The Rewatchables - 'Die Hard' 30th Anniversary With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, Jason Concepcion, and Sean Fennessey
Episode Date: August 1, 2018Yippee ki-yay motherf-----! The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, Jason Concepcion, and Sean Fennessey go shoeless to a holiday party interrupted by terrorists to celebrate the 30th anniversary of ...1988’s classic action film 'Die Hard,' starring Bruce Willis and directed by John McTiernan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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And now the rewatchables.
John McLean, officer of the NYPD,
tries to save his wife, Holly Gennaro,
and several others that were taken hostage
by German terrorist Hans Gruber
during a Christmas party
at the Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles.
All things being equal,
I'd rather be in Philadelphia.
This is Die Hard the rewatchables.
They've got the building.
They have already killed one hostage.
They've got the odds.
They've got his white.
No, no!
Now he's got one night to get it all back.
You really think you have a chance against us,
Mr. Cowboy.
Ipiquay.
Bruce Willis in 40 stories of sheer adventure.
Die Hard, Vegidar.
This is going to be a good one.
I'm here with my team of highly trained European bank robbers, Jason Concepcion,
Hello.
Sean Fennacy.
Yippe Cayet.
And Bill Simmons.
I just want to point out this movie came out the same year as Midnight Run.
But Sean Fennacy didn't want us to do as a rewatchable because it was too old.
It's the 30th anniversary of Die Hard.
It came out in July of 1988 when it made $83 million domestically, a quaint $83 million.
But it is considered sort of one of the archetypal summer blockbusters.
It capped an incredible, not capped, but it came during, I think, probably the peak decade of action movies.
It came out the same weekend as Midnight Run.
What a weekend.
That would have been a cool weekend.
I probably would have just camped out in a movie theater for an entire weekend to do it.
Dyerd was written by Stephen E. D'Souza, who I referred to as the Poet Laureate of Cop and Soldier action movies from the A's he wrote.
Or was he?
What do you think?
I don't know.
A lot of ad-libbing in this movie.
Sure.
I mean, let's just say that you get screenplay.
Overrated?
Underrated?
Properly rated.
48 hours diehard Commando,
the Running Man and Hudson Hawk.
It was also co-written by Jeb Stewart,
who wrote one of my favorite underwater horror movies,
Leviathan and The Fugitive,
which was a rewatchable.
That's a great IMDB.
It was directed by the best action director of the 1980s,
John McTiernan, who also directed Predator,
and at some point has to be a rewatchable movie
the hunt for October.
This comes right smack in the middle
of an iconic action movie run for us.
We can get deeper into what we think
is so great about what McTiernan does,
but I want to start by talking
about the star of the film, Bruce Willis,
who made a very, very well-compensated move
from the small screen to the big screen,
from moonlighting to dire.
Now, he had been in Blind Date.
He had been in a couple of 80s and movies and stuff like that,
but on Moonlighting,
was, I guess Bill, you would be able to answer this better than I was,
but were you just like, Bill, Bruce Willis is a star.
No, I remember when this happened because they paid him $5 million and it was a big deal.
Yeah.
And we didn't have the internet back then,
so I don't even know why I knew this was a big deal.
What do we have, like, Premiere Magazine?
Yeah, that was around at that time.
However it played out, people were like,
Bruce Willis is making $5 million to be an actual movie.
What's happening?
No one went from TV to the movies and starred in summer blockbuster.
This didn't happen at that time.
People tried.
Yeah.
Like Don Johnson tried.
Yeah.
Also, his competition for this role was not other TV actors.
It was Schwarzenegger.
You know, it was movie stars.
And so it represented a pretty big jump.
He kind of came out of nowhere and was this wise ass.
And he had a good story about being a bartender.
Moonlighting was a good show.
It wasn't like a runaway success.
I actually thought he was more important like going on Letterman and things like that.
Oh, he was like a great Letterman guest and was just super likable.
But did not see.
seem like an action star because that was the era of Sly and Arnold and just big muscle like
agro alpha guys.
That's what he didn't seem like that.
That's part of why die art is so iconic.
It's such a paradigm shift for the genre.
It's like a totally different kind of star, not a muscle bound guy.
He's not a super special forces, a commando.
He's just a guy, basically.
And that's like part of the branding for the movie.
And then that became the cliche.
It's just a guy and he's caught up in this.
But this was not a cliche in 1980.
No, this combined the smart-ass, wisecracking, Eddie Murphy in 48 hours in Beverly L.
Cop and Kurt Russell maybe in like big trouble in Little China or the thing with Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris, Sylvester Stallone level physicality.
Unkillable soldier.
Yes.
Yeah.
And they push him very much to the limit.
And I think that they, one of the crucial things about diehard and one of the things that you just, you always notice is they, they almost break this.
guy, the feet, the dirtying shirt, the sweat, the cuts all over his body. He's so bruised
and broken by the end of this movie and not in a way where you're like, oh no, I wonder if
the rock's going to get up from this fist fight. You know, it's like, no, this dude could die
at any moment and die hard. You know he's not. You know, there's that error of kind of comedy
to the movie that means that won't happen. But there's a, there's a, there's a kind of
tension in how much punishment can this one guy take. But he's only half.
of this movie.
And the other half of the movie,
who arguably might be more important
to the success of the movie,
is Alan Rickman.
Oh, man.
This is Alan Rickman's feature film debut.
I challenge anyone,
he was, I think 40 when he made this.
I challenge anyone to name a better 40 and over debut
than Alan Rickman and Diehardt.
You'd almost have to come out of jail.
I like that.
I did a little research that they saw him in dangerous liaisons.
The Joel Silver and John McTiernan,
and he played the John Malkovich.
And the stage play, yeah.
And they were like, who is this guy?
We got to make him the villain.
The villain.
Yeah.
Let's make him the villain and diehard.
And he's the best action movie villain of all time.
He's incredible.
He's the goat of action movie villains.
And he's actually.
led to a whole bunch of really bad action movie villains
doing a Hans impersonation.
It's Lithgow and Cliffhanger is the only one who kind of came close.
Other than that, it's not been approached.
Well, you mentioned Cliffhanger, Bill.
One of the legacies of this movie
is that it became a genre unto itself.
And I remember my dad was a movie critic back then
and he used to just describe movies this way.
It's become a trope.
But Die Hard Ana X is a genre of movie unto itself.
Die Hard on a bus is speed.
Die hard on a mountain is cliffhanger.
Die Hard on Air Force One is Air Force One.
Don't forget die hard in a prep school, toy soldiers.
It's a fucking good movie.
Sean Aston.
It's the most famous metonym in Hollywood.
It is the thing that is repeated the most in suites with executives die hard on a blank.
Yeah.
And you probably, there are probably still movies sold today using that language, right?
No doubt.
This is the year of skyscraper, the wrong.
rock movie that is more or less
an homage to diehard in full.
We talked about this during the speed rewatchables.
When speed was being made,
people are like, all right, enough for the
fucking diehard roboffs. Like, stop it.
Now we're going to die hard on a bus.
Notably, that's the director of
Jan DeBond, who was the director of cinematography
for this movie. And notably, speed rules.
It's completely true.
Also a rewatchable. The foremost
influential movies
of the last 40 years in terms of
spawning imitations. Wow, you're going there right now.
I'm going there right now.
Came out between 78 and 88.
Halloween, 48 hours, which spawned everybody,
Kywa.
These guys, should they get along, they don't.
Fatal attraction.
The dot, dot, dot, dot from hell.
Nanny from hell.
The psychological thriller thing.
The 10 from hell.
The dot, dot, dot, dot, that from hell.
And then die hard on a blank.
Those four things, those four movies combined spawned, I don't know,
500 movies?
I would argue that two of those frameworks are dead.
Which ones?
That fatal attraction is not a thing anymore.
No, the From Hell's back because it's made a comeback with black actors.
Yeah, but those movies are all especially in films now.
The From Howe Who showed up in my house?
And the, what's the Allie Larder movie I just watched?
I watched all these movies.
Allie Larder becomes fixated on so-and-so.
I think obsessed.
It's like the X-wife from Hale.
Yeah, Obsessed.
Allie Latter, X-wife from Hale.
It's just that those movies are the stakes on them are lower.
I wish Ali Larder would stop call.
Ali stopped calling me.
But yeah, those four movies, the dot, dot, dot's.
And now we've run out of ideas, basically.
I don't know.
I think that it's, I think that that is a really,
you're right, it's just that superhero movies have kind of wiped that out.
You know what I mean?
Suck the air out of the entire movie.
Superhero movies.
He's got a superpower dot, dot, dot.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's true.
Superpower is his tank top.
One other thing that we have to talk about up from the jump.
though is
what makes
die hard so rewatchable
but also why
it just remains so beloved
and part of it
outside of the fact that you
you know for a movie like this
is once you know
this is how he wins this fight
this is how they
this is how they get
you know the people off the roof
this is how he rescues Holly
is the vibe
and there's a lot of debate
about whether or not
this is a Christmas movie
or whether or not
you think it's a Christmas movie
or not
this is actually part
of a nice
legacy of 80s movies that are that used Christmas in an action movie shame black is the king of this
did it specifically an lethal weapon i thought a few times while i was watching this is this a shame black
movie even though i knew it wasn't i was still kind of like yeah the zippy dialogue and everybody's got
a clip sacks in the beginning to open up the like the music kind of feels it's at that l.a setting
you know there's a lot of debate like i said about whether or not die hard is a christmas movie
but um whether or not you think it's a it's not a christmas movie i but to me it's a it's not a christmas movie i
to me, it's like the hot dog.
Is that a sandwich or not argument?
It just means we're spending too much time online
if we're arguing about this?
It came out in July.
Yeah.
Yeah, Christmas in July.
It was a summer.
It's a summer movie.
It happened to take place on Christmas Eve.
There's no holiday spirit.
It's not something you get together
and watch the week of.
It's fine.
It literally ends with a music cue, let it snow.
It's not a holiday movie.
It's not.
Some people say it's home alone.
The holiday movie?
Home alone?
Home alone is, yes.
Home alone is a...
Are you serious?
Wow.
It's a fucking kid comedy.
What's a Christmas movie?
Bill Simmons killed Christmas.
Christmas vacation is a Christmas movie.
Bill, come on, man.
I think there are movies.
I think there are movies.
I think that good.
That was, first of all,
classic Chris Ryan twist.
I fucking love Pulp Fiction.
I just pointed out that
what's Bruce Willis's girlfriend
is the worst 10 minutes of my life ever in a movie.
That doesn't mean I didn't like the movie.
We'll be adjudicating this until you do the rewatch.
I think there are Christmas movies,
and then there are movies that happen and take place during Christmas.
And this is in the latter.
It's not a Christmas movie.
I think we can agree to disagree.
Thank you.
Let's agree to disagree.
Would you agree that the extra action elements of this movie,
be it the hard luck romance between Holly and Bruce Willis,
the friendship between John and Apple,
What a friendship.
Nobody's ever bonded on a couple
phone calls more than those two guys.
They talk for like nine minutes total.
They're vacationing in Mexico next month.
That was how I used to talk on the phone
with girls in eighth grade.
You just be like, you get off the phone.
No, you get off the phone.
But the extra action parts of this movie
are what make it so beloved over the years.
That if it was just straight action,
if it was just under siege
and Tommy Lee Jones is really good,
but it was mostly about like guys getting stabbed.
You wouldn't care as much 30 years later.
Well, I think going back to the Christmas thing,
what this movie does really well is subvert your expectations
while also fulfilling them.
And I think the classic Shane Black Christmas in Los Angeles
is just a great setting for that.
You want, where's the snow?
You're expecting the snow.
You're hearing the Christmas music,
and it's like 70 degrees out.
The sun is setting in this gigantic red fireball.
And John McLean is wandering around going like,
wow, Los Angeles, man.
Yeah.
This is crazy.
Yeah.
There's two things about it that stick with me as I think about it.
As a kid, when I saw it, it was one of the first movies that talked about movies.
It's so obsessed with Westerns and John Wayne and the cowboy and Roy Rogers as the running bit.
Rambo.
It's very self-referential and so clever.
And when you're a kid and you see a movie like this, you're like, oh shit, movies know about movies.
So that's the first thing.
The second thing is like it just looks cool.
It looks like they spent a lot of time on it.
You know, like I was listening to the commentary track and they talked about how the whole,
production design is just aping Frank Lloyd Wright.
Because Joel Silver, the producer of this movie, was obsessed with the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.
So the movie just had this really distinct look.
It's in this weird plaza that feels like a building.
Maybe you visited one time to pick up a package or something.
And it's just so like, it just sticks in your mind the way that it looks.
I still get like a little bit jacked up when I go into Century City and go into any of those
skyscrapers, which is pretty cool.
I actually, I had no idea until I moved here that Nakatomi Plaza.
it was a real thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I thought it was just made for the movie.
Like it was just they were using one and then they were cut.
Yeah.
It's you drive by it.
It's like, whoa, that's crazy.
What's the truth?
It was the corporate office of 20th Century Fox.
Is that what it was?
And I think that they were still moving into it.
Okay.
So I don't think it was fully operational at the time.
But yeah, it's, that's what they used.
And yeah, right.
I think it's important to set the framework of what action movies are like in the mid-80s.
Yeah, for sure.
Because, like, when First Blood came out in 80s.
And that's like a really pure old school movie that the first 40 minutes are still really good.
Yeah.
But even that was kind of groundbreaking.
And then it starts evolving and it becomes campier and campier leading to Cobra in 86.
I love Cobra.
Just an insane movie and would be a really good rewatchable.
I still don't know what the plot was.
Who the bad guys were?
The introduction of, this is an aside.
The introduction of Stallone's character is that he pulls up to his parking space.
and there's like a punk sitting on a car,
and he just walks up to him and tears the guy's shirt off
because he mouthed off to him.
Yeah.
And he has a toothpick.
But it's like in this four-year spin,
action movies just got crazier and crazier
and like Predator and Commando
and there were quippy one-liners left and right,
and it really started to go off the rails.
And Die Hard like kind of brought it back.
And then we had this really nice run,
Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Lethal Weapon 2,
Terminator 2, where all of a sudden
they were really well done. They were not well done
until this movie. I think that was one thing that stood
out. You know what's notable about this one too
in that lineage? A lot of those movies in the late
70s and early 80s, like Death Wish, which you always
talk about, and First Blood.
Those movies were essentially
like idea movies. They were like
the streets are running rampant with crime.
Or PTSD is real and you need to
think about it. There were vengeance movies rather than protection
movies. The war comes home with First Blood.
Exactly. They had some sort of strong
thematic element. And as you move into the
mid to late 80s. These movies are just fun. Like we're obviously going to spend a lot of time
talking about like what diehard means and how it influenced Hollywood and all this other stuff.
But there's no like grand idea in diehard. In fact, Hans Gruber does this amazing job of
basically like mocking the idea of being a terrorist for freedom. Like that's not what he's
interested in at all. And the fact that the villain, all he wants is money is representative of
what the movie wants, which is money. It's just an interesting shape that it's taken.
So we did this during Midnight Run. I'm doing it again. Best actor.
1988.
Gene Hackman, Mississippi Burning, Tom Hanks, Big,
Dusted Off and Rayman, Edward James Olmos,
Stan and Deliver, Max von Saito,
Pelley the Conqueror.
Bruce Willis, not nominated.
Could and should he have been nominated?
No.
I have, like, a lot of thoughts about Bruce Willis.
I don't think you should have been nominated,
but I think that this kick starts,
like, one of the most interesting
and underrated runs in movie history.
I can't think of one other person
who I would have wanted as John McLean over
Bruce Willis.
I think he's irreplaceable.
It's one of the more miraculous,
we're going to get into the casting what-ifs.
But the fact that he got this role
over the people who were being touted for it,
and you think about what would be different
about movie history if this,
you know, it's a huge what-if.
It feels like it should have been
a Harrison Ford movie.
They offered it to me turn it down.
And something went wrong at that.
I know at Schwartz saying,
we can go through all the what-ifs,
but like if this is a Harrison Ford movie,
which it really could have been
in 19 different scenarios,
I just don't think the one-liner's work as well.
He's so fucking likable in the movie.
And just the way he carries,
the way he pulls off scenes,
but he's by himself for half the movie basically.
It's so rare to see a movie like this and be like,
that guy kind of looks like me.
Like I kind of feel like I could do that.
Or I too would probably do to make the stupid mistake
of taking my shoes off at some point.
And then never get a chance to put them back on again.
Like all the little mistakes that happen,
his hair lines receding, he smokes, he's a little out of shape,
he's wearing a fucking tank top that gets dirty.
It's like all those choices are amazing.
He doesn't tear his tank top off.
You know, like he's like, I'm trying to like wash myself off in a bathroom like a schmo.
It's really effective.
All that stuff.
What all those, like accumulated effect of all that stuff is, is it is a sly critique of like the action movies of the 80s at the time.
It's like, hey, this is ridiculous, right?
What if it was like this?
What if it was more like you?
And that's why Diehard is so iconic.
I mean, he's just all the kind of like the monologing stuff
when he's like, man, I can't believe this is happening.
You know, fly out to the coast, have a few laughs.
And just like, and he's constantly like,
I cannot believe this is happening to me,
which was not a thing that happened in 80s movies,
80s action movies at the time.
I left that total recall was another really smart,
advanced next level type of movie.
There's like, this started that run.
sci-fi element of it.
Aliens to Total Recall.
Like, there's like that, there's, I think that there's also your right bill
because, like, when you go back to watching some of those,
it's like Conan and, and, uh,
none of them hold that.
They don't hold that.
Even the Running Man, which was fucking awesome in the theater in 1980s.
The other running man is ridiculous.
You watch that now.
They like, what happened on like a CBS sound stage.
Yeah.
It's like a cheap hunger games.
Best Supporting Actor 88.
This is the bigger crime to me.
Alec Guinness, little Domet.
Dome it.
Dormit.
Is it Dorrit?
Oh, yeah, I can't see.
Little Dorrit.
Kevin Klein, who won Fish Called Wanda,
Martin Landau, Tucker the Man who's Dream,
River Phoenix, running an empty Dean Stockwell,
Married to the Mob.
I can't believe Alan Rickman did it get nominated.
I don't think that they knew how to deal with a movie like this.
I agree.
Like, if you redid that, he wins the category, I think.
So that's already an awesome category
because you've got Kevin Klein who wins for a comedy,
a very rare win for a comedy.
And you've also got Dean Stockwell nominated for Married to the Mob,
also a comedy.
Yeah.
So it's one of the few categories
where you can like kind of flex genre,
wise. But I think
it's too soon. I wonder if
a role like this kind of sets
the stage for somebody like Keith Ledger
winning in the same category 20 years later.
You know, because that's, I don't think
that the Joker can happen and be like a credible
and laudatory role
if not for something like this. When was Batman?
The next year? Yeah, that was Nicholson.
So you had Ricklin and Die Hard, you had Nicholson
as the Joker and then all of a sudden
it became the cool thing to be like the villain.
And that leads to some really bad movie choices.
And I think you start.
to see really great actors, once Rickman does this,
really great actors, start to say, like,
not only do I get a paycheck, but you have a lot of fun in this.
I have the money.
And in the 90s, that's when you start getting these Michael Bay, Jerry
Bruckheimer movies that are basically packed up the gills with guys who have Oscar
nominations.
And you see something like Conair, where you're like, every single time I look around,
it's like Malcovich, Bouchemi, Nicholas Cage, it's just, you know,
whether you're watching or The Rock where it's like Sean Conry and Ed Harris are like going
toe to toe and you're like, this is a stupid movie.
You guys are really trying hard.
Two really good ones.
Tommy Lee Jones and Undersea is like way overqualified to be the villain in that movie.
It's not a good movie.
And he makes it really good.
I shouldn't say that.
It is a good movie.
But it's a good movie because of Tommy Lee Jones.
Yeah, he's so, if it's anybody else that doesn't work.
Lithgow and Cliffhanger is really good.
And I still, I still fuck with Cliffanger.
It's so good.
Clifhanger's really good.
Shades have been in Mission Impossible Fallout.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah.
But that character has also gone really wrong.
And it's the biggest flaw in Passenger 57, which is a movie that is really good except for the villain.
The villain's so bad.
He's like a parody of a parody of a parody of somebody being Hans.
And Toy Soldiers is another one.
The guy in Toy Soldiers is awful.
But it's gone badly.
Yeah.
The Alan Rickman impersonations, you could make, we do a whole podcast about how they've gone wrong.
What's the most recent Alan Rickman?
type villain.
Snape,
assuming he's
understood to be a villain.
I'm going to say no
simply for the fact
that one,
not a villain
and two,
you never really
know what Snape
wants until the
very, very,
very, very end,
whereas Gruber,
also you don't,
you're not really sure
what he wants
until about
midway through the film,
but when you find out
everything falls into place,
it makes sense.
And that choice, too,
of making,
of like,
it's such an 80s choice
to be like everybody's sold out.
Even the terrorists have sold out.
Even the Red Army faction guys from Germany have sold out
and they just want money now.
And it's you never, when he holds the screen,
you're never like, why do these kind of no-name lackeys?
Why do they follow him?
You never think that about him
because he's so smart and ruthless.
And he shifts gear so much in that character.
When he pretends to be the American guy,
when McLean comes across him.
It's really good.
Oh, my God.
Oh, no, man.
That's like, wow.
Rickman, incredible.
Nice suit.
John Phillips, London.
I have two myself.
I think the most shocking actor who took a role like this for me was Philip Seymorhoffin and one of the Mission Impossible.
Maybe that's one like that.
I was like, really?
It lifts that movie completely.
And he's fucking amazing in that movie.
He is great.
And that's not a great movie, but he's great in it.
Yeah.
And it seems like every real actor has just gotten.
sucked into doing it once.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
De Niro, basically in Cape Fear, I guess, is his version of that.
He does, like, the crazy lunatic version.
But they all have to kind of try it.
Did Pacino do it?
I guess he didn't Dick Tracy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think that in, like, the devil's own and some of those, like, kind of not quite as action movies.
He does it in the devil's advocate, too, which is, like, the craziest performance
of all time.
Right.
He's playing literally the devil's advocate.
Oh, yeah.
Is it the devil's own or the devil's advocate?
The devil's own is the Harrison Ford movie.
Oh, right.
That's the IRA movie.
The devil's advocate is when Al Pacino plays the devil.
Tommy Lee Jones under siege, but then stumbles and blown away because he sounds like Chris Ryan doing Bono.
Chris Ryan as Bono as Daniel de Lewis.
Oh, man.
Oh, you got to get their explosives.
It's not great.
But, yeah, Hans, I guess we had these with the Bond villains when we were growing up, right?
I was going to say that.
Super characters, but not realistic.
He's kind of like, it's a riff on a Bond villain.
It's definitely, it's part of the reason that.
it works and it doesn't expire now and it doesn't feel weird is because it is already self-referential
on like the Blowfeld kind of European money-hungry world domination person. You know what I mean?
It's a comment on that. And that's why it's such a clever, the same way that John McLean is a comment
on all the action hero stars that were coming before that is a really clever movie for something
that seems kind of dumb and straightforward. Yeah, I'm trying to think, I mean, like, you know,
a lot of the action movie guys, I think, have kind of gone, they took the wrong lesson from
Joker and they are like a little too bent and demented.
and so I'm trying to think of like
that's one thing that they kind of lost
as they get more and more supernatural
with their villains.
Marvel could use a Hans Gruber.
Oh yeah.
Charlize really missed it in Fast 8.
Oh yeah.
I was going to ask if there was a fast and furious villain.
She went for it in Fast 8
and I think they filmed our scenes
in like two and a half days in some room.
I think part of the issue with like
the Charlize version of the Hans Gruber
is Gruber
was a delegator, but a leader.
Like, he didn't know how to hack stuff.
He didn't know how to, had a blow torch a vault.
But he had those people around him, and he know how to marshal their...
Trust me.
It's Christmas.
He knew how to marshal their abilities into, like, a cohesive unit.
Whereas nowadays, like, Charlize is just, like, the best hacker in the world, and she's
out to do something.
How much do you think the name Hans Gruber played into the enjoyment of Hans Gruber?
It's at least 20%.
Definitely a factor.
Great villain.
Like, whoever thought of that, they must have been, like, I got to be.
the name of the villain. It's a really, really great villain name, but I have a, I think that you
could name him like Buck Rogers and when he walks on screen and we're going to talk about this.
Oh, yeah. You'll just be like, ah, well, this is a wrap. This is like a new paradigm shift.
It's a great shot too. Yeah. John McLean, also another great name. Awesome name. John McLean.
All right. Let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsors and we'll get into the awards for
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Back to the rewatchables.
Okay, we are back.
Let's start off a little casting what ifs.
Obviously, the John McLean role, we've talked about it,
was really, really, it was offered around Hollywood
to pretty much anybody with a heartbeat.
They offered it to me.
I was 19.
I didn't know what they were talking about.
Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford,
Robert De Niro, Charles Bronson,
Nick Nulte, Mel Gibson, Richard Geer,
Don Johnson, Bert Reynolds, and Richard Dean Anderson.
I don't believe the Bert Reynolds thing.
He's too old.
And crucially, just want a little tidbit of information here, this movie is based on a book by Roderick Thorpe.
The first, like the prequel of this book, the first in the series that Roderick Thorpe was writing, was owned by Frank Sinatra.
The movie rights were owned by Frank Sinatra.
So Frank Sinatra, at 70 something, had like the right of refusal to be in Die Hard.
And in my, like, ever since I've learned this,
all I can do is think of 70-year-old Franksino.
That's what I want that way.
Or being like, sugar, you better get yourself out of that building.
Because I'm out of here.
Hans, baby.
Hans, baby, you're driving us crazy right now.
I'm going to Muso and Franks.
Like, that's got a martini with my name on it.
My wife was the greatest piece of ass in either coast.
Frank Sinatra would have had a great time with Argoal.
Let me tell you something, baby.
You guys are just doing Joe Piscopo doing Sinatra.
No, doing Hartman doing the round team.
Ellis, you whack it do right now.
They're going to kill you, baby.
So, you know,
Cue ball, you're up next.
Sinatra is Joe Leland,
who was originally who John McLean was in this movie
the detective in 1968.
I mean, they actually made a movie
previous to this.
It's amazing how much of the novel
they kept.
Yeah.
Like I was going back and reading
about the novel for Die Hard,
And I thought it was going to be completely different.
Really, the only major plot point they changed is they changed Holly Gennaro from his daughter to his wife.
And then everything else is pretty much the same.
Hans Gruber is different and the villains are different in some ways.
But basically the attack on the building is entirely the same, which is kind of fascinating.
I have two thoughts on the casting with us for that.
I think Tom Barringer would have been really good.
I still fuck with Tom Barringer.
I think Tom Barringer had a great run.
Too dark.
Too intense.
I just think he would have been good.
I ride with Bairanger
Bards!
No, that's it.
You can't, I'm not thinking
Batoon Barringer.
I'm thinking someone to watch over me.
Major League Beringer.
Someone to watch over me, Major League Beringer.
Someone to watch over me, like,
legit good movie.
Mimi Rogers,
Pek of Mimi.
Ridley Scott.
But I think that character he played in that
could have been John McLean.
And I still ride with Don Johnson, too.
I think he could have pulled it off.
Wow.
I don't think it would have been as good.
Too pretty.
Too pretty.
I think Don Johnson is in play.
I love Don Johnson.
What Willis and Frank Sinatra have in common is they have this weird urban ethnic thing
that is just like, what are you talking about?
Yeah, that's the thing.
It's like very slick and bending the vowels.
And he really play that up in three in Die Hard 3, which really is actually like it brings
out his New York copness.
Very much.
And it's such a great New York movie and it's all like, you know, oh, the subways and this
and that.
And it's like, welcome to New York.
It's constant.
Like it really like makes.
that character so much more of an indelible New York character.
It's such a fish out of water in this fashion.
This was the best, best choice by far.
That's part of the reason why Hans is right.
But I do think the movie could have worked with other people.
Yeah.
It just wouldn't have been iconic.
I think it would have been amazing though if it would Nulte and it was just like...
So Nolte is the worst case there, right?
I can't see Nolte moving as with the vigor that is needed for this world.
Even in 1988, I can't see it.
The line ratings would be amazing.
They would go out to the ghost, have a few lives.
also like if he was Jack Kate's
Nick the old team
just insulting the Germans
God damn it
you sound crowd eating
motherfucker
yeah he would have gotten
super racist so early
immediately got it in the Germans
really the only other casting
what if worth noting is
that they thought about Sam Neal
for Hans Gruber and Sam Neal
great Australian actor
most people know him probably from Jurassic Park
and as
this sort of Sean Conry
sidekick
and Huntford October, he's incredible in that.
Wow, I think of him as grown-up Damien Oman.
That's where I go first with Sam Neal.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah.
Almost became the president.
He's running for president, right?
I just watched in the mouth of madness this week.
That's a great horror movie that he'd say.
Yeah.
Yeah, so Sam Neal, but obviously, you know, once you see Alan Rickman in this movie, it's a career maker,
and you can't see anybody else in it.
It's amazing that Chris Rock or Wayne's brother was an Argyll.
Eighth, Chris Rock?
What was Chris Rock?
doing.
It's like as a first role
for Chris Rock kind of moment.
It's pre-New Jack City.
It's pre-C-B-4.
It's pre-Cube 4.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I would have loved to have known
the Argyle casting process
who would like the final five.
And also what happened
Argyll?
We get to that later.
Yeah.
That actor never really did it.
He didn't really pop off.
I think had some issues.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay, so those are the casting what-ifs.
Let's get right into
most rewatchable scene.
Wow.
I have a couple of nominations.
I think
this probably says a lot about your host in that I've seen Die Hard so many times that I
know this is, and Andy just made this joke, but this is sort of like saying I replayboy for the
articles. I actually watch Die Hard for the non-action scenes at this point. So I am leaning in that
direction a little bit for most rewatchable scene. I am fine with you guys nominating other stuff.
So let's just go through my nominations here.
This is why Bruce Willis's Pope Fiction girlfriend. This is Chris's,
Flaw.
Is your rewatchable's flaw?
Is that I like the wrong parts of movies?
No, you've seen the movies too many times.
You start talking yourself into the worst parts of the movies.
It's called the word watchable is not.
I just saw Die Hard for the first time.
Can we talk about him wrapping a chain around the guy's neck?
The best thing is the broken glass scene.
It's fucking unbelievable.
You think that's rewatchable to watch a man's feet?
It's just straight.
It's unbelievable.
You put yourself in the position of like, what would I do?
The broken glass is like, oh, fuck, he looks down and he sees the broken glass.
He's got to go.
Like, that's one of the best scenes.
all time.
Okay.
That can be in there.
But I have other ones.
Okay.
I have the Takagi
interrogation.
Yeah.
Which is really where you see who Hans Gruber is, his charm, and is also his
ruthlessness.
Can I throw a quick nitpick in?
Yes.
They've done all this research on Takagi.
He doesn't know what he looks like.
They don't have Nexus back there.
They did it.
Lexus Nexus.
I don't know.
I think that that's like...
There's no idea who Takagi.
It was like, which one's to guy?
First of all, there's like three Japanese people in a room of...
50.
So narrow it down there.
Also, Takagi should just give up the combo.
Just be like, oh, yeah, here it is.
Let me just say one of the wildest 80s.
One of the, my, I actually don't know how I feel about it.
One of the wildest 80s tropes is like the Japanese are coming and they're buying our country.
Oh, yeah.
And it's in so many movies.
And this is the best version of that because he's like a great point.
One movie we probably will not do a rewatchable on is gung ho.
Oh, that's a top one.
No, there's some bad.
Ooh, yeah.
Yeah.
Cho and Chang talk about that.
They were just talking about that two weeks ago.
I was at dinner with them about that and the guy from 16 Candles.
Yeah.
This air of like Asian Hollywood characters.
The all-time nadir of just how they were treated.
But this is, I mean, this is a real, Toggi's a real part.
James Chagetta, who plays him as a real actor.
I mean, he was a famous, kind of a famous movie star in the 60s.
He's in Flower Drunk Song and he's in all these musicals.
He's from Hawaii.
He's a really, one of the most well-known.
Asian American actors ever.
Can I pick apart Takagi?
First of all, don't give up the combo.
Second of all, give up the combo.
Give up the combo.
I mean, give up the combo.
Second of all, why do you have $640 million worth of bear bonds in your basement?
That is a good question.
Who?
Why do you need that much money in your area?
It's like you might as well put a bullseye in your building that says like have a terrorist act and scale for us.
Let me just say in 88 and like there's no Bitcoin.
That's like, very shady shit.
million dollars now.
It's very,
it's very van Zant in heat
kind of situation.
Like,
like,
like I think Takagi is dirty also.
Like,
that's the,
I think there's an underlying,
what,
yeah,
the $640 million in Barabonds.
Like,
I think he's secretly,
it's like $6 billion.
It's like,
$6 billion?
Yeah,
like,
you can't spread that out
and some other buildings,
put that in a fucking bank.
What are you doing,
Takagi?
In this scene,
deserve to die.
This is a memorable quote,
but I just will say
that my,
one of my favorite lines of the movie is when
Rickman walks into this scene and he's
looking over the projects that they have.
And he goes, and when Alexander saw
the breadth of his domain, he
left for there were no more worlds to
conquer. And he turns, he goes, benefits
of a classical education. It's just
such a great opening. Like you're like,
this guy's smart. Yeah.
All right, so other rewatchable scenes,
this one is iconic. Ellis
gets a Coke. Yeah, that's incredible.
The Ellis, the whole Ellis run
there. Ellis is just a
The walkie-talkies, them pouring the Coke and him just...
Hans, Bubby!
Business is business.
You use a gun, I use a fountain pin.
What's a difference?
Hans, Bobby, I'm your white knight.
This is my favorite scene.
This is this guy basically imitating Dennis Miller for an entire movie and crushing it.
He's by far the worst actor and character in the movie and also the best.
I mean, he sticks out like a sore thumb really.
watching it now, but it does one really cool thing in the telling of the story, which is it shows
you how smart John McLean is. The minute he realizes that Ellis trying to side with him is going to get
him killed and shows that McLean, even though he's just on a phone, is a really, really good cop,
is like such a great movie. Yeah. Can we just jump ahead in the middle of this most rewatchable
to the Mark Ruffalo they knew a word? Sure. Because that's Hart Bockner, just point back as
said that we may need to rename the Dionne Writers Award the Hartbockner Award.
It may be time.
Dion has served us well.
I never realized you're the dentist.
That's a great point by Sean.
I hate giving Sean credit ever.
God damn it.
You're right.
That was a really kind of over-the-top Dennis Miller impersonation.
Even down to the way he does, like his smile is this really like quippy, like dickish
witticism smile.
Aren't you amused by what I just said?
I'm getting over on you with.
I'm saying to myself, they're motivated.
They're happening.
I.
They want something.
Maybe it's because you're pissed off
or maybe it's the jockeys.
It's none of my business.
If you're like, what were the 80s like?
You point to hands on people.
Hart Bochner.
Yeah.
My question with that performance is,
did he bring it into the filming?
And he was just like,
I'm doing this.
and everybody kind of looked around and were like,
what the fuck's he doing and they just let him go?
Or did he hash that out with John McTurranen?
I'm sure that there was...
Here's what I'm thinking.
He has such a look and it's such an 80s L.A. asshole.
I mean, this is literally what I thought people in Los Angeles were like until, like, 2006,
until like no age started putting records out.
I thought like everybody in L.A. just does Coke and says, I get it.
Bubby, I'm all about it.
It likes the Lakers.
Yeah, I loves the Lakers.
There's been a couple of variations of this character.
The true romance has somebody like this.
Alan Ruck and Speed on the bus is basically the Hart-Bockner character,
a little tone back.
But yeah, it's the L.A. character of an asshole.
He invents Jeremy Piffin's character and entourage here, basically.
Funny connectivity here.
I don't know if you guys know much about the career of Hart Bockner.
Well known as a good friend of Warren Bady.
The only time he kind of shows up in movies in the last 25 years is when Warren Bady makes one.
He appears in the most recent rules don't apply, and he's also in Bullworth.
but he's probably best known aside from Diehard for directing two movies.
One, PCU.
Unbelievable.
And two, high school high, the John Lovitz comedy.
PCU, I liked it when I was a young man.
Has an age 12.
Have not seen it in a number of years.
Wow, PCU.
I have not thought about that movie in a long time.
It has basically the one thing that's still salvageable from that movie is when Jeremy
Piven says to John Favreau.
You can't wear the shirt. You're going to see.
Don't be that guy. Anyway, let's get back to die hard.
Ellis gets cooked.
John tries to get Al's attention.
That whole sequence of Al
kind of like meandering around
in the driveway. Who's driving this guy?
Stevie Wonder?
And like him going into the lobby
and coming out and everything he has to do
until he finally throws a guy out of the window
to get Al's attention. That whole thing is so tense.
kind of goes to the glass thing where you're like,
what would I do in this situation?
How would I get the cops attention?
Because he tries to do all this stuff when you're like,
yeah, but why wouldn't you just call the cops?
Why wouldn't you just start a fire?
Why wouldn't you just do this?
And it's such a great moment.
I really like the SWAT raid.
And Theo being like, you know,
here we go.
Night before Christmas.
And they have an attack armored attack vehicle.
Can we go back to him breaking the window?
Yeah, sure.
How did he think?
throw the body out of the window.
Like, what do you mean?
So he throws the body onto Al's car.
Yeah.
It travels a great distance.
Guys, 200 pounds.
Do you think the guy's dead, so he can't move?
Do you think he put him in a chair and pushed him out the window?
Or did he, like, fling it?
And if you fling it, how do you make sure you don't fall out of the window?
I realize this is the 193rd time I watch this movie.
I'm like, how did he pull that off?
It travels a great thing.
Did he nudge him out from the building?
Yeah.
You have to imagine it's going like 40 or 50 feet.
The thing that I think you don't really recognize is there's a lot of, you know,
supporting fiction about the John McLean character that he's actually a failed quarterback.
No, just kidding.
I was in for a second.
He has a cannon for an arm.
No, I don't know.
I mean, obviously he travels a great distance.
Could have thrown a chair, maybe got in the same reaction from Al?
Possibly.
I think the dead body really.
Really?
Really, I just really love more information than how I did that.
I also have McLean on the roof is just really good.
The fire hose.
In the theater 30 years ago, him jumping off the side and thinking he was just jumping to his death was great.
The most crucial part about that scene is he's scared.
Yeah.
He does that look over the edge and he's just like, God damn it.
Like, I can't believe I have to do this.
When he actually gets, when he swings into the building and the wheel that the fire hose is on falls and he manages to get.
get the fire hose off him.
He makes a truly like, oh my God, I just almost died face.
That is like incredible and magnetic.
Hans pretending to be captured is great.
Yes.
And then Willis versus Goodenoff is fucking every time I'm in.
It's epic.
Yeah.
Epic.
And also like some context on him because now he's just the guy from Diehard.
That guy was like one of the two best ballet dancers.
Yeah.
He's like not Baryshnikov.
It was like him.
And Barysnikov's like five foot one.
And Hans, I mean,
What's Fritz.
His name was Fritz, right?
Carl.
Carl.
Carl.
Carl.
Oh, Fritz was his brother.
It's Carl and Tony.
He calls him Fritz, like, as a...
Oh, yeah, yeah.
But he was actually a big guy.
I don't know how he was a ballerita.
He seemed like he was a couple inches bigger than Bruce.
He was a very elegant man.
Yeah.
Yeah, he's great.
Any other most rewatchable scenes you want to add?
I think these are small but honorable mention for any time the FBI is on screen.
Yeah, they're crazy.
I'm Agent Johnson.
This is Special Agent Johnson.
No relation.
Yeah.
And my favorite.
My favorite line of dialogue in the whole movie is just like fucking Saigon.
It's like, I was in junior high, dickhead.
That makes me laugh every time.
The little touches of the dialogue is so good.
When he goes, Johnson to Johnson, no relation.
It's just like.
Oh, when he's on the radio, this is Special Agent Johnson.
No, the other one.
Honorable, I forget what seen this was, but him shooting under the table at the guy was really kind of inventive in the late 80s.
Yes.
Now it's like we've seen a million versions of that.
Also, the guy taunting him with like, end of table or whatever he says.
Next time.
There's no more table.
Don't hesitate when you have the chance to kill us up.
Meanwhile, he's reloading his fucking submachine gun.
Yeah, that was like a fortnight death.
It was good.
All right, so what do we say?
It's most rewatchable scene.
I'm going with Ellis gets a Coke.
I go Alice gets a Coke.
I like jumping off the building because you get the FBI agents as well and I love them.
Bill?
It's really dramatic pause for it.
This is podcasting.
I really like when Hans pretends to get captured in that acting.
That's a good one.
I just really thoroughly enjoy it.
And gives him the cigarette.
And I read this on the Internet.
I don't know if it's true or not, but gives him the German cigarettes that he got off a terrorist.
And Hans has the smoke.
And because those cigarettes were apparently so strong, John McLean reads into Hans reacting,
not reacting to how strong the cigarette was.
Zach McNabb is staring at me.
He's really intense.
No, this is great.
He's like, wow, this is great stuff.
The cigarette, him not reacting to how strong it was made him realize it was Hans.
Giving him the gun with no bullets is an incredible twist move and then snatching him.
Oh, no bullets.
But should have killed him right then.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This movie has a lot of, why didn't you just kill him right then moments?
What's next, Chris?
Because we probably have a decent amount of nitpicks here.
Yeah, no, so we can burn through these.
Let's do what's age the best.
Because I think it's either Rickman is a villain or 80s Los Angeles.
I have a couple others.
Okay.
I think the title is one of like the best six titles of all time.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Yeah.
Die hard.
It looks great.
It's got the extra meaning.
It explains the movie.
It's hard for him to die.
Just like whoever thought of that was probably the same person who thought of Hans Gruber.
But really incredible.
And also the LAPD being incompetent in the 1980s.
Yeah, it's very very good.
I have one other.
It really fits in with that era.
It really fits in with that era.
The guy who looks like, then there's also the guy who looks like Huey Lewis.
Allion is the guy who's eating chocolate bars in the lobby before the shootout.
In every 80s action.
In every 80s action movie.
What about the rare evil black guy?
Theo.
Yeah, Theo.
Not an 80s character ever.
Low-key, very diverse movie.
Yes.
And then the guy who just looks like Huey Lewis, who takes over in the lobby is.
Love that guy.
The fake.
Texan.
Yeah.
He's like, oh,
God damn it,
I got $80 on USC,
whatever he says.
Are we sure that wasn't Huey Lewis?
It was not.
I wish it was.
It really,
really would have been good.
That's a nitpick for me is,
is, uh,
the Christmas Eve football game
between USC and Notre Dame in 1988.
I,
I,
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure.
Bill,
let's hold that.
Bill.
Not sure that's a matchup.
Um,
I have one other,
predictably very pretentious
what's age of the best
which is just
the cinematography.
The filmmaking of this movie
is unbelievable
and what separates it
from movies like Cobra
that you were talking about, Bill,
is that it is literally
the best people
in their field at the height
of their powers.
It's McTiernan at the height
of his powers.
It's Yon de Bonn
before he's a director
at the height of his powers.
The score is crazy good
by Michael Kamen.
The acting is perfect.
It's really hard to shoot
a movie like this
where you're like in elevator shafts
and you're in all these
weird tight stuff.
I love that.
The camera's always moving around.
You don't even really notice.
Like, you follow every character perfectly.
It's not confusing.
A lot of times when you have these big action movies that happen nowadays,
movies like skyscraper, it's always directors that are, like, pretty good.
They're, like, pretty talented, but they're not amazing.
John McTiernan is literally the best action director of the 80s doing this movie.
And that's totally what makes the reason that it still stands up.
There's a shot in this movie that's a small shot, but it's, like, iconic for how little it's in the movie.
It's McLean on top of the elevator.
as it's going up and the angle gives you the entire length
of the elevator shaft and he's got this really determined look
on his face.
There's such a sense of place everywhere in this movie.
You have a total sense of all the spaces
that these characters are inhabited and where the action is taking place.
What's going on for as chaotic as it is?
And that's part of why this movie is so great.
The naked lady picture a couple of times.
and kissing it one of those times for luck
and the fan that he has to take his gun out of
and keeps moving, you're right.
You have a map of the building in your head
I have one more what's age the best.
I think his pithy one-liners,
which really went off the rails in the 80s,
the delivery that he had was really good
because if you go back and watch those action movies,
some of the movies are so bad with the one-liner.
Arnold specifically is just like really...
Commando is literally...
It's every, yeah, every.
How was your fall?
Hang around.
And these are it was like really good.
He's not overselling them either.
Yeah.
You know, like, gippie kai, motherfucker.
Like he didn't like overact any.
Yeah, they were an organic out, like,
Welcome to the party, pal!
Yeah, yeah.
They came out of the character rather than just being tacked on by a screenwriter.
Oh, one other one stage is the best.
And this is a credit to the TVs.
We always talk about the TVs with some of these movies.
This in the 90s was
This and Die Hard too even worse
Was really hard to watch on like TNT or whatever
Because with the square TVs
But they filmed it in a wide thing
And like watching the action
It was always like you'd get vertigo
And then when the TVs went wide
And got nice
And how beautifully this movie was shot
You were talking about this with Jaws too
Jaws was another one
There's certain movies that just had a renaissance
And I think this is in the top five for me
It's great call
What's age the worst?
It's hard to find one for this movie.
Oh, I have a bunch.
Okay.
How does everybody feel about you throw quite the party?
I didn't realize they celebrated Christmas in Japan.
And then Takagi says, hey, we're flexible.
Pearl Harbor didn't work out, so we got you a tick.
I think we generally say the attitude towards Japanese people in this movie is aged poorly.
That's a tough snatch dialogue.
As I mentioned before, like the whole attitude towards Japan as a country was very strange in the 80s.
That was one of our phobias.
as a country was Japan's buying up all our stuff.
They're going to be the biggest economy.
There was a whole plot of Gung Ho.
Gung Ho. Rising Sun is probably the worst exponent of this.
Black rain?
Black rain.
That was a thing.
It's decapitated.
That was a thing in the 80s.
And that aged quite poorly in this movie, but this is weirdly the best version of this.
Yeah, it handles some stuff still reasonably well.
The Pearl Harbor line jumped out to me like, wow.
Maybe somebody did make a joke like that one time,
I was like, that is quite on the line.
I don't know.
What aids badly for you, Bill?
Guns on the airplane?
Yeah.
Smoking on the airplane?
Smoking in the airports.
Yeah.
Yeah, midday running the same thing.
We're like, wow, people really smoked everywhere back then.
That always jumps out of me.
Bonnie Badele's hair is just like, it's late 80s,
and it just was that kind of Cheryl Miller, WMBA,
kind of perm, pro.
Glenn Close had it and the big chill.
It was this whole.
four-year era of, I don't know
what people were thinking with that hair.
It's really unflattering. You're saying I shouldn't do the perm.
People did look like that at the time. They really did.
A lot of them had it and you watch it now
and it feels just so
80s. Heart like a wheel.
Great movie. And they're really trying to
sex her up at some point like a button burst
on the blouse so we get a little cleavage
for the last half hour. That felt like a real like
producer note. He's got to get a button off the
body's blouse. Can I get some cleavage over there
with Bonnie? How do we feel about Hans
falling to his death? I love it.
30 years later.
I love it.
It has special effects of it.
It's in my head forever because of Die Hard with a vengeance.
Because of that moment when they revealed at Hans,
that Simon is Hans' brother.
And then they flashed to the moment when he's falling in the movie.
So because of that, you see him in slow motion.
So they actually dropped him 70 feet when they shot him.
They dropped him like quite a bit.
That explains the look on his face.
And they dropped him earlier than they said they were going to drop him to actually get that reaction.
Genius.
They did one, two, three.
Did it a two?
movie Bruce Willis lost some of his hearing because of the shots going off.
Like so much, it was so loud.
It's still a really loud movie today when you watch it.
It's very, very realistic.
I also think it's probably 12 minutes too long.
Okay.
Wow.
It's 131 minutes.
It's just a little long.
I know you're not as crazy about the beginning as I am.
I can move faster.
I love it.
Get him in the building.
That's how you get him as be fish out of water is have him at the airport and see, see, like, the girl in the spandex jump up on the guy and just be like, fuck.
California.
My God.
Yeah, move it along.
I love the Hans Gruber
falling scene.
I don't think there's a better
send-off for a great villain.
There's nothing that matches that.
And McTiernan has used that move
I think at least two other times,
most notably in Last Action Hero
where he's essentially parodying himself.
We're talking about what's not age the best.
It feels very 80s.
We didn't have good special effects yet.
I love the practical effects.
All right.
It's the only,
but it's one of the only movies that has a series of sequels
in which the original is longer than the sequels.
Yeah.
Which is a really odd thing.
You know, Die Hard 2 and Die Hard Revenge's are both shorter
than the original Die Hard.
It's very strange.
We can blow through the Dion Waders Award because,
I mean, there's a lot of candidates.
So many candidates.
Yeah, there's so many that guys in this movie.
It's Hart Bogner versus Our guy on the finals.
I guess so, but like, I think William Atherton
and Paul Gleason definitely need to get mentioned.
Absolutely.
So, like, eh, really?
Hart Bachtner's.
For Richard Thornberg?
Hart Bockner's in there for 11 minutes and puts up 28 points and has eight
turnovers.
Thornberg's case carries over into Die Hard 2 when he's stuck on a plane with Monty Medealius.
It's also such an incredible extension of his Ghostbusters character.
Yeah.
He is just that guy.
Yeah, Atherden does such a great job of being like a bureaucratic suit asshole.
It's so good.
Yeah.
I don't like how it reflects on journalism,
and these are especially censored times in the jump era.
We're in the Deon Waders Award, obviously.
By the way, the greatest moment of his career
winning the Deon Waders Award.
I don't know, a piece of you.
The Dean Waders slash Hart Bacher Award.
I think being friends with Warren Beatty sounds pretty cool.
We're not talking about Paul Gleason?
Paul Gleason in the run, a legendary run of pricks.
I mean, is this guy the worst cop of all time,
Dwayne T. Robinson, deputy chief of LAPD.
he's fucking horrible.
Coming right clean off of Breakfast Club,
leaning into a series of roles.
I mean, every time somebody's like,
get me a dick, they call Paul Gleason's agent.
The thing is, I still feel like
he peaked in Breakfast Club in a way that
any time you saw him in a movie,
he's that guy from Breakfast Club,
and it was hard for me to separate.
He's just basically the principal
from Breakfast Club is now working for the FBI.
His face when Gruber is doing the new members
of the new Provo Front
in Canada, the five imprisoned leaders
of Liberté to Quebec,
the Asian Dawn movement.
They're like, are you getting this down?
Are you writing this down?
Asian Dawn.
I love when Carl's like,
Asian Dawn?
Asian Dawn?
I heard about them on 60 minutes.
Okay, I really, really, really want to get
to unanswerable questions that it picks.
So let's just go there.
All right.
Can we just quickly do the Joey Pantzel word?
Yeah, sure.
Go ahead. Paul Gleason.
Okay. Thanks. So you give Paul Gleason, that's like his
makeup. Well, I don't think a lot of people know his name's
Paul Gleason. They just know him as the principal from the
Breakfast Club and the guy from Diehard. I don't think most people
would be like, if I showed a picture around the office, like who's that?
No, not. Especially not our office.
I'd say Reginald-Vell Johnson's in the conversation there for this one.
But I think he became Reginald Val Johnson.
Right. Is it at this time or is it forever?
He literally got a sitcom out of Diehard.
That's underrated.
Is that Dyer created family.
That's amazing.
He's really good in this movie, though.
He really gives this movie a heart.
He's not only really good.
He became like a thing from this movie.
There were like Reginald Val Johnson articles.
And who is this guy?
Well, he kind of plays the part that Bonnie Bedelia doesn't get.
Yeah.
But Bonnie Bidelia is cool in this movie,
but she has so little interaction with McLean until the end,
whereas, like, Reginald Val Johnson is basically his, like,
partner in this movie.
And he has an arc.
He has a real character
arc that pays off at the end of the movie.
When they hug,
when they recognize each other
without hearing one another's voice,
which is something we should discuss.
Bruce Willis laugh.
Well, he just knew it was
Reginald Val Jansen.
I remember in the theater
when he shoots
Carl at the end,
which we're going to get to
in Nipix.
The audience applauded in my theater.
Oh, yeah.
That's awesome.
That was one of those.
Oh!
Yeah.
Oh!
You're shooting guns again, buddy.
Seriously, it's like you got over your crippling fear of murdering another person.
Not a child.
Not a child.
You did it, Al.
Jesus Christ.
You're actually going what's age the worst.
All right.
So Joe K.
It's supposed to Paul Gleason.
Let's do Apex Mountain really fast.
Yeah.
Bruce Willis.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
More than Pulp Fiction.
Just let me do a little bit of Bruce Willis talk.
Wait, do you know, Bruce Willis, just go down his IMDB.
Almost every movie he makes after this up until Pulp Fiction is the worst movie made by a good director.
You've got Michael Lehman, who made Heathers and then makes Hudson Hawk.
You've got Robert Benton, who worked on Bonnie and Clyde, who makes Billy Bathgate.
You've got the bonfire of the vanities that's this Brian to Palm a fuck up.
You've got, look who's talking to Amy Heckerling, who made look who's talking and clueless.
You've got down on the line, Mortal Thoughts, all these movies from 88 to that.
He's like Zool from Ghostbusters.
It's crazy.
He kills everything.
And he maintains
striking distance.
He's got all these
Color of Night North.
All of these movies are terrible.
Hold on.
You're going to ride for Color of Night?
No.
Striking Distance is a good movie.
Okay.
That is the best...
Isn't that the one with Sarah Jessica Parker?
That's the best Pittsburgh Coast Guard movie ever.
It's Rowdy Harrington.
Let me just...
I would ride for Color of Night,
which in the 90s was one of the great, like,
late night Skinnamax
mainstream movies.
That and silver.
Card of night,
Jade, silver.
That was a basic instinct
rip-up there.
Bruce,
I remember seeing that
with my friend Nick Iida
in Massachusetts,
and Bruce Wilson's cock
just comes flying out
in the pool
on the big 50-foot screen
and it's like,
come on Bruce.
Sorry, it's not silver.
It's not happy.
Is your plan here
every time you and I
run a podcast together
to just talk about an actor's dick?
Is that something that you want to do?
I'm saying it comes flying out
Carl Nett.
I didn't enjoy it.
But the thing is, it sounds like a criticism, and it sounds like he torpedoes these movies.
He doesn't.
He actually has this really cool reputation for working with interesting directors at the right time in their careers.
And he works with, like, Terry Gilliam, he works with obviously Tarantino.
He works with, he makes the Fifth Element.
He makes all these really interesting movies.
And we think of him as kind of this expired action star, in part because of diehard.
But Bruce Wallace has had a pretty fascinating career.
Pulp Fiction revived his career in Travolta's because at that point it was like he can
I do die hard and that's it.
I also blame Demi Moore.
I think maybe if he marries somebody differently
is better scripts.
No comment.
Wow.
Apex Mountain for John McTurning.
Ooh.
I like Predator Moore.
He stole Demi Moore for Millie Oestoviz.
I'm going to say yes.
This is the way I love that.
Bill will not acknowledge that we've moved on in the category.
Save it for the Pittsburgh Coast Garden.
To be more engaged.
She broke it off for Bruce Willis.
Are you more?
About Emilio Estevez and Denny Moore or Keeper Sutherland and Julia Roberts?
What's the bigger heartbreak for you?
The Keeper Sutheran thing was worse.
Jason Patrick was the best man.
It's a fucking runaway bride, man.
He was the best man.
He took the bride.
Yeah, look what happened to him.
You wind up serving in the Pittsburgh Coast Guard.
Alan Richmond, Apex Mountain.
Yes.
Alan Rigman, yeah.
And then 80s action movies.
Apex Mountain Freddy's action movies.
Oh, man, there's a lot of good ones.
I'm going to say yes, though.
I say yes.
Argyne.
I think it might, I think it is,
yeah, I think it's Argyll's apex mouth.
This is McTiernan's apex for me, but it's close.
I mean, I like October.
I like October more.
Yeah.
I have one.
Bonnie Bedelia, yes or no.
Isn't she presumed innocent?
I think presumed innocence her apex mouth.
Yeah, I like Bedelia.
She's really good in that.
Part like a wheel, I still think.
Art like a wheel!
Shirley-Mold Downey!
Sherry-Mildo-Duty!
Do you guys know who Bonnie Bedelia is the aunt of?
No.
Macaulay, Rory, and Kieran Culkin.
Whoa!
No way!
She is the sister of Kit Culkin, father of the Colkin brood, and she dropped, I think Bedelia's
her middle name.
She dropped her last name professionally.
Sean, are you saying that in some way...
This ties in a succession?
The McLean-Genero family is related to the McAllister family in Chicago.
It's a fact.
And the Roy family.
In movie universe?
The Expanded Christmas movie universe.
Yeah.
They're all connected.
Yeah.
They should do a home alone sequel where they go visit Uncle John and Aunt Holly,
that would be good.
Karen could go.
Herjit, you're on load.
Oh my God.
What, come?
There's only like 900,000 people who watch Succession,
and I don't know how many people have seen Dryard.
So then it's just going to be really weird that you said.
For the crossover,
for this Die Hard Succession crossover people, great show.
Yeah, it's just LOL.
All right.
I need to do unanswered.
questions right now. There is a very
important scene in this movie to me that a lot
of people don't really notice.
And it's when Theo walks into the lobby
of the Nakatomi Plaza describing a
basketball play. Right.
Last night, goes to worthy.
First of all, no one's ever talked
about basketball in this way. If I ever
walked up, Jason and Sean, two people I talked to
almost as much as anyone else in my life, if I ever
walked into either of their offices, and I was like, last
night, Ben Simmons gets his steal,
passes it to Rob of Covington, gets
it back, throws it over to Joe
B, two points.
You guys would be like, get the fuck out of this.
Have a cup of coffee, do whatever you need to do.
You've lost your ability to appropriately tell a story.
But that didn't stop me from trying to figure out what game he was talking about last night.
All right, great.
So I looked up basketball reference.
Die Hard was shot from November of 87 to March of 88,
which corresponds with an 15-game winning streak for the Lakers.
Yeah.
I think that he is talking about a game that happened, if I'm, if I'm correct, on December 11th, when the Lakers
beat the Celtics, 115, 11th, 1887.
Magic bank shot to win the game, right?
Look, I'm just saying that's what I think it could be.
It would make sense.
They've been on set for a couple weeks.
They're bullshitting with each other.
They're watching basketball.
You know, like maybe there's one game on a week or whatever.
but the Celtics Lakers would definitely have been televised.
Nationally televised.
Magic made the bank shot, ran off with the wheel.
This is up there with what day was a good day.
It was a good day.
What bank was a good day?
This is incredible.
This is Theo talking about in Dyehardt.
He walks in, describes his play in the most boring way possible,
shoots another man in the head.
Or actually, I guess his friend does.
Healy Lewis does.
Building and steals $640 million.
But I am obsessed with the idea of you guys have a better idea out there.
of what game he's specifically talking about.
It has to be the 87-88 season,
and it has to be the calendar year of 87 because it's Christmas.
So we haven't gotten into 88 yet.
And also I want to know,
could USC and Notre Dame have played on Christmas Eve
at any point in the 80s?
Right.
Okay.
Did they even have bowl games on Christmas Eve in the 1980s?
The reason that Clarence Gileard's character is talking that way
is because he's standing next to a gigantic German baller.
arena with a jacket full of guns.
So he needs to distract the guy, obviously, right?
Yes.
So that's the only explanation for why that character,
why Theo is acting like a lunatic talking about the Lakers,
unless maybe he was just a huge Lakers fan.
I mean, there's banter among groups of people, right?
Like, he must have been like,
I have to be talking about something,
because otherwise it's just going to be a gigantic German dude
and a black guy walking into Nakatomi Plaza
on Christmas Eve for no reason whatsoever.
My interpretation was terrorists like the Lakers
and take that for way you will.
That says a lot about that franchise.
That says a lot about that franchise.
They're thieves.
Good call.
Get it right.
Didn't hear them talk about the Celtics, did you?
I have one more unanswerable question.
Roger Ebert gave this movie two stars.
This is a recurring theme when we do the rewatchables,
when we go back and Roger Ebert has some terrible take.
Are we sure Roger Ebert was good?
No, he was amazing.
Roger Ebert was absolutely amazing.
It seems like every single time he's completely off with
he has had many bad opinions over the years.
An extraordinary number of bad opinions, but he is good.
He's a volume shooter.
He gave die-hard, two stars.
It happens.
Two.
I think my dad thought it was stupid.
I mean, like, people thought this movie was stupid.
He didn't like the cop was his big reason.
He didn't like the FBI agents that the whole cop interplay thought it ruined the movie.
Really?
It's on the internet.
He has a whole huge thing.
And Cisco's looking at him like, I just watched die-hard and thought it sucked.
And Cisco's looking at him like, what the fuck are you talking about?
I thought it was amazing.
You know, it's interesting to go.
I'm Team Cisco and Cisco.
It's interesting to go back and watch the trailers, the official trailers, because the first two are like,
here is a synopsis of diehard because we realized Bruce, you don't trust Bruce Willis as an action star.
And then by the third official trailer, they're like, okay, this movie is going to be a hit.
And it's just the Beethoven's ninth, go to joy with explosions.
And then these words flying at you that literally say, you will be blown through.
through the back wall of the theater.
It's like they're, by that trailer, they realized, okay, people are going to love this movie.
Yeah, and they said in the research and the marketing, they were so afraid to market Willis
because they were so scared to put him at the forefront of a movie.
And then, as Jason said, at the end, it was like, it flipped.
It was like, Bruce Willis, here he is.
So they must have marketed the living shit out of that thing.
Roger Ebert, I don't think he was good.
Any other unanswerable?
Any other unanswerable questions?
Two stars for die hard.
Fuck that guy.
Yeah, let me just say I'm just trying to torture.
I'm trying to torture.
I'm trying to torture.
No, I like Hebrew.
He's one of the most important cultural writers
in the history of America.
I'm pro-Aver.
I did an amazing amount of work for cinema.
I'm pro-Ebert.
I do not stand by fuck that guy.
Die-hard two stars is really bad.
Any other unanswerable questions
before we get to nitpicks.
I love the idea that Gruber didn't plan
to get his whole crew out.
Yes.
I mean, if you recall when Tony or whoever is on the roof
and Bruce Willis is also up there and Hans is like, blow the roof and they're like,
but Tony, whoever is still up there and he just grabs the detonator and is like mashing it.
So this is a big theory online, right?
Yeah, I agree with that.
Okay, so I can't trace this to a single author, although I do,
I did find one by a guy named Robin Warder writing for crack who basically breaks down
how there was no way Hans ever was going to get his whole crew out of this building
because the ambulance is so much small.
or than the semi-truck that they came in.
Now, they brought a lot of shit with them,
and maybe they would leave it behind.
But basically, the biggest nitpick of this whole movie
is does Hans' plan make any sense?
I think just in terms of getting out of the building
with the money, I think it does.
If there's no John McLean, he succeeds.
You could fit 13 Germans in an ambulance.
I think the part of the plan that doesn't make sense to me
is when he says at one point,
By this time next year, we'll be sitting on a beach earning 20%.
So he planned to put the bearer bonds in a bank somewhere?
My name is Hans, Grub, G-R-U-B-E-R, yeah, no-o-lot, and, yeah, deposit.
Well, funny you should ask, here's $640 million in Takagi industry's bearer bonds, you know?
I got to say bearer bonds have been involved in so many of the movies that I love,
and I don't understand where they are.
Are you any bear bonds?
Chris, can you tell us if they're.
You're an economist.
What are bearer bonds?
Yes.
Yeah.
What are bearer bonds, Chris?
They bear.
They bear a lot of money in just a little bit of paper.
And they bond you to them.
You bonded to them.
I have an unanswerable question.
What are bearer bonds?
What are bearer bonds?
What was going on with the McLean-Generer marriage?
Good question.
Yeah.
She's in L.A.
she's got this fancy job working for George Takagi,
whatever his name was, George Tagore.
The Nakatomi Corporation.
The Nakatomi Corporation.
He's in New York.
He's a cop.
They're not divorced.
They have kids.
What the fuck is going on?
She didn't take his name?
All the stuff in the 80s was really weird.
Argyle had him dead to rights when he was like,
you thought she was going to move out here,
and it wasn't going to work out,
and she'd be back.
And now she's riding high,
so you're coming out to, like, make amends.
I think that's exactly what happened.
I have some problems with that.
Imagine if your wife got a job.
I wouldn't have married somebody
didn't take my name, but keep going.
The thing is, we know that she...
This is incredible podcast for you.
I'm going to steer right around that one.
We know that she took his name.
Let's not get married then.
At the beginning of the movie, when he enters her name
into the computer system, it doesn't...
Yeah, it's not there.
Right.
And she's obviously changed her name back.
And she's begun using.
And I assume that she's been working for Nakatomi for a long time.
Right.
This isn't like a new game.
And she says that it's because they're sort of stuck up that she's got to like maintain a certain appearance.
Right.
So it is, it's just really confusing like where they're at in their marriage.
Like have they agreed to take a break?
It seems like she's probably having sex with somebody at work.
Ellis.
But not Ellis.
You know, maybe Alice.
Might have been.
Ellis was knocking on the door.
Alice was trying.
Show him the watch.
Yeah.
blows a couple of lines with Ellen.
things get out of hand.
But yeah, I have a lot of problems with the marriage.
She changes the name back.
At that point, you're getting divorced.
In the 80s, though, maybe it was a little bit more complicated than that.
By the way, hard to change your name.
It's not something you'd be like, hey, I have a new last name.
Zach Mack didn't come in like, hey, my name's Zach Thompson now.
But you're not distracted by the internet in the 80s.
You can just go down to City Hall and be like, I have pre-in-in-in-in-net.
You could just basically be anybody.
Yeah.
It was very easy.
I have two picking nits.
Yeah.
Argyll's cell phone is in the basement of this fucking 80-story building.
That cell phone now isn't getting reception.
I can't get reception if I go 20 feet next to the men's bathroom over there.
Tell me about it.
On the Sunset Gower lot.
Argo's perfect reception on a cell phone and a limo that, by the way, like two people had in 1988.
Also, Argy only has one gig that day.
He's just like, I'm just going to fucking hang out at this building for eight hours.
Also, he's just getting shith housed in the back of his limo?
Like eight hours?
What's he doing?
Just drinking all the bottles of liquor?
I think he was doing that in real life.
That's why we never saw Argya again.
I'm going to ride for the cell phone for the simple fact that just like you said,
nobody had cell phone.
You're just like, oh yeah, that must work, right?
A phone in a limo?
We're talking two years before Wall Street, Michael Douglas.
He's on the beach with this giant spaceship.
And when he had that thing, everybody who saw the movie is like, wow, he's so rich.
He has a phone that doesn't need a cord.
Two years later, our guy was in the fucking basement talking to people in like Detroit.
That was one thing.
And then the other thing, we got to talk about it.
It's the biggest flaw in the movie.
Carl comes back at the end after he's dead.
He's down.
He's every 80s action movie.
No, but that's like, if you see how he dies, he's dangling and he's just.
just like he's hung, he's dead.
How does he come back?
I don't know. We could do that in every single one of the other.
It's Michael Myers.
Yeah, it's Mike Myers. You know, the villain always comes back.
He's hanging.
Who let him down?
My thing is like, he managed to sneak through the police lines with like a stire og fully
fully automatic.
You're letting everybody out of the building and you're putting blankets on people and you're
like, okay, you know, like the pregnant lady and the guy works like this guy.
And a six foot one.
And a giant blonde guy who was just hung.
with a machine gun
with like something jacked up
underneath his shoulder or whatever
and they're just like yeah here's a blanket man
how you doing?
Did you like what's your name?
And he wasn't like
my name is Jimmy.
I work in accounting.
What do you think Carl's...
What do you think his plan was there?
Was it to kill every single person there
with that machine gun?
driven by personal vengeance
I don't think he just wanted McLean.
Yeah.
That's also a great Patriot games
I believe rips this off when it's like
you know, there's the overarching mission for the gang,
which is like, get the money,
but then this one guy is like,
he killed my brother, I have to kill this guy.
I saw, I was going through YouTube clips,
and it was the scene when Carl dies.
The title was Carl does.
The first comment on YouTube was,
Carl killed Carl.
It was like super disappointed in Carl's performance.
I was like, I love YouTube comments.
That's incredible.
My only other, my only nitpick
per se is just from a personal standpoint
is just that shoes
would be a priority for me.
I would be emphasizing
at the end of the movie.
Finding shoes throughout the firm.
I would be like, this is going to really
hinder my ability to survive.
I just feel like I'm going to be
doing a lot of running right now.
Whatever I can do to get a pair of shoes,
even if I have to like
cut holes in the guy's shoes that were
too small or something, like I'm doing
that because
before you're in the glass of the ground, I just can't run
around a skyscraper with bare feet.
It's a great point.
Great nitpick.
It would have been my only goal.
Even over saving all the hostages.
Just the first person I killed, I would have grabbed somebody's shoes.
It's a trope that I'm surprised hasn't been ripped off more, the barefoot guy.
I think children of men does it.
Yeah.
Kind of.
But it's like, yeah, it just adds a layer of vulnerability to him.
He does try on the shoes at one point.
He does.
And he's like, this guy's got feet smaller than my sister.
And it's like, I get that that's uncomfortable.
but it's just such a high intensity situation.
Wouldn't you rather have mildly uncomfortable but protected feet
than be like, I'm just going to go barefoot in my combat with these terrorists?
Yeah.
Also, what do you think his injuries were when he went to the hospital?
Oh, massive blood loss.
Yeah.
Did you just see the bathroom when he's clearing the glass out of his feet?
It looks like he got his head shot off.
Do you think he had like severed tendons in his feet?
Yeah, it's kind of crazy.
The plantar tendons are gone.
Did he have stitches?
Yeah, the plantar tendons are gone.
How long?
I don't plant our fanciitis for the rest of his life.
You couldn't walk for a long time.
Right.
It would be like having like, you know,
the same way like when a guy does his Achilles,
he's like, well, I'm gaining 30 pounds.
Like, he just would be out of commission.
He's probably got a cracked rib from when he jumped off the building
and the rope concussion, ear, ear, covering damage.
He is CTA.
That's probably what happened with the fourth diehard movie.
That's probably.
The CTA really ravaged it.
But like, imagine like Vince Carter,
just on the broken glass scene, he's done.
He's not helping anybody from that point out.
He's just lying down.
He's like,
Oh, listen, my feet are cut up.
Can you get a SWAT team in here?
I'm done.
Just pull up the building.
I'm done, guys.
We're all going to die.
Sorry, my feet hurt.
Oh, man.
Any other nitpicks, Bill?
I mean, we hit on this already, but I just think it has to be mentioned one more time.
The $640 million of bearer bonds in the safe.
I just need to know more about bearer bonds.
And would anybody ever have that much in one place?
I just Google Barabonds that I still don't know.
understand them. A bearer bond is a bond or debt security issued by a business entity such as a
corporation or government. My thing with the bearer bonds is twofold. One, he's got to be dirty
for having that much. And two, how is it that it's so publicized that people are like, we got to
go get the barabonds in the Nakatomi Plaza? Like, if you have 640 million in barabonds in your
vault, maybe don't say anything about it. Yeah, keep that. Keep that quiet. Why do people,
Why do people know about that?
We missed two weird factual things.
One was when McLean falls down the ventilation shaft, the stuntman who did that actually really fucked up and fell.
Oh, really?
And then caught himself.
And then they just decided to use that actual cut.
It was a fuck up.
And that's why it looks so cool.
And then Bruce was shooting moonlighting at the same time during the day?
That's incredible.
And shooting diehard at night and also married to me more during the shoot.
What a fact.
What a month for Bruce.
He's dealing with Sebel Shepherd.
He's dealing with him.
He's told to be more familiarly, Le Westemez.
He's working 20 hours a day.
He's got blood in his feet.
What a stretch for him.
So it is Apex Mountain.
Best quote, these are just absolute barn burners.
Come out to the coast.
We'll get together.
I love that one.
Yeah, that's great.
Yippe Kaii motherfucker.
Just like fucking Saigon.
Hay Slick.
A couple of that I'd rather not say on a podcast.
Maybe.
Yippie K motherfucker was the iconic line.
It was great in the moment.
If you watched a trailer and then even the commercials that they do at the time,
they did a really nice job of cutting out right before he says the swear.
But it gives you the intent of it.
In the edited version, they usually put like an explosion or like a bullet sound,
like a firing gun for the motherfucker if you catch it on like TNT.
Oh, yeah.
It always hurts.
You guys haven't been any of the best quotes you want to add?
No, you hit them.
can't top you, you picka.
Yeah, it's boring, but it's iconic.
I think Rickman gets a lot of lines.
You mentioned the earlier one.
Alexander, you know, the benefits of an education.
And also, I just love the whole sequence when he essentially introduces himself as like this priest-like figure in front of the whole staff.
Oh, he's like, nice suit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, but I think that come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs.
It's my favorite.
We left out one category that I think is important.
Okay.
Dany Trey, Steve Bouchemy, or Michael K.
Who would have fit in this movie the best?
I'm actually shocked Trejo's not in this movie.
I think all three of them could have been Grubber's crew.
I think Michael K. Williams would have been the best one for this.
Okay.
He easily could have been in that crew in nine different ways.
Where did Gruber find this multinational group of terrorists?
It's always a great question.
Yeah.
I think that you find terrorist henchmen.
Who are this list?
There's got to be conventions of some kind.
I was going to say message boards, but they didn't have it.
back then.
We can't even find a basketball writer.
But if you're doing a lot of wet work for fallen Eastern European governments,
you meet people, you know?
Yeah.
Okay.
Sure.
Hans is like.
You meet him in the Pittsburgh Coast Guard.
What do you want me to tell you?
I don't know.
Hans is like, Carl, do we have a deal?
And he's like, you've got to hire my brother.
He's great.
He really needs a chance.
He's done some smaller terrorist stuff.
I think he's ready to blast him.
They're the Morris twins of the terrorist world.
We have like sort of a duo routine when we're cutting telephone wires.
I use a chainsaw.
He's very precise.
Then he meets his brother and his brother's like, hey, I went to college with this guy, Bob.
He'll be great.
He knows how to drive an ambulance.
So let's wrap up with this.
There is a very crucial question, which I honestly, like, you know, a lot of times we go into this section.
We go into these movies.
I kind of know the answers before we get there.
But this is great.
I'm so glad to be doing this pot with you guys.
I'm very curious would each of you say, who won this?
movie.
It's a two-horse race,
but it's too close to call from me.
It seems like one of those
immediately you think you have the answer,
but then you think about it more
and you're like, eh?
It's a movie that is...
So it's either Hart Bockner
or Bonnie Bedelia, right?
Those are the two?
Or that stunt guy
who fell down there.
Air conditioning shafts.
George Takaji does not win the movie.
No, it's between Rickman and Willis.
Cocaine is in there, too.
I'm going to go
Willis just because it basically
created his entire career.
He's got a two-track
career after this, which is action movie star and co-star in good movies.
And the second one only exists because he has the first one.
And so I'm going to go Bruce Willis.
Before we go down the road a little further, are we sure McTiernan's not in the conversation
here?
Yeah.
I think you could make that argument, but I think when you, it's like you can't
overthink this.
Like I think you, when I watch it again last night for like Bill, the one.
180th time.
I think this might be the movie
I've rewatched the most in my life.
No, you've watched it.
No, Jaws. Jaws.
He.
Neal.
Neil.
Neal.
Chews my whole life.
Please exclude Jason and I
from your sick Michael Man romance.
Okay, motherfuckers!
Okay.
Guess we just got me.
You guys are good.
You know what they're looking at?
I'll tell you what they're looking at.
L.A.
PD police department.
Can we do a podcast where me, Chris,
and Jason just do the entire script of heat.
We can only do
Pacino though. The only thing we can do Pacino and Trejo.
We can't do any other rules.
I just want to say with the
McTiernan pointed who won the movie,
I think it's become more of a thing now
in the 80s. I didn't know who directed
any movie. It was never on my radar.
That's true. You were either
George Lucas and Scorses
or you were nobody.
I think that this is one of those movies,
guys like him, guys like James Cameron,
guys who were like committed to making action
genre movies but took them really seriously
and were really craft-focused.
Kind of made us care about these kinds,
made us care about directors in general more.
I think, you know, going right to Hunt for Red October,
and then he makes Last Action Hero,
which if I could, would do a rewatchable's on
and would save because I think it's good,
and I've always thought it was good.
That's a whole other conversation.
I'll go further.
McTiernan is not made a bad movie.
an interesting moment in every single movie he's made.
Even the 13th Warrior Roller...
He did Rick Medicine Man.
Roller is interesting shit in Roller Ball.
Like, I love McTieran's movies.
He's also...
Wait, did he do the James Con Roller Bowl?
No, no, the remake. The remake.
The remake of Thomas Crown as well.
Yes, which is very good.
He's also, like, kind of one of the really great lost talents
for like a really big chunk of what would have been his prime.
Of course, Sean, like that, that whole Anthony Pelacano's case
where he kind of just got taken out of the mix.
Yes.
I mean, he literally went to prison for 11 months
because he was part of a surveillance ring, essentially,
run by a private investigator slash crook.
Well, you can't judge.
I mean, it has complicated his legacy
and he'll never make a movie again.
I think he's in his late 60s now.
I'd hire him.
To do what?
To write about basketball?
Argyz.
Argyll's story.
Argyz's still in the basement.
He's still on the cell phone.
To answer the bigger question,
I think it's definitely Bruce Willis,
who won.
I would put McTiernan and Rickman on an
I actually think Rickman wins the movie
I just think it's just
it's a really good action movie
Rickman makes it like a great movie
That's true
I have a great answer for this
Because it happened the same year
This movie came out
To me this is like the dunk contest
With Dominique and MJ
Bruce Willis wins the movie
But Rickman
What you think Theo says about that dunk
But Rickman should have won the movie
Michael Jordan dribbles up to the hook
Ducks the basketball
Two points
Two points
But Rickwin really wins the movie
Because he creates this archetype that becomes the most dominant action movie thing we see
But I think you look at where Willis was before and after this movie
It's no contest he becomes like an A plus lister for 30 years
Okay twist Reginald Vell Johnson wins the movie because as Jason noted
He literally gets a sitcom that runs for eight years and he's still cash in sweet residuals off of that show
Yes
Bill we should do a side pod where we do
just rewatch that December 11th, Lakers Celtics game.
I think he had great takes on that.
Thanks, man.
And I do think terrorists like the Lakers.
That's my final point.
Thanks for listening to the Rewatchables.
