EXORCISING MY DEMONS
AN ACTRESS' JOURNEY TO THE EXORCIST AND BEYOND
By Eileen Dietz and Daniel Loubier
2012, AuthorMike Ink (www.AuthorMikeInk.com), $19.99 (softcover),
$9.99 (Kindle edition at amazon.com), 353 pp.
REVIEWED BY TIM LUCAS
This is an autobiography by Eileen Dietz, an actress of notable (if not always noted) accomplishments who is best-known for her unbilled performance in William Friedkin's THE EXORCIST (1973), in which she played the demonically possessed Regan McNeil in all the scenes which the role's official actress -- 12-year-old Linda Blair -- could not physically (or legally) play, as well as the subliminal flashes of the white-faced, demonic apparition known as Captain Howdy. Linda Blair may continue to reap most of the recognition for the former, but in the years since it has become more visible since the advent of home video and the pause button, the latter has become one of the most iconic images of the horror genre, full stop.
In Dietz's chapters on THE EXORCIST, which encompass about one-third of the overall work, she insists that she was hired to play the demon Pazuzu in both its bodied and disembodied form; that she was hired as an experienced actress in her own right, not to serve as Blair's double or stunt person, and meant only to serve as an extension of Blair's impeccable debut performance, not to make it seem assisted or insufficient in any way. Her detailed account of her hiring and the film's production schedule makes such distinctions seem clear and reasonable. Unfortunately, it became the two-fold tragedy of Dietz's career that William Friedkin -- out of showmanship -- opted to conceal the various components that made Blair's performance so terrifying (including the vocal contribution of Mercedes McCambridge, which was acknowledged only after she brought suit against Warner Bros.) and that columnist Joyce Haber leaked Dietz's untold story in THE LOS ANGELES TIMES in the wake of Blair's winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress, revelations which industry pundits later credited with Blair's failure to make good on her Academy Award nomination in the same category. Dietz tells the heartbreaking story of being flown out west to Warner Bros., visiting Hollywood for the first time, only to be told in person by director Friedkin that she would "never work in this town again"─though Haber's disclosure was not her fault and despite the fact that she was never asked to sign a vow of professional secrecy. One infers from the book that Blair herself, though they've "talked" since, still hasn't quite forgiven Dietz.
In Chapter Five, she recounts an episode from the time of her early years as a New York actress, when a psychic reading given to her by a Mrs. Carvainis warned her that she was surrounded by negative forces, "demonic forces" that would try to bring her down. Dietz seems to mention this purely as a premonition of her working on THE EXORCIST and spends the rest of the reading almost chiding the psychic, humoring the seemingly easy guesses she based on the few things she knew about her. But when "she told me she believed in doppelgangers, [...] that was about the time my skin began to creep. The thought of another me walking around this earth was somewhat terrifying... Well, I was finished with the topic. I switched gears and asked her if she saw me winning an Academy Award in the future. She got up from the table, looked at her watch, and kindly motioned to the door. It was time for me to leave."
Rightly so. As Dietz mentions earlier in the book, she is a twin -- there literally is another her walking around this earth -- and, ironically, her greatest fame was achieved by sharing a role with another actress who received all the attention and acclaim for it. First things first: One imagines that having an identical twin would impact every moment of one's waking reality, and Eileen does admit to a great psychic bond between herself and sister Marianne. But, after Dietz describes their closeness for several early pages, Marianne falls victim to an unnamed disease (it sounds like polio) and disappears from the book -- partly, we're told, to protect her privacy (understandable) but also, we're told rather bluntly, "because this book is my story and nobody else's." Unfortunately, by refusing to discuss this core relationship with Marianne (except in her closing acknowledgements, as someone "who physically is always with me and knows when I need a call or a hug"), Dietz establishes a tone that floats just above the surface of her story without peering very deeply beneath it; it may well be more than a tone, and more of an actual approach to living, because her self-described naïveté about people and work is frequently mentioned. Which brings us to the second point: When Dietz's psychic showed her the door when she asked if she might ever win an Oscar, she was clearly being given the finest psychic reading money can buy.
Books by actors tend not to be the most reliable testimonies of how films were made, but the general public love them because they offer peeks behind the public persona, they often tell stories of triumph over adversity, and they tend to offer entertainment and gossip as well as hope and encouragement. Dietz's book certainly holds true to these standards, providing an overview of her many professional vindications, and better still -- insofar as it goes into the details she remembers of making certain films, television shows and soap opera -- it has the ring of frank, sometimes self-effacing reliability. However, the reader is left wanting more: more details, more description, more focus, not to mention more proofreading. We feel a bit rushed through too many interesting stories, too many meetings with interesting people, partly by Dietz's own insecurities about how worthy her story may be of our attention.
is no reference to any interaction with William Peter Blatty, who is someone Dietz specifically thanks in her closing acknowledgements, or with Ellen Burstyn, Jason Miller or Max von Sydow, all of whom would have spent significant time with her on set. Also, it was not a good idea editorially to follow Dietz's account with 13 pages of solicited fan mail about the film, all of which pretty much says the same thing in slightly different ways. It would have been much more to the point to collect quotes from the published sources of the time as a testimony to the film's monumental social impact.
Eileen Dietz is a solid working actor and she can be forgiven for not observing her own career, or indeed Hollywood history, with the eye of an historian. That said, there are a number of gaffes in the text that someone -- say, her amenuensis in this venture, Daniel Loubier -- should have caught. She recalls working in a Hershey, PA stage play with actress Jean Stapleton ("of Archie fame" - which is not quite the same thing as ALL IN THE FAMILY); she claims that DAVID HOLZMAN'S DIARY was the first film to break the fourth wall (it wasn't) and that it never had a theatrical release (it did, but a delayed one, premiering in New York City the same month as THE EXORCIST); when she visits the Warner Bros. lot for the first time, she thrills to be on the same lot where her favorite movie THE WIZARD OF OZ was filmed (Warner holds the rights to the picture now, but it was shot on the MGM lot, Stage 27); in a parenthetical (but still paragraphs long) reference to Howard Fast, author of the novel SPARTACUS, she confuses him with the film version's screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo, and credits the Stanley Kubrick film with breaking the Blacklist by crediting Fast by name for the first time (that was Trumbo; Fast was a member of the US Communist Party and served a three-month prison sentence for refusing to name names to the HCUAA, but his novel was self-published and never credited to any name but his own). Despite all this, in the book's closing remarks, Loubier thanks "ALL our proofreaders," explaining "This book would be in rough shape without your eyes." Make no mistake: between these editorial errors, some misspellings of the names of fellow actors, and other typographic faults increasingly common to the post-internet press, it's not exactly smooth.
Regardless of such surface imperfections, I can recommend this book without hesitation to EXORCIST buffs (who will eat up these first-hand reminiscences of Pazuzu herself), and I think it might be of equal or greater value to young people embarking on acting careers. The chapters about Dietz's early professional years in 1960s New York City -- doing her first movie (TEENAGE GANG DEBS!), commercials, soap operas, and ending up nude onscreen in the cult classic DAVID HOLZMAN'S DIARY -- offer vivid testimony to the powers of visualization, thoughtful persistence and stupid luck in the craziest of professions.
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