'The Exorcist' is absolutely my favorite horror film, and I watched it when I was, like, seven years old with my mother for the first time. I don't know why my mom let me watch that. I couldn't go to the bathroom by myself. I couldn't go upstairs by myself. I couldn't sleep.
I play Father Francis in 'The Exorcist Prequel.' It's fantastic. We are shooting in Morrocco and Rome. Paul Schrader is directing; Stellan Skarsgard plays the younger Max Von Sydow character. It's just a fantastic script. It's a very eerie, very scary script. It encomposes a growing dread that I think is really appropriate for the film.
And the sad truth is that nobody wants me to write comedy. The Exorcist not only ended that career, it expunged all memory of its existence.
When you think of the 'Exorcist,' you think of Linda Blair and pea soup and all this madness, but really if you look at the first half of that film, the stuff between her and Ellen Burstyn is so naturalistic and so real.
At awards time, The Exorcist was nominated in 11 categories, everybody but the janitor was up for an Oscar. There was no category for what I did.
I love 'Paranormal Activity' and 'The Exorcist.' 'The Shining' is a great one too, but there's not a lot that scares me. Maybe it's because I know the other side of it, and I know how movies are made, but it takes a lot for me to get freaked out.
I don't go to horror movies. I walked out of 'The Exorcist,' man.
I never read detective novels. I started out in graduate school writing a more serious book. Right around that time I read 'The Day of the Jackal' and 'The Exorcist'. I hadn't read a lot of commercial fiction, and I liked them.
When I was 13 I asked my mother if it was possible for this to end - I'd had enough of it. And that was right about the time that we got a call for 'The Exorcist' interview.
'The Omen,' 'The Exorcist,' those movies for me are the quintessential horror movies that still scare me as an adult.