Filipe Furtado

The truth is that there are fewer big misanthropes in film than Friedkin. He just rarely seems to have a decent opinion of other human beings, not that he is especially nicer about himself: his autobiography starts in a self-defeating manner, listing a series of personal mistakes, beginning with the tale of how a young Jean-Michel Basquiat gifted him a painting he promptly threw in the trash because, well, he wasted so much money that day. One suspects the reason he loved staging car chases was because it allowed him to completely downplay the human element. Machines in the environment might be the ideal form for Friedkin’s worldview.