Films Within Films...or, Jurgensen x2

In the 1977 telefilm Contract on Cherry Street, cop Michael Nouri awaits c.i. Steve Inwood at the Queensboro Plaza subway station.  Note the tattered subway poster for William Friedkin's Sorcerer, also released in '77, to the right of Nouri. 

Yes, it's yet another example of this most exciting kind of synergy, this time Friedkin's Sorcerer turns up, in a way, in "dirty old New York" cop telefilm Contract on Cherry Street.  Interestingly, NYPD detective turned actor / consultant / producer Randy Jurgensen appears in both Contract on Cherry Street and Sorcerer.  Jurgensen broke into the movie game as a consultant on The French Connection...he was one of the cops who broke the case, along with Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso.

He also appeared on screen, for the first time, in French Connection in a humorous role as the sergeant in the police garage.  In that film, Gene Hackman would win an Academy Award for playing Egan surrogate Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle.  Two years later, Robert Duvall would essay another Egan-inspired character, Eddie Ryan, in Badge 373.  Logically, Jurgensen appears in the latter film, as well, as a cop alongside Duvall, in the finale at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Jurgensen's connection with Sorcerer and French Connection star Roy Scheider would carry over to The Seven-Ups and Still of the Night.  With Friedkin, he would collaborate on French Connection, Sorcerer, The Brink's Job, and Cruising.  Jurgensen's undercover work in the '60s in the gay community of Greenwich Village, and the cases related to those assignments, directly inspired the narrative of Cruising.

Essentially, if you've seen a New York City-set, '70s policier or two, you've almost certainly seen some of Jurgensen's work, whether it be in front of or behind the camera.

Sorcerer remains at the center of a lawsuit put forth by Friedkin, charging the two studios who financed the picture, Universal and Paramount, with withholding profits owed to him and mismanaging the distribution and stewardship of the film...in short: both studios plead ignorance as to who controls Sorcerer, which has kept it out of circulation on home video and the repertory circuit as of late.  Friedkin tweets that an end is in sight to the litigation.

Jurgensen plays movie trivia games with his partners, which include Frank Sinatra, over the airwaves in Contract on Cherry Street.

Jurgensen counsels Roy Scheider in Sorcerer.  Note the very pronounced collar Jurgensen sports in each screen shot.

Not So Obscure Trailer, but still MIA on DVD in Widescreen: Sorcerer (1977, William Friedkin)

This one was rated PG?!  Amazing, and something that could only happen in the '70s...

Much ink has already been spilled about the merits of William Friedkin's mammoth vanity project Sorcerer.  In 1977, the nature of that verbiage was not so good.  But, in the more than thirty years since its initial release, it's regarded less as a bloated, unnecessary remake, and more as one man's skillfully-crafted ode to one of his cinematic heroes, Henri-Georges Clouzot and his masterpiece The Wages of Fear.  I like the idea of the mysterious title ('Sorcerer' is painted on one of the trucks in the film), but in hindsight a more literal title probably would have helped the film's business.  

One couldn't blame the trailer, however, which is a superb example of movie marketing. The voiceover explains that Friedkin hasn't made a film since 1973's The Exorcist (the trailer says '74) because he's "spent over two years, in five countries, on three continents creating his latest film, an unusual adventure into the realm of suspense." The phenomenal music is a track from the film's original score, "Betrayal (Sorcerer Theme)" by legendary Krautrock band, Tangerine Dream (here, working on their score for a Hollywood production).  The folks cutting the trailer for 1979's The Warriors liked the music so much they used the same track.  

So why no widescreen DVD?  The story is that when the film was prepared for laserdisc in the early '90s, Friedkin objected to widescreen presentations on home video and so the film went out full-frame.  In the early days of DVD, Universal simply ported over the old laserdisc transfer for their budget line DVD.  Friedkin has promised a special edition DVD with all the trimmings, but it is as of yet only a rumor...

One last bit of marginalia for the Friedkin followers out there: Friedkin claims, on the French Connection audio commentary track, to have wanted Francisco Rabal for the part of Charnier ("Frog 1") in French Connection, after seeing him in Bunuel's Viridiana. Due to some bizarre mix-up, Friedkin ended up with Rabal's co-star in that film, Fernando Rey.  The irony, of course, is that neither man is a Frenchman.  Rey proved an able villain in French Connection and its underrated sequel.  Meanwhile, Friedkin finally got his man, Rabal, for the role of Nilo in Sorcerer.

The Warriors trailer with Sorcerer score: