William Friedkin’s 10 Most Jaw-Dropping Movie Moments

By Keith Tomlinson /

4. To Live And Die In LA (1985)

The 1980s were a leaner decade for Friedkin€™s output than the 1970s, but despite this he did produce one of his best ever movies right in the middle of the era with To Live and Die in LA, which also pulled off the seemingly impossible task of equalling - and perhaps even topping - his iconic car chase of 14 years previously from The French Connection. To Live and Die in LA starred CSI€™s William Petersen as an LA cop chasing Willem Dafoe€™s high-rolling counterfeiter. It€™s up there with the better known titles in Friedkin€™s oeuvre and deserves to be recognised as a classic 80s cop movie. But once again, it is a car chase which stole the show. Apparently Friedkin got the idea for staging the chase down the wrong way of a Los Angeles freeway some twenty years previously - after falling asleep at the wheel and waking up on the wrong side of the road. It took him the next two decades to figure out how to use it, but the results are pretty spectacular: