Special Report: David Kittredge on Boorman and the Devil (2025)

Filmmaker and frequent Projection Booth co-host David Kittredge returns to the show to talk about his stunning new documentary Boorman and the Devil (2025). Premiering at the Venice Film Festival and recently screened at the Brooklyn Horror Film Fest, the film examines the making—and unmaking—of John Boorman’s unfinished masterpiece The Heretic, a project that became both a creative obsession and a cautionary tale.

Mike and David trace the film’s journey from inception to restoration, exploring the documentary’s mix of melancholy reflection and deep admiration for Boorman’s uncompromising artistry. As one critic called it, Boorman and the Devil is “melancholy, thoughtful, and highly perceptive”—a love letter to pure cinematic vision and the madness that sometimes comes with it.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Oh ye is, folks, it's showtime. People say good money
to see this movie.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
When they go out to a theater, they are cold
sodas from hot popcorn in no monsters in a protection booth.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Everyone for tend podcasting isn't boring, cut it off.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
In nineteen seventy four, a motion picture shunt the world.
It has become one of the most acclaimed and successful
films in history. The Anxiousist is a classic in its
own time. And now Warner Brothers takes you a step
y'all Exorcist to the Heretic starring Linda Blair, Richard Burton,

(01:18):
Louise Fletcher. Excellent see don James E. Jones. Their mind's
a lot together with the most terrifying vision of all

(01:41):
Exorcist to the Heretic.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
Hey, folks, welcome to a very special episode of The
Projection Booth. I'm your host Mike White. On this episode,
I am talking with David Kittridge, who has been a
co host on the show many, many times ever since.
The very first time he was on the show, he
was talking about a documentary he was working on, which
at the time was called Heretics. It is now called
Borman and the Devil, and it is making the round

(02:12):
at festivals. Just played the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, has
played at Beyond Fest, played at Venice, and is coming
to hopefully a neighborhood near you very soon. Is great
finally sitting down and talking about the movie. I've seen it.
It's fantastic, had a lot of fun with it. I
would highly recommend it to everyone out there. And of

(02:33):
course I asked David when he first got the idea
of starting to work on.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
This in twenty seventeen, my friend Jeffrey Schwarz, who's a
documentary filmmaker. He's done a lot of really great documentaries.
I Am Divine is my favorite. He did Veto, he
did hob Hunter Confidential. He did one called Boulevard a
couple of years ago, a really fantastic one on William Passel.
I had no thought to actually making a documentary because

(02:59):
I know how much work they are. They are a
lot of work. You take a normal narrative film and
you multiply it by another normal narrative film, and that's
what a documentary is. And he was on me to
do a documentary about Exorcist too, because he knew I
loved the film so much, and you'd have been obsessed
with it since my twenties. He basically said to me

(03:20):
one night I was over at his place. We were
watching a movie or something, and he said, if you
don't make this documentary, no one ever will. And I
was really irritated because I knew he was right. I
knew that Borman was getting up there. Louis and Ross
Bo and other people, they were all getting up there,
and I knew it. I knew they were approaching their
eighties or in their eighties, and Borman's case, he was

(03:41):
well into his eighties. And so he said, if I
could get you contact with Borman, would you consider making
this documentary. I was just like, I get to talk
to John Borman. Sure, I'm a fan. I think ex
Caliber is a masterpiece. I think Point Blank is an
insanely amazing film. The general hope and glory I could
go on at any rate. What happened was Jeffrey had

(04:03):
made a documentary involving Paul Verhoven. And there's an author
who wrote a book about Paul Verhoven, but he also
wrote a book about John Borman. So Jeffrey knew this guy. Well.
I think he's in Ireland, and I wrote him an
email basically saying can you forward this to John Borman?
He did. John Borman wrote me back and I was
just I was like, what John Borman just wrote me

(04:25):
an email? And basically what happened was we started talking
and we had a Skype call where we were like
zooming that old thing called Skype that doesn't exist anymore,
things to Microsoft. Basically at the end of it, I said,
would you be okay with me coming to Ireland and
shooting you for an interview? And he said yes. And

(04:45):
then that was when I knew, okay, I had to
do this. Why I could not live with myself if
I didn't do this. And I had a friend of
mine named Carson Gaspar who's been my friend for decades,
literally like we were a little I need something gay
boys running around New York at one point in the nineties,
and he let me a little money which I still

(05:07):
have to pay him back, and I will pay him
back that this movie gets distributed that I really wanted
to and yeah, I went to Ireland, we got a crew.
I shot John for a day. It was a full day,
and I left with an interview that I knew that
interview was important and special. I was like, this is
one of the great filmmakers. And it wasn't just talking

(05:29):
about the Heretic. We were talking about all of his
other work. We were talking about how we came up,
we were talking about his views on cinema today. He
gave me anecdotes on all of these filmmakers, most of
which did not make it into the cut because there
was just so much, and I knew that I needed
to tell the story. I literally felt like I could

(05:49):
make a documentary just on Bormann's interview, but we were
lucky enough to The next one was Linda Blair, and
she said yes once she heard that we got and
I had to reassure both of them that this was
not some kind of an exorcist Oh look at the
bad movie. We get to make fun of people movie,
this snide golden turkey bullshit. And I think what convinced

(06:13):
John was I brought up Black Narcissus, the Palm Presburger movie,
because one of the things that Exorcists two did very
consciously was he shot almost the whole movie on sound stages,
including exteriors, including African exteriors like this African village. These
were all in sound stages and it's this weird vibe
that it's not realistic, but you're in that reality anyway.

(06:39):
And the movie that reminded me the most of was
The Black Narcissus Biden Pressburger and I mentioned that and
he was I did not know this. He was a
huge and Pressburger fan, and I guess I could have
put that together. He's a British filmmaker and they were huge,
one of the most important filmmaking duos in British films.

(07:00):
I think, possibly the most underrated filmmakers that have ever
been behind a camera. They had a run of those
four films that were just unlike Blife About the Colonel Blimp,
Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death,
just those. They also made other good movies, but those
four films are such bullet proof, honest to goodness, top

(07:21):
one hundred masterpieces. There are almost no directors that I
think have done anything like that. Kupri Hitchcock, we're talking
about the greats. Anyway. He vibed on the fact that
I got the Black Narcissus reference because it was something
he was inspired by. That film, Black Narcissist. Once we
got Linda, we got Louise Fletcher, and then we got

(07:44):
Roswell Pallenberg and then the pandemic happened and we were
unable to shoot anybody for almost two years. So it
was just a long process. So all in all, going
back to twenty seventeen, we didn't shoot Boorman until early
twenty eighteen. But it's over seven years. It's almost eight years.

(08:04):
They say documentaries take a long time. I thought it
was gonna take like maybe two or three years when
I was starting, but the double whammy of the pandemic
and the fact that I basically had to take edit
jobs just keep the lights on. I'm not rich, and
this money was coming from mostly me. We had a
couple of donors from wealthy friends because we set up

(08:26):
a film collaborative and one of the things it offers
to sponsor a film for finance. So theiry nonprofit. The
Film Collaborative is a nonprofit. So what this person with
money would do was they would give money to the
Film Collaborative for my movie. The film Collaborative has to
approve it first, because there's this whole thing where they

(08:47):
have to make sure it's for real. They have to
make sure it's a worthy project because their mission is
to help make films that are worthy, He'll think. And
I had to submit a lot of stuff, but I
got approved. And then these people, so they would donate
to the film collabors then assign ninety five percent of
that money to the film, and they keep five percent

(09:08):
for overhead for their nonprofit. In this way, these people,
because it's always a crapshoot whether anything's going to pay back.
Most independent films, almost all independent films do not make
their money back, especially documentaries. They get a tax break
because they donated to a charity and then the movie
gets the money and everybody's happy. So we got some

(09:28):
money that way. But yeah, it just took a really
long time because I had my producers, Jim Fallen, Travis Stevens,
who were helping, but I was the only editor on
this film. I was the only director, the only writer,
the only editor. Ninety something percent of the work came
from me. And I don't feel bad about saying that.
I think Travis and Jim would agree, but they were

(09:49):
invaluable partners in this too. They helped me so much
because the journey of this film. The last two years
was the most difficult because in August of twenty twenty three,
we had our first rough assa. I had cut a
first rough assembly. I think he even told you that, Mike,
And it was one hundred and ninety six minutes. This
was the version of the movie with everybody's stories in it.

(10:11):
Everybody had stories like the thing with this movie. When
we talked to the s crew members and we talked
to the actors and we did all this. These people
have had huge careers, all of these people. The Heretic
was a very early film for a lot of these
people that I talked to, but they remembered it like
it was yesterday. This was a shoot, and these are
people who have done so many movies and TV shows

(10:32):
you just can't even count. Like you look at their
it's like it scrolls forever, you know. But they remember
The Heretic and they remember John. This was a very
special and particular production and shoot, and everybody remembered it
like it was yesterday, Like it was unbelievable. And I
got such amazing stories, like such detailed, amazing stories. And

(10:56):
so the one hundred and ninety six minute version was
the version but with all of the stories, and I
tested it with a few friends and basically the response
was very surprising because everybody said, at no time were
they ever bored ever and one hundred ninety six million movie.
I'm like, Wow, that's a that's an achievement. Wow, I

(11:16):
must be a good editor or something. I don't know,
but it was like the equivalent when we got back.
It's like the equivalent going to a really good restaurant
and getting three or four amazing entrees and it was
just too much. It was like, it's all great, but
this needs to be we need to be shaping this.
And I felt a real responsibility, especially after the interview

(11:38):
with John, I felt a real responsibility to tell the
story of this film and kind of the milieu around
it that allowed it to happen the way it did,
which was very particular and significant, and that is a
lot of the crux of the movie. I think you
and you and I Mike talked about this. It's like,
this movie is not really about Exorcist too. It's about it.

(12:01):
We have there's all the stories and this is like
the foundation that the movie is, but it's about It's
really about the insanity of making movies, how much it
takes to make a movie, and this period of Hollywood
that an auteur like Borman could be given the biggest
budget in Warner Brothers history. Just think about that. It
is the biggest budget in Warner Brother's history to make

(12:22):
a sequel to the biggest movie in the studio's history,
and the third highest grossing movie of all time. The
Exorcist was iconic. It rewrote the book on horror, and
John Borman did this movie, which is so different. It's
not even a horror movie. It's a different genre. That
kind of audacity is I don't know if I've ever

(12:44):
seen it in any other movie. And it's not just
the movie, it's the fact that it was made and
made out a big studio on a huge budget, and
was a big summer release. This is an art movie.
This is like a surreal art movie and a sequel
to The Exorcist. It didn't fit and that's why it
was infamous and rejected and people were throwing stuff at
the screen. The whole story of this movie is, I feel,

(13:08):
just one of the most amazing Hollywood stories and no
one had told it, which is why the last two
years of cutting it down from one hundred and ninety
six minutes to one hundred and eleven minutes, which is
the final cut. Was just so hard. It made me
a better editor, but I went way past my own limits.
I think back to all the work I did on this,
it's like I can't even wrap my head around it

(13:28):
now here we are. The film played at the Venice
Film Festival, which is a dream. I could only dream
that it would have gotten into the Venice Film Festival.
And we had a big premiere out here in La
for Beyondfest, which was the North American premiere, and I'm
about to next week. I'm flying to New York to
be at the Brooklyn Horror Festival, which is the East
Coast premiere, and bouncing around the world. I think it

(13:50):
played in France and Norway, and it's going to play
in Poland. So I'm really I feel like I can
say without arrogance, so like, I really feel like this
is a great movie, and I don't feel like I
can completely take credit for it. So many things fell
into line on this movie I had nothing to do with,
and the most you could credit me with is identifying

(14:12):
them and making sure they were in the cut. That's
really it Borman to be that vulnerable and that open
and talking about his life and as an artist and cinema.
If you love movies, you need to hear this. I'm
not just saying that to promote my movie. I feel
like it's important. I feel like this is a great
artist talking about one of the newest art forms in

(14:35):
human history, and I think what he says is really valuable,
and what he says about living as an artist really
moved me and shook me to my core. And I
think that the people who watched the film, a lot
of people feel the same way. There were people crying
at the end of screenings, and one of them came
up to me. If you ever told me I was
going to be crying at the end of a screening

(14:56):
about the making of Extorsies too, I'd have thought you
were crazy, because it's not really about that. It's about
this man, this great artist, making this vision and it
absolutely is just a catastrophe, but something comes out of it.
It redefined how he made movies, eager to find how
he viewed movies, and the movie he made after it

(15:17):
ex caliber. I genuinely think is John Borman's finest work.
And it's a work of fury. It's a work of
a man who has something to prove, who made one
of the most publican catastrophic studio releases in history, and
he really wanted to show people that he can make
movies like he made Deliverance. He called all the names
in the book.

Speaker 3 (15:38):
It's obvious his love for film comes through with that
interview and with all of the things that he faced
and had to struggle through being sick for what six
weeks and having to shut down production.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
In the middle of production, John Borman gets a high
fever and a rational over his body and he's taken
into the ICU. He almost dies. They gave him spinal taps.
I literally saw the hospital bills at the University of
Indiana where I was looking through his papers. I know, Mike,
you've been there. The man almost died and they shut
down this major studio production for five weeks, which was

(16:15):
a huge deal because they were locked into a release
date for reasons that are totally different and comes down
to how the movie was finance, which is a whole
nother story, but the way that this movie was financed,
this movie literally was one of the things that led
to it being legislated out of existence. That was the
impact of this movie. It was like a neutron bomb.

(16:36):
It was just like everything in its wake suffered the.

Speaker 3 (16:39):
Love that he had or has for film, the passion
that comes out from him. But what comes out even
more is the passion that you have for this project,
and that passion that you have from the very first
conversation you and I ever had back in either twenty
seventeen or twenty eighteen.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
It was one of those twenty seventeen Yeah, Mike, you
were one of the first people told I'm just like,
I don't know if I'm gonna do this, but somehow
I just feel like I need to make this movie,
which is interesting because I have all these projects in
front of me, the people. I'm trying to figure it out.
But it's like, what do I feel that strongly about
that I feel like about Extorsses too, and it's I
don't know. It may take a few weeks to just

(17:17):
meditate on it. I can't even tell you why I
love Extorsses Too so much. It's not even the movie,
because I understand the shoes this movie has. I don't
disagree Bornman would agree that this movie doesn't work at
least totally. But the audacity and the fact that they
took these risks, these crazy risks with this project on

(17:40):
such a huge scale. It's either gutsy or stupid. I
prefer to look at it as gutsy. But my god,
I don't know if you know a lot of artists,
but I know a lot of artists, and there's always
these things where they're afraid to do this. They're afraid
to do this project. Oh how will this get made?
Oh if I do this, then no one will try
to finance it or whatever. And it's just I wanted
to make this movie be for those filmmakers who were

(18:02):
just despondent and dissatisfied. I'm like, they don't know what
the answer is. You got to do that thing that
you need to do, and it doesn't fucking matter what
you think is going to happen or not happen, whether
it's gonna get bought or like you're gonna be able
to raise money, that you have to do it anyway.

(18:22):
That's what an artist is like. There are just some
things that you just need to do in life, and this,
for me was one of them. And I'm still trying
to decompress from it. I'm not quite there. It was
a lot just to get it ready for Venice, and
then we had to tweak some stuff and go back
in the mix before Beyond Fest and right now where
I'm cutting teasers and stuff for our sales reps to

(18:46):
pitch the distributors and stuff. But yeah, it's ongoing. I'm
still busy working on it, hoping that it's over.

Speaker 3 (18:53):
So when did the title change from Heretics to Bormann
and the Devil.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
I think that was probably mid twenty twenty four or
late twenty twenty four. And the reason was very practical.
It's because that Hugh Grant movie called Heretic, which I
hear is good. I haven't seen it, but I hear
it's good. It was up for a Baftaz, so it
was not like a little released like people have seen
this film. And basically the point was it was always
Heretics colon something, Heretics brushed by the wings of Extoris Too,

(19:22):
Heretics the brilliant Disaster of extorsis Too, or Heretics John Borman, whatever.
It was always that. But changing it from Heretics did
two things. One is we got away from the Hugh
Grant movie at least, but in a lot of the
test screenings, people who were expecting a making of movie
were really thrown by the first I don't know, like

(19:44):
thirty minutes, because the first thirty minutes of the movie
really is about John and the movies he made going
up to the Heretic, and so people were like, why
are we seeing all this? We just want to see
Exorcist too. I'm just like, Yeah, it's not about that,
it's about all of this, and it really it's about
Borman making it. It's not about the movie itself, it's

(20:05):
about Borman and the journey through to make it. So
when we changed it to Borman and the Devil, and
we had a really long list by the way of titles,
and I was not sold on Borman and the Devil
for a really long time. I was just like, oh,
sounds like a like people are telling me to do
The Devil and John Borman, and that sounded too much
like The Devil and Daniel Webster. And I was just like,
which is a great movie, by the way, but it

(20:26):
has no bearing, just no similarity between this movie and
that movie. And I just liked Borman and the devil.
I was like, all right, and I started kicking it around.
And then when we showed it to a test audience
with that title, we immediately lost all of the snotty
notes from people about like why it's my bad exorsis fair,

(20:47):
and we lost all of them simply because we changed
the title. And I was like, that was nice, that's good.
I thought it was gonna have to do some kind
of editing jiu jitsu because we were trying to figure out, like, oh,
so do we do it so that we just start
with Harry taking then we Pepper ran his stuff and
I'm like, no, that doesn't make any sense and it's
going to be confusing, and yeah, we trust me. We

(21:07):
tried every sort of edit. We tried to address all
of the significant notes, which was like the notes that
we would get more than once or twice, and it
was just a lot. It was a lot of tests
and we tested it. I got probably sixteen or seventeen
times over those two years, different cuts everything from the
first one hundred ninety six minute cut. I think the
lowest cut we did was one hundred and two minutes,

(21:29):
and it was just it was a lot of taking
stuff out putting stuff back, condensing stuff, re arranging stuff,
changing the order of stuff. It's surprising, though, the vast
majority of the movie that's in there was pretty much
in there in the first cut. Like the sections, they
were all longer, like we have a section on Zardas

(21:49):
and your first cut was like four minutes or something,
and it was just like, there's no way you can
do that in this movie. Four minutes is a very
long time, even if it's something if I love Zardaes
and I love Zardas, but I think the final version,
I think it's like a couple of minutes instead goes
through that whole thing. And Rose Portillo, who plays the
actress who burns up in the first scene of Exorcist Too,

(22:10):
has a very funny story. But in the first cut
she had I think three stories, and of course they
were all in there. They were like, okay, which of
these three stories, and we kept the one where she
was freaking out because she was set on fire. It's
a very funny scene. She was protected. I didn't intentionally
set her on fire in a bad way, but it

(22:30):
was still a pretty dangerous stunt.

Speaker 3 (22:33):
It must have been pretty painful to go from that
one hundred and ninety some minute cut down to what
you have. What were some of the most painful things
that you had to lose.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
The most painful thing I had to lose was there
was a small section with Linda Blair talking about her
reviews for The Heretic, and this happened after the film
had come out, and we took it out because basically
it did stop the movie at a dead fault. The
movie was going and going, and then the scene comes up,
and it's very serious because these reviews, the things that

(23:03):
I highlight were basically talking about her body, like she's fat,
she's unattractive or whatever. There were six or seven of these,
like really repellent, not I'm sorry, she was seventeen, she
was a minor. There is no justification for any of
that shit. And all of those critics, really I had
them big bold in the lower third. I was like,

(23:25):
and I'm sure, but because some of them are not
around anymore, but I'm like, fuck these people, this is
not a fucking review. You are mocking a seventeen year
old actor's appearance, and if you look at her in
the film, she's radiant. I don't know what they're talking about.
She has a little bit of like baby fat in
her face, but it's ridiculous and she had to deal

(23:47):
with that along with everything else. She had to deal
with that. And basically it was her saying people were
very mean and we just see these reviews come up
on the screen, no music, it's dead silent, like just
the reviews like she's ugly, she has chipmunk fat, whatever.
And then I cut back to Lynna and she goes
and that was my life at seventeen, and it was

(24:08):
really powerful, and every single test audiance, all of the
women in the testandians were like, it was like very powerful.
And it absolutely killed me to cut that because it
was like, film criticism is really important, and film critics
right now are in a lot of trouble and that sucks.
But I think there was a time in the seventies
where they were almost all straight, almost all white, almost

(24:30):
all male, and you know what, a lot of them
were not terribly kind people. It feels did not know
these people personally, but just reading their reviews, I don't
know how you can love cinema and take delight in
ripping apart in a movie. You know, and there are
a lot of movies I dislike, but I'm not gonna
run around and be like that person. Can'tna thank God,

(24:53):
because those guys, those people who do that, I doubt
if any one of them did a one fucking thing
in their life to put themselves out there as much
as any of those people who made that movie. And
that killed me. And then there were a few other things.
I hit a little bit where, you know, because Ross
po Palenberg, the man that the writer that John brought

(25:14):
onto the project, and John worked on an adaptation of
Lord of the Rings in nineteen seventy one or nineteen
seventy and condensing all three books into one four hour
script is gonna be a four hour movie with an intermission.
And what Boorman wanted to do was to get around
the Hobbit thing. He wanted to pass like nine or

(25:34):
ten year old boys, put fake beards on them, dubbed
them with male adult voices and that would be the Hobbits,
and put hair on their feet and hands. And even
Bormann telling the story, starts laughing because he's this wouldn't
have word in a calamity, but that was the idea.

(25:55):
And so that's a very funny moment. But it just
we just had to lose it because the whole thing
about cutting down this movie to its length, which is
I think the right length. It's just a little under
two hours, so it's not like it's a short The
last section of this movie is very moving, and it's
bornman talking about his life and Bornman talking about art,

(26:15):
and he's talking about it somewhat in the past, tense,
and it moves me a lot when I see it.
Louis Fletcher also has a bit at the end where
she talks about how life is like one big spaghetti dinner.
There's good and bad and it moves everybody. And the
idea in cutting it down is I needed the audience
to not be exhausted by the time all of this happened,

(26:38):
so when they're watching it, they're still engaged and moved
and they're not just exhausted and want to go home.
And it's very moving, but I wanted to end it.
Just took a lot to get to that point. You
need to do a lot of streamlining and making sure
things move. Most of my editorial background, or at least

(26:59):
most of the bills that I've been paying for the
last twenty years, have come from short form which is
like trailers and promos and commercials and like stuff that
aren't features like. So that is a very specific kind
of editing at very varsity level, and it's very hard
to do well, which I'm very happy to say that
is how I got paid these years. I basically wanted

(27:21):
to cut this movie not like a commercial, not cut
that fast, but it had to move, and because there's
just so much in it, it has to move quickly.
And the editing style that I used in this film
I think I couldn't have done had I not had
all that experience and had the experience with Brian Fuller
on Queer for Fear for Shutter, which I was lead

(27:44):
editor on, and that was like a two plus year
project that I was working with him on to make
those episodes, and that made me a better editor. So
it was really all about not exhausting the audience and
keeping the pace up. You can think it's not some
kind of a what do they call Max Hedroom blip vert.
I know I'm dating myself by saying Max Hedgroom nobody knows.

(28:04):
Does anybody know what Max Hendrim was? Yeah? You do,
we do, but it is whatever. It's the eighties. It
was actually a really cool show. I have the DVDs
in the other room. It's not some kind of like
add cut home, Miss, but it had to move. I
have a thing about documentaries that are little naval gayzy.

(28:24):
I don't like them, and I find that a lot
of them are not all but too many, and I
feel like you gotta entertain the audience. You got to
take them on a ride.

Speaker 3 (28:36):
So Borman was the first person you interviewed for this one.
Who was the last person?

Speaker 1 (28:41):
The last person was Mike Flanagan. We shot Mike Flanagan
in January of this year of twenty twenty five. He
was a very late addition because he saw cut of
the film without him. Of course, he really loved it
at the time. I think he still is. I don't
know the status of this project, but he had been
hired by Blumhouse to do the next Exorcist sequel. I

(29:01):
know that it's been on and off, so I don't
know where we're at with that. I do know that
they should do it because I think he is ideal
for this and I think he understands it so well.
In the conversation I had with him, I heard the
basic just the basic hitch of the plot of this sequel,
and I was like, I would see that. Now, Please

(29:23):
let me see that now. I want to see that.
He had an appreciation of Exorcist too, similar to mine,
which is that it doesn't work completely, but it's really cool.
There's some stuff in it that's really cool, and it's
audacious and it's different, and I would actually say it's
never boring. That movie is just bonkers, but it's visually

(29:44):
so stunning, and the music is so insane by anyone Morriconey,
the soundtrack is phenomenal. You just have to divorce yourself
from thinking that it's actually a sequel to The Exorcist,
which is hard because they keep referring to it, including
like a beyond the grave performance from Max Foncito's father,

(30:05):
Maren and Sharon, the caretakers in In and of course Linda,
and it's all about what happened in that room, and
it's just if he's not the first movie what happened
in that room, but then we have to get there.
And Richard Burton plays the priest and he's his own thing,
he's in his own movie in this movie. I actually

(30:25):
personally think that he's probably the biggest liability in the film. Like,
if there's something that doesn't work in this film, that's
And I like Richard Burton a lot. I think he's
a great actor, but there's a disconnect here that I
don't know if the movie can get past.

Speaker 3 (30:37):
Yeah, your critiques of his acting are really spot on
with some of the line deliveries that he gives.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
And I also heard all the stories. There's a whole
section in the documentary about like Burton and how problematic
he was.

Speaker 3 (30:51):
Well, it's funny because there's that whole discussion I believe
of the rehearsals.

Speaker 1 (30:56):
Yeah, the read through.

Speaker 3 (30:57):
Yeah, And like just over the last few weeks, I've
heard about several other British actors that just kind of
refuse to do any sort of read through his rehearsals
or anything.

Speaker 1 (31:07):
And it's just like Brenton didn't refuse. He just has
have aggressively pranked them all what he would do basically,
and this is revealed in the film. Louise Fletcher tells
this story is he basically kept running to the bathroom
and then say it was because his stomach was always
bad when he traveled or something. So he's bolt up
and run to the bathroom, and he started late, and
he finished without him. And then Louise Fletcher learned years

(31:27):
later that he pulls this every time they do a
read through because he just hates he resents the fact
that he has to be there so much. My own
personal view is that if you're going to get paid
seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in nineteen seventy six
to be in the sequel to The Exorcist, the least
you can do is sit your ass down and read
the lines. But you know, I don't know, I don't
I don't know. I feel like the ghost of Richard
Burton's going to just snap me at some point. I

(31:49):
do love Richard Burton. That he was, It just was
not a He was not a really good contributor to
this film, and I think the film suffers as a result.

Speaker 3 (31:58):
So after all of that hard work that you put
into it, when was the first time you saw with
the proper audience? Was that actually at Venice?

Speaker 1 (32:06):
No? That was Venice?

Speaker 3 (32:07):
Yeah, what was that experience like for you?

Speaker 1 (32:09):
Being at the Venice Film Festival and being a film
that was selected. Venice is a top five festival. Venics
is up there with Can. It's up there with Sun Dance,
It's up with Toronto, Berlin till You're Ride. Those are
like you premiere at one of these festivals. It's like
getting into Harvard. It's like it's really hard to get
into one of these festivals. I don't know what percentage,

(32:31):
it's just it's extremely low. Sometimes producers no programmers. My
producer Travis Stevens has had several movies running around, and
he knew a programmer at Toronto, but we knew nobody
at Venice, and we submitted for Venice and I did
not think we had chance in hell. And that's not
to put me or the movie down. It's just the
fact that after you're at a certain quality level, it

(32:53):
really just depends on whoever's watching it. And they only
have a few slots. Our lineup was in the Venice
Classic slot, which is basically movies about movies, So they
have I don't know how many dozens and dozens of
movies about movies for us to get one of the
I think the six slots or whatever it was is Okay,
that's a lot. And I think only four of them

(33:13):
were American and then there were a few from other countries.
I didn't see many films in Venice, so to get
into Venice was tremendous. So we get there. All of
the Venice Classics titles premiere at the end of the
festival because they get it. I think they just do
all the other premieres, the big movies, The with Julia
Roberts and Jake kell A, George Clooney and Smashing Machine

(33:37):
with the Rock These are all big, splashy things. So
we premiered on I think the second to last day
of the festival, and it was a sold out show.
I think the theater had three hundred something seats and
I go out there and maybe two thirds to three
quarters of the seats are filled and sold out. But
it's so late in the festival that only the diehards

(33:57):
are there. And I could look at the audience and
there was this exhaustion and these people had obviously seen
twenty seven movies in the last week and they're here
for another way. But the response was really good. It
was a little bit muted, but like people laughed and
people were with it, and a lot of people came
up to me after and that was really nice. But

(34:19):
the beyond Fest screening in La We sold out the
Arrow in Santa Monica, which is a beautiful historic theater.
If you ever saw Danny Darko the interior of the theater,
that was the Arrow, and to have that screening. It
was programmed with a double feature of Exorcist to the Heretics,
so our doc came first. Then there was a Q

(34:39):
and A. Then they screened a thirty five millimeter print,
Martin Scorsese's thirty five milimeter print. Because Martin Scorsese loves
Exorcist to the Heretic. I'm dying for him to see
my movie. If anybody knows how to get to him,
please let me know. I think you'd really like it.
But that crowd laughing all through it like reacting. There

(35:01):
were people in tears at the end. It was the
kind of reaction that every filmmaker just dreams of. And
for me to get it after having worked in this
industry for decades as editor and all the stuff, and
just seeing a lot of my friends have movies at
sun Dance and have movies at south By and have
big whatever, and they have agents and little I'm just

(35:22):
doing my thing, and I'm editing for me to be
suddenly in that position is really it's crazy, and I
am so grateful. I'm so grateful that and I'm grateful
not only to the people who love the film. I'm
grateful just for the people who helped me make it
and the people in it. There was just so much
of this film that was not in my control. It

(35:45):
just happened or people were just they chose to be
open and vulnerable and share things that it was a gift.
It's just a gift. And it's funny, like I was
working with Brian Fuller. Of course, Brian Fuller is huge
the Hannibals show. He has this movie dust Bunny, which
is really great, and I worked for him for Queer

(36:06):
for Fear for two and a half years, and suddenly
our movies are going to the same festivals all over
the place and it's crazy like Brooklyn Horror Fest like
next week, and I think Dust Bunny is playing the
day after and went to tell Your Righte Horror and
we're both playing in Ireland and it's like crazy, like
everywhere that Borman and the Devil's playing, Dust Bunny seems
to be playing, and Brian's like texting me like we're

(36:28):
festival buddies. And I'm just like, I mean, Brian's a friend,
but it's wow, I'm like up here now, that's like
crazy to me, And it's a weird mind shift. And
I would be lying if I told you I completely
have processed it. I haven't. I'm still in a very
weird and somewhat burnt out but very vulnerable place with
regard to all of this, because I was like everybody, like,

(36:51):
I'm getting emails from Edgar Wright and Sean Baker about
how much they love this movie and yet, to be
completely honest, I'm gonna pay my bills in six months,
like every filmmaker. But that's the way it is. You
get a gig and then on that and whatever. But
I don't know what's next. I have projects I can
be pitching and trying to put stuff together, but who knows.

(37:12):
It's a weird time in the entertainment industry. That's a
whole other podcast we can to talk about. But I
know an awful lot of people who haven't worked for
a while or who have not worked enough, mostly since
the strikes. But it's really it's not a product of
the strikes. The strikes just precipitated it. It's because the

(37:34):
streamers stopped growing with that exponential growth, and every week
saw a ceiling. And once you see a ceiling to
these products, it's okay, how much can we spend? And
I don't think any of the big media companies expected
it to hit it ceiling at this point or as

(37:54):
low as it was. They all had projections that it
was because before the strikes, it was like everything was
in production. Everybody was working because they were trying to
refill their coffers and they were trying to get as
much shot as possible, get as much written as possible.
And the industry hasn't recovered, and it's very scary. There
are a lot of very gronted people who find themselves,

(38:15):
like after multi decade careers, unable to pay the bills,
which is not a place that anybody in that world
thought they'd ever be. Because when you're a key grip
or when you're a second as assistant camera, these are
very specialized fields, and these are very specialized jobs. They
don't really translate a lot to a lot of other things,
and they've spent years and years getting to their point,

(38:38):
getting to their stature, and they make decent money. All
of these below the line people, including me, Me along
with everybody in the entertainment industries like looking, okay is
production and to come back. It's starting to, but we're
still nowhere near the point we were before the strikes.

Speaker 3 (38:54):
We talked a little bit about your first interview in
your last interview, who was the toughest one to get.

Speaker 1 (38:59):
I'm really fortunate because after the first four interviews, which
was Borman, Rospo, Linda, and Louise, really the four biggies,
I cut a sizzle reel for the whole project. It
was like eight minutes, and when I would show people
that all those people were in it, there were almost
no nos, especially with the crew. The crew were like,

(39:20):
I don't even think I had to show them this thing.
It made it like, Okay, you're for real. There's John, Oh,
there's Louise. Oh there's Linda, Oh there's Rospo. Whatever. So
who was the most difficult to get? Honestly, it was
current Joe Dante was difficult to get, but that was
only because we couldn't find a way to get to him.
We tried through social media, and we tried through this,

(39:40):
or we tried through that, and the way that we
finally got to him was my downstairs neighbor. Ed Herrera,
who ended up shooting the last two interviews, knows producer
John Davidson, the legendary producer of Airplane and RoboCop and
a lot of other movies, and he and Dante are
friends and they would screen stuff because they're total filming.

(40:00):
And so Ed saw a cut of because Dante was
a later I forget when it was, but he was
one of the later ones. I want to say he
was like twenty twenty four and Ed saw a cut.
I think he was in a test audience and he
was just like, Joe Dante should be in this. I'm like, dude,
I would love Joe Dante to be in it, because
he literally went into Film Comment eighties and said Exorcist too.

(40:21):
The Heretic is actually a good movie and it should
be taken seriously. The only two filmmakers who did that
it was Scorsese and Joe Dante. And we tried for
Scorsese and he was impossible to get, which was a
bummer because I really really wanted Martin Scorsese to be
in this. Who wouldn't You're doing the documentary, Why would
you not want Martin Scorsese, especially if it's a movie

(40:41):
he has said, he has gone on record and said
this is underrated so much so he has a print
of it. But Joe Dante, we finally did get to him,
and he was really sweet and he basically let us
shoot him for a few hours and we got some
fantastic lines from him, which really helped the bits because
that was the point. It was. Later we only had

(41:04):
carn Kusama as a filmmaker, and it was just like,
we need more filmmakers. We need more like established name filmmakers.
And once we got Joe and then we got Mike
and and that feels right, that's okay, We're good on
the filmmaker justifying what we're doing kind of moment. And
we had it like the same way we had a
trio of critics. We had a Greek chorus of critics

(41:26):
with Bilga Ibiri of New York Magazine, Simon Abrams, and
Stephanie Zacharic of Time, and they walk us through the
beginning part with the Hollywood New Wave and how Extorsist
Too is more like a Hollywood New Wave movie than
the sequel. One of the most annoying criticism of Exorcists too.
And the one I want my documentary to upend the

(41:48):
most is people say that it was a cash grab.
A lot of the critics at the time, we're just like, oh,
it's a cash in the studio made them do this cashion.
Exorcist to the hairtic is literally I feel the opposite
of a They could have so easily John Kelly and
Ted Ashley and Warner Bros. Easily could have made a
movie without Linna Blair, with another possessed kid, or even

(42:09):
with Lenna Blair she gets possessed again, or somebody else
gets whatever. It would have been so easy to do that,
and they very purposefully and consciously went as far astray
from that as possible. They wanted to do a much
bigger thing. They wanted to do a prestige movie. The
Exorcist was nominated for Best Picture. They wanted Exorcist the

(42:32):
Heretics to be nominated for Best Picture. That was the mentality, like,
they wanted to make something great. So it's like, all
the people who like piss on this movie and say
it's a cash grab, you can say it's awful, like whatever.
If you just want a movie that's like the Extorcist.
You're not gonna like this movie ever. It's absolutely the
opposite of all of it, but as a piece of art,

(42:54):
which I think cinema is watching it on its own terms,
in its own logic and its own weird dream logic
that is arched and heightened and sometimes laughable a little bit,
but it's very consistent. I think it's a worthy It's
a worthy film for anybody who loves cinema, and especially
anybody who wants to learn about Hollywood in the seventies.

Speaker 3 (43:16):
When we originally were talking about things, that was how
you're really framing stuff, especially this whole idea of like
the end of au tour cinema and that weird slash
magical time in Hollywood where all of these directors were
able to make these passion projects for better or for worse.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
Mostly for better, like even the ones that tank. Extracist
two was one of the first ones that went down.
Before that, I think it was just at long Last
Love Bogdanovich's musical, which you can watch it. It has
its moments. I know a lot of like my friend
the filmmaker Jim Fall who did the Lizene MacGuire movie,
and a lot of other movies Loves at Long Last Love.
He demanded that I rewatch it because I was like,

(43:54):
I couldn't get through it, and I rewatched it. I'm like, Okay,
it's good, but like the Missouri Breaks, Arthur Penn's movie, Sorcerer,
Friedkin's movie, Sorcerer costs way more than Exorcists two and
grossed way less than Extorsist Too. And yet everybody thinks
Exorcists Too is the biggest bomb in existence. No, actually,
Sorcerer lost. Everybody will lot more money than Exorcists Too. Ever,
did nineteen forty one Spieldberg's movie Again not a huge

(44:18):
financial bomb, and I think it broke even but certainly
it's considered one. And it led all the way to
Heaven's Gate. And Heaven's Gate was the bomb of all bombs.
It was the mother of all bombs because it was
a bomb that literally destroyed a studio like United Artists
was literally basically destroyed by this film. The name still stood,

(44:41):
but all of the people who had anything to do
with it to make it United Artists left and had
to leave or they were fired. It's been a while
since I've read Final Cut, the Stephen Bach book about
the May of heavens Gate. It's a great book, but
basically United Artists after Heaven's Gate was a different thing.
It was not under Arthur Krim and all those guys
and United Artists like the Rocky just so many movies

(45:04):
and so many great films, and that one movie just
destroyed it, like utterly destroyed it. And so all of
the studios from basically from then on were like, Okay,
that whole thing's done, and that it was the one
two punch of that. And years before it Star Wars,
which really changed everything. Star Wars which literally came out
three weeks before Extorsist two did, and we're battling for

(45:27):
the same box office money. It's just such an important time.
The Hollywood New Wave, which started basically in nineteen to
sixty seven ish with Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie and Clyde
was the thing that kind of kicked it off. The
Graduate came out, I think the same year. There's a
wonderful book by Mark Harris called Pictures of a Revolution.

(45:48):
If you're interested in cinema, you need to read it. Basically,
all it does is it takes the five Best Picture
nominees from nineteen sixty seven, which were I'm going to
fuck this up, but I'm going to try. It was
The Graduate, Bunny Clyde, then The Head of the Night,
Guess Who's Send Me There? And Doctor Doolittle, And basically
it's a deep dive on all five of those movies
in the heat of the night. I ended up winning.

(46:09):
But it's basically like how there was this radical shift
because the number one movie of nineteen sixty seven it's
The Graduate. Now, The Graduate's a great movie. We can
all look at it and me like, oh, it's a great movie.
But it's like, watch that movie that is not like
a mainstream quote unquote movie that is a very edgy,
subversive whoa what is this movie? And one of the

(46:33):
reasons that I so wanted to do this documentary, it's like,
that's what we need now. I want to see movies
that are interesting. I was interviewed for The Guardian. There's
a piece up on the Guardian on this whole thing,
and I told the guy, I was just like, there
are ways to look at any piece of art, and
cinema is art, so you can either see is it

(46:54):
good in the sense, does it do the things that
it sets out to do in the way it sets
out to them, and is it interesting? Is it trying
to do things different or is it subverting your expectations?
Is it doing something interesting different? Is it taking a
different point of view? Exorcist to the Heretic does not
succeed as being quote unquote good under this definition, but

(47:17):
it is so interesting. And to me where I'm at
with cinema and where I think I've been at, it's
like it is so much more important for a movie
to be interesting than it is to be good. I
just last week saw a film that's an Oscar bait
film out here in la in the theater, and it
was good, but it was really not interesting. I never

(47:39):
need to see this movie again. I can see that
it's going to get good reviews, or it did get
good reviews. It's perfectly effective at what it's trying to do,
but there's nothing new. We're interesting, it's not taking any
different anything like. It was exactly what one would expect
from the thing. And I don't want to see any

(48:01):
movies like that anymore. I just don't. You can take
ten movies that are fine shoot for a base hit,
I want to see the one that tries to swim
for the Grand Slam, and I don't even care if
it connects or not. I want to see that swing.
That's what I feel is interesting and valuable about cinema

(48:23):
to me, and I think there are a lot of
people who have just been anesthetized over the last ten
years with these extremely similar like Marvel movies. Now I
don't want to dump on Marvel. I actually don't dislike
Marvel movies, but they are very formula. They all do
follow a pattern, and after you've seen like twenty seven
of these, it's just, dude, like, maybe something different. Maybe

(48:46):
go to Criterion Channel, which is the best streaming nerves
service in the world. By the way, if you don't
have it and you love movies, you're missing out. Watch
a brand to Palmer movie. Watch Three Women by Robert Altman.
That's a logic movie that like, you can't even explain
what that is. It's amazing. There's so many amazing movies

(49:07):
and they're so entertaining, and it makes me sad when
I talked to especially younger people who are like, they
don't know that there's this whole universe of fantastically amazing
films that some of them don't work, but they will
broaden your mind. Like I've always argued, and I'm gonna

(49:27):
lose everybody that I'm talking to when I say this,
but south Land Tails is a great film. It doesn't work,
It really doesn't work. There's so many problems with it.
But I love Southland Tails because it is just one
scene with a big swing, after one scene with a
big swing, after one scene with a big swing, and
half of them don't work. But at no point in
that movie was I not on the edge of my
seat won and where that hell this was going. There's

(49:50):
so many movies like that. They're just dismissed, and yet
those are the movies that I keep coming back to
for inspiration. And again, they don't have to be good,
but they have something. They tried something. That's what the
documentary is about. That's what I believe. I want more
people to try more stuff, not just in art, but
in their lives. We're all hemmed in by like fear

(50:14):
of what will happen, or what's practical or what's not practical,
and it's just I think so many people. I know,
I've got to get a little more bold. So much
of our life is about dealing with fear its I
don't feel like you can give into it, and once
you do, it's what's the point. Like you can make
the decision right now to do that artistic project that

(50:35):
you want to do right now. You can make that decision,
and you know what, it doesn't have to be good,
but it has to be sincere, and it has to
have your energy, and it has to be the thing
that you want to make, you need to make, And
it doesn't matter if people laugh at it. It doesn't
matter if the critics don't like it or whatever, it
doesn't matter. We're here. That's what this is about. Make

(50:56):
the thing that you most want to make. And honestly,
I wish I could sometimes follow my own advice, like
Lord knows, like I could have given this speech to
twenty four year old me and I would have been like, yeah,
but a lot of excuses, and it took me, I
feel too long to get to that place. And I
know a lot of people that I know who are
artists aren't in that place now, and they're in their

(51:17):
like fifties and sixties. I'm just like, dude, what's left?
What do you have to lose? Just do it? Do
that thing, Write that script, write that crazy script, do
that low budget movie or no budget movie, like you
can do a no budget movie. Now, write the book,
do the graphic novel, write the piece of music. Whatever
doesn't matter. The Internet gives us eternal distribution if you

(51:38):
want that. You're an example of this. You started this podcast.
This is something you wanted to do and you felt
it strongly. You've been at this for years. You have
been doing amazing work looking at these movies that nobody
except for film there it's like me know about and
people listen. It's like you. You can't predict what this
is going to do or not do.

Speaker 3 (51:59):
David, is there good place for people to keep up
with you in this movie so they can see it
when it comes to a theater near the theater near them?

Speaker 1 (52:07):
I would probably say Instagram at this point. I'm still
on Facebook. You can do Facebook. I think Instagram is
probably the best way. And I'm just at David Kittridge.
It's my name. Yeah, I'm also in Blue Sky for
those I think there are a few, and I believe
that's my name too, But yet it's Instagram as I
think where we're most regularly posting.

Speaker 3 (52:27):
I have loved seeing all of these pictures coming out
of the different you know, festivals and events and everything.
It's been wonderful. So I'm just kind of here from
Afar looking at this and just enjoying the whole thing
because you so deserve this great ride.

Speaker 1 (52:44):
Thank you well, and I want to thank you because
you were a huge help making this movie. I think
you were actually the person who helped me get in
touch with Louise if I remember correctly, That was you,
And was there anybody else. I don't think it was
anybody else.

Speaker 4 (52:57):
It could have been, though, Yeah, because I had also
talked with that guy who wrote the book on Borman,
but I don't think I gave his conf his information.

Speaker 1 (53:08):
Brian Hoyle, that's right, Brian Hoyle.

Speaker 3 (53:10):
Yeah. And I think you might have hooked me up
with Rospo Pallenberg.

Speaker 1 (53:15):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:17):
It was an interesting guy for sure, and he helped
me with very interesting Doune commentary because he wrote a
draft of Dune.

Speaker 1 (53:24):
He did very early on, but that was because he
worked for Dina d Laurentis that whole time, and he
took time off to work on the Heretic and then
he went back to Dina de Lorencez after, I think,
but he was definitely with Dina de Lorenziz for several
years before he was just the main like I don't
know what his title was, but he basically gave notes
on scripts and helped to develop stuff. I know he

(53:46):
worked on King Kong because we had a lot of
the interview that we did with him, he was talking
about King Kong. But I want to say, yeah, you
were a huge help. Like you were a huge help,
and not a lot of people knew I was doing
this documentary. I told you, I told a few other people,
and I want to thank you. You are thanks in
the movie too, but I want to thank you and
this podcast for just being such a wonderful inspiration to

(54:08):
me and I think other filmmakers too. It's not a
little thing, it means a lot.

Speaker 3 (54:12):
Well, I can't wait to see what happens Sex. I'm
so excited for you.

Speaker 1 (54:16):
Thank you. I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (54:18):
Congratulations on the film.

Speaker 1 (54:19):
My friend, Thank you so much, Mike, I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (55:31):
S