On August 8th, in Los Angeles.
William Friedkin, a famous director who won an Oscar for movies like ‘The French Connection’ and ‘The Exorcist’, died in Los Angeles on Monday, according to Variety. He was 87 years old.
The Dean of Chapman University, Stephen Galloway, who is a good friend of Sherry Lansing (Friedkin’s wife), confirmed that Friedkin has passed away.
The Venice Film Festival will show the first screening of his latest movie, ‘The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial’ with Kiefer Sutherland as the main actor.
In the 1970s, Friedkin became very famous and well-known like Hal Ashby, Francis Ford Coppola, and Peter Bogdanovich. They were all part of a group of daring and young filmmakers.
Friedkin brought a lot of excitement to scary and crime movies because he combined his knowledge of TV, especially making documentaries, with a modern way of editing.
Friedkin started working at WGN in Chicago, sorting mail. He then moved up to directing TV shows and documentaries.
He said that in the beginning years, he directed around 2,000 TV shows. One of them was a documentary called “The People vs Paul Crump” in 1962. It was about a man who was released from death row.
He got an award called the Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco Film Festival. This award helped him get a job where he supervised the making of documentaries at WBKB. Later, he also got a job making documentaries for producer David L Wolper.
Friedkin was born and raised in Chicago. He went to Senn High School, where he had difficulty in his studies but put in a lot of effort to improve his basketball abilities to become a pro player. But since he was never taller than six feet, he chose to become a journalist, according to Variety.
Oscar-winning director William Friedkin dies at 87
