How did William Friedkin end up directing a Sonny and Cher movie?
WF: Well, I didn’t end up—it was my first picture. Sonny and Cher were basically the hottest act in show business at that time, and I had just come out of documentaries, and the only thing that I had done on a sound stage was the very last Alfred Hitchcock Hour. And then I met Sonny Bono and we became friends and I went down and heard him record some pieces and I thought the guy was an absolute genius, and the way he literally created and directed Cher, I thought was fascinating. And the opportunity to make a film came up, and he asked me to do it. AVC: Was he still sort of hanging out with Phil Spector? WF: No, he’d kind of broken away from Spector, but he was a gofer for Spector for years. That’s how he got his start, and that’s how he learned to make his music. AVC: It seems that as a producer, Bono had his own version of the “wall of sound.” WF: “Wall of sound” was created kind of accidentally. All of the songs and backgrounds that were created for the wall of sound were done at a
