Thoughts on The Exorcist

The Exorcist has been playing on TV that past few weeks so I've had a chance to check it out again. Still one of the most terrifying movies of all time, in my opinion. Peter and I talked about it once--it's kind of stunning that movie only won two Academy Awards. Two! It was nominated for a bunch but only won for adapted screenplay and sound mixing. Peter said that when Ellen Burstyn won the following year for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, it was just kind of understood that it was REALLY for The Exorcist, that the Academy was making it right. Okay, so good. But let's look at Linda Blair's performance, which was also nominated for Supporting Actress. This was the year that really showed up what a sausagefest Hollywood was (and is)--there were so few decent roles for women, they had to nominate two little girls to fill out the slate for Supporting Actress.* Another nominee, Candy Clark, was given the nod for her role in American Graffiti--now I happen to love that movie but it's not exactly Long Day's Journey Into Night! Candy Clark's role was kind of insubstantial and fluffy (she was great, don't get me wrong, but not Oscar-bait, IMO). Now looking at the performances of the two little girls. Tatum O'Neal won for Paper Moon, becoming the youngest Oscar winner in history (and smoking out her dad, who wasn't nominated at all for PM! Good, Ryan O'Neal's a tool. A hot tool, but a tool nonetheless). If you watch Paper Moon, Tatum is not exactly a supporting actor--she CARRIES the film from start to finish. I think she's in every scene! And she was nine AND it was her first film. An amazing accomplishment. That said--again, Addie isn't the most difficult role. Tatum was essentially playing herself. So why did Tatum win?

Well, when The Exorcist premiered, everyone was blown away by Linda Blair's performance. This sweet little girl, turning into THAT? (Stephen King's discourse on American horror media, Danse Macabre, talks a lot about this movie, it's very interesting. He connects the surge in "demon child" movies in the mid-'70s [eg., The Omen, It's Alive, etc.] to the lingering fears of the youthquake of the late '60s.) And the voices were a big part of the reaction--the voices are viscerally terrifying. I can't even type out some of those lines, they creep me out so much. Oscar noms came out and Linda Blair got one for Supporting Actress and seemed well on her way to a victory. Then la scandale emerged--Linda hadn't done all of the voice work. A longtime actress, Mercedes McCambridge (I saw her in Giant, James Dean's last film) did much of the voice work and was never credited--Linda's performance was seen as tarnished and the Academy reactively gave it to Tatum. But rewatching it this week--it really sucks that she got caught up in that crap, because she gave an amazing performance even beyond the voice. She literally became another person--she played a fucking demon, for God's sake! She was strapped into that disgusting bed for weeks on end in that freezing room and had to spew pea soup all over everyone! What's really interesting is that she's better (that is, her performance is more compelling and real) when she's possessed than when she's plain old Regan--when she's essentially playing herself. It's just too bad that her career didn't really go anywhere after that so she couldn't get a "makeup Oscar" the way Ellen Burstyn did.

*See also 1976, when Jodi Foster was nominated for Taxi Driver, and Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie were nominated for a genre film--horror, no less!--with Carrie. The Exorcist doesn't really count as a genre film, it goes deeper than that, delving into religion and psychology as well as horror--certainly it's deeper than Carrie. See also: Quinn Cummings, another little girl, nominated for The Goodbye Girl. (She was SO CUTE in that movie--love her!) Also see also: Leslie Browne nominated for her painfully terrible performance in The Turning Point. Oscar had to fill out the slate somehow!