed their scenes.

Or like.

Which, to be fair, two people involved in Making Pretty and Pink also died during or shortly after it came out.

And we don't talk about that movie being cursed, but you know.

This was something that was being, you know, regularly reported in the press before the movie even came out.

Yeah.

And it's just a good, and it makes sense how they're, you know, it makes sense that some stories become as big as they are because there's this perfect symbiosis where if you're a reporter, you're like, I get to put the devil in the headline.

That'll be great.

Everyone's going to love it.

And as a filmmaker, you're like,

yes, I'd like to do some viral marketing before that term exists.

Right.

exactly, exactly.

So, yeah, I think there were reports in the press about all of those, you know, kind of disasters happening on set.

There were also reports that Linda Blair was having psychotic breaks and that they needed to have a therapist on set.

That does not appear to be true.

Oh, my God, not a therapist.

Yeah, right, right.

They probably actually should have had a therapist on set, but they didn't.

Yeah, and also it's like, let's be concerned for her well-being, but only in a way that stigmatizes the idea of having problems of any kind.

Yeah.

So

the movie was going over schedule and over budget.

They were like, you know, so maybe he's just trying to rationalize, you know, like why it was such a disaster.

It's like, we're going over budget because of the devil, all right?

He cut off my hair.

Yeah.

And it's like, yeah.

And before this movie came out, like, you know, you couldn't bank on it being legendary in any way.

It was just one of probably several devil movies that were totally slated for that period, right?

Yeah, yeah, because after Rosemary's Baby in 1968, right, there was a lot of devil movies that came out.

I think, like the year before, there was a possession movie about a young boy who becomes possessed, the possession of Joel Delaney.

Yeah, so you know, these stories are widely circulating in the press, and

by the time it hits screens, December 26, 1973, it has its own reputation and you almost want to be terrified.

Oh, yeah.

You know, you're primed to be disturbed.

Yeah.

So yeah, the movie hit screens in 24 theaters the day after Christmas.

So kind of a limited release and then expanded beyond that.

So 1973, Roe v.

Wade had legalized an abortion about a year before.

Second wave feminism is kind of at its peak.

The Watergate hearings were unfolding at this time.

America was also in the middle of the oil crisis, which I don't know, when I learned that this was kind of when the oil crisis was happening.

And

when I learned that the White House was issuing these warnings to like, or issuing these recommendations, like, don't put up Christmas lights this year.

Oh, wow.

Talk about the war on Christmas.

I'm kidding.

I'm obviously kidding.

Yeah, no one could get gas.

And the crisis was so bad that, yeah, the White House was saying you know suggestions for how to conserve energy in all of the smallest ways and so you kind of think about the time when the exorcist premiered the day after Christmas and you'd have a dark Christmas without Christmas lights up in a lot of houses

Which makes it easier for Satan to hide in the shadows

precisely

So that was happening and I think you know there was this kind of backlash to the

kind of more liberal progressive movements at the end of the 60s.

So, you know, I think culture at that time was still kind of reckoning with the civil rights movement and some of the racial uprisings of 1968 and the end of the 60s.

Stonewall had happened in 1969.

And again, we have the second wave feminist movement, women's liberation movement, as like a huge, you know, conversation topic.

So there's this idea that that time in the 70s was kind of this reaction to some of the liberalism of the end of the 60s and almost like a backlash to it.

And so, in a way, I think this movie arrived at like this, was you know, at the perfect moment.

Like, the culture was really primed to be terrified and unsettled by it in a lot of ways.

Also, because of some of the religious things that were happening in the culture, like, you know, there was a lot of concern about church attendance dwindling.

Hal Lindsay's book came out that year, I think you might know more about that than I do.

Satan is alive and well on planet Earth.

Like it's not just he's alive.

It's like he's thriving.

Thriving.

He's living.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, which brings me to this statement in 1972 that the Catholic Church issued.

Let me, I'm going to once again reference my book.

Perfect.

Evil is not merely a lack of something, but an effective agent, a living spiritual being perverted and perverting, a terrible reality.

And then, you know, it kind of goes on.

But it's this, the church pretty much saying that evil is not an idea.

It's a concrete thing that exists in like physical form in the world.

Yeah, which, like, what do you, what do you think of that?

In a way, I suppose I agree with the idea that, you know, evil can exist in all of us and it's, it's a, it's a real thing that everyone is capable of.

It's not this like metaphysical idea about like man's battle between, you know, God and the devil.

It is a real thing that takes, that, that we can, you know, enact in the world.

But I also think, you know, it's ridiculous that the church was warning people at this time that the devil is afoot and we should all be

terrified.

What do you think?

Well, I mean, one thing I love about that quote is that that quote is in the opening of Michelle Remembers and it's based as like evidence, basically, of like, you should believe this book because look at what the Vatican said.

They said evil is a reality.

So therefore, these very specific things did happen.

And you're like, wait a minute.

I mean, I feel like a lot of my work in the past has been kind of

questioning the concept of evil.

And I think what I,

something I've, I've said previously, and I, and I think still

believe, is that evil is often a word for something that we can break down.

more and understand more deeply using other language, right?

Because it's kind of a stand-in word for like

great harm or apparent indifference to harm I think but the question of like where it actually comes from is really interesting and helpful but I think I but I agree with what you say which is that like

we also I think

and stuff like the exorcist I think puts us in this frame of mind have this idea of like

humanity sort of is what it is, but we can't be tempted or we can't let evil in.

But what's really, what I think is more is real to me, as far as I can tell, is that like our capacity for destruction and harm is innate and it's a part of us as much as our capacity for good and that that's you know really thought-provoking and complex and scary in some ways but liberating in others and I think can help us feel deeply connected to sort of all of our fellow humans as people who have

you know are made of the same ingredients at the end of the day

evil in quotes you know being the structural thing that is like created by circumstance you know and it makes me think of

James Baldwin Saw the Exorcist when it premiered in 1973.

Well, he hated the movie and he, you know, wrote this whole

essay about it where he kind of says, you know, I have seen evil in this world and it doesn't look like this, you know, crazy little girl possessed by the devil.

Evil looks like, you know, how we treat black people in our society, how we treat gay people in our society, how we treat women, how we treat children.

Ask all those people what evil is.

It's not just bad masturbation technique.

Yeah.

Well, and also the idea of, it's like the idea of evil versus sacrilege is so interesting.

You know, I remember watching Rosemary's Baby when I was about 13 and also feeling underwhelmed by it and not really getting in the moment that its strength is as a movie that like just works into you and works on you over time.

Like Rosemary's Baby features an actual Time magazine cover from 1966 where Time magazine was like, is is God dead?

Which is like a fucking crazy cover to have on a magazine, but you have to think about circulation, I guess.

And I remember thinking like, well, if you have to deal with the devil impregnating you, like, that's obviously horrible and this is a horror movie and it's scary what they're showing.

But on the other hand, I guess it does give you confirmation of the existence of God.

And like the thing about these movies appearing at the time that they did, especially during, you know, and we, I think, have never stopped freaking out about a decline in the number of people attending church regularly and certain, you know, the idea of America and whether it is or isn't a Christian nation.

But like that these movies are so interesting because they kind of inevitably reinforce the power structures we have and specifically of Catholicism.

Yes.

Yeah.

I think The Exorcist is like a very reactionary movie to the time that might open up the possibility to like break up some of these you know traditional values of our country but then by the end normalcy returns you know and I think a lot about like what the horror critic Robin Wood says about horror as you know horror he's like the basic premise of horror is that normalcy however you read that you know typically you know

traditional values of the nuclear family things like that that's you know suddenly under attack

and you know a horror movie can be very radical if it does not allow that return to normalcy, if it kind of breaks with that.

And you're kind of left with this kind of uncertain notion of where do we go from here.

Like kind of in the omen, where the omen ends and you're like, oh, maybe the devil wins.

You know, the devil's going to become president or something.

I actually don't remember.

The devil's in the Carter White House.

Oh, my God.

And horror movies used to have happy endings is the thing.

And that feels like it's related to the production code, where like one of the stipulations of the production code was that bad guys couldn't get away with it

and it feels like it's so rote now and kind of based on what happened in slashers that you have to have like the end or is it like even if you don't want to do a sequel you just have it's just the law now and we didn't used to do that so much yeah right but i think i don't know i feel like in the case of the exorcist it's a little sinister like i feel like william peter bladdie had an agenda oh yeah and whatever radical potential that horror has he wanted to foreclose that with the ending where you know the priests saved the day and so I do think in that way, the exorcist is kind of this like

reaction to progressive values at the end of the 60s and early 70s.

And, you know, he wanted to create something that was so shocking and so disturbing that by the end, you know, the audience would be grateful that God, God wins in the end.

To clarify, like, what happens in this, because it's like whoever is inside Reagan says at one point, and I'm the devil, quote unquote.

So they self-identify as the devil, but then there's this whole thing about like, there's a demon called Pazuzu.

Like, what's the situation with this?

Is this demon pulling rank and pretending to have a more responsibility than they do?

Pazuzu is some type of like wind demon from like, you know,

I don't know, like Abyssinian mythology or something like that.

And the movie begins when Father Marin is in Iraq, I believe.

He's like on an archaeological dig.

Good for him.

He's got his Steve's money belt on.

Yeah, he's in his khakis, in his

archaeological garb, the anthropologist garb.

And he like finds a medallion with like Saint Peter on it or something, but he also finds some type of like statue of Pazuzu, who is a demon of, you know, some like mythological demon.

And

he like goes wandering through this city and then somehow finds his way into the desert.

and it's this giant statue of Pazuzu who's like this winged man beast with wings and he also has a massive heart on with a snake wrapped around it.

I've never noticed that.

Yeah.

Just to show how much you cannot see in a movie.

So

there's like a suggestion that you know at the moment when

Father Miron is facing off with Pazuzu in the desert, there's also, you know, that's also the moment when the Pazuzu is entering the body of Reagan.

It also feels like it's the book trying to have it both ways because it's like fear of a pagan god, but also the devil who is just, you know, you can't do better than the devil.

This movie honors a worldview where like anything you feel scared of spiritually is just the devil.

Right.

Yeah.

And you can also,

you're kind of situating the devil in like the Middle East in this non-Western

mind.

Naturally.

Yeah.

So I don't know.

I mean, I've always been a little like, oh,

are they saying it's not the devil?

It's this like Eastern monster, you know, and what is that?

You know, what message is that sending?

Yeah.

Yeah, like nailing or almost like kind of connecting a classic devil to sort of American.

fear and xenophobia at this time.

Right.

And this being, you know, the place we're getting all our oil from.

Totally.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I think people forget that the movie opens in the Middle East with

a call to prayer.

Yeah, it starts off looking like Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Yeah.

In an amazing way, it's very appealing to American audiences if you're trying to scare us to be like, what if something scary came from far away?

Scary things don't come from inside America, they come from outside of America, famously, according to our belief system.

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting because I feel like I've always kind of interpreted The Exorcist and the time in which it premiered as this moment where the horror, as depicted on the screen, was switching from this like fear of external horror, like fear of the aliens coming in, or, you know, like there are like 50s is a lot of like alien sci-fi horror movies.

And then, you know, as you get into the late 60s and early 70s, there's lots of movies about this horror that's like within the individual body, you know, like Rosemary's Baby.

There's that movie, It's Alive.

There's like, you know, The Exorcist, you know, a lot of movies about it's the body, it's internal.

And so I've always kind of thought that reflects this like fear that there's something wrong inside America now.

You know, maybe something wrong with this liberalized culture, you know, something wrong with our youth who are becoming these kind of like directionless, overly liberal, drug-addled hippies, you know, like this fear that.

it's now not coming from, you know, Russia or, you know, from Europe or from somewhere, far away.

It's coming from within.

But then if you think about the fact that the exorcist begins in a foreign country and that you can maybe trace the demon there,

that like troubles that idea a little bit.

Um, but I think both are at play, probably, yeah.

And also, and maybe also like the fear that the fear kind of, which is always with us to some extent, that like

the youth are up to things that are scary to us, but also what if they're right, like, oh my god, what if they're right?

Which we're absolutely going through, I think, in a big way now.

Where people today are like, you know, what I'm scared of, I'm afraid of my child's gender.

And it's like, are you afraid of that?

What about not to boss you around, but like, there are so many better fears to have, you know, like climate change or microplastics or frogs.

Teenagers always, some of them manage to make even good ideas sound sort of

over the top the way they describe them.

But there's always, I think, a lot of real insight and a lot of clear-headedness about

just what actually makes sense.

They know what they need in many ways.

And I think that scares us.

And the idea of, you know, that this movie is able to execute so elegantly this thing of like,

what if the children are right?

And it's like, no, they're not.

They're just, you know, getting possessed by the devil.

And we have to forcibly eject the devil and then get our sweet girl back.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, so maybe now would be a good time to like talk about what happened when people actually went to the theater and saw this movie.

Oh my God.

Yes.

What does happen?

The myth that I have encountered is that the movie was so terrifying that people fainted.

They had seizures.

They had heart attacks.

They had miscarriages.

That people were so terrified that theaters were keeping smelling salts on hand to like revive anyone who fainted.

That there were...

That there were ambulances queued up outside of theaters to like take anyone who had some medical incident to the hospital from the theater.

You know, these are the stories that I've heard over the years.

And so, yeah, there's definitely reason to be skeptical of them.

Yeah.

A lot of those stories about, you know, the really intense like bodily reactions, I think, do stem from this one article in the New York Times.

Oh.

Not the New York Times.

Yeah, so the headline is, they wait hours to be shocked.

And

it was published January 27th, 1974.

So the movie had been out for about a month.

And so, yeah, it's this one reporter who was going, you know, to see the movie.

And she just is kind of talking about what she saw and what she experienced and what she was told.

So, you know, she reports on seeing people standing outside in like the winter cold.

But then, you know, she kind of features this one interview she had with someone who worked at the theater.

She calls them a guard.

He is saying, you know,

moviegoers are vomiting.

Others faint.

Others just leave the theater, nauseous and trembling.

And then he says, several people had heart attacks.

One woman even had a miscarriage.

Okay.

So classic, you know, shaky reporting.

It's according to this one guy.

Well, Sid said that there were several heart attacks.

And it's like, God knows the 70s were a freewheeling time, I guess.

But if I were running a theater that multiple people had heart attacks in, I would like close it to see if there was a gas leak or something like that.

Right, exactly.

And one one woman even had a miscarriage.

Like, how do you know she had a miscarriage?

How does he know?

Especially because this was a time when women really kind of didn't talk about miscarriages.

Right.

Not to make this too sad, but like.

Yeah, you wouldn't be running out of the theater.

Oh, I'm having a miscarriage.

You know, like, and she also talks about some, like, what was going on at some other theaters.

But it's all coming from people who worked at the theaters.

And part of me wonders, like, maybe, like, these theater owners have an incentive to play up these stories because they want people to keep coming to the movie.

Right.

And also that I would wonder like how many theater employees are teenagers who are just like, you know, making stuff up for fun.

Right.

Yeah.

So yeah, she talks to these people who work at the theaters and she's also, you know, in this article talking to people who've seen the movie and are saying, you know, yeah, I lost my appetite from watching it, that they were, you know, utterly terrified.

But she also talks about people walking out of the theater, laughing and smiling and talking about what a good time they had.

So, you know,

I think she's representing like the full spectrum of responses that you could possibly have to the movie.

You know, she's not necessarily endorsing the idea that everyone was vomiting all over the place.

So, you know, maybe you have to like be skeptical of some of these stories.

I think that's true, but also there is some evidence that that really, really, really was happening.

You can find on YouTube this news report from CBS about, you know, the cultural impact of the exorcist in 1974, and you know, you hear people's stories, you hear people talking about it, and like there is such real fear in their voices.

So, I do have if I send you a video, do you want to watch it?

Yeah, I would love that.

Let's do it.

Oh, yeah, this is great.

Okay, one, two, three.

It didn't scare me.

I just, I don't know what happened.

I just fainted.

It was frightening.

She turned her head around.

It's probably the grossest thing I've ever seen.

It's weird.

She turned her head around.

So why don't you just step out so I can get it?

She turned her head around.

It's not that bad.

Connie was so scared the bed was shaking and let her bath

her voice change.

My God, I've never seen anything like it.

Did you see the part where she turns her head around?

Not yet.

I'm not going to see it either.

And then we have footage of somebody who has fainted.

Yeah, and the or at least, you know, collapse.

The ushers in their dapper red coats saving her.

It is one of the most grossest movies in the world.

It is.

It's really gross.

It's a gross ass movie.

Yeah.

You know, you can see the way it's like deeply, deeply unsettling people.

That's so interesting.

And there's like photographic evidence of people fainting.

Yeah.

So,

I mean, I think it freaked people out, and they had never seen anything like this before.

And maybe people weren't having heart attacks or miscarriages.

But they sure were collapsing

sometimes.

They were collapsing.

I mean, it actually makes me think of Beatle Mania, you know, where it's like part of it, it is the Beatles.

Like, the thing is truly exciting and new, and like,

you know, and it like brings people together in a way that sort of

causes our our reactions and emotions to kind of reverberate more between each other but also the thing of like i think people need social permission to have like huge embodied reactions to things yes yes there's this quote let me just try to find it this amazing quote from the film scholar charles derry from his book dark dreams and he says in an era when acts of violence in the form of killings in vietnam live riots and assassinations were watched daily over long periods on the evening news, and our responses to death had become complacent and anesthetized.

Going to the exorcist and throwing up reaffirmed our ability to be revolted, our ability to feel.

Thus, the vomit of the spectators became a valid aesthetic response to the world around them.

That's so true, but you're like not allowed to do that about the news because you have to like cook dinner.

And there's also the issue of

reports of people requesting exorcisms after seeing the movie or like wanting to join the Catholic Church.

And there was a news report about that as well in the New York Times.

And again, it's just, you know, interviews with pastors and priests saying, you know, a lot of terrified teenagers are coming to the church saying they can't sleep and they're seeking guidance.

Again, this is like a news report of people just telling stories.

You know, I don't know if there's actually data of like, was there really an increase in people, you know, turning to the church for solace, but at least in these priests storytelling, there was.

It makes sense to me, especially coming out of this era of kind of incredible repression for teenagers and adolescents, that like, you know, that something is wrong that society doesn't have language to address.

And if like

an exorcism or a demon like becomes part of your vocabulary, like, I don't know, it makes sense to me that people would attach to that, not because it was what they needed, but because they needed something.

Yeah, I agree.

I think that's a really good point.

And of course, like any, if you're a priest getting interviewed about it, you're like, yeah, there is an increased demand for God.

Right.

Yeah.

So, you know, critics were split.

And I think the Catholic Church was split as well.

I think, you know, the Catholic Church had issues with some of the more like sacrilegious parts of the movie, you know, the crucifix masturbation.

I think they had issues with it.

But I think overall,

they kind of liked the message.

And so, you know, I would have to re-listen to your episode about the production code, but The Exorcist is premiering post-the production code ending in this new era of ratings.

It was rated R, but I think at this time, the Catholic Church was also still doing their ratings.

And so sometimes they would call a film condemned.

They would.

That was their rating.

C for condemned.

And they didn't condemn the exorcist.

They said, we recommend with some reservations or recommend with caution.

Huh?

Wow.

So it wasn't actually

forbidden by the Catholic Church.

Right.

They kind of said, we've got some reservations about it, but go see it if you're curious, which is pretty interesting.

Which makes sense because the message, you know, it's ultimately very pro-them and it's showing them as the antidote to all the awful stuff.

Yeah, I didn't expect to learn today that people really were responding in, you know, not exactly all of the ways that we claim in legend, but that the exorcist

did have

a physical effect on a surprising number of people who saw it.

And that's not making a claim that's hard to believe.

It makes sense that it

affected people on that level because it's like, you know, there was all this hype and all this mythology around it that was just kind of hot air, but that it primed people.

to maybe allow themselves to just kind of surrender to the feeling.

Totally.

Yeah.

What do you feel like you've learned, if not like in

the entirety of what you've learned, like what comes to mind at this moment?

I mean, I think when I was writing this book, I had to look really, really closely at the way we depict young women, in particular, in movies and kind of think about how those depictions have shaped my perception of myself and like my understanding of myself and, you know, my mom's understanding of herself and

how, you know, some of the internalized sexism that she experienced, seeing the exorcist in 1973, was kind of passed on to me as kind of this like generational story.

And so, I don't know, I think when we look at Reagan, the character of Reagan, we see a girl who's like angry and loudmouthed and outrageously sexual.

but it's like a sexuality that's somehow like not her own.

You know, it's devoid of her own desire.

You know, she's being like sexual, but it's not her.

She has no agency in the matter, no subjectivity.

As a character, she's kind of empty.

You know, we don't really see her inner life.

And I think through like researching this book and watching the movie a lot, I've come to like feel a lot of empathy for the character of Reagan

and also to think more deeply about some of the implications of what showing young girls in this way does to your own self-perception, my own self-perception.

I think in a way, The Exorcist, it's a very like like frightening depiction of girlhood.

But in a way, I also kind of started to relate to the way it depicts girlhood and how

hard and lonely it can be.

All of our horror concepts in some way reflect the more mundane fears of our lives, and we deserve to take those seriously.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, The Exorcist shows

female anger, female sexual desire as this very like monstrous, terrifying thing that has to be like controlled and

quieted down, tamped down.

And we have to return the possessed little girl to her original innocent state.

But I also think there's ways to look at Reagan and kind of see her as an awesome heroine who's fearlessly sexual and unapologetically angry.

And she's going to spit in the face of all the priests and all the men that are trying to control her.

Right.

And like the secret of girlhood and womanhood and really adolescence is like, I don't have a devil inside me.

This is just me and you have to deal with it.

And like, you know, and part of it is the kind of the adolescent experience of like power beyond your control and emotion beyond your control, but also like the part of me that you're scared of is the part of me that is good.

Right.

It's so often also true.

Yeah.

What a wonderful exorcist we've had today.

For people who can't remember what was said to them an hour ago, which is certainly what I'm like, what is your book called and where can people find it?

My book is Night Mother: a Personal and Cultural History of the Exorcist, and you can find it wherever you find your books, I think.

Little Free Library, Independent Bookstore.

But yeah,

it's such a beautifully written book.

I'm so happy that we are having our half-centennial for the Exorcist.

Yes, 50th anniversary.

We're in it.

It's a very powerful time.

And that was our episode.

Thank you so much to you for listening.

Thank you to Marlena Williams for being an amazing guest.

and writing an amazing book, Night Mother, Go Find It.

Thank you so much to Miranda Zickler for editing.

Thank you so much to Tiny Carolyn Kendrick for producing.

Happy New Year.

We'll see you on the other side.