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This is Later with Lee Matthews,
The Lee Matthews Podcast More of what you

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hear weekday Afternoons on the Drive.
That second off as a writer, producer,

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journalist, Hugo and Locust Award nominated
author, and more than two dozen

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books about filmmaking in film history.
His newest volume is called The Exorcist Legacy

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Fifty Years of Fear. I got
to start in that with this movie,

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and when it came out, it
was really the first of a kind in

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the horror genre. It was.
It came out on December twenty sixth,

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nineteen seventy three, and I think
it was so powerful because it wasn't from

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the people who made it a horror
film. It was what they called a

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supernatural detective story, and the horror
stuff was kind of put onto it,

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which of course summoned fears and memories
and dogma that audiences had had for thousands

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of years, And so it insinuated
itself into the culture and into the souls

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and mind to the people who watched
it because it wasn't what it was,

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and that it was what it wasn't. Well, this was a time too,

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when movies were doing that. They
were weaving themselves into the culture of

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America. Whether it was Midnight Cowboy
or Jaws or any of the other films

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of the time, they it was
more than a movie. You went there,

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it was a full on experience.
That's very astute because the early to

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middle seventies were what many of us
think was the last great era in American

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filmmaking. That movies were not just
movies. They had something to say about

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society. And there are some people
Stephen King is one of them who believes

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that The Exorcist is about the breakup
of the generations. It's about how,

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oh, kids these days are swearing
and they're doing things and the parents are

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unable to stop them. And that's
I think one of the things that made

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the Exorcist work because people could identify
with both the parents and the children in

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it. And oh, yes,
there was horror on top of that,

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but the real horror was the breakdown
of society. Matt Segaloff, as a

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writer, producer the Exorcist legacy fifty
years of fear it's out now. You

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know now, if it came out
now, there would be a lot of

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talk about how it's treading upon the
Catholic Church. But there wasn't that much

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when it came out, at least, as I recall, well, no,

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because it wasn't treading on the Catholic
Church. He was embracing their dogma.

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He was embracing the Roman ritual of
exorcism, and it was taking the

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priests very seriously. That was because
the writer of the Ectresses, William Peter

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Blandi, had been a Jesuit scholar
at Georgetown University and had stumbled upon a

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front page but a very small article
in the Washington Post in nineteen forty nine

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about a lad a fourteen year old
boy who had been freed of demonic possession

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by priests. And so throughout the
film and throughout his life, Bladdie,

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who was a very very Catholic and
very serious and wonderful menshi man, was

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making stories about faith and about transcendence. And so in a sense, the

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Exorcist is a religious film. I
think so, yeah, And I think

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it had the effect on the church
that kind of legitimized some of their work.

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It did. It did, and
that's a good thing in a way,

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because the actual possession case in nineteen
forty nine may have been a fraud.

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And we go into that in the
book, which was engineered by the

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church to kind of increase their power. But I think Bladdie saw through that.

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What Bill Bladdie did in his books
The Exorcist, It's sequel, Legion,

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and that another book he had written
called The Ninth Configuration his Trilogy of

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Faith, he did something very interesting. He said, if he could prove

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the existence of a personified devil,
then perhaps he could also prove the existence

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of God and the life everlasting.
That's a wonderful, wonderful thing to try

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to do. Do you think he
succeeded well for certainly people who read the

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book and saw the movies because they
went home fearing something and also believing in

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something else. I'm not sure if
that actually works. You know, if

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you prove there's a devil and there's
a God, it's like saying you can

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prove the existence of nectarines, you
can also have oranges. But it worked

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for Bill, and it worked for
many many people who've seen the movies and

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read his books. So I can't
argue with that. The Exorcist Legacy fifty

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Years of Fear and that segle Off
as the author, did anybody care at

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the time or no at the time
that it was based on actual events.

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Well, there was some druhaha about
that from Warner Brothers. I was one

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of the junior publicists working with it
in the Boston area, and so there

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was some knowledge that it was based
on reality, and there was a pamphlet

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about an actual possession that had been
written and it was secretly circulated among the

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Warner Brothers people. Lately it's been
online, so I'm not so worried about

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discretion about discussing that, but it
gives it a certain veracity. But the

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real veracity came from watching the movie. You know, the movie did not

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have CGI. There was no computer
generated defection those days, so that everything

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you're seeing on the screen, the
floating people, that turning heads, the

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bed shaking, the walls cracking,
those things actually happened in front of the

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camera. Now, they didn't happen
because Linda Blair was possessed. They happened

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because there was a whole team of
technicians behind the scenes making it happen.

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But the fact that it was done
in a documentary style, which is what

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director William Freakin where he had begun
and where he has continued, gave the

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film a believability that audiences couldn't really
put their finger on. But it did

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come through, and Linda Blair's back
troubles are a proof of all that.

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Yeah, that's a shame. One
of the machines got kind of out of

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control. But you know, Linda
Blair is a together, bright, wonderful,

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wonderful lady who has done a lot
of charity work with animals. So

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I all these rumors about her being
possessed. If you've ever made a movie,

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you'll know it's the most boring thing
in the world. They don't have

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time to even do anything much.
Let's get possessed. The Exorcist Legacy Fifty

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Years of Fear. Nat Segaloff is
the author. One of the things that's

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very distinct about the movie is the
soundtrack. Did the piece of music the

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one that we identify with the Exorcist
tubular Bells? Was it written for the

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movie or was it chosen because of
the content of the movie? Only a

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radio Only a radio guy would ask
you about sound Thank you so much.

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It happened to be part of an
audition that was being sent around. Mike

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Oldfield's Tubular Bells was sent to Warner
Brothers do you want to distribute this because

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in those days of A and R, people went out and actually were interested

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in getting new artists I'm like today, And that was one of the things

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that William Freakin heard. He was
going through trying to find some music that

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would work, and tubular bells fit
the bill. But you're right about the

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sound of the film. You know, it was released with a magnetic soundtrack,

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which was not the case. This
is just the beginning of the days

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of Dolby stereo, and magnetic tracks
were where you got the full frequency range

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something like one until maybe fifteen decibels. I'm not an audio guy, so

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pardon me if I've exaggerated, And
that meant that everybody, to every shout

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worked with that incredible decibel range.
The audience was sucked into what was going

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on and then they were blown back
in their seats. You didn't have that

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with the normal optical soundtrack, which
was maybe I don't know, one hundred

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two, maybe five thousand cycles per
second, and in mono, yeah so,

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and in mono, well that was
it. It wasn't you know.

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Things coming out of the gate was
just totally believable. And you mentioned Linda

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Blair earlier. She never really ran
or hid from the role as some actors

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do. She embraced it well.
She made a film called Repossessed, which

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was a kind of a spoof of
it, Leslie Hielsen's what had to be

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his spoof. Then she also made
the dreaded sequel to The Actresses called The

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Heretic, And she had signed on
for one film and they wound up making

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another one. So it isn't her
fault at all that The Heretic got out

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of control. That was the one
that people don't talk about. It's sort

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of like the fight Club with Supernatural
film. We don't talk about Heretic actresses

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too. Matt segel Off, the
name of the book is The Exorcist Legacy

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fifty Years of Fear. If you
love this behind the scenes stuff, he's

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it's chocolate bock full. That here
on the fiftieth anniversary of the release of

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the film. Nat. Thank you
for joining us, Thanks very much,

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leave for having me, Thanks for
listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the

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Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to
listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from

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five to seven and iHeart Media Presentation