We can’t really do this justice, so we’re going to just post most of it, but the quick back story: Director William Friedkin recently butchered the look of “The French Connection” on DVD. Everyone pretty much agrees, including the completely appalled original cinematographer, but the always-aggressively arrogant and stupefyingly contrarian (to save face) Friedkin apparently thinks you’re all nuts.
This is awesome because 1) It’s typically asinine behavior from Friedkin, one of cinema’s most contentious figures you love to hate who’s probably never once admitted fault in anything he’s ever done (or one of them and 2) the way Jeffrey Wells rips him a new asshole.
In a disconnect-from-reality interview that will live in the annals of psychedelia [ed. ha ha ha, amazing], French Connection director William Friedkin has waved off cinematographer Owen Roizman‘s very sharp disparaging of the recently-released French Connection Blu-ray, which Friedkin supervised. The result was an abomination that made this classic 1971 cop drama look (and this is me talking) bleachy, blotchy, ultra-grainy and, by any visual standard, degraded. And Friedkin, not unexpectedly, thinks it’s just peachy. In an online audio interview last week with Back By Midnight‘s Aaron Aradillas, Roizman called the transfer “atrocious” and “horrifying.” Freidkin, talking with Aradillas last night, said that Roizman “happens to be wrong” and called the French Connection Blu-ray “by far the best print that’s ever been made for that picture. You’re hearing this from the director. Not a frame has been changed, but the process is deeper and richer than anything that’s come before….[it’s been made] as good as we could make it look using the new home technology.”
Ha ha, Friedkin will go to his grave thinking everything he’s ever even thought about is gold. Well done, Mr. Wells.