William Friedkin is not a very sentimental man, said Sean Macaulay in The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). The director of The Exorcist and The French Connection has been married four times, and refuses to discuss his three ex-wives—who include screen sirens Jeanne Moreau and Lesley-Anne Down. “They were insignificant relationships,” says Friedkin, 77. “Which is how I look at them now—as blips.” In writing his memoirs, he reviewed 100 pages of notes he took over the years about affairs and one-night stands, but decided that none of the women were worth mentioning. The one past affair he will discuss occurred in the 1970s while he was scouting film locations in the Dominican Republic. One night, he wound up on the beach having sex with the mistress of a local colonel—who’d recently gunned down another man in a restaurant. “She was very persuasive,” he says. “After a few minutes of bliss, well, more than a few minutes, I hear the click of rifle bolts and screaming in Spanish. I open my eyes to six rifles pointed at my head. I thought, ‘It’s all over. They’re going to kill me on the beach.’ Then this woman stood up, still naked, and yelled at them. Words to the effect of, ‘Get your asses out of here or I’m going to have the colonel take your heart out!’” Friedkin takes a sip of coffee. “I continued to see her, obviously. Just not on the beach.”
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