THE INDISPENSIBLES - #14: DIE HARD
That Die Hard is one of the greatest movies to exist within the action genre is not up for debate. What is, though, is just how close it skirted in development to being anything but. Just look back over its history:
Sourced from a novel by Roderick Thorp called Nothing Lasts Forever, this was in itself a sequel to his own book called The Detective, which had already been made into a movie with Frank Sinatra taking on the role of Thorp’s protagonist, Joe Leland. The Detective was an accomplished, somewhat successful picture for the studio and plans to develop a sequel were put in motion. Sinatra wasn’t playing though and Nothing Lasts Forever was twisted into a stand alone piece.
Robert Mitchum liked the part. Studios didn’t like Mitchum for the role. Nothing Lasts Forever disappeared from the studio’s slate soon after. Flash forward a good decade or so and the property was in the hands of producer Joel Silver. He put it at Stallone’s door. Stallone had just walked away from Beverly Hills Cop, taking all his “script-ideas” with him and working on a property for them, that would soon become Cobra. He would fit the project in, if he could work on the script and get “the plot out of the building”.
You still with me?
Things didn’t work out with Stallone, and Silver had pumped a fare amount of dollar into the property so decided the best move would be to use the material to make a sequel to Commando, which had just been a massive success for him. He dragged that film’s young writer, Steven E. de Souza on board to develop Nothing Lasts Forever into Commando 2 - this time Schwarzeneggar’s John Matrix would have to rescue his girlfriend, Rae Dawn Chong’s Cindy, from her new place of work when it is taken over by terrorists.
Mr Schwarzeneggar didn’t like the script and had back-to-back projects already lined up anyway, but whilst on the set of Predator the screenplay fell into the hands of that movie’s director John McTiernan - who liked it and wanted to helm it but “had some ideas” that he wanted to share with the attached producer who, guess what, just happened to be the producer on the very movie he was working for!
McTiernan thought it should be a stand-alone movie, not a sequel to anything (Silver was at the point of considering working the material into a new 48HRS movie for Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte). He suggested keeping the ‘wife’ character (all earlier drafts prior to Commando 2 had been a ‘daughter’) too. Silver sent Steven E. de Souza back to the drawing board and started courting Richard Gere for the role of (now renamed) Detective John McClane. When Gere said no, Burt Reynolds was romanced, then James Caan, then Don Johnson, then Richard Dean Anderson. All negatives. But it was whilst pouring through the TV schedules, whilst considering Maguyver’s worth, that they spotted someone with potential… Bruce Willis, star of TV’s Moonlighting.
Die Hard, as we know it now, started to form. Yippee-Kayee Motherfucker!
And what a formation huh? Producer Joel Silver was on what could only be described as a ‘gold-run’ with 48HRS, Commando and Predator to his belt already, and Lethal Weapon waiting in the wings. John McTiernan had gotten Hollywood’s attend with Nomads and blew them away with Predator. TV critics loved Bruce Willis and anyone with any sense could see he was in desperate need of just the ‘right’ big screen property to break him. And they were hiring a stellar technical team to back them up - Michael Kamen for the music, Jan De Bont for the cinematography, Richard Edlund for the visual effects and a casting unit sensible enough to spot Alan Rickman and cast him to perfection.
The years might not have been kind what with McTiernan remaking the likes of Rollerball before heading off to jail, screenwriter Steven E. de Souza never being able to write anything as good as this again (Jeb Stuart played more of a hand in co-writing then Souza is prepared to admit, obviously) so settled on writing stuff like Streetfighter instead, Joel Silver becoming a hyperbole obsessed ‘personal bitch’ to The Wachowski Brothers on fare like Matrix Reloaded, Matrix Revolutions and Speed Racer, Jan De Bont would go onto a directorial career of his own that peeked after his debut movie and Bruce Willis (whose career overall is actually pretty decent!) made Hudson Hawk.
But back on Die Hard, this was very much a case of the perfect elements lining up at the perfect time to create an action event so undeniably effective that it spawned, not just its own rip-offs, but its own name for said rip-offs. Passenger 57? “Die Hard… on a plane”! Cliffhanger? “Die Hard… up a mountain”! Under Siege? “Die Hard… on a ship”! Sudden Death?“Die Hard… in a ice hockey stadium”! You get my point?
Willis is so utterly perfect in his role that it rightly deserves the label ‘icon’ alongside the likes of Poppy Doyle or Harry Callahan. He judges the tone perfectly so that the ‘quips’ never lighten the tone or lessen the seriousness of the threat. He created a character so enjoyable that, as we saw, it doesn’t matter whether you put him in an airport, a city or rambling round America as a whole, as long as you have Bruce Willis playing him, fuck him/whatever he is wearing up AND get him to say “Yipee-Kayee Motherfucker!” and not “Yipee-Kayee-‘GUNSHOT‘!” (thank you Die Hard 4.0) then people WANT to see him and that movie. That’s why we’re still cherishing Die Hard to this day and willing to write essays on it, whilst David Hasselhoff’s Gridlock is for sale at 20p in my local supermarket!
There’s been studies in universities of this film with people saying it is a glossy promotion of xenophobia (every foreigner in the movie is bad!), chauvenism (Willis’ John McClane does not like his wife’s independent attitude) and misogyny (women in the work place only serves to cause trouble!) All are reaching for something and coming up with nothing; taking the last accusation into account, do people really think that if Holly McClane (nee Gennero) had been a “good” stay-at-home wife-type that Hans Gruber wouldn’t have carried out his ‘attack’ or is it more that John McClane just wouldn’t have got caught up in it?
This is not a movie to be studied for subtext. It is a movie to be studied for its relentless sense of pace, its awesome set-pieces (the roof-top jump, the bone-crunching fist fight, the helicopter assault, and on and on I could go!) and the almost beautiful shine that it has to its look. It’s a film scripted so finely that it has just the perfect amount of build-up and exposition to it, so that we come to know enough about the characters to care, before setting off its ‘fireworks’. Best of all, what Die Hard has that its (actually not that bad) sequels never got right was in writing and casting some of the best ’side’ characters of any movie of that decade. Paul Gleason’s Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson? Devoreaux White as Argyle? Reginald Veljohnson as Al Powell? Alexander Godunov as Karl? Al Leong as Uli? Hart Bochner as Harry Ellis? Robert Davi as FBI Agent ‘Big’ Johnson? Grand L. Bush as FBI Agent ‘Little’ Johnson? And who could possibly forget William Atherton as the deliciously slimy Richard Thornberg (Atherton would fill out his 80s CV with similar style roles in Ghostbusters and Real Genius on top of this. How impressive is that?)? Now you’ve got to admit, you can’t help a smile breaking out across your face when you think back to these characters - and you can’t say that about Under Siege can you?
Die Hard stands up as flawless. Its effects work, its action choreography, you name it. You cannot help but watch it and get sucked in. It’s the sort of utterly perfect piece of action fare that, when you pass it whilst channel-surfing, you dip in for a couple of minutes and then never move on. It built careers, it started trends, spawned its own franchise and created a catch-phrase that - thanks to new police legislation and the creation of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders here in the UK - as great as it is, you cannot shout in the street more than twice anymore!
So let’s bow out with the infamous TV-edit version instead, shall we?
“Yipee-Kayee-Kim-O-Sabee!”
Related Posts:
- DIE HARD 5 In Production By 2010?
- Movie Review: DIE HARD 4.0
- DIE HARD 4.0 DVD Release Details!
- [DVD Review (R2)] WALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY
- THE INDISPENSIBLES - #8: GHOSTBUSTERS
3 Responses to “THE INDISPENSIBLES - #14: DIE HARD”
Under Siege had Gary Busey in drag, nuff said.
“DIE HARD
COMING THIS JULY”
anyone else think that die hard came out on december?
…maybe im crazy but i could have sworn die hard came out in december
(MARRY ME gwyneth!)
“Poppy Doyle”? Is that what his grandkids call him?
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