William Friedkin

Director of The Exorcist, Cruising and Bug. Dr K is often accused of being a Friedkinophile and therefore will automatically like anything Friedkin does. He points out this is not true, as he hates Deal Of The Century.

When Radio 1 ran a competition in 1999 for the world's biggest Star Wars fan to travel with Mark to see the global premiere of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in Los Angeles, Friedkin sat right behind them.

And snored all the way through.

Mark once asked Friedkin what he thinks of The Exorcist now, and Friedkin replied, "it's like a Louis XIV chair; you can sit on it."

When Friedkin appeared on the Film Review Show in 2006 (Bug had just premiered in Cannes, although it would be well over a year before it was finally released in the UK) he said "hello Mark" and Simon immediately jumped in to remind Friedkin that it was his show and Mark was "just my movie reviewer". Simon then asked Friedkin to talk about the film, only for Friedkin to refuse, saying he never liked to reveal plot details - "even something like Hamlet, if you reduce it to the plot, it's just a load of tosh."

Friedkin has a maxim which Mark likes to repeat, which is that there are only three reasons for making a film: to scare an audience; to make them laugh; or to turn them on.

Deal Of The Century notwithstanding, there is only so far Mark's love for Friedkin can be pushed. While he was prepared to make allowances for a very troubling scene in Killer Joe, for example, he refused to applaud when asked to by Friedkin during a screening of Death Proof in which Quentin Tarantino (who had used the score from Friedkin's Cruising in his Kurt Russell disasterpiece) was in the audience. At the time, Mark was keen to prosecute Tarantino for the crime of being completely full of himself, which may not have helped.