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William Peter Blatty (1928-2017) |
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American screenwiter and novelist, who gained international fame with the theological horror tale Exorcist (1971), in which a small girl is unaccountably possessed by the devil and turned into a repellent monster. The book was also filmed (1973) and together with a worldwide boom for the supernatural, it gained enormous commercial success. William Peter Blatty did not start as a horror writer, but a with comedies. His early works include the screenplay for A Shot in the Dark (1964), a hilarious Peter Sellers farce about the accident-prone Inspector Clouseau's investigations. "I remember very distinctly reading a funny ghost or terror story in Unknown by Robert Bloch. He started me on my writing career. I just fell apart with laughter, and I would call my friends and read the entire story to them. And I caught fire. I wanted to write something like that. And I started trying comedy, because it was the laughs that got me." ('William Peter Blatty,' in Faces of Fear: Encounters with the Creators of Modern Horror by Douglas E. Winter, London: Pan Books, 1990, p. 56) William Peter Blatty was born in New York City, the fifth and youngest child of Lebanese Catholic immigrants. His great uncle, Germanios Mouakad, was one of leading philosophers in the Middle East in his day. When Blatty was six, his father left home, and in the space of the years the family lived at twenty-eight different addresses. "I don't know what went wrong with my parents. I never found out. Mama never says. And the only argument that my brethren remember had to do with my father's ability to read; for my mother, though exceptionally intelligent, had long been baffled in her far too sporadic and impatient attemps to learn written English, and was jealous of my father, who had mastered it quickly". (I'll Tell Them I Remember You by William Peter Blatty, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1973, p. 24) Blatty's mother, Mary, made and packaged her own quince jelly, selling it on the streets of New York. She was deeply religious, which influenced Blatty's childhood and choice of schools. He attended a Catholic grammar school, St Stephen's in New York, Brooklyn Preparatory, a Jesuit High School, and Georgetown University, also a Jesuit school, receiving a bachelor's degree. Blatty studied English literature at the George Washington University. His relationship with his mother was very close and when he married in 1950, his mother grew hysterical. After receiving his M.A., Blatty entered the U.S. Air Force in 1951 and was stationed in Beirut, Lebanon, where he analyzed Soviet propaganda. During this time he started to write. His early pieces appeared in magazines and newpapers. After returning to the U.S. Blatty worked as the director of publicity at the University of Southern California, but quit his job when he won $5,000 as a contestant on Groucho Marx's quiz show You Bet Your Life. As a novelist Blatty made his debut with Which Way to Mecca, Jack? (1959), about his experiences in the Middle East. It was based on a series of comic articles written for The Saturday Evening Post. His script for a Danny Kaye comedy, The Man from the Diner's Club, was produced four years later. Directed by Frank Tashlin it told of a clerk who accidentally lets a credit card go to a notorious gangster. Blatty quickly became one of Hollywood's leading writers of off-the-wall farces. In the mid-1960s Blatty began his cooperation with the director Blake Edwards in such films as A Shot in the Dark, perhaps the best in the "Pink Panther" series, What Did You Do in the War, Daddy (1966), a WWII comedy, Gunn (1967), a spin-off from Peter Gunn TV show, and Darling Lily (1970), starring Julie Andrews, Rock Hudson and Jeremy Kemp. A Shot in the Dark was based on Harry Kurnitz's play, which was an English-language version of L'Idiote (1960), written by the French playwright Marcel Achard. Kurnitz's adaptation enjoyed a successful run at Broadway's Booth Theater, starring Julia Harris and Walter Matthau. Blake Edwards and Blatty turned the character of Detective Paul Sevigne into Inspector Jacques Clouseau, played by Peter Sellers. The production began well, but then Sellers got bored with the role, and eventually the star and director stopped speaking with each other and communicated with little notes slipped underneath each other's door. In 1969, comedies were suddenly out of favour in Hollywood. Unable to find work, Blatty rented a cabin in the woods near Lake Tahoe and began writing The Exorcist. The idea for the story dated to 1949, when Blatty was at Georgetown University and read newspaper accounts of an exorcism, involving a fourteen-year-old boy in Mount Rainier, Maryland. A Jesuit priest, Father William Bowdern, assisted by Father Walter Halloran, Father Hughes, and Father Raymond Bishop, performed more than twenty exorcism on the boy. Bowdern kept a diary of the events. Blatty, who had once considered becoming a Jesuit and entering the priesthood, launched his research by looking into incidents of reported exorcism. Ultimately the book was based on an earlier case from 1928, which took place in Earling, Iowa, and other historical cases dating back to the Bible. Blatty said in his autobiography I'll Tell Them I Remember You (1973), that he finished the novel because he had a sign from his dead mother to carry on. He wore a Jesuit medal on a single chain around his neck, and one morning there was two chains and two medals – the second was exactly like the one his mother had worn. In the prologue of the novel Father Merrin discovers in Iraq an
amulet of the Mesopotamian demon Pazuzu. Soon in Georgetown a young
girl, Regan MacNeil starts to act strangely. Meanwhile Father Damien
Karras, a Jesuit priest and psychologist, fears that he is losing his
faith. Regan's mother Chris seeks Karras's help, her character was
partly based on the actress Shirley McLaine, Blatty's neighbour. Father
Merrin performs the exorcism, but dies of a heart attack. Karras expels
the demon from Regan by taking it into his own body and then killing
himself. The book became a worldwide bestseller, sold 13
million copies in the U.S. alone and paved the way for the rise of the
horror-supernatural genre of the 1970s, with its famous representatives
Peter Straub, Stephen King, Dean R. Koontz, Ira Levin and others. For
some reason the writer Stephen King did not like Blatty's bestseller: " . . . two novels of the Humorless, Thudding Tract School of horror writing are Damon, by C. Terry Cline, and The Exorcist, by William Peter Blatty – Cline has since improved as a writer, and Blatty has fallen silent . . . forever, if we are lucky." (Danse Macabre by Stephen King, New York: Berkley Books, 1983, p. 298) Blatty sent the book to William Friedkin, the director of The French Connection,
known as a documentary filmmaker. Friedkin was an agnostic Jew. His movie version, which
opened in December 1973, broke box-office records. It transformed the
horror genre with its realistic and shocking effects. Some reviewers were appalled. The critic John Simon wrote in Esquire: "As for the impious thrillseekers and obscenity hounds, have they no pride" The Devil in Miss Jones
is one thing, but the devil in Little Nell is quite another, devious,
craven, hypocritical way of coming by one's smut. Is there no honor
left among thieves?" (quoted in Some Like It Not: Bad Reviews of Great Movies by Ardis Sillick and Michael McCormick, London: Aurum Press, 1996, p. 204) Friedkin
retained many of the novel's images, including the projectile vomiting,
head rotations, and the scene in which the possessed girl masturbated
with a crucifix. In Britain this particular scene was cut by the
censor. Understandably, the Catholic Church was not pleased although
three priests served as consultants on the film. However, the shot of
the exorcist standing outside the MacNeil home, in the middle of a
mist, is one of its most effective visual images. Despite ten nominations, only sound and Blatty's screenplay won an Academy Award. The soundtrack consists primarily of sound effects and the occasional use of previously composed pieces, including Mike Oldfield's 'Tubular Bells.' Fiedkin initialy planned to make the film in "documentary fashion" and have a soundtrack with no music. When this plan foundered, he approached Bernard Herrmann, and after quarrels, he commissioned a score from Lalo Schifrin, and reportedly, threw a reel of his recordings out of a studio window. Schifrin's score was released as a limited-edition CD alongside the "Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition" DVD in 1998. The revised version of the film was released in 2000 as The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen. Unhappy with Friedkin's ambiguities and treatment of theological concerns, Blatty published his original screenplay six months after the premiere of the film. The Exorcist was followed by two sequels: Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), written by William Goodhart and directed by John Boorman, starring Richard Burton, Linda Blair, Louise Fletcher and Max von Sydow. In the story Father Lamont, investigating the case related to the first film, has found that the evil Regan, apparently exorcized, is only dormant. After many plot twists, Regan and Lamont enter the Washington house where Merrin performed the first exorcism. Again the demon is defeated, but at the cost of Lamont's life. The third installment in the trilogy, entitled Legion: The Exorcist III, repeated in flashback's the scene of Karras's death. Before the advent of the notion of multiple personality, it
was believed (and still is) that demons could enter people and
take control over them. (Multiple Identities & False Memories: A Sociocognitive Perspective by Nicholas P. Spanos, Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2002, p. 9) In the novel Legion (1983), the sequel to Exorcist,
Blatty utilized the mystery story as a vehicle to convey his
theological message: if the devil is a real person, there must also be a God. In
Catholic countries, over a number of centuries, exorcism provided a way
the reintegrate deviants into the community, and strenghten its
religious and moral values. Protestants rarely used formal exorcism
procedures because direct communication with demons was shunned as
sinful. "In place of exorcism, Protestant demoniacs were treated with
prayer and fasting, procedures that were much less likely to elict
demon self-enactment." (Ibid., p. 162) It has been claimed that people who have seen the film Exorcist have taken the role of Linda Blair, imitating her husky voice and smirking and snarling. Father Henry Sebastian D'Souza, the Archbishop of Calcutta, ordered a priest to perform an exorcism on Mother Teresa shortly before she died in 1997. (The Skeptic's Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions by Robert Todd Carroll, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2003, p. 129) The Archbishop believed she was attacked by the devil. It is not known, if Mother Teresa, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, had ever seen The Exorcist. According to a Vatican source the ritual was "like something out of a Hollywood horror flick". (Weekly World News, October, 9, 2001) After the commercial disaster of Exorcist II, Blatty wrote and directed himself the film adaptation of the book. The plot centers around a serial killer, who is caught and executed, but whose soul is inserted by "The Master" into Father Karras's soul, who died in the original version. The traces lead to a hospital, where a catatonic patient has woken and is becoming violent. Blatty's The Exorcist also inspired The Exorcist: The Beginning (2004), directed by Renny Harlin, born in Protestant Finland, and Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (2005), directed by Paul Schrader, a Roman Catholic. Blatty received several awards, including Golden Globe Awards
(1973, 1980), Academy of Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror award
(1980), and The American Film Festival Blue Ribbon and Gabriel Award
for an episode of the religious 'Insight' television series titled
'Watts Made Out of Thread'. In 1998 Blatty received the Stoker Award
for Lifetime Achievement. Much of his live he lived in
California. Blatty was married four times; he had seven children. In
1983 he married Julie Alice Witbrodt; they remained together untill his
death on January 12, 2017, in Bethesda, Maryland. Blatty
had been suffering from multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer. After Exorcist Blatty mostly published horror, although he did not wish to be regarded as a "horror writer". An exception in his early period, when he wrote comic novels, is Demons Five, Exorcists Nothing (1966), a thinly veiled satirical fable about the author's involvement with the film. In his novels Blatty debated the existence of God, the soul, the afterlife, and the nature of good and evil within a specifically Roman Catholic framework. Blatty's short novel, 'Elsewhere' (1999), drew from the idea that ghosts are dead people who refuse to accept that they are dead. "For a moment there was silence. Dare gulped down the scotch and stared into the fire. "All that rot about eternal hell's fires and damnation. Just because I like Mackinaws more than silk blouses, I'm condemned to take bath in jalepeño juice and eat napalm hot fudge sundaes with Son of Sam for all eternity in some Miltonesque Jack in the Box. Is hell fair?"" (from 'Elsewhere,' in 999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense, edited by Al Sarrantonio, New York: Avon Books, 2001, p. 617) Dimiter (2010), Blatty first full-length novel since Legion, was a theological thriller, which takes place in Albania and Jerusalem. With Crazy (2010), tale of an 82-year-old former screenwriter, Blatty returned to the hilarious side of life. "It's like a classic Jean Shepherd anecdote with supernatural overtones." (Elizabeth Hand, The Washington Post, November 23, 2010) For further reading: The Story Behind the Exorcist by Peter Travers and Stephanie Reiff (1974); 'The Exorcist and Jaws' by Stephen E. Bowles (1976, in Literature/Film Quaterly); 'William Peter Blatty,' in Faces of Fear by Douglas E. Winter (1990); The Monstrous-Feminine by Barbara Creed (1993); Clive Barker's A-Z of Horror, compiled by Stephen Jones (1997); Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers, ed. by David Pringle (1998); The Exorcist by Bob McCabe (1999); If There Were Demons, Then Perhaps There Were Angels: William Peter Blatty's Own Story of the Exorcist by William Peter Blatty and Rae Smith (2001); American Exorcist: Critical Essays on William Peter Blatty by Benjamin Szumskyj (2008); Confrontation with Evil: an In-depth Review of the 1949 Possession that Inspired The Exorcist by Steven A. LaChance (2017); Diabolical Possession and the Case Behind the Exorcist: An Overview of Scientific Research with Interviews with Witnesses and Experts by Sergio A. Rueda (2018); The Theological Turn in Contemporary Gothic Fiction: Holy Ghosts by Simon Marsden (2018); 'Demoniac: Who Is Roland Doe, the Boy Who Inspired The Exorcist' by JD Sword, Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 45, No. 6, Nov./Dec. 2021). Blatty's film cameos: No Place to Land (1958), The Exorcist (1973), The Ninth Configuration (1980). Quote: "I don't believe believers can be possessed by the Devil." Reverend Billy Graham on The Exorcist. Selected works:
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