The Exorcist with Marlena Williams

The Exorcist turns 50 this week, so we invited Marlena Williams, author of Night Mother: A Personal and Cultural History of the Exorcist, to come tell us about the little possession movie that changed America forever. Was the set cursed by Satan himself, or plain old 70s misogyny? What makes a country going through a cultural upheaval embrace stories about the Devil? And—the most critical question of all—do Ouija boards really cause possession? 

You can find Marlena online here.
You can buy the book here.

This episode was produced by Carolyn Kendrick.

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Transcript

Sarah: She wanted National Velvet and she got The Exorcist.

Good evening. Welcome to You’re Wrong About. I'm Sarah Marshall, and on this winter's night we are talking about The Exorcist. We have already done an episode about exorcisms, which I encourage you to listen to. Specifically, it's about how they're easier to get than you might think. 

But this week, our episode is about the whole over the top cultural phenomenon that was The Exorcist. First, the novel by William Peter Blatty. And then the movie, by William Friedkin, which it is pretty safe to say changed us in more ways than we perhaps wanted to admit. My amazing guest for this episode is Marlena Williams, who is the author of the new essay collection Night Mother, a personal and cultural history of the Exorcist.

You may or may not know, the Exorcist came out December 26, 1973. Incredible timing, in my opinion. So we are now celebrating its half century anniversary. And this is a movie that, as you might imagine, is also very important to me in my life, in my ongoing obsession with the Satanic Panic, a.k.a. the reason I began doing this show at all in many ways.

The Exorcist is famously a horror movie. We'll be talking about its content and its themes in some detail. So that may or may not be the right speed for you today. But I also want to make sure you know that you don't have to be into horror movies. You don't have to ever want to see this movie to be interested in its themes. And I think often having that friend who tells you about the media you don't want to consume so that you can learn about what people are thinking about is fun and useful. And I would love to be that friend for you. 

And if you still want some more conventional Christmas fare, we have got a You're Wrong About audiobook original of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol over on Patreon and Apple+ subscriptions. I read it myself and I had a really great time. 

So if you still want to roast some chestnuts and listen to something about Tiny Tim, we've got you covered there, too. So thank you so much for being here. Happy New Year in advance. Happy travels, happy long walks. Thank you for spending the year with us. Thank you for everything.

Welcome to Your Wrong About, Christmas edition. And we are talking, of course, today about The Exorcist. And we are talking about The Exorcist with Marlena Williams. Hi! 

Marlena: Hello! Hello! 

Sarah: I'm so happy to have you here. I'm so happy we're talking about demonic possession. It just feels so right.

Marlena: It really does. Yes. The Exorcist is a low-key Christmas movie. 

Sarah: And today there are so many demon movies that are really a staple of the horror genre, and I think they're all descended from The Exorcist in one way or another, but none of them are trying to get Oscars. 

Marlena: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's what makes The Exorcist a really good movie. An interesting movie because it's a horror movie, but it's also a product of this early 1970s new Hollywood filmmaking. And I don't think William Friedkin, the director, or William Peter Blatty, the screenwriter, really even envisioned it as a horror movie. That sounds crazy, but there you go.

But yeah, I think William Friedkin wanted to make a movie that was going to be just as good as. Anything Coppola and Scorsese were doing, and William Peter Blatty wanted to make a movie that was going to convert some people. It's a horror movie, but the intentions behind it were a little more than that. 

Sarah: So in terms of why we're talking to you here on this beautiful Christmas Exorcist episode, what is your relationship to the Exorcist, and have you written a book about it recently by chance? 

Marlena: Yes. My relationship with the Exorcist really stems from my mother's relationship with the movie. So my mom saw the movie when it premiered in 1973. She was raised quite conservative, quite Catholic, and so her mom was just like don't see this sacrilegious movie. And of course everyone was going to see it, so my mom snuck out of the house and saw it with her friend and was really deeply terrified by it. You know, I don't know if she was one of the people who was crying or fainting or any of that, but she was so scared of it that 20 years later when she had me, she was telling me the story about how scared she was. 

The Exorcist was always just a story she would tell me. And I accidentally saw a really short clip from the movie when I was a kid, probably when I was six or seven. It really freaked me out too, really messed me up. I also did not sleep for days on end. And yeah, it really disturbed me even though I just saw a 10-second clip. 

And so after my mom died when I was 18, I wanted to look back on the movie and try to understand why exactly it scared her so much, why exactly it scared me so much, and why exactly it unsettled and scared the culture so much. So I did write a book about it. And the book is Nightmother: A Personal and Cultural History of the Exorcist. 

Sarah: And it's such a beautifully written book as well. And I feel like that's such a big part of the experience is that you're not just getting into the history and ideas and kind of sociology behind it, but really it's almost how people, I feel like, forget that Elvis was a really good singer.

The Exorcist is really a beautifully made, beautifully crafted movie, and I think that's a big part of what makes it so unsettling and pervasive. And I feel like you've written a piece of art to answer the original piece of art. 

Marlena: It seems like everyone has a story about it. I'm actually curious about what your relationship to The Exorcist is, but from writing this book and from talking to people about this book and doing a little bit of press around the book, everyone has a story about when they saw The Exorcist or why they've never seen The Exorcist.

Sarah: It's funny also to think about my relationship to this movie through my mom, because I feel like there is such a sort of often a matrilineal thing in terms of horror media. Where pieces of media become rites of passage that you're warned against, but then also you measure yourself against your mother by experiencing them.

And that my mom being the very contrary person that she is, I feel like she did not find The Exorcist particularly scary, except for the scene when they're doing all these tests to try and rule out demons and determine what else it can be. She goes in for these very painful, invasive medical tests, including something where they draw a bunch of blood. I think they might do a spinal tap. And that was the part that was the only part of the movie that bothered her. 

Marlena: Apparently that part of the movie was one of the scenes that actually is noted for disturbing a lot of people. Which is interesting because we assume it's the head spinning around, the projectile vomiting, the masturbating with the crucifix, but a lot of people reported being very… 

Sarah: But hey, some of us do that by choice now. That's millennial culture. 

Marlena: Right! And what scares us, perhaps, is there's something wrong with your body. You don't know what it is, and you have to just submit yourself to medicine, which can be quite a barbaric, brutal, process. 

Sarah: And they do the classic doctor understatement thing, too. I love this. They always do this. They're like, “You're going to feel a little pinch”, and then they plunge a giant needle into her neck. And I think that it might be more than, I'm sure they used a local. I hope they used a local. But it's, come on you guys, don't lie to the girl. 

Marlena: So true. And I think, in our cultural understanding of The Exorcist, if you haven't seen it before, or you haven't seen it in a while, is that it's this movie about a 12-year-old little girl who gets possessed by the devil. But, there's a lot more going on in the movie than that. There's the medical aspect, there's the parent/child aspect, there's the crisis of faith aspect that the priests are going through. 

Sarah: Yeah, the hot priest aspect. 

Marlena: Yeah, definitely. It must be said. Yes. 

Sarah: Pretty hot priest. 

Marlena: Yeah, Max von Sydow, who plays the other priest. There's Father Karras, who is the hot priest I think you're referring to. And then Max von Sydow is the slightly older, kind of more haggard Exorcist, but he's pretty hot too without all the…

Sarah: The added old rose makeup that he's wearing.

Marlena: Yes. And so maybe that's actually a good place to start, the overall narrative of The Exorcist.

Sarah: Yeah. I  would love that. 

Marlena: Because the exorcism that inspired The Exorcist was actually of a little boy, not of a little girl. Which is really interesting as a change. But yeah, so do you want to get into the narrative of The Exorcist? 

Sarah: I would love that. Yeah. And for us to maybe start with, the book comes out and I've read the book. And I have to say I found it to be quite bad. What are your thoughts?

Marlena: Yes. I also agree that the book isn't that good. The book, it's been several years since I've read it. I remember the book being pretty similar to the movie. Probably because William Peter Blatty wrote the novel, and he wrote the screenplay. So you know, he didn't want to change his masterpiece too much.

Sarah: When does this book come out? And is it part of the promotion for it that it's based on a true story? 

Marlena: Yeah. So the book comes out in 1971, I believe, written by William Peter Blatty, and inspired by a story he read in the Washington Post in 1949. The headline of that is, Priest Frees Mount Rainier Boy Reportedly Held in Devil's Grip. This is the story of a possession in a major newspaper. 

Sarah: The word ‘reportedly’ is really doing a lot of work. 

Marlena: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, so the first sentence actually is funny. It says, “In what is perhaps one of the most remarkable experiences of its kind in recent religious history, a 14-year-old Mount Rainier boy has been freed by a Catholic priest of possession by the devil, Catholic sources reported yesterday.” 

Sarah: It's okay. Whatever. 

Marlena: Yeah. Yeah, that article recounts this story of alleged possession. It's pretty boilerplate possession, if you ask me. I haven't read too much about the history of, stories of possession, but it's the story of a young boy living in a suburb of Washington, DC. who slowly is overtaken by the devil. 

It began with his parents hearing scratching and dripping sounds in the attic. But they dismissed that as rats. But then the signs of something else going on just got worse and worse. He started screaming, the little boy started screaming, cursing. I guess he had a knowledge of Latin even though he’d never taken a Latin class. Talking a lot about priests and nuns having sex.

Sarah: Was this child Catholic, by the way?

Marlena: I believe they were Lutheran. 

Sarah: Okay.  Because if he were Catholic, I would be like, no knowledge of Latin? If he's going to church, he knows at least some. 

Marlena: True. I don't know how much Latin is in Lutheran masses. But the way the possessions typically start out, maybe there's some other explanation for it, such as rats in the attic, but eventually more supernatural things start happening. Reports of mattresses flying across the room, an armchair just toppling over for no reason, these gross, foul odors filling the bedroom. 

Sarah: It is an adolescent boy in there. 

Marlena: Exactly. Yeah. Gross, foul odors, the cursing, screaming, talking about sex between priests and nuns. 

Sarah: There's so much behavior you can't get away with unless you're possessed, is one of the problems. 

Marlena: Very good point, yeah. But yeah, so at first the parents, after accepting that maybe something bad was going on with their son, took him to the Georgetown Hospital and the hospital in St. Louis where they had some family. And then after those doctors couldn't provide any explanation for what was going on, they turned to a Lutheran minister who tried to figure it out. And eventually the Lutheran minister was like, I can't handle this, you need to bring in the big guns, you need to bring in a Catholic.

They consulted a Catholic priest, who apparently was successful. And eventually, after two months of constant work with the boy, was able to free him of the devil. And so that's the basic story that was reported in the Washington Post, and that William Peter Blatty read when he was living in Washington, DC in 1949, attending Georgetown. 

Sarah: Wow. And then he just kept it in mind for 20 years. 

Marlena: Exactly. Yeah, he was Catholic. So he was born in New York to two parents who were Lebanese immigrants. And he was born in 1929. His dad left when he was eight years old, and he was raised by his mother, who was a very devout Catholic and raised in what he calls ‘comfortable destitution’. He says they made their money from his mom selling jelly in the streets. 

Yeah, he didn't do anything with it right away. He had a bit of a quixotic twenties and thirties. He was in the Air Force for a little bit, working for the Psychological Warfare Division, which I don't really know what they do. I guess it's spies. 

Sarah: The Exorcist is some sort of psychological warfare as well, that would teach you how to write a horror novel, maybe. 

Marlena: Yeah. 

Sarah: Just, I don't know. The writing to me is just clunky in a way that makes it hard to get through. But the basic premise of the book is clearly there's something about it. And it's always so interesting. When something comes out that people disagree on having quality or being any good or pundits, I think, often describing media like this in the tone of oh, no, it's embarrassing that this is what so many people are responding to. I don't like this, but all we can do is accept that Fifty Shades of Grey, The Macarena, Tamagotchis… God I loved my Tamagotchi. I raised a Tamagotchi to maturity, and I feel proud of that still. But the stuff that comes along where it's like, there's just some kind of primal pull towards it that we just have to accept. It really feels like The Exorcist is one of those things.

Marlena: Yeah. He knew what was going to strike a chord with people.

Sarah: Perhaps. And maybe because it had struck a chord with him. Because I think any story you remember for that long, it sticks to you in a way that means that maybe it's going to be sticky for other people. 

Marlena: Yeah, yeah. It must have been, because yeah, it stayed in his mind for literally 20 years.

I guess he moved to Los Angeles and wanted, it seemed, to be working in Hollywood, or at least working as a writer. But he had to work full-time in another job. And he tells the story of going onto a game show called You Bet Your Life. It all went very well for William Peter Blatty, because he won $10,000.

Sarah: Oh my god. Which is how much money back then?

Marlena: Enough for him to quit working and devote his life to writing. 

Sarah: And if you won $10,000 today, you'd be like, “Great, now I get to pay off the debt from getting four stitches.” 

Marlena: Yeah, so this was pretty, I think it was a lot of money for the ‘60s. And so he starts writing full time, writing screenplays, writing novels.

I think everything he's written is really funny because he really likes putting punctuation marks in the titles of his movies and books. His memoir is called, Which Way to Mecca, Jack? He wrote a novel called, John Goldfarb, comma, Please Come Home, exclamation point! That's another screenplay called, What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? They're very declarative, inquisitive titles. 

Sarah: I wish that The Exorcist was like, Get Out Of Her, comma, Demon Boy, exclamation point! 

Marlena: Yeah. They're mostly comedic, spy thrillers in there. I think he wrote one of the Pink Panther movies. So he's pretty successful, but he's not having any runaway hits.

In 1967 his mom dies, and he was very close to his mom all throughout his life. And this kind of throws him into a crisis of faith and a period of reflecting on his past. And for whatever reason, he thinks about that Washington Post story he read in 1949. And you know, I've been thinking about it, but for years and years. But after my mom died, he says he finally decided to turn it into a book. 

So he writes The Exorcist. The Exorcist novel was originally published, very sluggish sales, no one really was buying it. I think there's some stories of bookstores returning it because no one was buying it. But then he got invited on the Dick Cavett show. He wasn't even supposed to be on it, but a guest dropped out. William Peter Blatty was able to fill in, and then one of the other guests on the show, Robert Shaw, Shakespearean actor who also played Quint in Jaws. 

Sarah: Perfect combination of resume and irons. 

Marlena: Yeah. He was so drunk when he showed up at the soundstage that either he went on and it was very brief and they told him to get off, or they didn't bring him on at all. And so William Peter Blatty essentially had 45 minutes to go on a monologue about his book and about demonic possession. And after that episode, the book became a runaway hit, sold 13 million copies, was optioned for a movie.

Sarah: It says everything about what a monoculture with three channels we used to have that Robert Shaw gets drunk and suddenly the entire world is different. 

Marlena: Totally, I know. Also, he was a really Catholic man and when he wrote The Exorcist, he definitely viewed it as a story that was supposed to show people that God was a real and living entity.

Sarah: Also, if I were him and I'd had a couple of miracles now, I'd be like, hey, I really think that this book, that God wants people to read this. 

Marlena: Yeah. And so after the massive success of the book, he signs a contract with Warner Brothers to write the screenplay, but also to be the producer of the movie. And it all happened really quickly. I think the book came out in 1971, and then by 1972, they're starting production of The Exorcist. 

Maybe to talk about a little bit about how William Friedkin comes into the scene, because William Friedkin did not like the original screenplay. The original screenplay apparently was 226 pages long. 

Sarah: Oh my god. And basically in screenplays a page equals about a minute of screen time. Is that right? So yeah, so it's a mere three hours and 46 minutes. 

Marlena: So I think it was definitely a case of William Peter Blatty wanting to make sure that his novel was, or that the movie was, very loyal to his novel. But then William Friedkin comes in and there's the story of him reading the screenplay and just drawing an X through all the scenes that he thought were unnecessary. 

Sarah: Just the little ego wars that go into this kind of thing, too, are devastating if you're involved in them, and very funny to read about decades after the fact.

Marlena: Yeah. William Friedkin, he was fresh off his Oscar win for The French Connection, was a young hotshot. I don't think he was their first choice as a director for the movie. I think they approached Arthur Penn and Mike Nichols and a few other directors. 

Sarah: God, Mike Nichols would have been incredible.

Marlena: Yeah. And the reason Mike Nichols passed, they say, is because he didn't want to be dealing with a child actor. And he didn't want the fate of the movie dependent on a child actor, which actually is reasonable. It's a good point. 

Sarah: Yeah, this is. This seems like such an atypical shoot as well. And the kinds of things that you have to have a kid do or say, and also to clarify what Friedkin's reputation is at this point, it feels like the reputation the French Connection had was as I fully believe the French Connection is one of the movies that film bros are actually right about, which sucks. But it does happen sometimes, and that this was like that. He's an edgy, young guy, basically. Is that correct? 

Marlena: Yes. Yes. Yeah. He was born in Chicago. He was also mostly raised by a single mother. But William Friedkin got his start as a documentary film director. He got to start working at a Chicago TV station, and then produced several fairly well-respected documentaries. One called, The People vs. Paul Crump, which is about a black man on death row for murder that was the result of a robbery gone awry. 

But then, obviously, he works his way into Hollywood and has this great success with The French Connection, and he does have this reputation of having a bit of a temper, being a bit of a loudmouth, being a little bit abrasive. But I think confidence in Friedkin at this time was strong, but also, it did turn out to be quite a disastrous production in a lot of ways. Not disastrous, I feel like that's maybe too strong of a word. 

Sarah: But I think it's important to challenge this idea of I think we really do see movies as a success as long as they make enough of a profit for the studio to feel justified in the choices they made. But really the question, and it's a very timely question, is at what cost, right? And at what human cost?

Marlena: Right. 

Sarah: And can you tell us a precis of what the movie is about? I feel like probably writing this book, you know something the faster you can describe it. So I feel like you might be able to do one of the more succinct Exorcist summaries that can be done.

Marlena: You could just say it's a movie about the possession of a 12-year-old little girl who's living in with her single mom in Georgetown. Her mom, Chris McNeil, is a very successful actress who's in Georgetown filming a movie. And then it's also the story of the two priests who eventually are called into the scene to exercise the demon from the young girl's body.

And it's about one of those priests, Father Karras, is in the middle of a really intense crisis of faith. He's doubting his decision to join the priesthood. And halfway through the movie, his mom dies, and he's thrust into grief and guilt after the death of his mother. And his belief in God and his trust in religion is perhaps bolstered by the possession and his role in the exorcism.

Sarah: Yeah, and that it's about a mother and daughter who have this really lovely, sweet relationship that we get to see a lot of. And then a demon comes along, merely because Regan found a Ouija board and decided to start playing with it. And boy, I would love to know how the Ouija, how the Milton Bradley people have felt about all of this for the last 50 years. I'm sure it's been quite a ride. 

Marlena: Yeah. So I never feel like the Ouija board is what caused it. 

Sarah: Oh yeah? That's so interesting. 

Marlena: I don't know. I just, I feel like that's something that Blatty and Fried can put in to have a logical explanation. 

Sarah: Well, it fits in with the kind of the media of the 70s. All this Age of Aquarius stuff is really opening us up to Satan's rule, and the idea of seeing a Ouija board as a sort of paranormal witchcrafty tool of divination. But I also have a mental image in my head of Dwight Schrute being like, “Do you know what I think caused the Exorcist? Menses.”

Marlena: Wow. I think it's certainly possible to interpret the whole movie as demonic possession caused by menses. 

Sarah: Because I mean there is, I feel like, this is a theme we'll be talking about the whole time, but the idea of parents feeling they don't recognize their adolescent daughters. And it's no, that's not the demon, that's just your kid. 

Marlena: Totally. Yeah, I think this movie is very infused with a panic around young girls as they turn into young women. So, yeah. 

Sarah: So okay, so we get to adapt this exciting novel about an adolescent girl who is possessed by a demon and goes through all kinds of physical transformation because of that, and the war waged for her very soul. Just a walk in the park film to make, really. 

Marlena: And the success of this story depends largely on finding the right little girl to play this role. And when we're talking about the production, the film's premiere and release, and then it's aftermath, I think it could be cool to talk about it through the lens of Linda Blair's experience.

Because I do feel as if her character, Regan, is definitely the most memorable, iconic part of the movie. But Linda Blair as an actress, she's obscured by this role. And this role that she played when she was 12 years old pretty much decided everything about her life that came after her. So I don't know. I feel a deep, personal need to tell her story, and maybe correct some of the narrative that I think floats around about Linda Blair that was floating around at the time when the movie was filmed and released, but also that I think lingers to this day. 

So she was born in 1959 in St. Louis, on 123 Hollywood Lane. But eventually, her family moved from St. Louis to Connecticut. And when she was six years old, her mom decided that she should start modeling. She was in some small roles in movies and a shortly lived soap opera. 

The way she's spoken about it, she's said, “Yeah, I thought being an actress, the idea of being an actress was really exciting. But I also would have been fine being a veterinarian or a jockey.” She really loved animals when she was a kid. And she said, “If I am going to be an actress, I want to be in movies about girls and their dogs, or girls and their horses.” Like Lassie or Black Beauty, that was her idea of what would happen to her life if she became an actress. 

Sarah: She wanted National Velvet, and she got The Exorcist. 

Marlena: Exactly. Yes. So instead, her mom brings her in to an audition for The Exorcist with William Friedkin. And Friedkin had really been struggling to cast the right little girl for this film. It is a tricky role to cast. You definitely want someone who seems stable and grounded. He didn't want to be responsible for traumatizing a young little girl. I do think he was aware of that. But you also have to find a kid who's somewhat knowledgeable, is mature.

And I guess now is a good time to pause and just say, William Friedkin is not the most reliable narrator, I feel like. I think he's a man who just talks. And whatever he's saying or thinking or wants to say in the moment, he says it. He's very brassy.

Sarah: He gives the guy in a bar interview style.

Marlena: He says that Linda Blair came into the audition room, and he goes over the script with her and her mom. And they get to the infamous crucifix masturbation scene and he says, “Linda, do you understand what Regan is doing here?” And Linda says very eagerly, “She's masturbating.” And William Friedkin nods and says, “And do you know what masturbating is?” And apparently she responded, “Yeah, it's like jerking off.” He said, “And have you ever masturbated before?” Which is, no thank you. But apparently she responded, “Sure, of course I have, hasn't everyone.” 

So that's the story he tells about what inspired him to cast Linda. She has said that she didn't know what masturbation was at the time.

Sarah: And yeah, certainly when you're a middle school aged kid, I certainly remember spending a lot of time pretending I understood more adult concepts than I actually did. 

Marlena: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And so maybe she vaguely understood what it was enough to say, sure. 

Sarah: Gosh, the ethics of filmmaking of any sort are so complicated. And I don't know how you would reasonably go about that. Because this movie comes out in 1973, so she's 14 when it's in theaters, right?

Marlena: Yeah. Take that story with a grain of salt. I think the story seems believable to me up to the point where he asks her, “Have you ever masturbated?” That seems so inappropriate and with her mom right there with her. But, I don’t know.

Sarah: I think that we have, as a public, a relationship to performers where we feel like their mistreatment is less meaningful because we treat fame or being remembered for something as a liquid asset of some kind. When in fact, it can prevent you from getting your life together. 

Marlena: Especially when you're so young. And she probably only had minimal say about wanting to be in this movie in the first place, or fully understanding what this was going to do to her life and her career.

Maybe I'll just touch really quickly on some of the other people they cast. Ellen Burstyn was cast as the mother, Chris McNeil. Max von Sydow, we already talked about him, was cast as Father Mirren, the priest who's a more experienced exorcist. Jason Miller was cast as Father Karras, who's the younger exorcist, or the younger priest exorcist having a crisis of faith.

So those are the main roles. So once they're all cast, production begins August 14th, 1972 in Georgetown, but mostly in New York on a soundstage in Hell's Kitchen. Friedkin was really adamant that when he was making the movie that all the special effects would be live. There would be no trickery. There would be no fake obstacles. He wanted it all to be real effects. So he hired Dick Smith, the now famous makeup artist, to create a dummy head for Regan when her head spins around and does the full 360. 

He also hired Marcel Vercoutere as a special effects supervisor. And I think a lot of the tough things that happened to both Linda Blair and Ellen Burstyn on set, and you can trace them back to Marcel. He was pretty ruthless in some of the contraptions he designed to achieve some of these special effects. And they actually caused legitimate injuries in people. 

There's a scene where Linda Blair is strapped onto the bed. She's on the bed, and you can't tell, but she's strapped into some type of contraption that is making her body just thrash around wildly. And so Marcel was controlling that off screen, and she had no control over what was happening. He was just using essentially a remote control to make her thrash around. And Linda Blair has told the story. She says, “When I'm yelling, ‘make it stop, make it stop’, that was the dialogue, but it was truly happening. I'm screaming and I'm thinking I'm the best actress in history.”

So from this she injures her back, and they have to bring a massage therapist and a doctor on set to care for her. But the story that Marcel Vercoutere tells about that, and again, this is another guy just talking himself up and telling a wild story. But he says of the contraption he made for Linda Blair, “I was the devil. I had her strapped in there, and I was throwing her back and forth. When does the acting start and the realism begin? To say she's being possessed and thrown and picked up, jiggled and bumped, and to get that whore, and not going too far, not to hurt her or bruise her. Up to a certain point, it's for fun. Then it starts to get more violent. And she starts to say, ‘Okay, I've had enough’. Now that's when you start.” So these were the type of men who were making this movie, and that Linda Blair was, subjected to.

Sarah: And there is such a rich tradition of men tormenting women and being like, “I'm making a horror movie.” And it's like, okay. If you're hiring actors, you need to just give them a nice trailer. Give them some Pepperidge Farm cookies. Take good care of them. Don't make them work crazy hours, etc. And then let them act! You hired them to be actors! So you don't actually have to whip them around and cause injuries to them. Just let your performers perform. That's what I think.

Marlena: Yeah, I feel like that was the attitude of Kubrick with Shelley Duvall in The Shining.

Sarah: Oh, my God. Completely. 

Marlena: Yeah. And Linda Blair, the way she talks about the filming of the movie, it seems really real to me that she would talk about it this way, because she was a young girl. Her memory, I couldn't narrate for you a multi month long period of what I was going through when I was 12. My memory would be blurred. I'd tell the story differently one day, tell it another way another day, based upon how I was feeling. 

So sometimes she says, “Oh, filming was a lot of fun. Everyone was really nice to me. I learned a lot about movie making. I learned about how the cameras work. I had a great time.” But she's also said, “No one has understood how hard filming was for me.” And she's told stories about William Friedkin very famously kept the set at below freezing temperatures in certain scenes to mimic the chilly air.

Sarah: Demonic cold spots. 

Marlena: Yeah. And he really wanted the actor's breath to be visible on the screen. The set was freezing. There's images of Friedkin and the crew in big puffer jackets to keep themselves warm. But Linda Blair's in a nightgown the whole time. She's talked about being terrified of the dummy, made by Dick Smith, of her. And if you think about it, you're a 12-year-old kid. There's this dummy version of yourself made to look like a little devil. And she said that was kept in the dressing room with her every day while she was getting her makeup done. And she said, “I would just be getting my makeup done, looking at the dummy in the mirror.” And she said she really did not like being in its presence at least ever, it freaked her out. 

Sarah: And I know this is I think a very modern kind of recent concept, but it just feels like the obvious thing to do is to try and keep people physically and mentally healthy while you're working with them. Because then, and I get why that doesn't happen, because it's like, you're, a contractor for any other kind of a job and you have X amount of money and you're expected to generate X amount of profit and it's very easy to start ignoring the needs of the human beings you're working with when they seem to get in the way of that. But that's why we have unions. 

Marlena: There's this famous scene where Regan is masturbating with the crucifix. Her mom walks up to her to try to stop her, and then she flies back from some supernatural force. Actually, what happens is Regan punches her in the face and then she flies back. And that was a device that was designed to pull her back and make her drag her across the floor. 

And Ellen Burstyn has said there was no padding on the floor, so she was just yanked onto the hard ground. And she says she injured her coccyx and had serious pain from it for years afterwards. William Friedkin for years has just refused to acknowledge that she was injured because she was back at work the next day. 

Sarah: But again, it's not like you have the freedom to choose any of this, right? The reason women have this sort of very deep socialization to tolerate pain is because we have to, and we're not allowed to. And I would love to see what would happen if we just didn't have to do that. Or if we demanded to not have to do that, to the extent possible. 

Marlena: Yeah. And I think also maybe at play with Ellen Burstyn not wanting to say, “I have to take a couple days off to recover”, or Linda Blair also getting time off to recover after she was injured, is the fact that the production was going over schedule and over budget quite rapidly.

Sarah: Right. So because of someone else not knowing how to manage a shoot, you have to just tough it out. 

Marlena: Yeah, these are the famous stories about The Exorcist’s cursed production But the studio set where they had built the replica of the Georgetown house burnt down on a Sunday. That was really played up in the press. And that was one of the reasons why it went so far over schedule. There was a two-week delay where they had to just completely reconstruct the whole set because there was a fire. 

These are the myths that we hear about The Exorcist, of the fire. I've heard stories that I included in the book of the sprinklers going off one night and completely dousing the entire set after they had just rebuilt it all. And there was deaths, peripheral deaths of people who were involved dying shortly after they'd filmed their scenes. 

Sarah: Which, to be fair, two people involved in making Pretty in Pink also died during or shortly after it came out, and we don't talk about that movie being cursed. But, you know.

Marlena: This was something that was being regularly reported in the press before the movie even came out. 

Sarah: Yeah. And it's just a good and it makes sense how they're, it makes sense that some stories become as big as they are because there's this perfect symbiosis where if you're a reporter you're like, “I get to put the devil in the headline. That'll be great. Everyone's going to love it.” And as a filmmaker, you're like, yes, I'd like to do some viral marketing before that term exists. 

Marlena: Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, I think there were reports in the press about all of those disasters happening on set. There was also reports that Linda Blair was having psychotic breaks, and that they needed to have a therapist on set. That does not appear to be true. 

Sarah: Oh my god, not a therapist. 

Marlena: Yeah, they probably actually should have had a therapist on set, but they didn't. 

Sarah: Yeah, and also let's be concerned for her well-being, but only in a way that stigmatizes the idea of having problems of any kind.

Marlena: Yeah. The movie was going over schedule and over budget. They were like, so maybe he's just trying to rationalize why it was such a disaster. 

Sarah: You're like, we're going over budget because of the devil, alright? Out of my hair. And before this movie came out, you couldn't bank on it being legendary in any way. It was just one of probably several devil movies that were totally slated for that period. 

Marlena: Yeah. Yeah. Because after Rosemary's Baby in 1968, there was a lot of devil movies that came out. I think the year before there was a possession movie about a young boy who becomes possessed, The Possession of Joel Delaney.

So these stories are widely circulating in the press. And by the time it hits screens, December 26, 1973, it has its own reputation, and you almost want to be terrified. You're primed to be disturbed. So the movie hit screens in 24 theaters the day after Christmas. So a limited release, and then expanded beyond that.

So 1973, Roe v. Wade had legalized abortion about a year before. Second wave feminism is at its peak. The Watergate hearings were unfolding at this time. America was also in the middle of the oil crisis, which, I don't know when I learned that this was when the oil crisis was happening. And when I learned that the White House was issuing these recommendations of, don't put up Christmas lights this year.

Sarah: Oh, wow. Talk about the war on Christmas. I'm kidding. I'm obviously kidding. 

Marlena: Yeah, no one could get gas. And the crisis was so bad that the White House was saying suggestions for how to conserve energy in all of the smallest ways. And so you think about the time when The Exorcist premiered the day after Christmas, and you'd have a dark Christmas without Christmas lights up in a lot of houses.

Sarah: Which makes it easier for Satan to hide in the shadows. 

Marlena: Precisely. So that was happening, And I think there was this kind of backlash to the kind of more liberal progressive movements at the end of the 60s. I think culture at that time was still reckoning with the Civil Rights movement and some of the racial uprisings of 1968, and the end of the sixties. Stonewall happened in 1969, and again, we have second wave feminist women's liberation movement as a huge conversation topic. 

So there's this idea that time in the seventies was this reaction to some of the liberalism of the end of the 60s and almost like a backlash to it. And so in a way, I think this movie arrived at this perfect moment as like the culture was really primed to be terrified and unsettled by it in a lot of ways. Also, because of some of the religious things that were happening in the culture, there was a lot of concern about church attendance dwindling, Hal Lindsey's book came out that year. I think you might know more about that than I do. 

Sarah: Satan is alive and well on planet Earth. It's not because he's alive. It's like, he's thriving. 

Marlena: He's thriving. He's living. Yeah. Which brings me to this statement in 1972 that the Catholic Church issued. I'm going to once again reference my book. “Evil is not merely a lack of something, but an effective agent, a living spiritual being, perverted and perverting, a terrible reality.” And then it goes on, but the church pretty much saying that evil is not an idea, it's a concrete thing that exists in physical form in the world.

Sarah: What do you think of that? 

Marlena: In a way, I suppose I agree with the idea that evil can exist in all of us, and it's a real thing that everyone is capable of. It's not this like metaphysical idea about man's battle between God and the Devil, it is a real thing that takes that, that we can enact in the world. But I also think it's ridiculous that the church was warning people at this time that the Devil is afoot and we should all be terrified. What do you think? 

Sarah: One thing I love about that quote is that quote is in the opening of Michelle Remembers. Oh, it is. like evidence basically of you should believe this book because it's like, what? 

The Vatican said evil is a reality, so therefore, these very specific things did happen. And you're like, wait a minute. I feel like a lot of my work in the past has been questioning the concept of evil. And I think what I write, something I've said previously, and I think still, believe is that evil is often a word for something that we can break down more and understand more deeply using other language. Because it's a stand in word for great harm or apparent indifference to harm, I think. But the question of where it actually comes from is really interesting and helpful. 

But I agree with what you say, which is that we also, I think, and stuff like The Exorcist, I think, puts us in this frame of mind, have this idea of humanity is what it is, but we can't be tempted or we can't let evil in, but what's really what I think is more is real to me, as far as I can tell, is that our capacity for destruction and harm is innate and it's a part of us as much as our capacity for good.

And that's really thought provoking and complex and scary in some ways, but liberating in others, and I think can help us feel deeply connected to all of our fellow humans as people who are made of the same ingredients at the end of the day. 

Marlena: “Evil” in quotes, being the structural thing that is created by circumstance. And it makes me think of James Baldwin who saw The Exorcist when it premiered in 1973. He hated the movie, and he wrote this whole essay about it where he says, “I have seen evil in this world, and it doesn't look like this crazy, little girl possessed by the devil. Evil looks like how we treat black people in our society, how we treat gay people in our society, how we treat women, how we treat children. I'll ask all those people what evil is.” 

Sarah: It's not just bad masturbation technique. And the idea of evil versus sacrilege is so interesting. I remember watching Rosemary's Baby when I was about 13, and also feeling underwhelmed by it and not really getting in the moment that it's strength is as a movie that just works into you and works on you over time.

Rosemary's Baby features an actual Time Magazine cover from 1966 where Time Magazine was like, Is God Dead? Which is a fucking crazy cover to have on a magazine, but you have to think about circulation. And I remember thinking, if you have to deal with the devil impregnating you, that's obviously horrible. And this is a horror movie and it's scary what they're showing. But on the other hand, I guess it does give you confirmation of the existence of God. And the thing about these movies appearing at the time that they did, especially during, have never stopped freaking out about the decline in the number of people attending church regularly, and certainly the idea of America and whether it is or isn't a Christian nation. But these movies are so interesting because they inevitably reinforce the power structures we have, and specifically of Catholicism. 

Marlena: Yes. Yeah, I think The Exorcist is a very reactionary movie to the time that might open up the possibility to break up some of these traditional values of our country. But then by the end, normalcy returns. 

And I think a lot about what the horror critic Robin Wood says about horror as horror. He's like, “The basic premise of horror. Is that normalcy?” However, you read that typically traditional values of the nuclear family, things like that, that’s suddenly under attack. And a horror movie can be very radical if it does not allow that return to normalcy, if it breaks with that, and you're left with this kind of uncertain notion of, where do we go from here. 

Like in the Omen, where the Omen ends and you're like, Oh, maybe the devil wins. The devil's going to become president or something. I actually don't remember. 

Sarah: The devil's in the Carter White House. And horror movies used to have happy endings is the thing. And it feels like it's related to the production code where one of the stipulations of the production code was that bad guys couldn't get away with it. And it feels like it's so rote now, and based on what happened in slashers is that you have to have the end or is it like even if you don't want to do a sequel you just have it's just the law now, and we didn't used to do that so much. 

Marlena: Yeah, but I think, I don't know. I feel like in the case of The Exorcist, it's a little sinister. I feel like William Peter Blatty had an agenda. And whatever radical potential that horror has, he wanted to foreclose that with the ending where the priest saved the day. And so I do think in that way The Exorcist is this reaction to progressive values at the end of the 60s and early 70s, and he wanted to create something that was so shocking and so disturbing that by the end, the audience would be grateful that God wins in the end. 

Sarah: To clarify what happens in this, because it's like whoever is inside Regan says at one point, “And I'm the devil,” quote unquote. So they self-identify as the devil. But then there's this whole thing about there's a demon called Pazuzu. What's the situation with this? Is this demon pulling rank and pretending to have more responsibility than they do? 

Marlena: Pazuzu is some type of wind demon from, I don't know, Abyssinian mythology or something like that. And the movie begins when Father Marin is in Iraq, I believe. He's on an archaeological dig. 

Sarah: Good for him. He's got his Rick Steeves money belt on. 

Marlena: Yeah, he's in his khakis and his archaeological garb. His anthropologist garb. And he finds a medallion with Saint Peter on it or something. But he also finds some type of statue of Zuzu, who is some mythological demon. And he goes wandering through this city, and then somehow finds his way into the desert. And it's this giant statue of Pazuzu who's this winged man-beast with wings, and he also has a massive hard on with a snake wrapped around it.

Sarah: I've never noticed that. Just to show how much you cannot see in a movie. 

Marlena: There's a suggestion that at the moment when Father Merrin is facing off with Pazuzu in the desert, that's also the moment when the Pazuzu is entering the body of Regan. 

Sarah: It also feels like it's the book trying to have it both ways. Because it's fear of a pagan god, but also the devil who is just, you can't do better than the devil. This movie honors a worldview where anything you feel scared of spiritually is just the devil.

Marlena: Yeah. And you can also, you're situating the devil in the Middle East in this non-Western mind, naturally. Yeah, I don't know. I've always been a little, are they saying it's not the devil? It's this Eastern monster, and what is that? What message is that sending? 

Sarah: Nailing, or almost connecting a classic devil, to American fear and xenophobia at this time. And this being the place we're getting all our oil from. 

Marlena: Totally. Yeah. Yeah, I think people forget that the movie opens in the Middle East.

Sarah: With a call to prayer. It starts off looking like Raiders of the Lost Ark, in an amazing way. It's very appealing to American audiences if you're trying to scare us to be like, what if something scary came from far away? Scary things don't come from inside America. They come from outside of America, famously, according to our belief system.

Marlena: Yeah, that's interesting because I feel like I've always interpreted The Exorcist and the time in which it premiered as this moment where the horror as depicted on the screen was switching from this fear of external horror, fear of the aliens coming in, or they're a lot of alien sci-fi horror movies. And then, as you get into the late 60s and early 70s, there's lots of movies about this horror that's within the individual body, like Rosemary's Baby. 

There's that movie, It's Alive. There's The Exorcist. A lot of movies about it's the body, it's internal. And so I've always thought that reflects this fear that there's something wrong inside America now, maybe something wrong with this liberalized culture, something wrong with our youth who are becoming these kind of directionless, overly liberal, drug addled hippies. This fear that it's now not coming from Russia or from Europe or from some far away. It's coming from within. 

But then, if you think about the fact that The Exorcist begins in a foreign country and that you can maybe trace the demon there, that troubles that idea a little bit. But I think both are at play probably. 

Sarah: Yeah. And maybe also the fear which is always with us to some extent, but the youth are up to things that are scary to us, but also what if they're right? Oh my God, what if they're right? Which we're absolutely going through, I think, in a big way now where people today are like, you know what I'm scared of? I'm afraid of my child's gender. And it's, are you afraid of that? What about not to boss you around? But there are so many better fears to have, like climate change or microplastics or frogs.

Teenagers, some of them manage to make even good ideas sound over the top the way they describe them. But there's always, I think, a lot of real insight and a lot of clear headedness about just what actually makes sense. They know what they need in many ways. and I think that scares us. And the idea that this movie is able to execute so elegantly this thing of what if the children are right. And it's no, they're not. They're just getting possessed by the devil. And we have to forcibly eject the devil, and then get our sweet girl back. 

Marlena: Exactly. Yeah. So maybe now would be a good time to talk about what happened when people actually went to the theater and saw this movie. 

Sarah: Oh my god. Yes. What does happen? 

Marlena: The myth that I have encountered is that the movie was so terrifying that people fainted. They had seizures, they had heart attacks, they had miscarriages. That people were so terrified that theaters were keeping smelling salts on hand to revive anyone who fainted. 

Sarah: Where do you even get smelling salts, is what I wanted to know?

Marlena: That there were ambulances queued up outside of theaters to take anyone who had some medical incident to the hospital from the theater. These are the stories that I've heard over the years. And so yeah, there's definitely reason to be skeptical of them. A lot of those stories about, the really intense bodily reactions, I think, do stem from this one article in The New York Times.

Sarah: Oh, not The New York Times.

Marlena: Yeah. So the headline is, They Wait Hours to be Shocked, and it was published January 27th, 1974. So the movie had been out for about a month. And so it's this one reporter who was going to see the movie, and she just is talking about what she saw and what she experienced and what she was told. 

So she reports on seeing people standing outside in the winter cold. But then she features this one interview she had with someone who worked at the theater, she calls them a guard. He is saying moviegoers are vomiting, others faint, others just leave the theater nauseous and trembling. And then he says, “Several people had heart attacks. One woman even had a miscarriage.” 

Sarah: Okay, so classic, shaky reporting. It's according to this one guy. “Well Sid said that there were several heart attacks.” And it's like, God knows the 70s were a freewheeling time, but if I were running a theater that multiple people had heart attacks in, I would close it to see if there was a gas leak or something like that.

Marlena: Exactly. And one woman even had a miscarriage. Like, how do you know she had a miscarriage? 

Sarah: Does he know? Especially because this was a time when women really didn't talk about miscarriage. Not to make this too sad, but like… 

Marlena: Yeah, you wouldn't be running out of the theater. “Oh, I'm having a miscarriage.” And she also talks about what was going on at some other theaters, but it's all coming from people who worked at the theaters. And part of me wonders, maybe these theater owners have an incentive to play up these stories because they want people to keep coming to the movie. 

Sarah: And also then I would wonder, like, how many theater employees are teenagers who are just making stuff up for fun? 

Marlena: She talks to these people who work at the theaters. And she's also, in this article, talking to people who've seen the movie and are saying, “Yeah, I lost my appetite from watching it”, that they were utterly terrified. But she also talks about people walking out of the theater laughing and smiling and talking about what a good time they had.

I think she's representing the full spectrum of responses that you could possibly have to the movie. She's not necessarily endorsing the idea that everyone was vomiting all over the place. Maybe you have to be skeptical of some of these stories, I think.

But also, there is some evidence that really was happening. You can find on YouTube this news report from CBS about the cultural impact of The Exorcist in 1974. And you hear people's stories, you hear people talking about it, and there is such real fear in their voices. I do have to send you a video. 

Sarah: Yeah, I would love that. Let's do it. Oh yeah, this is great. 

*Recording* 

It didn’t scare me, I don’t know what happened, I just fainted. It was frightening.

She turned her head around. Oh my God. 

That's probably the grossest thing I've ever seen. 

Oh, it's weird. She turned her head around. 

She turned her head around. It's not that bad.

God, I was so scared when the bed was shaking, and like her back, and then when her voice changed. My God, I’ve never seen anything like it!

Did you see the part where she turns her head around? 

Not yet. I'm not gonna see it either. 

It's gross. I can't believe that. Yeah, it's one of the most grossest movies.

Sarah: And then we have footage of somebody who has fainted. Or at least, collapsed. 

Marlena: The usher is in their dapper, red coat saving her. 

Sarah: It is one of the most grossest movies in the world. It is. It's really gross. It's a gross ass movie. 

Marlena: You can see the way it's like deeply, deeply unsettling people. That's so interesting. And there's photographic evidence of people fainting. I think it freaked people out and they had never seen anything like this before. And maybe people weren't having heart attacks or miscarriages.

Sarah: But they sure were collapsing sometimes. It actually makes me think of Beatlemania, where part of it is the Beatles. Like the thing is truly exciting and new, and it brings people together in a way that sort of causes our reactions and emotions to reverberate more between each other. But also, I think people need social permission to have huge, embodied reactions to things. 

Marlena: Yes. There's this quote, let me just try to find it. This amazing quote from the film scholar Charles Derry, from his book, Dark Dreams. And he says, “In an era when acts of violence in the form of killings in Vietnam, live riots and assassinations, were watched daily over long periods on the evening news, and our responses to death had become complacent and anesthetized. Going to The Exorcist and throwing up, reaffirmed our ability to be revolted, our ability to feel. Thus, the vomit of the spectators became a valid aesthetic response to the world around them.” 

Sarah: That's so true. But you're not allowed to do that about the news, because you have to cook dinner. 

Marlena: And there's also the issue of reports of people requesting exorcisms after seeing the movie, or wanting to join the Catholic Church.

And there was a news report about that as well in The New York Times. And again, it's just interviews with pastors and priests saying a lot of terrified teenagers are coming to the church saying they can't sleep and they're seeking guidance. 

Again, this is a news report of people just telling stories. I don't know if there's actually data of was there really an increase in people, turning to the church for solace. But at least in these priest’s storytelling, there was. 

Sarah: It makes sense to me that especially coming out of this era of kind of incredible repression for teenagers and adolescents, that something is wrong that society doesn't have language to address. And if exorcism or a demon becomes part of your vocabulary, it makes sense to me that people would attach to that. Not because it was what they needed, but because they needed something.

Marlena: Yeah, I agree. I think that's a really good point. 

Sarah: And of course, if you're a priest getting interviewed about it, you're like, “Yeah, there is an increased demand for God.” 

Marlena: Yeah. Critics were split, and I think the Catholic Church was split as well. I think the Catholic Church had issues with some of the more sacrilegious parts of the movie. The crucifix masturbation, I think they had issues with it. But I think overall, they liked the message. 

And I would have to re listen to your episode about the production code, but The Exorcist is premiering post production. The production code ending in this new era of ratings, it was rated R. But I think at this time, the Catholic Church was also still doing their ratings. And sometimes they would call a film condemned. That was their rating, C for condemned. And they didn't condemn The Exorcist. They said, we recommend with some reservations or recommend with caution. So it wasn't actually forbidden by the Catholic Church. They said, we've got some reservations about it, but go see it if you're curious. Which is pretty interesting. 

Sarah: Which makes sense because the message, it's ultimately very pro them and it's showing them as the antidote to all the awful stuff.

I didn't expect to learn today that people really were responding in not exactly all of the ways that we claim in legend, but that The Exorcist did have a physical effect on a surprising number of people who saw it. And that's not making a claim that's hard to believe. It makes sense that it affected people on that level. Because it's like, okay, there was all this hype and all this mythology around it that was just hot air, but that it primed people to maybe allow themselves to just surrender to the feeling. 

Marlena: Totally. Yeah. 

Sarah: What do you feel like you've learned? If not in the entirety of what you've learned, what comes to mind at this moment? 

Marlena: I think when I was writing this book, I had to look really closely at the way we depict young women in particular in movies. And think about how those depictions have shaped my perception of myself and my understanding of myself, and my mom's understanding of herself. And how some of the internalized sexism that she is experiencing. Seeing The Exorcist in 1973 was passed on to me as this generational story. 

And so I don't know. I think when we look at Regan, the character of Regan, we see a girl who's angry,, and loud mouthed and outrageously sexual, but it's a sexuality that's somehow not her own. It's devoid of her own desire. She's being sexual, but it's not her. She has no agency in the matter, no subjectivity. As a character, she's empty. We don't really see her inner life.

And I think through researching this book and watching the movie a lot, I've come to feel a lot of empathy for the character of Regan, and also to think more deeply about some of the implications of what showing young girls in this way does to your own self-perception, my own self-perception. I think in a way, The Exorcist is a very frightening depiction of girlhood. But in a way, I also started to relate to the way it depicts girlhood, and how hard and lonely it can be. 

Sarah: All of our horror concepts, in some way, reflect the more mundane fears of our lives. And we deserve to take those seriously.

Marlena: Yeah. Ad I think The Exorcist shows female anger, female sexual desire, as this very monstrous, terrifying thing that has to be controlled and quieted down, tamped down. And we have to return the possessed little girl to her original innocent state. But, I also think there's ways to look at Regan and see her as an awesome heroine who's fearlessly sexual and unapologetically angry. And she's gonna spit in the face of all the priests and all the men that are trying to control her. 

Sarah: And the secret of girlhood and womanhood, and really adolescence, is I don't have a devil inside me, this is just me and you have to deal with it. And part of it is the adolescent experience of power beyond your control and emotion beyond your control, but also the part of me that you're scared of is the part of me that is good. It's so often also true. 

What a wonderful exorcist we've had today. For people who can't remember what was said to them an hour ago, which is certainly what I'm like, what is your book called and where can people find it?

Marlena: My book is Nightmother: A Personal and Cultural History of the Exorcist, and you can find it wherever you find your books, I think.

Sarah: Little Free Library, Independent Bookstore. But yeah, it's such a beautifully written book. I'm so happy that we are having our half-centennial for The Exorcist. 

Marlena: Yes. 50th anniversary. We're in it. 

Sarah: It's a very powerful time.

And that was our episode. Thank you so much to you for listening. Thank you to Marlena Williams for being an amazing guest and writing an amazing book, Nightmother. Go find it. Thank you so much to Miranda Zickler for editing. Thank you so much to Tiny Carolyn Kendrick for producing. Happy New Year! We'll see you on the other side.