lvlllllv Flll)^tt

Fll,^ll
BY FRANK LOVECE It's only a movie. A piece of fiction. Make-believe. And

seething. "They wanted to get in and cut my movie, because that's the climate in Washington. And they were trying to ruin Gerry Petievich out of envy and jealousy."
Friedkin, who won an Oscar for The French Connection, recounts: "Three Secret Service agents came from Washington to prescreen the film, based on rumors they'd heard. They grilled about 15 people on the crew some of them as many as six times.

still the U.S. Secret Service demanded to view a rough cut of Io Live and Die in L.A., director William Friedkin's thriller based on the novel by
former Secret Service agent Gerald Petievich. Concerned about their image, they interrogated the crew, threatened Friedkin with a grand jury investigation, and tried to

They sought a subpoena from a U.S. attorney, who de-

To

live and die in Hollywood: Friedkin wresties the feds

prescreen the film with an eye toward what First Amendment lawyers would call "prior restraint of content."
Or, less politely, censorship. One Secret Service

clined to let them prescreen

a work of fiction. Then they came back to me and said, 'This is a training film for counterfeiters.' Now, counterfeiting is impossible if you don't know offset printing, can't get 100 percent rag paper, and a hundred other variables. I finally said to them, 'Look. l'll screen the movie for Secretary of the Treasury James Baker. lf he thinks there's anything in there that's a danger to national security, I'll remove it.' never heard from them again." But Friedkin's censorship 33
I

spokesman claims they launched their investigation because L.A. depicts a counterfeiter at work; another says it was because some stage money started circulating. Neither story explains,
however, why a work of fiction

troubles didn't end there. The Ratings Board of the Motion Picture Association of America wanted to give L.A. an X rating-a box-office death warrant. Friedkin had to cut 17 seconds to get an R. "The Ratings Board," explains the director, "consists of seven people whose names it will be difficult if not impossible for you to discover. lt's controlled by a man named Richard Hefner. He is absolutely a censor. The board may say one thing and Hefner will say, 'No, you've got to give this an R or an X,' or whatever. And he is easily swayed by poweriul people in Hollywood, like Steven Spielberg, who can show a human heart getting ripped from a chest lin lndiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) and get a PG-13." (ln fact, a PG, initially.) "The board," Friedkin asserts, "has let far more violeni films ihan L.A. go out with an R. Rambo, where 600 people get killed, rates an R because it's the board's perception those 600 people are, A, Asians, and B, Rambo's a comic-book thing, and it's 'patriotic,' and it's okay. Let me tell you something. had to trim frames out of shots of white people getting shot in the face-but not the black guy. A black man gets shot In the face, and they never said a word about
; I

\
tt

lr
C

tr
A
fc

tr

fre

l.r
lF.

I'
I
I

I
F

F'

l. t.-

n
T
n tih

cutting it." Yet, Friedkin insists, the board is a better alternative than "local sheriffs and prosecutors cutting every picture tc suit their own tastes, fears, and paranoias." The attempt at government
suppression is something else again. "l would have gone to jail first," he says.

l(
p
+.

o c
A

would have to pass a government inspection. "They were on a fishing expedition," Friedkin says,

s
b

34

PENTHoUSE