William Peter Blatty had approached many major studies with his script for 'The Exorcist' and was promptly rejected. A film about possession, involving a young girl being invaded by somethng horrible and-most shockingly of all-masturbating with a crucifix. Could blasphemy and demonic acts ever be seen on screen without some sort of outrage? The rejections from the majro studios all proved one thing to Blatty; they were too scared. Not of the content, but of how to handle the movie.
Finally, Warners bought the
rights to the novel and the search was on to find a director to film 
Blatty's
screenplay. Blatty wanted William Friedkin, after seeing The French
Connection but the studio wanted someone a little more established.
Blatty fought and eventually got his way. Friedkin agreed to direct
after reading the novel and becoming fascinated by it. For the leading
roles Blatty had suggested many of his friends, but Friedkin nixed that
idea. Ellen Burstyn was cast as Chris MacNeill, Linda Blair (right,
with Friedkin), a child model at the time, came on board to play regan
after months of auditions organised by Friedkin to see how stable the girl
was. The casting of Kinderman, as far as Friedkin was concerned,
was a foregone conclusion: Lee J. Cobb was perfect for the role.
Max Von Sydow was signed on for the same reason. For Sydow, brought
up on Scandinavian Folk tales that showed the devil to be a 'loser' it
was an interesting role to play. For the role of the doubting Father
Karras, Jason Miller was cast.
Filming
began in late 1972. Exterior scenes would be shot in Georgetown,
Washington and New York, while the interior scenes of would be shot entirely
in New York's Ceco Studios. It was not to be an easy shoot.
Problems were rife throughout. Blatty and Friedkin were often at
odds with each other about how things should go and about the film in general.
Friedkin was prone to the odd temper tantrum and threatened to walk out
several times. At one point, he challenged Blatty to fire him. Blatty
did so but Friedkin returned after lawyers pointed out that Blatty had
no legal right to fire Friedkin.
Things would not go easy on the actors too. Blatty's obsession for realism meant acctress Ellen Burstyn severely wrenched her spine when the director advised an effects guy to yank a wire designed to pull her just that little bit harder. Blair was faced with having to spout pages of bad language...at the tender age of twelve! Jason Miller became agitated at Friedkin's habit of firing guns on set.
The special effects would prove a bigger problem. To make Regan's room look cold, Friedkin wanted the actor's breath to condense, so the room was refrigerated overnight. The crew returned the following day to find a thin layer of snow on the set.
Of course it wasn't all problems on set. Spectacular and cutting edge (for their day) effects were achieved by the crew. These included Regan's head spinning, acheived by a lifelike mechanical dummy created by special effects man Marcel Voceateure (sic?), projectile vomiting using a device created by Dick Smith, a spiderwalk never used in the film and of course the levitation, created by suspending Blair from piano wires.
The first cut of the film, with the lost scenes retained but without the spiderwalk, was shown to Blatty with a running time of 146 minutes. Blatty loved it. But Friedkin still wasn't happy and so set about trimming scenes he felt slowed the film down (see The Lost Scenes section). The final cut ran in at 2 hours.
The film was released on December 26, 1973 to a response described in The Inspiration area of this site. The missing scenes may soon be reinstated...