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[00:00:00] Come out to the coast, we'll get together, record a few podcasts.
[00:00:26] That's good.
[00:00:27] Thank you.
[00:00:28] That's good. I mean, I just, I think about this film so much as just like the textbook sort of case study in how do you make someone a movie star, right? Sure. How do you take someone who's an actor or even a TV star and make them undeniably a movie star? And there are like 15 moments in this movie that being one of them where you're like this guy just his stock just shot up 10% with that one line reading.
[00:01:44] Sure. He's got he's got the secret sauce.
[00:01:46] Yeah.
[00:01:46] Yeah. of Bruce Willis's career. So first time I notice him is of course, like most people in Miami Vice, where he plays like a bad guy. Sure. I also notice him in an episode of the new Twilight Zone called Shatter Day. Okay, so you were like pinning this guy early. He was, yeah, popping for you.
[00:03:01] I'm telling you, you can jump on YouTube
[00:03:03] and watch, just enter Shatter Day.
[00:03:05] His performance is fantastic. in terms of that character, be it the Bill Murray archetype or David Addison, the original man child, who would not grow up. Those characters infected my work, those characters from the 80s infected my work from the 90s. So Randall, Brody, Bankey, they're all the children
[00:04:22] of Winger from Struts, played by Bill Murray And then they moved to Jersey when he was like a little kid. Right. And then he was there until he moves to Hollywood, basically. Right? That's right. No, around New York for a... No, he goes to Philly and New York. Oh, yeah, you're right. Because he bartends for quite some time. He was a bartender of kamikaze. He knew Linda Fiorentino. Like when I worked at Linda Fiorentino on Dogmas, she's like,
[00:05:41] oh my God, me and Bruce used to bartend together.
[00:05:44] That was before I'd ever met him.
[00:05:47] I mean, that's what we're hearing. You got to remember kids, like a lot of people, of course, Bruce Willis, the diehard, and then yes, naturally the movie career. But Bruce was so huge that one career couldn't contain him and he became a music sensation. He recorded two albums under the name of Bruno.
[00:07:01] And those albums were the first one particularly,
[00:07:04] dropped right around the time that I was learning to drive. And it was huge. It wasn't like, oh, let's indulge this guy as an actor and he likes to sing now That song was huge played on MTV constantly and whatnot was big radio hit as well So there was a moment where that dude had TV Movies wine coolers music. Yeah Sea-grounds golden white cool
[00:08:24] Let's go
[00:09:26] possible. We became inundated, man. It was just all Willis all the time, but nobody complained. People were well into it. No, that was good times.
[00:09:29] And he was very earthy. You know what I'm saying? This is the whole thing.
[00:09:33] You knew he was not to the manor-born. The bartender part of his mythos was laid in there when we were making Goodwill Hunting namedra. Robin Williams said, as we were going into the bar in Toronto, she was with people across the street going, more, more, and you're like, this is like 15 years after more. And I was like, more, man, you can't hear that anymore. He goes, I hear that all the time. I was like, really? But it was so long ago.
[00:11:00] I would imagine it'd be like, good morning, Vietnam.
[00:11:02] And he goes, TV makes you family.
[00:11:05] And I am family to a bunch of times, every other actor turned it down. Bruce is the last guy on the list, but the time McTiernan finally says yes to the script, they were, he'd turn it down, they'd rewrite it, they'd send it
[00:12:23] back to him, he'd go no. They'd turn it down, will blow you out the back of the theater. And we were in the back and it did like blow us away but I going to see it in real time. When it actually open this was like a guy who I loved on tv but the whole world didn't necessarily think of them as like.
[00:14:42] make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear,
[00:14:43] and sometimes they tie a fire hose around their chest
[00:14:47] and swing outside of a building as it's exploding baby.
[00:14:51] It's pretty fucking cool.
[00:14:52] Yeah. Yeah. This is Die Hard.
[00:14:56] We're talking John McTernan.
[00:14:57] What's the miniseries called?
[00:14:58] It's called Pod Hard with Avenge Cast.
[00:15:01] Our guests are returning to the show,
[00:15:03] writer-director, filmmaker, raconteur,
[00:15:05] podcaster, movie theater owner, And yeah, and you have so many different perspectives around this film. I, talking about, I mean, granted I do have like, I aggregated from fan to professional who got to work with the two stars of the movie. But first and foremost, I was before I was a filmmaker, I was just a movie guy. I just love movies.
[00:16:20] And so this was one of the movies I loved and like everybody.
[00:16:24] And it, I just loved it enough that later choices, right? So Java choices, or that an actor, as you know,
[00:17:40] is like, I'm gonna choose to say it like this.
[00:17:42] And you hope it lands in a way
[00:17:43] that connects with the audience,
[00:17:45] makes them forget that all this is bullshit. and you want John to get him. Is there a movie where everyone can win? But right, you'd be kind of like, I kind of want them to open the vault and get the money. Is there an inside man ending? Fuck this company, whatever. Especially in this day and age. Don't you think if they tried to do Die Hard Now, the audience would be like, yeah, get him, get him. Because he shoots Joe and you like Joe.
[00:19:00] Yes.
[00:19:01] He's like two scenes with that guy,
[00:19:02] but you're kind of like, this seems like a good guy,
[00:19:05] and he shoots him so callously.
[00:19:06] That's enough for you to be like, you know, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like,
[00:20:20] it was like, it was like, it was like,
[00:20:21] it was like, it was like, it was like,
[00:20:22] it was like, it was like, it was like,
[00:20:23] it was like, it was like, it was like,
[00:20:24] it was like, it was like, it was like,
[00:20:25] it was like, it was like, it was like,
[00:20:26] it was like, it was like, it was like,
[00:20:27] it was like, it was like, it was like,
[00:20:28] it was like, I was like, what pension? And she's like, well, when, what do you think that money that you pay in the DJ was for? And I was like, I don't be a member of a secret society. She's like, no. Get the ring, the decoder ring. Yeah, I was like, I don't know, the smoke the aforementioned smoking check. But she was like, no, Kevin,
[00:21:40] like you being in the writer's guild, you get a pension.
[00:21:42] You being in SAG, you get a pension.
[00:21:44] You being in the DJ, you get a pension
[00:21:46] because we don't work in a traditional world.
[00:21:47] Like most people that work for a company There was a konsan approach, so to speak. But I never met him, but he is the unsung star of this movie. I don't think in many other hands this movie is the same as the... And it's, I believe me, I'm not taking anything away from the screenwriters, but it was Steven D'Souza, how many people wrote this? Yes, although that's a point of... Two people are accredited.
[00:23:00] Well, Jim Stewart and Steven D'Souza are the big writers.
[00:23:04] Yeah.
[00:23:05] Right. In my, I've been doing the job for 30 years, but you may not like the movies I've done. In my yeoman-like opinion, I feel like he shaped the movie. I feel the presence of the author, the director as author, in a way that you feel on like, Zucker Brothers movies in the back, Shyamalan movies.
[00:24:23] Just, it was saying to people, we're doing McTiernan next, and they're going, who's McTiernan? Or like, what else did he do besides Die Hard? There is this weird degree of him being
[00:25:41] a little bit anonymous, and I often find as well
[00:25:45] that people will assign his movies to other directors. a little bit anonymous, but he still does tons of interviews. He records new commentary tracks and whatever. I've been trying to read as much and watch as much and listen to as much in prepping these episodes. And he speaks very transparently about everything, but he's also got that old school studio director sort of like John Hawks, they pass me a script.
[00:27:00] If I think it's okay, I shoot it.
[00:27:02] And his decisions are very intelligent and thoughtful
[00:27:06] and big picture and he understands every capacity hours-long Empire magazine podcast interviews after each Mission Impossible movie comes out. When you hear him break down his process, it feels very similar to the way McTiernan talks about his understanding of how an audience is going to track things in real time, which is the main thing both of these guys are concerned with. Nothing they do is for Flash or showy for the sake of trying to make, call attention
[00:28:25] to their own style, show of the director as a personality. And that's the era that I came up in. So he does it. He comes up in late 80s when a studio director is like, who directed? I don't know. It doesn't matter. There is a star. Nothing on this poster that's like from the director of Predator or anything like that.
[00:29:40] Right. They could put that on there.
[00:29:42] That's wild. I wouldn't imagine they put his name on there, but from the beginning of Die Hard, that it will blow you out the back of the theater, that was about the power of the story itself. And there was a likening to disaster movies, which hadn't been in vogue in a while, but there's a bit of towering inferno to the idea of him
[00:31:01] like being up in Nakatomi Plaza and stuff.
[00:31:04] So you could see the kind of parallel was there,
[00:31:06] but they didn't deep dive with that very much because building. Right. Like so they were like let's put a guy's face in the building. We need to care about the guy in the building. I think when they put his face in the building by that pointir type cop in a straight-up. He's got a shoot-down terrorist setting I tried reading the book. Yeah, it's a perfectly serviceable airport thriller sure
[00:33:44] I did not realize how much of what I like about this movie is not, there are two stages of, I mean, there's like... There's a 70s call and then there is the nominal contractual 1987 call of like, hey, 70 year old Frank Sinatra, you want to do Die Hard? And he's like, no. The first time I think he says, I'm too old and I'm too rich. But it speaks to like, this guy drafts on the trend of towering
[00:35:00] Inferno, writes the quick cash in sequel,'s the person. And that person they go to until the thing doesn't do well or until there's a new flavor of the month. And then they go to that person over and over again. David Kepp seems to have had a really good run of that. Really good. David Kepp seems to be like the go-to guy. I think he's reliable, right? You know, whatever.
[00:36:20] But you basically have this thing they own the rights to sitting on a desk for like a
[00:36:25] decade. That would have been it. Like my wife would have never heard from me again. We ended on a fight. And he's like, that's what the movie's gotta be. It's gotta be someone my age who just gotten a fight with his wife basically. And then this shit happens before he gets to apologize. I mean, it's an even better thing that he latches onto there. I mean, the Aha moment is so incredible and is like the first spark of like something great
[00:37:42] in this idea.
[00:37:43] Cause none of that is in the book.
[00:37:46] But it's like, well, where this is going. Wait, I don't know where this is going. No, now I know. No, wait, I don't know. Well, and you talking about how this is a movie that's not only still studied by film dorks like ourselves, but also by like kitchen sink people. There's the third column, which is, this is still a movie that executives try to replicate.
[00:39:02] And certainly for the 10 years after this,
[00:39:03] it was like the movie that everyone was trying to replicate.
[00:39:06] But people go like, how do you make a John McClain style the stakes of the story in a way that I think is kind of beautiful. The shooter is Yann de Bonne, right? Sure is. Yeah. How interesting that the best of the diehard, let's not call them knockoffs, but the children of Die Hard. Yeah, Die Hard on the bus. On speed was directed by the guy that shot Die Hard.
[00:40:20] That's how obsessed the studios were with this movie, that they were like,
[00:40:23] get us anyone who was on set and understands what the recipe was
[00:40:27] that made that movie work. What he brought to the table. He was like no, no, no the movies got to have explosions in it. Yeah, like was actually a good note So Jeb Stuart is still working on rewrites with silver They're trying to get a director attached I mean, this is like right moving train because they have this summer slot where they want something like this
[00:41:45] The first guy they offer the movie to is bum people out. Yeah. Yeah. They just, bad vibes, they make you think too much about, like, the larger political machinations
[00:43:00] of our bad world.
[00:43:02] And if the solution to them is a rogue hero
[00:43:04] going in and shooting them all,
[00:43:06] even if that's gonna be, like, a net positive,
[00:44:01] Like basically that's who they want.
[00:44:06] DeSouza says he also just was being brought in to like kind of, like they had walked,
[00:44:09] they walked through the building, through the sets,
[00:44:13] and figured out just how the geography
[00:44:15] of set pieces would work.
[00:44:16] Like, you know, where can he fight who when basically?
[00:44:20] Because the original draft didn't have that.
[00:44:22] So he did this on location specific stuff
[00:44:24] once they knew like where Nakatomi Plaza was.
[00:44:27] Right, well, let's put joy in it.
[00:45:40] Like there's something you don't see
[00:45:41] in these fucking movies, let's put irony in it.
[00:45:43] Did it feel that way when you saw,
[00:45:45] do you have a memory of that?
[00:45:46] Like of you being like, damn, this movie is like fun. came with me and we sat in the back of the theater and I was able to get Ernie to come with me because he also loved Bruno. We listened to the Return of Bruno album. That's where I learned to drive in Ernie's car. So we went in for Willis and Willis delivered and he was, you know, he wasn't David Addison. He was definitely more hardened.
[00:47:01] He was quippy, but not nearly as quippy as David Addison.
[00:47:03] He wasn't a wise guy, wasn't the class clown.
[00:47:07] But he delivered and what he delivered The first time you see him enter a room in a Harry Potter movie, it's all about Alan's entrance. They basically get a gag out of his entrance in each film. Yes, and it was established probably here, but he was the one that like all the gallows humor, yes, the fact that he did kill Mr. Takagi,
[00:48:21] which then made him a threat enough
[00:48:23] to not want to root for the irony,
[00:48:26] the like, you know, come out to the coast, Does he like to die hard or is it hard for him to die? He's too good at living. That's sort of his issue, right? His Achilles heel is he is too good at staying alive. Killing him is hard. I feel like you should arrive at a point. You know what is hard though? Making several meals a day. That's true.
[00:49:40] I mean, yes, it's very hard.
[00:49:42] Eat hard is what?
[00:49:43] Food hard is my life story.
[00:49:46] It's hard to feed yourself. all of them. You feel up fast with factors restaurant quality meals as you said they're ready to heat and eat whenever you are they got snacks smoothies and more. I don't know what you're talking about by the way all our ads are 60 minutes 60 minutes 60 seconds long. Sorry listeners think they're 60 minutes long. Yes they got snacks they got smoothies they are less expensive than takeout every meal is dietitian approved to be nutritious and delicious.
[00:51:02] And they're flexible for your's what we were thinking about.
[00:52:22] Like, a suave, sophisticated guy.
[00:52:25] Like, not a muscle-bound guy.
[00:52:28] Like, a guy who wears a jacket, right?
[00:53:25] like one of the later shows to get released on DVD once that was the craze and then has been one of the last major shows to get on streaming and I had never really watched it
[00:53:29] before and it is insane just tuning in the first episode and being like this guy is fully
[00:53:35] like he's arriving fully made fully developed.
[00:53:38] I cannot take my eyes off of this fucking he wants everyone to think he is. This McTiernan thing of all of the terrorists should look like European male models. They should look like Armani models. They should be more like Richard Gere types, right?
[00:55:01] And Maclean is a guy who gets on a plane
[00:55:03] to have a conversation and then refuses
[00:55:04] to have the healthy banana of that show.
[00:56:22] But when they allow David Addison these moments,
[00:56:25] like, you know this sort of full meal, but there's always this feeling of like, there's something kind of broken inside this guy. There's a longing, there's a thing he's struggling to express. I mean, yeah, Eastwood says, I don't get the humor, right? Paul Newman says, I don't wanna shoot guns in movies anymore.
[00:57:40] I'm sick of carrying a gun in a movie, sure.
[00:57:42] Then there's a list of guys that's debated over
[00:57:45] who the studio wanted, who casting wanted,
[00:57:47] who the theater wanted. The point is, So they're looking at it. I don't know if you have a blind date take, Kevin. I don't know if you saw a blind date back in the day. Him and Kim Basinger. I remember the song. There was a song about a guys, Billy Vera and the beaters, right? What would you think? Let you get away. Oh, what a night. Anybody's
[00:59:01] seen her. They had a lot of songs in this. I has some marquee appeal, but he's untested as a movie star and people don't know exactly where to slot him in as a movie star. The one thing we can do as an insurance policy is get him the quote unquote record highest salary,
[01:00:24] even if it's a record that is- Even if it's for a second. They have to build out the supporting cast because of his fucking schedule. It's another fucking blessing in disguise. It is, yes. We're much like Back to the Future. They're like, we got this guy half the time. At a certain point in production, Moonlight will have wrapped for the season, but at least for the first chunk, we're going to be sharing him. They have him in the mornings and the days. like, I'm not doing this. What is this shit? And his agents are like, you've been in LA for two days and you got offered this job. Like you do not turn this down. You are doing this. And Rickman is like, obviously changed my life. Like, you know, immediately changed his life.
[01:03:01] I mean, you worked with him.
[01:03:03] His rep is very menchie.
[01:03:05] I mean, obviously, he didn't remember this when I told him the story. And then he was like, oh my God, you're right. And I said, this shows you what a life you've led, that you don't remember this story. So he calls me up and he goes, dude, we just had a meeting with Alan Rickman. And I was like, Hans Gruber? And he's like, yeah, man.
[01:04:21] Like we met with him about this merchant ivory project.
[01:04:23] I was like, how was he?
[01:04:24] Was he cool?
[01:04:25] He was very cool.
[01:04:26] He's going, but you have a God? And I was like, no, right now we're godless.
[01:05:41] And he was just like, well, I would like to ask my friend,
[01:05:44] I think she would find, oh, Emma Thompson was gonna play God, but she wants to stay back in England and try to have a kid. So, and then we got a phone call from Emma Thompson's agent who was very, very sweet, but communicated the message
[01:07:02] of like, can you please not tell people
[01:07:05] that I'm thinking use to this day. Alan said about Jason, he goes, he is a true American original. And he was oddly fascinated by him and stuff. So he loved hanging out with him. He loved the shoot. We threw out Alan's back while we were making Dogma because we put these wings on him with a big harness and levers in another room. And we kept opening and closing him.
[01:08:20] And it literally threw his back out,
[01:08:21] like to the point where he couldn't move.
[01:08:23] So there's a scene in Dogma,
[01:08:25] we couldn't change our schedule,
[01:08:26] where they all meet in the States, he'd be like, you owe me dinner and we'd take him out. So he, like I remember one time I went to do a show at the O2 in London, like one evening with Kevin Smith type thing. And he was like, can I go? And I was like, oh my God, you wanna?
[01:09:40] He said, yeah, I love going to your shows.
[01:09:42] People know who I am in the audience.
[01:09:44] And I was like, that's adorable.
[01:09:47] So they went to the show, I finally bought an apartment. I was like, oh my God, that's great, man. And he goes, well, not so great. I said, why? And he goes, well, I bought an apartment in the same building where my friend lives. And I was like, well, I would imagine that's really nice. And he goes, yes, but my friend is Ray Fiennes. And I was like, I didn't know that you guys were friends. And he was going, yes. And we're trying desperately to keep all of this secret.
[01:11:01] And I was like, why?
[01:11:02] And he's like, because of the Potter fans, find out.
[01:11:04] Snape and Voldemort live in the same building.
[01:11:08] They will bring it down. He never really talked about the business. He would talk about the craft if he wanted to and stuff, but he had such a great sense of humor, not a wicked sense of humor or something like that. He was just funny. And when you can make him laugh, you felt insanely powerful. There's some people in life where if you can crack him, you're like, oh man. And Alan's laugh was so rapturously joyous and silent.
[01:12:22] He was very like,
[01:12:26] so you only heard the exhale. a fully formed adult person. And not only that, like someone with complete command of his craft, even though he's working in a different medium. It has this meta effect that I think helps the movie. Even if you're watching it today, obviously, like we're of an age where we watched it already familiar with Alan Rickman and other things.
[01:13:40] But there's something you have to imagine about,
[01:13:41] like what you're saying, this guy just entering
[01:13:43] and being like, I got no read on this guy.
[01:13:46] This guy's inscrutable. a public persona for so long, as much as his work was so big and he was so known and people loved him, it felt like, I feel like I as a fan was always worried like, is he just kind of what he plays? Is he kind of haughty and aloof and sort of above it all? And then he plays it very well on screen, but I never hear people telling me that this dude's a
[01:15:00] mensch. And then when he died, not know is that he is a comment robber, right? He is embarrassed by the notion that he only is in it for gold. How embarrassing is that? He wants to put on this show of this is this is from coming from a political ideology. I have a statement's cartoon. If you've never seen it. Yes, Leonardo Leonardo. Only six episodes. Leonardo Leonardo is the villain of the show. And I made the show with Dave Mandel who was from Seinfeld, Veep, White House Cleaners, Euro Trip. Scotty doesn't know.
[01:18:43] of the clerk's cartoon was like, oh my God, it's him. And so Alan was like, we showed him the designs and stuff
[01:18:46] and we're like, so yeah, man, just take it away.
[01:18:49] And Alan goes, if you don't mind,
[01:18:53] I really don't wanna do Hans Gruber.
[01:18:56] Yeah.
[01:18:57] And I was like, yeah, I know, but like his cartoons,
[01:19:01] it was kind of, you can get away with it.
[01:19:02] And he goes, no, I can't get away with it.
[01:19:04] He's gone, I'd rather, if it's cartoon,
[01:19:06] I'd rather do something.
[01:19:08] I'd rather be Adam. doing. And so we wound up Dave Mandel because he worked on Saturday Night Live and because other stuff he worked on, he became friendly with Alec Baldwin. And so Alec Baldwin came in and played Leonardo Leonardo instead. And he's basically doing his own Gruber impression. Which we said, where he was like, what do you want? And we were like, can you just do
[01:20:22] Hans Gruber? And he was like, okay. No, it's the one for it. And one of them is just, he called out, I think it's a fascinating recurring thread as we've been doing all these McTiernan movies, that McTiernan seems to be somewhat driven by his distaste for what other action movies were at the time, right? We talk about this being a movie that everyone sort of copies that becomes the blueprint.
[01:21:44] And the commentary is I've been listening to
[01:21:46] that are recorded decades later. getting incredibly, incredibly technical about it. And he talks about how he was truly like, he would write up charts with shot lengths, just theoretically. Like he was working on like a theorem of just like, would it work if a shot was this long and then you cut it this length and directionally one shot was this way and the other shot was this way? He spends a lot of time being incredibly analytical
[01:23:02] and clinical about it to 10 years later
[01:23:05] when he's on the set of Die Hard,
[01:23:07] almost all of this is unconscious for him. Like, it's like watching someone on the fucking Johnny Carson show do a plate spinning routine. And you're like, there's no way he's going to be able to make it over to that plate in time before it stops spinning. And you're just keeping track of all the plates in real time. And as you said, a lot of it was like out of necessity of we need to make the other characters interesting enough that we have reasons to shoot them.
[01:24:24] We only have Bruce for half a day. Right.
[01:25:25] see you in high school high. Your favorite. Yeah. Bizarrely. I believe his, was his dad Lloyd? Correct. Yes. I'm not calling him out as a Nippo baby, but I think I remember his
[01:25:29] dad from his dad was Lloyd Faulkner. Yeah. Who was either on Dynasty or I think Dynasty.
[01:25:36] He was on Dynasty. Yeah. He was on Million Things. He, he was a legacy, this kid, but
[01:25:40] oh my God, he was magic. I remember watching the movie in the theater and being like, this
[01:25:44] guy's great. McTurnan apparently had said up everything on the board and he is quietly, simultaneously, both teaching you the geography of everything so invisibly, right? Like all these kind of sweeping camera movements going in and out of rooms where you're just starting to be able to piece together in your brain. Okay,
[01:27:00] I get it. This room connects to this room the gun of the hand. Oh, I love that fucking. I love it. It's the best. We will do it on this podcast obviously. Why do you think, why do you think like, a side note, why do you think a witness
[01:28:21] hasn't been remade yet?
[01:28:23] That is a great question
[01:28:24] because it is the easiest thing in the world.
[01:28:26] Yeah. are usually IP driven versus the sort of like character calculation of a John McLean. A movie that's on its face, this film does not feel like it should be able to spawn a franchise. It feels like this is a story and a character- This is a thing that happened to this guy. Are so circumstantial. Well, I mean, how do you feel about the franchise? And then they use that in the marketing of two where it's like, how can the same thing
[01:29:41] happen to the same guy twice?
[01:29:44] I mean, like, how do you like, oh man, this is a gross fucking grab at my dollar again. It's like, no, I buy it. Bad thing happened to this guy twice. And it also felt like, oh, they're going in the Irwin Allen theme.
[01:31:01] So they did a building, now they're doing an airplane.
[01:31:04] You know, it would not have been out of the ordinary that, oh, this is in somebody else's hands. David. Yes. I got a problem. I got a big, big, big, big, big issue. What's that? Well, when I'm looking for hand-selected, great cinema from around the world, I go to a movie. I go to our friends at movie. I pull up movie. We love movie.
[01:32:20] That solves that problem for me.
[01:32:21] Yep.
[01:32:22] I got an unrelated issue
[01:32:24] that I don't think movie can solve.
[01:32:25] What's that?
[01:32:26] I don't know how to have sex.
[01:32:27] Okay, look, listeneter season, ride or die glory of young female friendship. It's a good movie, I've seen it. I mean, this sounds like my kind of thing. BAFTA nominee for British Film of the Year. It was at Sundance, it was at Cannes. It's gotten incredible reviews and it's playing in theaters and it is a cool movie to see in theaters because it is very sensory. It is, you know, you are partying with these girls.
[01:33:42] Like it's about this sort of crazy sort of like
[01:33:44] overwhelming scene that they're in. nate qualities as a movie star that we need to bring to the fore and frame properly. And also, like, what are the different aspects of your relationship with the audience that we need to nurture? What do people like seeing you do? And what are the things they haven't seen you do that we need to try? You know? So there was like a will-less persona, but? Which is like, what are you accomplishing in this? I know, like this seems ridiculous, like, you know, doing this business. Yeah, right. You're setting up a little bit of like, this is how the Nakatomi Corporation works. This is very modern. This feels kind of hermetic.
[01:36:20] This is the sort of influence of Japanese culture onto our business that is like a rising
[01:36:25] sort of like consideration in the 80s. make an action movie with real emotional stakes and basically a Robert Altman-esque approach to tapestry of characters and subplots and different things you need to track happening simultaneously in real time. Like this is like Nashville combined with an Erwin Allen movie, combined with a Dirty Harry movie. And there's just an efficiency to, you know, John McTiernan being 10 years on from,
[01:37:44] there was a point where I was academic and technical and scientific about it and now it's So, 15 minutes is when they shoot the security guard. So, that's when like shit starts to unravel. But you already feel it. You know so much. And by then we established your world. All the players are pretty much on the proscenium, I've taken to the stage. I think about, you guys mentioned the feet thing. You didn't have to set up the feet. He could have just been getting changed
[01:39:01] and like it's an incidental thing
[01:39:03] that they don't spend a lot of time on.
[01:39:05] It could have happened.
[01:39:06] He could have not had his feet are, oh, this is that bad ass, that's smart. I've never seen that in a movie before. That moment really didn't exist in mainstream movies probably. I'm certainly not saying that. Nobody ever did something smart in a mainstream movie, but generally people with guns were just shooting at each other or like shoot the gas truck so it blows up. But if that guy going like shoot the glass,
[01:40:21] because I noticed when I talked with him,
[01:40:24] he has no fucking shoes, so he can't run around.
[01:40:27] It's just like so simple and brilliant. And there's the type of magic trick that is sort of dependent on the magician making you think that they fucked up the trick Where suddenly the whole audience leans in you're like, oh shit I'm seeing the rare night where the guy fucking blows it in front of a crowd Right and then you realize oh no the failure was a setup for the actual trick Which I think this movie does a million times
[01:41:40] Where you're like the things I think it's setting up Yeah. That predates this, right? Like, it's, hey man, this is a guy who don't belong in LA and he's in LA and because he don't belong in LA, that's why he's the guy for the job. Totally. Yes. No, I mean, both of them are movies that basically have contempt. They're one good cop movies, right? Which people now look at with a little bit of itchiness,
[01:43:02] but they're movies that are like really happens similarly kind of by accident because Stallone drops out, because he wants it to be tougher and bigger and bloodier, and that they're like, fuck, this movie's a moving train, we have everything set, we got to plug someone else in, put in the unconventional guy, put in the guy who would never be in an action movie. The unconventional guy from television.
[01:44:22] Yup. Yup. And the guy you wouldn't grounds the audience in understanding where he is in the progression, but also I have to imagine grounds Bruce in that. And then every time they remind you, oh yeah, unless you forget, he's also barefoot. You have these moments where the movie kind of stops,
[01:45:41] where he has to take a breath and look at his feet
[01:45:43] and pull the glass out.
[01:45:45] Yeah. Kevin?
[01:45:46] You said soot, the sweat, and the dark went. He's like, that's how I absolutely look my best.
[01:47:02] If you're gonna shoot a close-up, you gotta give me one or three of those elements.
[01:47:06] And then...
[01:47:07] Wow. as possible so that the person off-camera is not looking down the barrel at the camera, but close enough where the intimacy level completely changes. That's what Bruce Willis taught me. I'm sure you've experienced this as well. It sounds like maybe before, up until the point you worked with Bruce Willis, but there's so many times I've been on set, you're shooting coverage, and then the DP goes,
[01:48:21] this is gonna sound strange, it's gonna feel strange.
[01:48:24] But actually what would help for I-Line
[01:48:26] is if you look at this says to Bonnie Bedelia, like, you know what, I'm an asshole,
[01:49:40] like, you know, how about after this party,
[01:49:42] we go out and grab dinner,
[01:49:43] or, and maybe she's like, you know,
[01:49:44] why are we going to the party?
[01:49:45] Let's leave now.
[01:49:46] And there is no movie. your brain reacts faster, oddly enough, than just thinking a thought. So when you speak out loud and doing a thing, like, I'm gonna move that can. Right. Your neurons are firing faster than you just thinking, I'm gonna move that can. I don't know how that works, but that's what I've found.
[01:51:00] It's the version of like, hey,
[01:51:02] remind me to take this with me when I leave.
[01:51:05] When you say that out loud to a friend
[01:51:07] and they're like, I'm never gonna remember that.
[01:51:08] And you're like, no helped by the fact that the rest of the cast is so winning that if you're not with him, you're still with the movie. Yeah, and as the stakes of the movie increase, then every 10 minutes you're like, right, and he's fucking barefoot too. Doesn't even cut in fate.
[01:52:20] Like there are these things they keep on sort of pinning in.
[01:52:23] I mean, the establishment of the one undeveloped room
[01:53:25] right inspired. They've sort of bought these expensive art pieces and reconstructed them and everything. And then you have all these like unfinished, undeveloped rooms where he's just in
[01:53:30] this weird kind of like literal urban jungle of just steel beams and open walls. Do you know what
[01:53:35] the film was called in France and Spain? What? The Crystal Jungle. Well, isn't that interesting?
[01:53:41] It is. Yeah. I remember I had this on DVD. Wait, Die Hard. That's a movie that's not a Die Hard movie until it gets turned into a Die Hard movie, like we said, right? Like, what is the, is there a Die Hard, like infrastructure at that point? Like are there people who are like, we're guardians of the Die Hard world? There isn't really, right? That's kind of the problem. It's kind of like just Bruce at that point? No, the exact, by the time we're doing,
[01:55:01] and I can say we, because I was in the movie,
[01:55:02] by the time we were doing Live Free or Die Hard,
[01:56:05] already and then they were finishing in Los Angeles with stage based stuff and my character the warlock had a fucking mom's basement.
[01:56:08] You were a hacker man.
[01:56:09] I was a hacker.
[01:56:10] You were the hacker.
[01:56:11] So when we're, when do I get there?
[01:56:15] He's like, I'm not shooting.
[01:56:16] We're not shooting.
[01:56:17] We're not doing this.
[01:56:18] And then he turns to me and goes, Kevin, and I hadn't really, I'd never met him before
[01:56:24] at this point.
[01:56:25] Like it was just on live for air diehard that we met. Bruce and Bruce is like, this is great, this is everything. This is the scene I wanna do, we're shooting this. And they sent it to the studio. And I guess the studio was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, this has nothing to do with what we've been doing so far. We didn't approve these pages, blah, blah, blah. So we had stopped and we were just waiting because Bruce wanted to shoot the scene, the studio didn't wanna shoot that scene.
[01:57:40] Len was caught in the middle.
[01:57:43] And in this standstill, Bruce had his personal chef
[01:58:41] And he's like, uh-huh. He's going, yeah, but this answers a lot of the questions.
[01:58:44] Okay.
[01:58:46] All right.
[01:58:47] Hutch, let me ask you this.
[01:58:49] Who's your second choice to play John McClane?
[01:58:51] Right.
[01:58:52] Right.
[01:58:53] Hell yeah.
[01:58:54] Because that's what I thought.
[01:58:55] Okay, bye.
[01:58:56] And he hung up and we went and shot the scene
[01:58:58] that he wanted to shoot.
[01:58:59] So if there was any gatekeeper,
[01:59:02] it's the guy who'd been there for every diehard.
[01:59:05] It was John McClane.