Poor Billy

Is there anyone sadder to look at than William Friedkin?

Seriously. Man goes out in the 70s and makes some bona-feeday classics (The French Connection, The Exorcist), but then his ego gets Olympian and his new habit becomes shooting himself in the foot (Sorcerer), over (Deal of the Century) and over (The Guardian) and over (Rampage) and over (Jade) again. (Okay, The Hunted wasn't bad. It wasn't very good, either.)

Now that his wife isn't running Paramount he can't get much of anything off the ground, and the only time you ever hear about him is when he pops up on some random DVD featurettes and/or commentary tracks. The ubiquitous credit "William Friedkin -- Director, The French Connection and The Exorcist" is presumably there to show us that his opinion is well-informed. But it comes off like he's yanking strings just to keep himself in front of someone's camera... anyone's camera.

And now he's pulling a Lucas and futzing with the color scheme of The French Connection for its new BD release. The tech side of this is pretty interesting -- according to Glenn Kenny it "involves first oversaturating and hence de-focusing the color, then reverting to black-and-white, and then 'mixing' the two resultant images" -- but to this guy here, he's stirring the pot for no reason other than because he can.

The man's got mad skills, and cojones like watermelons, but he's starting to become like a Jack-in-the-box that won't go back in.