William Friedkin & MKULTRA

[semper occultus]

Exorcist director William Friedkin says 'I will never be the same' after the Vatican allowed him to film a real exorcism this month

William Friedkin, 80, taken aback by exorcism in the Vatican
Exorcist director says he'll 'never be the same' after witnessing it
Believes case on which The Exorcist is based was a real possession
The 'real life' Exorcist involved a 14-year-old boy from Missouri

By SARA MALM FOR MAILONLINE and AFP
PUBLISHED: 15:57, 19 May 2016 | UPDATED: 17:03, 19 May 2016

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3599167/The-Exorcist-maker-says-Vatican-let-film-real-rite.html

The director of the horror classic 'The Exorcist', William Friedkin, has revealed that he has become the first person in the world to film a real exorcism at the Vatican.
The 80-year-old American filmmaker told a masterclass at the Cannes film festival late Thursday that he was invited by the chief exorcist in Rome to record the event earlier this month.
Friedkin told the crowd that he will 'never be the same' after the event, also revealing that he believes possession by the devil is real.

'I was invited by the Vatican exorcist to shoot and video an actual exorcism which... few people have ever seen and which nobody has ever photographed,' he said.
Friedkin said he was taken aback at how close the ceremony was to the exorcism depicted in his 1973 film.

'I was pretty astonished by that. I don't think I will ever be the same having seen this astonishing thing.
'I am not talking about some cult, I am talking about an exorcism by the Catholic Church in Rome,' he added.
The Vatican did not immediately respond to an request for comment, and has yet to confirm Friedkin's claims.

Friedkin also revealed that he believed that the 'real life case' on which The Exorcist was based was a true possession by the devil.
The director said he intended to shoot 'The Exorcist' - based on a bestselling novel by William Peter Blatty - as a horror movie, but the more he learned the more it became a story of the supernatural instead.

While the book was based on the 1949 case of an American teenager called Roland, Friedkin said the Catholic 'archdiocese of Washington DC asked Blatty to change the gender (in the novel) so as not to draw attention to the young man.'
But in reality, the director said, 'it was a young man of 14 years, not a girl' who was allegedly possessed.
The film recounts the demonic possession of a 12-year-old girl and her mother's attempts to win her back through a rite conducted by two priests.
Friedkin said he believed the boy was genuinely possessed. 'I'm convinced that there was no other explanation.
'I read the diaries not only of the priest involved (in the exorcism), but the doctors, the nurses and the patients at Alexian Brothers Hospital in Saint Louis where this case was carried out,' he added.

'Everything having to do with medical science and psychiatry was attempted. This young men suffered from afflictions very similar to what's in the film, as hard is that is to believe.'
The exorcism scenes in the film has been repeatedly voted among some of the scariest ever shown in cinemas.
'When I started I thought I was making a horror film and then the priest, who was the president of Georgetown University (in Washington DC), let me read these diaries and I knew that it was not a horror film,' Friedkin said. 'This was a case of exorcism.'

'I believed in this story,' Friedkin told the audience in Cannes, referring to the original possession of the boy. 'I made this story as a believer. I'm not Catholic, I don't to church, I don't belong to a church or a synagogue.

'I do believe in the teachings of Jesus,' Friedkin added, whose parents were Jewish immigrants from Ukraine.
'I believe they are incredibly profound and beautiful and we know that this character existed... the supernatural aspect I leave to each person's conscience and belief system,' he added.
'I don't intend to join a church and yet what amazes me... is the fact that this man (Jesus) over 2,000 years ago preached in the desert, on street corners and in synagogues and there is no recording of his voice, there is no words that he wrote... yet billions of people have believed in the idea of Jesus Christ.
'There must be something in there,' said Friedkin, who also made 'The French Connection', and was with Francis Ford Coppola and Peter Bogdanovich one of the leaders of the 'New Hollywood' group of filmmakers in the early 1970s.

[JackRiddler]

Fascinating little thread. Thanks to the contributors. But of all things mentioned what I want to watch (yet again) for the thrills (the chases!) is French Connection. And I never saw Cruising, either... Looked up this Ninth Configuration, might prove fascinating.

So what's known about Friedkin's MKU experience for sure?

[semper occultus]

....its an absolute fucking pile driver of a film that's hardly dated a day since it was made....the police were outraged on its release because it showed Doyle shoot a suspect in the back without due cause...'cos that was an outrageous calumny that could never happen in real life........was watching Straw Dogs by Peckinpah the other day - released exactly the same year & it looks as creaky & dated as Victorian melodrama....pretty shit actually......also hugely enjoyed re-watching To Live & Die in LA - hadn't seen that in yonks.....as brilliantly, quintessentially 80's LA as FC is 70's NY....( Willem Dafoe as a sort of gangsta Andy Warhol.....)

[brekin]

Fascinating little thread. Thanks to the contributors. But of all things mentioned what I want to watch (yet again) for the thrills (the chases!) is French Connection. And I never saw Cruising, either... Looked up this Ninth Configuration, might prove fascinating.

So what's known about Friedkin's MKU experience for sure?

The Ninth Configuration was actually directed by William Peter Blatty. I think this is after he had a falling out with Friedkin so he ended up directing it himself. I think it is worth a watch. The trope has been done a million times since its release, actually very adequately recently in Stonehearst Asylum, but atmosphere and style wise it is pretty interesting, especially for 1980 or thereabouts and considering Blatty's reported intelligence experience/connection.

[Cordelia]

I think I saw 'The French Connection' three times when it was released......Fernando Rey, also a great actor.

[brekin]

I think I saw 'The French Connection' three times when it was released......Fernando Rey, also a great actor.

You should read Friedkins bio then. From what I remember he basically picked the wrong French actor by screwing up their names, Rey (who was actually Spanish!) showed up and Friedkin was like "who the fuck is this guy? and why is here?" but they both were able to make it work.

[Cordelia]

^^^
If it's available at my local library--can't justify buying another book

The real 'French Connection' heroin seizure, on which the film was based, happened in 1962 (as U.S. presence in Vietnam was escalating, fwiw). Some significant events in the month and year(s) following the film's release........

After the Fall

.........."Moreover, informed observers arc convinced that some of SDECE's top intelligence officers have been organizing narcotics shipments to the United States to finance SAC operations, using SDECE's counterintelligence net to protect their shipments. Although U.S. narcotics agents working undercover against French heroin traffickers have little fear of being unmasked by the milieu, they have become increasingly concerned about being discovered by SDECE. In early 1971, for example, a U.S. undercover narcotics agent met with representatives of Marseille's biggest heroin syndicate in a New York City hotel room. Posing as an American mafioso, the undercover agent offered to purchase a hundred kilos of heroin and agreed to pay a top price. Convinced that they were dealing with a real American gangster, the Corsican smugglers flew back to Marseille, elated at their success, and began to put together the shipment. However, just as they were about to depart for New York and walk into a carefully-laid trap, another Corsican gangster phoned to warn them that the American mafioso was really a U.S. narcotics agent. Incredulous, the smugglers asked the informant over the phone, "How do you know?" And the caller responded, "Colonel- passed this information on to me." According to informed observers, that colonel is a high-ranking SDECE intelligence officer. And, these observers ruefully admit, some corrupt elements of SDECE seem to have done a good job of penetrating their undercover network.
The extent of SDECE's involvement in the heroin trade was finally given public exposure in November 1971, when a New Jersey prosecutor indicted Colonel Paul Fournier, one of SDECE's top supervisory agents, for conspiring to smuggle forty-five kilos of heroin into the United States. On April 5 a U.S. customs inspector assigned to the Elizabeth, New Jersey, waterfront had discovered the heroin concealed in a Volkswagen camper and arrested its owner, a retired SDECE agent named Roger de Louette. After confessing his role in the affair, de Louette claimed that he was only working as a courier for Colonel Fournier. (80) Although Fournier's guilt has not yet been established, his indictment rated banner headlines in the French press and prompted former high-ranking SDECE officials to come forward with some startling allegations about SDECE's involvement in the heroin traffic. (81) "

http://druglibrary.eu/library/books/McCoy/book/16.htm


Mobster Makes Offer on French Connection Case

"Dangling as a prize is the answer to one of New York’s most scandalous mysteries: how 400 pounds of heroin and cocaine, much of it seized in the so-called French Connection drug bust in 1962, were spirited out of the police property vault for resale back on the street. By the time the record theft was discovered in December 1972, the drugs — then valued at $73 million — had been replaced with flour and cornstarch.".............

..........."The drugs at the core of the mystery — popularized as “The French Connection” in a 1969 book by Robin Moore and an Academy Award-winning film that followed two years later — were secreted in compartments in a 1960 Buick loaded aboard the liner United States sailing from Le Havre, France, to New York. The car and its 112 pounds of heroin were later claimed by a Lucchese family underling, Patsy Fuca, who, as it happened, was being tailed by a pair of dogged New York narcotics detectives, Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso.
The drug bust in January 1962 was widely hailed as a record. But the heroics proved short-lived. In six thefts between March 1969 and January 1972, someone signing the register as Detective Joseph Nunziata, a member of the narcotics bureau’s widely corrupt special investigations unit, and using fictitious badge numbers, removed the French Connection drugs along with another 300 pounds of heroin and cocaine from the police property vault at 400 Broome Street (now a New York University dorm)."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/nyreg ... .html?_r=0

[guruilla]

^^^
If it's available at my local library--can't justify buying another book

Yeah, don't. IMO Friedkin phoned it in. Most of it reads like notes for a magazine article.

[semper occultus]

http://secretsun.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/uncle-sams-secret-sorcerers-addenda.html

[norton ash]

http://secretsun.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/uncle-sams-secret-sorcerers-addenda.html

Wow... strange days... thanks, Semper.

[Cordelia]

Interview w/Friedkin and Mercedes McCambridge about how McCambridge created the voice of 'The Exorcist' demon, Pazuzu.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzAHP-Ww5oc

I found the interview more chilling after reading that McCambridge had her own demons to face before, and after, her son donned a Halloween mask, killed his wife, two daughters and then shot himself w/two guns.

Murder Mystery: A Nightmare on Main Street

November 2, 2015

In the bright light of day, the gray Victorian house that sits on a hill above Main Street in Little Rock, Ark., looks like any other nicely-restored home in the historic Governor’s Mansion district.

Neatly-rounded shrubs bordering the porch along the front and side show the care taken with the home’s appearance while a basketball goal on a backyard parking pad suggests someone who lives there likes to play.

Nothing hints that 1820 Main St. was the site of a bizarre, horror-movie-worthy crime 25 years earlier that resulted in the deaths of four people. What occurred there shocked the city and prompted extensive speculation and media coverage. Today it’s a faint memory in the public consciousness — although the deaths of John L. Markle, his wife Christina and two young daughters have all the elements of a true-crime novel or made-for-TV movie.

Markle, 45, was a depressed, angry man eaten up with bitterness toward his movie-star mother, Academy Award-winner Mercedes McCambridge, whose approval he wanted desperately, according to personal documents and articles in the Arkansas Democrat (now the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette), Arkansas Gazette and Arkansas Business. He moved his family to Arkansas in 1979, when he was hired by Stephens Inc. as an economist and futures trader, and he was trusted with the accounts of the company’s founders. Markle also was responsible for his mother’s investments.

The family created a life in the community; the girls attended public schools, and Markle’s mother moved to Little Rock to be near her son. To all outward appearances, they were a normal, happy family. But the tragedy that unfolded in the early hours of Nov. 16, 1987, shattered that image and brought Markle’s personal and professional secrets — and his inner turmoil — into the light of public scrutiny.

A thunderstorm raged throughout the night as Christina and daughters Amy Michele, 13, and Suzanne Marie, 9, slept on the second and third floors of their home. At 2:30 a.m., Markle put on a Halloween mask, went upstairs and systematically killed his family. Afterward, he phoned his attorney, Richard Lawrence, and asked him to come by his house.

When Lawrence arrived at 4:15 a.m., accompanied by a Little Rock police officer, the house was dark except for a light glowing in a downstairs window. Finding the front door unlocked, the officer went inside and discovered Markle dead in his downstairs study. Lying beside him were two pistols as well as the blood-spattered old man Halloween mask with a bald head, bushy eyebrows, hooked nose, beard and mustache. A third pistol was found in an upstairs bathroom.

The officer found 45-year-old Christina dead in the third-floor master suite. Amy and Suzanne were dead together in one bed in a second-floor bedroom. Later, police investigators concluded that Markle shot his wife three times, Amy four times and Suzanne five times.

On the desk in the study, there was a handwritten suicide note bearing the date and time, 11/16/87 at 2:30 a.m., and signed by Markle: “Let it hereby be stated as true that I, John L. Markle, murdered my wife and two children, Amy and Suzanne, then committed suicide myself. My wife had no knowledge or part in this. I think the evidence shall so provide."

After calling his attorney, Markle shot himself in the head simultaneously with the two guns found beside him.

Continued......
http://www.aymag.com/murder-mystery-a-n ... in-street/

Also, the Exorcist story is based on that of a boy named Robbie Mannheim, who reportedly went on to work for NASA. fwiw

[Agent Orange Cooper]

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-38613928

William Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist, dead at 89.

[semper occultus]

very odd - Friedkin apparently involved in the AAT milieu with everyone's favourite wacky Swiss hotelier / purveyor of speculative history von Daniken & a certain Herr Blumrich who sounds rather like they might be a product of Project Paperclip





https://newspapers.library.in.gov/cgi-b ... 19-01.1.13

Author Defends Theories About Ancient Astronauts

BONSTETTEN, Switzerland (AP) - Puffing on an unlit pipe, Erich von Daniken does not have to think long before answering the question whether he himself really believes that modern man is the product of ancient astronauts. "Not completely at first," he readily concedes. "Basically, I thought it possible. But I was not at all sure. Now, I am dead certain. I would cling to it even if I were tortured." With intercontinental support from tens of millions of . fans, no immediate need of martyrdom seems likely for the stocky, bright-eyed Swiss who, according to his publishers, has become the world's most widely read modern author. four books in the past eight years - his first was "Chariots of the Gods" - have sent worldwide .'sales rocketing, with close to 30 million copies printed in 34 languages. And his fifth - titled "Appearances" - which has just hit the market, is a cinch to send him beyond that outer space belt in the book trade.
The new book, he predicts with a tense but contented smile, "is going to stir trouble and fiercest criticism" because he is treading new ground. On 320 pages he rummages through religious visions recorded since ancient times, dismisses most of them, including Lourdes and Fatima, and centers on those for which there is "objective proof." The people who experience these, he suggests, were at the receiving end of interstellar communications. They received telepathic signals from the extraterrestrials who visited our planet some 30,000 years ago, mated with earthlings and by artificial mutation produced modern man. "Electromagnetic waves are not possible but could not telepathy be a conceivable means of communications?" He says in his typical style studded with question marks. "If yes, how? Not in a given language. I cannot send a telepathic order to someone, 'You get me a glass of beer.' But I can transmit emotions, like peace, love, hatred and I can transmit pictures."
Von Daniken, 39, says initial response from readers makes clear he will hurt a lot of feelings but "I had to get this book off my chest." He had already received about 70 letters in the two weeks since it had gone on sale with an initial 100,000 copies on the German language market. The letters, along with some 25,000 others, as well as news clips and countless photographs, are kept in multicolored file cabinets lining the basement office of his modest . house here. This is the place where he works, preferably at night between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. while,his German-born wife, his daughter and "Neptun," a calf-sized Great Dane, are asleep. Using the English word, von Daniken says his success story has' "crazy" dimensions. "In Rio, where I agreed to sign books for an hour at a large bookstore, the queue was like the one you see in Moscow at the Lenin mausoleum, crazy," he reminisces. "In Turkey, where they still have many analphabets, my latest sales figure is 178,000, crazy."
He has also broken ideological barriers. East Germany, he says, bars his hooks as anti-Marxist. In the Soviet Union, the film based on "Chariots" is durable fare even in rural regions. Peking has imported 20,000 Danikens in Chinese. In Czechoslovakia, they arc a "tremendous success" and the official Yugoslav press agency speaks of a "convincing analysis" offered by the author. The front of scientists who dismiss his writings as cosmic whodunits is crumbling, too, according to von Daniken. His star witness is Josef F. Blumrich , Austrian-born NASA 'aerospace engineer. Blumrich, who presents himself as an original doubter, is the author of another bestseller, "The Spaceships of Ezekiel," in which he agrees with von Daniken that the Hebrew prophet describes the vehicle that brought the "ancient astronauts" to earth. Both, along with "Exorcist" director William Friedkin, arc on the advisory board of an "Ancient Astronaut Society." The group will have a world congress at Zurich next May. "It will be a solid affair," comments von Daniken. "No UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) people and the like."