Cinema Shock

THE BOYS IN THE BAND (1970) capped a brutal run of four consecutive box-office failures that left thirty-four-year-old William Friedkin convinced his feature career was over. After walking away from David Wolper's death-defying TV specials, he threw himself into features — writing a Sonny and Cher vehicle on legal pads, clashing with studio veterans on a burlesque set, adapting Harold Pinter's menace for the screen. We trace how his single-room staging experiments pushed him to rock bottom, right