William Friedkin: A Retrospective

Who is William Friedkin as an artist?

It was the question I started out with when I turned on his first narrative feature film, Good Times, the first film featuring Sonny and Cher, and I was hit with comedy and fakery and artifice. This was the introduction of William Friedkin, director of The French Connection, The Exorcist, and To Live and Die in L.A. to the movie going public. I was already having trouble predicting who he was, and his first film threw me such a curveball that it took me a...