Sep 20, 2018
Every film is both a product of its environment, and a rebellionagainst it. Artists (and audiences) search for something new andfresh, but cannot escape the world as it exists around them.Die Hard is no exception. While Die Hard is oftenmarked as a turning point in American action cinema, we must firstlook at the state of action cinema as it existed before 1988. Whatdoes a “typical” 80s action movie look like? What artistic andsocietal pressures shaped that mold? And in what ways does DieHard break it?
As we kick off this limited series, let us know what you think!Drop us a line at diehardwithapodcast@gmail.com,or visit our site at www.diehardwithapodcast.com.
Source Links
- A/V Club, Die Hard humanized (and perfected)the action movie
- Creative Screenwriting, “There is no such thing as an actionmovie.” Steven E. de Souza on Screenwriting
- David Bordwell, It's the 80s, stupid
- Hollywood Suite, The French Connection and the grittyrealism of the 70s
- IndieWire, 10 Defining 1970s DisasterMovies
- IndieWire, Cruel Summer: Die Hard(1988)
- James Kendrick, Hollywood Bloodshed: Violence in1980s American Cinema
- Medium, New Hollywood: Why The 70's Were TheGreatest Decade In America Cinema
- New York Times, How the American Action Movie WentKablooey
- Oxford Bibliographies, Action Movies
- Slate, In The Parallax View, ConspiracyGoes All the Way to the Top—and Beyond
- Vulture, How Die Hard Changed the ActionGame
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Full Episode Transcript
Welcome to the podcast, pal.
My name is Simone Chavoor, and thank you for joining me for DieHard With a Podcast! The show that examines the best Americanaction movie of all time: Die Hard.
Thank you to everyone who listened to the first episode of theshow! It’s been so fun to get this podcast off the ground.Everyone’s been really awesome and supportive, from the listenersto the experts I’ve been talking to for the show. Starting in thisepisode, we’ll hear from filmmakers, film critics, and pop culturewriters to get their perspectives on Die Hard and what it means asa part of film history. I’m excited to introduce them to you laterin the show.
If you want to share your thoughts on Die Hard and the thingsbrought up on the podcast, reach out!
I’ve been trying to post lots of additional photos and facts tothe social media accounts in particular. My favorite so far was aDungeons and Dragons character alignment chart I made for Die Hard.McClane is Chaotic Good, Al Powell is Lawful Good… You’ll have tovisit the pages to see the rest of who’s who on the chart.
And if you like this show, kick me a buck or two on Patreon.Patreon helps to offset the cost of doing this show, not just inpure dollars and cents, but for the sheer amount of time thispodcast takes to put together. This is my first solo project, andalthough I have the wonderful, amazing support of my guests andfans, it still takes a lot of time researching, writing, recording,and editing.
There are some cool bonuses you can get, everything from shoutouts on the show, to stickers, ornaments, and the bonus episode –which is TBD, because you get to vote on! So check that out, andpitch in if you can.
Shout out to our contributors… Rob T, Jason H, and Saint Even! Ihope I’m saying that right. Anyone who’s listened to my otherpodcast knows that I can’t pronounce half the names I come across.It’s amazing how good you think you are at pronouncing things untilyou get in front of a mic... Thank you so much!
You can also support Die Hard With a Podcast by leaving a reviewon iTunes. With more starred ratings and written reviews, the showbecomes more visible to other potential listeners, so please sharethe love and let me know what you think!
All right. On to our main topic.
Every film is both a product of its environment, and a rebellionagainst it. Artists (and audiences) search for something new andfresh, but cannot escape the world as it exists around them. DieHard is no exception. While Die Hard is often marked as a turningpoint in American action cinema, we must first look at the state ofaction cinema as it existed before 1988. What does a “typical” 80saction movie look like? What artistic and societal pressures shapedthat mold? And in what ways does Die Hard break it?
But before we talk about 80s films, let’s talk about… 70sfilms.
70s cinema was a time when sh*t started to get real. After yearsof glossy studio pictures, filmmakers wanted to show things as theyreally were. And with Vietnam, Watergate, the oil crisis, risingcrime in cities, and so much more, things were… f*cked up. And themovies made then reflected that. They were dark, pessimistic,gritty, bleak. No happy endings to be found here. Midnight Cowboyand Taxi Driver are two of the most 70s-ish depressing-ass moviesthat I like to point out as an example of this.
[CLIP: MIDNIGHT COWBOY - I’M WALKING HERE]
With that mood in mind, let’s drill down into somespecifics.
[INTERVIEW: ED GRABIANOWSKI
I’m Ed Grabianowski, and I am a longtime writer; I’ve writtenfor sites like io9 and How Stuff Works and a whole bunch of others,and I also write horror and fantasy fiction.
If you go back to the 70s, there weren’t really movies in the70s that were just like action movies, like that you would justdefine as action movies, to the extent there were later. Youinstead got sort of different sub-genres; you had sort of like copsand robbers movies with gunfights and car chases, and then you hadlike martial arts movies with lots of fist fights and swordfights.]
Within this general movement, a few particular genres stand out.There was a lot going on in 70s film as the studios’ creativecontrol was usurped by a new wave of auteur filmmakers. Now ofcourse, there were lots of popular genres in this moment, allimportant in their own ways, like science fiction, horror,spaghetti Westerns, blaxploitation films, kung-fu movies. You cansee some through lines from then, to the 80s, and into Die Hard inparticular.
But for our discussion today, we’re going to focus on three:disaster movies, paranoid political thrillers, and rogue cops andvigilantes.
Let’s start with disaster movies.
[INTERVIEW: ED GRABIANOWSKI
And then you had the disaster movie subgenre, which was a hugetrend for a while, and that was more based on spectacle and thevisuals of a disaster happening. And also interestingly tended tobe more ensemble casts.]
After all, As we discussed in our first episode, Die Hard wasdirectly inspired by one of the best-known disaster movies of the70s: 1974’s The Towering Inferno. These movies featured peoplegoing about their business – attending a party, trying to catch aflight, taking a nice little cruise. Then BAM! A fire starts, abomb goes off, a tsunami hits. These disasters, some natural, somenatural-with-the-help-of-man’s-hubris, and some entirely man-madestrike large groups of people, who we quickly learn are totallyexpendable. We follow these thinly written characters in multipleplot lines as they try to escape, survive, or stop whatevercalamity is going on. In the process, the audience gets toexperience their peril... which usually includes a bunch ofexplosions.
The Towering Inferno boasts an all-star cast that includes SteveMcQueen, Paul Newman, Faye Dunaway, and Fred Astaire. Our maincharacters are at a dedication ceremony for the new Glass Tower,the now-tallest building in the world. (As an aside, I work quiteclose to Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, which is currently thetallest building in San Francisco and the second-tallest west ofthe Mississippi. The fictional Glass Tower in the movie is tallerthan both of those by 500 feet. And every time I look at it I thinkabout either The Towering Inferno or Nakatomi Tower, and neither ofthose are things you want to think about on your lunch break.)
While at the ceremony, a fire breaks out on the 81st floor,trapping the people above. A group makes it to the roof for anattempted helicopter rescue, but the copter crashes and sets theroof on fire. After many thwarted attempts to escape, Steve McQueenand Paul Newman use plastic explosives to blow up the water tankson the top of the building, flooding the floors below and puttingout the fire. [CLIP: THE TOWERING INFERNO TRAILER] It’s easy to seehow novelist Roderick Thorp could see that movie, dream about it,throw in some terrorists, and come up with the seed of DieHard.
As the Watergate scandal unfolded, the paranoid politicalthriller came to the fore. We’re talking Three Days of the Condor,Parallax View, and obviously All the President’s Men. These arefilms mostly centered on an individual uncovering a governmentconspiracy, and trying to either expose it or just escape withtheir life. But, fitting with the general mood of American cinemaat the time, things usually don’t work out too well for theprotagonists. Spoiler alert – in these films, usually the big badgovernment conspiracy gets away with it, leaving the heroes eitherdead or defeated. The individual, no matter what knowledge they’rearmed with, is helpless against the faceless cabal that keeps thepopulace in line. To put it bluntly, the government is all-powerfuland all-knowing, and you, the lone citizen, are f*cked if you goagainst them.
[CLIP: ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN TRAILER ]
The final 70s genre we’re looking at as a direct influence toDie Hard is the “rogue cop” or “vigilante” movie. The protagonistsin these films are also lone individuals, but of a different stripethan what we’ll see later: they’re the anti-heroes. They’re deeplymessed up in some way. They’re the cop who doesn’t play by therules, or the everyman who gets pushed too far by society and turnsto violence. Death Wish, Dirty Harry, The French Connection. Thesemovies manifest the existential dread of audiences who fearedsocial upheaval, economic instability, and rising crime in cities.And then they offer the wish fulfillment of being able to buck therules and do things your way – no matter what the police chiefsays. [CLIP: DIRTY HARRY]
As Ed pointed out earlier, the 70s didn’t have what we considera blanket “action movie” – as you can see, the genres we justtalked about had action in them, but it wasn’t the definingcharacteristic of the movie. If the word “action” was used todescribe a movie in generic terms at all, it was usually pairedwith the word “adventure” to convey something more fantastic andepic. But moreover, the action in these films was, well… kind of abummer. Violence and destruction were used to emphasize the moretroubling aspects of our society. Even if these scenes wereexciting, they were heavy. They were serious.
So what tipped these old genres over into a new kind of film atthe start of the decade?
[INTERVIEW: ED GRABIANOWSKI
It just sort of happened. There’s – yes, people – there’s thissort of gestalt like, let’s take elements of all these things andmake something that just embodies all of that. And that became theaction movie.]
Audiences were transforming from Steven and Elyse Keatons intoAlex P. Keatons. But in addition to a transition from Carter andthe recession to Reagan and a “greed is good” economy, the filmindustry in particular had new pressures and opportunities thatushered in a new era of filmmaking. David Bordwell, Professor ofFilm Studies at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, sums it up:“With the new attractiveness of the global market, the demands ofhome video, and increasingly sophisticated special effects, the1980s brought the really violent action movie into its own.”
Bordwell amusingly closes his exploration of 80s action movieswith one, lone sentence: “I save for last the obligatory mention ofDie Hard, the Jaws of the 1980s: a perfectly engineeredentertainment.” Guess that statement stands on its own...
The writer of Die Hard and Commando, Steven De Souza, expands onBordwell’s point about the global market. He says, “I would arguethat the genre of an ‘action movie’ is a completely false creature.There is no such thing as an action movie. All movies have action.‘Action movie’ is a term that was invented in the ‘80s. I thinkCommando may have been the first one in 1985. They noticed for thefirst time that a handful of American movies were making more moneyoverseas than in America. This had never happened before. Commandomade 60% of its money overseas and 40% in the US. Action speakslouder than words. You don’t need to read the subtitles to know itwas a bad idea to kidnap Arnold Schwarzenegger’s little girl. Idisagree with the idea that there is such thing as an action movie,but we are stuck with that term now.”
Well, if we’re stuck with that term, let’s go with it. So: whatmakes an action movie?
In the 80s, “physical action and violence [became] theorganizing principle, from the plot, to the dialogue, to thecasting.” That’s according to academic reference site OxfordBibliographies.
Picture your typical action movie poster. There’s probably somekind of aircraft or ship or ground vehicle, maybe a hot lady kindasmall and in the corner there… there’s definitely a bunch of fire…And standing tall in the middle, our hero. And he’s probablyholding a gun.
The lone hero is one of the defining characteristics of what wethink of the stereotypical action movie. But he – and it’s almostalways a “he” – is different than our “rogue cop” of the 1970s. The80s action star was a one-man army, alone more powerful than thehordes of henchman thrown up against him. Our hero might have asidekick or lead a small team, but in the end they’re eitherineffectual and/or expendable – by the end of the film, it’s ourprotagonist who takes down the bad guy by himself.
The action hero inhabits his body, not his mind. His powers comefrom physical strength (and firepower) instead of cleverness. Imean, when we meet Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando, we seemultiple shots of his biceps before we even see his face. AsIndieWire put it, the heroes are “obscenely pumped-up one-manfighting machine[s]... outrageously entertaining comic-bookdepictions of outsized masculinity.”
[INTERVIEW: ADAM STERNBERGH
My name is Adam Sternbergh. I’m a novelist and a contributingeditor to New York Magazine and a pop culture journalist.
80s action films, as we think of them now, they’re veryexcessive, they’re all about a sort of oversized machismo andenormous guns and enormous muscles and enormous explosions. Whichwas very exhilarating, but I think even by the time Die Hard cameout, was starting to feel a little bit tired, and there was ahunger for action film fans – certainly myself, I would have beenabout seventeen or eighteen, for something a little bitdifferent.]
[INTERVIEW: SCOTT WAMPLER
My name is Scott Wampler, I’m the news editor at Birth. Movies.Death. I’m also the host of the Trying Times podcast.
The first word that’s coming to mind is “sweaty.” When I thinkof action movies in the 80s I think of, you know, dudes that aresuper cut up, they look like condoms filled with walnuts, andthey’re always glistening with sweat. And usually there’s a dirtytank top involved, or maybe some camo pants.]
[INTERVIEW: SHANNON HUBBELL
My name is Shannon Hubbell, I’m editor-in-chief ofLewtonBus.net.
I’d say action films of the 80s – I mean, it’s obviouslydominated by Schwarzenegger and Stallone, and so a lot of thelarger action films are centered around big, burly, unstoppablekilling machines. Just barely human. Other than Terminator, thatkinda thing doesn’t yank my chain. But also, you have things like,say, Escape from New York – smaller fare, different types ofheroes, anti-heroes, instead of just hulking, machine-gun-sprayingdouchebags.]
Matrix and Dutch, Rambo and Cobra – these guys were far fromhelpless. Once pulled into a conflict by circ*mstance, our hero isunstoppable. It’s a reclaiming of agency that had been taken awayby faceless forces in the 70s.
Our heroes’ incredible power is just that: incredible. I knowthis might be shocking news to you, but a lot of these 80s actionmovies are… unrealistic. After all, in Predator, Arnold escapes athermo-nuclear explosion by just… running away. These guys aresuperheroes pretending to be regular dudes. Comic book moviesweren’t so much a thing yet, although we did have that platonicideal of a superhero – Superman – appear onscreen in ‘78, ‘81, ‘83,and ‘87.
But invulnerability is okay. That’s part of the appeal. We wantthe heroes that fight for truth, justice, and the American way tobe assured of victory. This leads into another characteristic of80s action: patriotism.
Now, of course, not all of our protagonists are American. Arnolddefinitely does not – er… can not – try to pass for an American,and neither can Jean Claude Van Damme. But most of our protagonistsare not only American, but working-class, everymen Americans whoare just trying to get by with an honest day’s work. Sometimes thathonest day’s work involves special forces missions, but you knowwhat I mean.
Adam Sternbergh explains.
[INTERVIEW: ADAM STERNBERGH
There was a sort of parallel ascent of the John Rambo paradigm,and Ronald Reagan. And Reagan was quite open about makingreferences to Rambo, and I think Reagan at one point quoted theDirty Harry line, “Make my day.” And there was a real sense inAmerican culture that post the 1970s, post Jimmy Carter, post thisnational ennui or whatever people decided had overtaken thecountry, that America was being proud of being America again, andpart of that was watching movies in which American POWs blow entirecountries. And in fact the third Rambo movie is just sort of aridiculous patriotism p*rn where he goes to Afghanistan andessentially single-handedly defeats the Russian Army inAfghanistan. That kind of action movie, I think if you look at itin a historical, sociological context, it made perfect sense forthe national mood.] [CLIP: REAGAN AND RAMBO]
In other words, if America was in fact a shining city on a hill,Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and Carl Weathers werethere to guard its walls.
Finally, the hallmark of an action movie is all the… [GUNSHOTS,EXPLOSIONS]
If you’re having a celebration of American masculinity andstrength, what else are you gonna do but blow sh*t up? There wascertainly a fetishization of weapons in the preceding decade.Robert Blake’s character Beretta shared his name with that of a gunmanufacturer, and Dirty Harry gives a whole soliloquy about his .45Magnum. But the films that followed had to be bigger. Louder. Ifthe 70s were the decade of the handgun, the 80s were the decade ofthe automatic weapon. [CLIP: NOW I HAVE A MACHINE GUN, HO HOHO]
General explosions were also bigger and better, due to improvedspecial effects technologies. The disaster movie of course hadterrific destruction, but the buildings getting blown up were moreobviously flimsy sets, if not just miniatures.
And to me, the differentiating factor that separates 70s actionfrom 80s action, was that 80s violence and destruction was…celebratory. It was fun. It was generally free of consequence. Ourhero can’t die, remember? And the bad guys he’s blowing away arelargely faceless cartoon characters, a dime a dozen. It wasperfectly okay to sit in a theater and shove popcorn in your mouthwhile large-scale mayhem unfolded before your eyes.
With these definitions in place, let’s go back and tick off theaction movie characteristics that Die Hard shares.
Lone hero? Check. John McClane is almost totally alone, withonly a walkie-talkie as a tether to the outside world. The LAPD andFBI are ostensibly on his side, but they’re certainly not workingwith him. John must face a whole gang of terrorists by himself torescue his wife. We’re confident that he’ll achieve his goal, evenif things look dicey sometimes.
[INTERVIEW: ADAM STERNBERGH
I mean, Die Hard was similar in the sense that it featured asort of lone, male protagonist who’s battling against the odds, andif faced with a sort of intractable situation where he’s trying tofight his way out using his brains and brawn. An interestingparallel is the movie Commando, which came out just a couple yearsearlier with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he basically has 24 or 48hours save his daughter from these evil military types. And he goesabout breaking everyone’s neck and shooting a bunch of people andblowing things up, and spoiler: he saves the daughter at the end.And so in that sense, Die Hard was sort of a very familiar setup.It obviously was kind of ingenious setup because it launched itsown mini-genre of movies, which was the “Die Hard in ablankity-blank movie.”]
Physical prowess? Mmm, not as much. John McClane isn’t in badshape, not at all. He’s a cop, he can brawl. But he’s not one ofthose guys with “gleaming sweat [and] bulging muscles that couldn’tpossibly exist without chemical enhancement... A bodybuilder’sfever dream, the sort of thing he might imagine after doing amountain of blow and watching nothing but early MTV for 48 hours,”as the AV Club puts it.
[INTERVIEW: ADAM STERNBERGH
Everything else was moving in that direction, toward moreinvulnerable, more muscular, more explosive. And then Die Hard camealong and said, what if a real, normal guy found himself in thissituation? What would he do, and how would he prevail?]
Bruce Willis’s embodiment of a wisecracking cop caught in anextraordinary situation was a key factor in John McClane’sbelievability.
[INTERVIEW: SHANNON HUBBELL
On paper, just like describing Die Hard to someone, you cantotally imagine Schwarzenegger playing that role, or Stalloneplaying that role. It’s the details and execution that makes itdifferent. You have a character who is fallible, and hurtable andemotionally vulnerable, which is not something that comes across ina paragraph synopsis of Die Hard.]
John is a pretty regular guy. He gets tired, he gets hurt. Infact, his physical vulnerability in the original Die Hard isfamous. [CLIP: SHOOT THE GLASS]
[INTERVIEW: ADAM STERNBERGH
From the very beginning of the movie, when he takes his shoesoff at the beginning of the movie, you know, he’s in bare feet,he’s incredibly vulnerable and there’s this real sense that he’sthis regular guy, who, there’s no way he’s going to accomplishthis. He doesn’t even seem to believe it at the beginning. And itmakes it so much more satisfying at the end of the movie when hedoes; he’s bloodied and he’s broken and his feet are bleeding. Andthat was just so different from that kind of Rambo, Schwarzeneggerparadigm that had been established that had been sosuccessful.]
When you watch an action movie, you get the thrill of watching asuperman executing a perfect plan. But watching a normal guy makingit up as he goes along in Die Hard, you start to wonder – whatwould I do in this situation?
We’ll get more into McClane’s physical and emotionalvulnerability in our next episode.
Patriotism? Die Hard isn’t an explicitly jingoistic film. Therearen’t American flags waving as soldiers fight to defend Americanvalues. But we do have John, a white, heterosexual, working-classdude as our hero. See, not only is John representative of theAmerican way of life, he also reflects a tension between classeswithin America, as well as in relationship to other world powers.Our bad guys are an International House of Terrorists, includingwhat Ellis calls… [CLIP: ELLIS EUROTRASH]
[INTERVIEW: ADAM STERNBERGH
I think there’s definitely some quintessential American ideas ofclass in the movie, and it’s not a mistake that the terrorists arenot just Europeans but they’re all wearing turtlenecks and sort ofbeautiful European clothes and then there is a whole conversationin the elevator between Hans and Mr. Takagi about their suits andtheir respective tailors. And John McClane’s just a guy with asinglet on, running around like Johnny Lunchbucket. And I think atthat particular moment in American history, that was a veryresonant idea, again because there was this sense of America’sinfluence in the world being undermined – in particular by Japan,but just in general. American industry and this sort of notion ofthe blue-collar American economy was faltering in coming out of the1970s. There was a sense that that was changing. So McClane isinteresting, and I wonder if you made Die Hard now, if he wouldstill be a New York cop, or if they would try to make him even moreof a kind of heartland hero.]
It’s also worth noting the presence of another foreign “threat”in Die Hard. The Nakatomi Corporation represents a very realAmerican fear in the 80s that the Japanese wouldn’t so much invadeas they would conduct a hostile takeover.
Richard Brody of The New Yorker explains: “There’s anotherethnic anxiety that the movie represents—the film is centered onthe Nakatomi Corporation, headed by a Japanese-American man namedJoseph Takagi, which is an emblem of the then widely stoked fearthat Japanese high-tech businesses were threatening to dominate theAmerican economy.”
At the time, the Japanese economy was booming thanks topost-World War II reconstruction and a strong manufacturingindustry. Japanese corporations began buying American companies,starting with car factories, steel works, and media companies –industries that are held as quintessentially American. [CLIP:TAKAGI TAPE DECKS]
[INTERVIEW: ADAM STERNBERGH
It also has interesting strains of things that were happening inpolitics at the time, you know, the whole idea of a Japanesecorporation that’s come to America and is a powerful corporation,and then the American inevitably has to save them. There’s a littlemini-genre of 80s-era films that were sort of about America’sanxiety about Japan’s rising influence in the world. So I think alittle bit of that is in Die Hard. You know, this sort of twist ofhaving the terrorists be political terrorists who just turn out tobe greedy robbers, was a little bit of a wink at the notion thatall the other movies were about politics.]
As Adam points out, American fear of this so-called threat canbe seen in more than just Die Hard. 1986’s Gung Ho is specificallyabout a Japanese company buying Michael Keaton’s character’s autoplant. The Back to the Future series (which kicked off in 1985)also has a few telling moments. [CLIP: BACK TO THE FUTURE ALL THEBEST STUFF IS MADE IN JAPAN] [CLIP: BACK TO THE FUTURE II McFLY’SBOSS]
In Die Hard, Nakatomi is positioned as not just another Japanesemega-corporation with more money than they know what to do with,but it’s also the company that is threatening to take Holly awayfrom John.
Okay, onto our last action movie qualifier: [CLIP: GUNSHOTS,EXPLOSIONS]
Welp, I think it’s pretty safe to say that Die Hard has bigexplosions and over-the-top stunts. Lots of ‘em – and really goodones, too. They’re well choreographed and a pleasure to watch.
Plus, they keep their own sense of fun. Having your herodispatch a bad guy and follow it with a quippy remark is a classicaction movie cliche. [CLIP: FEET SMALLER THAN MY SISTER] But thedifference is that Bruce Willis has the comedy acting chops toactually pull it off. Look, Arnold’s great at a lot of things, butline delivery ain’t one of ‘em. [CLIP: LET OFF SOME STEAM]
In the end, Die Hard is very much in the mold of traditional 80saction movies – and where it breaks that mold, is where it improvesupon it. Hollywood’s been trying to recapture that magic eversince.
[INTERVIEW: SCOTT WAMPLER
I would say that it probably broke a general mold that had ahold on Hollywood for at least a decade. Outside of the work ofsay, Stallone, Schwarzenegger, who – you know, Schwarzenegger did alot of sci-fi stuff, and Stallone – Stallone’s always been pretty‘oo-rah American.’ But I think Hollywood as a whole, it definitelyreformed the template, you know? There were shock waves coming offof Die Hard for at least a decade. You can still feel them.]
[INTERVIEW: ADAM STERNBERGH
I remember sitting in the theater and watching the movie andjust being completely blown away by how great it was and how fresh*t felt. That is really the thing I wonder if people watching itnow can appreciate, is just how it felt like this gust of freshair, given all the films that had come before. And those actionfilms again, they were all tightly packed in in just like six orseven years in the 80s. It was a very sort of young genre itself.But this kinda came in and it was just a complete reinvention ofwhat an action film could be, and John McClane was a completelydifferent kind of hero, and it was so exhilarating.]
The elevated craft of Die Hard, from the airtight script toMcTiernan’s direction to De Bont’s cinematography, to theperformances of Willis and Rickman, took what could have been anunremarkable summer flick and turned it into a classic.
[INTERVIEW: KATIE WALSH
My name’s Katie Walsh. I am a film critic for the Tribune NewsService and LA Times.
You know, you see enough bad action movies, and then you watchDie Hard, and you’re like, “This is so impeccably made.” Thecinematography is gorgeous, there’s these amazing camera movements,and the lighting and all of the stuff that’s going on is just soperfect. And then you’re like, “Okay, this is a perfect movie.” Ithink cinephiles now are saying John McTiernan’s an amazingdirector, Jan De Bont is an amazing cinematographer, the craft thatgoes into this movie is impeccable, and it’s a very well-mademovie; I think people are recognizing that.]
In our next episode, we’ll dig in to arguably the most importantcontributor to Die Hard’s success: the character of John McClane,and Bruce Willis’s portrayal of him. So get ready, take off yourshoes, make some fists with your toes, and join us next time.
Thank you to our guests Adam Sternbergh, Scott Wampler, ShannonHubbell, Ed Grabionowski, and Katie Walsh. Be sure to check theshow notes on the website to learn more about them.
Thanks again for joining me, and yippee-kai-yay,motherf*ckers!
