When I think of 70s auteur cinema, I don’t think of Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Lucas, Spielberg, and others. I think of Michael Cimino.

I also think of William Friedkin, who passed away yesterday at 87 years of age. Fans of the horror genre are in mourning because he made one of the most important films of the decade in The Exorcist. But let’s not forget his other pioneering achievement in Sorcerer, which, a few years before Heaven’s Gate, managed to steer Hollywood away from director-focused pictures. Friedkin was a pioneer in that way.

But he also directed The French Connection which garnered him an Oscar for Best Director. For me, the picture defined Hollywood cinema of the 1970s. Along with DP Owen Roizman (who also died earlier this year), Friedkin created a vision of NYC that was grimy and downright disgusting. Honestly, the city never looked better. While the picture presents itself as a run-of-the-mill police procedural, the ending flips the script. Instead of catching the bad guy, Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle accidentally kills a fellow cop and is left shooting at the shadows. The French Connection was a game-changer.

Of course, the movie is best known for its car chase sequence, where Friedkin bravely put at risk the lives NYC motorists and bystanders by failing to obtain permits to film such a thing. He was a maestro at shooting these scenes. He’d try to duplicate his success with the car chase in Jade, switching out the streets of NYC for San Francisco, and let’s just be honest: it was genius. But too bad that David Caruso is no Gene Hackman.

Billy Friedkin also claimed that he only ever did one take. I have a hard time believing that, but salute. If only Michael Cimino had learned that trick, Hollywood history might’ve turned out different.

RIP Billy Friedkin