Cinema lost a genuine legend yesterday following the passing of William Friedkin, the Academy Award and Golden Globe-winning maverick responsible for such classics as The French Connection, The Exorcist, To Live in Die in L.A., and Cruising to name but a small few.
Tributes have been pouring in from all across Hollywood, with Stephen King reflecting on Friedkin’s titanic status among the annals of cinema by offering a shout-out to one of his most overlooked features, one that inadvertently changed the face of cinema forever.
1977’s Sorcerer focused on four fugitives offered a cash reward and citizenship in Colombia if they transport a dangerous cargo on a 200-mile trip, which proves to be even more hazardous than they could have possibly imagined when anything that could potentially go wrong seemingly does.
Overlooked at the time of its initial release, the nail-biting adventure cratered catastrophically at the box office, earning less than $10 million from theaters on a budget north of $20 million. As a result, many analysts offered that the failure of so many major productions from high-profile filmmakers – which also included Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart, and Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York – helped move the industry away from auteur-driven films and towards mass-marketed studio-approved fare, exacerbated by the record-breaking success of Jaws and Star Wars.
Of course, Friedkin’s legacy was hardly defined by a single bomb that played a part in ushering in a new era in Tinseltown, but the moral of the story is not to sleep on Sorcerer if a deep dive into his back catalogue is on the agenda.