Last year, The Exorcist: Believer (The Exorcist. The believer), an ill-advised sequel that attempted to pick up where The Exorcist (The Exorcist) left in 1973, was a costly failure. Oh surprise, here is The Exorcism, an independent film implicitly referring to William Friedkin’s masterpiece without ever naming it, among other things for rights reasons, turns out to be the ingenious continuation that we no longer hoped for, however unofficial it may be. Creating a work of metafiction, filmmaker Joshua John Miller pays homage to his father, actor and playwright Jason Miller, star of The Exorcist. We spoke to him exclusively.
“I had not measured the extent of the vortex that was going to engulf me, on a psychological level, in relation to my father,” admits from the outset the man whose previous film, just as “meta”, The Final Girlsis a tribute to his mother, actress Susan Bernard.
For the record, Jason Miller successively received the Pulitzer Prize for his play That Championship Seasonand an Oscar nomination for his composition in The Exorcist. A composition which, in certain respects, was not one… Indeed, to the director William Friedkin, who had offered him the role of Damian Karras, a Jesuit who had lost his faith, Miller admitted to having himself studied to become a Jesuit, before a spiritual crisis similar to that of the character dissuades him.
In short, there was already “meta” at work between the actor and the role in The ExorcistAnd The Exorcism continues in this subliminal vein.
Set in the world of cinema, Joshua John Miller’s film tells the story of the attempt at redemption by Anthony Miller, an alcoholic actor who has just landed the role of a priest responsible for exorcising a possessed young girl. However, Anthony himself begins to show signs of possession, to the great dismay of his daughter, Lee, who is at odds with him.
The film within the film has the working title The Georgetown Project. Note : The Exorcist takes place in Georgetown. “Are you going to star in a remake of…” asks an incredulous Lee. “Yes,” agrees Anthony, without further naming the original work in question. In this case it would have been useless: from start to finish, The Exorcism is lined with direct and indirect references to The Exorcist.
The raison d’être of the film by Joshua John Miller, who co-wrote it with his professional and life partner, MA Fortin, a native of Montreal, is nonetheless very personal.
“The film is full of precise historical elements, but also a very intimate mythology… But if you are not ready to invest a part of yourself in your films, what is the point of creating? »
As the director’s character says in The Exorcism (Adam Goldberg): “It’s not a horror film, it’s a psychological drama disguised as a horror film. »
Demons all around
The “meta” components in The Exorcism are, on the whole, innumerable. Besides the protagonist Anthony Miller, partly based on Jason Miller (born John Anthony Miller), and the film within the film, which refers to The Exorcist with strong winks and references, The Exorcism consists of a dizzying series of mise en abyme.
Possession is literal and metaphorical. The famous “method” of play recommended by many comedians is also compared, jokingly, to a form of possession. Oh, and it’s Russell Crowe, star of the recent The Pope’s Exorcist (The Pope’s Exorcist), supposedly based on the exploits of a real exorcist priest, who plays Anthony. Crowe who, at the start of his career, was known for his “method” approach to the game… It’s endless.
“It makes you dizzy,” confesses Joshua John Miller. But what a pleasure to talk about it, eh! Basically, I don’t think we choose the films we make. These are the stories that find us, and then we just have to surrender to them, and follow them wherever they lead us. »
However, the biographical allusions, linked to his father, are numerous, and their inclusion required an immense letting go on the part of Joshua John Miller. On this subject, let us quote here the actor Jason Patric (The Lost Boys/Lost Generation), his half-brother, who confided to Los Angeles Times in 2011: “My father had several demons inside him, long before the play and the film, and fame only intensified them…”
And in fact, in The Exorcismthe protagonist is struggling with demons literally and figuratively, as evidenced by these scraps of memories dating from the time when he was an altar boy…
“The film also deals with sexual trauma, yes. MA and I wanted to address this. In fact, we wanted to give a huge middle finger, a huge “fuck you”, to the Church. That was really our intention, because we are not at all happy with the way the Church has handled all the attacks that have occurred within it. And we are also not happy that the Church and certain politicians vilify the people of our community. »
A queer supplement
Which brings us to another personal aspect of the film, this one concerning not Jason Miller, but Joshua John Miller and MA Fortin.
“The possession film, as a subgenre, is very patriarchal and heterosexual. That’s why apart from The Exorcist, which is a cinematic pinnacle of all genres, possession films have never really interested me. Telling for the umpteenth time the story of a man who saves a hysterical woman has never tempted me. That’s why MA and I wanted to make the possession film more queer. »
This through the character of Lee, Anthony’s daughter, who is gay (played by non-binary performer Ryan Simpkins, from the trilogy Fear Street). An aspiring playwright, Lee, helped by her new actress friend, Blake (Chloe Bailey), is ultimately the one who will save her father, a false priest and real tormented actor, in a subversion of the traditional pattern.
“It’s the story of a straight guy saved by two lesbians, and you can quote me on that,” says Joshua John Miller with a laugh.
“But seriously, we wanted to channel our anger in a thoughtful way. And the whole “meta” dimension lent itself to it, as this movement has queer roots. »
Here, Joshua John Miller refers to the producer of The ExorcismKevin Williamson, designer in 1996 of Scream (Chills), a “meta” horror film par excellence, which deconstructs the codes of horror cinema and whose legacy continues to this day.
“Kevin is a queer man, and he has been a huge inspiration to us. You know, MA and I faced a very “bro” in the Hollywood studio system. Gay men have a little more agency, and there’s more diversity than there used to be, but this culture bro lives in Hollywood. I don’t want to play the victim, but there is marginalization and phobia that persists. As queer men, we have to work harder, and speak louder, all the time… MA and I had a particularly harrowing experience on a previous project… In fact, the whole time we were designing The Exorcism as a tribute to my father, I was not aware to what extent, on another level, I was trying to exorcise this professional trauma. And that’s a good thing, because the thing about trauma is that if you ignore it, it comes back to haunt you. This is what happens to Anthony in the film. »
Dreams and nightmares
At the moment, Joshua John Miller is thinking about what will be the third and final part of a metahorrific trilogy bringing together The Final Girls And The Exorcism.
“I think after that, I’ll be done with metacinema. We must understand that the “meta” approach is very anchored in the past and nostalgia. At some point you have to grieve… The Exorcism, it’s me who misses the Hollywood of the 1970s that I didn’t know, it’s me who misses my dad. »
End of the metacinema cycle, therefore, but not the end of horror cinema. Because it must be noted that Joshua John Miller has, since his early youth, been closely associated with the genre, as a child actor, notably in Halloween III: Season of the Witch (The sorcerer’s blood), Tommy Lee Wallace, and Near Dark (At the borders of dawn), the magnificent first long solo by Kathryn Bigelow.
In this regard, and in view of the content of The Exorcismwhen asked why horror lends itself, better than any other genre, to the play of metaphor and subtext, Joshua John Miller quotes the late Mike Nichols (The Graduate/The winner ; Primary Colors/Primary colors): “Nichols once had this formula that I love. According to him, films are dreams that we have not yet had. I believe that, for their part, horror films allow us to exorcise nightmares we have had. »
The film The Exorcism hits theaters on June 21.