{"id":39476,"date":"2025-09-26T18:34:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T18:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/39476\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T18:34:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T18:34:14","slug":"william-petersen-on-making-to-live-and-die-in-l-a-and-manhunter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/39476\/","title":{"rendered":"William Petersen on making ‘To Live and Die in L.A.’ and ‘Manhunter’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Two of the most stylish crime thrillers of the 1980s, William Friedkin<\/a>\u2019s \u201cTo Live and Die in L.A.\u201d and Michael Mann<\/a>\u2019s \u201cManhunter,\u201d will both screen at the Egyptian Theatre on Saturday as part of Beyond Fest<\/a>. Actor William Petersen, who starred in both projects in his first major film roles, will be there for a Q&A after each show.<\/p>\n

In 1985\u2019s \u201cTo Live and Die in L.A.,\u201d Petersen plays Richard Chance, a Secret Service agent assigned to investigate a counterfeiting ring in Los Angeles. He finds himself in pursuit of Rick Masters (Willem Dafoe), an amoral artist who has turned his talents to forging money. With evocative cinematography by Robby M\u00fcller and music by Wang Chung<\/a>, the film is a propulsive portrait of Los Angeles in the \u201980s, featuring a thrilling foot chase through LAX and a now-iconic car chase going the wrong way on the Terminal Island Freeway around Long Beach.<\/p>\n

For 1986\u2019s \u201cManhunter,\u201d Petersen is Will Graham, a former FBI criminal profiler with an uncommon ability to understand the mindset of serial killers. Though retired, Graham is drawn back in by a perplexing new case. An unsettling, meditative adaption of Thomas Harris\u2019 1981 novel \u201cRed Dragon,\u201d the film features Brian Cox<\/a> in the role of Hannibal Lecktor (enigmatically spelled differently here) a full five years before Anthony Hopkins immortalized Lecter in \u201cThe Silence of the Lambs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Petersen, 72, got on the phone earlier this week to talk about the experience of making these two movies within the span of one year, launching him into a career that would include a long run on the popular series \u201cCSI: Crime Scene Investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

William Petersen and Darlanne Fluegel in the movie \u201cTo Live and Die in L.A.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Sunset Boulevard \/ Corbis via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

[The following interview contains spoilers.]<\/p>\n

These two films in particular \u2014 Friedkin\u2019s \u201cTo Live and Die in L.A.\u201d and Mann\u2019s \u201cManhunter\u201d \u2014 now seem like essential crime thrillers, so it makes sense to show them together. How connected are they for you?<\/p>\n

They\u2019re really connected. I shot them both in the same year, and they were my first two pictures, really. That was at a seminal time for us actors from Chicago. We were all of a sudden branching out \u2014 I didn\u2019t even have an agent for those first two pictures. I was making deals with my business manager from my theater company, who became my producing partner, because we were just theater actors. In fact, when Billy [Friedkin] offered me the role in \u201cTo Live and Die in L.A.\u201d I had to call my friend John Malkovich, who had just made \u201cThe Killing Fields,\u201d because I had no idea what I was supposed to ask for or get or anything. I had no idea if I was supposed to make five hundred dollars a week or five thousand.<\/p>\n

It\u2019d be one thing if I had started on some little indie someplace with some new director or whatever. I learned so much in that year from those two men and those projects. It was an incredible education for me. And I was able to continue to go back and do the theater. Because it was never my intention to make any movies, it wasn\u2019t like I was seeking them out. They kind of just came and found me.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard you say that before, that you feel like you learned so much in that year making those two movies. Can you boil that down a bit? What do you think you took away from those experiences?<\/p>\n

They\u2019re such different filmmakers. Billy was all: run, gun, improvise, steal shots, we\u2019re not supposed to do this, let\u2019s do it anyway. And so it was almost like a documentary. It was like we were really doing it. And then Michael is such a craftsman that every part of everything is studied and controlled and carefully attenuated. And to have them both happen in a 12-month period, back to back, it took me a long time to process all that. I didn\u2019t know how much I was learning because I had no frame of reference for any of it.<\/p>\n

With \u201cTo Live and Die in L.A.\u201d in particular, there\u2019s just so much energy in that movie. Where did that come from?<\/p>\n

[Friedkin] wanted it. He wanted it to be like that. I think part of it was a callback to \u201cThe French Connection.\u201d They were just trying to get shots and I think he felt that it really required an energy like that. I remember him telling Robby M\u00fcller, our d.p. \u2014 brilliant guy, wonderful man \u2014 he didn\u2019t care whether we hit our marks. Robby had to just figure out how to capture this. Friedkin] said, \u201cI just want them to react, I just want them to be.\u201d A lot of it was kind of improvisational, both physically and textually.<\/p>\n

\"Two <\/p>\n

Petersen, left, and John Pankow in the movie \u201cTo Live and Die in L.A..\u201d<\/p>\n

(Sunset Boulevard \/ Corbis via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a moment in the movie where you have one of those metal briefcases and you start banging it against the wall over and over until it finally breaks open. That was improvised?<\/p>\n

We didn\u2019t think the scene was going to carry that far. It\u2019s set up to be a certain thing, and then at some point we stop and we put the prop case in, which will open. And we started shooting that scene and we just kept in it. Billy never cut it. I didn\u2019t stop until I heard cut. And Billy knew that. So I was banging on the thing, which is why [co-star John] Pankow half the time is just screaming, \u201cWhat are you doing? What the hell are you doing?\u201d Because we hadn\u2019t gone that far in terms of prepping it. And the thing finally broke. And fortunately there was a phone book inside of it.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s just all real. It happened. And he never cut it. He just wanted to see what would happen. And I felt bad sometimes for the other actors, because of course, they weren\u2019t there the whole time. And they didn\u2019t know what I was going to do. Pankow was scared to death when I was driving the car: \u201cYou have no business doing this. My life is in jeopardy.\u201d Screaming from the backseat.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s such a classic car chase now. What made you want to do your own driving? That seems like a big decision but also kind of crazy.<\/p>\n

First of all, you\u2019re young and you think you know what you\u2019re doing. And I had that idea that I could be a stunt guy too. Why can\u2019t I be a stunt guy? I didn\u2019t even think I was going to be a movie actor. So all of a sudden I was in the thing and I would get upset if he thought that he couldn\u2019t use me in a shot. I remember Buddy Joe Hooker, who was our stunt coordinator, and I were talking about all this stuff I could and couldn\u2019t do. There were certain things they weren\u2019t going to let me do. But by and large, I got to do a lot of what I wanted to do. What else am I going to do? Sit in a trailer? I wasn\u2019t used to that anyways, that whole movie thing where you hurry up and wait.<\/p>\n

So once Billy found out I was game, he always wanted me to be a part of it. Buddy Joe was really great. Dick Ziker was the guy who did whatever driving I didn\u2019t do. The stunt guys were fabulous. He wouldn\u2019t let me jump off the bridge. God bless \u2014 Dar Robinson<\/a> did that.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m reluctant to spoil a 40-year-old movie, but I\u2019ve seen it a number of times, and every time I am shocked that your character dies and that it happens so close to the end of the movie. Was that a shock to you when you first read the script?<\/p>\n

I thought that was the best. I thought that was the key. At the end of the picture, I remember Billy coming out and us having a long afternoon talking. We were down by the beach, and he said, \u201cThey want me to shoot another ending.\u201d I was like, \u201cBilly, this is the whole reason we did this. The whole reason I could play the guy the way I played him was because he doesn\u2019t get out of jail.\u201d Otherwise, it\u2019s the wrongs make the right. There was a morality to it, I felt. Chance, he pushed it too far. And it didn\u2019t feel right to me to have them all of a sudden just walk away going, \u201cAren\u2019t we cool Secret Service agents?\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what made the movie, I thought. Now granted, did it cost them at the box office? I suppose. They certainly felt that it would. It is shocking. I\u2019ve got a couple of 14-year-olds that haven\u2019t seen the movie. They\u2019re going to see it on Saturday. And there\u2019s a debate as to whether to tell them what happens or not. And I haven\u2019t even come to the conclusion. I got half my people telling me, \u201cHey, you gotta tell them.\u201d And the other half going, \u201cDon\u2019t wreck it.\u201d So the debate goes on, 40 years later, whether it\u2019s the right thing to do. He did shoot an alternate ending. We had to come back to L.A. and shoot this silly thing where I was all bandaged up and we\u2019re supposed to be up in Alaska someplace, at a remote Secret Service station. We shot in such a way that there was no way you could use it. It was just ridiculous. But see, Billy had big balls, man. He just did.<\/p>\n

And then \u201cManhunter\u201d is such a different vibe. It\u2019s so methodical and there\u2019s something really unnerving about it. What was it like to shift from one project right into the next?<\/p>\n

They were completely opposite things. They both symbolize a kind of \u201980s slick-cop genre thing, but it was such different material. The characters were so completely different as well. You had my character in \u201cTo Live and Die in L.A.\u201d \u2014 he just wanted to jump off bridges, drive opposite ways on the freeway and shoot bad guys. The character in \u201cManhunter,\u201d Graham, he didn\u2019t want anything to do with any of it. He was reluctant to even answer the phone. The character in \u201cTo Live and Die in L.A.\u201d was more like I was then, and the character in \u201cManhunter\u201d is more like I am now. Stay home and forget about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo Live and Die in L.A.\u201d was not disturbing. I would go home after a day and drink a couple of beers and watch a football game. Whereas \u201cManhunter\u201d was a much more difficult experience because of the material you\u2019re dealing with during the day. And it wasn\u2019t a Method thing. I wasn\u2019t Daniel Day-Lewis.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

Brian Cox as Hannibal Lecktor in the movie \u201cManhunter.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Rialto Pictures \/ Beyond Fest at American Cinematheque)<\/p>\n

Serial killers, profilers, that\u2019s such an accepted part of pop culture now. There are so many shows and movies and podcasts about them, but at the time it was still kind of new. It wasn\u2019t something that everybody knew so much about.<\/p>\n

One of the things I liked about \u201cFrench Connection\u201d was the heroin making and the counterfeiting. When you see the counterfeiting in \u201cTo Live and Die L.A.,\u201d people were fascinated by that. And then we did \u201cManhunter,\u201d and we were going to the FBI lab and using the stuff to lift latent prints \u2014 all the laboratory stuff. I found people were fascinated by that. And that\u2019s why I sort of knew the \u201cCSI\u201d idea was the one to go with, to do, because people were fascinated with the whole \u201cHow do you do this stuff?\u201d<\/p>\n

I want to be sure to ask about your scene with Brian Cox, the Lecktor scene. To really settle in and do a long dialogue scene, that must have felt like doing a play in the middle of the movie.<\/p>\n

Yeah, it was. Brian, of course, is a wonderful theater actor. We oddly played a couple of the same parts in the theater in different countries. I worked with him basically only for about two or three days. It took a long time because, of course, Michael was doing all this very interesting camera stuff with the bars, going back and forth. He wanted it a certain way and he got it. And so it took a long time because there were a lot of takes. I just remember it being wonderful because it was real tamped down. Brian was just brilliant and surprising as Lecktor. He\u2019s my Lecktor. Anthony Hopkins is fine, but it\u2019s just a completely different thing to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two of the most stylish crime thrillers of the 1980s, William Friedkin\u2019s \u201cTo Live and Die in L.A.\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9641,6935,146,878,85,46,23019,32037,6376,32035,740,12605,32038,32039,9475,32040,32036,1661],"class_list":["post-39476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-billy","tag-character","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-l-a","tag-long-time","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-manhunter","tag-movie","tag-part","tag-petersen","tag-robby-muller","tag-thing","tag-will-graham","tag-william-friedkin","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}