‘To Live and Die in L.A.’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey

What It Covers

Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey analyze William Friedkin's 1985 crime thriller *To Live and Die in L.A.* for CR Month, covering the film's commercial failure despite critical acclaim, its collaborative production approach, William Petersen's career trajectory, the legendary car chase sequence, Wang Chung's soundtrack, and how Miami Vice's cultural dominance buried the film on release.

Key Questions Answered

• •Release timing vs. cultural competition: *To Live and Die in L.A.* grossed only $17 million against a $6 million budget largely because Miami Vice became a phenomenon in summer 1985 reruns, just weeks before the film's November release. Audiences dismissed it as a ripoff of a show Friedkin hadn't even seen while filming. A summer release four months earlier likely would have produced five times the box office performance.
• •Collaborative filmmaking over auteur control: Friedkin deliberately recruited outside collaborators rather than dictating every element — cinematographer Robbie Müller (Paris, Texas), German artist Rainer Fetting for Dafoe's paintings, and Wang Chung for the score. He gave each collaborator near-total creative freedom, including allowing Wang Chung to make the title song he explicitly forbade, then built a new opening sequence around it after hearing the result.
• •No-name casting as creative advantage: Petersen, Dafoe, and Pankow were all unknown stage actors in 1985, which allowed Friedkin to make choices — including killing the lead character on screen — that would have been impossible with established stars. Friedkin discovered Petersen at 33 via a casting director tip, saw him perform in Toronto, and cast him immediately. A recognizable star like Richard Gere would have required a redemptive arc.
• •William Petersen's sliding-doors career: Petersen turned down Henry Hill in *Goodfellas*, a major role in *Heat*, and a part in *Platoon* to make *Amazing Grace and Chuck* and *Young Guns II*, decisions that prevented him from reaching the Mel Gibson or Kevin Costner tier of 1990s stardom. He ultimately landed on CSI in 2000, reaching 25 million weekly viewers — a different path to the same financial outcome.
• •4K restoration changes rewatchability calculus: Films shot with a European cinematographer's eye for texture and location — as Müller did here, framing LA's industrial south as a violent wasteland — gain significantly from high-resolution restoration. Details invisible in VHS or cable prints, including production design in background frames and the counterfeiting workshop sequence, become fully legible, adding layers that reward repeat viewings at numbers 10, 15, and 20.
• •Car chase construction methodology: Friedkin shut down a stretch of Los Angeles freeway for a weekend, filled it with 900 cars traveling in opposing directions simultaneously to create deliberate audience disorientation. The sequence was shot by Robert Yeoman, later Wes Anderson's regular cinematographer, who won a lifetime achievement award from the American Society of Cinematographers. The practical, pre-CGI approach put crew members in genuine physical danger that Friedkin later acknowledged he underestimated.
• •Villain casting and career range: Dafoe's four-decade career demonstrates a ceiling-basement dynamic worth tracking — his work with Sean Baker, Robert Eggers, and Wes Anderson represents peak output, while *Body of Evidence* and *Speed 2* represent genuine low points in villain performance. His strategy of alternating art-house projects with mainstream franchises (Platoon, Spider-Man) while maintaining experimental theater roots through the Wooster Group provides a replicable model for sustaining a long, varied career.