Cynical and cranky, director William Friedkin was in fact a mensch who gave many of our most beloved actors their big breaks. Whether it was playwright Jason Miller (Father Karras in The Exorcist) or amateur fellow Chicago native William Petersen (Agent Richard Chance in To Live and Die in L.A.), Friedkin trusted his instincts, ignoring studio bigwigs, all in the pursuit of gritty authenticity. He shot his murder-mystery film Cruising in actual gay “leather bars” across New York City, securing permission from the owners — mobsters, mostly. In these scenes, all of the background actors double as real-life BDSM patrons out for a good time.

His technique was shaggy, but his vision and style were anything but. He handled spectacle and intimacy, thriving in claustrophobic liminal spaces. He liked to capture scenes in one or two takes at the most. Upon being told that the camera crew was visible in a shot from 2011’s Killer Joe, Friedkin said: “Rehearsal is for sissies — rehearsal is for dummies. I’m not looking for perfection in film, I’m concerned with spontaneity.”

Friedkin was the son of Ukrainian Jews, who fled an anti-Jewish pogrom in 1903 and landed in Chicago. The young Friedkin loved his hard-working parents but disliked school and graduated by the skin of his teeth. He was indifferent about movies until he saw Citizen Kane after which he was inspired “by the power of film to go so far below the surface of a human life.”