To Live and Die in LA
To Live and Die in LA – the title is almost an invitation. Its director, William Friedkin, though born in Chicago, did live in Los Angeles, and that’s where he died aged 87 last week (I’m writing this on 18 August 2023), till the end a combative, charming, rough-edged, cultured man of many parts. The director who gave us the magisterial The French Connection and the blood-thinning The Exorcist stumbled at the box office with 1977’s Sorcerer (for all its merits nowhere near as good as the film it’s based on, The Wages of Fear) and then as good as fell off the edge of the world with Cruising, a film that looks … Read more