As you’ve probably heard by now, we caught up with William Friedkin at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival last week where he revealed he’s had a meeting with “True Detective” creator Nic Pizzolatto about working on season two—we’ll have the full interview for you soon. While we wait to see how the directing situation for the HBO show pans out, it’s the perfect opportunity to sit in on a master class Friedkin conducted at the festival.
Like his contemporaries in the so-called New Hollywood movement, Friedkin is an ardent and cultivated fan of cinema and so it’s no surprise when he namechecks films as disparate as Milos Forman’s “The Firemen’s Ball”, Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon” and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s “All About Eve”—which he calls the best American screenplay ever—as his influences and some of his favorite films. The master class is over an hour long but it’s worth the time as Friedkin is as candid and expressive as ever at the age of 78.
Watch the master class below and pray over your “Sorcerer” Blu-ray that our wish of Friedkin and “True Detective” coming together becomes a reality.