For We Are Many

What people don’t think about when they think about the Exorcist movies is that there are five of them. They don’t think that the Saw films exceed Exorcist films by only one. They don’t now consider that the new Final Destination movie actually makes that franchise even with the Exorcist series. The reason that no one regards the five Exorcist films as any kind of regular horror franchise must be because the sequels, as an extension of the Friedkin/Blatty original, are so wildly scattershot. William Peter Blatty is the original creator, and he only sanctions two of the four follow-ups: Exorcist III, which he wrote and directed himself, and which, regardless of the studio imposed ending, still bears his unmistakable, oddball Catholic stamp; and Dominion, the 2003 prequel written by William Wisher and Caleb Carr and directed by Paul Schrader. That leaves John Boorman’s batshit Exorcist II: The Heretic and Renny Harlin’s alternate universe prequel, Exorcist: The Beginning (clever!) unaccounted for.
The battle (a tad grand, I know) between those films Blatty approves of and those he doesn’t is at the root of the series’ let’s-try-this-again awkwardness, and apparently constant state of reboot. This is true even if Blatty, specifically as a figure making these movies, outside of his role as the creative force behind Exorcist III, doesn’t matter so much. What matters is that Blatty wrote the original novel and, years later, a sort-of sequel called Legion, which followed Boorman’s film and acted as though – and quite rightly, too – it never existed. So it would follow that Blatty’s own film adaptation of Legion would ignore Exorcist II (and would carry over only supporting characters from the original, unless you count Jason Miller’s Father Karras, which you can, but also can’t, depending on how you feel). What matters is in 2002 or 2003, the studio that hired him looked at Paul Schrader’s Dominion and were, for some bizarre reason, so put off by what they saw that they scrapped the post-production and turned the Wisher-Carr script over to Renny Harlin(!), who rejiggered quite a bit, and ended up making a movie which tested so badly that the studio, Morgan Creek, gave Schrader a little money to finish Dominion, and then said “Fuck it, we’ll just release both.” Which is sort of admirable.

Now, clearly, none of these films would have been made if The Exorcist, the original one, hadn't been such a hit, so the desire for financial gain was the catalyst. So take that, corporations, I'm on to you. But beyond that, the artistic drive to make these sequels -- and I think it's fair to say there was more artistic drive behind most of these sequels than any of the Saw or Final Destination films -- seems to be based entirely on a misunderstanding of Blatty and Friedkin's film. Let's kick things off with some of John Boorman's comments about Exorcist II: The Heretic, made several post-mortem years later in this interview:

The film that I made, I saw as a kind of riposte to the ugliness and darkness of The Exorcist – I wanted a film about journeys that was positive, about good, essentially. And I think that audiences, in hindsight, were right. I denied them what they wanted and they were pissed off about it – quite rightly, I knew I wasn't giving them what they wanted and it was a really foolish choice. The film itself, I think, is an interesting one – there's some good work in it – but when they came to me with it I told John Calley, who was running Warner Bros. then, that I didn't want it. "Look," I said, "I have daughters, I don't want to make a film about torturing a child," which is how I saw the original film. But then I read a three-page treatment for a sequel written by a man named William Goodhart and I was really intrigued by it because it was about goodness. I saw it then as a chance to film a riposte to the first picture.

To begin with, to say that The Exorcist is a film about torturing a child...fuck off. Deliverance is a film about torturing Ned Beatty. How does that feel, John Boorman? Not so good, probably. But I guess because Boorman doesn't have any Ned Beattys, he can't really feel it as intensely.
Second, and more importantly, is his implication that The Exorcist somehow isn't about positivity or goodness. Perhaps he's forgotten the ending, but Damien Karras goads the demon into leaving Regan, the young girl, and possessing him, Karras, at which point Karras sacrifices himself by jumping out a window, removing the demonic threat from the girl, and from the house. This is good. This is positive, if you understand that defeating a demon at the expense of the life of a good man is a victory, which Karras clearly believed it was. And so did Blatty, so much so that his fear that the victory inherent in Karras's sacrifice would be misunderstood, misinterpreted, or just plain missed, that he would eventually recut the film, add scenes that Friedkin has taken out, for the "producer's cut" that came out in 2000. I did, and still do, believe that this was a mistake, because this version of The Exorcist simply doesn't work. But apparently Blatty was right to have these misgivings, because on the DVD commentary for Dominion, Schrader says that...well first he says that the conceit of Dominion, as devised by William Wisher and Caleb Carr, that the possessed character would be an ill person who got better while the world around him went mad, was ingenious, but a poor engine for a horror film. All this does is prove that Schrader has a depressingly narrow view of what horror can be, but never mind. What he says that's more relevant is that he wants his film, which focuses on the crisis of faith of Father Merrin (played originally by Max von Sydow in the first two films, here, and in Renny Harlin's take, by Stellan Skarsgard), to be a journey for the lead character. Presumably this journey is about Merrin for some reason getting over the hump of his crumbling faith to find God anew. Remember that. And as bit of an ancillary example, to just give some evidence that Blatty's fears were not for nothing, I'll note that Edgar Wright, in one of the DVD extras for Hot Fuzz, describes Karras's death in the original film as Regan "compelling" Karras through the window. So, Karras sacrificed nothing, and was instead murdered. This is exactly the idea that Blatty didn't want people to carry away from the film.
This sort of thing makes me wonder if the whole world hasn’t gone mad. Schrader seems to believe that the journey in Dominion – and I like his film – isn’t simply a retelling of the one in The Exorcist. In other words, Karras/Merrin loses his faith and only regains it when confronted by a cosmic evil. Oh, excuse, Karras/Merrin/and also Lamont from Exorcist II loses his faith and only etc. Every single Exorcist film revolves around a crisis of faith (or never having it and then finding it, as it’s unclear if Lt. Kinderman in Exorcist III ever believed, prior to that film’s action) that is resolved by facing off against demonic forces, yet Boorman and Schrader act like they just invented bread. This is Blatty’s whole thing – well, obviously not just his, but his own devout Catholicism has been expressed through stories that employ some variation of this idea. See also The Ninth Configuration, novel and film, in which skepticism is confronted not with an ultimate evil, but with an ultimate good. So the idea that Boorman’s film is a “riposte” is simply inane – his film is, at best, a restating.

And anyway, at least Schrader had the decency to make a good film. Boorman's is ridiculous, with a brief nice moment here and there, and a cast that seems gathered together to prove that if Friedkin could get Von Sydow and Ellen Burstyn and Lee J. Cobb, then he could get Von Sydow and Louise Fletcher (more or less fresh off her Oscar win) and Richard Burton and James Earl Jones! Blatty talks about seeing Exorcist II and laughing from the beginning, though for me the journey from "This is just stupid" to actually laughing was a bit longer. I didn't find anything really hilarious in Boorman's film until Linda Blair, here about eighteen years old, starts to be sort of (but not really?) possessed again, and she makes just the cutest face:

Look! She's like a little bunny rabbit making its angry face!

So that movie didn't work, though it set the template followed by all subsequent films, save Blatty's own, in that it focuses on, or locates its secrets thereabouts, Father Merrin's life in Africa prior to the events of The Exorcist. Merrin isn't even mentioned in Blatty's Exorcist III, and my understanding is that even Jason Miller's presence in that film was enforced by the studio. Butchered ending notwithstanding, Exorcist III is a terrific film, strange and funny and genuinely frightening -- that long hallway scene with the nurse is a classic -- as well as ultimately moving, though not as hopeful as Legion, Blatty's novel (which he himself was planning to diverge from, anyway), with a strong and idiosyncratic cast headed up by George C. Scott, who reportedly loved what Blatty was going for. It really is the only sequel that counts for me, and I think it's the series' bizarre, jumbled, see-what-sticks nature that allows for that kind of disconnect from all the other films.

The backstory behind the two prequels, recounted earlier, is really sort of amazing. I've heard that Stellan Skarsgard had some reservations about repeating the role he'd just completed for Schrader under another director after Schrader was fired, but Schrader urged him to do it because what other actor would have the same story to tell? Who else has played an entire role for a basically finished film, only to be told that movie isn't cutting it, here's a new director and a reworked script, now go do it again? This would all be even more interesting if Renny Harlin's Exorcist: The Beginning had anything at all to recommend it. Harlin is sort of a punchline, but I'll freely admit that he's made some fun trash. The problem here is, nobody wanted his movie to be trash, exactly. They wanted it to be commercial, but this is The Exorcist we're talking about here, so it had to be serious. Well, apparently when Harlin goes serious, he also goes hopelessly dull. There's nothing that's even absurd enough to really justify watching it. Actually, no, there is the bit at the end when the possessed woman (Izabella Scorupco) is running through a tunnel at a stationary Skarsgard, windmilling her arms in a way that is I guess supposed to ward of Catholicism, but then just as she's about to get to Skarsgard, Catholicism punches her in the face. Killing her, I hasten to add. This would count as a botched exorcism in my view, but it ended up getting Merrin the gig in Georgetown, so I guess we all have different standards.

What's really strange is watching the Harlin and Schrader films back-to-back, because it's pretty hard to imagine what Morgan Creek saw in the Schrader film that so put them off (or that so convinced Schrader that he was somehow not making a horror film). It's well-made, just on a basic competency level, which Harlin's film can't always boast, but it's also suspenseful, eerie, mysterious, it has violence and gore, which is the sort of thing you'd imagine, not having seen either film, Morgan Creek wanted Harlin to cram back into the story, and a performance by Skarsgard that is real and moving, and actually acting. In the Harlin version, he clearly does not give a shit. The novelty that Schrader supposedly convinced him would be enough to carry him through turned out to be not so powerful, and he just wants to get through this ridiculousness. In the Schrader film, though, he cares.
And even if all these sequels are just weaker versions of what The Godfather Part II did, which was to underline all the important stuff from the first movie, Dominion approaches the ideas introduced in The Exorcist differently. Here, the demon (played by Billy Crawford) doesn't present itself as some ragged and wounded, disease-ridden creature, but as something beautiful and androgynous -- in other words, not so much Satanic as Luciferian ("I am perfection," it says at one point). There is a real Biblical, and Miltonian, power to this that could have perhaps been exploited more completely, but is certainly better and more interesting than we've gotten elsewhere. In Exorcist II, the Catholicism takes a backseat to some moronic science fiction contraption, and in the Exorcist: The Beginning, it's a plot point. But in the other three, the Friedkin, Blatty and Schrader films, the horror and the struggle with religious faith and ritual are inseparable. The suffering -- the "torture of a child" -- is part of it, the hell and nightmares, the sacrifice and triumph, are all part of it.

This is why only three of the films succeed; well, that, and because the exorcism subgenre is, as I've said before, extremely narrow, and when you perfect it right out of the gate, as Friedkin and Blatty did in 1973, the only thing that will allow a new film to stand on its own is style, intelligence, and craft. Three out of five isn't bad, I suppose.

Seriously, though, John Boorman, you're a good director, but come on, man.

The Collection Project: The Infinite

.It would be inaccurate to claim that there's much in the way of aesthetic or philosophical overlap with Mean Streets (d. Martin Scorsese) and The Exorcist (d. William Friedkin) beyond the fact that the driving creative force behind each was raised to be pretty damn Catholic. The force behind Mean Streets is obviously Scorsese, and this film, while the most explicitly religious of his works outside of The Last Temptation of Christ, finds him struggling with his church, to the point where his alter ego, Charlie Capa (Harvey Keitel) kicks things off by saying that prayers and gospels are "just words", and that they don't mean anything to him. Meanwhile, in Friedkin's film, the force is not Friedkin -- though the man does a brilliant job -- but rather William Peter Blatty, author of the source novel and the screenplay. Blatty's the force here because it's his faith up there on screen, and he believes in the truth of Catholicism, and of the power of the words that Charlie can no longer use, enough to cover the cast and crew of both films. Where Blatty and Scorsese/Charlie might agree most strongly is in the idea expressed by Charlie at the very beginning of Mean Streets: "You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets, you do it at home." The concept of making up for your sins at home is one that, in The Exorcist, Blatty positively runs with.

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Both films came out in 1973, which is a coincidence not worth making a hell of a lot from, but this was the post-"Is God Dead?" era (which we're still in, as far as I can tell). That 1966 Time Magazine article found its definitive film just two years later, when Roman Polanski made Rosemary's Baby (from Ira Levin's 1967 novel, to which Polanski was slavishly faithful, so more credit to Levin), which is, of course, like The Exorcist, a horror film. Prior to writing The Exorcist, Blatty was primarily known as a comic novelist (John Goldfarb, Please Come Home!, Which Way to Mecca, Jack?) and screenwriter (A Shot in the Dark). The fact that this life-long practicing Catholic found the best expression not only of his sincere faith, but of his belief in mankind's essential decency, in a particularly shocking and transgressive horror story is, I'm going to say, interesting.

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But that's what The Exorcist is, however many people wish to psychoanalyze Blatty and Friedkin by claiming the film is really about man's (small "m") fear of female puberty and sexuality. By which I don't mean that Regan McNeil's (Linda Blair) age and gender were chosen by throwing darts at a board, but this reading of the film seems to not only want to treat the film's ending as meaningless or abitrary, but to pretend that Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller) and Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) have no function in the story at all. The still-shocking obscenities in The Exorcist are meant to show the corruption not only of Regan's innocence, but the natural growth that her puberty is bringing forth, as well. Blatty and Friedkin don't see her pending womanhood as terrifying -- they view the unnatural exploitation of it by the demon as terrifying.

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And, in any case, those obscenities are not, finally, the point. The point -- if you want to boil the film down this small -- is the religious words and rituals that Charlie Capa in Mean Streets no longer finds meaningful. Because in The Exorcist they sure as shit have meaning, and it's Father Karras's realization of this, and the drive to perform the ultimate good that results in this realization, that is the point. (It's worth noting, by the way, that it was a fear of Blatty's intentions being misread that led him to construct the new edit of The Exorcist that hit theaters about ten years ago, a decision which, while I'm sympathetic to Blatty's motives, has to count as one of the worst director's cuts (well, producer and writer's cut, in this case) of a great film I've ever encountered.)

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Sacrifice at the level practiced by Karras at the end of The Exorcist is not something that Charlie Capa has in him. He doesn't even have it within him to go as far as the details of his story might require of him (as a Catholic, at least), which is a good deal less than is asked of Karras. As Christ figures go, Charlie is an interesting one. He doesn't even manage to die, for one thing, but he also is one of the few who actually, almost, sort of literally fancies himself as a Christ figure, or at least a Francis of Assisi figure. His problem, or one of them, is that the Church holds no power for him anymore. He can say the words, he can hear them, he can understand what they mean, and he can even wish they held the power for him they once did, but he knows how little impact they have in day-to-day life. If he doesn't have the backbone to be Karras, he also doesn't have a demon like Pazuzu up in his face, removing all doubt and ambiguity.

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Where Karras had a possessed girl named Regan to protect, Charlie has Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro) and Teresa (Amy Robinson). Johnny and Teresa are cousins; Johnny is Charlie's best friend, and Teresa is Charlie's lover. Charlie and Johnny are both low-level gangsters, and Johnny owes three thousand dollars to...oh, let's just go ahead and call them money lenders. Johnny never pays up, and his arrogant, reckless attitude about his situation taints Charlie by association, but Charlie still believes it's his role -- specifically as a Catholic -- to protect him. It's also his duty to protect Teresa, who has not only also been tainted by her connection to Johnny, but is sneered at throughout the neighborhood because she's epileptic. Though she hardly fits the literal definition, Teresa would represent the "lame" of the Bible that Jesus cared for. As for Johnny, I don't know off-hand what term the authors of the Bible used in place of "stupid asshole", but I'm sure there's something in there for him, too.

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The problem is, for all his big talk ("I'm doing my best, Lord"), Charlie isn't actually willing to do that much for these people. He's cagey about his relationship with Teresa, and doesn't defend her when his uncle runs her down. And speaking of which, Johnny frequently points out to Charlie that if he'd just speak to that same uncle, who has the power to quash Johnny's debt, all this would be over. But because Charlie is working to open his own restaurant with his uncle's help, and because his uncle despises Johnny, Charlie won't do it.

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Charlie does small things. He gives Johnny a few bucks to put towards his debt, or -- for the common good this time -- apologizes to a cleaning woman Teresa has just been rude to. Beyond that, though, he has very little to offer. Sacrifice is beyond him. True suffering for the betterment of anybody is something he cannot bring upon himself. How many of us can? But it's still interesting to see Charlie testing his ability to deal with Hellfire -- which he does view as a potential fate -- by sticking his fingers over open flames, only to pull them back immediately, and then watch Father Karras hurl himself through a window, his shattered body tumbling to a rest on M Street. Charlie believes, or at least hopes, he can be a better person, one who walks in Christ's footsteps, but he never really tries very hard. Since the words in church lost their power, it became easier for him to ignore the little evils around him, like Michael (Richard Romanus), the friend to whom Johnny owes his money, or even the little evils of a guy like Johnny himself. Karras had a big evil to face and snap him around, but Charlie could have gotten there, too, in his own way, if he'd only looked a little closer, and tried a little harder.

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The Kind of Face You SLASH!!: Day 16 - The Clams Aren't Safe

William Peter Blatty's Elsewhere sort of just appeared one day. This novella first appeared in Al Sarrantonio's great horror anthology, 999, which came out, appropriately enough, in 1999 (it's scheduled to be published as a stand-alone book this December). 999 is full of terrific, or at least interesting, short fiction, but Elsewhere is the centerpiece of that anthology. For one thing, at 100 pages, it's by far the longest piece in the book, but more importantly it marked Blatty's return to horror fiction; his previous novel in this genre, Legion, the sequel to The Exorcist, was published sixteen years prior.

What a lot of people don't realize these days is that Blatty began his career as a comedic novelist. Which Way to Mecca, Jack? and John Goldfarb, Please Come Home opened the door for him to write for the movies, and began a long partnership with Blake Edwards (in those days, Blatty's most famous credit was as co-writer of the first Inspector Clouseau film, A Shot in the Dark). So The Exorcist, his blockbuster novel from 1971, was really an anomaly. That novel grew from Blatty's Catholic faith, among other things, and forever changed the way he was perceived as a writer. Blatty never set out to be a horror writer, and I imagine he still doesn't think of himself that way, but since 1971 his work has been either a part of that genre, or a bizarre and twisted genre entirely its own, like the novel, and film, The Ninth Configuration.

The first time I heard about Elsewhere, it was being talked about as film, which Blatty would write for William Friedkin, the filmmaker behind The Exorcist, to direct. As a huge fan of Blatty's by that point (whenever it was, I can't really remember, but it was a long time ago), I was very excited by the idea that he was returning to horror. I have a vague recollection that, in the piece I read about this up-coming film, Blatty said that while he really didn't know much about horror, his experiences with The Exorcist had taught him how to manipulate the audience into being scared. He'd become familiar with the methods, tricks, that sort of thing. So okay, I said, let's see this movie. But the movie never happened. That magazine, or newspaper, reference I read was the first and last reference to it I ever encountered. Friedkin's career had sunk pretty low at the time, and I have to assume that had something to do with the scuttling of the project, but why any studio would turn their back on the opportunity to slap "From the Writer and the Director of 'The Exorcist'" on a poster is still beyond me.

Anyway, as I said, it never happened. Then, one day, I'm browsing in some bookstore somewhere, and I find this book 999. And among the many big name contributors (King, Oates, Gaiman, Ligotti) was William Peter Blatty, and his story, a 100 page novella, was called Elsewhere. Well, all right then, I said to myself, as I bought the book. And now, nearly ten years later, I've read it.

The set up to Elsewhere is pretty much the same as that of The Haunting of Hill House (or The House on Haunted Hill, for that matter). Joan Freeboard is a realtor (she's ocassionally referred to, bizarrely, as "the Realtor") who has been tasked with selling a secluded mansion on a small island in New York. The house is called Elsewhere, and it has a reputation for being haunted. One of its previous owners, a doctor named Peter Quandt, murdered his wife, then took his own life. Since then, subsequent residents have met with various bizarre fates, some lethal, some not. This has happened often enough that, for many years, the house has been uninhabited. Freeboard, who has been suffering from strange dreams involving an oddly familiar angel whose cryptic messages she doesn't understand, is determined to sell Elsewhere, and hits upon the idea of clearing its name. So she recruits her old friend Terrence Dare, a famous writer; a British psychic named Anna Trawley; and an esteemed expert in the supernatural named Gabriel Case. The four of them will stay in the house for a period of time and investigate -- since Freeboard doesn't believe in ghosts, she believes Trawley and Case will find nothing. Dare will write up their experiences as a magazine article. The renown attached to Dare, not to mention Case and Trawley, should end all the dark rumors and supersitions surrounding Elsewhere, Freeboard reasons, the house will be sold, and she'll make quite a bit of money.

But, of course, once they get to the house, odd things begin happening. Dare thinks he sees a priest scurrying through a door, in the dark. He also seems to have lost his beloved dogs, which he'd insisted on bringing with him. Or did he bring them? Everyone seems to be suffering from weird memory lapses. And Freeboard experiences a wicked case of deja vu. And why doesn't Gabriel Case look like his picture? Well, everything gets answered. And it's all just too damned pat.

As it happens, a few days ago, over at Cinema Styles, a discussion was brewing about the pros and cons of the ambiguity levels of the film version of The Exorcist. Those who felt that there should have been more ambiguity argued that the question of whether or not Regan was actually possessed should have remained unanswered until the end, and that Father Karras's struggle with his faith could have played out the same way, with no loss of emotional or visceral power. Those who argued against that point of view (and I was among them...okay, I was the only one) said that this would have simply been ambiguity for its own sake. If that unanswered question doesn't alter the outcome, then what's the point of leaving it unanswered? In art, ambiguity is a tool, or a shading, and should only be employed when it has a purpose. I can see no purpose for it in The Exorcist, when the the question is finally simply "yes" or "no". Not only that, but the question -- is Regan possessed? -- is only interesting if the answer is yes.

But in Elsewhere, the question isn't simply "yes" or "no". As with The Exorcist, the question of the supernatural in Elsewhere shouldn't be raised, because, for this story to work, the answer must be "yes". Yet the question that shouldn't be answered so cleanly, but which Blatty goes ahead and answers, is "why". I can't think of a haunted house story that has ever benifited from a neat wrap-up. The model for Blatty's novella, as I've already said, is Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. Now I realize there are many people who argue about the presence of the supernatural in that novel, too, but the point is that even if you're convinced, as I am, that Jackson's ghosts are real, by the end of the novel you still don't know exactly what has happened, and the sense of dread and unease is, as a result, heightened.

The story is also not served well by its short length. I rarely argue that a work of fiction needs to be longer than it is, but this is a case where another fifty pages or more would have been a help. When Blatty reaches his explanation, he rushes through the characters' reactions, so the last few pages essentially read like this:

CHARACTER 1: So there's your answer. That's why we had all those ghosts.

CHARACTER 2: No kidding. That is nuts.

CHARACTER 1: I know, isn't it?

CHARACTER 2: Yes. But I accept your answer. Now I'm going to leave.

CHARACTER 3: Me too.

CHARACTER 1: I understand.

The other thing about Elsewhere, which is dicier to talk about, is that the novella occupies a place in probably the smallest off-shoot of the genre: optimistic horror. Seen from a certain point of view -- the point of view Blatty would like you to take -- even the shocking horror of The Exorcist is optimistic. Blatty is an unapologetic Catholic, and that's right there on the surface of his fiction. This is something that I quite frankly like about his work. His writing in the genre always reinforces the idea of a benevolent God, and of a peaceful afterlife, even while acknowledging the deep pain human beings suffer in this life. Such is the case with Elsewhere, which is fine, but this time Blatty doesn't attack his subject with the unblinking sharpness of The Exorcist. There's a meat-and-potatoes quality to his take on Catholicism in that book (and film) that I love. This time around he's more moony-eyed about the whole thing, more self-consciously mystical, and it makes the novella come off as soppy.

This isn't helped by his constant injection of humor, of the rapid-fire dialogue, one-liner variety. Some of this is funny, much of it is not, and there's generally just too damn much of it. There's always been humor in his serious fiction, even in The Exorcist, but the humor never overwhelmed the narrative. Here it does. Elsewhere would almost play as a supernatural comedy, if the humor was funnier.

Before reading Elsewhere, I hadn't read Blatty in many, many years. When I come back to a writer I've enjoyed in the past, after several years away, and find myself struggling to enjoy his or her work, I have to wonder if I've grown out of it, if my tastes have evolved to the point where this author has been left behind. I've wondered this about several horror writers, like Richard Matheson and Robert Bloch. But with Bloch and Matheson, the work I don't enjoy is almost always their late fiction, written well after their heyday. When I return to their older work, as I just did with Bloch, I find that I wasn't wrong to like them before...they were good. It's just that they eventually became tapped out. This may be the case with Blatty. It would be weird to say that I hope this is the case, because I would love it if Blatty got his old rhythm back. But he's never been prolific, and that may not happen, and Elsewhere may be his swan song. If so, that's a shame. Still, being able to say that you're the guy behind The Exorcist, Legion and The Ninth Configuration -- in both their novel and film incarnations -- ain't too shabby.