
The Friedkin Connection
A Memoir
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Narrated by:
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William Friedkin
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By:
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William Friedkin
About this listen
""[This book] captures the gut-wrenching shifts of a filmmaker’s life—the bizarre whipsaw from success to disaster.”—Variety
An acclaimed memoir from William Friedkin, a maverick of American cinema and Academy Award–winning director of such legendary films as The French Connection, The Exorcist, and To Live and Die in LA. The Friedkin Connection takes listeners from the streets of Chicago to the suites of Hollywood and from the sixties to today, with autobiographical storytelling as fast-paced and intense as any of the auteur's films.
In this book, William Friedkin, offers a candid look at a thrilling era of Hollywood cinema, when traditional storytelling gave way to the rebellious and alternative; when filmmakers like him captured the paranoia and fear of a nation undergoing a cultural nervous breakdown.
©2013 William Friedkin (P)2024 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Hollywood in the 1950s was a period when the film industry both set conventions and broke norms and traditions—from Cinerama, Cinemascope and Vistavision to the epic film and lavish musical. It was a decade that saw the rise of the anti-hero; the smoldering, the hidden, and the unspoken; teenagers gone wild in the streets; the sacred and the profane; the revolution of the Method; the socially conscious; the implosion of the studios, the end of the production code; and the invasion of the ultimate body snatcher: the “small screen” television.
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Captivating from start to finish
- By Steve C. on 02-01-25
By: Foster Hirsch
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Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli
- The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather
- By: Mark Seal
- Narrated by: Phil Thron
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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The story of how The Godfather was made is as dramatic, operatic, and entertaining as the film itself. Over the years, many versions of various aspects of the movie’s fiery creation have been told - sometimes conflicting, but always compelling. Mark Seal sifts through the evidence, has extensive new conversations with director Francis Ford Coppola and several heretofore silent sources, and complements them with colorful interviews with key players including actors Al Pacino, James Caan, Talia Shire, and others.
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A great book that draws from many, many sources
- By DARBY KERN on 04-11-22
By: Mark Seal
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Pandora's Box
- How Guts, Guile, and Greed Upended TV
- By: Peter Biskind
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Instead of focusing on one service, like HBO, Pandora’s Box asks, “What did HBO do, besides give us The Sopranos?” The answer: It gave us a revolution. Biskind bites off a big chunk of entertainment history, following HBO from its birth into maturity, moving on to the basic cablers like FX and AMC, and ending up with the streamers and their wars, pitting Netflix against Amazon Prime Video, Max, and the killer pluses—Disney, Apple TV, and Paramount.
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The rise and fall of peak TV
- By AlexBenBlock on 02-16-24
By: Peter Biskind
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Box Office Poison
- Hollywood's Story in a Century of Flops
- By: Tim Robey
- Narrated by: Tim Robey
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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From grand follies to misunderstood masterpieces, disastrous sequels to catastrophic literary adaptations, Box Office Poison tells a hugely entertaining alternative history of Hollywood, through a century of its most notable flops. What can these films tell us about the Hollywood system, the public’s appetite–or lack of it–and the circumstances that saw such flops actually made? Away from the canon, this is the definitive take on these ill-fated, but essential celluloid failures.
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The ending
- By Anonymous User on 03-13-25
By: Tim Robey
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In the Blink of an Eye
- A Perspective on Film Editing, 2nd Edition
- By: Walter Murch, Francis Ford Coppola
- Narrated by: Chris Brinkley
- Length: 3 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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In this second edition, Murch reconsiders and completely revises his popular first edition's lengthy meditation on digital editing (which accounts for a third of the book's runtime) in light of the technological changes that have taken place in the six years since its publication.
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Doesn’t really get to the point of the book
- By Anonymous User on 02-03-25
By: Walter Murch, and others
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Making Movies
- By: Sidney Lumet
- Narrated by: Richard M. Davidson
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the greatest directors of all time, Sidney Lumet has made movies that have been nominated for more than 50 Academy Awards. Making Movies is an honest and unflinching look at the business and craft of movie making. Lumet's book reveals the ingredients for the potion that brings movie magic to life and assures one thing: you will never look at movies the same way again.
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Clearly a genius but material dates
- By M. Rogers on 08-31-19
By: Sidney Lumet
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Michael Curtiz
- A Life in Film
- By: Alan K. Rode
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 25 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Academy Award-winning director Michael Curtiz—whose best-known films include Casablanca, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Mildred Pierce, and White Christmas—was in many ways the anti-auteur. During his 27-year tenure at Warner Bros., he directed swashbuckling adventures, Westerns, musicals, war epics, romances, historical dramas, horror films, tearjerkers, melodramas, comedies, and film noir masterpieces. In the first biography of this colorful, instinctual artist, Alan K. Rode illuminates the life and work of one of the film industry's most complex figures.
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Comprehensive
- By MikeEC on 04-28-22
By: Alan K. Rode
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Oscar Wars
- A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears
- By: Michael Schulman
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs
- Unabridged
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In Oscar Wars, Michael Schulman chronicles the remarkable, sprawling history of the Academy Awards and the personal dramas—some iconic, others never-before-revealed—that have played out on the stage and off camera. Unlike other books on the subject, each chapter takes a deep dive into a particular year, conflict, or even category that tells a larger story of cultural change, from Louis B. Mayer to Moonlight. Schulman examines how the red carpet runs through contested turf, and the victors aren't always as clear as the names drawn from envelopes.
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Fascinating and FUN
- By Peter Riley on 06-11-23
By: Michael Schulman
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The Last Action Heroes
- The Triumphs, Flops, and Feuds of Hollywood's Kings of Carnage
- By: Nick de Semlyen
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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The Last Action Heroes opens in May 1990 in Cannes, with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone waltzing together, cheered on by a crowd of famous faces. After years of bitter combat, the world’s biggest action stars have at last made peace. In this wildly entertaining account of the golden age of the action movie, Nick de Semlyen charts Stallone and Schwarzenegger’s carnage-packed journey from enmity to friendship against the backdrop of Reagan’s America and the Cold War.
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Fantastic!
- By Alan on 07-17-23
By: Nick de Semlyen
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The Late Shift
- Letterman, Leno, & the Network Battle for the Night
- By: Bill Carter
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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When beloved host Johnny Carson announced his retirement after 30 years on The Tonight Show, millions of Americans mourned. But inside the television industry, the news ignited a battle between two amazing talents - Jay Leno and David Letterman - who both yearned to occupy the departing legend's chair. For NBC, it would be a decision with millions of dollars at stake. Soon these two comedians with strikingly different styles, who had once shared a friendship as they worked the clubs together, would be engaged in a fierce competition for the prize.
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Very detailed, spectacular, and riveting!
- By John Collins on 02-09-21
By: Bill Carter
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Wild and Crazy Guys
- How the Comedy Mavericks of the '80s Changed Hollywood Forever
- By: Nick de Semlyen
- Narrated by: Curtis Armstrong
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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The behind-the-scenes story of the iconic funnymen who ruled '80s Hollywood - Bill Murray, Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, and Eddie Murphy - and the beloved films that made them stars, including Animal House, Caddyshack, and Ghostbusters.
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Side-Alley Stroll Down Memory Lane of SNL/SCTV Comedians
- By Eirekitten on 02-23-21
By: Nick de Semlyen
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Best. Movie. Year. Ever.
- How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen
- By: Brian Raftery
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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From a veteran culture writer and modern movie expert, a celebration and analysis of the movies of 1999 - arguably the most groundbreaking year in American cinematic history.
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Like talking about movies with a friend
- By Shawn Inmon on 05-30-19
By: Brian Raftery
What listeners say about The Friedkin Connection
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Chris
- 01-13-25
First hand details about movies from the source.
Heretofore unknown details of Freidkin's movies and life from the source. Wonderful narration by the Director himself.
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- Jeremy Landes
- 02-02-25
Friedkin shows humility
This man lived a fascinating life plagued with hubris. I wanted to learn more about his final decade.
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- AlexBenBlock
- 03-30-25
Exorcist, French Connection Director Insightful, Truthful in Memoir
Oscar-winner William “Billy” Friedkin never sugar coated his many movies and he remained honest, truthful and real in his powerful memoir completed before he died in 2023. During a notable career over more than half a century he delivered tough minded, realistic and mostly memorable movies that largely stand the test of time. His most famous are the original “Exorcist” (1973) and “the French Connection” (1971) which earned him Best Picture and Best Director Oscar’s and set the standard for car chase thrillers forever after. His many other movies never quite reached the same level of acclaim but still were well done, usually exciting and intriguing. His story starts in Chicago where he began in local TV and became excellent at crafting documentaries-skill he brought to his best movies. In 1965 he began his Hollywood career in Tv with a memorable episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He went on to a career influenced by European new wave filmmakers like Fellini, matching that kind of vision with the unrelenting realism that marked his documentary roots. Along the way he had the good fortune to marry the beautiful, brilliant Sherry Lansing just as she became head of movies at Paramount Picture. She was his fourth wife but the longest lasting and most influential during their union that last about 30 years until his death. This is an entertaining, honest, important book especially for movie lovers and those who dream of making great entertainment. Whatever Hollywood is today it is poorer for not having Friedkin as a guide star.
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- L. Robertson
- 04-30-25
Thank you, William Friedkin
This was such a great and honest memoir by this incredible director. I really enjoyed the remarkable detail, describing how each of his films were realized. He is humble in relating his flaws, while giving us insight into the extraordinarily complicated process of his type of film making! I highly recommend this story! I just wish Mr Friedkin was still living so I could express to him my appreciation!
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