Die Hard (1988)
In 1968, Roderick Thorp’s 1966 novel, “The Detective”, was adapted to the screen by 20th Century Fox. The film version starred Frank Sinatra as middle-aged ex-cop Joe Leland and performed well enough at the box office for Fox to acquire rights for any follow-up novels. Thorp struggled with sequel ideas until 1974 when he viewed the skyscraper disaster film, The Towering Inferno. Afterward, Thorp had a dream about a man trapped in a building; instead of a fire, he was being chased by men with guns. Thorp surmised this could work as the next Joe Leland novel. Entitled “Nothing Lasts Forever” the completed manuscript was optioned by Fox before publication.
However, a studio reader flagged the manuscript as “not recommended.” Thorp’s story contained elements that weren’t commercially appealing. Leland, now a troubled divorcee in his sixties, reunites with his somewhat estranged executive daughter, Stephanie Gennaro, at the corporate office Christmas party held in a 40-story Los Angeles highrise owned by the Klaxon Oil corporation employer. Stephanie’s a cokehead embroiled with major arms sales to the Chilean junta. Leland becomes trapped in the building, chased by a band of terrorists. Killings in the novel were gruesome. The story ends with Stephanie falling from the building along with its villain, Anton Gruber. In Thorp’s original manuscript, Leland also dies, killed by gunfire.
Due to the adaptation issues, Thorp revised his novel prior to its publication in 1979, softening the violence and allowing Leland to survive when the final bad guy wounds him before getting killed by Al Powell a cop on the ground. Fox was still reticent, unsure about making a sequel to The Detective a decade later with Frank Sinatra’s fading box-office presence. In 1983, another script reader revisited the novel, still calling it distasteful and exploitative. However, in 1986, associate producer Lloyd Levin, scouring dormant Fox properties for a potential project, discovered Thorp’s novel and thought it has possibilities. Levin showed it to independent producer Lawrence Gordon. Gordon looked at the cover depicting a burning skyscraper and a helicopter and told Levin, “I don’t need to read it. Buy it.”
Screenwriter Jeb Stuart, stuck in a four-picture deal with Disney that didn’t pay him enough to support a pregnant wife and young child, was seeking outside work to make ends meet. After a potential career-making deal for a Robert Duvall vehicle went bust at Columbia, Stuart’s agent, Jeremy Zimmer, contacted producers at Fox and Paramount for new opportunities. Fox’s Levin offered, “Nothing Lasts Forever”. Stuart, needing the money, immediately accepted both deals from Fox and Paramount, but Stuart had issues with the Paramount producers, so he concentrated strictly on “Nothing Lasts Forever”. After reading the novel, Stuart felt pessimistic, even with Levin’s assurances that he could change things as he pleased. It was heavy, depressing, and something he’d personally want to see as a movie. He only liked the core idea of a good guy taking down bad guys in a building.
Stuart also had no action-movie experience. He knew the thriller genre, which built audience identification with the protagonist before the plot kicks in but struggled to find that resonant hook to draw audiences in from the start. Stuart eventually had an epiphany on how to proceed. After a heated argument with his wife, Stuart stormed out of his Pasadena home and headed to his Burbank studio office. Dodging LA traffic, he had a head-on collision with a cardboard refrigerator box that had fallen off of a stake-bed truck hauling appliances laying in his lane. If the box weren’t empty, the collision at 65 mph could have been fatal. Stuart pulled to the side of the road, shaken by the potentially fatal experience. His only thought was his wife’s last memory would have been of him leaving in anger.
Stuart’s new story hook involved a 30-something married cop returning to his estranged wife before losing her for good. The New York cop refused to follow his wife for a career offer to work in Los Angeles. Like so many of Stuart’s friends going through a divorce, the wife would go back to her maiden name. He used ‘Gennaro’, the name of Leland’s daughter from the novel. He travels cross-country to tell her she’s right and get her back. Before making amends, terrorists storm the building, trapping everyone, including the detective, inside. Motivated by love and duty, the detective springs to action to thwart the terrorists. Stuart completed 35-40 pages of the script that day, ironically still not having apologized to his wife.
Stuart realized his plot necessitated knowing the workings of a building. Serendipitously, the studio had erected a new building in nearby Fox Plaza. Fox originally wanted to shoot in Houston in one of their many empty, recently-built skyscrapers, but decided this new skyscraper worked much better for saving time and money, as they could shoot on floors that were still under construction. The superintendent gave Stuart an in-depth tour. Because Thorp internalizes Leland’s motivation in the book, Stuart fleshed out supporting characters so he’d vocalize expository info on his CB radio, particularly Al Powell, a cop on the outside. Stuart, a major John Wayne fan, added Western tropes for flavor.
Gordon found the action too unrelenting. He wanted “ledges”, i.e. small respites to allow the audience to catch their breath. He also requested a name change for the protagonist to break ties with The Detective. Paying homage to Westerns, Stuart renamed Joe Leland to John Ford, after the director. Gordon felt that John Ford was too famous and that using it would be a distraction. Stuart thumbed through a phone book until he found a surname that resonated: McClane – a good, strong Scottish name. After two months, Stuart’s script was complete.
Stuart returned from a vacation to find his answering machine replete with ecstatic responses to the script. Fox, eager to ride the wave of action movie blockbusters, fast-tracked the picture. They brought on action-movie producer Joel Silver, Gordon’s former protege. Silver told Stuart he was fired, even though he loved the script, to being in someone he knew and trusted that could work fast. Gordon got Silver to let Stuart continue until he secured another screenwriter.
Silver additionally wanted the title changed to Die Hard. Silver asked for the title rights from Shane Black, who’d had it in mind for a script idea for what would eventually be released as The Last Boy Scout. When he heard about it, Thorp wasn’t keen on the title change, thinking it reminded people of the car battery brand. Silver also wanted an ending where the top of the building blows up, arguing that people pay money to see explosions. Stuart obliged.
Paul Verhoeven was the top choice to direct, but he and several others on their list passed. John McTiernan, who had directed Predator for Gordon and Silver, also turned it down several times, fatigued from the Mexican jungle shoot of Predator and turned off by the ultracool nature of John McClane and the terrorist plot, thinking audiences found wouldn’t relate to a hero without flaws and would find the terrorism topic depressing. Silver and Gordon pressed McTiernan, who only consented on the condition that the terrorists became thieves (heists are fun; terrorism is not), they change McClane from an overly aggressive “Dirty Harry” archetype to an average guy, the villain a sophisticated, educated elitist, and they add more humor.
Silver sought screenwriter Steven E. DeSouza to take over scripting chores. De Souza had worked for Gordon on the TV show, “Renegades”, and Silver for his movies, 48 Hrs. and Commando. Coming from TV, De Souza was experienced with fast deadlines to fix problems as they arose.
In changing the terrorists to thieves, Klaxon was changed to a Japanese company, more topical because the Japanese were buying many Los Angeles buildings and businesses. As the Japanese were becoming high-rollers in Hollywood, they didn’t want to demonize them because they were likely to work for them in some capacity in the future. The bad guys remained Germans, more traditional to villainize in the 1980s. For the company name, they chose ‘Nakatomi” after reading a list of aristocratic Japanese clan names; Takagi, Nakatomi’s president, came from a list of Japanese admirals. McTiernan expanded the limo driver (changed by Silver to Argyle from William) in the intro to ground McClane early as an average guy, uncomfortable with the rich and famous California lifestyle. McTiernan also wanted dialogue reduced as much as possible, preferring imagery to tell the story. McTiernan had Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in mind, where everyone becomes something else for a crazy evening, then all’s well that ends well once it resolves.
The producers were relieved that Frank Sinatra, who possessed first-look rights for any sequel to The Detective, passed, claiming he was too old and too rich to need to do an action movie. Although Stuart’s script called for a younger actor, the producers tied for Clint Eastwood, who declined because he didn’t understand the humor. Paul Newman wanted no more films where he carried a gun. Opening things up for more traditional stars, Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Harrison Ford said no. Silver targeted Richard Gere. However, Gere was exploring Buddhism, and playing a hard-boiled cop in an explosive thriller wasn’t speaking to him, despite the $4 million offered. Al Pacino, Burt Reynolds, and James Caan also passed. Time was ticking; they needed a star pronto to get the film underway on schedule. Even hot TV action stars like Don Johnson and Richard Dean Anderson wouldn’t commit.
Bruce Willis was floated as a possibility while Silver was on a flight talking shop with Willis’s talent agent, Arnold Rifkin. Although Willis was hot from “Moonlighting’, a popular series of Seagram’s wine cooler commercials, and a hit rock-and-blues album, Silver was skeptical because Willis was a comedic actor, not an action star. He also had a public persona issue due to his reputation as an arrogant, egotistical bad-boy party animal. However, the star quality was undeniable. Silver met with Willis and then had him come in for a reading with McTiernan. Impressed and under pressure, they decided to secure Willis immediately.
Willis was committed to “Moonlighting” and was going to pass but a break occurred when “Moonlighting” co-star, Cybill Shepherd, became pregnant, delaying the show’s taping several weeks and making him available for pre-production. Rifkin, sensing Fox’s desperation, requested $5 million to sign Willis. Willis was apprehensive to ask for such a high number, but Rifkin told him to hold firm. A big payday shifted the blame toward the producers rather than Willis if the film failed. Fox approved the money, shocking the industry that an untested action star whose prior screen efforts, the dismal Blake Edwards comedies Blind Date and Sunset, were critical and commercial failures.
The amount was used as leverage for Willis’s total commitment. Willis exercised several hours a day, avoided parties, went into therapy, and joined Alcoholics Anonymous to achieve sobriety, with help from his girlfriend Demi Moore, also a recovering alcoholic. Demi’s fitness instructor, Jackson Sousa, concentrated on building Willis’s biceps and upper torso and shifted his diet toward healthier options. Failure could ruin his movie career. Willis got serious – about Die Hard, his health, his career, and his relationship with Demi, who he would soon marry.
De Souza reduced Willis’s scenes to accommodate his limited availability once “Moonlighting” commenced, as his availability was limited to evenings. Willis arrived on the set, took a 20-minute nap, and then worked while sneaking catnaps between takes. McTiernan had De Souza add scenes spotlighting supporting characters to allow Willis more rest. Expanded supporting characters included the villain, Hans Gruber, his surrounding terrorists, McClane’s wife, a good-natured cop, a pushy reporter, and the limo driver used for cutaway scenes.
Production designer Jackson DeGovia wasn’t the first attached, coming in with only six weeks until production started. He imagined the building as a ‘jungle maze’. He was influenced by the J.G. Ballard book, “High Rise”, where a modern building is the setting for tribal warfare, as well as the 1966 film, The Naked Prey, where the protagonist is pursued through the jungle by natives. There’s an irony to people turning into savages despite being surrounded completely by modern, man-made structures, completely set apart from anything resembling nature. DeGovia further highlighted the jungle themes as McClane and the terrorists alter between actions to determine who is the predator and who is the prey. He elevated the elegance to make it stylish, like a James Bond film without gadgets. Joel Silver, a Frank Lloyd Wright devotee, requested the Nakatomi interiors follow Wright’s design for the Pennsylvania house, “Fallingwater”.
McTiernan thought Stuart’s script was too serious and wanted more fun. Stuart’s script seemed more at home in the morally ambiguous 1970s when the book was written. De Souza gave it an 80s sheen, working with Willis’s inherent comedic persona. De Souza was naturally funny and had an ironic eye for movies as something to get overly serious about. McTiernan stressed to De Souza to make the dialogue wittier, so long as he didn’t change anything regarding the plot, character basics, or available sets. De Souza also sparked fun plot points, such as having the villains know the FBI terrorist playbook. They’d deal with them as terrorists when they were actually just robbers. The FBI would cut off power to the building, but it was what would open the vault. By the time the FBI realized they’d been duped, the robbers would have gotten completely away.
McTiernan wanted the villains to look cool and dress in fine fashions as compared to the grubby A-shirt for McClane, who was patterned after Bruce Willis’s persona of a smart-alecky working-class guy. McClane is the anti-Stallone – a self-made loser that feels fear and bleeds. His heroism is brought out by extraordinary circumstances. His vulnerability propels the tension and identity in his plight. In this way, Die Hard targeted audiences who’d grown fatigued by action genre trends toward an overblown sensory assault.
McTiernan considered Robert Duvall or Gene Hackman for Sgt. Al Powell but casting director Jackie Burch pressed for Reginald VelJohnson, claiming McClane needed to be surrounded by grounded characters. Broke and living in his mom’s basement, Veljohnson was considering quitting acting to pursue a career in advertising when he got the call. McTiernan liked the idea of a black cop and suggested Laurence Fishburne instead, but Burch insisted he look at Veljohnson, who instantly exuded kindness and likability. Wesley Snipes also auditioned at the same time as VelJohnson, but Willis felt VelJohnson was a better fit. Willis also suggested casting Bonnie Bedelia as McClane’s wife, rather than a tempting starlet, to embody a woman of quality McClane would regret losing. Willis admired Bedelia’s Golden Globe-nominated performance for Heart Like a Wheel and wanted to work with her.
For Hans Gruber, casting director Burch remembered stage actor Rickman’s audition for the Schwarzenegger action-comedy, Red Heat. Silver and McTiernan went to see Rickman perform in the Broadway production of “Dangerous Liaisons” and offered him the role. Rickman initially wasn’t interested, as he didn’t understand action movies and didn’t want to perpetuate the British bad-guy stereotype. Just holding a gun for his audition required rehearsal. Early in the shoot, Rickman felt lost in the role, getting hurt performing a stunt on day one and then flinching every time he fired his gun, He felt that his own firing was imminent once they concluded he was obviously wrong for the part. However, the dailies revealed Rickman possessed an unexpected dimension that the producers felt elevated Gruber above most screen heavies.
Alexander Gudonov, a ballet dancer turned actor, was selected for Gruber’s main henchman, Karl. Gudonov liked the script but was hesitant because there was little depth to the role. He worked with Silver and Stuart to build up the character. Gudonov spoke little English and worked with Stuart to reduce Karl’s dialogue to letting his physicality drive his menace while writing in a brother for Karl to give some of the dialogue to.
De Souza’s first revision blew the script up to 145 pages. McTiernan ordered a complete overhaul to tighten everything up. The shoot began with only 35 pages of De Souza’s new script completed, and daily changes incorporating new ideas emerged. For instance, in Stuart’s script, terrorist Theo pretends to be a hostage. McClane is unaware, creating tension. De Souza felt Gruber assuming the hostage identity worked better; the best action movie villains match the hero in cunning, satisfying audiences when they’re beaten. After De Souza discovered Alan Rickman could do a California accent, he convinced McTiernan and Silver to add a twist for Gruber to fool McClane, who only knew Gruber as a voice on his walkie-talkie, with the accent and get his gun. Overnight DeSouza scripted a new scene where Gruber picks a name from the company directory near the elevator and pretends to be one of the employees.
Silver wanted Takagi’s assassination to be graphic, showing his brains blowing out the back of his head so the MPAA would target this moment as too much and wouldn’t quibble about the other violence when it was removed. During the editing phase, De Souza continued to add laugh lines mostly done in ADR off-camera.
McTiernan hired cinematographer Jan de Bont, whose work he admired from Paul Verhoeven’s Dutch films. They employed a documentary style using stationary camerawork complementing the handheld close-ups that draw viewers into the action. De Bont preferred naturally dark environs and incorporated lens flares, something that became commonplace henceforth. De Bont and McTiernan had a contentious shoot; McTiernan pressed for multiple takes from different distances, so he could edit the best footage later, which De Bont despised. Despite their legendary spats, De Bont and McTiernan drove together to and from the shoot preparing their upcoming scenes.
Willis had some initial difficulty finding the right rhythm. He initially began playing his role straight and seriously, but Silver egged him on, encouraging him to ad-lib and provide his trademark humor. Eventually, Willis figured out the balance and improvised many of the film’s most enduring lines. Willis had caused problems by continuously moving to places he wasn’t supposed to; he was trying to avoid them capturing his thinning hair. The filmmakers assured Willis that it was their job to make him look good.
The lead-up to Die Hard‘s release wasn’t good for Willis as a marketable asset. The ratings for “Moonlighting” descended in its fourth season, the HBO mockumentary “The Return of Bruno” met with lackluster reviews, and Willis’s Blake Edwards comedy, Sunset, was a major bust. Willis’s public perception did prove to be negative during the early marketing phases. Audiences, who’d grown jaded by Willis’s “bad boy” persona, began booing or laughing at the trailer around the country when they saw Willis appear. Sensing unintended backlash, initial advertisements downplayed Willis’s involvement. The studio marketers were initially apprehensive, devising a plan to showcase the building but not Willis in the poster. The studio also suggested a reduction of the humor, thinking its jokey tone might erase all of the film’s tension.
However, early test results of the workprint revealed that audiences loved the movie, and Willis’s performance first and foremost; a superstar turn seemed to be in the making. Trying to generate good buzz for the film, Die Hard was released in a limited run. On July 15, 1988, it was released in twenty-one theaters across twenty cities. The following week, it ballooned to 1200 theaters. The film made $88 million in the US and over $50 million internationally on a budget of $28 million. It broke a video rental record in 1989. It became the template for action movies throughout the 1990s.
Die Hard was a star-making movie for Bruce Willis and a terrific action flick that set a standard for high-concept, high-octane action blockbusters for the following decade that was unmatched by its sequels and imitators. The joys lie in the well-developed set-up and characterizations, plus great action sequences, rather than the plot. It’s also one of the few films where the wisecracking hero’s one-liners are actually funny.
Die Hard isn’t what one would call a thinking man’s thriller, but it is a case where the formula is done right for popcorn movie fare. With plenty of action, incredible stunts, pithy lines, and good performances to anchor it, John McTiernan sets the table for over two hours of action movie-lovers bliss, as things blow up, and we actually care about what happens in the end.
Many initially questioned the casting of comedic actor Willis as an action hero. Willis proved them wrong by successfully establishing that there is nothing remarkable about McClane at all — he’s just a normal New York City cop who is out of his element in a new environment and pretty much unsettled about everything in his life. He has normal problems and normal feelings. Bruce Willis isn’t Rambo or John Wayne and even rejects the notion when presented with a poignant question by Hans himself. Although Beverly Hills Cop would come before with a similar premise of a street-smart, wisecracking blue-collar cop transplanted to California, Die Hard did it with a unique style, verve, and wit, delivering everything you could want in an action picture.
Qwipster’s rating: A+
MPAA Rated: R for violence, nudity, language, and a scene of drug use
Running time: 131 min.
Cast: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Bonnie Bedelia, Reginald VelJohnson, Paul Gleason, Alexander Gudonov, William Atherton, Hart Bochner
Director: John McTiernan
Screenplay: Jeb Stuart, Steven E. de Souza