Original subtitles

I was at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, Canada, doing

a play, A Streetcar Named Desire, playing Stanley Kowalski.

Billy was casting To Live and Die in L .A. in New York, in Manhattan.

His casting director was a man by the name of Bob Wiener.

And Bob was interviewing actors for the movie.

Billy evidently wanted no names.

He wanted to kind of, I think, mimic what he had done with French Connection,

because really Gene Hackman was not known then, and Roy Scheider was, nobody

knew who he was.

And I think he was trying to capture that idea that, you know, I want to put

these guys in a movie, and I don't want anybody to think, oh, that's Richard

Gere, that's Mel Gibson, you know.

And so he was looking for unknown actors in film.

And he was interviewing one actor.

a friend of mine by the name of Gary Finney.

And he interviewed Gary.

This is Bob Wiener, the casting director.

And when he was done interviewing him and reading him, he said, okay, you're

going to get this part, but do you know anybody in Chicago, because I hear

Chicago is really happening with all these actors, and I know you're a member

Stepwell Theater.

Do you know anybody who would be right for this part?

And Gary, being a mensch, said,

Well, I do know a guy named Billy Peterson in Chicago, and he might be

the part.

So Bob Wiener tracked me down in Canada. I happened to be up in Canada doing the

play. And he flew up there by himself and came to the play and met me in the

lobby after the play and said, let's get a cup of coffee. We talked.

He was a very strange sort of guy, and I didn't know him. And we had a cup of

coffee, and he left, went back to New York.

And he called me up.

And he said, would you be willing to come down to New York to meet Mr.

I said, well, I have shows on Sunday.

The only day I don't have shows is on Monday. He says, well, we'll fly you

on Monday, and you can meet with Mr. Friedkin if you're interested in doing

movie. And I flew down on Monday to Manhattan, and

all of a sudden found myself at Billy Friedkin's fabulous Fifth Avenue

house, really.

i sat there with billy for 45 minutes and i was in awe because of course the

exorcist and friends connection and i didn't really know what to say although

didn't know he was from chicago you know so we had that in common and uh he

taught me a script and and i i read a scene with him just sitting in his

room and i put it down and he said that's great you got the part

i didn't have an agent nothing and i was like Really? I got the part?

Yeah.

So I left his apartment and went to a hotel because I was staying overnight to

fly back on Tuesday morning.

And we got a call from Bob Wiener, the casting director. And he said, we want

make a deal with you for this movie.

A deal? I don't even... I have no idea.

Well, my friend John Malkovich had just made his first movie.

So I called...

and talked to his wife, and I said, I've got to know what John made on his first

movie, because I have no idea what to do about making a deal with these guys.

And so that's how it happened, and by that evening, he called me up and asked

to come back over to his apartment, because he wanted me to read with

actor to play Vukovic.

And I did that, and we decided that wasn't quite right, and he said, is

anybody you know that could play this part?

And I said, well, I have a great friend that's here that I've done a theater

with.

His name is John Pankow, and he's understudying a play on Broadway. He was

Amadeus on Broadway.

And he said, well, bring him over in the morning. I said, well, I got an 11 o

'clock flight. So we ran over.

Johnny and I ran over to Billy Friedkin's place on Tuesday morning and

improvised a scene around his couch.

And he said, I like it. You got the part.

So John and I are downstairs now waiting for a cab. He's going uptown. I'm going

to the airport.

And we're standing there going, okay.

Mr. Friedkin's flipped over to the other side.

He's cast us both like in a matter of minutes.

Doesn't know either of us. This can't be happening.

This is some sort of, he's telling all these actors in New York they all have

the part in this movie.

That must be happening.

And the next thing I knew, I went back to Stratford, and the next night Billy

flew up and saw the play and took the whole cast out to dinner afterwards, and

we started talking about the movie.

And then, even then, I was, and I had never done a thing.

And then I said, well, he was going to start shooting in October. I said, well,

I'm committed to this play until the end of October. He goes, well, you can get

out, two -week notice. I said, I really don't feel comfortable doing that.

And he puts the movie back for me.

I mean, nobody would ever do that, you know?

So, I mean, completely unique.

My first two movies, to work with Friedkin and Michael Mann on these first

movies, it was an education in one year that you couldn't have gotten if you

would have been out here in L .A. for 20 years.

Does this mean that you won't carry your weight if something goes down? Look,

what I'm saying is we could have got shit -canned for this little trick.

If you expect me to take the heat, you should tell me about it before you do

If I'd asked you, what would you have said?

I'd have said that the cops probably would have let us copy the diary after

was booked into evidence.

I wouldn't have done it if I was with somebody I didn't trust.

Look, I'm no snitch.

We got to rehearse a lot. Billy wanted to go to the locations, actually, and

rehearse, which was also unique.

I mean, we actually went to the airport.

to LAX and came up with that idea of running along the escalator, you know,

doing that whole thing.

I got to have time with Darlan at the little house that she lived in, you

know, where we were. So he had gotten all his locations in advance, took the

actors, and we got to work on these scenes together.

We got to work on the script with him, what didn't work, what didn't come out

our mouth right.

I mean, half the movie is kind of improvised because he wanted such a fast

-paced shooting thing. He wanted the movie to just move.

And so he didn't want the actors to stop. He didn't want to hit marks.

He didn't want to make sure you're in the light. He wanted to shoot it as if

was really happening.

And Robbie Mueller, the director of photography, was...

genius in that in being able to do that to capture it with sometimes sometimes

we would think we were doing a rehearsal and he would tell Robbie to just turn

the camera on and we would do what we thought was a rehearsal

and he'd say that's it I got the scene no coverage

just that camera from there captured what he wanted in the rehearsal I was

whoa whoa wait a minute what do you mean

What? We're not doing this again?

But there's so many things I could do with this.

And he'd be like, I got what I want.

Mr. Masters?

How you doing? Ben Jessup.

My associate, Dr. George Victor.

Pleasure. How do you do?

Cut yourself shaving, Mr. Jessup?

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?

Really nice. I've been up here the last few days.

I've got a friend in Palm Springs.

Lenny Green.

You know?

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

That was the other thing. I learned everything there is to know about L .A.

in three months with Billy.

Because we were everywhere.

You know, we were in San Pedro.

We were in Pasadena.

It was...

It was phenomenal. We were on the freeway going the wrong way.

I mean, he blocked off the 710 freeway for two weekends.

Two Saturdays and Sundays we shot on the 710 freeway with trucks and cars. I

mean, he had 200 extras driving cars and trucks.

Big trucks, semis, sliding sideways.

And he was... I remember the first day we were shooting it, and I...

i realized all of a sudden we were we were going on the wrong side of the road

i was going against the traffic the traffic was coming this way but it was

then the other traffic was going that way right and but we were on the wrong

side of the freeway like we were in england or something right and i said to

i said billy

I mean, I'm sure you're aware of this, but we're on the wrong side of the

freeway. We should actually be over there going that way, and the car's

this way.

If you look at the movie, you'll actually see it.

And again, this great lesson, he said, I'm disorienting the audience.

You're disorienting me, that's for sure.

And sure enough, that's what he did. And again, I learned all these lessons

about what you can do with film.

I remember...

Several years later I was doing a play in Chicago and Barry Levinson came to

play to see it.

And afterwards we were in the bar and he was gracious enough to buy us a beer

and say he liked the play.

And we were talking and he said, you know, we started talking about Friedkin.

And he said as far as he's concerned, Billy Friedkin knows how to use film

better than anybody in the business.

How to use film to get his,

that thing.

And, you know, if you look at things like The Exorcist and The French

Connection, it's obvious, you know.

And, you know, I didn't even realize it at the time, but, you know, that energy

that we created. So I never felt, I was always, at the end of the day, I was

always, I felt like I hadn't even done anything, that I hadn't acted at all.

You know, that I just, I showed up, I drove the car, and now I'm going home.

You know and and it was kind of great that way it was a very spontaneous

Improvisational and yet he knew exactly what he's doing and he never had to look

through the camera or anything He'd look at this cameraman and say did you get

it? You're not wired are you?

It's my package

Look okay?

You're beautiful.

But it was great. All of a sudden, you know, we're up in San Luis, and then

thing I know, I'm standing in the middle of this prison.

And convicts are everywhere.

Now, that prison up there is a bit of a, you know...

country club -like prison. I mean, it didn't have a whole lot of serious

murderers, you know. They had a lot of white -collar guys and a lot of drug

guys.

But he got us access into the prison, and we used the prisoners in the movie,

which was amazing, too, because, I mean...

I mean, it was running and gunning, and there were no rules. I remember when we

got to the airport to do this scene in the airport where I chased down John

Turturro's character. We had gone there and rehearsed it and thought, oh, this

would be great. I'll get up on the escalator and run along there and go

the people and jump and chase them.

And so we got to that point where we were shooting, and the head of the

who was with us on the set, said,

Excuse me, we rehearsed it with the camera, and he said, no, we can't have

jump up on that and run along the top of the escalator. We can't.

That's just not going to happen. We don't want to start letting people think

they can do that in an airport.

So Billy came over to me, and he said, the guy doesn't want us to do the shot.

I said, oh, Billy, we've got to do the shot. That's the whole point of being

here.

And he said, well, I'm going to tell Robbie to roll.

And I'm going to tell you in front of everybody not to do that.

And then, however you feel, you do what you

need to do.

So he said, all right, all right, Billy, we can't do it up there. I need you to

go along the escalator just like regular and just knock through people and go

through. Okay, all right.

Ready? Roll cameras.

Action.

I come running around the corner. I jump up on the thing. I run along there.

Robbie's shooting as fast as he can. You know, he's chasing me on a cart.

And I jump down at the end, and shot's over.

Guy's freaking out. He goes, I just told you you can't do that.

I said, you know, I had rehearsed it that way, and it got in my head, and I

just, I'm sorry. I did it. I'm sorry.

And Billy said, don't worry about it. We won't use it. We'll shoot him now. Now

we'll shoot you the way you're supposed to do it. And I went through there, and

of course, we used it.

I mean,

yeah, some stuff was dangerous, but it wasn't dangerous beyond anything else

that would be dangerous, you know.

And he had really good people all the time everywhere.

You know, our stunt guys were phenomenal.

We did some dangerous stuff, stunt -wise, in terms of that.

And we got away with all of it.

I tore up a camera.

They had a camera mounted on the side of my car.

And we're down in East L .A., driving through the warehouse district, you

and I'm racing through these trucks, and he's got guys opening doors, and he

wants me to pull through like this, all of which was great, and I got to do the

driving, and I was all pumped up. Panko was freaking out in the backseat. He did

not want me driving this car, and he did not want to be in the car either.

Every scene that we'd do in the car, he'd go, do I have to be in the

Are you going to actually see the guy in the backseat?

Get in there, and off we go.

And I was going through there at one time doing this shot, and I had a camera

mounted on the side because they wanted that thing, and he let me drive it. And,

of course, I got past the corner of the truck, the car, but the camera

mount hit the truck.

And then they told me how much one of those cameras was, and I was like,

sorry.

I think we lost the mothers. I don't see them, man. Huh? I don't see them. We

fucking did it, man. We made it, baby.

We fucking did it.

God damn it, we did it.

Oh, shit.

You had me scared out of my fucking mind, man. You had me scared.

Ha!

Sons of bitches.

The first time I saw the movie was Billy actually...

He let my theater company in Chicago do a screening of it as a benefit.

So we charged people to come see the movie who were part of our theater.

And so I had friends and family and everybody all over the place was there.

I thought, I'll never do that again.

And I remember afterwards going into the bar with everybody and talking about

the movie and saying, you know, these scenes that weren't in it that I wished

were still in it, blah, blah, blah.

And Bud Smith was our editor, and he was there. He had come with the movie for

the thing.

And I realized he was hearing me. I said, you know, Bud, I don't mean, I

mean, I just like, you know, because again, I was unfamiliar with how movies

work and the whole editing process and what the thing is and why the scenes

disappear.

You shoot them and then they don't ever end up in the movie.

Because you start to think, well, that's an important thing.

And you find out at the end of the day that it's not, and that they're right,

and that the editors and the director know what they're doing.

There was only one... Because, of course, I get my head blown off in the

And somehow or another, the producers, at the end of the day, when they saw it,

they said, you know, this is really kind of a downer.

And I remember talking to Billy about it in Malibu. We were walking on the

beach, and he said, you know, they really want me to do something about

ending. And I said, but Billy, that's why we made the movie. We made the movie

because we could play it this way because that's how it ends, right?

And he agreed.

And he said, I've got to do something. I've got to give them something. So he

came up with a scene that John Pankow and I shot over at Culver Studios.

They built a set where we were in like a...

a weather station for the Secret Service up in the North Pole

or something. And I had my head covered in bandages and stuff. And it was so

silly and ridiculous that, you know, he shot it in such a way that there was no

way they could use it.

Billy was great. I learned so much from him in terms of

how you can do stuff.

and what you should do.

Well, I mean, the Wang Chung soundtrack is a classic.

I mean, you hear that music, and all of a sudden you're back in the movie.

Again, that was a... Who would have thought of that?

And Wang Chung's like two guys in England, you know?

And he specifically told them, do not write a song that has to live and die in

.A. in the title.

And, of course, they immediately did.

And he loved it, and he put it in. You know, I mean, it's funny. You know,

sometimes the great thing about this business is there are very many happy

accidents, you know.

And to be a filmmaker is being able to be open to the happy accidents.

And I've been fortunate to work with guys that were able to do that.