Composition & framing

William Friedkin

Hello, this is Bill Friedkin, the director of To Live and Die in L.A., and I'm gonna do this commentary now about the film without referencing the film itself. I'm just gonna give you my impressions, thoughts, and feelings about what went into the making of it, why we made it, what I saw in the material, a little background on the cast, and about some of the things that we were trying to do.

0:22 · jump to transcript →

William Friedkin

But I met him, just sat in a room with him, and I said, this guy's great. He has extraordinary quality, exactly what I want, a theatrical background. He's been in front of a camera. Nobody really knows who he is. And so I went with him, which is what I tend to do when casting. I'll just go instinctively.

24:33 · jump to transcript →

You had that painting, that mural. Yeah, we painted that mural on the back. And we had done something like that in Pretty in Pink, too. But it never really had the significance as the one in Pretty in Pink did, 'cause it just served as a background color here.

18:08 · jump to transcript →

It's funny how those diamond earrings are status symbols now. Still, it's a big deal. So there's the refinery in the background for this location, which we see, like, just about that one time or maybe another time, just to get a sense of, you know, the difference in the neighborhood between where Eric lives and the different class of kids that you hang out with.

37:30 · jump to transcript →

a very fascinating event took place, and I think it was in, I forget which district, federal district court it was, but in a federal district court in Phoenix, Peter Gersten, who is the head of an organization called CAUSE, Citizens Against UFO Secrecy, and he's a lawyer, and he is kind of a, he comes out of a whole New York prosecutorial background, successfully argued that the government, the Department of Defense,

23:43 · jump to transcript →

and so i did put in the background of the film you referred to this earlier on but i did put in a lot of imagery of archetypes in the background the new guinea sculptures and in fact my mother one of my mother's tapestries in the psychiatrist's office is there she's very involved in union archetypes and things but i thought it was i mean it's not exactly a new trick but i but i thought it reinforced the concept that these could be ancient

54:12 · jump to transcript →

Hey, your buddy Stuart Cornfeld. That's my friend Stuart. I love that outfit. Were you into composition and all that stuff? Did you storyboard? We didn't storyboard any of this. I mean...

1:00:31 · jump to transcript →

Keep it track. And she won't. So, okay, this right here, as I'm sure aficionados know, is one of those spots where the art department did a fantastic job dropping in a joke in the background of what is, you know, a plot-moving scene. Like, right there. Primetime TV? Come on. Yeah, he's surrounded by some tampons. Some tampons. Yeah, this was an interesting night of shooting. I know we were pushing the clock. Like, you know, I was only allowed to work eight hours because I was underage. Because you were a kid, right?

15:15 · jump to transcript →