Repossessed
What's scarier than the new version of The Exorcist? Writing about it.
      by Sarah Kendzior

Blair, in pre-possession mode, in The Exorcist.

You're halfway through the Exorcist press junket, and Linda Blair, it seems, has an answer for everything.

"Yes, I actually think a few times a day," she says, in response to the question -- if it really was a question -- "When you look back on it and you think about your parents saying yes, this changed your whole life, and the whole tenure of the culture, and stuff, do you have any thoughts about when you thought about it when you were a kid or 20 years old or something?"

This is the first of many queries of this nature you've heard over the course of the past hour. Blair, who played Regan in the movie whose junket, unbelievably, you were once psyched to attend, is attempting to take it in stride. "I'm sorry, I have to entertain myself at these things," she explains. You don't blame her. "An easy way to explain it is that I worked in New York since I was five years old, doing modeling and commercials, and that's a different world than in LA, where there are dreams and aspirations of maybe being a so-called star, being in movies..."

It's hard to pay attention. You're sitting one foot away from a forty-something Linda Blair, and damn it if you can't feel her pain. First question: "How do you feel about pea soup?" Second question: "How long have you been a vegetarian?" The man across from you, who has been dominating the press session, seems to be writing his article as he goes along, often interrupting to get rout facts -- "How old were you when you did the movie?" "What other movies have you done?" You shift uncomfortably, trying to get a word in, but honestly, by this time you've pretty much given up.

Linda Blair and Ellen Burstyn in The Exorcist. Again, this is before that whole icky possession thing happens.

You wanted to write a compelling, in-depth article about one of the greatest horror movies ever made, but around 10:45 or so you realized that wasn't going to happen, and not just because William Friedkin -- wise and vigilant even twenty-seven years later -- didn't show up. ("He was tired," screenwriter William Peter Blatty explained earlier. "I talked to him last night; he sounded very tired.") You had a lot of questions -- stuff about the MPAA, about the timing of the re-release, about good and evil and so on and so forth-- but between the rapid-fire, publicist-timed set-up and the razor-sharp inquiries of your journalistic peers ("Now what exactly is the name of your pet horse, Linda?") you've pretty much abandoned hope. You know when you're beat. Plus, that guy with the laptop keeps interrupting you anyhow.

So what's left for you now, you wonder? Things obviously are not going your way, but you've already advertised the damn thing on the front page of your magazine. You look around. The room is divided between the antagonists and those with a vague look of desperation/boredom. Mouths open and close at random, trying vainly to get a word in edgewise, to bring something of substance to the situation. The man next to you has reported from Indonesia and Cambodia. He has seen horrors you could never even fathom. Someone asks Linda Blair whether she belongs to an organization of disgruntled child stars. The man next to you shudders and looks away.

Hey, that's more like it!

Linda Blair is still talking, poor thing. She actually has some interesting stories to tell. "After reading the book, I had the same questions everybody else had," she says. "How does she jump up and down on the bed? How does her head spin around? How does she throw up? The religious questions? I didn't have a clue. I was raised in Connecticut at the Sauwatawk Congregational Church. We didn't talk about the devil. That's Catholicism. That was my safety net, and that's why they didn't hire a Catholic child who may have heard about the devil. We didn't talk about it on the set, my mother and I didn't talk about it -- it was a closet."

"Do you recall the first rehearsals?" Interrupted. Again.

"Yeah, I do, actually. What do you want to know about it?" Before you came here, you dutifully watched the documentary on the Exorcist DVD. You learned how Blair was forced to film in subzero temperatures and wear a device that spat pea soup out of her mouth.

"Did you have any rehearsals?" But you've never felt so sorry for her as you do right now.

One of the questions you've gotten the most as editor of your web magazine is how exactly you get these interviews. You tell them the truth -- most of the time you interview the person, by themselves, over the phone, or occasionally in person, or even more occasionally by email. What you try not to bring up are the junkets. You never really knew why until now. You told yourself it was because you'd only been to a few of them -- unlike certain reporters you know who literally make their living by the things -- but the truth was, these kind of examples of entertainment industry/media synergy give you the creeps. Maybe you're too young, maybe you take yourself too seriously, or maybe you just enjoyed Almost Famous a little too much, but -- how do people write their stories from these things and not feel a certain shame?

On the plus side, the food fairly rocks. Perhaps in anticipation of events to transpire (or hey, who knows, maybe they're just really hospitable), junket food is always a sweet deal. Inevitably held in a swanky hotel, these pseudo-journalistic pow-wows give you everything you want in a croissant and more. The Pitch Black one had shrimp, but this is morning, and so you're happy just partaking from the fruit platter. Mmmm. Strawberries.

You sit back and lounge, feeling a little left out. Junkets are always divided by medium, and you, as an "online person", are the proletariat of the proceedings. They always shuffle you guys in and out as quickly as possible, it seems. Which is understandable, as you kind of suck, right? You deserve to hear about Linda Blair's horse! You deserve to get stood up by William Friedkin! You know your place and, feeling kinda shady -- okay, just hungry -- you have another croissant.

The publicist says it's your time to go. Still stupidly thinking William Friedkin is going to be there, you happily stand up and ride the elevator to the press room. One hour later, you're feeling a little panicked. Sure, you've got a whole new story to tell, but can you counter that with the sinking feeling that Harry Potter coverage is going to be a tad harder to come by? Eh, screw it all. Chris Columbus is directing anyway.

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