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The recent passing of film director William Friedkin, and a tweet I stumbled across, brought back a memory of seeing his film Sorcerer (1977) more than 40 years ago. Of course, Friedkin’s most famous films were The French Connection and The Exorcist, but there were many others in addition. However, my experience of watching this film had a unique aspect to it, and I want to tell the story of what happened at that screening.
First, a brief description of the film. Sorcerer is a remake of a French film entitled Le Salaire de la peur (The Wages of Fear) (1953). It’s the story of four desperate men from various parts of the world who are hiding in South America. When an oil well in the oil field where they’re working catches fire, they volunteer to drive unstable nitroglycerine across many miles of bad or nonexistent roads in order to put out the fire. They are promised large sums of money if they succeed, and they imagine they can rebuild their lives with that money. The film itself is the most suspenseful film I have ever seen, bar none, to the point of absurdity. You’re watching these trucks bouncing around on potholed dirt roads in driving wind and rain just waiting for them to blow up. Seriously, this one goes to eleven. One thing I never understood, though, is why the film was called “Sorcerer.” There is no sorcerer, no magic, nothing occult at all. The title of the original French film is far more descriptive of the story.
The film starts with the backstories of the four men, explaining why they need to take such extreme measures to go into hiding. It was one of these backstories in which my moment occurs. A gang member in New Jersey (played by Roy Scheider) is involved in the killing of the brother of a powerful mafioso, who is determined to kill said gang member. Here is where I bring in the relevant tweet. The point of the tweet’s poster is the sudden transition Friedkin makes from New Jersey to South America, where the rest of the story takes place. Watch it:
I saw this film with a couple of friends in 1979 or 1980 at a screening on the campus of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. While my friends were students at Hopkins, I was not. I was attending what was then called Towson State University several miles north of Hopkins. Towson was far further down the academic food chain from Hopkins, but much cheaper. My friends were themselves native Baltimoreans, which is rare for Hopkins students. Most of the student body at Hopkins come from other places and pay dearly for the privilege, even in those days. Going back now 45 years, Baltimore had a reputation of being America’s biggest small town (Y’hear that Jason Aldean?). There was not much in the way of culture or nightlife in the city, and these rich, privileged students at Hopkins weren’t shy about complaining they were living in the world’s biggest Podunk. (This situation has improved greatly in the intervening years, what with the opening of the National Aquarium, Harborplace, and various other new tourist attractions starting in the early 1980s. Further, with filmmakers like Barry Levinson and John Waters setting their films in their hometown of Baltimore, and giving an honest portrayal of life in the city, people began to consider Baltimore to being a cool, if quirky, place to visit, or even live.)
So the scene featured in the tweet comes on. So, Roy Scheider asks his friend what he needs to do to get away so he won’t get murdered, the actor opposite him starts saying “Get a train down to Baltimore...” and the entire audience erupts in laughter. “Yeah, come to Baltimore—they’ll NEVER find you here!” It was impossible to hear the rest of the dialog in that scene. Then comes the cut to the South American local and its scenes of third-world poverty, and again the audience laughs long and hard. While I’ll admit that, then and now, there are parts of Baltimore that are not terribly distant from third-world poverty, the city really didn’t deserve this kind of disrespect. It wasn’t until I played the scene in this tweet that I actually heard the dialog that I missed 43 years ago.
So that was my weird little moment, prompted by William Friedkin’s passing. If I hadn’t stumbled on that tweet, I probably wouldn’t have remembered it.
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