Die Hard 3 مشاهدة
Phyllis Sterlin
New York Detective and reluctant flyer John McClane (Bruce Willis) touches down at LAX with some handy jet lag advice from a fellow passenger: "Walk around on the rug barefoot and make fists with your toes." The tip was one shared with Stuart during his frequent flying youth. Does it work? "Honestly, I think a Valium is just as good," he says.
The first trademark Willis smirk. Everyone from Clint Eastwood and Paul Newman to Richard Gere and James Caan had been offered the role of McClane but none of them bit. In desperation, the studio paid Willis, then star of Cybill Shepard sitcom Moonlighting, a humongous $5 million for the role. "There was a lot of hand-wringing at Fox but they were over a barrel," says Stuart. "I was a big Moonlighting fan, though. I loved it!"
"DIE HARD"! It was producer Joel Silver who switched from the novel's rom-com-sounding Nothing Lasts Forever to Die Hard, having cribbed the title from Shane Black's early draft of The Last Boy Scout. An idiom, the name doesn't travel well, leading to an assortment of weird and wonderful international re-brandings including The Glass Jungle in Spain and the delightful Give Your Life Expensive in Hungary.
Nakatomi boss Joseph Takagi addresses the troops at the annual Christmas party. Resembling a feng shui meditation chamber more than a corporate office, Nakatomi HQ was based on American architect Frank Lloyd Wright's famous Fallingwater in Pennsylvania. In the film's mythology, the company bought the house and had it reconstructed brick-by-brick in the atrium. The Nakatomi logo, meanwhile, was created by production designer Jackson De Govia to resemble a samurai helmet.
Arch-douchebag Harry Ellis (Hart Bochner) puts some unwanted moves on Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) "Bochner was playing leading men at the time; he was seen as a straight guy," recalls Stuart. "That really helped make this foul character work."
Trainee limo driver Argyle (De'voreaux White) picks up McClane (and bear) in the departure lounge. Silver suggested the name, although no one seems to know why. "It might have been his pet dog, it might have been the name of his sled, I have no idea but he insisted on Argyle," recalls McTiernan. "It was just goofy enough that I thought it was wonderful."
Thanks to Argyle's side-gig as Basil Exposition, we get the lowdown on McClane's backstory as a NYC cop whose wife moved to LA without him. Everyman McClane naturally sits up front. "It positions him as this typical blue collar guy and a contrast to the terrorist leader," says De Souza. In earlier drafts McClane (then called John Ford) was a more Fleming-esque counter-terrorist expert. McTiernan insisted he be downgraded to a run-of-the-mill flatfoot from New Jersey.
Sunset on December 24th. When the dust settles, Santa will have just finished his rounds. Originally, though, the action took place over days rather than hours. "I specifically made it a single night," says McTiernan of the change to the timeline. "It starts with sunset and finishes at dawn."
McClane looks up his wife (now using her maiden name) on some cutting edge '80s tech. The guard reveals that the only people in the building are at a party on the 30th floor, begging the question of why he made McClane use the computer to look her up in the first place.
McClane and Holly lock eyes across the office. "The only thing that dates it is Bonnie Bedelia's hairstyle and shoulder pads," observes De Souza. "We should get whoever turned the guns into flashlights for the Special Edition of E.T. to go in and tweak her fashion sense."
Holly and John's first conversation turns into a spat. According to De Souza, Willis and Bedelia improvised the argument during a run-through and he worked it into the script. The scene was designed to show McClane's human side and the fact that the character doesn't actually like himself very much.
Theo (Clarence Gilyard Jr.) recounts the plays of a Lakers game as he and Karl (Alexander Godunov) storm reception and take out the guards. The imposing Godunov was a ballet dancer at the Bolshoi before defecting to America.
Led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), the terrorists spill out of the truck in a wave of blouson jackets, popped collars and fluffy blow dries. It all looks less like an armed infiltration than a slightly glowery catwalk at Hamburg Fashion Week. "When Rickman came in they started fitting him with all this tactical gear and he said 'I'm not going to wear this, I'm going to look ridiculous,'" recalls De Souza. "[Casting Director] Jackie Burch said, 'Why do these guys have to look like the mooks in every other action movie? Let's elevate it, let's make them look like models!'"
Gruber steps out of the elevator and ends the festivities. Die Hard was Rickman's first movie role, having been cast off the back of Broadway's Les Liaisons Dangereuses. "Once we started to see what he was able to do, it was like, 'Hey, get the fuck out of his way! Just let him do it,'" recalls McTiernan.
A couple in one of the meeting rooms has been getting into the festive spirit. The woman is Kym Malin, Playboy's Miss May 1982. She and fellow Playmate Terri Lynn Doss (Miss July 1988, seen jumping into a man's arms at the airport) were included at the behest of Silver, who insisted on having some "female eye candy".
Gruber addresses the hostages, citing Nakatomi's legacy of greed around the globe as reason for the attack. This was, in fact, the original setup until McTiernan (after turning the job down several times due to the dour nature of the script) insisted the 'terrorists' be transformed into thieves. "Terrorists make you feel bad," he explains. "There's no joy in that. But robbers are fun, you can root for them. They just want the money!"
"I'm going to count to three. There will not be a four." Takagi (James Shigeta) checks out, brains liberally splattered across the conference room door (the film's biggest wrangling point with censors). "We'd had a preamble of about half an hour where we've not really seen anything terrible from Gruber," says Stuart. "This set the stage for the fact that if he will kill this man in cold blood, he'll probably kill anybody!"
The vault's security consists of a code, which Theo cracks, five mechanical locks, which he drills, and the seventh seal (a Bergman nod from De Souza): an electromagnetic lock that can't be cut locally. "That's the most stupid thing in the movie, which I take full credit for," laughs De Souza. "That the final lock is a fibre optic cable that runs from this building to another one in Tokyo under the ocean is the most ridiculous thing ever! But it enabled us to put the audience in suspense. In the book, they're searching the office for documents but in the movie it's this lock that gives the terrorists something to do."
Having alerted Gruber to his presence by pulling the fire alarm, McClane is hunted by Tony (Andreas Wisniewski), the world's least stylish terrorist. Despite being part of a group resembling the militant wing of Spandau Ballet, Tony sports a grey tracksuit. It doesn't save him from getting his neck snapped when McClane drags him down the stairs, though. "That was inspired by Hitchcock's Torn Curtain where you see how hard it is to kill somebody with your bare hands," says De Souza.
Just as Gruber utters the words "We have left nothing to chance," the lift opens to reveals a very dead Tony, sporting a Santa hat and bearing everybody's favourite festive slogan: 'Now I Have A Machine Gun Ho-Ho-Ho'. "Bruce rode the top of that elevator for real," says De Souza.
Continuing the film's debt to Hugh Hefner, the topless pin-up on the wall is from the November '87 issue of Playboy, featuring centrefold Pamela Stein. Rather than another of Joel Silver's booby contributions, this is a breast-based landmark to orient the audience, letting us know we're back at the top of the elevator shaft when McClane sees it again later on.
Our introduction to Sergeant Al Powell (Reginald Veljohnson), loading up on Twinkies at a convenience store. According to the film's casting director, McTiernan originally pushed for Robert Duvall but she went to bat for Veljohnson, insisting he'd be a grounding influence. McTiernan recalls it differently, maintaining he'd actually wanted Lawrence Fishburne.
"Girls." After a brief firefight, McTiernan's 'nipple nav' indicates we're back at the lift shaft. Rather than just being pervy, McClane pawing at the poster is a nod to 1958 Clark Gable movie Run Silent, Run Deep, in which the submarine crew all touch a pinup of Betty Gable for luck as they head into battle.
McClane lowers himself into the elevator shaft by the strap on his machine gun, which breaks. The cavernous drop was actually a painting laid over an air bag but the near-miss was real as Willis' stunt double missed the lip of the vent and fell. Editor Frank Urioste liked it so much he cut it into the movie as McClane slipping and catching himself on a lower ledge.
"Who's driving this car? Stevie Wonder?" Coincidentally, when Powell crashes past Argyle's rear view mirror after McClane drops a body through the windshield, Wonder's 'Skeletons' can be heard playing in the limo.
Terrorists Heinrich (Gary Roberts) and Marco (Lorenzo Caccialanza) take on McClane and lose. The moment McClane shoots Marco through the conference table is, according to Willis, responsible for permanent hearing damage in his left ear. McTiernan, however, dismisses the claim: "You're not allowed to shoot a gun without hearing protection all around. There's a safety man on set whose job is to make sure that doesn't happen!"
Slimy reporter Richard Thornburg (William Atherton) is introduced, discussing dinner plans with his girlfriend (he's referring to Wolfgang Puck's '80s hot spot Spago on the Sunset Strip). Thornburg was inspired by Stuart's time at University, where he disliked most of the journalism students: "I didn't hold them in high regard, so, anytime I could find a chance to stick a dig in, I did."
McClane cold calls Gruber for the first time. The call wraps up with Die Hard's most famous line: "Yippe-Ki-Yay, motherfucker." While Willis has claimed it as an ad-lib, the line is in the shooting script. "That came out of a conversation Bruce and I had in his trailer," corrects De Souza. "We grew up about 40 miles apart and were talking about our childhood and how we both watched The Roy Rogers Show. Roy always signed off that way and that's why it's in the movie."
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