William Petersen was a theater actor from Chicago when William Friedkin changed the course of his life. In 1984, the Oscar-winning director tapped the then-unknown performer to play Richard Chance, a Secret Service agent willing to bend rules and break laws in order to capture a shadowy counterfeiter (Willem Dafoe) in “To Live and Die in L.A.” The crime thriller was a return to form for Friedkin, who had summited the heights of the movie business with “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist,” only to suffer a string of disappointments. Petersen and Friedkin would later collaborate on a Showtime remake of “12 Angry Men” and two episodes of “CSI.” Friedkin died on Aug. 7 at the age of 87, and Petersen shared his reflections on his “greatest mentor and most brilliant friend.”
I was doing “Streetcar Named Desire” at the Stratford Festival outside of Toronto, and Billy sent his casting director to watch me. I got the call to go to New York to talk to Mr. Friedkin. So I went down on my Monday off and met with him in his apartment. He handed me the script, and we sat in his living room. After a couple of pages, he said, “You got the part in my new movie.”
I didn’t have an agent or anything. So, when his casting director called and said we have to make a deal, I didn’t know what to ask for. I called my friend John Malkovich, who had just done “Killing Fields” and was down in Texas shooting “Places in the Heart.” I had to find out what he made for his first picture.
I remember Billy telling me that my character Richard Chance is “a guy who might piss on your mother’s grave, but you’d forgive him.” That’s a tough note to act, but it made me realize that this guy is willing to do anything.
That’s what gets Chance shot, which we had to fight to include. The producers were like, “You can’t kill the main character. That will bum the audience out.” So we actually filmed an alternate ending, but Billy did it in such a way that nobody could use it. He just needed to appease the producers. It was so dumb — it looked like it was from another movie. People would have laughed.
He used to walk around with $800 in cash. He told me he started that on “French Connection” because what if he was shooting a scene and some guy’s got a sprinkler going or he’s running his lawn mower and we need to get this shot. He’d just send a P.A. down there with 200 bucks and the guy goes to lunch. He wasn’t going to be stopped by anything.
We spent six weeks on the chase scene in “To Live and Die.” He sent everybody home. It was me and [co-star] John Pankow and all the stunt guys. We were all over the city. We were down by the train, around the L.A. River — we were just running, gunning, getting shots. He shut down a whole freeway for two weekends so we could drive on the wrong side of it. Billy wouldn’t even have to look through the lens. Today, directors all sit by the monitors. They can be 200 yards from the scene you’re doing. Billy was there with us. He was a visceral filmmaker, period.
He spent so much care crafting characters. You don’t forget Ellen Burstyn or Linda Blair in “The Exorcist.” You don’t forget Gene Hackman as Popeye Doyle. These are people dealing with huge moral dilemmas. Whether it’s about demonic possession or a crazy cop with a funny hat, Billy’s movies are about the need to make ethical choices.
The only reason I have this nice house and any success I’ve had in Hollywood is because of Billy. I’d still be knocking around somewhere in the Midwest trying to land parts in plays, if it weren’t for him. Billy affected so many people’s lives. Everybody in Hollywood will feel this loss.
