To Live and Die in L.A. (film)

Friedkin had a $6 million budget to work with while the cast and crew worked for relatively low salaries.[4] As a result, he realized that the film would have no movie stars in it.[3]^:226 William Petersen was acting in Canada when asked to fly to New York City and meet with the director. Half a page into his reading, Friedkin told him he had the part. The actor was drawn to the character of Chance as someone who had a badge and a gun and how it not only made him above the law, but also "above life and death in his head".[4] The actor found the experience of being this character and making the film "amazing" and "intoxicating".[4] He called fellow Chicago actor John Pankow and brought him to Friedkin's apartment the day after being cast as Chance, recommending him for the role of Vukovich. The director agreed on the spot.[3]^:226

Former Secret Service agent and author Gerald Petievich, who wrote the book the film is based on, appears in a cameo as a fellow Secret Service agent.

The basic plot, characters, and much of the dialogue of the film is drawn from Petievich's novel, but Friedkin added the opening terrorist sequence, the car chase, and clearer, earlier focus on the showdown between Chance and Masters.[3]^:230 Petievich said that Friedkin wrote a number of scenes but when there was a new scene or a story in need to be changed, he wrote it. The director admits that Petievich created the characters and situations and that he used a lot of dialogue but that he wrote the screenplay, not Petievich.[3]^:230

The director wanted to make an independent film and collaborate with people who could work fast, like cinematographer Robby Müller and his handpicked crew who were non-union members.[4] Friedkin shot everything on location and worked quickly, often using the first take to give a sense of immediacy. He did not like to rehearse but would create situations where the actors thought they were rehearsing a scene when actually they were shooting a take. Friedkin did this just in case he got something he could use. To this end, he let scenes play out and allowed the actors to stay in character and improvise.[4] For example, during the scene where Chance visits Ruthie at the bar where she works, Friedkin allowed Petersen and actress Darlanne Fluegel to devise their own blocking and told Müller, "Just shoot them. Try and keep them in the frame. If they're not in the frame, they're not in the movie. That's their problem".[3]^:231

The shot of Petersen running along the top of the dividers between the terminal's moving sidewalk at the Los Angeles International Airport got the filmmakers into trouble with the airport police.[4] The airport had prohibited this action, mainly for Petersen's safety, as they felt that their insurance would not have covered him had he hurt himself. The actor told Friedkin that they should do the stunt anyway so the director proposed that they treat it like a rehearsal but have the cameras rolling and shoot the scene, angering airport officials.[4]

The counterfeiting montage looks authentic because Friedkin consulted actual counterfeiters who had done time. The "consultant" actually did the scenes that do not show actor Willem Dafoe on camera to give this sequence more authenticity[4] even though the actor learned how to print money.[3]^:233 Over one million dollars of counterfeit money was produced but with three deliberate errors so that it could not be used outside the film. The filmmakers burned most of the fake money but some leaked out, was used, and linked back to the production. The son of one of the crew members tried to use some of the prop money to buy candy at a local store and was caught.[3]^:234 Three FBI agents from Washington, D.C. interviewed 12-15 crew members including Friedkin who screened the workprint for them. He offered to show the film to the Secretary of the Treasury and take out anything that was a danger to national security. That was the last he heard from the government.[3]^:234

The wrong-way car chase on a Los Angeles freeway sequence was one of the last things shot in the film and it took six weeks to shoot.[4] At this point, Friedkin was working with a very stripped down crew. He came up with the idea of staging the chase against the flow of traffic on February 25, 1963 when he was driving home from a wedding in Chicago.[3]^:234 He fell asleep at the wheel and woke up in the wrong lane with oncoming traffic heading straight for him. He swerved back to his side of the road and for the next 20 years wondered how he was going to use it in a film. He told stunt coordinator Buddy Joe Hooker that if they could come up with a chase better than the one in The French Connection then it would be in the film. If not, he would not use it. Petersen did a lot of his own driving during this sequence and actor John Pankow's stressed out reactions were real.[4] Three weekends were spent on sections of the Terminal Island Freeway near Wilmington, California that were closed for four hours at a time to allow the crew to stage the chaotic chase.[3]^:234–235 With delays, the film ran a reported $1 million over budget.[3]^:235

Adding to the chaotic feeling of the chase, Friedkin staged it so that the freeway traffic flow was reversed. That is that the normal traffic in the scene has the drivers driving on their left in the left hand lanes (as in Britain) while the cars driving against the flow were driving on their right (as would be usual in North America).

As early as the day he cast Petersen, Friedkin thought about killing off Chance towards the end of the film, but according to editor Bud Smith, Vukovich was supposed to be the one who was killed.[3]^:232 The climactic scene in which Chance is killed was not very well received by MGM executives, who found it to be too negative.[4] To satisfy the studio heads, he shot a second ending, in which Chance survives the shotgun blast and, presumably as an internal punishment, he and Vukovich are transferred to a remote Secret Service station in Alaska, and watch their boss Thomas Bateman being interviewed on television.[4] Friedkin previewed the alternate ending and kept the original.[3]^:233

To Live and Die in L.A. premiered in the United States on November 1, 1985 in 1,135 screens where it grossed $3.6 million on its opening weekend behind Death Wish 3.[5] It went on to make $17.3 million in the United States and Canada, well above its $6 million budget.[6]

Roger Ebert, film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, gave the film four out of four stars and wrote that "the movie is also first-rate. The direction is the key. Friedkin has made some good movies...and some bad ones. This is his comeback, showing the depth and skill of the early pictures".[7] He went on to praise Petersen, "a Chicago stage actor who comes across as tough, wiry and smart. He has some of the qualities of a Steve McQueen".[7]

Critic Janet Maslin was dismissive of the film, and wrote "Today, in the dazzling, superficial style that Mr. Friedkin has so thoroughly mastered, it's the car chases and shootouts and eye-catching settings that are truly the heart of the matter".[8]

David Ansen, critic for Newsweek, wrote "Shot with gritty flamboyance by Robby Muller, cast with a fine eye for fresh, tough-guy faces, To Live and Die in L.A. may be fake savage, but it's fun".[9]

The staff at Variety gave the film a mixed review and wrote that it was over the top: "To Live and Die in L.A. looks like a rich man's Miami Vice. William Friedkin's evident attempt to fashion a West Coast equivalent of his 1971] The French Connection is engrossing and diverting enough on a moment-to-moment basis but is overtooled...Friedkin keeps dialog to a minimum, but what conversation there is proves wildly overloaded with streetwise obscenities, so much so that it becomes something of a joke".[10]

In his scathing review for the Washington Post, Paul Attanasio wrote "To Live and Die in L.A. will live briefly and die quickly in L.A., where God hath no wrath like a studio executive with bad grosses. Then again, perhaps it's unfair to hold this overheated and recklessly violent movie to the high standard established by Starsky and Hutch".[11]

Movie historian Leonard Maltin seemed to agree with Attanasio, giving TLADILA 1.5 stars out of a possible four: "Try to imagine Miami Vice on the West Coast...here you have it. This picture is so gritty that it's hard to root for anybody...since the good guys are as foul-mouthed, greedy, and sadistic as the bad guys...! For a crack Secret Service agent and a master counterfeiter, both Dafoe and Petersen act pretty dumb; Friedkin delivers one of the most spectacular car chases since his own French Connection, along with a galvanizing score by Wang Chung, but even that's not enough to counteract the bad taste this film leaves behind."

Jay Scott, in his review for The Globe and Mail, wrote "Pity poor Los Angeles: first the San Andreas fault and now this. The thing about it is, To Live and Die in L.A., for all its amorality and downright immorality, is a cracker-jack thriller, tense and exciting and unpredictable, and more grimy fun than any moralist will want it to be".[12]

Time criticized its "brutal, bloated car-chase sequence pilfered from Friedkin's nifty The French Connection", and called it "a fetid movie hybrid: Miami Vile".[13]

Almost two decades later, a review in The Digital Fix called the film "A sun-bleached study in corruption and soul-destroying brutality, this film by the notoriously erratic but sometimes brilliant William Friedkin is nasty, cynical and incredibly good."[14] The film was voted as the 19th best film set in Los Angeles in the last 25 years by a group of Los Angeles Times writers and editors with two criteria: "The movie had to communicate some inherent truth about the L.A. experience, and only one film per director was allowed on the list".[15]

Wins

• Cognac Festival du Film Policier: Audience Award; William Friedkin; 1986.
• Stuntman Awards: Stuntman Award; Best Feature Film Vehicular Stunt, Dick Ziker and Eddy Donno; Most Feature Film Spectacular Sequence, Dick Ziker; 1986.

Although criticized at the time for the lack of accomplished celebrities in its cast,[3]^:226 many of the actors have become established stars, most notably Willem Dafoe, William Petersen, John Pankow, Jane Leeves, and John Turturro.