Alexandre O Philippe on telling the inside story… | Little White Lies

Interviews

Alexan­dre O Philippe on telling the inside sto­ry of The Exorcist

19 Nov 2020

Words by Anton Bitel

Black and white image of a film production clapperboard on a bed with a person in the background.
Black and white image of a film production clapperboard on a bed with a person in the background.
The doc­u­men­tary mak­er dis­cuss­es Leap of Faith, his spir­i­tu­al exca­va­tion of William Friedkin’s 1973 masterpiece.

This is Bill Fried­kin; day one, take one,” says the famous film­mak­er, bring­ing his hands togeth­er like a clap­per­board in front of the cam­era. In this open­ing scene to Leap of Faith: William Fried­kin on The Exor­cist, we see a direc­tor call­ing the shots, play-act­ing at being pre­cise­ly a direc­tor. But this doc­u­men­tary is very much the baby of anoth­er direc­tor, Alexan­dre O Philippe.

Besides a cou­ple of nar­ra­tive short films, Philippe has devot­ed him­self to the doc­u­men­tary form, with fea­tures about the cul­tur­al impact of pecu­liar ani­mals (Chick Flick: The Mir­a­cle Mike Sto­ry, The Life and Times of Paul the Psy­chic Octo­pus), of fan­dom and genre nich­es (Earth­lings: Ugly Bags of Most­ly Water, The Peo­ple vs George Lucas, Doc of the Dead), and most recent­ly of indi­vid­ual films (7852: Hitchcock’s Show­er Scene, Mem­o­ry: The Ori­gins of Alien).

What all of Philippe’s doc­u­men­taries have in com­mon, he says, is that they rep­re­sent cul­tur­al moments. I’m real­ly inter­est­ed in char­ac­ters and events that affect us cul­tur­al­ly, but specif­i­cal­ly char­ac­ters and events that we tend to dis­miss as pop cul­ture’, and there­fore not impor­tant. To me pop cul­ture is extra­or­di­nar­i­ly impor­tant. If we don’t pay atten­tion to pop cul­ture, that means we’re not will­ing to look at our­selves in the mirror.

It seemed nat­ur­al for Philippe to shift to mak­ing film itself his sub­ject. I’ve always been fas­ci­nat­ed by pop cul­ture, I’ve always been a huge film geek any­way, ever since I was a kid, and so this idea that I’m essen­tial­ly decon­struct­ing moments in cin­e­ma that have become cul­tur­al moments is some­thing that, in a way, I was already doing as a kid, and was pas­sion­ate about then.”

The dif­fi­cul­ty in mak­ing doc­u­men­taries about films is get­ting them to stand out from the crowd of ancil­lary mate­ri­als found as extras on DVD and Blu-ray releas­es. Philippe is right­ly insis­tent on the dif­fer­ences. Not to knock DVD bonus fea­tures, because some are great, but the form and the con­tent of my films is rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent to bonus fea­tures. Peo­ple say that Mem­o­ry is not a defin­i­tive behind-the-scenes Alien doc’. Well, it’s not a behind-the-scenes doc [or] a mak­ing-of doc at all. I mean, yes, it’’ a film about Alien, but it’s fun­da­men­tal­ly a film about ancient ori­gins and the res­o­nance of myth in our col­lec­tive uncon­scious. It’s about some­thing deep­er than Alien.

Leap of Faith,” he con­tin­ues, goes to the heart of what I think William Fried­kin is all about, which is grace notes, these ideas of faith and fate, his sacred stones – the stones in the Kyoto Zen gar­den, the stone steps in The Exor­cist, the obelisk in 2001, which is why the film opens with those three stones. There’s a poet­ic res­o­nance here that I think is real­ly beau­ti­ful and worth explor­ing, because there’s a mys­tery to art.

Though backed up with some very care­ful­ly select­ed cor­rob­o­ra­tive footage, Leap of Faith is essen­tial­ly for­mat­ted as a Fried­kin mas­ter­class. I want­ed it to be real­ly about his process as a film­mak­er,” Philippe explains. The way that I pitched it to him is that I want­ed to use the Hicthcock/​Truffaut mod­el of inter­views, but instead of going over his entire career, it was com­plete­ly about The Exor­cist, and we agreed right away that we were not going to talk about SFX, because that’s been obvi­ous­ly well-doc­u­ment­ed, and I’m not a tech­ni­cal guy. I’m very inter­est­ed in influ­ences, in art, in inspi­ra­tion and ideas, and I think that’s what Leap of Faith is real­ly about.”

Black and white image showing a cramped film set with various people working, including a person lying on a bed.

Fried­kin is a won­der­ful­ly thought­ful and artic­u­late sub­ject and a com­pelling racon­teur – and it turns out that, while he most cer­tain­ly is not the direc­tor of this film, he was the one who ini­ti­at­ed it. We met in Sit­ges at the film fes­ti­val,” Philippe recalls, he invit­ed me to his table to tell me some sto­ries about Hitch­cock because he had heard a lot about 7852. Then he request­ed a link, which I sent to him, and he watched it right away, loved it, and basi­cal­ly said he want­ed to invite me to lunch in Los Angeles.

In LA three weeks lat­er, the con­ver­sa­tion shift­ed quick­ly to The Exor­cist, and he start­ed talk­ing about his archives, old­er stuff that he has that peo­ple hadn’t seen, and he said, If you want, I’ll give you full access to my archives,’ and I said, What do you mean?’ He said, Why don’t you read my auto­bi­og­ra­phy. If you find any­thing just let me know.’ So that’s a clas­sic Fried­kin way of say­ing, I want you to make a film.’ He knew how to bait, and that was that.”

Once on set for the six days of inter­view­ing, Fried­kin was hap­py to sit back and sur­ren­der the direct­ing duties to Philippe. He was love­ly,” says Philippe. Hon­est­ly, I can say there was zero ten­sion on the set. He com­plete­ly went with it. A few times, he did ask me, Are you sure you don’t want to talk to Lin­da Blair or Max von Sydow or Ellen Burstyn?’ And I said, No, it’s just you.’ He nev­er asked to look at any­thing, until the film was not just fin­ished but already accept­ed by Venice. He then sent me an email that brought tears to my eyes; he real­ly pro­found­ly loved the film.”

Philippe has plans to build a big­ger project from this mas­ter­class for­mat. We’re devel­op­ing it now as what will be the first of a series of films called The Process, where we basi­cal­ly apply the same mod­el to Cop­po­la and The God­fa­ther, Jane Cam­pi­on and The Piano, Scors­ese and maybe The King of Com­e­dy – one direc­tor, one film, deep-div­ing into their process.” Philippe would also even­tu­al­ly like to make some non-doc­u­men­tary fea­tures (“I’m a huge fan of west­erns,” he says).

Also on a west­ern theme, but much clos­er to com­ple­tion, is Philippe’s forth­com­ing fea­ture doc­u­men­tary The Val­ley which, he says, is about Mon­u­ment Val­ley in film. Very specif­i­cal­ly, it’s about the mythol­o­gy of the West but actu­al­ly, in the way that 7852 is a film about edit­ing, this one real­ly is a film about fram­ing. It’s about the way the Mon­u­ments have been framed by John Ford, but then also by oth­ers beyond Ford, and how the ele­ments with­in the frame over time have changed our per­cep­tion not just of Mon­u­ment Val­ley but of the West, and not just of the West but of Amer­i­can history.

It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing place to me because you have two real­i­ties, you have the fake Amer­i­can West which peo­ple still go there to cel­e­brate, but it’s also a very spe­cial place for the Nava­ho, a place that car­ries a lot of sig­nif­i­cance, and it’s home to a lot of peo­ple who have a very hard life. So it’s two sorts of com­plete­ly incom­pat­i­ble Amer­i­c­as that essen­tial­ly are jux­ta­posed in the same space. So that’s what I’m try­ing to say.”

Leap of Faith: William Fried­kin on The Exor­cist is avail­able to watch on Shud­der on November

You might like