When William Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist (and whose screenplay for its adaptation won him the Academy Award), died in January, tributes poured in praising the former Jesuit student for creating the ultimate horror masterpiece.
But now as then, people didn’t realize that despite the bull-bellowing blasphemies and head-spinning, Blatty had an ideological purpose in writing the book–a purpose that was socially conservative in nature.
When the movie debuted to long lines and even longer lines of moviegoers bolting to vomit and then attend church, social conservatives at the time didn’t think so. Billy Graham stated it “stank of evil.” Even limousine liberals (“I don’t know how Nixon won; everyone I know voted for McGovern”) like Pauline Kael condemned the film on moral grounds, horrified more by the legions (no pun intended) of show-biz mothers who took their daughters to audition for a film that would have had them, among other things, masturbating with a crucifix.
But Blatty wrote the book as means to convince atheists and agnostics that there was a God. Calling the novel an “apostolic work,” he hoped his presentation of the devil (actually the demon Pazuzu) being alive and well and capable of violating and abusing a twelve-year-old girl was proof that the presence of evil proved there was a presence of good. The scenes that Blatty wanted to restore, and which were only restored decades later, certainly were those of a socially conservative nature (it is unknown whether he wanted the infamous “spider walk” scene added). For him, the whole purpose of the film centered around a conversation shown between the two shell-shocked priests. When the younger priest — who has lost his faith but will regain it at the end of the story when he altruistically beckons the demon to enter him and then attempts to kill it by killing himself — asks the elder exorcist why the demon picked the girl, the exorcist’s reply is that the whole purpose of possession isn’t to harm the host, but to convince the witnesses that God could never love anyone so bestial and ugly.
The other discarded scene that Blatty lamented was the ending in which the younger priest’s friend links arms with a kindly detective, the beginning of, as they both put it, “a beautiful friendship.” Blatty intended this scene to show that now “all was right in God’s world.” Whatever the audience’s interpretation of the film — and there is certainly proof that the makers of it went for the gross-out and not the religious factor — Blatty’s authorial intention, in both the book and the script, was socially conservative. He wanted it to be a conservative film, despite whatever blasphemies drew audiences in.
Bill Blatty and the director of the film adaptation William Friedkin became lifelong friends. The author specifically asked requested him to direct The Exorcist. Blatty admired the matter of fact, almost documentary, style Friedkin used in making The French Connection. Blatty did not object to the film’s more repulsive visuals because it was not for the sake of exploitation. The evil that steals inside the little girl is in fact repulsive and offensive to human sensibilities. It’s a totally uncompromising depiction of evil, the exact opposite of that which is good and decent. The viewer is made to understand quite viscerally the unconscionable evil that is inside her and the immediacy of its danger. Billy Friedkin always states he directed The Exorcist as a believer. In real life he is a spiritual agnostic type and is very much open to the mysteries of life. This was a film made with great respect for the mystery and power of faith. He directed a great documentary called The Devil and Father Amorth not too long ago and dedicated it to his friend Bill Blatty.