Breaking the Line

Killer Bill: William Friedkin on Ali G, Spandex Movies and the Fight for Sorcerer

Of late, my favorite interviews seem to be those where I get my ass ever so slightly handed to me by my subject, a category into which my talk with the ever-irascible William Friedkin squarely falls. Killer Joe, which I'll be reviewing when it opens in Philadelphia in a couple of weeks, is the latest step in what's looking like a full-blown late career revival for the director, who went seriously astray with movies like Jade and Rules of Engagement before getting his mojo back with a vengance. Along with 2007's Bug, which like Killer Joe was adapted from a play by Tracy Letts, Killer Joe is a bloody chamber piece, in this case trapping the audience inside a trailer home with a group of morally bankrupt Texans. It's an expert button-pusher, disturbing and hilarious and as live-wire thrilling as anything I've seen since my first viewing last September. That goes for Friedkin as well, a pugnacious conversationalist and clearly a man you want on your side in a fight. More, including his refreshingly blunt take on the effort to free his movie Sorcerer from the clutches of uncaring studios, at the A.V. Club, where he also explains this picture:

Margaret: Life As an Unfinished Movie

The good folks at Slate let me go long on Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret, whose much-anticipated extended cut arrives today as a DVD bundled with the Amazon-exclusive Blu-ray of the theatrical cut. (As to why it's a standard-def edition available only through a single outlet, see the tortured history of the film's theatrical release.) The piece is long enough without me blathering on here as well, so suffice it to say that in spite of some technical rough spots, the three-hour Margaret turns an already great movie into a wounded masterpiece. When you're done, return here for an equally patchy recording of last night's post-screening Q&A, with Lonergan, Mark Ruffalo, Matthew Broderick, Jeannie Berlin and J. Smith-Cameron. (Not seen: Editor Thelma Schoonmaker, who from her seat in the house told moderator Tony Kusher to "move on.")

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