Life in the universe where William Friedkin’s Sorcerer beats out Star Wars: A New Hope at the box office in the spring of 1977

with Mattie Lubchansky, Isaac Fellman, and Calvin Kasulke

If you haven’t seen Sorcerer yet, you really should; “it’s like Fitzcarraldo, for trucks,” as my dear friend Mattie puts it. “It’s incredible, how many new and innovative ways this movie finds for Roy Scheider to get wet over the course of two hours,” added dear friend Isaac. I finally watched it last week with some friends and got so fired up about it that two days later I slept with an older gentleman who drives trucks for a living.¹

The two things everyone says about Sorcerer is that it unfairly tanked a lot of Friedkin’s post-Exorcist, post-French Connection auteur goodwill, and that it tanked in part because the title confused audiences into thinking it was going to be a movie about wizards² and in part because it came out at almost the exact same time as Star Wars: A New Hope. (Sometimes to really drive the point home people will say “as a little picture called Star Wars,” but I think that’s unnecessary embroidering.)

How can a counterhistory not present itself in the face of such a comparison?