William Friedkin, the director of the horror classic The Exorcist, has revealed that he was allowed to film a real exorcism at the Vatican earlier this month.
The 80-year-old American filmmaker told a masterclass at the Cannes film festival late Thursday that he was invited by the chief exorcist in Rome to record the event.
“I was invited by the Vatican exorcist to shoot and video an actual exorcism which few people have ever seen and which nobody has ever photographed,” he said.
Friedkin said he was taken aback at how close the ceremony was to the exorcism depicted in his 1973 film.
“I was pretty astonished by that. I don’t think I will ever be the same having seen this astonishing thing.
“I am not talking about some cult, I am talking about an exorcism by the catholic church in Rome,” he added.
The Vatican did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.
The director said he intended to shoot The Exorcist — based on a bestselling novel by William Peter Blatty — as a horror movie, but the more he learned the more it became a story of the supernatural instead.
While the book was based on the 1949 case of an American teenager called Roland, Friedkin said the Catholic “archdiocese of Washington DC asked Blatty to change the gender (in the novel) so as not to draw attention to the young man.” But in reality, the director said, “It was a young man of 14 years, not a girl” who was allegedly possessed.
