‘Exorcist’ author
WILLIAM PETER BLATTY Jan. 7, 1928 - Jan. 12, 2017
Novelist and filmmaker William Peter Blatty, a former Jesuit school valedictorian who conjured a tale of demonic possession with the best-selling novel and Oscarwinning movie “The Exorcist,” has died. He was 89.
Mr. Blatty died Jan. 12 at a hospital in Bethesda, Md., where he lived, his widow, Julie Alicia Blatty, told the Associated Press. The cause of death was multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer, she said.
Inspired by an incident that unfolded in St. Louis and Washington, D.C., that Mr. Blatty had read about while in college, “The Exorcist” was published in 1971, followed two years later by the film of the same name. Mr. Blatty’s story of a 12year-old-girl inhabited by a satanic force spent more than a year on The New York Times fiction bestseller list and eventually sold more than 10 million copies. It reached a far wider audience through the movie version, directed by William Friedkin, produced and written by Mr. Blatty and starring Linda Blair as the young, bedeviled Regan.
“RIP William Peter Blatty, who wrote the great horror novel of our time,” Stephen King tweeted Friday. “So long, Old Bill.”
Even those who thought they had seen everything had never seen anything like the R-rated “The Exorcist” and its assault of vomit, blood, rotting teeth, ghastly eyes and whirlwind headspinning — courtesy of makeup and special effects maestro Dick Smith. Fans didn’t care that Vincent Canby of The New York Times found it a “chunk of elegant occultist claptrap,” or that the set burned down during production. They stood for hours in freezing weather for the winter release and kept coming even as the movie, with its omnipresent soundtrack theme, Mike Oldfield’s chilly, tingly “Tubular Bells,” cast its own disturbing spell.
From around the world came reports of fainting, puking, epileptic fits, audience members charging the screen and waving rosary beads, and, in England, a boy committing murder and blaming “The Exorcist.” The Rev. Billy Graham would allege that the film’s very celluloid was evil.
Named the scariest movie of all time by Entertainment Weekly, “The Exorcist” topped $400 million worldwide at the box office, among the highest at the time for an R-rated picture. Oscar voters also offered rare respect for a horror film: “The Exorcist” was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and received two, for best sound and Mr. Blatty’s screenplay. Imitations, parodies and sequels were inevitable, whether the Leslie Nielsen spoof “Repossessed”; the four subsequent “Exorcist” movies (only one of which, “The Exorcist III,” involved Mr. Blatty) or a stage version performed in 2012 at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles.
"When I was writing the novel I thought of it as a super-natural detective story, and to this day I cannot recall having a conscious intention to terrifying anybody, which you may take, I suppose, as an admission of failure on an almost stupefying scale,” Mr. Blatty told The Huffington Post in 2011.
Mr. Blatty returned to the “Exorcist” setting in "Legion,” which he adapted into “The Exorcist III.” He also revised a novel from the 1960s, “Twinkle, Twinkle, ‘Killer Kane’”; renamed it “The Ninth Configuration” and wrote and directed a 1980 film version that brought Mr. Blatty a Golden Globe for best screenplay. In 2011, he worked in a new scene for a reissue of the 1971 novel, originally acquired by Bantam Books for a reported $250,000. More recently, Fox announced it would revive the story as a TV series, starring Geena Davis.
Mr. Blatty was married four times and had eight children.
“He was an absolutely wonderful, kind, generous, faith-filled man, and I was very blessed to be his wife,” Ms. Blatty said.