Shortly before his death, the director William Friedkin expressed a few regrets. Among them was that, in his opinion, he never created a film as critically acclaimed as some of Hollywood’s masterpieces, like Citizen Kane. The man who embodied New Hollywood for many, and who died on August 7 at the age of 87, was perhaps forgetting that he was behind the best thriller of the 1980s, To Live and Die in LA.

Released in 1985, the plot of this 116-minute feature centers around a Secret Service agent’s relentless pursuit of a brilliant forger. The cop is a handsome adrenaline junkie, while the counterfeiter is a criminal with the smooth talents of a social climber. The film was Friedkin’s return to the detective genre, the source of his fame in the movie industry (The French Connection, his first success, won him an Oscar for Best Director in 1971). He also, however, produced some duds in the same genre. In 1980, the director released Cruising, a thriller starring Al Pacino as an undercover cop immersed in New York’s homosexual community. The film, which some critics pointed out was latently homophobic, was later disowned by Pacino. It put some dents in Friedkin’s reputation as a minor genius, and in 1983 he took another tumble with Deal of the Century. Critically and publicly panned, the comedy barely turned a profit.

By the mid-1980s, the filmmaker’s young promise felt like a distant memory, based on movies released in the previous past decade. At the age of 50, he had no choice. If he were to continue directing, he had to create another great film.

Then the director heard about a book written by a former Secret Service agent, Gerald Petrievich. The son of a California cop, Petrievich was assigned to fight counterfeiting operations. The novel To Live and Die in LA, published in 1984, was directly inspired by his experience as an agent.

To make his film, Friedkin had to work with a $6 million budget ($4 million less than the budget for Deal of the Century). He soon realized that he wouldn’t be able to cast any of the big stars of the day. He called in his old friend Bob Weiner, the casting director who had worked miracles on The French Connection. His mission would be to find young actors capable of carrying a big movie. It was easy for Weiner: the lead role went to William Petersen, a complete unknown at the time. As for the counterfeiter, it was the angular face of young Willem Dafoe that caught the producer’s attention. The supporting roles were played by actors who would go on to successful careers in Hollywood: John Turturro, Darlanne Fluegel, Dean Stockwell, and John Pankow.

Among the remarkable aspects of the film is how Friedkin used music to anchor it in its time. He has some firsthand knowledge of ’80s pop music. In 1984, he directed the video for “Self Control,” performed by Laura Branigan, and a year later, he fell in love with the group Wang Chung. The film’s soundtrack was entrusted to the British band, which “adds real depth to the film’s universe,” Friedkin said at the time.

The ’80s setting of the film was also influenced by a cultural touchstone of the era, Michael Mann’s Miami Vice series. For many fans of the TV show, To Live and Die in LA provided a West Coast counterpart to the program, reflecting the same taste for that latest in cool, whether sports cars, fashion, or music. The artwork promoting Friedkin’s film—a stylized bloodstain forming a palm tree along with fluorescent lettering—also evoked the world of Miami cops. Michael Mann, perhaps touched by the homage, would later cast William Petersen in Manhunter. Released in 1986, it was the first adaptation portraying the villain Hannibal Lecter.

It is the look of To Live and Die in LA that is one of the film’s great strengths. Friedkin entrusted cinematography to Robby Müller. (The acclaimed Dutch cinematographer had been praised for his work on the 1984 film Paris, Texas, directed by Wim Wenders, and he was soon to become Jim Jarmush’s right-hand man.) Lilly Kilvert was the production designer and she insisted on filming both the most rotten and the most fascinating aspects of Los Angeles. For the film, the team imagined an LA in flames in the middle of winter, dirty and polluted. They filmed car wrecks, congested freeways, and homeless kids wandering the streets. The LA they portrayed is a world where everyone is sweating profusely in a suffocating city. “Robby saw Los Angeles through the eyes of an outsider,” says William Friedkin. “He notices details that nobody else does.”

Friedkin wanted To Live and Die in LA to be a sensational film, an ’80s response to The French Connection. He pulled off that feat, complete with a chase scene as impressive as any in his first success. But, above all else, he tackled a provocative theme that had obsessed him since the beginning of his career: the impossibility of differentiating between good and evil in some situations. In 2018, the filmmaker declared in the documentary Friedkin Uncut: “The two most interesting characters in history are Hitler and Jesus.”

In To Live and Die in LA, secret agent Richard Chance (played by William Petersen), with his youthful good looks, is in reality a bad guy, ready to use those closest to him to achieve his ends. He doesn’t hesitate to sexually exploit his informant Ruth (Darlanne Fluegel) and blackmail her when necessary. Rick Masters, the counterfeiter played by Willem Dafoe, is paradoxically an elegant aesthete, who only kills out of necessity and takes no pleasure in doing so. “All the films I’ve made deal with the fine line between good and evil, between the policeman and the criminal. The best cops are the ones who can think like criminals,” Friedkin said in 2008.

From the Archive: Battling the Devil

The California-noir thriller led the director of The Exorcist back to success. It grossed $17 million at the box office, while its ability to capture ’80s culture, its cast of future stars, and its legendary chase scene gave it cult status.

This story first appeared on Vanity Fair France. It was translated by John Newton.