Talk:The Exorcist

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Vaticidalprophet talk 17:49, 25 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• ... that takes of scenes where Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair suffered permanent back injuries while making The Exorcist are included in the film? Source: "Watching the film back now, and the violence of her thrashing and jerking, it is little wonder that Blair suffered a spinal injury. A fracture in her back developed into scoliosis, leaving her in chronic pain for years. 'The back injury was far more serious than I ever imagined and really affected my health negatively for a long time,' Blair later said. ", "One particularly upsetting issue is the fact that Blair was haphazardly strapped to a mechanically rigged bed for one of the film's terrifying possession scenes, which resulted in the young actress's lower spine being fractured. Even worse, the trauma of that moment was immortalized forever when the take of her incurring the injury made it into the final cut of the film. This means that the crying and screaming we see at one point in the film is not the result of great acting, but is instead Blair's genuine cries for help that went unanswered as the cameras kept rolling.", "Burstyn permanently injured her spine while shooting the scene."
  • ALT1: ... that scenes in Regan's room in The Exorcist, chilled to −20 °F (−29 °C), could only be filmed for three minutes at a time since the lighting warmed the air too much to make the actors' breath visible? Source: "For this reason, the child's bedroom was duplicated and built inside a "cocoon" — as they called it — which was refrigerated, generally to about 20 degrees below zero. We tried it first at just below freezing (about 25 degrees) and you could see some breath, but it really wasn't enough and as soon as the lights were turned on the heat took care of the cold so quickly that we couldn't even make a take. We found out during the test period that this wouldn't work, so we went back to the drawing board. A system was developed that could refrigerate the room quickly to any temperature from zero to 20 below.", "The bedroom set was refrigerated for the frosting of the breath. The lights usually raised the temperature again after about three minutes of filming, so a break had to be taken to re-refrigerate."
  • ALT2: ... that the angiography scene in The Exorcist has been described as one of the most realistic depictions of a medical procedure in a popular film? Source: "Even today, Lane and other doctors at NYU credit the angiogram scene as one of the most life-like depictions of a medical procedure in film."
  • ALT3: ... that the popularity of The Exorcist with Black audiences has been credited with ending Hollywood studios' support for blaxploitation? Source: "Accordingly, the film industry realized it did not need an exclusively black vehicle to draw the large black audiences that had saved it from financial disaster. This important point was underscored when surveys showed that as much as 35 percent of the audiences for the megahits The Godfather and The Exorcist was black. Thus, Hollywood reasoned, if it could market films which would capture the lucrative black audience and at the same time attract whites, it could shift from making Blaxploitation films ..."
  • ALT4: ... that when The Exorcist was released, viewers waited for hours in freezing temperatures to see it in packed theaters where vomiting and fainting were frequent responses? Source: "He operates the four theaters in Manhattan where the film has been playing to capacity crowds that have braved 6‐degree temperatures in block‐girdling lines for a chance to be chilled by the doings on screen within ... eager audiences endure waits as much as five “hours for a chance to see the Warner Bros. film, based on a best‐selling novel by William Peter Blatty. For their money ($3.50 a ticket at the Cinema I theater, where “The Exorcist opened locally on the day after Christmas), filmgoers get not only the events on the screen, but also—according to all reports‐the spectacle of the less hardy among them succumbing to fainting spells and bouts of vomiting.
  • ALT5: ... that a psychiatrist wrote a paper on neurotic responses triggered by watching The Exorcist when it was released? Source: [1]
  • ALT6: ... that film critics accused the MPAA ratings board of having yielded to studio pressure to rate The Exorcist R rather than X? Source: "But when a movie costs as much as The Exorcist did, the board doesn't dare give it an X"
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Dave Barney
  • Comment: I hope it's not too late to get this in the queue for Halloween ...

Improved to Good Article status by Daniel Case (talk). Self-nominated at 09:51, 25 October 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/The Exorcist; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.[reply]

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Wonderful work Daniel Case. With regards to Halloween, you may be interested in an ongoing discussion at WT:DYK. I prefer ALTs 0, 2, and 3, but I think even better hooks are sure to be available from the article (...was denounced as "hardcore pornography"; theatres arranged for ambulances to be on call; a viewer was "contaminated" because it was better than Psycho, etc.) ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:44, 25 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]