con-sara-cy theories

Episode 92: "The Exorcist Untold"

• Episode 92

Share episode

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

Sara Causey discusses the marketing strategy behind "The Exorcist," noting how the filmmakers created a fear campaign to attract audiences. She recounts personal anecdotes and academic work related to the film and its cultural impact. Causey also explores the documentary "The Exorcist Untold," which delves into the film's production and publicity. She mentions William Peter Blatty's storytelling tactics, including pretending to be an Arabian prince, and questions the authenticity of his appearance on "The Dick Cavett Show." Causey connects "The Exorcist" to the broader Satanic Panic trend in media and society during the 1960s and 1970s.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Exorcist Untold, marketing genius, Linda Blair, demonic possession, Faust legend, Mephistopheles, cultural phenomenon, William Peter Blatty, The Dick Cavett Show, Satanic Panic, Georgetown, Watergate, Mockingbird media, conspiracy theories, Hollywood.

 

Welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey.

 

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In tonight's episode, since we're in spooky season, which is my favorite time of the year, I will be talking about the exorcist untold in next week's episode, I will be talking about the Amityville origin story Docu series, choose your witch's brew of choice, and we will saddle up and take this ride. Over the years, I've seen more than one interview with Linda Blair talking about how the controversy and the hoopla around the Exorcist was manufactured that the filmmakers were not convinced that it was going to be a success. In fact, they were all really worried that it was going to be a box office flop. What better way to guarantee that you have people going to the theater than to get a fear campaign going? I always think about the exorcist whenever I also think about the episode South Park, where Eric Cartman inherits a bunch of money and he decides to spend it on a theme park. But he doesn't look at the theme park as a business investment. He's buying the theme park purely and solely for himself. And as a matter of fact, he runs advertisements to the community, saying, I own this theme park, and you can't come as things begin to go wrong, he has to hire a security guard, then he has to hire a maintenance person, then he has to hire ride operators. In order for him to have concessions, he has to hire somebody to run the concession stand. In order to finance the salaries that he has to pay for staff members to work at the theme park, he has to begin letting people in. And he doesn't want to do it, but a little at a time, he has to let more and more people in, until finally, he has to allow the entire community to come in, and there are lines out the wazoo, and the former owner comes up to him, and he's like, Eric, this is incredible. You are a marketing genius. The park hasn't been this busy in years. Your tactic of telling people, I don't want you to come has brought them out in droves. But Eric is mad because he wasn't doing it to be a marketing genius. He legit didn't want anybody else out there with him. In the case of The Exorcist, they have used it as a tool of marketing genius. Do not bring your kids. If you have a weak stomach, if you have a weak heart, if you are easily upset, don't come, do not go and see this movie. It's instantaneously forbidden fruit. And in the interviews I've seen, Linda Blair laughs about it like, yeah, we got all of this hoop log going. We said that there were going to be ambulances on site, and priests would be there in case you felt compelled to confess your sins, and people just ate it up, and here they all came. As far as personal memories, for me, connected to the exorcist when I was growing up, that was always the forbidden film. I remember my dad saying that he saw it in the 70s and had to sleep with the light on, because it just disturbed him, and he felt like it was grotesque. My mom has always made it a bragging right that she has never seen it and never wants to see it. She believes it's a devil film. And there's something wrong with anybody who would want to go see a devil film. I would laugh about that as well, because throughout college and my time in graduate school, I did a lot of academic work with the Faust legend, as well as the role of the devil in cinema. My master's thesis is about the adaptation that takes place from Goethe's Faust to F W mornaus Silent Film Faust, in particular, the way that he translates the character, Mephistopheles, From Page to Screen. And I remember sitting with my thesis advisor, because early on in graduate school, you have to start having thesis meetings to decide what you're going to write and how you're going to go to go about your research. So early on in graduate school, we're sitting there and we're brainstorming. And I knew that I wanted to do something with the Faust legend. We were just trying to suss out exactly what that topic would look like. I was talking about redemption. I was talking about love. We were batting things around like with Freud's Civilization and its Discontents, the idea of love. Versus death, because you see that theme as well in Goethe's Faust. And he said, you know, your eyes really seem to light up, and you seem to be the most excited whenever we're talking about Mephistopheles. So I think that needs to be where your research takes place. And I laughed and said, Well, he's a bon vivant. He gets all of the best lines. He has all of the best scenes like, of course, he's the most interesting character to talk about whenever you're talking about the Christian devil, the ultimate boogeyman, the ultimate taboo. You know, we don't talk about that, we don't do research into that, we don't look into that. That's that's bad. Even watching the film The Exorcist, you could wind up being demon possessed, or you could wind up having a haunted house simply by watching it. Those are the kinds of things that I heard growing up. It was the granddaddy of films you don't watch. And so for me, years later, writing about the exorcist as being the gold standard for demonic possession films. Any film that we do about demonic possession is always held up against the exorcist. It's like the exorcist is your ultimate gold standard or your ultimate acid test. I did not actually see the film until I was 18. I was 18, and my boyfriend at the time, was 19. He had grown up in a very religious household and had been told very similar things. This movie is of the devil. There's a demon that lives inside the celluloid. You can become demonically possessed. Bad things will happen to you if you watch this film, it's forbidden. Do not ever bring it into our home. Don't ever come here after watching it, because you could have a demon attached to you from a theater. Naturally, the forbidden fruit is always sweeter. So we wanted to see it. And we were both adults. We're both legally adults. So we were able to go to the video store, which is what you did back in the day, back in the 90s, when you wanted to see something, you went to Blockbuster or a little family video store and got the VHS tape, which is what we did, we were both able to check it out without any problem, because we were adults, and we waited until it was after dark and it was late. I don't think we actually started watching it until 11 or 12, and after it was over with, our reaction was just that was gross. Neither one of us felt scared that we were going to be possessed by demons, or that demons were going to fly out of the VHS tape. We both just felt ugh like that. That was grotesque, and all these years later, I still feel the same way. It's unsettling. It's disturbing, and to me, it feels like child abuse, because Linda Blair actually did break her pelvis during the filming of that movie. And here's this little girl that's saying horrendous things and being really vile and spitting pea green soup everywhere it's it's gross. It doesn't convince me of demonic possession. It's just grotesque, and it feels like child abuse, as I've said before, if you remember my early episode where I reviewed Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining, if you wanted to convince me of demonic possession, watching the exorcist is not going to do it, watching the way that Jack Nicholson behaves when he portrays Jack Torrance in the shining the way that he speaks to Wendy, the way that he has these interactions with the ghost people, the way that He talks about Danny that would convince me of demonic possession. The Exorcist untold is a short documentary film. I was able to find it without any trouble on Tubi. I think it's also been on Plex. Standard disclaimer here, I don't control what comes and goes from Tubi. I was able to watch it free of charge. But we know how this goes. It may be there by the time this hits the airwaves. It may not. It was released, I believe in 2023 and it purports to just give us some behind the scenes insight into things that we might not know about. The Exorcist. In the beginning of this documentary, we see footage of masses of people in line to watch The Exorcist, as the filmmaker wisely points out, soon, the hype and the publicity around the film become like their own self propelled phenomenon. I will butt in and say, I believe that's true, even still, because thinking about growing up in the 80s and being told, Do not ever, ever watch that film. And then my boyfriend, same thing. Do not ever watch that film. That film is of the devil. Don't watch it. Really.

 

The publicity and the hype around the film is almost like its own separate entity. For example, we see a police officer having to try to do crowd. Control outside of the theater using a bullhorn. We also see news cameras ready to interview people after they watch the film and talk about how gross it was, how disturbed they are. They wouldn't take their wife or their mother to see this film, etc. We see women crying and fainting some leave early and say they cannot stomach the film. This reminded me of the episode I recorded about JFK TV, and how the author of that piece, even though he gets into some very wacky territory, I definitely believe what he's saying about Sinatra and the Beatles. He talks about how young girls were paid to scream for Sinatra to really help his career take off. Same thing with Beatlemania. You have girls being paid to scream and seemingly lose their freaking minds over the Beatles. There's even a picture in his article of Bobby's that have been rented in order to hold back this tidal wave of teenage girls that are screaming and yelling and losing their shit over the Beatles. So when we see this publicity of women crying and fainting, people are leaving early, saying they cannot stomach the film, you have to wonder how many of these people were paid actors, as the narrator says, it becomes a cultural phenomenon, and major newspaper stories are carrying this information, and we have to remember that this story is spreading like wildfire. In an age before social media, people are hearing about it word of mouth. They're seeing it on television. They're hearing about it in the newspaper. We see an article from a Toronto newspaper, for example, and the headline reads, exorcist keeps ambulances busy. Warner Brothers reaps the benefits, and the film becomes the highest grossing of the year. It even beat the box office for Gone With the Wind only Star Wars, which beat everything that decade. Bests the exorcist. Theater Owners discuss how they've never seen anything like it. Film reviews also stir the pot by telling people things like, don't allow your children to see this film. Don't go if you have a weak stomach, don't go if you have a weak heart. There were people who allegedly went to Catholic mass for the first time in years, murderers confessed to their crimes. As one of the commentators says, I have never fact checked any of these claims.

 

There's probably no real way to the exorcist also had some strokes of good luck. The Shadow of the Vietnam war loomed over the country. The end of the 60s brings an end to flower power. We see violence at Altamont, for example. That's another topic that should really be its own podcast episode. What the hell really went down Altamont between the Rolling Stones and the Hell's Angels? Mean, why in the hell would you hire the Hell's Angels to be your security detail? That's completely bonkers. The Manson murders Hollywood was changing. We leave behind films like Camelot and Mary Poppins, and we see films like The Godfather and Easy Rider. In this documentary, William Peter blatty's wife says that blatty had a friend who was a Foxtrot Bravo India agent.

 

I'm long pausing on purpose, and that blatty pulled some bizarre stunt in Hollywood saying that he was an Arabian prince. He even winds up on the Groucho Marx show, and the money that he won on the Groucho Marx show allowed him to quit work and to focus on writing The Exorcist. There's an article about this incident on flashback.com titled William Peter Blatty, the Arab prince who fooled Hollywood and wrote The Exorcist. Now according to them, blatty has a friend who is pretending to be a foxtrot, bravo, India agent who's following around this fake Prince. But in this documentary, his wife says that the man was a Foxtrot Bravo India agent, and that they had this shtick going where blatty would go around and fool people in Hollywood and Beverly Hills into thinking that he was a prince who was a wayward son of King Saud of Saudi Arabia, And he was on vacation out there in Hollywood. Now, why? Why were they doing this flashback.com? Says the plot was to trick Hollywood notables. It worked. Doors opened for the exotic blue blood one article which appeared in the March 29 1958 issue was head. Mind, they believed I was an Arab prince, and that was from the Saturday Evening Post. I find that whole thing to be really bizarre as practical jokes go. That seems like an awfully elaborate one. It's also funny to me that we have this article on flashbacks saying, well, his friend was also an actor and was just pretending to be an agent. But you have his wife saying I rewound it and made sure I wasn't misunderstanding. She says he had a friend who was a Foxtrot Bravo, India agent. She doesn't say he was pretending to be one. She said he was one. Maybe she misspoke, or maybe I misunderstood. I don't know, but I find this awfully weird. Blatty had been a comedy script writer, according to his wife, comedies were not as popular, so blatty decides to pull out the story of The Exorcist. She refers a lot to Providence, like things all came together through lucky serendipity, blatty goes to a party in Aspen after he's sent around the manuscript and no one has wanted it. At this party, blatty just happens to meet a publisher who offers to publish the exorcist with no qualms or negotiations. This publisher was paperback book tycoon Mark Jaffe, who had been a military commander in World War Two, in his book, weird scenes inside the canyon, Laurel Canyon, covert ops and the dark heart of the hippie Dream, which is what I did the very first podcast episode about was the counterculture and invention. Dave McGowan tells this story of the improbable turn of events that happen. In order to launch the band Buffalo Springfield, I want to read a little bit from weird scenes inside the Canyon for you now, more than pure luck, coincidence or serendipity, at that very moment the planets align, stars crossed. Everyone's karma turned positive. Divine Intervention interceded. The Hand of Fate revealed itself whatever you subscribe to in order to explain the unexplained, though each of the five participants in that moment in time tell it slightly differently. The fact remains that the occupants of the white van, individually or collectively, depending on who's retelling it, noticed the black hearse with the foreign plate heading the other direction once the light of recognition came on, the van hastily pulled an illegal and likely difficult in rush hour U turn, maneuvering its way through the line of northbound cars, horn honking frantically all the while to pull up behind the hearse. One of the passengers leapt out, ran up, pounded on the driver's side window of the strange vehicle, yelling to the startled travelers inside who had taken no notice of the blaring car horn directly behind them. Hey, Neil, it's me. Steve stills pull over. Man, the drivers of the two vehicles managed to find curb space or a vacant store parking lot, again, depending on whose version is being related, and the five piled out to embrace and introduce one another on April 6, 1966 in that late afternoon line of traffic, the course of popular music was altered forever. Anyone who actually lives and drives in LA likely knows that difficult is not really the word to describe the feasibility of making an impromptu U turn, U turn in rush hour traffic on the Sunset Strip. The correct word would be impossible, which is the same word that accurately describes the likelihood of that van maneuvering its way through the line of northbound cars, or of it finding curb space on Sunset Boulevard. But let's just play along and assume that Neil Young and Stephen Stills, each of whom, for some reason, have been dreaming about forming a band with the other had a random chance encounter on Sunset Boulevard in that brief moment in time, a band was formed, or at least four fifths of a band. End quote, I thought of that exact scene. It's like, okay, so we're told that blatty just happens to go to a party in Aspen, just happens to bring along his manuscript, just happens to run into Mark Jaffe, who's a paperback book tycoon, and he just happens to have been a military commander, and he just happens to say, Yes, I will publish your story The Exorcist with no qualms and no negotiations. Sounds great. I'm like these chance meetings just seem to me a little far fetched. Steven stills and Neil Young just happened to magically meet each other in traffic. And what do you know they form Buffalo Springfield, same thing here. What do you know Mark blatty is just in the right place at the right time, and a paperback book Baron decides to publish the exorcist with no qualms. So the book is released and no one cares. The wife says that blatty goes out on a book tour and no one is interested. He had auditioned to be on The Dick Cavett Show, and I want to break in here. And say that if you're not familiar with The Dick Cavett Show, that used to be a big freaking deal to be on The Dick Cavett Show was a big deal. A lot of people watched The Dick Cavett Show. It was very popular, and he pulled in a lot of big names, as the story goes. Robert Shaw, who was starring in Jaws at the time, was supposed to be a guest on The Dick Cavett Show, but he was drunk in the green room and couldn't go on. Blatty gets a phone call, and he runs six blocks to the studio and becomes a guest again. This seems like lucky coincidence, wink. But here's where the story gets weirder. The story itself is actually up for debate. Some researchers claim this alleged appearance on The Dick Cavett Show is totally false. At the very least, it seems to be a convenient premise. The idea is that blatty's book is going nowhere, but through sheer coincidence and a lucky break, he gets to go on Dick Cavett Show, which was very popular at the time, and he spends about 40 minutes discussing the Exorcist, and once he has sold the story to the TV audience, the book becomes a nationwide bestseller, and the rest, as they say, is history. But is this how it happened? After reading weird scenes inside the canyon and knowing what we do about the mockingbird media, I wonder what actually occurred and who pushed it. The Exorcist is set in Georgetown in Washington, DC. After all, if you want to go down the weird rabbit hole of whether William Peter Blatty ever actually did show up on The Dick Cavett Show or if this is some sort of weird urban legend, I would actually wonder if it's some kind of Mockingbird scheme myself. Oh, Sara, I know we see the fingerprints of intelligence everywhere. Did the conspiracy theory? Sara, okay, you can go down this rabbit hole on Reddit. I will drop a link to somebody's thread with multiple edits. I mean, whoever this person is, they went balls to the walls trying to track down this appearance. Supposedly, they called ABC and the digital research team, they called video source, global image works. From what I can tell, they tried and tried to track down a copy of William Peter Blatty actually being on The Dick Cavett Show and came up empty handed. There's one conspiracy theory that the episode was scrubbed because it also dealt with some elements of the Watergate scandal. I don't know, Judge for yourself, but the point is, so many of the clips and interviews from The Dick Cavett Show are easy to find on YouTube, with the exorcist being a cultural phenomenon, why would we not be allowed to see William Peter Blatty, even if the episode was scrubbed to exclude something about Watergate, why couldn't we at least see the footage of bladdy? I find that weird. I have to be honest with you. We see the story of a man named Andrew Huff putting up a plaque at the so labeled exorcist steps to commemorate bladdy and William Friedkin in Georgetown. Even Georgetown University has a memorial to the film. The cultural presence around the exorcist has never gone away. It's still in popular culture. Bladdy wanted Friedkin to direct The Exorcist, but Warner Brothers did not. We hear a wild story about how Paul Monash, a TV producer, optioned the Exorcist, he sells it back to Warner Brothers at a profit. Blatty says that someone broke into mo Nash's office and found the relevant paperwork, and that's how blatty was able to get mo Nash's hands off the book. Blatty had heard that mo Nash wanted to get his hands on the script and move the location from Washington, DC. Apparently, it is very strong passion for blatty that the film be set in Washington, DC and have a connection to Georgetown, the story of Mo Nash's office being broken into by someone reminded me of some of the stories. Funny enough, connected to Watergate. I'm going to hop over for a second to the Nixon library Friday, September 3, 2021 marked the 50th anniversary of the fielding break in. The fielding break in was an attempt to discredit defense analyst Dr Daniel Ellsberg by a top level government sanctioned burglarizing of the Los Angeles office of Dr Louis fielding the burglary is generally regarded as a precursor to the Watergate break ins of May and June of 1972 that ultimately led to the downfall of the Nixon presidency in August 1974 end quote, funny enough, as the rumor goes, Daniel Ellsberg, if this episode with blatty ever actually existed on The Dick Cavett Show, as the rumor goes, Daniel Ellsberg was the other guest that day in. And supposedly that's why it's just simply been scrubbed. I don't know if that's true or not. The coincidences here just seem awfully funky to me. I went into this thinking I'm going to watch this documentary about the Exorcist, record a couple of episodes about like the exorcist and Amityville Horror, because it's October and that spooky month, and all of a sudden I start, yet again, seeing the fingerprints of intelligence and the military industrial complex. And I'm like, What the fuck thought I was just gonna watch something about the exorcist. Stanley Kubrick is considered, but he turns down the opportunity. Blatty sent a copy of the book to Friedkin. When Friedkin finally reads it. He is hooked as if by magic. Warner Brothers agrees to Friedkin after his film The French Connection is a big success. In fact, Friedkin is Oscar for the French Connection, beating out Kubrick for A Clockwork Orange. Now they had to find a 12 year old girl to play Reagan, and Linda Blair gets the job. Even the song Tubular Bells becomes a big hit, and this helps the record label virgin and Richard Branson, one of the commentators, says, Satan is not Dracula or the Frankenstein monster. He can wait for you. He can enter your home. Wow. So what do we make of all of this? I mean, obviously I would say the cultural phenomenon of The Exorcist and the interviews I've seen over the years of Linda Blair laughing about how they concocted a marketing scheme. I feel like that's pretty clear, but some of these back stories about blatty, the whole weird thing about pretending to be an Arabic prince and his friend pretending to be a Foxtrot Bravo India agent, or he was one, but was play acting, along with the scheme we really don't know. And then he happens to be in the right place at the right time with Mark Jaffe, who was in the military earlier in his life. I'm thinking again of Dave McGowan. Isn't it funny that these people always seem to have ties to the military industrial slash military intelligence complexes. He just happens to go to this party in Aspen, and he just happens to pitch this book to mark Jaffe. Oh, and then later on, somebody else wants to take control of the script, but then that guy's office gets burglarized, and supposedly, Daniel Ellsberg, who was involved there, was also on the episode of The Dick Cavett Show that's been scrubbed. But then again, we don't know if the episode has been scrubbed and it's been memory holed, or if it never existed to begin with, because we get this weird story that blatty is called at the last minute because another guest is too drunk to go on television, and he has to run six blocks to auspiciously be a guest on a major television show, and Then he gets to sit and plug the exorcist on a prime television show with a lot of viewers for 40 minutes, and then bada boom, Bada bing. It goes from being a total flop to being a national best seller. Here's my theory, and that is all that this is. We're here to do the conserracy theories and talk about conspiracy theories. Here we go. This feels very Mocking Bird media to me. It feels very engineered and it feels very deliberate when we think about the films of this general period of time. Rosemary's Baby was earlier. But even that, to some degree, we can, we can begin to see the opening volley of the Satanic Panic. Well, let's think about this. You have Rosemary's Baby in 1968 and then the Manson murders take place in 1969

 

The Exorcist comes out in 73 The Omen comes out in 76 The Amityville Horror comes out in 79 and then the book Michelle remembers gets published in 1980 and that really lights the spark, if you remember back to the episode I did. Satan wants you about that documentary, which in turn was about the book Michelle remembers one of the most popular podcast episodes that I've done to date. By the way, people love these taboo topics of the Christian devil, you can see almost like birthing pangs. So late 60s, going through the 70s, you have the the pregnancy, if you will, of satanic panic, panic as that commentator says, Satan is not Dracula or Frankenstein's monster. He can wait for you. He can enter your home. The devil is the ultimate of all Boogeyman. So you have these films about Rosemary getting pregnant with the devil's baby. See The Exorcist. This child, this cute little 11 or 12 year old kid, is invaded by the devil himself. The Omen Damian is the product of Satan and a jackal, and he gets foisted upon these people who seem to be completely normal family. And as he matures, weird things start to happen around him, including murder Amityville, your classic haunted house story, but with a twist, all the crazy things that happen with the DeFeo family, then you have Michelle remembers this woman saying, I've been put into hypnotic states. I've been in therapy, and I now know that I was abducted and taken hostage by a cult of Satanists that did all these horrible things in front of me. By the 80s, Satanic Panic is everywhere, and it was big business. It was big business, not only for books, but also for movies, for music for the churches. Remember Anton Levay said the devil is the best friend the church ever had because he's kept them in business for all these years. Maybe there's some truth to that. I don't know.

 

I just think that in watching this documentary, I'm like, Holy shit, there are all of these bizarre intersections about this film that I never knew existed. I understood the idea of them hyping it up for marketing purposes. It's easy to blame it on money. Well, yeah, the studio did this because they wanted the film to be successful so they could make a lot of money. I'm wondering now if there were motivations that went beyond simply making money, that's a point to ponder.

 

Stay a little bit crazy, and I will see you in the next episode.

 

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast and share it with others.