her jobs afterwards since some producers believed she was falsely taking credit for Hager's work. Since then, after the intercession of SAG, she has been properly credited. Special effects The Exorcist has several special effects, engineered by makeup artist Smith. In one scene, Max von Sydow is actually wearing more makeup than Linda Blair, as Friedkin wanted some very detailed facial close-ups. The 44-year-old von Sydow was made up to look 30 years older. Many viewers did not realize he was made up at all, which Alan McKenzie calls "a tribute" to Smith; critic Pauline Kael, whose review of the film in The New Yorker was generally unfavorable, called it "one of the most convincing aging jobs I've ever seen" According to Friedkin, it took four hours to apply the makeup every morning. "Dick Smith just happens to be the best in the world", he says. He said that if there was a regular Academy Award for makeup, Smith would have received it. For the look of the possessed Regan, Friedkin and Smith drew their inspiration from the crucifix scene. If she had injured herself masturbating with it, they reasoned, it was likely that under Pazuzu's control she might also have deliberately scourged her face. "[So we] decided to have the makeup grow out of self-inflicted wounds to the face that become gangrenous so that there was an organic reason for the change in her facial features, which might certainly be demonic possession, or self-immolation", Friedkin later explained. A latex stomach was built for the scene where the words "HELP ME" appear to be written on the possessed Regan's body. The letters were scratched in, and then heated to make them disappear. This part of the process was filmed and then run backward in the edit so the letters seemed to be appearing in the finished film. Post-production Editing Bud Smith, who had gotten to know Friedkin while he was working on Putney Swope and other films with Robert Downey Sr. during the production of The French Connection, recalls Friedkin calling and asking him to work on The Exorcist after shooting was done. Friedkin had already hired three other editors (Jordan Leonduopoulos, credited as "supervising editor", Norman Gay and Evan Lottman), but told Smith he would be the lead editor. Seeing how much film there was to edit, he asked Friedkin if he could take one large rack of footage