Psy­cho, one of Alfred Hitch­cock­’s icon­ic films, did­n’t come togeth­er very eas­i­ly. Hitch­cock­’s stu­dio, Para­mount Pic­tures, did­n’t like any­thing about the film and denied him a prop­er bud­get. So the direc­tor went solo and fund­ed the film through his tele­vi­sion com­pa­ny Sham­ley Pro­duc­tions. The bud­get was tight — less than $1,000,000. Costs were firm­ly con­trolled. Hence why, in 1960, the film was shot in black and white.

When Psy­cho hit the­aters, Hitch­cock con­trolled the pro­mo­tion. The stars — Antho­ny Perkins and Janet Leigh — did­n’t make the usu­al rounds in the media. Crit­ics weren’t giv­en pri­vate screen­ings. And Hitch­cock cre­at­ed buzz for the film when he exert­ed direc­to­r­i­al con­trol over the view­ing expe­ri­ence of the audi­ence. Show­ings of the film began on a tight­ly-con­trolled sched­ule in the­aters in New York, Chica­go, Boston, and Philadel­phia. And a firm “no late admis­sion” pol­i­cy was put in place. You either saw the film from the very begin­ning, or you did­n’t see it all. Signs appeared in front of cin­e­mas read­ing:

We won’t allow you to cheat your­self. You must see PSYCHO from the very begin­ning. There­fore, do not expect to be admit­ted into the the­atre after the start of each per­for­mance of the pic­ture. We say no one — and we mean no one — not even the man­ager’s broth­er, the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, or the Queen of Eng­land (God bless her)!

The­ater man­agers ini­tial­ly balked at the idea, fear­ing finan­cial loss­es. But Hitch­cock had his way. And he was right. Long lines formed out­side the the­aters. Psy­cho enjoyed crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial suc­cess, so much so the film was re-released in 1965.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2012.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who Cre­at­ed the Famous Show­er Scene in Psy­cho? Alfred Hitch­cock or the Leg­endary Design­er Saul Bass?

How Cin­e­mas Taught Ear­ly Movie-Goers the Rules & Eti­quette for Watch­ing Films (1912): No Whistling, Stand­ing or Wear­ing Big Hats

The 5 Essen­tial Rules of Film Noir

Watch Alfred Hitch­cock Make Cameo Appear­ances in 37 of His Films

Alfred Hitch­cock Reveals The Secret Sauce for Cre­at­ing Sus­pense

William Fried­kin, who died yes­ter­day, will be most wide­ly remem­bered as the direc­tor of nine­teen-sev­en­ties genre hits like The French Con­nec­tion and The Exor­cist. But it was in the sub­se­quent decade that he made his most impres­sive pic­ture, at least accord­ing to the Paper Star­ship video essay above. As its nar­ra­tor Mar­cus Mus­ca­to puts it, Fried­kin’s To Live and Die in L.A. came out in 1985 as “a per­fect blend­ing of the crime and rene­gade cop gen­res, drenched bril­liant­ly in eight­ies aes­thet­ic and nihilis­tic exis­ten­tial glo­ry.” Over near­ly half an hour, he breaks down every major ele­ment of this “sub­ver­sive mas­ter­piece,” from its simul­ta­ne­ous­ly slick and dingy look and feel to its tech­ni­cal and nar­ra­tive brazen­ness to its sound­track by none oth­er than Wang Chung.

Like Fried­kin’s ear­li­er crime films, To Live and Die in L.A. traces “the thin line between cops and crim­i­nals, stat­ing how some of the best cops have some crim­i­nal in them, or have been crim­i­nals them­selves.” It does most of this through the char­ac­ter of Secret Ser­vice agent Richard Chance, played by William Petersen as a kind of “nihilis­tic Fonzie.” In pur­suit of Willem Dafoe’s sin­is­ter artist-coun­ter­feit­er Rick Mas­ters, Chance shows no cau­tion, and his dar­ing-to-the-point-of-reck­less ded­i­ca­tion. Fried­kin matched it with his own “spon­ta­neous, anti-author­i­tar­i­an guer­ril­la film­mak­ing,”  covert­ly shoot­ing and using per­for­mances his actors (whom he was­n’t above encour­ag­ing to do some rule-break­ing of their own) had been led to believe were rehearsals.

Fried­kin and his col­lab­o­ra­tors metic­u­lous­ly planned and painstak­ing­ly exe­cut­ed oth­er sequences, such as the cen­tral car chase. “The chase isn’t just on a free­way. It goes the wrong way down the free­way,” wrote Roger Ebert in his con­tem­po­rary review. “I don’t know how Fried­kin chore­o­graphed this scene, and I don’t want to know.” How­ev­er aston­ish­ing (and anx­i­ety-induc­ing) it remains today, it would­n’t be as effec­tive with­out the “hyp­no­tiz­ing yet ener­getic atmos­phere” cre­at­ed through­out the film by the music of Wang Chung, a band both indeli­bly asso­ci­at­ed with the eight­ies and also pos­sessed of a pen­chant for uncon­ven­tion­al, even sin­is­ter son­ic tex­tures. That’s true even of their ear­li­er sin­gles: wit­ness how well “Wait,” released in 1983, suits the ver­tig­i­nous plunge of the film’s star­tling but chill­ing­ly inevitable end­ing.

Yet even this con­clu­sion is just one mem­o­rable part among many. “Along with one of the great­est chase scenes, the film con­tains one of the most authen­tic and aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing depic­tions of the mon­ey coun­ter­feit­ing process,” Mus­ca­to says. Those with an aver­sion to spoil­ers would do best to watch the movie itself before the video essay, but like the work of any respectable auteur, it draws its pow­er from much more than plot twists. Its main theme, as Fried­kin him­self put it, was the “coun­ter­feit world: coun­ter­feit emo­tions, coun­ter­feit mon­ey, the coun­ter­feit super­struc­ture of the Secret Ser­vice. Every­one in the film has a kind of coun­ter­feit motive.” Giv­en that the world has become no more real over the past four decades, per­haps it’s no won­der that To Live and Die in L.A. holds up so well today.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Scari­est Film of All Time?: Revis­it­ing the Hys­te­ria in 1973 Around The Exor­cist by William Fried­kin (RIP)

Watch Randy Newman’s Tour of Los Ange­les’ Sun­set Boule­vard, and You’ll Love L.A. Too

Who Designed the 1980s Aes­thet­ic?: Meet the Mem­phis Group, the Design­ers Who Cre­at­ed the 80s Icon­ic Look

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Christo­pher Nolan has by now inspired at least a cou­ple gen­er­a­tions of young view­ers to dream of becom­ing film­mak­ers. For my own age cohort, the touch­stone work was his break­out pic­ture Memen­to, with its reverse-ordered sto­ry fea­tur­ing a pro­tag­o­nist unable to cre­ate new mem­o­ries. Oth­ers may have felt a greater impact from the real­i­ty-bend­ing Incep­tion or the dystopi­an sci-fi vision of Inter­stel­lar (to say noth­ing of all those Bat­man movies). But whether at the turn of the mil­len­ni­um or today, with Nolan’s lat­est fea­ture Oppen­heimer rid­ing high at the box office, the best advice for such aspi­rants is the same: watch as many movies as pos­si­ble.

‘The prob­lem with Chris,” says Oppen­heimer star Cil­lian Mur­phy in the video above, “is that he’s seen every film ever made.” “Not every film,” Nolan replies, a hand-wav­ing denial that only bol­sters the accu­sa­tion. This takes place amid the shelves of JM Vidéo, one of the last two video stores still stand­ing in the cinephile cap­i­tal of Paris.

Nolan and Mur­phy paid a vis­it there to shoot an episode of Kon­bi­ni Video Club, a Youtube series that has also brought on such auteurs as Wes Ander­son, David Cro­nen­berg, and Ter­ry Gilliam. JM Vidéo feels like an espe­cial­ly suit­able space for Nolan, giv­en his advo­ca­cy of phys­i­cal media. On the defin­i­tive Blu-Ray and 4k ver­sions of his films, he explains, “there’s much less com­pres­sion,” and “we con­trol the col­or and the pic­ture and the bright­ness,” where­as stream­ing is “like broad­cast­ing a film: we don’t have much con­trol over how it goes out.”

Nolan pulls off the shelves There Will Be Blood and Punch-Drunk Love, the work of his con­tem­po­rary Paul Thomas Ander­son, as well as clas­sics that shaped his own direc­to­r­i­al choic­es: Cit­i­zen Kane, For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent, Lawrence of Ara­bia, Dr. Strangelove. That last was for­bid­den view­ing dur­ing the devel­op­ment of Oppen­heimer: “I’m a big fan of Strangelove, but I stopped watch­ing it for a cou­ple of years while we were mak­ing the film, because it’s too daunt­ing” — and because its black­ly satir­i­cal take on how the men in con­trol of the bomb decide the fate of the world could­n’t pos­si­bly have been improved upon. “I’m glad you did­n’t men­tion it,” adds Mur­phy, who may not have seen as many movies as Nolan, but whose range of ref­er­ence nev­er­the­less demon­strates his own cinephile cre­den­tials. “No fight­ing in the war room.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Films of Christo­pher Nolan Explored in a Sweep­ing 4‑Hour Video Essay: Memen­to, The Dark Knight, Inter­stel­lar & More

Wes Ander­son Vis­its a Paris Video Store and High­lights the Films He Loves: Kuro­sawa, Truf­faut, Buñuel & More

David Cro­nen­berg Vis­its a Video Store & Talks About His Favorite Movies

Ter­ry Gilliam Vis­its a Video Store & Talks About His Favorite Movies and Actors

Hear 9 Hours of Hans Zim­mer Sound­tracks: Dunkirk, Inter­stel­lar, Incep­tion, The Dark Knight & Much More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.