To Live and Die in L.A.

To Live and Die in L.A.
Theatrical poster
Directed by	William Friedkin
Produced by	Irving H. Levin Bud S. Smith
Written by	Story: Gerald Petievich Screenplay: William Friedkin Gerald Petievich
Starring	William L. Petersen Willem Dafoe John Pankow Dean Stockwell John Turturro
Music by	Wang Chung
Cinematography	Robby Müller
Distributed by	United Artists Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s)	November 1, 1985
Running time	116 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) is an American thriller film directed by William Friedkin and based on the novel written by former Secret Service agent Gerald Petievich, who co-wrote the screenplay with Friedkin. The film features William L. Petersen, Willem Dafoe, John Turturro, John Pankow, among others. Wang Chung composed and performed the original music soundtrack. The film tells the story of the lengths to which two Secret Service agents go to arrest a counterfeiter.

Plot

Richard Chance and Jimmy Hart are United States Secret Service agents with the Treasury Department, assigned as counterfeiting investigators in its Los Angeles field office. Chance has a reputation in the department for reckless behavior while his partner is three days away from retirement. After a near-fatal stint with the Presidential Protection Detail, Hart admits he is "getting too old for this shit," but takes on one last mission to apprehend master counterfeiter Rick Masters. After Hart is killed by Masters' bodyguard, Chance is outraged and seeks revenge. Chance explains his outlook to his new partner, John Vukovich this way:

Let me tell you something, amigo. I'm gonna bag Masters, and I don't give a shit how I do it.

The two T-men try to track down Masters, to no avail. Chance and Vukovich finally engage Masters by posing as potential counterfeiting clients interested in Masters' services.

Willem Dafoe as Rick Masters making fake money.

Chance and Vukovich eventually break the law in their relentless pursuit of Masters. In order to get enough cash to convince Masters that they are "real" clients, they kidnap and rob the money from a man who, unbeknownst to them, is an undercover F.B.I. agent wearing a wire. The F.B.I. agent is accidentally shot to death by other agents, leading to a wild chase through the streets and freeways of Los Angeles.

Later, Chance once again meets with Masters, and pays him the "front money" that Masters has requested. Chance arranges the transaction, and Masters implies that he knows they stole the money from the F.B.I. undercover agent. During the transaction, when the agents move to arrest Masters and his bodyguard, the bodyguard pulls a shotgun from a locker and threatens Vukovich. Chance shoots the bodyguard in the chest, but is shot in the face at the same time. They both die. Masters escapes, but Vukovich quickly gives chase, following Masters to a warehouse Masters uses to produce his counterfeit money. At the time of Vukovich's arrival, Masters has already set fire to the contents of the warehouse. Vukovich confronts Masters and during a brief struggle, Vukovich is knocked unconscious. Masters covers Vukovich with shredded paper and just before Masters sets Vukovich on fire, Vukovich recovers and shoots him. Masters drops the torch and sets himself ablaze in the process. Vukovich survives and Masters perishes in the blaze.

After Masters' death, Masters' attorney gives his estate to his girlfriend, Bianca. Without showing much remorse, she rides away in Masters' black Ferrari with her new companion, a woman named Serena given to her as a present by Masters. In the last scene, Vukovich pays Chance's informant and love interest Ruth a visit just as she's packing up to leave L.A. for good. Vukovich mentions Chance's death, that she had known that the man they stole the advance money from was FBI, and that Chance had left her with the leftover front money that his agency now wants back. All this leads to a surprise for Ruth: "You're working for me now". And with that, Chance lives on through Vukovich.

Cast

Agent Chance (Petersen) and snitch Ruth (Fluegel) .

• William Petersen as Richard Chance
• Willem Dafoe as Eric "Rick" Masters
• John Pankow as John Vukovich
• Debra Feuer as Bianca Torres
• John Turturro as Carl Cody
• Darlanne Fluegel as Ruth Lanier
• Dean Stockwell as Bob Grimes
• Steve James as Jeff Rice
• Robert Downey Sr. as Thomas Bateman
• Jane Leeves as Serena (credited as Jane Leaves)
• Gerald Petievich as Agent Petievich

Production

Director William Friedkin was given Gerald Petievich's novel in manuscript form and found it very authentic.^[1] The filmmaker was also fascinated by the "absolutely surrealistic nature" of the job of a Secret Service agent outside of Washington, D.C.^[2] When the film deal was announced, Petievich was investigated by a rival for a pending office promotion, and felt that "a lot of resentment against me for making the movie" and "some animosity against me in the Secret Service" existed, exacerbated by the agent in the Los Angeles field office who suddenly resigned a few weeks after initiating the investigation.^[3] SLM Productions, a tribunal of financiers, worked with Friedkin on a ten-picture, $100 million deal with 20th Century Fox but when the studio was purchased by Rupert Murdoch, one of the financiers pulled the deal and took it to MGM.^[4]

Casting

Friedkin had a $6 million budget to work with while the cast and crew worked for relatively low salaries.^[2] As a result, he realized that the film would have no movie stars in it.^[4] 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".^[2] The actor found the experience of being this character and making the film "amazing" and "intoxicating".^[2] 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.^[4]

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

Screenplay

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.^[5] Petievich said that Friedkin wrote a number of scenes but when there was a new scene or a story needed 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.^[5]

Principal photography

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.^[2] 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.^[2] For example, during the scene where Chance visits Ruthie at the bar where she works, Friedkin allowed Petersen and actress Darlanne Fleugel 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".^[6]

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.^[2] 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.^[2]

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^[2] even though the actor learned how to print money.^[7] They actually printed on both sides of the paper which is illegal. Over one million dollars was made but had three things wrong with it so that it could not be used outside of 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.^[8] 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.^[8]

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.^[2] 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.^[8] 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.^[2] Three weekends were spent on sections of the Long Beach Freeway near Wilmington, California that were closed for four hours at a time to allow the crew to stage the chaotic chase.^[9] With delays, the film ran a reported $1 million over budget.^[10]

Post-production

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 got killed.^[11] The climactic scene in which Chance is killed was not very well-received by MGM executives who found it to be too negative.^[2] 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.^[2] Friedkin previewed the alternate ending and kept the original.^[7]

Soundtrack

Album cover.

An original motion picture soundtrack was released on September 30, 1985, by Geffen Records. The album contained eight tracks. The album’s title song, "To Live and Die in L.A.," made it on the Billboard Hot 100 where it peaked at #41 in the United States.

William Friedkin chose Wang Chung to compose the soundtrack because the band "stands out from the rest of contemporary music... What they finally recorded has not only enhanced the film, it has given it a deeper, more powerful dimension". This note was included in the album's back cover.^[12]

Reaction

To Live and Die in L.A. premiered in the United States on November 1, 1985 in 1,135 theaters where it grossed $3.6 million on its opening weekend. It went on to make $17.3 million in North America, well above its $6 million budget.^[13]

Reviews

The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 86% of critics gave the film a "Fresh" rating, based on twenty-two reviews. Roger Ebert, film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, "[T]he 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".^[14] 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".^[14] 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".^[15] 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".^[16]

The staff at Variety magazine were not impressed with the film 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".^[17] In his 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".^[18] 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".^[19] 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".^[20]

Although a number of critics, and a good portion of the audience, remained somehow unimpressed by the movie when it first premiered, it appears to have aged considerably better than many of its contemporary neo-noir fare, and the expectation set upon its DVD release was symptomatic of a well-established cult following. It appears that the lukewarm box-office reception in 1985 owed at least partly to the film's grim, bleak and cynical tone, perhaps out of context during the time in which it premiered—not because the film's antics were necessarily outdated in the mid-80s, but because the film's tinge of nihilism was far beyond aesthetic and affected the plot itself.^[21] All this is confirmed by the film's anticlimactic outbursts of violence, by the apparent absence of a single character or action driven by altruism or an established sense of moral justice, and especially by the ending, all of which are hardly in tune with the somewhat moralistic action films of the decade. An ostensible fact, perhaps indicative of this collective perception, is that most of the recent reviews of the film are punctuated by one-liners such as "A sun-bleached study in corruption and soul-destroying brutality"^[22].

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".^[23]

Awards

Wins

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

DVD release

A DVD was released by MGM Entertainment on December 2, 2003. The DVD contains a new restored wide-screen transfer, an audio commentary featuring director Friedkin where he relates stories about the making of the movie, a half-hour documentary featuring the main characters, a deleted scene that involves actor John Pankow, and the alternate ending Friedkin refused to use, in which the two partners survive and are transferred to Alaska while their supervisors take the credit for the case.

Notes

References

• Segaloff, Nat (1990) Hurricane Billy: The Stormy Life and Films of William Friedkin. New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc. ISBN 0688078524

External links

• To Live and Die in L.A. at the Internet Movie Database
• To Live and Die in L.A. at Allmovie
• To Live and Die in L.A. at Box Office Mojo