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 didnt have an agent or anything. So, when his casting director called and said we have to make a deal, I didnt 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 mothers grave, but youd forgive him. Thats a tough note to act, but it made me realize that this guy is willing to do anything.
Thats what gets Chance shot, which we had to fight to include. The producers were like, You cant 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 guys got a sprinkler going or hes running his lawn mower and we need to get this shot. Hed just send a P.A. down there with 200 bucks and the guy goes to lunch. He wasnt 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 wouldnt even have to look through the lens. Today, directors all sit by the monitors. They can be 200 yards from the scene youre doing. Billy was there with us. He was a visceral filmmaker, period.
He spent so much care crafting characters. You dont forget Ellen Burstyn or Linda Blair in The Exorcist. You dont forget Gene Hackman as Popeye Doyle. These are people dealing with huge moral dilemmas. Whether its about demonic possession or a crazy cop with a funny hat, Billys movies are about the need to make ethical choices.
The only reason I have this nice house and any success Ive had in Hollywood is because of Billy. Id still be knocking around somewhere in the Midwest trying to land parts in plays, if it werent for him. Billy affected so many peoples lives. Everybody in Hollywood will feel this loss.