William Friedkin was a young director still trying to figure out who he was. By 1970, he’d made a handful of films across very different genres, none of them quite connecting. One of them was “Good Times,” a lightweight movie starring Sonny and Cher. Friedkin later said he was so embarrassed by it that he wanted to buy up every existing print and destroy them.

In other words, he didn’t have a style. He was trying things, missing, and running out of runway.

Around that time, Friedkin was dating the daughter of Howard Hawks, which gave Friedkin access to one of the great American directors, a man who had made “Sergeant York” and “The Thing from Another World.” According to Hollywood lore, Friedkin asked Hawks what he should do next.

Hawks didn’t talk about grand visions. He said something much more blunt and tactical:

“People like car chases. Make the best one anyone’s ever done.”

Friedkin later clarified that Hawks may not have said those words exactly, and that the famous chase in “The French Connection” emerged from his own work with collaborators, not from a single piece of advice. Fair enough. But the story has endured because it captures what Friedkin actually did next.

He didn’t try to announce who he was as a serious filmmaker. Instead, he focused on doing one thing extremely well. “The French Connection” became the third highest-grossing film of 1971, won the Oscar for Best Picture – and featured what’s still considered one of the greatest car chases ever put on screen.

That chase didn’t just impress audiences. It shocked them. By getting one defining moment irrefutably right, the rest of the film was judged through that lens.

This is the power of creating something – not balanced and mundane – but unbalanced and unforgettable. It’s the restaurant with a decent menu that becomes legendary for a single, astonishing dessert. It’s the otherwise prosaic pop song that becomes a stadium anthem because of one killer hook.

So when I’m stuck on a creative project, I forget balance. Instead, I ask myself, “Where is the car chase here? And how do I make it as killer as humanly possible?”