Jordan Leondopoulos, also known as John Shade, is an American film director and editor.
Jordan Leondopoulos, also known as John Shade, is an American film director and editor....
By Peter Tonguette
The late filmmaker William Friedkin was fond of describing his 1973 horror masterpiece “The Exorcist” as being a meditation on “the mystery of faith.”
Undoubtedly, religious conviction — and its lack — is at the heart of the story of 12-year-old Regan (Linda Blair), the precocious but well-adjusted daughter of divorced actress Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) who unaccountably undergoes severe behavioral changes — and, during several famous sequences, gravitational changes — that are eventually attributed to demonic possession.
A neurotic Jesuit priest, Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller) is put on the case, and in ecclesiastical partnership with a battle-seasoned exorcist, Father Lankester Merrin (Max von Sydow), liberates Regan and confirms his own, previously dubious faith.
Yet the “mystery of faith” isn’t the only mystery that hovers over “The Exorcist.” Perhaps the biggest unsolved question is how such an unlikely project became not only one of the genuin