title: El Paso, Texas

text: On September 18, 2012, the city council voted to approve the demolition of its city hall to make way for Southwest University Park, the new home of the El Paso Chihuahuas Triple-A team (San Diego Padres affiliate); it opened in 2014. The team was purchased by Mountainstar Sports Group of El Paso. City Hall was demolished on April 14, 2013.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: The El Paso Marathon takes place annually since 2007. The El Paso Locomotive soccer team began playing in 2019 in the USL. They play at the Southwest University Park.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: El Paso is home to the largest urban park in the nation. The Franklin Mountains State Park, with its more than , is completely located within the city limits. It is considered a small range (23 miles long, wide) that extends from the city north into New Mexico. It is home to the highest peak in the county North Franklin Mountain at 7,192 feet.The park is open year-round for recreation including hiking, mountain biking, picnicking, scenic driving and views of the city. Scenic Drive runs along the mountain range, and is designated as a city park to allow better vandalism control and cleanup, The city closes the road to vehicles on some Sundays to allow walking, running, cycling, and skating. The road offers views of El Paso, as well as nearby Ciudad Juárez, across the Mexico–United States border.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: The Wyler Aerial Tramway is operated by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and is in the Franklin Mountains State Park. The tramway complex covers on the east side of the Franklin Mountains. The gondolas travel along two -diameter steel cables to Ranger Peak, above sea level. The trip takes about four minutes and lifts riders above the boarding area.The tramway was built in 1959 by KTSM radio to aid in the construction of a transmitter tower. Karl O. Wyler managed the project. First opening to the public as the El Paso Aerial Tramway, the facility provided rides from 1960 to 1986, when high liability insurance costs forced the tram to stop public operations. The tram was only used to service the transmitter towers. Wyler donated the tramway for public use in his will. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department accepted the donation in 1997 and renovated and re-opened the tramway to the public in 2001. The tramway was closed indefinitely on September 18, 2020.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: Hueco Tanks State Historic Site is a Texas historic site in the Hueco Tanks area, approximately northeast of downtown El Paso and just west of the Hueco Mountains. The park is popular for recreation such as birdwatching and bouldering, and is culturally and spiritually significant to many Native Americans. This significance is partially manifested in the pictographs (rock paintings) that can be found throughout the region, many of which are thousands of years old. Hueco Tanks is also widely regarded as one of the best areas in the world for bouldering (rock climbing, low enough to attempt without ropes for protection), unique for its rock type, the concentration and quality of the climbing, and after which the Hueco bouldering grades are named. In any given climbing season, which generally lasts from October through March, it is common for climbers from across Europe, Asia, and Australia to visit the park. Since implementation of the Public Use Plan, following a brief closure of the entire park due to the park service's inability to manage the growing crowds of international climbers, volunteer or commercial guides are required to access more than 2/3 of the park's area. Only North Mountain is accessible without guides, and then only for about 70 people at any given time. The park offers camping and showers for a small fee a day or, as is most popular for climbers, the nearby Hueco Rock Ranch offers camping where climbers can relax and socialize.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: Located in downtown El Paso, San Jacinto Plaza is a historical park notable for its alligator statues in the middle of the area. Known as "Alligator Plaza", it used to have a pond that held live alligators that the community can interact with starting in 1962. They were removed and relocated to the El Paso Zoo in 1974. The area around the park is typically used to hold major events such as "Chalk the Block Arts Festival" and "Winterfest".


title: El Paso, Texas

text: The Chamizal National Memorial is a 54.90-acre (22.22 ha) memorial park that serves primarily as a cultural center and contains art galleries, a theater, and an amphitheatre. A museum detailing the history of the Mexico–U.S. border is located inside the visitor center.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: The metro area has 16 golf courses including Butterfield Trail Golf Club, the only public premium daily fee Tom Fazio designed golf course in the state of Texas. It was ranked No. 1 in Texas and No. 3 in the Nation on "Golfweek"'s 2013 Best Municipal Golf Courses. Other golf courses found in the county include:


title: El Paso, Texas

text: The city government is officially nonpartisan. Mayors and city council members are elected for four year terms and may not serve more than two full terms or for more than 10 years total in their respective offices. Municipal elections were held in May in odd-numbered years until a voter-approved charter amendment changed this to November in even-numbered years, beginning in 2018.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: The city operates under a council–manager form of government. Power is concentrated in the eight-member elected city council and mayor, who hire a manager to carry out its directives and oversee the delivery of public services. The current city manager is Tommy Gonzalez and the current mayor of El Paso is Oscar Leeser, who was elected to the office in 2020 (Leeser served an earlier non-consecutive term from 2013 to 2017).


title: El Paso, Texas

text: The terms of Canales, Fierro, Kennedy, and Salcido will end in 2026. The terms of Leeser, Annello, Hernandez, Molinar, and Rivera will end in 2024.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: Annello, Hernandez, and Rivera have been on the council since 2017; Salcido since 2019; Molinar since 2021; Canales, Fierro, and Kennedy since 2023. Due to the term limits clause of the city charter, Leeser, Annello, Hernandez, Rivera, and Salcido are ineligible for reelection. All other councilors are eligible for reelection.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: The El Paso County Judge is Ricardo Samaniego, and the county commissioners are Carlos Leon (Precinct 1), David Stout (Precinct 2), Iliana Holguin (Precinct 3), and Carl Robinson (Precinct 4). The commissioners and the county judge are Democrats.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: Leon was first elected to his position in 2012, and was re-elected in 2016. Stout was first elected to his position in 2014, and was re-elected in 2018. Samaniego and Robinson were first elected in 2018. Holguin was first elected to her position in 2020.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: The El Paso metropolitan area is represented in the Texas State House by Democrats Art Fierro, Mary Gonzalez, Joe Moody, Claudia Ordaz Perez, and Lina Ortega, and in the State Senate by Cesar Blanco (D-El Paso). After the 2020 Census, El Paso will only have four seats in the state house. In the 2022 Democratic primaries, Ordaz Perez defeated Fierro.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: The Texas Department of Criminal Justice operates the El Paso I District Parole Office in the city. The El Paso II District Parole Office is in an unincorporated area east of Horizon City.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: El Paso City and County vote overwhelmingly Democratic, like most of the Texas–Mexico border area and urban Texas.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: In the United States House of Representatives, most of El Paso is part of represented by Democrat Veronica Escobar. A small sliver in the eastern part of the city is part of , represented by Republican Tony Gonzales. The current U.S. senators for Texas are Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and John Cornyn (R-Texas).


title: El Paso, Texas

text: El Paso is home to the University of Texas at El Paso, the largest public university in the region. UTEP was ranked as the 7th best university in Washington Monthly's 2013 National University Rankings, just behind Stanford and ahead of Harvard. Also, the university's School of Engineering is the nation's top producer of Hispanic engineers with M.S. and Ph.D. degrees.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: El Paso is also home to Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center at El Paso, Paul L. Foster School of Medicine, Texas Tech College of Architecture at El Paso, Brightwood College, Park University, Southwest University, Webster University and the University of Phoenix. Also due to its proximity, many El Paso students attend New Mexico State University where the school offers in-state tuition to El Paso County residents.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: The El Paso Community College serves most of the area as well as several technical schools and for profit schools. El Pasoans also have access to the Doña Ana Community College with campuses in Sunland Park, Anthony and Chaparral, New Mexico: This community college is a part of the New Mexico State University system.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: El Paso area students primarily attend public schools in four school districts, El Paso Independent School District, Ysleta Independent School District, Socorro Independent School District and Canutillo Independent School District, although there are nine independent school districts in the county. Numerous accredited private preparatory schools also serve El Paso students. These include various pre-high school religious (Christian, Catholic, Jewish) affiliates and Montessori schools, Cathedral High School, Loretto Academy, Father Yermo High School, Lydia Patterson Institute, Faith Christian Academy, El Paso Jewish Academy, Rose of Sharon Christian Academy, Zion Lutheran Day School and Radford School. The University of El Paso offers the country's only bilingual M.F.A. creative writing program.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: El Paso is home to bi-national economic development groups; the Hub of Human Innovation and Technology Hub. The industry groups' tertiary vocational programs, give workforce training in automation, robotics and AI technology.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: The El Paso Public Library serves the needs of the public in El Paso. It consists of 12 branches, a bookmobile, a mobile computer classroom and a mobile outreach unit (Kidsmobile). It also has multiple outreach services available.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: The main newspapers are the English-language daily "El Paso Times", founded in 1881; the Spanish-language daily "El Diario de El Paso", and the online newspaper "El Paso Herald Post" started in 2015. The original and defunct "El Paso Herald Post" was also founded in 1881 as the "El Paso Herald", which then merged with the "El Paso Post" in 1931. The paper was shut down in 1997. "El Paso Matters" is an online newspaper.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: Radio stations from Las Cruces, New Mexico, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, can also be heard within the El Paso market.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: El Paso was the largest city in the United States without a PBS television station within the city limits until 1978. El Paso viewers had to watch channel 22, KRWG, from Las Cruces until 1978. In fact, the city had only three English-speaking channels and two Spanish-language channels (channel 2 and channel 5) from Juarez, and cable TV subscribers in the 1970s and 1980s could receive four Los Angeles independent channels: KTLA, KHJ, KTTV and KCOP as well as Spanish-language stations KMEX of Los Angeles and KWEX of San Antonio usually sharing the same cable channel slot. Over time, as more television stations signed on, more cable channels were added and those stations added network affiliations, the Los Angeles and San Antonio stations disappeared from the lineup. The last to be removed was KTLA in the fall of 2006 as a consequence of the WB-UPN merger into The CW, when KVIA-TV launched a digital subchannel with the network's programming.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: El Paso is the medical hub of West Texas and Southern New Mexico, hosting numerous state-of-the-art medical centers. Some of the city's top hospitals include University Medical Center, William Beaumont Army Medical Center, Sierra Medical Center, Las Palmas Medical Center, Del Sol Medical Center, Sierra Providence East Medical Center, El Paso Children's Hospital, and Providence Memorial Hospital. University Medical Center is the only level I trauma center in the region. William Beaumont Army Medical Center will be replaced by a new state of the art $1.2 billion Fort Bliss Replacement Hospital expected to open in 2020. El Paso's newest hospital, The Hospitals of Providence Transmountain Campus opened in Northwest El Paso on January 27, 2017. The 106-bed teaching hospital is a collaboration between Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso and The Hospitals of Providence. The hospitals were strained during the COVID-19 pandemic in Texas, and 10 refrigerated morgue trailers were installed to handle increased mortality.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: El Paso is also home to the Medical Center of the Americas, an integrated complex of medical facilities anchored by Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center at El Paso, Paul L. Foster School of Medicine, University Medical Center, the El Paso Psychiatric Center and by the El Paso Children's Hospital. It is also the site to the Cardwell Collaborative biomedical research building, the Gayle Greve Hunt School of Nursing, and the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. The Woody L. Hunt School of Dental Medicine is expected to open in 2021 in the MCA area as well.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: Several roads and highways connect El Paso, including Interstate 10, US Highway 54 (known locally as "54", the "North-South Freeway" or officially as the Patriot Freeway), Spur 601 (Liberty Expressway), US Highway 180 and US Highway 62 (Montana Avenue), US Highway 85 (Paisano Drive), Loop 375, Loop 478 (Copia Street-Pershing Drive-Dyer Street), numerous Texas Farm-to-Market roads (a class of state highway commonly abbreviated to FM) and the city's original thoroughfare, State Highway 20, the eastern portion of which is known locally as Alameda Avenue (formerly US Highway 80). Texas 20 also includes portions of Texas Avenue in central El Paso, Mesa Street from Downtown to the West Side, and Doniphan Drive on the West Side. Northeast El Paso is connected to West El Paso by Transmountain Road (Loop 375). The city also shares four international bridges and one railbridge with Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. In 2009, El Paso was home to number 52, number 98, and number 100 of the 100 most congested roads in Texas, which are, respectively: North Zaragoza Road between Sun Fire Boulevard and Interstate 10; Lee Trevino Drive between Montana Avenue and Interstate 10; and Interstate 10 between Patriot Freeway and Loop 375.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: In 2009, 79.8% of El Paso (city) commuters drive to work alone. The 2009 mode share for El Paso (city) commuters are 10.3% for carpooling, 2.4% for transit, 2.5% for walking, and .2% for cycling. In 2016, Walk Score ranked El Paso as the 32nd most walkable of the 50 largest U.S. cities, rating it "car-dependent". The city of El Paso has a slightly lower than average percentage of households without a car. In 2015, 7.4 percent of El Paso households lacked a car, and increased to 8.4 percent in 2016. The national average was 8.7 percent in 2016. El Paso averaged 1.82 cars per household in 2016, compared to a national average of 1.8.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: The Sun Metro Mass Transit System operates a system of medium- to large-capacity natural gas-powered buses all around the city of El Paso.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: In 2011, Sun Metro was named the most outstanding public transit system of the year in all of North America for a mid-size transit system by the American Public Transportation Association.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: On September 1, 2009, NMDOT Park and Ride began operating commuter bus service to and from Las Cruces, New Mexico.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: Historically, El Paso and Ciudad Juarez had a shared streetcar system with a peak electrified route mileage of in 1920. The first electrified line across the Rio Grande, which opened on January 11, 1902, was preceded by a network that relied on animal labor. The system quickly spread into residential and industrial areas of El Paso. In 1913, a interurban line was built to Ysleta. At the close of 1943, the holding company El Paso Electric sold its subsidiary, the El Paso Electric Railway Company and its Mexican counterpart, to one of National City Lines' subsidiaries. This resulted in the formation of El Paso City Lines, whose domestic streetcar lines were replaced by buses in 1947. The international streetcar line which crossed the border via the Stanton Street Bridge continued to operate until 1973. In 1977, El Paso City Lines and two other bus companies were bought by the municipality and merged to form Sun City Area Transit (SCAT). In 1987, SCAT restyled itself Sun Metro.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: The El Paso Streetcar is a streetcar system that opened for service on November 9, 2018, and uses a fleet of restored PCC streetcars that had served the city's previous system until its closure in 1974. The system covers (round trip) in two loops from Downtown El Paso to University of Texas at El Paso. The system was constructed under the authority of the Camino Real Regional Mobility Authority, but when the major construction was completed, around spring 2018, it was transferred to Sun Metro, for operation and maintenance. , construction of the system was projected to cost $97 million. In 2019, it was reported that the system is losing money and that the number of people using it only reached half its goal in the inaugural year.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: The first bridge to cross the Rio Grande at El Paso del Norte was built in the time of Nueva España, over 250 years ago, from wood hauled in from Santa Fe. Today, this bridge is honored by the modern Santa Fe Street Bridge, and Santa Fe Street in downtown El Paso.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: The city collects tolls at its international bridges, except for the Bridge of the Americas, which is free. All bridges are open year-round.


title: El Paso, Texas

text: The Kay Bailey Hutchison Desalination Plant takes in brackish groundwater from an aquifer that is too salty for human consumption and treats it through reverse osmosis. A joint study by Fort Bliss and El Paso-area city governments found that desalination was a viable method for increasing El Paso's water supply by 25%. The plant on Fort Bliss property desalinates the groundwater of the Hueco Bolson for use by El Paso and Fort Bliss.


The Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to honor an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance in a supporting role while working within the film industry. The award is traditionally presented by the previous year's Best Supporting Actor winner.


title: Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress

text: At the 9th Academy Awards ceremony held in 1937, Gale Sondergaard was the first winner of this award for her role in "Anthony Adverse". Initially, winners in both supporting acting categories were awarded plaques instead of statuettes. Beginning with the 16th ceremony held in 1944, winners received full-sized statuettes. Currently, nominees are determined by single transferable vote within the actors branch of AMPAS; winners are selected by a plurality vote from all eligible voting members of the Academy.


text: Since its inception, the award has been given to 84 actresses. Dianne Wiest and Shelley Winters have received the most awards in this category with two awards each. Despite winning no awards, Thelma Ritter was nominated on six occasions, more than any other actress. At age 10, Tatum O'Neal became the youngest actress to win this award for "Paper Moon" (1973), and at age 77, Peggy Ashcroft became the oldest winner in this category for "A Passage to India" (1984). As of the 2022 ceremony, Ariana DeBose is the most recent winner in this category for her role as Anita in "West Side Story". DeBose became the first Afro-Latina and second Hispanic woman overall to win an acting Oscar after Rita Moreno who won in 1962 for the same role in the original film, marking the first time two actresses won Oscars for the same role.


text: In the following table, the years are listed as per Academy convention, and generally correspond to the year of film release in Los Angeles County; the ceremonies are always held the following year.


title: Rosa Salazar

text: Rosa Bianca Salazar (; born July 16, 1985) is a Canadian-American actress. She had roles in the NBC series "Parenthood" (2011–2012) and the FX anthology series "" (2011). She made her breakthrough as the title character of the film "" (2019) and is best known for starring in the series "Brand New Cherry Flavor" (2021), which she also co-produced.


title: Rosa Salazar

text: Salazar appeared in "" (2015), "" (2015), and "" (2018) and also appeared in the Netflix films "The Kindergarten Teacher" (2018) and "Bird Box" (2018). She stars in the Amazon series "Undone" (2019–present).


title: Rosa Salazar

text: Rosa Bianca Salazar was born on July 16, 1985, in British Columbia, Canada to Luis and Marilynne Salazar. Her father is Peruvian and her mother is French-Canadian. She grew up in Washington, D.C. and nearby Greenbelt, Maryland. She attended Greenbelt Middle School and Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, where she was active in the theatre program. She attended Prince George's Community College, where she studied drama, then continued drama studies at Upright Citizens Brigade, where she practiced method acting, improvisation and performance.


title: Rosa Salazar

text: Salazar enjoyed entertaining others from the age of fifteen and became serious about becoming an actress after moving to New York City as a young adult. There she appeared in several CollegeHumor sketches. Shortly after relocating to Los Angeles in 2009, she made her film debut playing the character Crystal in Jamesy Boy, written and directed by Trevor White. She then landed recurring roles on two hit TV series: "" and "Parenthood". In 2015, she co-starred in various sequels: "" as Lynn, and "" as Brenda.


title: Rosa Salazar

text: In 2016, Salazar directed and starred in the short film "Good Crazy," a story of a social crusader. It was nominated for a Short Film Grand Jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival.


title: Rosa Salazar

text: In 2019, she made her major studio lead debut with the film "", an adaptation of the manga "Gunnm" directed by Robert Rodriguez. It brought Salazar numerous awards, including "Best Visual Effects or Animated Performance" from the Hollywood Critics Association and "Best Voice or Motion Capture Performance" from the Association of Latin Entertainment Critics. That year, it was announced that Salazar would have a main role on the Netflix horror drama miniseries "Brand New Cherry Flavor". It was released on August 13, 2021.


title: Cain

text: Cain is a Biblical figure in the Book of Genesis within Abrahamic religions. He is the elder brother of Abel, and the firstborn son of Adam and Eve, the first couple within the Bible. He was a farmer who gave an offering of his crops to God. However, God was not pleased and favored Abel's offering over Cain's. Out of jealousy, Cain killed his brother, for which he was punished by God with the curse and mark of Cain. He had several children, starting with Enoch and including Lamech.


title: Cain

text: The narrative is notably unclear on Cain's motive for murdering his brother, God's reason for rejecting Cain's sacrifice, and details on the identity of Cain's wife. Some traditional interpretations consider Cain to be the originator of evil, violence, or greed. According to Genesis, Cain was the first human born and the first murderer.


title: Cain

text: A question arising early in the story is why God rejected Cain's sacrifice. The text states that "In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. And Abel also brought an offering—fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor." Genesis 4:3-5a. Noteworthy is the difference in the type of sacrifice: fruits of the soil are renewable and bloodless. Fat-portions are set apart for the Lord [see Leviticus 3:16], and came from the firstborn - which point to an act of faith, since it is not guaranteed there will be more. The Midrash suggest that although Abel brought the best meat from his flock, Cain did not set aside for God the best of his harvest.


title: Cain

text: Similar to the internalized spiritual death God warns Adam and Eve of from eating the forbidden fruit - they do not physically die immediately but over the course of time their bodies age and die - the Lord warns Cain that his inappropriate anger is waiting to consume him: "If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” [ Genesis 4:7 ]


title: Cain

text: According to , Cain treacherously murdered his brother, Abel, lied about the murder to God, and as a result, was cursed and marked for life. With the earth left cursed to drink Abel's blood, Cain was no longer able to farm the land. He becomes a "fugitive and wanderer", and receives a mark from God - commonly referred to as the "mark of Cain -" so that no one can enact vengeance on him.


title: Cain

text: Exegesis of the Septuagint's narrative, "groaning and shaking upon the earth" has Cain suffering from body tremors. Interpretations extend Cain's curse to his descendants, where they all died in the Great Deluge as retribution for the loss of Abel's potential offspring.


title: Cain

text: One popular theory regarding the name of Cain connects it to the verb "kana" ( "qnh"), meaning "to get" and used by Eve in when she says after bearing Cain, "I have "gotten" a man from the Lord." In this viewpoint, articulated by Nachmanides in the thirteenth century, Cain's name presages his role of mastery, power, and sin. In one of the "Legends of the Jews", Cain is the fruit of a union between Eve and Satan, who is also the angel Samael and the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and Eve exclaims at Cain's birth, "I have gotten a man through an angel of the Lord."


title: Cain

text: According to the "Life of Adam and Eve" (c. 1st century CE), Cain fetched his mother a reed ("qaneh") which is how he received his name "Qayin" (Cain). The symbolism of him fetching a reed may be a nod to his occupation as a farmer, as well as a commentary to his destructive nature. He is also described as "lustrous", which may reflect the Gnostic association of Cain with the sun.


title: Cain

text: Cain is described as a city-builder, and the forefather of tent-dwelling pastoralists, all lyre and pipe players, and bronze and iron smiths.


title: Cain

text: In an alternate translation of Genesis 4:17, endorsed by a minority of modern commentators, Cain's son Enoch builds a city and names it after "his" son, Irad. Such a city could correspond with Eridu, one of the most ancient cities known. Philo observes that it makes no sense for Cain, the third human on Earth, to have founded an actual city. Instead, he argues, the city symbolizes an unrighteous philosophy.


title: Cain

text: In the New Testament, Cain is cited as an example of unrighteousness in and . The Targumim, rabbinic sources, and later speculations supplemented background details for the daughters of Adam and Eve. Such exegesis of Genesis 4 introduced Cain's wife as being his sister, a concept that has been accepted for at least 1,800 years. This can be seen with Jubilees 4 which narrates that Cain settled down and married his sister Awan, who bore their first son, the first Enoch, approximately 196 years after the creation of Adam. Cain then establishes the first city, naming it after his son, builds a house, and lives there until it collapses on him, killing him on the same year of Adam's death.


title: Cain

text: In this alternative reading of the text, the ground could be personified as a character. This reading is evidenced by given human qualities, like a mouth, in the scripture. The ground is also the only subject of an active verb in the verse that states, "It opens its mouth to take the blood." This suggests that the ground reacted to the situation. By that logic, the ground could then potentially be an accomplice to the murder of Abel (Jordstad 708). The reaction from the ground raises the question, "Does the intimate connection between humans and the ground mean that the ground mirrors or aids human action, regardless of the nature of that action?"


title: Cain

text: In Jewish tradition, Philo, Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer and the "Targum Pseudo-Jonathan" asserted that Adam was not the father of Cain. Rather, Eve was subject to adultery having been seduced by either Sammael, the serpent ("nahash", ) in the Garden of Eden, or the devil himself. Christian exegesis of the "evil one" in have also led some commentators, like Tertullian, to agree that Cain was the son of the devil or some fallen angel. Thus, according to some interpreters, Cain was half-human and half-angelic, one of the Nephilim (Genesis 6). Gnostic exegesis in the "Apocryphon of John" has Eve seduced by Yaldabaoth. However, in the "Hypostasis of the Archons", Eve is raped by a pair of Archons.


title: Cain

text: Pseudo-Philo, a Jewish work of the first century CE, narrates that Cain murdered his brother at the age of 15. After escaping to the Land of Nod, Cain fathered four sons: Enoch, Olad, Lizpha and Fosal; and two daughters: Citha and Maac (the latter five aren't mentioned in the Bible). Cain died at the age of 730, leaving his corrupt descendants spreading evil on earth. According to the Book of Jubilees, Cain murdered his brother with a stone. Afterwards, Cain was killed by the same instrument he used against his brother; his house fell on him and he was killed by its stones. A heavenly law was cited after the narrative of Cain's death saying:


title: Cain

text: With the instrument with which a man kills his neighbour with the same shall he be killed; after the manner that he wounded him, in like manner shall they deal with him.


title: Cain

text: A Talmudic tradition says that after Cain had murdered his brother, God made a horn grow on his head. Later, Cain was killed at the hands of his great grandson Lamech, who mistook him for a wild beast. A Christian version of this tradition from the time of the Crusades holds that the slaying of Cain by Lamech took place on a mound called "Cain Mons" (i.e. Mount Cain), which is a corruption of "Caymont", a Crusader fort in Tel Yokneam in modern-day Israel.


title: Cain

text: The story of Cain and Abel is also made reference to in chapter 19 of 1 Meqabyan, a book considered canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. In this text, Cain killed Abel because he desired Abel's wife.


title: Cain

text: According to the Mandaean scriptures including the Qolastā, the Book of John and Genzā Rabbā, Abel is cognate with the angelic soteriological figure Hibil Ziwa who taught John the Baptist.


title: Cain

text: The following family tree of the line of Cain is compiled from a variety of biblical and extra-biblical texts.


title: Cain

text: Various early commentators have said that Cain and Abel have sisters, usually twin sisters. According to Rabbi Joshua ben Karha as quoted in Genesis Rabbah, "Only two entered the bed, and seven left it: Cain and his twin sister, Abel and his two twin sisters."


title: Cain

text: The Book of Genesis does not give a specific reason for the murder of Abel. Modern commentators typically assume that the motives were jealousy and anger due to God rejecting Cain's offering, while accepting Abel's. The First Epistle of John says the following:


title: Cain

text: Ancient exegetes, such as the Midrash and the "Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan", tell that the motive involved a desire for the most beautiful woman. According to Midrashic tradition, Cain and Abel each had twin sisters; each was to marry the other's. The Midrash states that Abel's promised wife, Aclima, was more beautiful than Awan, Cain's promised wife. And so, after Cain would not consent to this arrangement, Adam suggested seeking God's blessing by means of a sacrifice. Whoever God blessed would marry Aclima. When God openly rejected Cain's sacrifice, Cain slew his brother in a fit of jealousy and anger. Rabbinical exegetes have discussed whether Cain's incestuous relationship with his sister was in violation of "halakha".


title: Cain

text: A millennia-old explanation for Cain being capable of murder is that he may have been the offspring of a fallen angel or Satan himself, rather than being the son of Adam.


title: Cain

text: A medieval legend has Cain arriving at the Moon, where he eternally settled with a bundle of twigs. This was originated by the popular fantasy of interpreting the shadows on the Moon as a face. An example of this belief can be found in Dante Alighieri's "Inferno" (XX, 126) where the expression "Cain and the twigs" is used as a kenning for "moon".


title: Cain

text: In Latter-day Saint theology, Cain is considered to be the quintessential Son of Perdition, the father of "secret combinations" (i.e. secret societies and organized crime), as well as the first to hold the title Master Mahan meaning "master of [the] great secret, that [he] may murder and get gain".


title: Cain

text: In Mormon folklore—a second-hand account relates that an early Mormon leader, David W. Patten, encountered a very tall, hairy, dark-skinned man in Tennessee who said that he was Cain. The account states that Cain had earnestly sought death but was denied it, and that his mission was to destroy the souls of men. The recollection of Patten's story is quoted in Spencer W. Kimball's "The Miracle of Forgiveness", a popular book within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This widespread Mormon belief is further emphasized by an account from Salt Lake City in 1963 which stated that "One superstition is based on the old Mormon belief that Cain is a black man who wanders the earth begging people to kill him and take his curse upon themselves (M, 24, SLC, 1963)."


title: Cain

text: Freud's theory of fratricide is explained by the Oedipus or Electra complex through Carl Jung's supplementation.


title: Cain

text: There were other, minor traditions concerning Cain and Abel, of both older and newer date. The apocryphal "Life of Adam and Eve" tells of Eve having a dream in which Cain drank his brother's blood. In an attempt to prevent the prophecy from happening the two young men are separated and given different jobs.


title: Cain

text: The author Daniel Quinn, first in his book "Ishmael" and later in "The Story of B", proposes that the story of Cain and Abel is an account of early Semitic herdsmen observing the beginnings of what he calls totalitarian agriculture, with Cain representing the first 'modern' agriculturists and Abel the pastoralists.


title: The Exorcist

text: The Exorcist is a 1973 American supernatural horror film directed by William Friedkin and written for the screen by William Peter Blatty, based on his 1971 novel of the same name. It stars Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Lee J. Cobb, Kitty Winn, Jack MacGowran (in his final film role), Jason Miller and Linda Blair. It follows the demonic possession of a young girl and her mother's attempt to rescue her through an exorcism conducted by a pair of Catholic priests.


title: The Exorcist

text: The book was a bestseller, but Blatty, who also produced, and Friedkin, his choice for director, had difficulty casting the film. Unable to hire major stars of the era, they cast relative unknowns Burstyn, Blair and Miller (author of a hit play with no film acting experience), choices vigorously opposed by Warner Brothers executives. Principal photography was also difficult. Friedkin insisted on realism, going to northern Iraq to film the prologue despite political instability in the region, relying on live special effects and casting real priests and medical personnel in the film. Crew also recalled that he was temperamental, often firing people without warning. A fire destroyed most of the set, some crewmembers died, and Blair and Burstyn suffered accidental long-term back injuries; he also deliberately made cast members uncomfortable, going as far as refrigerating the set where the exorcism scenes took place to temperatures well below zero so their breath would be visible. Production took twice as long as scheduled and cost almost three times the initial budget; some deaths and accidents that occurred have led to a belief that the film was cursed.


title: The Exorcist

text: "The Exorcist" was released in 24 theaters in the United States and Canada in late December 1973. Audiences flocked to it despite mixed reviews, waiting in long lines during winter weather, many more than once; the sold out shows were even more profitable for Warners since they had booked it into those theaters under four wall distribution rental agreements, the first time a major studio had done that. Some viewers suffered adverse physical reactions, fainting or vomiting to scenes in which the protagonist undergoes a realistic cerebral angiography and later violently masturbates with a crucifix. Heart attacks and a miscarriage were reported among viewers; a psychiatric journal published a paper on "cinematic neurosis" triggered by the film. Many children were allowed to see it, leading to charges that the MPAA ratings board had accommodated Warner Bros by giving the film an R-rating instead of the X-rating they thought it deserved, in order to ensure its commercial success. Several cities attempted to ban it outright or prevent children from attending.


title: The Exorcist

text: The cultural conversation around the film, which also encompassed its treatment of Catholicism (and, in the years since, its apparent anti-feminism), helped it become the first horror film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, one of 10 for which it was nominated, and winning for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound. It has had several sequels, and was the highest-grossing R-rated horror film (unadjusted for inflation) until the 2017 release of "It". "The Exorcist" has had a significant influence on popular culture and has received critical acclaim, with several publications regarding it as one of the greatest horror films ever made. In 2010, the Library of Congress selected "The Exorcist" to be preserved in its National Film Registry, citing it as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".


title: The Exorcist

text: In northern Iraq, Catholic priest Lankester Merrin participates in an archaeological dig which unearths a medallion of Saint Joseph and an artifact representing Pazuzu, an ancient demon. As Merrin prepares to leave Iraq, he encounters a large statue of Pazuzu and observes two dogs fighting in the desert.


title: The Exorcist

text: In Georgetown, actress Chris MacNeil works on a film directed by her friend Burke Dennings. A temporary resident, Chris lives in a well-appointed house with servants and her daughter Regan. Georgetown-based priest Damien Karras visits his mother in New York. He confides to a colleague that he feels unfit in his role as counselor to other priests, citing a crisis of faith. Chris hears noises in the attic, and Regan tells her of an imaginary friend named "Captain Howdy". In a local church, a statue of Mary is found desecrated.


title: The Exorcist

text: Chris hosts a party. Karras' friend Father Dyer explains Karras' role as counselor, mentioning that his mother died recently. Regan appears and urinates on the carpet. After Chris puts Regan to bed, her bed shakes violently. Dyer consoles Karras, and Karras expresses guilt at not having been with his mother when she died. Karras dreams of his mother, a Saint Joseph medallion and—briefly—a demonic face.


title: The Exorcist

text: Regan becomes violent. She is subjected to several medical tests which fail to find anything physically wrong with her. During a house call, a demon possesses Regan's body; the possessed Regan exhibits abnormal strength. One night, Chris finds the house empty except for a sleeping Regan. Dennings is found dead at the foot of an outdoor staircase beneath Regan's window. Homicide detective William Kinderman questions Karras, confiding that Dennings' body was found with its head turned backwards.


title: The Exorcist

text: Regan's condition worsens, and her body becomes covered with sores. A doctor mentions exorcism as a remote option, suggesting a possible psychological benefit. Kinderman visits Chris, explaining that the only plausible explanation for Dennings' death is that he was pushed from Regan's window. As Kinderman leaves, the possessed Regan stabs her genitals with a crucifix. To Chris' horror, the possessed Regan turns her head backwards and speaks in Dennings' voice. The possessed Regan is confined to her bedroom.


title: The Exorcist

text: Chris seeks out Karras, who visits Regan. Over two meetings, the possessed Regan claims to be the Devil himself, projectile vomits into Karras' face, speaks in tongues, and reacts violently when tap water is sprinkled on her, which Karras had claimed was holy water—a point against genuine possession. The demon says it will remain in Regan until she is dead. Desperate, Chris confides that the possessed Regan killed Dennings. At night, Chris' assistant calls Karras to the house. They witness the words "help me" materialize on Regan's skin. Still ambivalent, Karras nevertheless concludes that an exorcism is warranted. His superior grants permission on the condition that an experienced priest lead the ritual while Karras assists. Merrin, having performed an exorcism before, is summoned.


title: The Exorcist

text: Merrin arrives at the house, warning Karras that the demon uses a psychological attack. As the priests read from the Roman Ritual, the demon curses them. It focuses on Karras, verbally attacking his loss of faith and guilt over the circumstances of his mother's death. The priests rest momentarily and Merrin, shaking, takes nitroglycerin. Karras enters the bedroom where the demon appears as his mother. Showing weakness, Karras exclaims that the demon is not his mother. Merrin excuses Karras and continues the exorcism by himself. Karras assures Chris that Regan will not die and re-enters the room, finding Merrin dead. Karras beats the possessed Regan and demands that the demon take him instead. The demon rips a medallion of Saint Joseph from Karras' neck and begins to possess him, freeing Regan. Karras hurls himself out the window, tumbling down the stairs outside. Chris and Kinderman enter the room. Chris embraces the healed Regan, and Kinderman surveys the violence and confusion. Outside, Dyer administers the last rites as Karras dies.


title: The Exorcist

text: The MacNeils prepare to leave, and Father Dyer says goodbye. Despite having no memory of her ordeal, Regan is moved by the sight of Dyer's clerical collar to kiss him on the cheek. As the MacNeils leave, Chris gives Dyer the medallion found in Regan's room.


title: The Exorcist

text: In 2000, "The Version You've Never Seen" or the "Extended Director's Cut", was released. In the ending of this version, when Chris gives Karras' medallion to Dyer, Dyer places it back in her hand and suggests that she keep it. After she and Regan drive away, Dyer pauses at the top of the stone steps before walking away and coming across Kinderman, who narrowly missed Chris and Regan's departure; Kinderman and Dyer begin to develop a friendship.


title: The Exorcist

text: Aspects of Blatty's novel were inspired by the 1949 exorcism performed on an anonymous boy known as "Roland Doe" or "Robbie Mannheim" (pseudonyms) by the Jesuit priest William S. Bowdern. The novel changed several details of the case, such as the sex and age of the allegedly possessed victim. Harper & Row, strongly believing the book would sell well, published it and sent Blatty on a 26-city book tour. But despite enthusiastic reviews, sales were not as strong as the publisher had hoped; at one point on the book tour the bookstore cancelled Blatty's appearance because, it told him, so few copies had been sold that it was remaindering the unsold ones back to the publisher. Harper was about to give up and had even, according to Blatty, treated him to a farewell lunch, when an opportunity to appear on "The Dick Cavett Show" came up after one guest canceled and the other, actor Robert Shaw, was too drunk to go on. Cavett was uninterested in the supernatural, but let Blatty talk about "The Exorcist" at length, captivating the audience with discussions of whether the devil existed. Soon afterwards the novel was atop the "New York Times" best seller list.


title: The Exorcist

text: Despite Blatty's previous experience working in Hollywood as a writer for Blake Edwards' films, film studios had generally been uninterested in adapting "The Exorcist" before its publication. Lew Grade made a modest offer for the rights that Blatty said later he would have accepted due to his difficult financial circumstances, but for his requirement that he produce. Shirley MacLaine, a friend of Blatty's on whom he had based the Chris McNeil character in the novel, to the point of using some things she had said in the past as dialogue, had been interested. But she and her partners refused to back the film due to Blatty's refusal to back down on producing.


title: The Exorcist

text: Paul Monash, producer of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", then expressed interest. He and Blatty reached a deal that gave him six months to get a studio to commit to filming "The Exorcist". Monash soon secured a deal to that effect with Warner Bros., who paid $641,000 ($ in modern dollars). Blatty recalled that studio head John Calley had been reading the book at his home, alone, in his bedroom, and found his dog unusually unwilling to join him on the bed. He tried to drag the dog onto the bed but the animal resisted vigorously. When he finally succeeded, he found the book was hot to the touch.


title: The Exorcist

text: Blatty and Monash had agreed to be co-producers. But Monash wanted changes to the story Blatty opposed, such as setting it somewhere else, making Kinderman less colorful and Chris something other than a film actress, getting rid of the prologue and even Father Merrin's character. Hearing rumors that Monash was planning something behind his back, Blatty was able to sneak into his office at Warners and surreptitiously copy some papers from Monash's files that lent credence to those rumors. When he shared those papers with the studio, he became the film's sole producer.


title: The Exorcist

text: Blatty's screenplay follows the plot of his novel closely, but narrows the story's focus. Subplots like the desecration of the churches (and the relationship between Karras and Kinderman that develops from the latter's investigation), Karras's efforts to get the Church bureaucracy to approve the exorcism, and the ongoing medical investigations of Regan's condition, are acknowledged in the film but to a much lesser degree than they are in the novel. Similarly, characters such as Chris's household staff, Dennings, and Regan's father, play a much smaller role, and the overall time frame of the plot is condensed.


title: The Exorcist

text: "I compressed the first third of my book into only 33 pages" of script, Blatty wrote later. He eliminated the subplot with Karl's daughter Elvira, despite its reinforcement of Merrin's belief that some good will always eventually come of any evil since at the end of the novel she goes into treatment for her heroin addiction. "I hated to do that", he admitted. "But there simply wasn't time and the subplot had to go." For the same reason he greatly reduced the suggestions that Karras was responsible for both Denning's death and the desecrations in the chapel, hints he felt many readers had missed anyway.


title: The Exorcist

text: Some scenes, particularly those with sexual content, were toned down for the movie since an actress of approximately Regan's age was expected to be playing the part. The scene where Regan masturbates with a crucifix was, in the book, more prolonged and explicit, with Regan seriously injuring herself yet attaining orgasm. The film also excludes the detail from the book that when possessed, Regan experiences constant diarrhea, requiring that she wear a diaper and giving her room a strong odor. One of the film's religious advisers, Father John Nicola, who had opposed including both the crucifix scene and the desecration, nevertheless advised that the language used by Pazuzu when possessing Regan should be even more profane than it was in the book, to an extent he considered more realistic; it was changed accordingly.


title: The Exorcist

text: Blatty also made the screenplay unambiguous about Regan's condition. In his novel every symptom and behavior she exhibits that might indicate possession is counterbalanced with a reference to an actual case where the same phenomena were found to have natural, scientific causes. Beyond Karras' initial professional skepticism, that perspective is absent from the film.


title: The Exorcist

text: When Friedkin came onto the project as director, Blatty expected that, as directors usually do, he would propose some changes to the story. But Friedkin did not, insisting on following the novel closely. According to Blatty, Friedkin even asked him, in one scene, to restore some slight changes to his dialogue to what it had originally been in the book.


title: The Exorcist

text: The film's lead roles, particularly Regan, were not easily cast. Although many major stars of the era were considered for the role, with Stacy Keach signed to play Father Karras at one point, Blatty and Friedkin ultimately went with less well-known actors, to the consternation of the studio.


title: The Exorcist

text: The studio wanted Marlon Brando for the role of Lankester Merrin. Friedkin did not want to make a "Brando movie" and refused. Jack Nicholson was considered for Karras, andPaul Newman interested, before Blatty hired Stacy Keach. .


title: The Exorcist

text: Three A-list actresses of the time were considered for Chris. Audrey Hepburn said she would take the role but only if the movie could be shot in Rome, where she was living. That posed too many problems, so Friedkin looked next to Anne Bancroft. She was also willing but only if production could start after she gave birth; Friedkin could not wait nine months. Jane Fonda, next on the list, purportedly derided the film and turned it down.


title: The Exorcist

text: Blatty suggested his friend Shirley MacLaine for the part, but Friedkin was hesitant to cast her, given her lead role in another possession film, "The Possession of Joel Delaney", two years before. After meeting Carol Burnett at a party, Friedkin believed she had the range beyond her comic television persona, and Blatty agreed, but the studio was not so eager to have her in the role. Ellen Burstyn received the part after she phoned Friedkin and emphatically stated that she was "destined" to play Chris, discussing her own Catholic upbringing and later rejection of it. Studio head Ted Ashley vigorously opposed casting her, not only telling Friedkin that he would do so over his dead body, but dramatizing that opposition by making Friedkin walk over him as he lay on the floor, then grabbing the director's leg and telling him he would come back from the dead if necessary to keep Friedkin from doing so. However, no other alternatives emerged, and Ashley relented.


title: The Exorcist

text: With Burstyn now set in the part, Friedkin received a surprise return call from Jason Miller whom he had talked to after a performance of his play "That Championship Season" about the lapsed Catholicism in it, as background for the film, and left him. He had read a copy of the novel Friedkin left him, and told the director "[Karras] is me". Miller had had a Catholic education, and had studied to be a Jesuit priest himself for three years at Catholic University of America (also in Washington) until experiencing a spiritual crisis, as Karras does at the beginning of the story. Friedkin thanked him for his interest but told him Keach had already been signed.


title: The Exorcist

text: Miller, who had done some stage acting but had never been in a film, asked to be given a screen test. Friedkin had the playwright and Burstyn do the scene where Chris tells Karras she thinks Regan might be possessed. Afterwards, he had Burstyn interview Miller about his life with the camera focusing on him from over her shoulder, and finally asked Miller to say Mass as if for the first time. Burstyn felt Miller was too short for the part, unlike her boyfriend at the time, whom Friedkin had auditioned but passed on. The director felt the test was promising but, after viewing the footage the next morning, realized Miller's "dark good looks, haunted eyes, quiet intensity, and low, compassionate voice", qualities which to him evoked John Garfield, were exactly what the part needed. The studio bought out Keach's contract.


title: The Exorcist

text: Directors considered for the project were skeptical that a young actress could carry the film. Mike Nichols had turned down "The Exorcist" specifically because he did not believe a 12-year-old girl who could play the very stressful part could be found. The first actresses considered had been in other successful films and television series. Pamelyn Ferdin, a veteran of science fiction and supernatural drama was ultimately turned down as too familiar. Denise Nickerson, who had appeared in two roles on the horror-soap opera "Dark Shadows" and played Violet Beauregarde in "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory", said in later interviews her family found the script too dark for her. Janet Leigh would not let her daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis, audition.


title: The Exorcist

text: Friedkin had interviewed young women as old as 16 who looked young enough to play Regan, but found none. Then Elinore Blair came in unannounced with her daughter Linda; her agency had not sent her for the part, but she had previously met with Warners' casting department. Both impressed Friedkin. Elinore was not a typical stage mother, and Linda's credits were primarily in modeling and a single soap opera role. "[S]mart but not precocious. Cute but not beautiful. A normal, happy 12-year-old girl", Friedkin later recalled.


title: The Exorcist

text: With Linda having the qualities Friedkin was looking for, he wanted to see if she could handle the material. He asked if she knew what "The Exorcist" was about; she told him she had read the book. "[I]t's about a little girl who gets possessed by the devil and does a whole bunch of bad things." Friedkin then asked her what sort of bad things she meant. "[S]he pushes a man out of her bedroom window and she hits her mother across the face and she masturbates with a crucifix." Friedkin then asked Linda if she knew what masturbation meant. "It's like jerking off, isn't it?", and she giggled a little bit. "Have you ever done that?" he asked. "Sure; haven't you?" she responded.


title: The Exorcist

text: She was cast after tests with Burstyn; Friedkin wanted to keep that level of spontaneity on set. "After all these difficult scenes she'd tiptoe around and giggle, after every bit", Blatty recalled. "It was all a big funhouse ride for her. She was disturbed only one time, and that was when her pet mouse died." After filming, Friedkin had similar praise: "She is the most totally pulled together, stable, mature young person I've ever met. The whole thing was a game to her." Of the 500 actresses he said he saw audition, "there wasn't one other I would have considered."


title: The Exorcist

text: Friedkin originally intended to use Blair's voice, electronically treated, for the demon's dialogue. He felt this worked fine in some places, but the scenes with the demon confronting the two priests lacked the dramatic power required and so cast Mercedes McCambridge, an experienced voice actress and Oscar winner, as the demon's voice. After filming, Warners did not credit her, until Screen Actors Guild arbitration.


title: The Exorcist

text: Actress Eileen Dietz, 15 years older than Blair, stood in for her in the crucifix scene, the fistfight with Father Karras, and others that were too violent or disturbing for Blair to perform. She also appears as the face of Pazuzu. Friedkin gave her no notes, telling her to play the possessed Regan as "a primal force of malevolence ... I wasn't playing a little girl, I was playing the demon that possessed a little girl". Reportedly Warners had forced Friedkin to hire her; he in turn used her only when absolutely necessary. Blair, who recalls Friedkin telling her the film would not succeed if she was not in as many shots as possible, estimates that Dietz's total screen time amounts to 17 seconds.


title: The Exorcist

text: The film's supporting roles were more quickly cast. After Blatty showed Friedkin a Philippe Halsman photograph of Gerald Lankester Harding, his inspiration for Father Merrin, Friedkin immediately thought of Max von Sydow for the part over Paul Scofield, Blatty's suggestion. "He portrays great spiritual quality on film." Von Sydow accepted it as soon as he finished reading the script. While out seeing a play starring an actor who had been recommended to them for the film, Blatty and Friedkin ran into Lee J. Cobb, who was cast as Lt. Kinderman.


title: The Exorcist

text: Two actual priests played priests in the film. Father William O'Malley, another Jesuit priest who taught English and theology at McQuaid Jesuit High School outside Rochester, New York, had become acquainted with Blatty through his criticism of the novel. After Blatty introduced him to Friedkin, they decided to cast him as Father Dyer, a character O'Malley had considered clichéd in the novel. The Rev. Thomas Bermingham, who as a professor of Blatty's at Georgetown had assigned him to do the research on demonic possession that had led him later to write the novel, took the minor role of the similarly named president of the university.


title: The Exorcist

text: Some sources from early in the film's production, such as cast sheets in "The Hollywood Reporter" and a Warners press release, list British director J. Lee Thompson as a member of the cast. It was suggested that he would be playing Dennings, whom Shirley MacLaine says was based on him, but Jack MacGowran got the role instead. A later cast listing adds Mary Boylan and The Rev. John Nicola, one of the film's technical advisors, in small roles.


title: The Exorcist

text: Greek actor Titos Vandis was cast as Father Karras's uncle. He wore a hat in one shot to obscure his face, as Friedkin felt that it would be connected with Vandis's previous role in the Woody Allen film "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)".


title: The Exorcist

text: Warners had approached Arthur Penn, Stanley Kubrick, and Mike Nichols to direct, all of whom turned the project down. Blatty recalled in 2015 that one director wanted to relocate the film to Salem, Massachusetts, which he rejected because he considered the contrast between the worldly nature of the capital and the supernatural aspects of the plot to be essential to the film.


title: The Exorcist

text: Originally Mark Rydell was hired to direct, but William Peter Blatty insisted on Friedkin as he had been impressed by "The French Connection". He also knew Friedkin, having met him before that film was made, and had lunch while working with Edwards on the "Darling Lili" screenplay, some of which the director had critiqued for him. Blatty also appreciated that at another meeting with Edwards, Friedkin had been (as he later said) extremely frank about the shortcomings of a "Peter Gunn" script, at the expense of getting the job.


title: The Exorcist

text: For "The Exorcist", Blatty recalled thinking in a 2000 interview, "[h]ere is a director who can bring the look of documentary realism to this incredible story, and also, just as important, here is a guy who is never going to lie to me." Even after all of the other higher-profile directors Warners wanted had turned the film down, the studio was still resistant, until "The French Connection" was released to commercial success and a Best Picture Academy Award. While doing his press tour for that film, Friedkin was sent a copy of Blatty's novel and began reading it. After the first 20 pages he canceled his dinner plans and read the entire book that night. The issues that had given other directors pause did not bother Friedkin: "I was so overwhelmed by the power of this story, and I didn't stop to think about the problems involved with making it."


title: The Exorcist

text: "The pacing is deliberate, and I wanted it to happen slowly because the story, as it affected the real people who inspired it, took place in just that way", Friedkin said in 2015. "I felt we had to go through all of that. You had to see the symptoms. You had to see the treatment that was given out by internal medicine and by psychiatry, and to see that it all had been tried and failed."


title: The Exorcist

text: Early in production, Blatty fired Friedkin per the latter's challenge to do so after the two clashed over what the director alleged was his poorly handled refusal of Burstyn's request that a limousine pick her up from the airport, a policy Friedkin himself had instituted. Blatty assumed the two would soon reconcile. Two days later, according to Blatty, he was summoned to a meeting with not only Friedkin but his agent and seven studio lawyers who told Blatty he could not under any circumstances fire the director. After that, Blatty recalled to Peter Biskind, he informed the studio he could no longer have any responsibility for controlling the film's budget, which he had believed to be his primary role as the film's producer; he and Friedkin did reconcile and got along well for the rest of the picture. Production costs soon exceeded the film's initial $4.2 million ($ in modern dollars) budget.


title: The Exorcist

text: Friedkin went to great lengths manipulating the actors, reminiscent of the old Hollywood directing style, to get the genuine reactions he wanted. Later, Friedkin was unsatisfied with O'Malley's performance as Dyer ministers to the dying Karras at the end of the film, telling him he was doing it "by the numbers". O'Malley protested that it was 2:30 a.m. and he had just administered last rites to his friend for the 15th time. Friedkin then asked if O'Malley trusted him, and when the priest said yes, Friedkin slapped him hard across the face to generate a deeply solemn yet literally shaken reaction for the scene, offending the many Catholic crew members on set. "It was beyond what anyone needs to do to make a movie," Burstyn said in 2019.


title: The Exorcist

text: He also fired blanks without warning to elicit shock from Miller for a take; Dietz recalls him doing this during the scene where Regan assaults the doctors who have come to see her. Friedkin also told Miller that the vomit, porridge colored to resemble pea soup and pumped through a hidden tube, would hit him in the chest during the projectile vomiting scene, and rehearsed it that way. But when filmed, the soup hit his face, resulting in his disgusted reaction.


title: The Exorcist

text: Dietz recounts another of Friedkin's manipulations. Since the demon's presence was, in the book, accompanied by the stench of Regan's near-continuous diarrhea, to ensure an equally distasteful odor on set the director would hide rotten meat or eggs on the set. While it worked initially, "[t]he problem was the crew and the cast all got sick so we had to stop shooting", she said.


title: The Exorcist

text: Crewmembers found Friedkin demanding and sometimes difficult to work with. One of the first shots for the movie when production began in New York was bacon being cooked in a griddle. The shot begins as a close-up and then pulls back. A wall had been built opposite the stove, leaving almost no space for the dolly, so Friedkin had shooting halted while it was removed. After that, he decided he did not like the way the bacon curled as it was being cooked, so the prop master was sent to look for preservative-free bacon, difficult to find at the time, further delaying the scene. Another crewmember recalls returning after three days of sick leave to find Friedkin still shooting the same scene.


title: The Exorcist

text: Dietz recalls that shooting took so long because Friedkin reshot most of the film. Even scenes that had been difficult to stage and film the first time, such as Regan's bed shaking, were redone. "People were literally placing bets on what he would re-shoot next."


title: The Exorcist

text: As Blatty had with him, Friedkin also fired and rehired crew regularly. One crewmember recalls seeing the director shake hands warmly with someone, and then seconds later tell a second person to "get this guy outta here". This mercurial behavior led the crew to call him "Wacky Willy".


title: The Exorcist

text: Director of photography Owen Roizman had worked with Friedkin in that capacity on "The French Connection". The two collaborated again on "The Exorcist", with Roizman in charge of filming every scene in the film save those in the Iraqi prologue, shot by Billy Williams. In a 1974 interview with "American Cinematographer", the magazine of the American Society of Cinematographers, Roizman discussed "The Exorcist" at length.


title: The Exorcist

text: "[H]e figured that since we'd done so well the last time, maybe we could do it again", Roizman said, recalling how Friedkin had gotten him to work on "The Exorcist". They agreed that, like their earlier film, they wanted the next one to look as if shot with available light. But this time they would eschew "Connection"s documentary look. The MacNeil house was, unlike house interiors in horror films such as "Psycho", designed to look normal and inviting. "What we tried to do, by means of the lighting, was to give it a kind of ominous feeling—as if some lurking, mysterious thing were hanging over it. That's about as far as we went with photographic style."


title: The Exorcist

text: While much of the filming took place in the set for Regan's bedroom, there were some other parts of the house set that presented challenges when filming. Roizman said the ceiling of the basement set left no room for conventional lighting setups. "There was really no place at all to put lights and, in doing any sort of pan around or dolly shot, we would have been fighting ourselves had we tried to use conventional lighting units." But the crew was able to make those shots work by replacing the ceiling's practical light bulbs with photofloods.


title: The Exorcist

text: "Friedkin demanded complete realism", Roizman recalled. "He wanted to see pictures with glass in them, mirrors on the walls and all of the other highly reflective surfaces you would naturally find in a house, we never tried to cover anything up, as we would normally do for expedience in shooting." This realism meant that the kitchen set, with much stainless steel and glass, was "virtually impossible" to light beyond the practical ceiling fixtures and whatever other lights they could manage to sneak in and hide. "[W]e'd walk in, hit the switch and shoot—through not much choice."


title: The Exorcist

text: One shot early in the film seemed simple when seen but, according to Roizman, required intense preparation and rehearsal. In it, Sharon greets the doctors and escorts them upstairs to Regan's room. The camera starts the scene at the top of the staircase, follows the actors from there as they walk towards it, tracks backward in front of them as they walk up to it towards the room around two corners and then turns again to let the actors pass, pan right and follow Karen as she goes to the door. It was necessary first to build a specialized chair for the camera operator on a track along the ceiling, then the grips had to move the camera in sync with the actors without causing any bumps. It was then necessary to light the scene while avoiding any crew shadows, which they did with photofloods and striplights through overhead muslin. "If I were to do that shot over again, I would probably underexpose a bit more to accentuate the shadows, but, all in all, the shot worked very well" said Roizman


title: The Exorcist

text: The film's opening sequences were filmed in and near the city of Mosul, Iraq, a country with whom the U.S. did not then have diplomatic relations, and was also experiencing civil unrest that later grew into civil war; Warners feared that Friedkin and his crew might not be able to return. Friedkin negotiated filming arrangements directly with the local officials of the ruling Ba'ath Party. He was allowed to shoot only on the condition that he hire lots of local workers as crew and teach some classes in filmmaking to interested residents, primarily in how to create and use fake blood. The archaeological dig site shown is ancient Hatra, south of Mosul. Temperatures during the days filming took place reached , limiting shooting to the early mornings and evenings. After shooting William Kaplan, the film's production supervisor, was held under armed guard in Baghdad as a check from Warners bounced.


title: The Exorcist

text: The stairs were padded with half-inch-thick () rubber to film the death of the character Father Damien Karras. Because the house from which he falls was set back slightly from the steps, the crew built an eastward extension with a false front to film the scene. The stuntman tumbled down the stairs twice. Georgetown University students charged people around $5 each to watch the stunt from the rooftops.


title: The Exorcist

text: Although the film is set in Washington, D.C., many interior scenes were shot in various parts of New York City. The MacNeil residence interiors were filmed at CECO Studios in Manhattan. Exteriors of the MacNeil house were filmed using a family home on 36th and Prospect in Washington, on the former site of E. D. E. N. Southworth's residence. A mansard roof was added to account for the scene in which Chris investigates the scratching noises in the attic.


title: The Exorcist

text: The scene where Father Karras listens to the tapes of Regan's dialogue was filmed in the basement of Keating Hall at Fordham University in the Bronx. where O'Malley, who plays Dyer, was an assistant professor of theology.


title: The Exorcist

text: The interior of Karras' room at Georgetown was a meticulous reconstruction of theology professor Father Thomas M. King's "corridor Jesuit" room in New North Hall. King's room was photographed by production staff after a visit by Blatty, a Georgetown graduate, and Friedkin. Back in New York, every element of King's room, including posters and books, was recreated, including a poster of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a theologian on whom Merrin was loosely based. Georgetown was paid a thousand dollars ($ in modern dollars) per day of filming. Locations on campus included both exteriors such as Burstyn's first scene, shot on the steps of the Flemish Romanesque Healy Hall, and interiors such as the defilement of the statue of the Virgin Mary in Dahlgren Chapel, and the Archbishop's office, actually the office of the university's president. One scene was filmed in The Tombs, a student hangout across from the steps.


title: The Exorcist

text: Roizman recalls the scenes in the chapel as the hardest interior to light outside of the house sets. In order to give it the same available-light look as the house interiors for an establishing shot that included the stained glass windows, it was necessary to rig it with 225-amp "Brute" arc lights on parallel mounts. "It was backbreaking work ... but the results were quite pleasing."


title: The Exorcist

text: The scenes where Merrin and Karras perform the exorcism were a great challenge to film. Following the novel, Friedkin wanted the bedroom set to be cold, cold enough that the actors' breath could be seen. A refrigeration system, which Friedkin describes as an air conditioning system powerful enough for a restaurant, was installed at a cost of $50,000 ($ in modern dollars) that could lower the temperature within to , cold enough that a thin layer of snow fell within it one humid morning, so the characters' breath would be visible. Since the set lighting warmed the air, it could only remain cold enough for three minutes of filming at a time. It broke down frequently, and Friedkin was only able to complete five shots each day; the complete scene thus took a month to film, in continuity, the order they were written in the script.


title: The Exorcist

text: Originally it was hoped that the room would not have to be chilled to that point, but at just below freezing, while the actors' breath "was" visible, the filming equipment warmed the set enough to quickly negate that. Going down to worked, but according to Roizman Friedkin decided on the maximum in order to improve the actors' performance. "An actor on his knees for 15 minutes at 20 below zero is really going to feel cold. It worked out very well."


title: The Exorcist

text: Having gotten the actors' breath to appear, the next challenge was filming it. This required backlighting the actors, which while it is easy enough to do in still photography is much harder while filming a movie. "[W]ith the actors moving all the time, it got to be a bit difficult. It was always a matter of finding a place to hide the backlight and finding a way to keep it off of the actors", Roizman said.


title: The Exorcist

text: Blair wore green contact lenses meant to give her eyes a bestial appearance for scenes where Regan is possessed. To accentuate them, the crew used a soft light with its barn doors nearly closed to throw a narrow strip of light across her eyes. "It's probably a 75 mm lens, because we used that a lot", Friedkin recalls.


title: The Exorcist

text: It was easier to film some of the other supernatural manifestations, such as the bed rocking and the curtains blowing, in Regan's room since the walls and ceiling of the set were wild, or capable of being moved to accommodate a camera, until the scene where the ceiling cracks and it was necessary to use a hard one afterwards. The scene where Regan levitates as the priests chant "The power of Christ compels you!", for which a hole was cut in the ceiling for the rig to go through, was the most challenging. the Blair wore a bodysuit under her nightgown to which hooks for monofilament wires had been attached.


title: The Exorcist

text: Roizman said that while he had filmed similar scenes many times in television commercials, painting the wires to match the background so they would not show on camera was difficult on "The Exorcist" because of the changes in background. "We had to practically paint them frame by frame", he told the magazine. While most directors would have been satisfied to use editing to smooth out the scene, Friedkin wanted it in longer takes. So effective was that painting that, when Friedkin returned to the film to prepare it for optical media release in the late 2000s, he found it unnecessary to apply any digital editing to that scene.


title: The Exorcist

text: Friedkin decided that he did not want any scenes in the movie to have "any kind of spooky lights that you typically saw in horror films." So all the lights in the bedroom come from a visible source. This was challenging because at one point one of the lamps lighting it falls on the floor; changing the way it had to be lit to preserve the impression of available light. At other times they flicker and dim, supposedly due to Pazuzu's influence. Lastly, at the end of the sequence, Friedkin wanted the lighting's mood to change, to "have an ethereal quality—a very soft, glowing, cool sort of thing" without any apparent change in its sources. "We tried, at that point, to work with absolutely no shadows in the room, using just bounce light—and I think we achieved the correct overall effect."


title: The Exorcist

text: Since it was so necessary to hide the lights with such a small room and so many people in it both on and off camera, Roizman and his crew mostly used "inkies", small incandescent bulb lights usually used to accentuate objects within the frame, "hidden wherever we could find a place for one. We were constantly controlling them with dimmers, so that if someone got too close to one, we'd take it down." He recalls his gaffer at one point controlling four of them; as a joke he put sheet music in front of the man one day. Due to the low light used, it was necessary to use wide aperture settings in most of the interiors, not just Regan's room. "I shot 90 percent of the picture wide open, as usual."


title: The Exorcist

text: The room's color scheme also worked to create the impression of black and white. The walls were a gray taupe, Regan's bedding a neutral beige, and the priests wore black. White, according to Roizman, would have been too dominant. "In toning everything down like this, the only real color in the room became the skin tones—an effect which I personally like very much", he said. "This sequence has an almost black and white feeling; yet, there is subtle color there."


title: The Exorcist

text: Father Merrin's arrival scene was filmed on Max von Sydow's first day on set. The scene where he steps out of a cab and stands in front of the MacNeil residence, silhouetted in a misty streetlamp's glow and staring up at a beam of light from a bedroom window, is one of the most famous scenes in the movie, used for film posters and home media release covers. It was inspired by René Magritte's 1954 painting "Empire of Light" ("L'Empire des lumières").


title: The Exorcist

text: Friedkin wanted to evoke visually the language Blatty used in the novel for this scene, likening Merrin to "a melancholy traveler frozen in time", standing next to a streetlight in the fog when he gets out of the cab. He gave the crew a full day to light the scene, using mainly arc lights and tripod-mounted "troopers", and boosting the brightness of the existing streetlamps. "After a great deal of trial and error, we filmed on the second night."


title: The Exorcist

text: Roizman said of all the nighttime exterior shots in the film, Merrin's arrival was "the trickiest". In order to get the beam of light the way Friedkin wanted it, the crew had to take the window frame out of the facade they had attached to the house for filming, put it behind the window and then put the spotlight in between the window and frame. "[I]t was difficult to get that bright of a glow from a shaded window and we also had to hold a fog effect all the way down the street", Roizman said. "Of course—wouldn't you know—just as we were ready to shoot, the wind came up, which made it more difficult to keep the fog settled in." By working quickly, he and the camera crew were able to get the shot, with Friedkin finding the first take satisfactory. At the time Roizman recounted this, the film had not yet been released and, based on dailies he had seen during production (which he allowed were not shown under the best possible conditions), he might have overlit the scene out of fear of missing detail. "However, with proper printing, I'm sure it will come out dark enough."


title: The Exorcist

text: The scenes where the possessed Regan's head rotates 180 degrees so that she appears to be looking directly backwards drew significant notice from audiences and critics when the film was released. "All I can tell you is that the way you think I did it is not the way we did it," Friedkin told "Castle of Frankenstein" at the time. Today it is known that that scene, like others in the film, relied on effects performed live in front of the camera rather than added in post-production. A life-size animated dummy of the character was built, one so realistic that Blair felt uncomfortable in its presence.


title: The Exorcist

text: Special effects supervisor Marcel Vercoutere built the dummy, primarily of latex based on casts of Blair's body, with help from makeup artist Dick Smith. They tested its realism by putting it in the front seat of a New York City taxicab and, when enough people were looking, turning the head. They had given the dummy's face the capability to move and appear to speak, even adding a condom so its throat would bulge when speaking, but it still did not quite look real in the bedroom set. Then Roizman noted that unlike the other characters in the scene, it did not exhale, so its breath was not visible in the chilled air, and a tube was added for simulated breathing, which produced the requisite clouds of vapor.


title: The Exorcist

text: The scene where the possessed Regan masturbates with a crucifix was filmed with Dietz playing the character since Blair was too young. To make it seem bloody, she struck it against a sponge soaked in stage blood that had been taped to her stomach. Dietz and Friedkin had a lengthy discussion before filming it about exactly how she was to move her arm. "[H]is method wasn't correct, well, anatomically speaking", she recalls. "We had this long discussion about the right way to jerk off and I showed him why a woman has to churn her wrist [more than a man does]."


title: The Exorcist

text: As they were arguing about this, a photographer visiting the set was taking pictures of the two of them. When Friedkin saw this, he went over to the photographer, removed their film from the camera, and tore it up, then cleared the set so the two could consider the sensitive discussion privately. Dietz was appreciative of this display of control on his part. "He knew how to create an environment where horror actors would be at their best."


title: The Exorcist

text: "This particular scene is the most thought about and talked about scene for the obvious reason that it programs two things that are generally not programmed up-front in the human mind ... sex and religion", Friedkin said at the time. It lasts only 50 seconds, yet to many viewers seems much longer, he noted. He had filmed much more, but ultimately decided, on his own without previewing it or consulting anyone, that it was about "how much I could take". While other directors might have used more (he joked that Russ Meyer might have made it the entire movie), "to me, it was worth about 50 seconds."


title: The Exorcist

text: The angiography scene, in which a needle is inserted into Regan's neck and spurts blood, as Blair undergoes the steps of the actual procedure, caused audiences the most discomfort, according to Blatty, who himself admitted he never watched it when viewing the film. "I've learned over the years that [it's] the most terrifying scene", Friedkin said in 2015. "Medical science impinging upon the innocence of this little girl. Which is more disturbing than the demon."


title: The Exorcist

text: It has been criticized as "unappetizing", the film's "most needless scene", and "revolting". British comedian Graeme Garden, who has a medical degree, agreed the scene was "genuinely disturbing" in his review for the "New Scientist"; he called it "the really irresponsible feature of this film".


title: The Exorcist

text: "The camera pointedly does not "express" the horror of Regan's experience with modern medicine, it only "records" it, allowing the audience to take away from it what it will", writes critic John Kenneth Muir of this scene in "Horror Films of the 1970s". "In some ways, the hospital interlude is the most terrifying scene in the film because it looks, sounds and feels totally real ... For a time, it is medicine that possesses Regan, not the Devil, it seems."


title: The Exorcist

text: In a 2021 article in the journal "History of the Human Sciences", Amy C. Chambers of Manchester Metropolitan University similarly observes that "[t]he medical space is made spectacular and horrific in "The Exorcist" not through the presentation of Regan's behaviour or the demon, but through the clinical nature of her treatment and how this is communicated through shots and sound." She quotes Finnish media professor Frans Ilkka Mäyrä on how the scientific suggests the spiritual here: "The violent movements and noises of arteriographic machinery reach diabolical dimensions. The names of medication gain occult resonances: "Ritalin", "Librium"."


title: The Exorcist

text: Medical professionals have described the scene as a realistic depiction of the procedure. It is also of historical interest in the field, as around the time of the film's release, radiologists had begun to stop using the carotid artery for the puncture (as they do in the film) in favor of a more distant artery. It has also been described as the most realistic depiction of a medical procedure in a popular film. In his 2012 commentary on the DVD release of the 2000 cut, Friedkin claimed that the scene was used as a training film for radiologists for years after the film's release.


title: The Exorcist

text: Roizman recalled the challenges of filming the scene in his "American Cinematographer" interview. It was shot with limited time available on a Saturday afternoon, in one of the actual rooms used for the procedure. "The space was cramped and there was really no room for rigging lighting equipment, so I decided to shoot the whole thing with available light, which, in this case, meant fluorescent light." Unlike most of the other interiors in the film, that was more than enough light to be adequate and he was able to use a narrower aperture. Roizman's crew changed the light bulbs in the hallways so they would be the same color as those in the examining room. He was so pleased with the resulting footage that, for a later scene shot at a medical complex on Long Island, where they had more space and control, they again used the existing fluorescent lighting with just some color correction filters in the camera and exterior light from the shades to compensate. "[T]here was virtually no correction necessary in the lab, and the results were the best that I've ever had with fluorescents."


title: The Exorcist

text: Stuntwoman Ann Miles performed the spider-walk scene in November 1972, after having practiced it for two weeks. Vercoutere had designed a special harness, but she did not need it; as a former college gymnast at Florida State she was already a skilled enough contortionist to do the scene on the first take. Friedkin cut it over Blatty's objection just prior to the premiere, since he thought it appeared too early in the film for such a drastic effect on Regan to be visible. Whether the scene had been shot at all was debated by fans for years afterwards—Friedkin denied having done so—until British critic Mark Kermode found the footage in Warners' archives while researching his book on the film in the mid-1990s. When he showed it to Friedkin, the director said he had probably forgotten filming the scene. It was restored to the 2000 director's cut, albeit with a "muddy, grainy" look that one critic said made the scene seem superfluous, using a different take showing Regan with blood flowing from her mouth.


title: The Exorcist

text: Miles was not credited. Websites devoted to the film during the early 21st century gave credit to another contortionist, Sylvia Hager, who had been credited after the 2000 re-release. This confusion may have arisen from Vercourtere's website, where he credited her and described the harness he had designed that she supposedly wore to make the scene possible. He blamed the inability to erase it from the film for its exclusion. Miles has recalled that in reality Hager, her lighting double, was unable to perform the scene even with the harness, which Vercourtere had hoped to bring to market afterwards. Since she was able to do the spider walk without it, she believes he left her out of his account for commercial reasons. The misidentification, Miles said in 2018, cost her jobs afterwards since some producers believed she was falsely taking credit for Hager's work. Since then, after the intercession of SAG, she has been properly credited.


title: The Exorcist

text: "The Exorcist" has several special effects, engineered by makeup artist Smith. In one scene from the film, Max von Sydow is actually wearing more makeup than Linda Blair, as Friedkin wanted some very detailed facial close-ups. At the time of shooting, von Sydow was 44, made up to look 30 years older. Many viewers did not realize he was made up at all, which Alan McKenzie calls "a tribute" to Smith; critic Pauline Kael, whose review of the film in "The New Yorker" was generally unfavorable, called it "one of the most convincing aging jobs I've ever seen" According to Friedkin, it took four hours to apply the makeup every morning. "Dick Smith just happens to be the best in the world", he says. He said that if there was a regular Academy Award for makeup, Smith would have received it.


title: The Exorcist

text: For the look of the possessed Regan, Friedkin and Smith drew their inspiration from the crucifix scene. If she had injured herself masturbating with it, they reasoned, it was likely that under Pazuzu's control she might also have deliberately scourged her face. "[So we] decided to have the makeup grow out of self-inflicted wounds to the face that become gangrenous so that there was an organic reason for the change in her facial features, which might certainly be demonic possession, or self-immolation", Friedkin later explained.


title: The Exorcist

text: A latex stomach was built for the scene where the words "HELP ME" appear to be written on the possessed Regan's body. The letters were scratched in, and then heated to make them disappear. This part of the process was filmed and then run backward in the edit so the letters seemed to be appearing in the finished film.


title: The Exorcist

text: The scene in which the demonic entity leaves Father Karras was originally achieved by filming Miller in possession makeup, then stopping the camera and shooting him again with makeup removed. This creates a noticeable jump in Karras' position as he is unpossessed. The 25th anniversary video smooths over the jumpy transition with a subtle computer morphing effect, an update was not featured in prints used for Warner's 75th anniversary at film festivals.


title: The Exorcist

text: Bud Smith, who had gotten to know Friedkin while he was working on "Putney Swope" and other films with Robert Downey Sr. during the production of "The French Connection", recalls Friedkin calling and asking him to work on "The Exorcist" after shooting was done. Friedkin had already hired three other editors (Jordan Leonduopoulos, credited as "supervising editor", Norman Gay and Evan Lottman), but told Smith he would be the lead editor. Seeing how much film there was to edit, he asked Friedkin if he could take one large rack of footage and try cutting it. It was the Iraq sequence at the beginning of the film, and after Friedkin disliked his first attempt, Smith worked through a weekend to recut the footage to a rhythm based on the sound of a blacksmith hammering an anvil near where Father Merrin is having his tea, a change that the director liked more.


title: The Exorcist

text: While working on the film, Smith also created a trailer for the film known as the "flash face" trailer. After starting with Merrin's arrival scene and a voiceover broadly explaining what is happening, it cuts to a montage of faces from various scenes in the film, still, all appearing in all-white against a black background, which quickly swells to almost all white and then fades back to nearly black, making a strobe-like effect, as tense string music plays, ending after almost a minute and a half with the title. Friedkin said in 2018 that Warners declined to use it as they feared it would scare audiences too much. He considers it the best trailer made for the film.


title: The Exorcist

text: In his tweet discussing this, Friedkin referred to Smith as "the film's editor", although the other three were credited. During principal photography, the editor then hired had never worked on a movie before and was forbidden from making any cuts to the raw footage. After shooting wrapped, he hired Lottman and closely supervised his work as he began editing. "It was all about power," Lottman said. "He wanted to be in control of the film." All four shared the Academy Award nomination the film received for its editing.


title: The Exorcist

text: Friedkin's final cut was 140 minutes long; despite his insistence that it was perfect, Warners insisted he trim the film to much closer to two hours to allow for more showings each day. Blatty was willing to fight for the whole film as it was, but over his objections Friedkin cut roughly 10–12 minutes. Some of the excluded scenes were among Blatty's favorites, including the original ending, with Dyer and Kinderman connecting and agreeing to go to the movies together at some point, and a scene where Karras and Merrin take a break from the exorcism and discuss the demon's motivation for possessing Regan on the MacNeil stairs. These scenes had been in Blatty's novel, and he believed that in the movie they made it clearer at the end that good had triumphed and what was at stake. Friedkin also cut the "spider-walk" scene early in the film, where the possessed Regan walks downstairs on her hands feet, her face looking upwards, and harasses her mother's guests.


title: The Exorcist

text: Special sound effects for the film were created by Ron Nagle, Doc Siegel, Gonzalo Gavira, and Bob Fine. Nagle spent two weeks recording animal sounds, including bees, dogs, hamsters, and pigs; these were incorporated into the multilayered mix of the demon's voice. Gavira achieved the sound effect of Regan's head rotating by twisting a leather wallet.


title: The Exorcist

text: Friedkin was personally involved in the sound mixing, which took four months. It was the last aspect of the film completed prior to release, finished only right before deadline. Jim Nelson, who Friedkin had hired to supervise the mixing, recalls the director being particularly demanding during this time, treating his then-girlfriend, who was among those assisting in the process, "like a dog". Nelson himself recalls going from "having a seven-year contract as his associate producer to the guy he hated most in the world—in two minutes" after Friedkin overheard him telling Calley on the phone that the sound editors were "basically finished". Friedkin also used the time to solicit opinions on sections of the film from anyone uninvolved, particularly one janitor in the building, and if he liked it, he decided that portion of the film was done.


title: The Exorcist

text: "The Exorcist" was also at the center of controversy due to its alleged use of subliminal imagery introduced as special effects during the production of the film. Wilson Bryan Key wrote a whole chapter on the film in his book "Media Sexploitation", alleging repeated use of subliminal and semi-subliminal imagery and sound effects. Key observed the use of the Pazuzu face (which Key assumed was Jason Miller in death mask makeup). He claimed that the safety padding on the bedposts was shaped to cast phallic shadows on the wall and that a skull face is superimposed into one of Father Merrin's breath clouds. Key also wrote much about the sound design, identifying the use of pig squeals, for instance, and giving his opinion of the subliminal intent.


title: The Exorcist

text: A detailed 1991 article in "Video Watchdog" examined the phenomenon, providing still frames with several uses of subliminal "flashing" throughout the film. Friedkin told the authors, "I saw subliminal cuts in a number of films before I ever put them in "The Exorcist", and I thought it was a very effective storytelling device ... The subliminal editing in "The Exorcist" was done for "dramatic" effect — to create, achieve, and sustain a kind of dreamlike state." In an interview for a 1999 book about the film, Blatty addressed the controversy by explaining that, "There are no subliminal images. If you can see it, it's not subliminal."


title: The Exorcist

text: The editing of the title sequence was the first major project for the film title designer Dan Perri. Friedkin had sought him out after seeing his work on "Electra Glide in Blue", before "The Exorcist" was even completed. "It took a long time to design the simplicity of what we wound up using due to experimenting as the film changed shape". Perri recalled. "As [Friedkin] was tightening and evolving the story it would affect how the opening took place."


title: The Exorcist

text: When Friedkin played for Perri the music he wanted to use over the opening titles, preceded by a brief pan from the MacNeil household, as the light goes out in Regan's room, to the street, then a brief shot of the head of the Virgin Mary statue in the chapel, that pushed the title designer further in the direction of having the titles be very simple. "On screen, the fewer the elements, the more important each becomes. So we're dealing with two elements: a screen that's black and type, the name of the film." The only other elements besides the title that had to be at the beginning of the film were the studio's name, and Blatty's and Friedkin's. The latter two were not on the best of terms at the time, according to Perri (Blatty had sued Friedkin and the studio almost two months before the film's release to make sure his name was included in the opening credits), which affected how he styled their names in the credits: "[Legally], their names had to be the same size but where Bill Blatty has three names, of course they had to be the same size." Perri first showed Friedkin a version in which both of them had their names in two-line stacks, but later changed it so Friedkin's name was on one line, to distinguish him slightly.


title: The Exorcist

text: For the words themselves Perri chose to keep the Weiss Initials typeface that had been used on the cover of Blatty's novel. The consensus among the filmmakers was that the words had to be red. But choosing an exact shade took some more time. "When it's exposed against black it tends to, what's called, bloom. It swells, it glows, it's very hard to control. I had to do a lot of exposure tests just to get the right red that wouldn't bloom."