In writing your story of your movie career you can go the Klaus Kinski route by including sex (which is to say the madness, fever, longing and heartache) or you can go the William Friedkin route and wait until approximately page 400 to mention that you have three ex-wives and then not even name them and then barely mention your current wife of 20 years, and generally ignore that aspect of your life entirely and just focus on the work.

Which is fine. I’m not sure I’d ever want to read stories about Freidkin doing Kelly Lange or Lesley Anne Down or Jeanne Moreau on a beach in Maui anyway. On top of which there there was only one Klaus Kinski. (To which some might say “thank God.”) In all the times I’ve listened to him address a live crowd, Friedkin has never been one to blurt out random confessions. He’s always been a guy who tells the tale that he wants to tell, no more and no less, exactly.

I’ve pasted two excerpts from Scott Foundas‘s Film Comment review of Friedkin’s book, “The Friedkin Connection,” which streets in mid April.

William Friedkin directing The French Connection sometime in the winter of ’71 with Gene Hackman and Fernando Rey.