From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment.

My guest is the director, the Oscar-winning filmmaker, William Friedkin.

I've been a fan of his for a long time.

It's a thrill to have him on.

His book, which could be called any number of things,

including based on some of his adventures here,

Reckless Endangerment,

is instead called the Friedkin Connection

and follows his entire career

and starts off with an anecdote,

you told me when I met you a year ago about getting a package in the mail from Mr. Baskia,

Jean-Messier-Besquia, and what did he say in this?

I had no idea who he was.

I had my offices at Warner Brothers then.

This was in the early 70s, and the offices were at 666 Fifth Avenue, where I did the exorcist,

and they've gotten wise to that address, so that's gone.

But one day a package came, a rather large package, and I opened it, and it was a number of

watercolors. They were very graphic and colorful and

interesting, but they really weren't to my taste. And with them was a letter from a young artist

named Jean-Michel Basquia who said he was a fan of, and would I accept these watercolors as a gift?

And I looked at them a few times, kept them on my desk for a couple of days, got bored with them, and

...