One Of The Bear Season 3's Best Vulgarities Also Comes From A Legendary Director
This article contains spoilers for "The Bear" season 3.
In "The Bear," it's been well-documented that the often volatile, surprisingly sweet, Taylor Swift-loving Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) is a movie fan, and he's particularly enamored with the works of directors like Michael Mann and Ridley Scott. In season 3, we discover that he's also a devotee of William Friedkin, the iconoclastic filmmaker of "The Exorcist," "Sorcerer," and "The French Connection."
But Richie's fandom goes well beyond simply enjoying Friedkin's films. In episode 4, he references a story about a Japanese Zen garden told by Friedkin in a 2020 documentary in which the director served as the interview subject. That reference alone reveals that Richie admires Friedkin so much that he's gone out of his way to not just watch the director's filmography, but seek out insights into his process.
And the true depths of Richie's interest go even deeper — all the way into the depths of a random YouTube clip.
In "The Bear" season 3 (read our full review here), Richie uses the phrase "I don't give a flying f*** into a rolling donut" a couple of different times. It's an extremely distinct turn of phrase, the type of line that feels like it could have been perfectly crafted in a writers' room to match Richie's prickly personality. But as it turns out, that phrase comes directly from Friedkin himself, courtesy of a somewhat obscure video interview in which the director recalls how, in his mind, actor Al Pacino was not particularly professional when the two of them made the film "Cruising" together back in 1980:
William Friedkin looms large in Richie's mind
As of this writing, I have not been able to track down the full interview in which this quote was said, but the video excerpt above was published in 2021, and seems to have served as a source for a few different articles published afterward, including Far Out Magazine's "Why Does William Friedkin Hate Al Pacino?" from May 2023 and Cracked's "6 Brutal Insults Unleashed About Actors" from September 2023.
Before we go any further, we must acknowledge that "I don't give a flying f*** into a rolling donut" is simply an incredible exclamation. It conjures vivid imagery and manages to be dripping with disdain at the same time. RIP, William Friedkin. What a legend.
Anyway, once we know that Richie is quoting random interviews with Friedkin from YouTube (or maybe he stumbled upon the aforementioned articles while doing research about the man), it shows us how much of Richie's mind Friedkin occupies. Richie doesn't have all that much to do in season 3 of "The Bear," but I appreciated these flashes of insight into his personality and interests, and hope he's being set up for a big arc in season 4.
"The Bear" season 3 is streaming in full on Disney+ and Hulu, and you can hear us have a spoiler-filled discussion of it on today's episode of the /Film Daily podcast below:
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