THE POWER OF SPOOKY SEASON COMPELS US
Executive & Artistic Director Angie Toomsen shares her long and complicated fascination with The Exorcist. And why, after all these years, we finally invited The Devil into the Grandon.
I have a history with The Exorcist,
although for a good portion of my childhood I probably would have described it less as a“ history” and more as a“ haunting.”
I saw the movie far too young, resulting in years of night terrors and an overactive imagination regarding random attic noises. I have since discovered I am not alone. Mention The Exorcist to people of a certain age, and an astonishing number will share a version of the same story: they saw it at nine, ten, or eleven.
Maybe that’ s just part of the Gen X experience. Unsupervised kids with unrestricted access to the scariest movie of all time. That tracks.
The persistent and irrational fear that my own bed was going to start spontaneously shaking only made me more enthralled by the story and its origins. To overcome my fear of The Exorcist, I read Blatty’ s novel around age eleven, along with
Travers and Reiff’ s The Story Behind The Exorcist, detailing its creation and film adaptation.
I wanted to understand the machinery behind the nightmare. It did not make Linda Blair’ s chilling, soul-staring gaze any less terrifying, but reading about it sparked a lifelong absorption with directing, production, and how stories work on us.
The intrigue endured. Years later, I turned a D. C. business trip into an Exorcist pilgrimage through Georgetown, visiting the house used for exterior shots and climbing the infamous steps. Researching childhood fears had officially evolved into tourism.
There is, after all, a reason The Exorcist has remained so firmly lodged in our cultural imagination. Blatty’ s 1971 novel became a phenomenon, and Friedkin’ s 1973 film was more than a successful horror movie. It was a cultural event: the first horror film
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