NEW FEATURE! Plus Toronto talk, picks, more
William Friedkin on Tangerine Dream and SORCERER - from the archives - plus the latest Last Thing I Saw podcast
Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,
Welcome back! This week I have a fun new feature to share: Bonus Track. It’s a brief excerpt from my interview archives. I might rename it, I don’t know. Anyway, I’m starting with William Friedkin, the director of The French Connection, who passed away in August.
Scroll down and have a read! And if you like this new feature, let me know, share, subscribe, give your cat a pat from me, etc. Don’t want to be wasting your time with interviews unless you, my wonderful readership, feel like reading them!
Thank you to all the supporters of The Last Thing I Saw, who bring sunshine to our rainy days.
Your cherubic host,
Nic
THE PODCAST
Toronto 2023 with Mark Asch: The Boy and the Heron, His Three Daughters, Silver Dollar Road, Lee starring Kate Winslet
Mark Asch is a critic for multiple publications and the author of Close-Ups: New York Movies.
Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are also available at other podcast places such as Spotify.
BONUS TRACK
[Quotes from interviews I have done. Here’s William Friedkin on Tangerine Dream and Sorcerer. Friedkin’s final film, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, opens in October.]
“In 1974 I was on a tour of Europe that included Germany for The Exorcist. While I was there, somebody told me about this group, I didn’t even know what their name was. It was extraordinary new music, synthesizer-driven, and they were playing a concert somewhere in the Black Forest.
We drove out there to an abandoned church, there were several hundreds of people, and the concert started at midnight. These three guys came out, there was no lights in the church, there was no lighting of any kind on the band. I thought, this was very strange. They basically played one long piece of music that was sort of a combination of Jimi Hendrix and Stockhausen. It was very fresh to my ears. They played this one long improvisational piece that went on for like two hours. The sound was amazing.
The whole notion of the film I later made came that evening. I started to see the images of the movie that ultimately became Sorcerer. I spoke to them and asked them if they would be interested in doing a film which I hadn’t even written yet...I actually edited a lot of the film to the tempo of this music.
I did something similar with two guys who called themselves Wang Chung. They did the score for To Live and Die in L.A. I liked their sound and told them, ‘I got a script coming, here’s what the movie is, write me some music.’”
—WILLIAM FRIEDKIN INTERVIEWED BY NICOLAS RAPOLD
RECENT WORK
For The New York Times, I critic-picked The Trial, a gripping account of Argentina’s 1985 trials of their military junta. I also reviewed Neither Confirm Nor Deny, an upbeat documentary about a nutty CIA mission.
For W Magazine, I interviewed the incredible collective Soda Jerk about Hello Dankness (now playing at Film Forum—catch it while you can!) and their work generally. I’ve wanted to write about Soda Jerk for a while—quite happy this is out in the world now.
THIS CRITIC’S PICKS
Other People’s Children (MUBI)
Coogan’s Bluff (Criterion) Far out
Innocence (MUBI)
Cocote (Criterion) I ran a feature on this back in the day after interviewing the director in Locarno. Glad to see it resurfacing. Heady brew
Cat People (HBO MAX)
THE END
Here I may end with a song.
ABOUT ME
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold.
Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer and an editor. My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The New York Times, Screen Slate, Sight & Sound, Filmmaker, Air Mail, The Los Angeles Times, and W Magazine. (Plus dearly departed publications such as The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) For notes on my superfun programming experience, drop me a line.
On the editorial side, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was in editorial for 15 years in all. There I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.
Feel free to get in touch re: writing, editing, moderating, programming, podcasting, etc.
nicolas.rapold@gmail.com