You're Wrong About - The Exorcist with Marlena Williams

Episode Date: December 28, 2023

The Exorcist turns 50 this week, so we invited Marlena Williams, author of Night Mother: A Personal and Cultural History of the Exorcist, to come tell us about the little possession movie that changed America forever. Was the set cursed by Satan himself, or plain old 70s misogyny? What makes a country going through a cultural upheaval embrace stories about the Devil? And—the most critical question of all—do Ouija boards really cause possession? You can find Marlena online here.You can buy the book here. This episode was produced by Carolyn Kendrick.Support You're Wrong About:Bonus Episodes on PatreonBuy cute merchWhere else to find us:Sarah's other show, You Are Good[YWA co-founder] Mike's other show, Maintenance PhaseLinks:https://www.marlywilliams.com/https://ohiostatepress.org/books/titles/9780814258767.htmlhttps://www.carolynkendrick.com/https://www.teepublic.com/stores/youre-wrong-abouthttps://www.paypal.com/paypalme/yourewrongaboutpodhttps://www.podpage.com/you-are-goodSupport the show

She wanted national velvet and she got the exorcist. Good evening. Welcome to your wrong about. I'm Sarah Marshall. And on this winter's night, we are talking about the exorcist. We have already done an episode about exorcisms, which I encourage you to listen to, specifically it's about how they're easier to get than you might think. But this week our episode is about the whole over-the-top cultural phenomenon that was the exorcist, first the novel by William Peter Blattie, and then the movie by William Friedkin, which it is pretty safe to say, changed us in more ways

than we perhaps wanted to admit. My amazing guest for this episode is Marlena Williams, who is the author of the new essay collection Nightmother, a personal and cultural history of the exorcist. You may or may not know, the exorcist came out December 26, 1973, incredible timing in my opinion. So we are now celebrating its half-century anniversary. And this is a movie that, as you might imagine,

is also very important to me in my life, in my ongoing obsession with the Satanic Panic, aka the reason I began doing this show at all in many ways. The exercise is famously a horror movie. We'll be talking about its content and its themes in some detail, so that may or may not be the right speed for you today. But I also want to make sure you know that you don't have to be into horror movies, you don't have to ever want to see this movie to be interested in its themes. And I think often having that friend who tells you

about the media, you don't want to consume so that you can learn about what people are thinking about is fun and useful. And I would love to be that friend for you. And if you still want some more conventional Christmas fair, we have got a wrong about audio book original of Charles Dickens, a Christmas Carol over on Patreon and Apple Plus subscriptions. I read it myself, and I had a really great time.

So if you still want to roast some chestnuts and listen to something about Tiny Tim, we've got you covered there too. So thank you so much for being here. Happy New Year in advance. Happy travels. Happy long walks. Thank you for spending the year with us. Thank you for everything. Welcome to your wrong about Christmas edition. And we are talking, of course, today about the exercise. And we're talking about the exercise with Marlena Williams. Hi. Hello, hello. Hello.

I'm so happy to have you here. I'm so happy we're talking about demonic possession. It just feels so right. It really does. Yes. The exorcist is a low key Christmas movie. And today there are so many demon movies. They're really a staple of the horror genre. And I think they're all descended from the exorcist in one way or another.

But none of them are trying to get Oscars. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's what makes the exorcist a really interesting movie because it's a horror movie, but it's also kind of a product of this early 1970s new Hollywood filmmaking. And I don't think William Friedkin, the director or William Peter Blattie, the screenwriter, really even envisioned it as a horror movie. I mean, that sounds crazy, but really even envisioned it as a horror movie. I mean, that sounds crazy, but... But there you go. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, I think William Friedkin wanted to make a movie that was gonna be just as good as anything Copeland Scorsese were doing, you know, and William Peter Blatt, he wanted to make a movie that was gonna

um, convert some people. So, you know, it's a horror movie, but the intentions behind it were a little more than that, I guess. I also, so in terms of why we're talking to you here on this beautiful Christmas exorcist episode, what is your relationship to the exorcist and have you written a book about it recently by chance? So yes, my relationship with the exorcist really stems from my mother's relationship with the movie. So my mom saw the movie when it premiered in 1973.

She was quite, she was raised quite conservative, quite Catholic, and so her mom was just like, don't see this, you know, sacrilegious movie. And of course, everyone was going to see it, so my mom snuck out of the house and saw it with her friend and Was really really deeply deeply terrified by it. You know, I don't know if she was one of the people who was you know crying or fainting Or any of that, but she was so scared of it that you know 20 years later when she had me She was telling me the story about how scared she was yet the actress was always just a story She would tell me and you know I accidentally saw a really short clip from the exorcist was always just a story. She would tell me and, you know, I accidentally saw a really short clip from the movie when I was a kid, probably I was six or seven.

It really freaked me out too, really messed me up. I also did not sleep for days on end. And yeah, it really disturbed me, even though I just saw like 10 second clip. And so after my mom died when I was 18, I kind of wanted to look back on the movie and try to understand why exactly scared her so much, why exactly scared me so much, and why exactly it like unsettled and scared the culture so much. So I did write a book about it. And the book is Nightmother a personal and cultural history of the exercise.

And that's such a beautifully written book as well. And I feel like that's a such a big part of the experience is that you're not just getting into the history and ideas and kind of sociology behind it. But really, it's almost like how people I feel like kind of forget that Elvis was a really good singer. Like the exercise is really a beautifully made, beautifully crafted movie. And I think that's a big part of what makes it so unsettling and pervasive. And I feel like you've written a piece of art to answer the original piece of art. It seems like everyone has a story about it. I'm actually curious about what your relationship to the accessist is. But from writing this book and from talking to people about this book and like doing a little bit

of press around the book, everyone has a story about when they saw the exercise or why they've never seen the exercise, you know. Well, it's funny also to think about my relationship to this movie through my mom because I feel like there is such a sort of often like kind of a matrilineal thing in terms of horror media where like pieces of media become like rights of passage that like you're warned against, but then also you sort of measure yourself against your mother by experiencing them. And that my mom being the very contrary person that she is,

I feel like she did not find the exorcist particularly scary except for the scene where Regan when they're doing all these tests to try and rule out demons and like determine what else it can be goes in for these very painful invasive medical tests including like something where they draw a bunch of blood. I think they might do a spinal tap and like that was the part that was the only part of the movie that bothered her. do a spinal tap and like that was the part that was the only part of the movie that bothered her. Well apparently that part of the movie was one of the scenes that actually is noted for disturbing a lot of people which is interesting because we assume it's you know the head spinning around the projectile vomiting the masturbating with the crucifix but a lot of people reported

being very very very some of us do that by choice. Now that's millennial culture. Right and what scares us perhaps is there's something wrong with your body. You don't know what it is and you have to just submit yourself to medicine which can be quite a barbaric brutal process. And they do the classic like doctor understatement thing too. I love this. They they do the classic like doctor understatement thing too. I love this. They always do. It's like, you're going to feel a little pinch and they're playing a giant needle under her neck. And it's like, I think that it might be more than like, I'm sure they used

a local. I hope they used to local. But like, it's come on you guys. Don't lie to the girl. So true. Right. And I think in our, like, the cultural understanding of the exorcist, you know, if you haven't seen it before, you haven't seen it in a while, is that it's this movie about a 12-year-old little girl who gets possessed by the devil. But, you know, there's a lot more going on in the movie than that.

You know, there's the medical aspect. There's the parent-child aspect. There's the crisis of faith aspect that the the priests are going through. Yeah, the hot priest aspect. Yeah, definitely. That must be sad. Yeah, pretty hot priest. Yeah. Max von Sydau who plays the other priest, there's Father Karris, who's the hot priest, I think you're referring to. And then Max on side-out is the slightly older kind of more haggard exorcist, but he's pretty hot too without all the the added old rose makeup that he's wearing. Yes, yes. And so maybe that's actually a good good like place to start like the overall narrative of of the exercist. Yeah. I would love that. Because the exercise that inspired the exercise was actually

a little boy, not a little girl. She's really interesting as a king. But yeah, so I think, do you want to kind of get into the narrative of the exercise? I would love that. Yeah. And for us to maybe start with, you know, the book comes out and I've read the book and I have to say I found it to be quite bad. Yeah. But what are your thoughts? Yes. So I also agree that the book isn't that good. The book, you know, it's been several years since I've read it. I remember the book being pretty similar to the movie. Yeah. Probably because William Peter Blattie wrote the novel and he wrote the screenplay, so you know, he didn't want to change his masterpiece too much. When does this book come out and like, is it part

of the promotion for it that like it's based on a true story? Yeah. So the book comes out in 1971, I believe, written by William Peter Blattie, and inspired by a story he read in the Washington Post in 1949, the headline of that is, Priest Freeze Mount Rainier Boy reportedly held in Devil's Grip. So you know, this is the story of a possession in a major newspaper. The word reportedly is really doing a lot of work. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. So the first sentence actually, it's kind of I says, and what is perhaps one of the most remarkable experiences of its kind and recent religious history, a 14 year old Mount Rainier boy has been freed by a Catholic priest of possession by the devil. Catholic sources reported yesterday.

And it's like, okay, whatever. Yeah. So, yeah, that article, you know, it recounts this story of a letter of possession. It's pretty boilerplate possession. If you ask me, I mean, I even read too much about the history of stories of possession, but it's the story of a young boy living in a suburb of Washington, DC, who slowly is overtaken by the devil. It began with his parents hearing scratching and dripping sounds in the attic, but they dismiss that as

it was rats. But then, you know, the signs of something else going on just got worse and worse and worse. He started screaming. The little boy started screaming, cursing. I guess he, you know, had a knowledge of Latin, even though he'd never taken a Latin class, talking a lot about priests and nuns having sex. I'm like, was this child Catholic, by the way? I believe they were Lutheran. Okay, because if he were Catholic, I would be like, no, no, no, like, of Latin. If he's going to church, he knows it would be straight.

It's true. I don't know how much Latin is in Lutheran masses. But he, you know, the way the possessions typically go starts out, you know, maybe there's some other explanation for it, such as rats in the attic. But eventually, more supernatural things start happening, reports of, you know, mattresses flying across the room, an armchair just toppling over for no reason. These gross foul odors filling the bedroom.

Well, it isn't adolescent boy in there, you know. Right, exactly. Yeah, you know, gross foul odors, the cursing, screaming, talking about sex between priests and nuns, you know. There's so much behavior you can't get away with unless your possessed is one of the problems. Very good point, yeah. But yeah, so like at first, the parents, you know, after accepting that maybe something bad was going on with their son took him to the Georgetown hospital

and the hospital in St. Louis where they had some family. And then after those doctors couldn't have any, didn't provide any explanation for what was going on. They turned to a Lutheran minister who tried to figure out and eventually the Lutheran minister was like, I can't handle this, you need to bring in the big guns, you need to bring in a Catholic. So they consoled it a Catholic priest who apparently was successful and eventually after two months of constant work with the boy was able to free him of the devil. And so that's the basic story that was reported in the Washington Post

and that William Peter Blattie read when he was living in Washington, D.C. in 1949 attending Georgetown. Wow. And then he just kind of kept it in mind for like 20 years, I guess. Right. Exactly. Yeah. He was Catholic. So he was born in New York to two parents who were Lebanese immigrants. And he was born nine to 29. His dad left when he was eight years old. And he was raised by his mother. He was a very, very devout Catholic

and raised in what he calls comfortable destitution. He says they made their money from his mom selling jelly in the streets. Yeah, he didn't do anything with it right away. He kind of had like a bit of a like, quixotic 20s and 30s. He was in the air force for a little bit, working for the psychological warfare division,

which I don't know. Okay. Yeah, I don't know what they do. Like I guess it spies. I mean, the exercise is, you know, some sort of psychological warfare as well. Like, that would teach you how to write a horror novel, maybe. Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just, I don't know, the writing to me is just like, it's clunky in a way that makes it hard to get through. But like, the basic premise of the book is like, clearly there's something about it. And it's always so interesting when something comes out that like people disagree on like having quality or being any good or like, you know, you seek pundits, I think often describing media like this in the tone of like, oh no, it's embarrassing that this is what so many people are responding to. I don't like this, but like all we can do is accept that like 50 shades of

gray, the macarena, tomagotchi's, God, I loved my tomagotchi. I raised a tomagotchi to maturity. Wow. And I feel proud of that still. But like, you know, the stuff that comes along where it's like, there's just like some kind of primal pull towards it that we just have to accept. Like it really feels like the exercise is one of those things. Right. Yeah. He knew what was going to strike a chord with people, perhaps.

And maybe because it had struck a chord with him, because I think any story you remember for that long, it's like it sticks to you in a way that means that maybe it's going to be sticky for other people. Yeah. Well, yeah, I must have been because, yeah, I mean, it stayed in his mind for literally 20 years. I guess he moved to Los Angeles and wanted it seemed to be working in Hollywood or at least working as a writer, but he had to work, you know, full time in another job. a writer, but he had to work full time in another job. And he tells the story of going onto a game show called, you bet your life. Well, it all went very well for William Peter Blatt, because he won $10,000. Oh my God. Which is how much money back then?

Enough for him to quit working and devote his life to writing. And if you won $10,000 today, you'd be like, great, now I got to pay off the debt from getting four stitches. Yeah, so this was pretty, I think it was a lot of money for, you know, 60s. And so he starts writing, writing full time, writing screenplays, writing novels. I think everything he's written is really funny because he really likes putting punctuation marks in the titles of his new piece in the books His memoir is called which way to mecca jack question mark John Gulfarbcoma, please come home exclamation point Another screen what did you do in the war daddy question mark?

So, you know, they're very declarative called, what did you do in the war daddy question mark? So, you know, they're very declarative, inquisitive titles. I wish the answer was like, get out of her comma demon boy. So they're mostly like comedic spy thrillers in there. I think he wrote one of the pink panther movies. So he's pretty successful, but he's not having any runaway hits. But then in 1967, his mom dies, and he was very, very close to his mom all throughout his life. And this kind of throws him into a crisis of faith and a period of reflecting on his past. And for whatever reason, he thinks about that Washington Post story he read in 1949. And I've been thinking about it for years and years, but after

my mom died, he says he finally decided to turn it into a book. So he writes the exorcist, the exorcist novel was originally published like very sluggish sales, like no one really was buying it. I think there's some stories of bookstores returning it because no one was buying it. But then he got invited on the Dick Cabot show. So he wasn't even supposed to be on it, but a guest dropped out, William Peter Blattie was able to fill in. And then one of the other guests on the show, Robert Shaw, Shakespearean actor, but also played Quint in JAaws. Perfect combination of resume and I guess. Yeah. Yeah. He was so drunk when he showed up at the sound stage that either he went on and it was very, very brief

and they told him to get off or he was, they didn't bring him on at all. And so William Peter Blattie essentially had 45 minutes to go on a monologue about his book and about demonic possession. And after that episode, the book became a runaway hit, sold 13 million copies, which was often for a movie.

It says like everything about what a monoculture with three channels we used to have that like, Robert Shaw gets drunk and suddenly the entire world is different. Totally, I know. Also, he was a really Catholic man, and when he wrote the excerpts, he definitely viewed it as a story

that was supposed to show people that God was a real and living entity. Also, if I were him and I'd have a couple of miracles now, I'd be like, hey, I really think that this book that like God wants people to read this. Yeah. And so he, you know, after the massive success of the book, he signs a contract with Warner Brothers to write the screenplay, but also to be the producer of the movie. Oh,

oh, and it all happened really, really quickly. I think like the book came out in 1971. And then by 1972, they're starting production of the exorcist. So maybe to talk a little bit about how William Fried can comes into the scene. Yeah, please.

Yeah, so because William Fried can did not like the original screenplay. The original screenplay apparently was 226 pages long. Oh my God. And basically, in screenplay is a page equals about a minute. Yes. Screenplay is that right. So yeah.

So it's a mere three hours and 46 minutes. Yeah. So I think it was definitely a case of William Peter Blattie wanting to make sure that his novel was, or that the movie was very loyal to his novel. But then William Frieding comes in and there's the story of him reading the screenplay and just drawing an X through all the scenes that he thought wasn't necessary. Just the little like ego words that go into this kind of thing too

or like devastating if you're involved in them and very funny to read about decades after the fact. Yeah, so you know William Friedkin, he was fresh off his Oscar win for the French connection was kind of, you know, a young hot shot. I don't think he was their first choice as a director for the movie. I think they approached Arthur Penn and Mike Nichols and a few other directors. God, Mike Nichols would have been incredible. Yeah, and the reason Mike Nichols passed, they say, is because he didn't want to be dealing with a child actor Yeah, and he didn't want the fate of the movie dependent on a child actor, which actually is a good point Yeah, like this is the seems like section a typical shoot as well like then the kinds of things that you have to have

a kid do or say and also like it I mean to clarify what Friedkin's reputation is at this point, like it feels like the reputation the French connection had was as like the, I fully believe the French connection is like one of the movies that film bros are actually right about, which sucks, but it does happen sometimes. And, and that this was like that he's like an egg-y young guy, basically. Is that correct? Yes. Yes. Yeah. He was born in Chicago. He was also mostly raised by single mother, but William Friedkin got his start as a documentary film director. So like he yeah, he got a start working at a Chicago TV station and then produced several like fairly well-respected, one called The People versus Paul Crump,

which is about a black man on death row for murder that was the result of a robbery gonna arrive. But then obviously he works his way into Hollywood and yeah, has this great success with a French connection and does kind of have this reputation of having a bit of a temper, being a bit of a loudmouth, being a little bit abrasive. But I think confidence in Friedkin at this time was strong, but also, you know, it did turn out to be quite a disastrous production in a lot of ways.

I mean, not disastrous. I feel like that's maybe too strong of a word, but it is, I think it's important to challenge this idea of like, I think we really do see movies as a success as long as they make enough of a profit for the studio to feel justified in the choices they made, but really like the question, and it's very timely question is like at what cost, right, and at what human cost? Right. And can you tell us a

pracey of what the movie is about? I feel like probably writing this book like you can give. It's like the better you know something the faster you can describe it. So I feel like you might be able to do one of the more succinct

exercist summaries that can be done. You could just say it's a movie about the possession of a 12-year-old little girl who was living with her single mom in Georgetown. Her mom, Chris McNeill is a very successful actress who's in Georgetown filming a movie. And then it's also the story of the two priests who eventually are called into the scene to exercise the demon from the young girl's body. And it's about, you know, one of those priests'

father, Karris, is kind of in the middle of a really intense crisis of faith. He's doubting his decision to join the priesthood and halfway through the movie, his mom dies and he's kind of thrust into grief and guilt after the death of his mother. And his belief in God and his, you know, his trust and religion is perhaps bolstered by the possession and his role and the exorcism. Yeah, and that it's about a mother and daughter who have this really lovely, sweet relationship that we get to see a lot of, and then a demon comes along merely because Regan found a Ouija board and decided to start playing with it. And I, boy, I would love to know how the Ouija, how the Milton Bradley people have felt

about all of this for the last 50 years, but I'm sure it's been quite a ride. Yeah, so I never feel like the Ouija board is what caused it, you know? I know, that's so interesting. I don't know, I just, I feel like the Ouija board is what caused it, you know? I know, that's so interesting. I don't know. I just, I feel like that's something that Vladie and Fried can put in to have a logical explanation, you know?

Well, and it fits in with like the kind of the media of the 70s. It's like, you know, all this Asia Biqueria stuff is really opening us up to Satan's rule and the idea of like seeing a Ouija board as like a sort of paranormal witchcrafty tool of divination. But I also have like a mental image in my head of like Dwight Shrute being like, you know what? I think caused the exorcist, Mencees. Wow.

I think it's certainly possible to interpret the whole movie as demonic possession called by men's ease, right? Cause I mean, there is, you know, I feel like this is a theme we'll be talking about the whole time, but the idea of like parents feeling they don't recognize their adolescent daughters. And it's like, no, that's not the demon. That's just your kid. Totally. Yeah, I think this movie is very infused with like a panic around young girls, you know,

as they turn into young women. So yeah, so, okay, so we get to adapt this exciting novel about an adolescent girl who, you know, is possessed by a demon and goes through all kinds of physical transformation because of that and the war waged for her very soul. Just to walk in the park film to make really. Right, and you know, the success of this story depends largely on finding the right little girl to play this role. And so, you know, when we're talking about the production, the film's premiere and release, and then it's aftermath,

I think it could be kind of cool to like talk about it through the lens of Linda Blair's experience. Yeah, it's so great. Because I do feel as if, you know, her character, Reagan, is definitely the most memorable iconic part of the movie, but Linda Blair is an actress. She's kind of obscured by this role, and this role that she played when she was 12 years old, pretty much decided everything about her

life that came after her. So I don't know, I feel, I feel a deep personal need to like tell her story and maybe like correct some of the narrative that I think floats around about Linda Blair, that was floating around at the time when the movie was filmed and released but also that I think lingers to this day. So she was born in 1959 in St. Louis on one two three Hollywood lane but eventually her family moved from St. Louis to Connecticut and when she was six years old her her mom decided that, you know, she should start modeling. She was in some small roles in movies and like a shortly lived soap opera. The way she's spoken about it, she's kind of said, you know, yeah, I thought being an actress,

the idea of being an actress was really, really exciting, but I also would have been fine being a veterinarian or a jockey. She really loved animals when she was a kid. And she said, you know, if I am going to be an actress, I want to be in movies about, you know, girls and their dogs or girls and their horses, like last year, Black Beauty, that was kind of her idea of what would happen to her life if she became an actress. She wanted national velvet and she got the exorcist. Exactly, yes. So instead, her mom brings her in to an audition

for the exorcist with William Friedkin. And Friedkin had really, really been struggling to cast the right little girl for this film. You know, it is a tricky role to cast. Mm-hmm. You definitely want someone who seems stable and grounded. You know, he didn't want to be responsible for like traumatizing a young little girl. Like I do think he was aware of that.

But you also kind of have to find a kid who's somewhat knowledgeable, who you know, is mature. Yeah. And I guess now is a good time to pause and just say William Friedkin is like He's not the most reliable narrator. I feel like I think he's a man who just kind of talks and whatever he's saying or thinking or wants to say in the The moment You know he's very he's very brassy. He's he gives the guy in a bar interview style So you know he says that Linda Blair came into the audition room and he kind of goes over the script with her and her mom and they get to the infamous

crucifix masturbation scene. And he says, Linda, do you understand what Reagan is doing here? And Linda says, yeah, like very eagerly, she's masturbating. And William Freak and nods and says, and you know what masturbating is? And apparently she responded, yes, like jerking off. And he said, and have you ever masturbated before? Which is like, no, no, thank you. Yeah. And but apparently she responded, sure, a course I have hasn't everyone. And but apparently she responded, sure, a course I have hasn't everyone. So that's the story he tells about what inspired him to Castlinda. She has said she didn't know what masturbation was at the time. And yeah, certainly when you're like a middle school aged kid, like I certainly remember spending a lot of time pretending I understood more adult concepts than I actually did.

Exactly. Yeah. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, and so maybe she vaguely understood what it was enough to say. Sure, yeah. Gosh, the ethics of filmmaking of any sort, I guess I think, are so complicated. And yeah, I don't know how you would reasonably go about that because she's I mean this movie comes out in 1973 so she's 14 when it's in theaters right I mean yeah yeah so you know take that story with the grand assault I think I mean the story seems believable to me up to the point where he asks her have have you ever masturbated?

Like that scene. So inappropriate. And like with her mom right there with her. But you know, I don't know. I think that we have as a public, like a relationship to performers where we feel like their mistreatment is less meaningful because we treat fame or being remembered for something as a liquid asset of some kind when in fact it can prevent you from getting your life together. Right, especially when you're so young and you know she probably only had minimal say about wanting to be in this movie in the first place you know or fully understanding what this was going to do to her life and her career. Yeah.

Maybe I'll just touch really quickly on some of the other people they cast. Yeah. At the person, was cast as the mother, Chris McNeil, Max von Saito. We've already talked about him, was cast as father Miren, the priest who's like a more experienced exorcist. Jason Miller was cast as father Karris,

who's the younger exorcist, or yeah, the younger priest, exorcist, having Miller was cast as Father Carus, who's the younger exorcist, or yet the younger priest, exorcist, having a crisis of faith. So those are the main roles. So once they're all cast, production begins August 14th, 1972 in Georgetown, but mostly in New York on a sound stage in Hell's Kitchen. Friedkin was really adamant that when he was making the movie that all the special effects would be live, you know, there would be no trickery, there would be no fake obstacles. You want it all to be real effects. So he hired Dick Smith, the now famous makeup artist, to like create a dummy head for Ray and when her head spins around and does the full 360. He also

hired Marcel Verketeer as a special effects supervisor. And I think a lot of the tough things that happened to both Linda Blair and Ellen Burston on set, and you can kind of trace them back to Marcel. He was pretty ruthless in some of the contractptions he designed to achieve some of these special effects. And they actually caused like legitimate injuries in people. So like there's a scene where Linda Blair is strapped onto the bed. She's on the bed and you can't tell her, but she's strapped into some type of contraption that is making her body just like thrash around wildly. And so Marcel was controlling that off screen and she had no control over what was happening. He was just using essentially a remote control to make her thrash around and she's Linda Blair has told the story. She says, when I'm yelling,

make it stop, make it stop. That was the dialogue, but it was truly happening. I'm screaming and I'm thinking, I'm the best actress in history. So from this, you injures her back and they have to bring a massage therapist and like a doctor on set to like care for her. But the story that Marcel Wukater tells about that.

And again, this is another guy just kind of talking himself up and like telling a wild story, but he says of the contraption he made for Linda Blair. I was the devil. I had her strapped in there and I was throwing her back and forth. When does the acting start and the realism begin to say she's being possessed and thrown and picked up, jiggled and bumped, and to get that whore and not going too far, not to hurt her or bruise her. Up to a certain point, it's for fun.

Then it starts to get more violent. And she starts to say, okay, I've had enough. Now that's when you start. Ugh. Ugh. So, these were kind of the type of man who were making this movie and that Linda Blair was, you know, subjected to. And there is like such a rich tradition of men tormenting women and being like, I'm

making a horror movie and it's like, okay, if you're hiring actors, you need to just like give them an ice trailer, give them some pepperage farm cookies, take good care of them, don't make them work crazy hours Etc. Etc. Etc. And then like let them act You hired them to be actors So you don't actually have to like Whip them around and cause injuries to them just like Let your performers perform. That's what I think. Yeah, right. I feel like that was the attitude of Kubrick with Shelley Duval and the Shining.

Oh my God, completely. Yeah, yeah. And you know, Linda Blair, the way she talks about the movie, seems the filming of the movie, it seems really real to me that she would talk about it this way, because she was a young girl. So her memory, like, I couldn't, like, narrate for you a month long, multi-month long period of what I was going through when I was 12. You know, my memories would be blurred. I'd tell the story differently one day, tell it another way, another day, and they spon how I was feeling. So she kind of says, sometimes she says, oh, filming was a lot of fun. Everyone, like, was really nice to me. I learned a lot about movie making, I learned about how the camera's work. I had a great time. But she's also said, no one has understood how hard filming was for me. And she's told stories about William

Freak and very famously kept the set at below freezing temperatures in certain scenes to kind of mimic the chilly air. Chromatic cold spots. Yeah, yeah. And he really wanted the actress breath to be visible on the screen. So the set was freezing. There's images of Friedkin and the crew in Big Puffer Jackets, you know, to keep themselves warm.

But Linda Blair's in a nightgown the whole time. Yeah. She's talked about being terrified of the dummy made by Dick Smith of her. And you know, if you think about it, you're a 12 year old kid, there's this dummy version of yourself. You made to look like a little devil. And she had, she said that was kept in the dressing room with her every day while she was getting her makeup done.

And she said, I would just be getting my makeup done, looking at the dummy in the dressing room with her every day while she was getting her makeup done. And she said, I would just be getting my makeup done, looking at the dummy and the mirror. And she said she really did not like being in its presence. And we started her and freaked her out. And it does feel like, I know this is like, you know, I think a very modern kind of recent concept, but it just feels like the obvious thing to do to like try and keep people

physically and mentally healthy while you're working with them because then, and I get why that doesn't happen because it's like you're a contractor for any other kind of a job and you have X amount of money and you're expected to generate X amount of profit and it's very easy to start you know, ignoring the needs of the human beings you're working with when they seem to get in the money in your expected degenerate, X amount of profit. And it's very easy to start, you know, ignoring the needs of the human beings you're working with when they seem to get in the way of that, I guess. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

But that's why we have unions. There's this famous scene where Reagan is masturbating with the crucifix. Her mom walks up to her to try to stop her. And then she kind of flies back, you know, some supernatural force. She said, well, actually what happens is Reagan punches her in the face and then she flies back. And that was a, like, a device was designed to pull her back and make her like drag her across the floor. And she says, Ellen Verson has said there was no padding on the floor. So she was just yanked onto the hard ground. And she says she injured her like coccyx and like had serious pain from it for like years afterwards. And William Friedkin like for years just kind of refused to acknowledge that she was injured

because he's like, well, she was back at work the next day, you know. have refused to acknowledge that she was injured because he's like, well, she was back at work the next day, you know. But that, but again, it's like it's not like you have the freedom to choose any of this, right? Like the reason women have this sort of very deep socialization to tolerate pain is because we have to and we're not allowed to not. And I would love to see what would happen if we just didn't have to do that. Right. Or if we demanded to not have to do that, I guess, to the extent possible. Yeah. And I think also maybe at play with Ellen Berson, you know, not wanting to say

I have to take a couple of days off to recover or, you know, Linda Blair also getting time off to recover after she was injured, is the fact that the production was going over schedule and over budget quite rapidly. Right. So because of someone else not knowing how to manage a shoot, you have to just tough it out. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, you know, these are kind of the famous stories about the exorcists' cursaid production, but the studio set where they had built the replica of the Georgetown house burnt down on a Sunday. That was really, really played up in the press, and that was one of the reasons why it, you know, went so far over schedule, there was, you know, like a two-week delay where

they had to just completely reconstruct the whole set, because there was a fire. These are the myths that we hear about the exorcist of, you know, the fire. I've heard stories that I included in the book of the sprinklers going off one night and completely dousing the entire set, you know, after they had just rebuilt it all. And there was deaths, you know, like peripheral deaths of people who were involved, you know, dying like shortly after they had filmed their scenes or like... Which to be fair, two people involved in making pretty in pink also died during or shortly after it came out. And we don't talk about that movie being cursed, but, you know.

This was something that was being, you know, regularly reported in the press before the movie even came out. Yeah. And it's just a good, and it makes sense how they're, you know, it makes sense that some stories become as big as they are because there's this perfect symbiosis where if you're a reporter, you're like, I get to put the devil in the headline, that'll be great, everyone's gonna love it. And as a filmmaker, you're like, yes, I'd like to do some viral marketing before that term exists.

Right. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, I think there were reports in the press about all of those, you know, kind of disasters happening on set. There was also reports that Linda Blair was having psychotic breaks and that they needed to have a therapist on set. That does not appear to be true. Oh my God, not a therapist. Yeah, right. Right.

Right. They probably actually should have had a therapist on set, but they didn't. Yeah. And also, it's like, let's be concerned for her well-being, but only in a way that stigmatizes the idea of having problems of any kind. Yeah. So the movie was going over-schedule and over-budget. They were like, you know, so maybe he's just trying to rationalize, you know, like why?

It was such a disaster. You're like, we're going over Bucke because of the devil. Oh, right. I got off my hair. Yeah. And it's like, yeah. And before this movie came out, like, you know, you couldn't bank on it being legendary in any way.

It was just one of probably several devil movies that were totally slated for that period. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Because after Rosemary's baby in 1968, right, there was a lot of devil movies that came out, I think, like the year before there was a possession movie about a young boy who becomes possessed, the possession of Joel Delaney. Yeah. So, you know, these stories are widely circulating in the press, and by the time it hits screens, December 26, 1973, it has its own reputation, and you almost want to be terrified. You're primed to be disturbed.

So yeah, the movie hits screens in 24 theaters the day after Christmas. So kind of a limited release and then expanded me on that. So 1973, Roe v. Wade had legalized abortion about a year before. Second wave feminism is kind of at its peak. The watergate hearings were unfolding at this time. America was also in the middle of the oil crisis, which I don't know, when I learned that this was kind of when the oil crisis was happening, and when I learned that the White House was issuing these warnings to like, or issuing these recommendations, like, don't put up Christmas lights this year.

Oh, wow. Talk about the war on Christmas. I'm kidding. I'm obviously kidding. Yeah. No one could get gas. the war on Christmas. I'm kidding, obviously kidding. Yeah, no one could get gas. And the crisis was so bad that, yeah, the White House was saying, you know, suggestions for how to conserve energy in all of the smallest ways. And so you kind of think about the time when the extras premiered the day after Christmas and you'd have a dark Christmas without Christmas lights up in a lot of households. Which makes it easier for Satan to hide in the shadows.

Precisely. So that was happening. And I think, you know, there was this kind of backlash to the kind of more liberal progressive movements at the end of the 60s. So, you know, I think culture at that time was still kind of reckoning with the Civil Rights Movement and some of the racial uprisings of 1968 and the end of the 60s. So, you know, I think culture at that time was still kind of reckoning with the civil rights movement and some of the racial uprisings of 1968 and the end of the 60s. Stonewall, it happened

in 1969. And again, we have the second wave feminist movement, women's liberation movement as like a huge, you know, conversation topic. So there's this idea that that time in the 70s was kind of this reaction to some of the liberalism of the end of the 60s and almost like a backlash to it. And so in a way, I think this movie arrived at this, you know, at the perfect moment, like the culture was really primed to be terrified and unsettled by it in a lot of ways. Also because of some of the religious things that were happening in the culture, like, you know, there was a lot of concern about church attendance, dwindling, how Lindsay's book came out that year. I think you might know more about that than I do.

Satan is alive and well on planet Earth. Like, it's like, he's alive. It's like, he's thriving. He's thriving. He's living. Right. Yeah, it's like, he's alive. It's like, he's thriving. He's thriving. Yeah. Right. Yeah, which brings me to this statement in 1972

that the Catholic Church issued, I mean, I'm getting, once again, reference my book. Perfect. Evil is not merely a lack of something, but an effective agent, a living spiritual being, perverted and perverting, a terrible reality. And then, you know, it kind of goes on. But it's this, the church pretty much saying that evil is not an idea. It's a concrete thing that exists in like physical form in the world. Yeah. Which like, what do you, what do you

think of that? In a way, I suppose I agree with the idea that, you know that evil can exist in all of us. And it's a real thing that everyone is capable of. It's not this metaphysical idea about like man's battle between God and the devil. It is a real thing that takes that we can enact in the world. But I also think it's ridiculous that the church was warning people at this time that the devil is a foot and we should all be terrified. What do you think? Well, I mean, one thing I love about that quote is that that quote is in the opening of Michelle remembers. And it's like evidence, basically, of like like you should believe this book because look at what the Vatican said

They said evil is a reality. So Therefore these very specific things did happen and you're like wait a minute I mean, I feel like a lot of my work in the past has been kind of Questioning the concept of evil and I think what I right something I've said previously, and I think still believe is that evil is often a word for something that we can break down more and understand more deeply using other language, right? Because it's kind of a stand-in word for like great harm or apparent indifference to harm. I think. But the question of where it actually comes from is really interesting and helpful.

But I think I agree with what you say, which is that we also, I think, and stuff like the exercise, I think puts us in this frame of mind, have this idea of humanity is what it is, but we can't be tempted or we can't let evil in. But what's really what I think is more is real to me, as far as I can tell, is that our capacity for destruction and harm is innate, and it's a part of us, is my capacity for

good. And that that's really thought-provoking and complex and scary in some ways, but liberating in others, and I think can help us feel deeply connected to sort of all of our fellow humans as people who have, you know, are made of the same ingredients at the end of the day. Evil in quotes, you know, being the structural thing that is like created by circumstance, you know, and it makes me think of James Baldwin, saw the exorcist when a premiered in 1973. Well, he hated the movie. And he wrote this whole essay about it, where he kind of says, I have seen evil in this world

and it doesn't look like this, praise a little girl possessed by the devil. Evil looks like how we treat black people in our society, how we treat black people in our society, how we treat gay people in our society, how we treat women, how we treat children, I'll ask all those people what evil is. It's not just bad masturbation technique. Yeah. What?

And also the idea of, it's like the idea of evil versus sacrilegious, so interesting, you know, I remember watching Rosemary's baby when I was about 13 and also feeling underwhelmed by it and not really getting in the moment that it's strength. This is a movie that like just works into you and works on you over time. Like Rosemary's Baby features an actual time magazine cover from 1966 where Time Magazine was like, is God dead?

Which is like a fucking crazy cover to have on a magazine. But you have to think about circulation, I guess. And I remember thinking like, well, if you, you have to deal with the devil impregnating you, like that's obviously horrible. And this is a horror movie. And it's scary what they're, they're showing. But on the other hand, I guess it does give you confirmation of the existence of God. And the thing about these movies appearing at the time that they did, especially during, you know, and we, I think, have never stopped freaking out about the decline in the number of people attending church regularly, and so, you know, the idea of America and whether it is or isn't a Christian nation.

But like that these movies are so interesting because they kind of inevitably reinforce the power structures we have in specifically of Catholicism. Yes, yeah, I think the exorcist is like a very reactionary movie to the time that might open up the possibility to like break up some of these, you know, traditional values of our country, but then by the end normalcy returns, you know, traditional values of our country. But then by the end, normalcy returns,

you know, and I think a lot about like what the horror critic Robin Wood says about horror, as, you know, horror, he's like the basic premise of horror is that normalcy, however you read that, you know, typically, you know, traditional values of the nuclear family, things like that. That's, you know, suddenly under attack. And, you know, a horror movie can be very radical if it does not allow that return to normalcy, if it kind of breaks with that. And you're kind of left with this kind of uncertain

notion of where do we go from here. Like kind of in the Omen, where the Omen ends, and you're like, oh, maybe the devil wins, you know, the devil's gonna become president or something, I actually remember. The devil's in the Carter White House. Oh my God. And horror movies used to have happy endings is the thing.

And it feels like it's related to the production code where like one of the stipulations of the production code was that bad guys couldn't get away with it. And it feels like it's so wrote now and kind of based on what happened in slasher is that you have to have like the end or is it like even if you don't want to do a sequel because how it's just the law now and we didn't used to do that so much. Yeah right but I think I don't know I feel

like in the case of the exorcist it's a little sinister like I feel like William Peter Blattie had an agenda. Oh yeah. And whatever radical potential that whore has, he wanted to foreclose that with the ending, where the pre-save the day. And so I do think in that way, the exercise is kind of this reaction to progressive values at the end of the 60s and early 70s. And he wanted to create something that was so shocking

and so disturbing that by the end, the audience would be grateful that God, God wins in the end. To clarify, like, what happens in this? Because it's like whoever is inside Reagan says at one point, and I'm the devil, quote, unquote. So they self identifies the devil. But then there's this whole thing about, like, there's a demon called Pazuzu. Like, what's the situation with this? Is this demon pulling rank and pretending to have a more responsibility than they do? Pazuzu is some type of like wind demon from like, you know, I don't know,

like, Abyssinian mythology or something like that. And the movie begins when Father Marin is in Iraq, I believe. He's like on an archaeological dig. Good for him. He's got his work steves money belt on. Yeah, he's in his khakis and his archaeological garb. The anthropologist garb. And he finds a medallion with St. Peter on it or something, but he also finds some type of statue of Pzuzu,

who is a demon, some mythological demon. And he goes wandering through this city and then somehow finds his way into the desert and it's this giant statue of Pzuzu who's like this winged man beast with wings. And he also has a massive heart on with a snake wrapped around it. You've never noticed that.

Yeah, it's to show how much you cannot see in a movie. So there's like a suggestion that, you know, at the moment when Father Marin is facing off with Pizzuzu in the desert, there's also, you know, at the moment when Father Marin is facing off with Pizzuzu in the desert, there's also, you know, that's also the moment when the Pizzuzu is entering the body of Reagan. It also feels like it's the book trying to have it both ways because it's like fear of a pagan god, but also the devil who is just, you know, you can't do better than the devil. This movie honors a worldview where like anything you feel scared of spiritually is just the devil. Right. Yeah. And you can also, you're kind of situating the devil

in like the Middle East and this non-Western mind. Naturally. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, I've always been a little like, oh, are they saying it's not the devil. It's this like Eastern monster, you know, and what is that? You know, what message is that sending? Yeah. Yeah, like nailing or almost like kind of connecting a classic devil to sort of American fear in xenophobia at this time. Right. Exactly. And right, it was being, you know, the place we're getting all our oil from, totally. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I think people forget that the movie opens in the Middle East with a, like a call to prayer. Yeah. It starts off looking like Raiders of the Lost Ark. Yeah. Yeah. It's very appealing to American audiences if you're trying to scare us to be like,

what if something scary came from far away? Scary things don't come from inside America. They come from outside of America famously, according to our belief system. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting because I feel like I've always kind of interpreted the exercise in the time in which premiered as this moment where the horror as depicted on the screen was switching from this like fear of external horror. Like fear of the aliens coming in or you know, like there like 50s is a lot of like alien sci-fi horror movies. And then you know as you get into the late 60s and early 70s there's lots of movies about this horror that's like within the individual body, you know, like Rosemary's baby, there's that movie. It's alive. There's like, you know, the exorcist, you know, a lot of movies about it's the body, it's internal. And so I've always kind of thought that reflects this like fear

that there's something wrong inside America now, you know, maybe something wrong with this liberalized culture, you know, something wrong with our youth who are becoming these kind of like directionless, overly liberal drug-addled hippies, you know, like this fear that it's now not coming from, you know, Russia or, you know, from Europe or from some four or four of ways it's coming from within. But then, if you think about the fact that the exercise begins in a foreign country and that you can maybe trace the demon there,

that troubles that idea a little bit. But I think both are at play probably. Yeah. And also, and maybe also like the fear that the fear kind of, which is always with us to some extent, that like the youth are up to things that are scary to us, but also what if they're right? Like, oh my god, what if they're right? Which are absolutely going through, I think, in a big way now, where people today are

like, you know what I'm scared of? I'm afraid of my child's gender. And it's like, are you afraid of that? What about not to boss you around? But like, there are so many better fears to have, you know, like climate change or microplastics or frogs. Teenagers always, some of them manage to make even good ideas sound sort of over the top the way they describe them. But there's always I think a lot of real insight and a lot of clear headedness about just

what actually makes sense. They know what they need in many ways. And I think that scares us and the idea of, you know, that this movie is able to execute. So elegantly this thing of like, what if the children are right? And it's like, no, they're not. They're just, you know, getting possessed by the devil. And we have to forcibly eject the devil and then get our sweet girl back. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so maybe now would be a good time to like talk about what happened when people actually went to the theater and saw this movie.

Oh my God. Yes. What? What does happen? The myth that I have encountered is that the movie was so terrifying that people fainted. They had seizures. They had heart attacks. They had miscar, that people were so terrified that theaters were keeping smelling salts on hand to like revive anyone who fainted, that they were... They were getting smelling salts, that's what I wanted. That there were, you know, ambulances queued up outside of theaters to like take anyone who had some medical incident to the hospital from the theater. You know, these are the stories that I've heard over the years.

And so, yeah, there's definitely reason to be skeptical of them. Yeah. A lot of those stories about, you know, the really intense, like bodily reactions, I think do stem from this one article in the New York Times. Oh, not the New York Times. Yeah, so the headline is, they wait hours to be shocked. And it was published January 27th, 1974, so the movie had been out for about a month.

And so yeah, it's this one reporter who was going to see the movie and she just is kind of talking about what she saw and what she experienced and what she was told. So she reports on seeing people standing outside in like the winter cold. But then, you know, she kind of features this one interview she had with someone who worked theater. She calls them a guard. He is saying, you know, moviegoers are vomiting, others faint, others just leave the theater, nauseous and trembling. And then he says, several people had heart attacks. One woman even had a miscarriage.

Okay, so classic, you know, shaky reporting, it's according to this one guy, well, Sid said that there were several heart attacks. And it's like, God knows the 70s were a freewheeling time, I guess. But if I were running a theater that multiple people had heart attacks, and I would like close it to see if there was a gas leak or something like that. Right. Exactly. And one woman even had a miscarriage. Like, how do you know she had a miscarriage? How does he know? Yeah. This was actually a time when women really kind of didn't talk about miscarriage. Why?

You thought to make this too sad, but like... Yeah, you want to be running out of the theater. Oh, I'm having a miscare, you know, like, and she also talks about some like what was going on as some other theaters, but it's all coming from people who worked at the theaters and part of me wonders like, maybe like these theater owners have an incentive to play up these stories

because they want people to keep coming to the movie. Right. And also then I would wonder like how many theater employees are teenagers who are just like, you know, making stuff up for fun. Right. Yeah. So yeah, she talks to these people who work at the theaters. And she's also, you know, in this article talking to people who've seen the movie and are saying, you know, yeah, I lost my appetite

from watching it that they were, you know, very terrified. But she also talks about people walking out of the theater, laughing and smiling and talking about what a good time they had. So, you know, I think she's representing like the full spectrum of responses that you could possibly have to the movie, you know, she's not necessarily

endorsing the idea that everyone was vomiting all over the place. So, you know, maybe you have to like be skeptical with some of these stories. I think that's true, but also there is some evidence that that really, really, really was happening. You can find on YouTube this news report from CBS about, you know, the cultural impact of the exorcist

in 1974. And, you know, you hear people's stories, you hear people talking about it, and like, there is such real fear in their voices So I do have if I send you a video do you want to watch it? Yeah, I would love that. Let's do it Oh, yeah, this is great Okay, one two three I didn't scare me. I just put them in one half just faint

It was frightening. She turned her head around. Oh, yeah. It's probably the girl's the thing I've ever seen. It's weird. She turned her head around. What? What?

She turned her head around. She turned her head around. She turned her head around. Little boss. That bad. I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding either. It grows. What do you have there? Yeah, it's me. And then we have footache of somebody who has fainting.

Yeah, and the, or at least you have to have a footache. Yeah, I'm not kidding either. I'm not kidding either. It grows. What do you have there? Yeah, it's me of the most broken movies. And then we have footage from somebody who has painted. Yeah, and the, or at least, you know, collapsed.

The ushers in their dapper red coats saving her. It is one of the most grossest movies in the world. It is. It's really gross. It's a gross-ass movie. Yeah. You know, you can see the way it's like deeply, deeply unsettling people. That's so interesting and there's like photographic evidence of people fainting. Yeah, so I I mean, I think it Forrieked people out and they had never seen anything like this before and maybe people weren't having hard attacks or miscarriages. But they sure were collapsing sometimes. They were collapsing. I mean, it actually makes me think

of beetle mania, you know, where it's like part of it, it is the beetles. Like the thing like is truly like exciting and new and like, you know, and it like brings people together in a way that sort of causes our reactions and emotions to kind of reverberate more between each other. But also the thing of like, I think people need social permission to have like huge embodied reactions to things. Yes. Yes. There's this quote. Let me just try to find it. This amazing quote from the film scholar Charles Derry from his book Dark Dreams. And he says, in an era when acts of violence and the form of killings and Vietnam, live riots and assassinations were watched daily over long periods on the evening news. And our responses to death had become complacent and anesthetized.

Going to the exorcist and throwing up, reaffirmed our ability to be revolted, our ability to feel. Ah. Thus, the vomit of the spectators became a valid aesthetic response to the world around them. That's so true, but you're like not allowed to do that about the news because you have to like cook dinner. And there's also the issue of reports of people requesting exorcisms after seeing the

movie or like wanting to join the Catholic Church. And there was a news report about that as well in the New York Times. And again, it's just, you know, interviews with pastors and priests saying, you know, a lot of terrified teenagers are coming to the church thing, they can't sleep. And they're seeking guidance. Again, this is like a news report of people just telling stories. I don't know if there's actually data of like, was there really an increase in people, you know, turning to the church for solace, but at least in these priests storytelling, there was. It makes sense to me that especially coming out of this era of kind of incredible repression for teenagers

and adolescents, that like, you know that something is wrong that society doesn't have language to address. And if like, an exorcism or a demon, like, becomes part of your vocabulary, like, I don't know, it makes sense to me that people would attach to that, not because it was what they needed, but because they needed something. Yeah, I agree. I think that's a really good point. And of course, like, if you're a priest getting interviewed about it, you're like,

yeah, there is a priest demand for God. Right. Yeah. So, you know, critics were split. And I think the Catholic church was split as well. I think, you know, the Catholic church had issues with some of the more like sacrilegious parts of the movie, you know, the crucifix masturbation. I think they had issues with some of the more like sacrilegious parts of the movie,

you know, the crucifix masturbation, and I think they had issues with it. But I think overall, they kind of liked the message. And so, you know, I would have to re-listen to your episode about the production code, but the excerpts is premiering post-the production code ending in this new era of ratings. It was rated R. But I think at this time the Catholic Church was also still doing their ratings. And so sometimes they would call a film condemned. That was their rating. See for condemned. And they didn't condemn the exorcist. They said, we recommend with some reservations or recommend with caution. Huh. Wow. So it wasn't actually forbidden by the Catholic Church. Right. They kind of said, we've got some reservations about it, but go see it if you're curious,

which is pretty interesting. Which makes sense because the message, you know, it's ultimately very pro them, and it's showing them as the antidote to all the the awful stuff. Yeah, I didn't expect to learn today that people really were responding in, you know, not exactly all of the ways that we claim in legend, but that the exercise like did have like a physical effect on a surprising number of people who saw it. And that's not making a claim that's hard to believe. It makes sense that it was affected people on that level because it's like, you know, there was all this hype and all this mythology around it that was kind of hot air,

but that it primed people to maybe allow themselves to get kind of surrendered to the feeling. Totally. Yeah. What do you feel like you've learned, if not like in the entirety of what you've learned, like what comes to mind at this moment. I mean, I think when I was writing this book, I had to look really, really closely at the way we depict young women in particular in movies and kind of think about how those depictions

have shaped my perception of myself and my understanding of myself and my mom's understanding of herself and how some of the internalized sexism that she experienced, seeing the excerpts in 1973 was kind of passed on to me as kind of this generational story. I think when we look at Reagan, the character of Reagan, we see a girl who's like angry and loud mouthed and outrageously sexual, but it's like a sexuality that's somehow not her own. It's devoid of her own desire. She's being like sexual, but it's not her.

She has no age and seeing the matter, no subjectivity. As a character, she's kind of empty. We don't really see her in her life. And I think through researching this book and watching the movie a lot, I've come to feel a lot of empathy for the character of Reagan and also to think more deeply about some of the implications

of what showing young girls in this way does to your own self-perception, my own self-perception. I think in a way the exorcist, it's a very like frightening depiction of girlhood, but in a way I also kind of start into relate to the way it depicts girlhood and how how hard and lonely it can be. All of our horror concepts in some way reflect the more mundane fears of our lives, and we deserve to take those seriously. Yeah, and I think, you know, the exorcist shows female anger, female sexual desire as this very monstrous, terrifying thing that has to be controlled and, you know, quieted

down, tamped down, and, you know, we have to return the possessed little girl to her original innocent state. But, you know, I also think there's ways to look at Reagan and kind of see her as an awesome heroine who's fearlessly sexual and unapologetically angry. And she's going to spit in the face of all the priests and all the men that are trying to control her. Right.

And like the secret of girlhood and womanhood and really adolescence is like, I don't have a devil inside me. This is just me and you have to deal with it. And part of it is the adolescent experience of power beyond your control and emotion beyond your control, but also the part of me that you're scared of is the part of me that is good.

It's so often also true. Yeah. What a wonderful exercise we've had today for people who can't remember what was said to them an hour ago, which is certainly what I'm like, what is your book called and where can people find it? My book is Nightmother, a personal and cultural history of the exercise. And you can find it wherever you find your books I think.

Little free library independent bookstore. But yeah it's it's actually a beautifully written book. I'm so happy that we are having our half centennial for the exorcist. Yes. 50th anniversary. We're in it. It's a very powerful time. And that was our episode. Thank you so much to you for listening. Thank you to Marlena Williams for being an amazing guest and writing an amazing book. Nightmother, go find it.

Thank you so much to Miranda Zickler for editing. Thank you so much to Tiny Carolyn Kendrick for producing. Happy New Year. We'll see you on the other side. you you