Two days before Bug was released in theaters, the film's director, William Friedkin, changed agents, telling the trades, "I don't want to compete with the guys who are making these $500 million movies. I'd rather make low-budget films where I believe in the stories and can cast well."

William Friedkin on the set of Bug Photo credit: Anthony Friedkin

His former agents should've seen the end of the line coming — Bug is Friedkin's first independently produced film in over two decades and a return to a genre that he practically invented, the psychological horror film, with The Exorcist in 1973. For Friedkin, the film is a change of pace following the Tommy Lee Jones thrillers Rules of Engagement and The Hunted for Paramount, where his wife Sherry Lansing had been a studio chief. Yet fans of the 71-year-old director's work can rejoice that he hasn't given up on the themes that have been present in nearly all of his work.

"I tend to drift towards paranoid, claustrophobic characters, probably being one myself," explained Friedkin, which is why it was a natural fit for The Exorcist auteur to tackle the film adaptation of Tracy Letts' dizzying and darkly humorous play Bug. The psychological thriller is about an increasingly detached Gulf War vet (Michael Shannon) who finds shelter and a kindred spirit in a cheap hotel room with a fragile, freebasing divorcee (Ashley Judd). What follows isn't your typical horror movie fare by any means, but Bug is Friedkin's fourth feature to be filmed primarily in one location, in addition to his play-to-film adaptations of Boys in the Band, The Birthday Party, and 12 Angry Men.

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"I don't start out being drawn to that stuff," says Friedkin. "But it seems that I am because of the limited setting and the pressure cooker atmosphere that brings out often the best and the worst in people. But I think all the films that I've made are about the thin line between good and evil, and the constant struggle that we all have for our better angels to appear."

In recent years, Friedkin found his better angels in working away from film as a director of plays and operas around the world, including Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle at the Kennedy Center and Salome in Munich, which Friedkin says has "deepened my appreciation for making films."

He wasn't the only one who was coming off stage for the film adaptation of Bug. Judd had just completed a run on Broadway in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and like Friedkin, the actress had been doing most of her film work for Paramount, starring in the women-in-peril films Kiss the Girls and Double Jeopardy. Between her turn in last year's indie drama Come Early Morning and Bug, Judd is finding roles similar to her breakout turn in Ruby in Paradise.