Oscar-wnning director William Friedkin died on Aug. 7. He was...

Oscar-wnning director William Friedkin died on Aug. 7. He was 87 years old. Credit: Invision / AP / Joel Ryan

William Friedkin, the uncompromising filmmaker who died Aug. 7 at age 87, will be the subject of a two-night retrospective on Turner Classic Movies.

The five-film “TCM Remembers William Friedkin” tribute begins Sept. 14 at 8 p.m. with the New York-shot true-crime thriller “The French Connection” (1971), for which Friedkin won the Academy Award for best director. Immediately following are his stylish and emotionally dark cult hit “To Live and Die in L.A.” (1985) and “The Boys in the Band” (1970), his adaptation of the groundbreaking 1968 Off-Broadway play about pre-Stonewall gay friends.

The retrospective continues on Nov. 26 with the TCM premiere of Francesco Zippel’s documentary “Friedkin Uncut” (2018), featuring interviews with filmmakers Wes Anderson, Dario Argento, Damien Chazelle, Francis Ford Coppola, Philip Kaufman and others, and actors including Ellen Burstyn (1973’s “The Exorcist”), Willem Dafoe and William Petersen (“To Live and Die in L.A.”), and Gina Gershon and Matthew McConaughey (2011’s “Killer Joe”).

The tribute concludes with “The Exorcist,” which helped elevate horror films to major-studio status for the first time since Universal Pictures’ 1930s to 1950s heyday, and earned Friedkin an Academy Award nomination. Friedkin, himself a TCM aficionado, attended the TCM Classic Film Festival several times, most recently in April.

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