William Friedkin Dead at 87

What a devastating blow to cinema.

Director William Friedkin, a maverick U.S. filmmaker, if there ever was one, died Monday in Los Angeles. He was 87. His final film, “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” starring Kiefer Sutherland, is set to premiere at the Venice Film Festival next month.

I’ve always thought of Friedkin as one of the more important, and underrated, American auteurs of the ‘70s. Friedkin had always been a cinematic provocateur, but the sheer amount of voluminous cinematic achievements he’s given us cannot be underestimated.

Friedkin was always paired with Peter Bogdanovich, Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola and Hal Ashby Friedkin as the A-list filmmakers of the the 1970s American movement, they were part of the risk takers that shook up Hollywood.

Friedkin started off on Rocky ground, he had a lot of production issues on his 1968 debut “The Night They Raided Misnky’s,” but it was a hit and led to “The Boys in the Band,” which hit the mark with critics at the time.

However, with his three ‘70s classics (“Sorcerer,” “The Exorcist,” “The French Connection”) Friedkin changed Hollywood. In the ‘80s, he also gave us an expertly crafted police procedural (“To Live and Die In L.A”) which has aged very well. Let us also not forget that Friedkin had a mini-comeback, of sorts, during the aughts with 2006’s “Bug”and 2011’s brilliantly deranged “Killer Joe.”

It's been 12 years since "Killer Joe”.  I had originally hoped that those back-to-back films would be a career rejuvenation of sorts for the director but, alas, it never came to be. The fact that both those movies were all but ignored is a real shame. They are well worth seeking out, especially “Killer Joe.”

Now we have this final film to look forward to.

At 87 years of age, this year, the very-selective, Friedkin embarked on his first film in over a decade. This is an adaptation of “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” a 50-year-old script play written by Herman Wouk from his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Kiefer Sutherland is set to star.

I’ve looked at a lot of scripts in the last 10 years, and I haven’t seen anything I really wanted to do, but I think about it a lot, and it occurred to me that could be a very timely and important piece, as well as being great drama. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is one of the best court-martial dramas ever written.