All language subtitles for To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) (2160p BluRay x265 10bit HDR Tigole).mkv3

Hello, this is Bill Friedkin, the
director of To Live and Die in L .A.,

going to do this commentary now about
the film without referencing the film

itself. I'm just going to give you my
impressions, thoughts, and feelings

what went into the making of it, why we
made it, what I saw in the material, a

little background on the cast, and about
some of the things that we were trying

to do.

To Live and Die in L .A. started out as
the impressions of a former Secret

Service agent on the job that he had
done with the Secret Service for about

years.

And he put his impressions in the form
of a novel called To Live and Die in L

.A., which I read.

A lot of the time I'll get recommended
by someone, a friend or even a stranger,

who tells me you ought to read this
book. It looks to be right up your

and often it isn't, but in this case it
was. What attracted me to this story was

the surrealist nature of the life of a
Secret Service agent, of a guy who...

would be protecting the President of the
United States one day, and in an

informal relationship, would often be
playing cards with the President in his

suite with other Secret Service agents.
They used to play poker for money with

President Reagan.

And then the next day, he would be
chasing some counterfeiter in a very

neighborhood of Los Angeles for stolen
credit cards or bad checks.

So that struck me as being a very
surrealist situation, and it's what

me to the story.

My

initial impulse,

as I've said, was to...

show the surrealism behind the life of a
Secret Service agent. One day, being

part of an elite squad that's protecting
the President of the United States

against all enemies, foreign and
domestic, which is their charter.

And the next day, chasing a guy for a
$50 bad check in Watts.

And I realized once I...

got all the footage together that I had
shot, that I didn't have the first part.

I never bothered to shoot the detail
that was protecting the President of the

United States.

I sort of took that for granted in my
own mind and then realized in the

room that we didn't have it, so we went
out and shot it as a kind of...

but a prologue to the film.

I also remember saying to Jack Hughes
and Nick Feldman, who are the group Wang

Chung, when I asked them to write the
score for the film, I said, one thing I

don't want you to do is write a theme
song.

Don't write a song that has any lyrics,
let alone the lyric to Live and Die in L

.A.

To my amazement, they...

one day in the editing room, handed me a
song that they had written and recorded

with that title, and it was meant to be
the signature song of the picture.

I liked it very much, I have to admit. I
thought it was...

terrific and had a wonderful mood both
musically and lyrically that set the

for the film.

And so I decided to use that song again
as an aftermath over the sequence that

we shot after all the other shooting had
been completed.

The Iranian terrorist on the roof at the
beginning of the film,

that's... something that I don't recall
being in the book at all.

It was something that came out of my
discussions with Jerry Petovich, who was

Secret Service agent and did write the
book.

I remember asking Jerry,

what were sort of the typical heroic
deeds that may have been done. And he

mentioned the idea of a terrorist trying
to get at the president during a speech

that the president would be making in a
big city hotel.

In 1985, there were terrorists all over
the place making threats against the

president, sometimes attempting to carry
them out. In many cases, they made

attempts, and it was never even
mentioned in the newspapers.

It was just hushed up because,
obviously, the Secret Service doesn't

give people any ideas.

But this was based on a threat to the
president, one of...

many that occur every time the president
goes out and makes a speech somewhere.

And the Secret Service is alert to these
guys, and they're very good at spotting

things that seem to be out of kilter in
what would otherwise look like a normal

operation, say, of a hotel, which you
and I might take no notice of.

The main title sequence tries to give a
flavor of the world.

That the audience is about to experience

It shows several of the characters
without any explanation of who they are

what they're doing, and it also shows
the act of counterfeiting and the act of

passing the money. The money is
counterfeited, often in a very secret

but then passed in very public places to
dealers by the mules, and the dealers

know where they have a market for
counterfeit money.

They know who's buying counterfeit
money. Often drug dealers will buy

counterfeit money at half price and then
pass that money on to the people that

they're buying drugs from.

But all kinds of people who deal in
cash.

to this day, are still buying
counterfeit money at half price.

I forget the exact figure that the
Treasury used, but I believe it was

of dollars of counterfeit money out
there that they were always trying to

down.

The number of people who made money as
good as Rick Masters in our film could

counted on the fingers of one hand. He
was...

really good.

He really was a better counterfeiter
than he was a painter.

And he probably knew that.

But he needed the conceit as well as the
day job, so -called, of

calling himself a painter so that he had
a profession.

But secretly, I think he would like to
have been a painter but knew because of

his high intelligence and taste.

that he was not really a painter, he was
a counterfeiter.

Rainer Fetting is an artist who sold a
lot of paintings on both sides of the

Atlantic Ocean. He sold a lot in Europe
and in New York, and I really value his

work.

He was one of the young modern German
expressionists. And I thought that his

painting was very evocative of the kind
of work that Rick Masters should be

doing. So I called upon Rainer Fetting
to let...

Willem Dafoe come to his studio, watch
him paint, see some of his paintings,

a sense of how he painted, and then we
actually used some of Rainer Fetting's

paintings in the film. The canvas that's
burned at the beginning was

done by Rainer Fetting, and if it had
not been destroyed, it would have sold

for quite a bit of money.

But he did it very quickly for us, and
he knew what its purpose was. But when

you see some of Master's other canvases,
they're all done by Rainer Fetting.

The shot that precedes the dive off the
Vincent Thomas

Bridge that's made by Richard Chance on
a dare...

The beginning of that shot is, of
course, Bill Peterson standing on top of

bridge waiting to dive, sort of getting
a sense of how he's going to do it.

And that shot was achieved with a fairly
new piece of equipment at that time

that's now in wide usage.

It's a Luma crane, it's called.

It's much more portable and lightweight
and easier.

to set up and manipulate on location
than the original cranes were.

A studio crane is too bulky and too
unwieldy to take to a place like a

It was only possible to do a shot like
that because of this portable,

lightweight crane that was originated in
France.

and that they had very few copies of in
this country.

And I remember seeing a demonstration of
that crane at the equipment rental

house where we were able to rent it, and
I thought, my God, I've got to find a

lot of usage for this. And so there's a
few shots of it in To Live and Die in L

.A., a few shots using that Luma crane.

or variations of it. Once we used that
piece of equipment, it suggested other

kinds of equipment that we were able to
fashion on our own using parts of the

technology of the Luma.

And I don't think anybody has been put
in harm's way more than I have by this

hot shot over here.

Seriously speaking, if I'm going in to
beg somebody... I contacted

Gerald Petovich after I read the novel,
learned that he had been a Secret

Service agent for 19 years, learned
that, according to him, a number of the

incidents in the book were based on his
experiences, which he had fictionalized.

And I acquired the rights to the book
myself.

And I wrote the screenplay.

I wrote a draft of the screenplay
myself.

And then...

I found myself calling Jerry from time
to time or meeting with him, and he

show me some of the hangouts for the
Secret Service agents downtown L .A. and

introduced me to a couple of people and
took me to their offices to get a look.

And I found myself leaning on him quite
a bit wherever I felt a little bit in

doubt about doing something.

It reached a point where I felt, you
know, I would often say, Jerry, why

you write this scene?

This is a new scene. It's not in the
book. I have an idea for something else.

Why don't you write it and send it back
to me and I'll change it or maybe it'll

be fine. And so I initiated a
collaboration with him.

And when it was finished, I decided to
put his name on the screenplay because I

thought it was a...

a genuine collaboration, although it
didn't set out to be that way.

My feeling at the time was I was going
to buy the rights to this book and then

do the screenplay alone, and that would
have been that.

Now, I felt that it would be good to
show the audience how counterfeit money

actually made.

And so Jerry Petovich, who had busted a
number of counterfeiters as a Secret

Service agent, he got us a guy. I don't
even know if Jerry got this guy out of

prison or if the guy had done his time
and he was back out. And the guy was

out of prison for counterfeiting, and
guess what job he was doing?

He was running a print shop, you know.
And guess, you know, what that involved.

Out -of -the -way print shop, somewhere
in an area where you'd need a police

escort to get to most of the time today.

And we met this counterfeiter, and he
took us through the process.

And he had the paper, you know, which we
paid for. It's a certain kind of, it's

called rag. The paper's a certain number
of rag, it's called.

And certain kinds of inks, and the money
that he was making.

These $20 bills were every bit as good
as what the government makes in those

days. They've changed the currency now
and put some little gimmicks on it

so that it's tougher to counterfeit.

I don't know if it is or not, but it's
supposed to be.

As you make a $20 bill, let's say you do
one side,

And that's finished, and it dries, and
then, you know, in a sheet of bills.

And then you do the other side, the so
-called gray side and the so -called

green side.

And a lot of bills that we made, we only
needed one side for.

Somebody on the set had taken some of
this money. It was lying all over the

floor on the set, one side or even two
sides.

Took it home and had a teenage son who

saw these, young teenage son, I might
add, who saw these

bills on his father's desk.

And he and a friend took the bills and
went off to a grocery store and tried to

buy some Hostess Twinkies or something.
And they offered the guy behind the

counter a one -sided 20.

And within five minutes, the store
manager had the Treasury Department

And they grabbed these kids, where'd you
get this money?

I had it from my dad.

Where'd he get it? Visit him, boom, up
props the name of our property master,

Barry Bedeck, who was in charge of the
counterfeit money.

And so for weeks, if not months, the
Treasury...

used to show up at Barry Bedeck's house
in the valley somewhere.

They first arrived at about 3 or 4 in
the morning. Knock, knock, knock.

Mr. Bedeck, yeah, United States
Department of the Treasury, Secret

like to talk to you.

Come in, sit down.

They start grilling him, and they haul
him downtown to question him about where

he got this money.

And he's making a movie.

Don't give us that.

Making what? What are you talking about?
Nobody makes this money.

You know, not for a movie or anything
else.

And so gradually, my name comes up. Who
told you to do this? Well,

the directors, Bill Friedkin.

Bling! Hello.

United States Department of the
Treasury. Mr. Friedkin, we'd like to

you. Blah, blah, blah. And I had already
talked to Petrovich about what I do

when that happens.

And I did as he instructed me. I said,
yeah, you mind coming down and talk to

us? I said, do you have a warrant?

Do you have a warrant for me to come
down and talk to you?

No, we don't. But if we have to go get
one, it's not going to be. I said, well,

go get one.

Just get a warrant and then present me a
warrant and I'll show up there.

All right, if that's the way you want to
play it.

The next call comes from the office of
the United States Attorney for the

District of Los Angeles County.

Mr. Friedkin, U .S. Attorney, blah,
blah, blah, blah. You have a warrant?

No. We just like your cooperation.

Cooperation what? I made a film called
To Live and Die in L .A. We got an

to make this money.

It's not for the purposes of passing it
around.

It's for the purposes of use in a motion
picture, and I want it to be as

accurate as possible.

And that's it.

Well, how much money did you make? Not a
lot. I don't know.

Do you have any of it on your person?

No, not really.

No.

Maybe some souvenirs, but, you know, not
really.

Well, I'd like to ask you a following.

Do you have a warrant?

No. Get a warrant. And they had no
grounds.

you know, to accuse me of a crime or to
question me about a crime.

They just tried to browbeat me a little
bit. There was no crimes committed.

We made this money for a movie and then
basically destroyed it all.

We weren't counterfeiters.

But the guy who made the money had been
convicted of counterfeiting and did

serve time.

So the money in that film and the
process is totally authentic.

The casting director was a guy named Bob
Wiener, who's since passed away.

He was a brilliant young guy who was not
really a casting director. He was a

writer for the Village Void, which was a
counterculture newspaper in New York,

still going.

And he would see every play and every
unusual or foreign film.

So he had a wide range of knowledge
about actors around the world.

And he cast the French Connection. He
brought me Roy Scheider and Tony

and others.

Several years later, I guess it was
about 12 or 13 years later, when I

to live and die in L .A., I contacted
Bob Wiener. He was living

in Paris then and writing...

and I said, listen, why don't you come
back here? I want to do another piece

that has similarities to French
Connection, and I'd like you to cast it.

And he said, all right, send me the
script, and let me see if I have a

for it.

Sent him the script, and he said, okay,
I'll come back, let's do it.

And he then sort of set about to find a
cast, and I said, Bob, I don't want to

cast anybody that's known, or anyone
that's a big star.

I had adopted that approach with The
Exorcist, French Connection, Boys in the

Band, and other films that I had made up
to that time.

I wanted just very good actors who could
disappear into their roles and not have

people say, oh, they're so -and -so, you
know.

He went out, and after a few months of
getting tips on this person or

that person, he called me.

And he said, I want you to fly up to
Toronto to the Shakespeare Festival.

He said, there's a guy here who is doing
a streetcar named Desire.

He's a young actor from Chicago.

He'd never been in a film. His name is
William Peterson.

And he's got his own acting company in
Chicago.

And he loves theater.

And he's doing streetcar up here. And
he's not doing anything that would

you of Brando.

which is hard to do. I mean, that role
in Streetcar, Stanley Kowalski, is so

identified with Brando as much, if not
more, than any role in the American

theater is identified with one actor.

You know, just as Death of a Salesman
was identified with Lee J. Cobb for

decades. And he said, this guy is really
good. And he said, the other thing is,

he's unusual looking, but...

You know, women find him attractive.

I've seen a couple of performances of
this thing, and there's women lined up,

young women lined up to see A Streetcar
Named Desire.

So I flew up there, and I saw Peterson's
performance, and it was great.

It was really different, and he had a
great stage presence, and he had very

-like movements, and he commanded the
stage.

And I met with him after the
performance, spent a couple of days up

him and talked about this picture. And I
was trying to get a feel as to whether

or not I would be willing to hang a
starring role on this gentleman.

Very intelligent guy.

He was also an athlete. He had played
college football somewhere up in the

Pacific Northwest, whether it was
Colorado or Wyoming, I'm not sure.

But he was like a cowboy and a football
player and a fantastic actor.

He had all of the ingredients for this
role, most especially

intelligence. He was extremely
intelligent.

And so I decided, yeah, I'm going to go
with this guy.

I'm not even going to screen test him.
I'm just going to go with him.

And then he suggested John Pankow, who
he had worked with in Chicago.

and elsewhere in theater.

And I met John, and I liked his quality
as well.

I'd never seen him in anything.

Wiener went out and found the two women,
Deborah Feuer and Darlan Pflugel.

He found them somewhere.

I had never seen them before in
anything.

He brought them to me.

suggested this guy Willem Dafoe, who was
and is part of an experimental acting

company in New York called the Worcester
Group, where they do really plays that

are totally out of the box.

You know, not the classic, just
experimental work.

And Willem had made one or two films
that were not widely

seen at all.

He had worked with Catherine Bigelow,
who's a director that I admire very

And I think he had made one other film,
you know, not in a lead role.

But I met him, just sat in a room with
him, and I said, this guy's great. He

extraordinary quality, exactly what I
want, a theatrical background.

He's been in front of a camera. Nobody
really knows who he is. And so I went

with him, which is what I tend to do
when casting.

I'll just go instinctively.

Federal agent, excuse me. Ma 'am, I'd
like to see the bills that man just

you, please.

During this foot chase between Bill
Peterson and John Turturro at the Los

Angeles International Airport, we had
many restrictions that were put on us by

the airport personnel. Of course, we
could only work around moments when the

traveler traffic was light. There were
many other areas they didn't want us to

go through and other areas that they...

indicated we could use.

They didn't want to get a lot of real
people who were traveling from one city

another caught in this film.

So they asked us to use extras, our own
extras.

But I wound up shooting a lot of people
who just happened to be there.

And one of the other restrictions that
they put on us was under no

could Peterson get up on those rails and
run along the rails, largely for his

own safety.

They felt that their insurance wouldn't
cover it if he got hurt.

But Bill assured me that he could run
those rails with immunity.

And Bill had been an ex -college
football player, very athletic and very

lithe and very capable.

In all of the physical stunts that he
did and he did almost everything in the

film himself Including a lot of the
driving But he assured me he could get

the rails and make the run and at one
point We worked it out where he would

actually do that for a short stretch and
After we made the shot, of course, I

had a severe

talking to from the airport manager who
said we violated our agreement and this

and that. He was all upset and I
remember telling him, look.

This is just a young actor who got
carried away, you know? He wanted to do

It was his dream. It's always been his
dream to run along the rails of the

people movers at the airport.

Now he's done it. I said, it's a
harmless incident, and he's okay, so why

we just forget it and move on? And the
guy finally gave it up, and it's in the

film. But it's not something I've seen
in too many other films that have been

shot at LAX.

The first

time

I had ever seen John Turturro was when
he came in to read for To Live and Die

LA. And I thought that... he had created
a really original character.

And he looked kind of strange and
sounded strange.

The part was not written that way. The
part was written rather

straightforwardly. But I think he comes
off as a very strange kind of a

character in the way that Peter Lorre
and Sidney Greenstreet used to in the

films of the 1940s and late 30s.

And this was, again, created by
Turturro. I loved his accent, which was

own sound, the way he sounded, his
attitude, a lot of the dialogue which he

improvised from what had been written
and took it a step further and took it a

step wilder.

I loved the way he had this...

quality of really looking into the eyes
of whoever he was talking to and

becoming emotional with every word that
was being said to him.

Master is like a poker player.

He never reveals his emotions.

He'll just talk to you. He won't get
excited.

He won't be elated. He won't be
depressed. He just very calmly lays

Cody's emotions.

are a kind of mirror of his temperament.

And I think that Turturro did a really
wonderful job in creating this character

in that way.

Don't forget about me.

I won't. You have my word on that.

Oh,

yes, I do remember saying to Willem
Dafoe from time to time, I would just

zen. And that, to me, was a code word
for the two of us about how I wanted him

to approach his performance with a kind
of calm.

Never push it.

Never get forceful. Never show masters
as too excitable.

Always as a guy who has his emotions
under control.

And the suggestion that underneath

that calm facade with some raging fire.

And he ultimately goes up in flames. He
ultimately goes up in his own inner

raging fire.

But the key to me to his performance was
then, and I would very often give

nothing but that as a direction to
Willem Dafoe.

What's up? Is there anything you can
give me on Rick Masters?

There's a guy in Pasadena.

He's a lawyer or something. Used to
represent hippies.

What's his name?

Waxman?

Max Waxman. Waxman? What's his story?

I think he's moving paper for Masters.

Good. Is there anything I can do for
you?

The choreography of the dance scene was
done by a woman named Leslie Linka

Glatter. And I first met Leslie Glatter
in Japan.

Leslie Glatter was the only woman ever
to dance with the Japanese

theater, which is all male, the Kabuki
theater.

It's all males.

all the women parts are played by men,
but Leslie Glatter had danced with the

Kabuki troupe. And she was quite an
extraordinary dancer and had studied

choreography in Japan.

And I had this idea to copy the Matisse
chassables as their costumes.

So the costumes in that scene are copies
of these chassables

that the great...

French painter Matisse made for a little
church in a small town in France called

Vence. Matisse designed this chapel and
he designed everything in the chapel and

he designed the robes or chastables that
the priests wore.

And so I copied the design of the
Chasuble's for these dancers and their

and their patterns which is pure Matisse
and I think at the time Matisse was so

old he wasn't even painting things
anymore he was just making cutouts out

colored paper and that's how he would
put the designs together so

I showed Leslie Glatter these designs,
and she choreographed a dance number

utilized the robes. And she taught
Deborah Feuer, who was the actress and

had done some dancing, she had taught
Deborah Feuer the choreography for this

piece with other dancers that she hired.
And the dance number was very kabuki

-based.

What motivates Vukovic is loyalty and
the need to prove himself.

Vukovic comes from a long family of law
enforcement people.

His uncle was a cop. His father was a
cop.

They probably retired as cops.

They influenced Vukovic to become a cop,
that it was an honorable profession.

In the course of the film, Vukovic finds
himself caught up in an illegal attempt

by Chance to trap Masters out of his own
desire to

kill Masters in retaliation for Masters'
murder of

Chance's former partner, Jim Hart.

So Vukovic is torn between his loyalty
to...

the Secret Service and to law
enforcement and his loyalty to Chance.

When they first get together as
partners, Chance tells Vukovich he's

get Rick Masters and he doesn't care how
he does it. And Vukovich doesn't say to

him, well, I'm not going for that.

I'm not going to do anything that goes
against the law.

In the course of the film, he is seduced
by chance into the very thing that he

fears most, and that's a compromise of
his values as a law enforcement officer.

The location of the lawyer who trades in

counterfeit money, whose name is Waxman
in the film, Max Waxman, and...

a church right across the street from
Waxman's office.

I chose those locations because I wanted
an office that had a church across the

street. And so that location is out in
Pasadena.

And we made the rain for that scene. We
manufactured the rain because I just

felt the location was pretty dull
otherwise.

But I wanted the two Secret Service
agents to be hiding in a church

watching

the comings and goings of people into
and out of Waxman's office.

And so the scene is there to show the
kind of dullness of surveillance that

often leads to the agents losing it and
even falling asleep while on

surveillance because for so much of the
time so little happens.

But the priest who comes in and brings
them some milk and cookies is actually

Rainer Fetting, the painter who did
Master's artworks.

So why don't you make a jump with me
sometime?

Yeah?

Yeah, you'd love it.

Fabulous. Once you get over the first
fear, it's a piece of cake.

It's the greatest feeling you'll ever
have. Until you float out, man, your

go right up into your throat.

I'm going to take a pass, partner.

You know, I could help you.

If you ever get in trouble.

You know what I mean?

No.

Not here.

I don't like to spell things out for an
audience.

I don't like... to have the audience
know where the next scene's going to be

where the next shot's going to be.

That's something called show and tell.

A typical example of that would be one
character says to another, I'm going to

meet you around the corner in a half an
hour. And the next cut is to around the

corner in half an hour.

A lot of films are structured this way.

The audiences are told where they're
going and when they're going there, and

then you go there.

I like to have events just unfold
without the audience's expectation of

coming or what it's leading to.

That's what I prefer in all of the arts
that I care about, whether it's music.

I love, for example, the compositions of
Stravinsky, where they're completely

unpredictable as to...

where the rhythms are taking off, the
melodic structure.

The films that I most value, films like
Citizen Kane and All About Eve and The

Treasure of Sierra Madre and Paths of
Glory and any number of others, are

that are unpredictable in their
structure.

You have no idea where this story is
going.

You have no idea, for example, in...

in Citizen Kane that the meaning of
Rosebud will ever be determined for the

audience, but not to the characters in
the film.

Or that in Treasure of Sierra Madre, the
Bogart character is going to get

killed. Or that in All About Eve, Eve
Harrington is going to be played the

way that she's been playing all the
other characters in the film. It's a

wonderful irony.

That kind of ironic, unpredictable
quality is seldom achieved in film, and

anymore almost at all.

There are several examples today that I
could cite. The work of Spike Jonze and

Charlie Kaufman is completely
unpredictable.

And so in music and in art and in films,
I most

value the ironic and the unpredictable.

What's going on?

Get up. The whole caper is gone. Come
on.

Shit.

In

this

particular section of the film, you see
that the two Secret Service agents have

entered...

Waxman's office after he's died.

There has been an entrance previous to
that by the police department.

And it's obvious that while they were in
the house, although I never show it on

film, that Chance snatched up what he
felt were significant documents out of

Master's house, for which he had no
warrant, so that they would never stand

in a court case.

It was Waxman's notebook, and it showed
the dates and the amounts of money that

Waxman had purchased from Masters.

Vukovich points out that that book is
evidence, that they should have left it

the house or turned it over to the
investigating officer.

Chance sees it as an opportunity to pin
some of these crimes

on Masters.

It gives him names, addresses, amounts.

which though he could not use as
evidence because it wasn't subpoenaed,

kind of roadmap to the people that
Masters associated

with and the kind of amounts of money he
was counterfeiting and dealing with.

Vukovic wants to turn it in. Chance
wants to keep the notebook.

This becomes an essential fissure or
break between them.

that never quite gets repaired until the
final sequences.

But Vukovic begins to see at that point
that his partner is a psycho,

that he's not just, by reputation, the
best agent in the Secret

Service, he's a guy that will break the
law in order to arrest somebody.

My subject, I guess, has always been the
thin line between the policeman and the

criminal. The fact that the very best
cops or law enforcement officers

are those guys who not only think like
criminals, but occasionally have to act

like criminals to bring them to justice.

Now, often that backfires.

There was a time when the public didn't
mind law enforcement agents.

having to bend, if not break the law, to
catch a bad guy.

Today, if that comes into court, the bad
guy walks.

And the public is less sympathetic to
the idea of cops breaking the law.

But it's always been a major theme of
mine that there is a very thin line

between the policeman and the criminal.

Well, one of the things that I did with
Darlene Pflugel was let her hang out

around the apartment that I chose for
her character, Ruth.

And I let her do a lot of the decor for
it, or she worked actually with the art

director, Cricket Rowland, in how the
apartment would look and what its

emotional colors would be.

And a part of letting the characters do
that...

you also want them to get some feelings
about how they would behave, how they

would move around in that kind of space
that's supposed to be theirs.

So for the love scene, I let Peterson
and Darlan work that out themselves.

I just told them where I was going to
put the camera.

I gave them the direction that I think
is the greatest direction I've ever

heard. It was Diaghilev's... direction
to Nijinsky.

Now, Diaghilev was the ballet master of
the very famous 20th century ballet

company, the Ballet Russe de Monte
Carlo.

And his principal dancer was Vassilov
Nijinsky.

And the greatest advice I've ever heard
was Diaghilev's advice to Nijinsky

before Nijinsky went out to do a
performance.

And Diaghilev said to him, E tonne moi.

in French, which means surprise me.

And that's what I said to Darlan and
Bill.

I said, all right, I'm going to put the
camera over here, and when you guys are

ready, you tell me, and then surprise
me.

How much do I get for the information I
gave you on the accident?

No arrest, no money.

It's my fault he's dead?

It's clear that Chance is using Ruth not
only for sex, but for information.

And she's using him both for money, for
giving him information, and

keeping her out of prison.

So again, it's part of the metaphor of
the counterfeit world.

You gonna stay a while?

No.

I gotta go.

I got something for you.

I'm here.

The dealer from San Francisco is coming
into LA next week with 50 grand to buy

stolen diamonds.

Stuff that was lifted from the Bel Air
Hotel.

He's a Chinaman and he's connected to
people in Hong Kong. I told you I'm only

interested in Play -Doh.

I was reading about the star.

Talked about how the stars are the eyes
of God.

I think it's true, don't you?

No, I don't.

I can't tell you that I actually
understand.

the true nature of any character I've
ever depicted in a film.

I just believe that there are tremendous
complexities to people, and that's what

I try to show.

It's Hamlet's dialogue to Horatio in
Shakespeare's play Hamlet. There are

things in heaven and earth than are
dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio.

And that's really how I feel about all
these characters that interest me, that

have managed to show aspects of their
lives.

I don't know everything there is to know
about them. I don't know all their

backstories. I don't really care.

I have your parole revoked.

You mean that?

You'd do that?

I did send Peterson and Pankow around,
not only with the LAPD, but Jerry

Petovich arranged for them to go out
with Secret Service agents as well and

to some of the bars and places where the
agents hung out and told war stories.

And I went out with them myself from
time to time, and we would compare notes

and discuss mostly the attitudes of
these guys.

Not so much incidents. It was tough.

to put incidents into the story because
the story did not allow for a lot of

digression.

What I wanted Peterson and Pankow to
adopt was the behavior

of the Secret Service agents.

Amazingly, they had a kind of devil -may
-care quality about them, this group of

guys.

So I wanted John Pankow and Bill
Peterson to get a sense of their

personal lives and their private lives
and their attitudes in the street.

The scene with the artist in the
wheelchair, that's an artist, a downtown

painter called Mark Gash. That was his
studio.

I knew Mark Gash, and I have collected a
number of his paintings. I find them

very original, and while they look to be
like... children's paintings and quite

humorous and graphic.

They have a very, very dark heart.

And Mark Gash is handicapped. As you can
see, he's in a wheelchair.

He is not exactly playing someone else.
He's playing himself. But I

wanted to make him a part of the film,
so I gave him some lines that pertain to

the story.

And we shot at his studio.

The only significance of that Chinese
character that's over the door of

downtown printing operation is that I
saw it there on that

location, and it was just the beginning
of the kind of Asian invasion of Los

Angeles. There's now several million
Asians living in greater Los Angeles,

that area had just... begun to become an
Asian enclave. I forget what that

character means. There are probably
people watching this video or DVD that

know the meaning of that character.

I've long since forgotten it, but it was
up there when I chose the location.

I just loved Steve James as a human
being and as an action actor.

I actually, you know, we wrote this part
for Steve James simply because I was a

fan. He plays a guy who was one of
Masters' contacts for passing

counterfeit money. He was also a guy
that Masters could call on from time to

time to do some unpleasant work, such as
killing somebody even while they were

in prison.

He was a guy that I both knew and liked.
I did a couple of television shows at

NBC called The Cat Squad, and I cast
Steve James in those and

loved working with him. He was just a
pleasure to see every day on the set. He

was always ready, always there with
good, fresh ideas.

He called himself the Funky Man.

And I introduced my young son to Steve
as the Funky Man. And my son, who was at

the time about six years old, he only
knew Steve as the Funky Man. Whenever

see him, he'd say, Hi, Funky Man, how
are you?

And Steve had a great, great sense of
humor and was a really terrific actor,

well beyond the kind of roles that he
was mostly known for.

You still driving that piece of shit?

We actually shot the prison scene at San
Luis Obispo State Prison.

And that's where, by the way, some of
the Manson family are being held.

And we shot with actual inmates in the
yard, no actors, just our principals,

John Turturro and a couple of other guys
that were cast in that scene.

One thing I remember about being there
is that Bill Peterson and I and somebody

else, we played some three -on -three
basketball with the inmates, and we beat

the inmates, who were pretty good
basketball players.

They were looking for an opportunity to
break their daily routine, and so they

enjoyed participating in the film and
playing themselves, and the warden

it was a good idea as well.

I wish that...

that prison sequence had been developed
more. I wish that I had done more with

it, but I only needed a small part of
it, just really to show that Cody was in

prison, that a hit had been put on him
by Masters, and that that was giving

the motivation to suggest that he would
give Chance some information about

Masters. It turns out that he was in no
way prepared to do that, but was just

looking for a way to escape.

by using chance.

Pretty girl, Carl.

Actress. There is a perceived code of
honor among thieves.

I don't think it's very real.

They pride themselves on their inability
to snitch.

And yet, if the price is right, they
will snitch somebody off.

Nobody's going to do time for somebody
else. There's always a way that law

enforcement can get to a guy that
they've got the goods on and get him to

out. The whole idea of honor among
thieves, whether it be mafia or the kind

guys that were counterfeiting money in
Los Angeles in those days.

drug dealers, it's just a myth.

The myth of the godfather, you know,
that you, there is honor among these

people. They are men of honor, men of
respect.

My experience has been that there is no
honor, no respect, but that to

each other, they're trying to display
these qualities.

You know, I respect you.

That's your turf. I'm not going to
interfere with...

You're turf. And if something goes down
bad for me, I'm not going to pull you

into it.

That's something that they have to
perceive about themselves.

They know if they have any intelligence,
and often they do, great intelligence,

they know that what they are doing is
without honor, without respect. It's

against the law.

And yet, most of what you hear them
talking about and demanding from others

respect.

That fight scene between Steve James and
Willem Dafoe and a guy named Jack

Hoare, who was an actual cop, a member
of the Ramparts Division, and he was the

toughest cop I've ever met. He was not
really an actor. He's a cop.

He's the guy who kills Peterson in the
movie.

The choreography was done by a guy named
Pat Johnson, who I've worked with a

number of times. Pat is a...

Black belt, you know, ninth degree. He
was the number two middleweight karate

champion in the United States. Chuck
Norris was number one.

I like Pat very much. He's a very tough
guy and a lethal guy, but

he's soft.

He's soft -spoken. He's a wonderful
family man.

He's a very gentle man.

He had choreographed Bruce Lee's Enter
the Dragon, among others.

And he did the Karate Kid, all the
Karate Kid movies.

I can't afford to have it circulating
right now.

A fight scene has to be choreographed or
you're going to hurt somebody.

You might even hurt somebody if it's
choreographed. It's always a risk, which

why you try to get a good...

professional guy to make sure that the
blows look real but aren't.

And one of the things that, you know,
the concepts that I had that I asked Pat

Johnson to work through, and I worked
very closely, you know, with him, is

they used objects in the room.

That, you know, they didn't just come in
and start doing flying kicks.

I didn't want a sense of karate in the
movie.

except occasionally, but that what they
would do in a situation like that is

what people do in any kind of an
impromptu brawl, and that is use the

that are near at hand.

So we worked very hard to use things
that would be natural to that setting,

which was a guy's living and dining
room.

You broke a contract with me, Jeff.

Now, I don't know whether you're into
it. I don't think that...

Masters kills the Steve James character
at all. He puts a gun in his mouth, and

then you hear the loud sound of a
fireplace roar.

I think he just forced him to give him
the money back, to get the money back.

I know some people have told me that
they think that Masters killed him. He

would kill him. He wasn't bluffing.

But at the end of the fight, he just
puts the barrel of the gun down his

I don't assume that he killed him at
all, but he may have. I just don't know.

I felt that a part of Masters' character
was that he was a voyeur.

He loved to watch himself having sex and
tape it while he was having sex.

A part of the character of Masters is
that he looks at things. He looks at

people. He looks very carefully at the
work that he does.

And he's always looking and evaluating.

His most important feature is his eyes.

What do you want? I got a writ I need
you to sign.

What kind of a writ?

I need the release of a prisoner from
San Luis Prison to help me in a

counterfeit case.

Must be a big case.

The target's a major counterfeiter
involved in the murder of a federal

I never sign such writs.

Why are you still here?

I spent all morning working on this. The
scene in the federal judge's office, or

the district judge's office, is actually
in a federal judge's office.

We were allowed to shoot in the offices
of a wonderful federal judge named

Mariana Felser, downtown.

And the judge in the film is using her
office.

His name is Val DeVargas. I have not
seen a lot of film on Val DeVargas. I

not seen him for years on film since he
played a much younger gang member

in the great Orson Welles film, Touch of
Evil.

When Bob Weiner brought him in to see
me, I remembered him from Touch of Evil,

and I naturally was excited to have him.

play the judge in the scene. I think he
did a great job.

I think it's a wonderful performance
with a lot of things going on underneath

that you're not quite sure of. Again, it
comes back to my belief that really

good actors are magicians. They turn
paper into flesh, and that's what he

Get back here!

Let me look at it again.

If this prisoner escapes from custody,
I'll make you testify in open court

how we made a fool out of you.

Now get the hell out of here.

If you cross me or bullshit me, I will
dedicate my life to putting you back in

here. Bob Wiener, our casting director,
rented a house.

somewhere. I think it was even in
Beverly Hills or Brentwood or some very

section of Los Angeles and all the
actors stayed at this house. It was like

boarding house.

They stayed there while we were making
the film and it became known as Camp

Wiener and there were actually t -shirts
out about Camp Wiener

on the crew and

There was one famous T -shirt that said,
I've been insulted by Bob Wiener.

And it was a very convivial atmosphere
that I put these guys through.

Actually, the Willem Dafoe character and
the John Turturro characters, they

stayed apart from Peterson and Pankow
because their characters were in

conflict in the script.

So they didn't become as convivial as
Peterson, Pankow, and some of the others

who were playing Treasury agents.

The town is in room 306. The elevators
are over there. Thank you.

You have to come up to the room with me.

What happened to your daughter? I don't
know. She was in a park and those little

monkeys... You do see in the scene where
Totoro

leads Chance astray, ostensibly to a
hospital, which was the Queen of Angels

Hospital in Los Angeles, to visit his
daughter, who's supposedly sick, in the

hospital. It's all a ruse.

And you see Chance let his guard down
there.

And it's a kind of precursor of what's
going to happen to Chance ultimately in

the film when he lets his guard down.

And it gives you some understanding of
why Chance is such a hard case and

rarely lets his guard down, because
whenever he does, he pays a dear price

it.

I don't have a lot of time. I'm in the
middle of a trial.

What kind of trial? It's a dope case.

Client got busted smuggling 50 pounds of
cocaine.

I should be able to get him off, though.
Bob Wiener, the casting director,

brought me virtually every, well,
everyone in the film.

And he had run into Dean Stockwell
somewhere or he had seen him in

and I only knew Dean Stockwell as a
child actor.

But then I saw Dean Stockwell in Paris,
Texas.

And then I subsequently saw him in Blue
Velvet and realized that there was much

more to Dean Stockwell than the child
star that I remembered from The Boy with

Green Hair.

And Dean Stockwell was a cute, lovable
child actor and very good.

Then he...

came in to meet me for the role of this
sleazy downtown L .A. lawyer, and he was

pitch perfect.

He understood the irony of that
character.

He understood the double dealing.

He knew how to use the law to bend the
law, and this was something that

Dean understood innately, and he had the
quality that I most often look for in

an actor, which is intelligence.

That's the first thing I'm looking for
with an actor. Is this person

enough to understand the character
they're playing and to do more with the

character than is written for them?

Mr. Masters?

How you doing? Ben Jett.

My associate, Dr. George Victor.

Pleasure. How do you do?

Cut yourself shaving, Mr. Jensen?

No, as a matter of fact, I got hit by a
tennis ball.

You're in from Palm Springs, huh? Yeah.

What's the weather like there?

It's really nice. You've been up here
the last few days.

I've got a friend in Palm Springs.

Lenny Green.

You know him?

I've got a friend in Hollywood, Donald
Duck. You know him?

I understand you gentlemen do some
island banking.

That's right. Where?

Cayman Islands.

Good business?

Not bad.

What sort of banking?

We're a Dutch antilles company.

We loan money to various enterprises
here in the state.

Loans aren't secured by real estate or
anything else down there.

Hey, Rick. Get a phone call, man.

The idea of continuing a scene from one
location to another has been done...

often in the past, not so much recently
that I can cite, but it's done in

Citizen Kane where you take an idea or
some dialogue and you run it across

several scenes.

And I had that in mind when I moved the
first meeting between Chance Vukovic and

Masters from the roof of a gym to the
weight room of the gym to the locker

of the gym to the steam room of the gym.
And it's all one conversation.

You see the physicality of the three
characters.

They become naked to one another.

And what's going on there is that while
they're sitting in a steam room or are

shown in the locker room totally naked,
which is part of what Chance and Vukovic

have to do in a meeting with masters to
show that they're not wearing a wire,

that they're not wired for sound and
recording.

the conversation because he somewhat
believes that these guys

might be agents. He's always suspicious.

So you see them get naked in front of
one another.

And then they go into the steam room
where they have a conversation, which is

place that's almost impossible to hide a
microphone.

And Master speaks quite clearly and
honestly about his...

intentions and his needs, and Vukovic
and Chance are just making up a story.

So there is underneath that scene the
sense that, well, these three people

gotten physically naked in order to show
that they are completely

open, and yet they're not.

They're just putting each other on.

I've been coming to this gym three or
four times a week for five years.

I'm an easy man to find.

My reputation speaks for itself.

The fact is that if you can't come up
with the front money, you're not for

No way I can get you 30K to make a buy.
You'd hear him laughing all the way from

Washington. Shit, Masters beats the
government out of that much in a day.

We got a chance to make him on a hand
-to -hand buy.

Robert Downey Sr.

plays Bateman, who Chance referred to as
a pencil neck.

And Jerry Petovich referred to his own
boss at the Secret Service as a pencil

neck.

And Robert Downey Sr.

was a good friend of mine for many years
in New York. We used to play basketball

together, and I would see early cuts of
his films, which were really cutting

-edge comedies back in the 60s, Putney
Swope and Greaser's Palace.

two among several.

And I always thought Bob Downey had a
really weird sensibility and was a

interesting guy, a nice guy, and a very
funny guy.

He had not done a lot of acting for
other people, but I cast him in that

simply because I liked him and I thought
he would bring a different color to the

film.

Let me try something on you.

Yeah, what?

Ruth tells me there's a guy coming in
Thursday to buy stolen diamonds.

He's going to be carrying $50 ,000 cash.

I think I've only made one or two
independent films in my career, and the

13 or so have been major studio films.
But I wanted to make an independent

let's put it that way.

And I wanted to do it with guys who knew
how to work quickly.

One of the things that happens on a full
Union picture, which is usually loaded

up with a lot of personnel that are not
absolutely necessary,

is you move slower.

And when I did the French Connection, I
was very fortunate in that we had a

Union crew, but it was a small crew in
New York.

They didn't load a lot of people on us
that we didn't need. We only had the

personnel that we needed.

And it was almost...

an independent sized crew it was very
small very hands -on by everyone

no one had a lot of assistance no one
had you know the sound person was a one

or two man band the camera operator and
the

focus puller and the director of
photography, that was it, on the camera,

know, and just a few key grip, just a
few guys to do light.

And it was a small crew, and the picture
was shot in 40 days, the French

connection. And a part of that is
because you had a small unit moving very

quickly around to God knows how many
locations, possibly, you know,

anywhere from 50 to 80 locations.

in New York in the winter.

And I thought, well, this is the way to
make to live and die in L .A., you know,

in L .A.

And so that's what we did.

And I sought out people from the
independent world.

Well, I had seen Robbie Mueller's work
in a number of European films,

those of Wim Wenders and Paris, Texas
being the best example,

which had a European sensibility but was
shot in the United States. And it had

the kind of a look that I thought would
be very good for...

to live and die in L .A., and so I
contacted Robbie and sent him the script

invited him to shoot the film. He
actually did not shoot any of the chase

Robbie didn't feel too comfortable
filming a chase. That was the director

photography and operator on the chase
was a guy named Bob Yeoman.

But I loved Robbie's sensibility, and I
liked the idea of not

doing a lot of cutting.

in this film as I had in previous and
subsequent films.

And Robbie is a kind of a master of the
single setup scene.

So he would like to find the best light,
shoot the scene in that light, and

that's it, then move on.

And from time to time, that's what we
did.

I told him when we started this that I
was not going to be able to do the whole

film that way.

I would have to do some intercutting.

And he wasn't very happy about that.
Robbie is the kind of a guy that likes

envision a scene and the light that it's
going to play in. And if it's natural

light, you can't keep moving around to
cover it. But often you need coverage in

an American film to keep a scene moving.

So there are several sequences that we
shot that just didn't work because I

didn't get coverage on them. But I was
very interested in Mueller's approach,

and I think it's a unique approach to
the look of To Live and Die in L .A.

was at that time uncommon for a
thriller.

I'll give you five cheese.

Not enough.

And my promise not to throw you back in
the joint.

I had heard some of the recordings of
Wang Chung on the radio while I was in

London before I made To Live and Die in
L .A. And I really liked their sound. It

had, for the time, a very unique pop
sound with very intelligent and ironic

lyrics.

Especially they had a hit song which was
called Wait.

And you had to listen to the lyrics very
carefully before you really got it, but

the beat and the melody were insinuating
and sinuous and very

sensual and evocative, I thought.

And so I met with the two fellows, Jack
Hughes and Nick Feldman, who comprise

this group, and I told them I would be
interested in having them write a score

for To Live and Die in L .A., but I
hadn't made the movie yet.

and I didn't even finish the script at
that time.

When I finished the script, I sent it to
Hughes and Feldman and told them the

kind of movie I was making. I let them
read the script, and I described the

style which I attempted to make the
film. And I said, now, based on what

told you and what you're reading here,
go ahead and just write some stuff.

Write it free form.

Don't write anything that has
necessarily beginnings, middles, or

take care of that.

You guys just write me some long
stretches of track and sometimes

even single sections of track, and we'll
mix them together later, and

I'll find a way because I feel that your
music has an affinity with the movie

I'm trying to make.

It's strange because here are two guys
from England that had never really been

to Los Angeles except perhaps to tour in
one or the other of the clubs at that

time. I know they played the Whiskey A
Go -Go live.

But they had no idea really of the
street life of Los Angeles, let alone

lives of a Secret Service agent or what
they went through in an average day in

Los Angeles.

Yet there was something about their
music that inspired me in terms of the

and attitude of the film. I had done
this once before with the group

Dream for a film I had made called
Sorcerer.

I heard that group playing in an
abandoned church out in the Black Forest

Germany at 3 o 'clock one morning, and
it struck me as being the perfect

soundtrack for the film that I hadn't
made yet. And so I approached them to do

the same thing that Wang Chung did. I
think in both cases, the score turned

to be very good, although the musicians
had not seen the film, any part of it.

by the time they composed and performed
the score.

Get your clothes on.

Come on, two hands. Take your shirt off.

Oh, that's great.

That's it.

Get your pants down.

Let me get your fucking pants down.
Let's get the fuck out of here. Get your

pants down.

I love to see a good chase scene. I've
only been able to come up with about

three in all the films I've made.
They're very tough to dream up.

There's a lot of them that are being
done now. There wasn't at the time.

But they're being done to a greater
extent now using digital opticals, which

sort of cheating.

Looks good, though.

But we did all these chase scenes
mechanically.

And I never said, let's...

top the French connection or something
like that. Let's try to come up with

something different.

We have to come up with something
different. You can't do the same thing.

And let's try to make it intrinsic to a
certain locale.

We'll find the locale first that looks
cinematic, and then we'll work out a

chase that fits that locale.

The cooperation that we got from the
city was terrific.

There was almost no...

problem at that time getting permits to
do this stuff you had to do it on

weekends when there wasn't heavy traffic
you know to get the control so

we couldn't like shoot for three or four
straight days or something you'd have

to shoot on a weekend a saturday and a
sunday often it was early in the morning

first light until about four in the
afternoon then we'd be shut down

and then come back the next weekend and
go do something else in between. If

there was anything else, it could be
shot.

You don't need a lot of people to shoot
a chase.

You need cameras.

You don't even need a lot of sound. I go
out and record all the sound

afterwards.

Because when you're shooting a chase,
it's one shot at a time. One shot at a

time. Maybe with multiple cameras from
different angles, but one shot at a

And so sound can't do very much in that
situation.

We go out and record the sound later,
often after the picture has been cut,

after the film has been edited to just
picture.

Then I'll go out and figure out what
sounds I want.

and go out with one recordist, often not
even to the same location,

and make up a soundtrack from scratch
the way we make up the picture from

scratch.

Live sound isn't very good on a chase
scene.

Usually the length of shots is not very
long at all.

You can't sustain a chase scene in a
long setup.

The chase requires a lot of cutting to
be made to work.

Actions and reactions and points of view
and shots of the people who are looking

at something and then what they're
looking at. It's all done. It's like

knitting. Anyone who's ever knitted will
know the process.

It's painstaking and, you know, it's
knit one and purl two.

I remember seeing a lot of things as we
were filming that just became

ideas to me.

And you always have to be open to the
unexpected.

You always must be open to accidents
that occur or things that you see that

never planned on.

And I'll try and weave such things into
the sequence, either at that time or at

another time.

So, yeah, I saw that, you know, the L
.A. basin where we shot that riverbed,

riverbed, and I said, geez, this looks
really good.

There's some things we can do down
there.

And I even changed the concept of the
chase while we were shooting it. I

midway that these...

Two guys, Peterson and Pankow, weren't
just being chased by two agents in one

car. There were agents all over the
place tracking them and chasing them.

The phrase I used to Buddy Joe, which
sent him to the library, was I said, I

want this to be Kafkaesque.

referring to the works of Franz Kafka,
which is about, all of his works are in

some way about paranoia, and often
paranoia that's real.

These guys thought they were being
chased from everywhere, and they were.

The idea of doing various sounds that
were meant to be subjective.

in this sequence came to me in
editorial, absolutely.

Not at the time that I was filming.

I just filmed it as straightforward as
possible.

And then when I was cutting it, I
always, as I say, try to think cutting a

sequence out of the box, not the way
it's anticipated.

Going this way.

And along the way, I came up with this
idea of a car that's being chased going

the wrong way up a freeway, which I
thought, wow, I've never seen that.

And these ideas are just dictated to me
by the movie God.

And then I'll talk to...

the great stunt coordinator, Buddy Joe
Hooker, and we try to figure out a way

how to do it.

But, you know, I thought, what have I
not seen? Well, I haven't seen a car on

freeway traveling against traffic.

If we can pull this off, this is going
to be very hairy.

And Hooker came up with any number of
ways to do that with a team of

fantastic stunt...

to make it believable.

And it is pretty believable, I think,
even to this day.

And the only guidepost was that it be
different than

any other chase we'd ever seen.

You can't say better, because that's in
the eye of the beholder, but different.

There's a minor tie -up on the North
Long Beach right near Henry Ford. A

of cars have tangled in traffic there.
Shouldn't take too long to get this to

the shoulder. It's a very simple affair.
No injuries involved.

Shouldn't cost you more than a couple of
minutes, though, if you're heading

northbound on the 710.

I'm Stacey Vinn for Metro Traffic
Control.

I think about my shots in my head.

And I often, you know, I'll think about
how I want a scene covered.

or if I want coverage at all or where.

And I may even write down some notes for
myself so I don't forget the coverage

the next day after I've worked it out
the night before or even weeks before.

And then I'll come to the set and tell
the whole crew what I want to shoot.

I'll say, we're going to cover the scene
this way. This is what's going to

happen. I like to pick up the following.

and I will encourage the crew and the
cast to make suggestions, and I'll very

often alter my plan if I get what I
think are better suggestions, you know,

especially from the director of
photography or the camera operator or

And so it's very much a collaborative
effort, but I come in with a total plan.

I don't show them drawings of, you
know...

come in here and do a shot, you know,
this big on Peterson, and that's all.

May not even shoot the other side.

Or all I want to do is do a one -camera
setup over this person's shoulder, and

then if that person moves, the camera
will move around and follow him and then

come back and pick up the person who
used to be over their shoulder.

I believe in only moving the camera when
an actor moves. or when

something's moving, whether it's an
actor or a car or some movable object.

I don't like to move the camera just for
the sake of moving it. The one

exception to that is if I'm trying to
draw the audience into a more intense

moment while an actor is either speaking
or listening, but they're sitting

still, I might slowly and
imperceptibly...

Draw the camera closer to this person.

But that's it. That's the only style I
ever use.

And the only rules I have.

Move the camera when the actors move.

But stage the scene so that there's as
much movement as possible in the scene.

I like to cover a whole movie without
repetitious angles.

The average film...

which owes a debt to television, is
usually covered in a very basic in -the

way. Two people are sitting and talking
and there'll be a shot over this

person's shoulder followed by a close
-up of the person who was in the over

-shoulder. Then the camera turns around
and shoots the other person the same

way. There might be a long shot followed
by close -ups or over -shoulders.

Today you can look at a lot of films
or...

most television shows, and you can sit
there and snap your fingers to the

of the cut. You know from experience
when the cut is going to come and often

where it's going to be.

You often know what the next shot is
because the editor and the director have

established a cutting pattern that
becomes boring and predictable.

And I perceived a long time ago...

that a director whose work I really
admired, the Italian neorealist, I guess

you'd call him, Michelangelo Antonioni,
his films used to never use the same

shot twice.

He would never do that over -shoulder,
close -up jive. He would cover a scene

one way, and it was simple. There'd be
no repetition of angles within the

and then he'd cut to the next scene.

It was sort of like the way you read a
good book. Your eye scans the page from

left to right, and you scan until
gradually the words disappear and become

thoughts and images and real dialogue.

If a book was indicating a pattern of
dialogue

that kept repeating itself in a boring
way,

You'd put the book down.

And Antonioni is the only other film,
and Kubrick to a great extent, never

repeated angles.

They would find the right angle for a
shot and then a scene and then move on.

Now, it's impossible not to repeat a
shot occasionally, often not by design,

often because something didn't work.

you get in the cutting room and you
find, well, I've got to repeat a shot.

in the films of like Antonioni and in
films that I've made, there might be 60

70 shots without a repeat.

Look okay?

When do I get delivered?

I regard the set and all of the filming
that goes on in production as simply raw

material for the editing room.

I often have no idea, except for maybe
one shot to another, how one shot might

connect with another shot.

But I have no idea, and I don't do
storyboards, of how a scene is supposed

look in its ultimate edited version.

I love the process of editing and I like
to go into the cutting room and sort of

find the film in the cutting room
because my experience has been that the

takes on a life of its own in the
editing room.

It decides what it wants to be and it
shows you what it wants to be.

Very often I found that I have shot too
many scenes that I didn't need that to

me were all like character scaffolding
that didn't need to be in the final But

I shot these scenes, and I'm sure they
helped the actors to play them.

But in terms of the ultimate telling of
the story, the film pulls me

in the cutting room in various
directions. So I use the editing room as

a creative way as I try to do with the
shooting.

And we determine the pace and the tempo
and the...

length of the shots and the ultimate
story in the editing room as

we're doing it it's like playing jazz
you have a theme and variations in your

head and then everything comes out of
improvisation improvisation is a word i

probably used a couple of times on this
recording

Now, and it's something I very much
believe in when you're dealing with an

American contemporary film where you
want the acting style to be loose, you

know, not sound like the words were
typed first.

You want it to sound as though the
actors are just making up the words as

go along.

You want the photography to almost be
caught by surprise by what the

are doing.

And so I let that attitude follow me
into the cutting room where I'm

improvising not only the structure of
scenes but the order of scenes. I'll

often change the order of one scene or
another while the film is telling me

it wants to be in the cutting room.

I never want to see an assembly on a
film.

I have seen assemblies on films years
ago when I started, and I hate them.

don't add anything at all.

I need to get in with the film into its
next phase, which is the editing, and

start from scratch.

I don't want to look at a film the way
it was supposed to have been put

or according to a script order.

Because a film is not a play. It's
something that must create a life of its

And where that life is literally created
is from the raw material that you have

in the cutting room.

And when you see an assembly, even by
the very best editor or a tremendous

editor like Bud Smith, it's his version
of the film based on his reading of the

script.

I've read the script too, but my
attitude toward the film has changed by

time I get in the cutting room.

Actors really are miracle workers.

Actors are people who take paper and
convert it into flesh.

Once you cast an actor as a director,
that's the most important decision

made in the making of the film.

It's certainly as important as the
script that you've chosen to film, but

the script is made flesh by the actors.

And the actors, whether they like it or
not, whether they want to or not,

whether they intend to or not,

must bring a great percentage of
themselves to every role that they do.

It's impossible not to.

You can try to become another character,
as all actors do.

It's not them up there, it's the
character as written.

Yet, it physically is them, and often it
is spiritually them as well.

And what I always try to do is invoke...

the spiritual aspect of an actor as I
perceive it, as well as the physical

aspect.

The character Masters is certainly
inspired by the character in Jerry

novel. I think I went a lot farther in
making him kinkier than Petovich

intended.

Petovich had written him as kind of a,
just a cold criminal.

But I was looking for the feminine
inside that.

To me, once I had cast Willem Dafoe, it
was clear that this actor

had tremendous complexity and a kind

of ambisexual quality.

So I adapted the character to what I
perceived about Willem.

The ending, for better or for worse, is
a culmination of what we see about

these two characters, Masters and
Chance, who are two sides of the same

They are both tempting death throughout
the film. They are both seeking death.

Masters' obsession is to burn.

He burns his painting at the beginning
of the film, which is a self -portrait,

and he burns himself at the end of the
film.

These are guys driving toward suicide.

They would not have this credo on their
wall, but the credo of both characters

is live by the sword, die by the sword.

You live by fire, you die by fire.

Both of these characters, the agent, and
the counterfeiter are

tempting death, if not suicide, from the
outset. I believe that

in that kind of lifestyle, whether it's
the policeman or the criminal, wherein,

to my mind, there's a very thin line of
separation that is often blurred,

there's a death wish.

I mean, you're out there every day.

dealing with the possibility that you
may get killed or you may have to kill

somebody.

And it's dangerous in that world.

And I've tried to show in some of the
police procedural films I've made what

that danger can amount to. And the
personalities of the guys who do this

either on one side of the law or the
other, is that of...

suicidal people, I think.

I can't imagine a lot of people who are
watching this tape or this DVD choosing

to go into a profession where they could
die at any moment.

But that's what these characters are in.
That's what they're doing.

And ultimately, it's a death wish that
comes true.

I found one of the best ways well to get
a blood effect and I've used it often I

it came to me out of desperation and
when I did the French Connection and the

guy in the first scene the undercover
French cop is shot in the face.

We had elaborate makeup made for that
guy, you know, and the standard way to

it was you'd make a mask of his face and
put a part of his face

and then there'd be these little
monofilament wires and on cue, when the

supposed to be shot, the makeup artist
would pull away the piece of makeup and

blood would be behind it and spurt. And
we had...

a great makeup artist on French
Connection who tried to accomplish that,

never worked. It always looked phony.

And finally, just out of inspiration, a
gift from the movie god, I saw a

huge one of those plungers that had
makeup blood in it.

And I picked it up, and I put a white
card next to the camera, and I said, let

me see how this is going to work.
Because, you know, in a real fast cut,

is not going to detect the direction
from which this ensues, a blood spurt.

And so I tried a test of it against the
white card, just myself standing

alongside the camera with a big plunger
very close to the subject, the actor's

face, and when he did not expect it to
come, you know, I would silently cue

action. without saying a word.

And the actor would be all prepped, and
he was a little nervous because this was

something different.

And without his realization, I just
squeezed the plunger into his face, and

looked like, when you edit it with a guy
shooting a gun, and then you cut it to

this guy's face, it looks like that's
the source of the blood.

The simplest solution's always the best.

You know, I didn't want to use an
optical.

to do that, and I didn't want to go
through the time -consuming and costly

process of a prosthetic device, which
may or may not work.

It's easier in a trial and error basis
to do it the way I just described.

Even if you miss, even if it doesn't
work right away, all they have to do is

clean up the actor and then do it again
until it does work.

I don't know what's acceptable.

The film got an R rating and there were
no cuts requested.

Same is true of The Exorcist when it
came out in 1973.

That got an R rating with no cuts.

Today, of course, the envelope has been
pushed a lot farther than anything we

did. But, you know, I think if a film is
depicting violence

and a violent world... that it's up to
the individual filmmaker to decide where

to draw back, and it's up to the
audience to decide whether they want to

that place or not.

But I don't believe in a great deal of
self -censorship.

I don't believe in any form of
censorship.

Anybody watching this tape or DVD, if
they don't like it, they can just click

off. You know, put on another DVD.

I'm sure you have a huge collection out
there, whoever you are.

And there's always Rebecca of Sunnybrook
Farm.

Or there's always Lethal Weapon 3.

Or there's Police Academy 6.

So I think it's up to whoever's watching
to decide whether they want to go.

to this place or not.

And it's up to the filmmaker to decide
how far you wish to go in depicting

something. I think I've always put the
brakes on when it comes to sex and

violence. And I think we all have to
have a built -in sensor.

But I just like to forget that that
sensor is there while I'm working.

You might want these. They're very
personal.

Yes.

I can't seem to find any of his
paintings.

He told me he did two large portraits of
you.

They might be worth a lot of money.

He used to burn a lot of things. Maybe
he burned them.

I can't understand how you stayed with
him so long.

Why did you work for him?

You find out at the end of the film,
really, that Bianca, played by Deborah

Feuer, had been playing Masters. You
think throughout the film that Masters

playing her.

But in the end, you find out that she's
part of a betrayal of Masters, and she

winds up with his car, his paintings,
his house, and everything else, and goes

off with her girlfriend into the sunset.

So you learn that...

As with all of the relationships in the
film, this is another counterfeit

relationship.

As I've stated a number of times to the
point of overstatement, the entire film

is about counterfeit relationships, not
just counterfeit money.

And it's a metaphor for a lot of what
I've seen in the years that I've been at

work in Los Angeles.

There's a lot of email that appear on
movie sites to this day about To Live

Die in L .A.

I think it raised a lot more questions
than it answered.

Do I wish it had been as successful as
Star Wars?

Certainly. But did I expect that? No.
What did I expect?

I expected to make a film about
something that interested me, characters

interested me.

The two people, as I say, primarily who
are two sides of the same coin, the

policeman and the criminal, and the thin
line that exists between them, that's

something that I'm just drawn to.

And I try to do it in the form of a
thriller or whatever these things are

in the genre, but I have...

other motives for doing them. I would
like them to reach as large an audience

possible, but that's not in my hands.

I don't know anyone who sets out to make
a film and says, I know this is going

to be a huge hit, or I know this is not
going to be.

You just make the film unless it's
purely a commercial hack job.

You make it because you have some inner
need to express your feelings about

these characters.

What I did for the making of this DVD
was work with a very talented young

man named Michael Eric, who, along with
me, arranged to...

have each shot in the movie retimed for
video.

So the print that you are looking at is
the very best print that exists of

this film. There is no theatrical print
that ever looked this good where all the

dirt is removed, all of the scratches
are removed, shots that were mistimed in

the printing process because the
printing process only can go so far.

The digital process has managed to cure.

The digital timing of the film is the
very best way to print out a

film. I believe that it captures all of
the colors in

their truest nature. We're able, with
this process, to make it more vivid or

less vivid.

But in the case of To Live and Die in L
.A., extremely vivid and full of color.

We're able to make...

The black's blacker and the white's
whiter so that the film has more

The densities are all perfectly timed.
And that's the process

of digital color timing.

The timer's a man named Brian McMahon
who does an absolutely brilliant job. He

is like a restorer.

I view the work of making a digital
video similar to that of someone who

in a great museum restoring paintings
that are centuries old. And I've seen

process. I've seen how they take a
canvas that's falling apart and touch it

Where there's holes in it, they sew it
in the back.

They sew the canvas back together
imperceptibly. And then they paint on

the canvas.

to try and recapture what the original
artist maybe three or four hundred years

ago had intended.

But the colors have been lost or faded
because that's the process.

The work of timing a film digitally is
exactly the same as that of a great

restoration artist or someone who
restores great paintings.

We did the same thing with the
soundtrack.

mixed again, brought in new elements to
emphasize certain sounds and de

-emphasize other sounds.

It's, of course, re -recorded at a
louder level than the original was.

And there's a lot more give and take
with the dynamics of sound

than I had on any print of the 35mm
film.

So I'm a big fan of this process.

In the case of...

Three or four of the films that I've
done with Michael Eric and Brian

they look better than any theatrical
feature that I've ever seen in a

And presumably, this is the way they
will exist.

To the end of time, the memory of man
runneth not to the contrary, because

time you run the film, you're not
destroying it.

as you do with a film on a projector.

Every time the film is projected in
35mm, it's dying a little death.

But when you put this little DVD on your
DVD player, it's treating

it as gentle as one treats a baby.

And there's no reason for the colors or
the sound to ever fade or become

distorted or pick up dirt or scratches.