10 Times Hollywood Regretted Giving Directors All The Freedom

Of the New Hollywood developing in the Seventies, it was Peter Bogdonovich, Francis Ford Coppola and William Friedkin that appeared to be working in concert with one another. The three formed The Director's Company under Paramount, which yielded The Conversation and Daisy Miller. But Friedkin, in what became a common theme in his career, walked away from the company before directing anything under it.

His first hits, The Exorcist and The French Connection, had made him an expensive name. But after walking away from what may have proven a more lucrative and supportive position, he seemed to set about only making films that studios didn't want.

Friedkin entered the Eighties in the worst way possible, with an underground gay panic thriller called Cruising that sparked protest both in and out of the gay community. He suffered a coronary and came back more determined to piss off the studios. His entire career in the 80s is loaded with flops and critical failures that not only did studios not know how to market, they often didn't try.

Of them, the one best is To Live and Die In L.A., a secret service thriller whose grim ending terrified MGM. It's as bleak and unsparing as The French Connection, with a car chase nearly on par and a cynical, almost nihilistic philosophy not only characteristic of Friedkin, but the decade.

In an era of blockbusters, few studios in the 80s found anything marketable from this auteur.