Talk:William Peter Blatty

Autobiography
"Blatty's autobiography is titled I'll Tell Them I Remember You" - this is correct only in that it describes - Impressionistically - his life growing up with his mother; it's more a dedication to her than a formal autobiography. It's also out of print.--Apostata 20:16, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

20% of The Exorcist's profits?
"Blatty produced the movie, based on his own script, and reportedly signed a deal reserving him in excess of 20 percent of the film's profits" (John Kenneth Muir's Horror Films of the 1970s (2002), McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, Jefferson, North Carolina and London). Would be interesting to include if true.--droptone (talk) 17:00, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Article seems to be written by Blatty
Most of this article has obviously been written by Blatty himself. This may be in violation of Wikipedia policies: "It is not recommended that you write an article about yourself. If you are notable, someone else will notice you and write the article. In some cases, Wikipedia users write articles about themselves when the more appropriate action would be to create a user page. In these cases, the article is normally moved into the user namespace rather than deleted. If you believe you may be notable enough, make your case on the appropriate talk pages, and seek consensus first, both with the notability and any proposed autobiography." (from http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest). The article needs some serious editing. 97.81.102.44 (talk) 03:59, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Serious doubt WPB ever even looks at Wikipedia.104.169.26.177 (talk) 18:30, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Image choice
The choice of photo is an editor's choice.

The photo that was in the article is a poor quality image from 2007. The subject has provided a more recent, and much better quality photo.

I'm taking the liberty of replacing the old image with the new, better one.

If editors disagree, let's reach a consensus about which image is better.

New image: File:Bill Blatty 2009.jpg Old image: File:William Peter Blatty (4647730344).jpg-- S Philbrick (Talk)  13:06, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch.
Syrians and Lebanese that are Orthodox never call themselves members of the "Greek" Orthodox Church. They are Antiochian Orthodox and often Syrian or Eastern Orthodox. Greek Orthodoxy is one of the 14 autocephalous churches. Lebanese/Syrian Orthodox fall under the Patriarchate of Antioch. This is a mistake made time and time again by people who contribute to wikipedia. F. Murray Abraham is Syrian Orthodox or Antiochian Orthodox. He is not part of the "Syriac" church but the Syrian church. Syriac is something quite different than Syrian

USAF career
The article originally claimed that during his service in the USAF, Blatty "ultimately became head of the Policy Branch of the USAF Psychological Warfare Division." This is sourced to an article in the Latin Post. A check with the Latin Post, however, shows that this claim came from Moviepilot. Moviepilot uses a "fan-focused creator model," meaning people simply submit blog-like posts and the "curators" of the Moviepilot pick the ones they like.

Note that there are no fewer than three obituaries for Blatty cited in the article, from the Guardian, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. NONE of these mention that Blatty held the post of head of the Policy Branch of the USAF Psychological Warfare Division. It is absurd to add this bizarre claim based solely on a post from the utterly unreliable Moviepilot. Note also that the link here is to an alleged component of SHAEF, the headquarters of the Commander of Allied forces in Europe during World War II. This has nothing to do with Blatty. He may be dead, but that doesn't excuse such poor sourcing. Rgr09 (talk) 08:08, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

New York Times obituary vs. Latin Post
The Latin Post was previously used as the source for the well-documented fact that Blatty and Friedkin adapted and filmed Blatty's Exorcist. There is no reason to prefer the Latin Post article for the much better written and documented NYT obit. Parenthetically, the Latin Post reference also gives an unsourced claim that ‘The Exorcist’ "Used Tactics Previously Tested by US Government to Scare Audiences." This cannot go in the article without real sources. Rgr09 (talk) 15:47, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 06:54, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
 * William-Peter-Blatty-2009.jpg