There are times in the movie business when it pays to be thought of as a dangerously psychotic person,' wrote William Friedkin in his 2013 autobiography. Indeed, when it suited him, the Oscar-winning director could be as unpredictable as a powder-keg on a volcano. Before filming began on The Exorcist in 1972, Friedkin concocted a ruse with screenwriter William Peter Blatty – a fabricated argument about salad dressing – to make sure the Warner Bros. bean counters were wary of upsetting them. Five years later, while meeting executives about 1977's Sorcerer, he glugged from a bottle of vodka before pretending to pass out. ‘Does this happen often?' enquired Paramount's Barry Diller. ‘Every day,' replied writer Walon Green.
Stories like these, and a hundred others, earned Friedkin the moniker Hurricane Billy, or Wacky Willy for short, and they helped cement his image as an arrogant, hubristic flame-out who flew too close to the sun and came crashing down to earth. ‘I thought I was bulletproof. Nothing was going to stop me,' he later conceded. ‘When people tell you how, he came to embody the egotism of the New Hollywood generation and the folly of giving flamboyant auteurs power over their projects.
