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Hurricane Billy: The Stormy Life and Films of William Friedkin
Hardcover
Entertainment & Performing ArtsFilm Studies
Publisher: BearManor Media
Published: Jan 1 2026
Pages: 328
Weight: 1.34
Height: 0.75 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Originally published in 1990, Hurricane Billy: The Stormy Life and Films of William Friedkin is at last available again with a new foreword and extensive afterword written in assessment of William Friedkin's career following his 2023 death. Biographer Nat Segaloff draws upon his fifty-year friendship with the controversial director of The French Connection, The Exorcist, To Live and Die in L.A., Cruising, and his greatest achievement, Sorcerer. This was the first book to offer an intimate portrait. BearManor Media is proud to bring this work back into print.
Nat Segaloff's groundbreaking biography is an important contribution to examining Friedkin's life and work.
- Daniel M. Kimmel, author of
The Fourth Network and The Dream Team.
Now, Segaloff has given his essential text a necessary and illuminating update. Friedkin is one of the most important directors of the New Hollywood, and Segaloff is one of our most important veteran film historians.
- Daniel Kremer, filmmaker and film historian
There's hardly a day on set when I don't feel the pull of The French Connection, The Exorcist, Sorcerer that set a bar for authenticity, grit, and pure emotion that's almost impossible to match. He's still one of my biggest inspirations. And Nat Segaloff's book? It's got that same Friedkin energy-unvarnished, surprising, and wildly entertaining.
- Gary Fleder, director, Kiss the Girls and Runaway Jury
Hurricane Billy was a key source when I first started writing about William Friedkin's films, and it has remained one of my favourite movie biogs through all these decades. Nat writes with clarity, insight, wit and (most importantly) passion. He really captures Billy's brilliantly creative personality.
- Mark Kermode, critic and broadcaster
Billy Friedkin was everything they said about him and the complete opposite, When I had the chance to know Friedkin myself years later, I saw just how accurate Segaloff's portrait was. An essential book for anyone who wants to become familiar with the work of one of the greatest American directors of our time.
- Laurent Vachaud, critic and screenwriter
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