Die Hard Ep. 01 - Die Hard / The Taking of Beverly Hills - Get Me Another

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:14):
In 1966, novelist Roderick Thorpe published The Detective, a story of a former NYPDofficer named Joe Leland who becomes enmeshed in a murder investigation.
That novel was adapted into a feature film in 1968 starring Frank Sinatra and became oneof the biggest hits of his career.

(00:34):
In 1979, Thorpe wrote a sequel entitled Nothing Lasts Forever.
in which the now retired Leland visits his daughter on Christmas Eve and attends a partyat her company's 40-story headquarters in Los Angeles.
That party is soon interrupted by a group of terrorists who take the employees hostage.

(00:57):
It's up to Leland, alone and exhausted, to stop the terrorists and save his daughter.
Nothing Lasts Forever spent several years in development as a movie, during which time themain character was aged down, the person he was visiting in Los Angeles became his
estranged wife, and the script underwent a title change.

(01:18):
When ultimately released in 1988, the resulting film was not only a box office smash, itchanged the course of action filmmaking forever, creating one of the most enduring movie
templates.
and becoming a Christmas classic.
This is Get Me Another Die Hard.

(01:41):
We thank you one and all and wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
It's Christmas Eve in LA.
But a team of terrorists.
want money?
Terrorists?
Who said we were terrorists?
have their uh

(02:02):
We're doing it the hard way.
The one thing they didn't plan on was New York cop John McLean.
Got invited to the Christmas party by mistake.
Who knew?
BITTY KIE MOTHERFUCKER

(02:27):
already killed this channel is reserved for emergency calls only lady do i sound like amoron of pizza come to papa honey you really an american only if new jersey counts what
does he think he's

(03:03):
Hello, welcome to our new Get Me Another series exploring the wave of action films thatfollowed in the wake of John McTiernan's 1988 film, Die Hard.
My name is Chris Iannica and with me are my co-hosts, Rob Lemorgis.

(03:24):
You know, I really hate guys that don't like football.
Second movie right to the s- And Justin Beam!
I really hate guys who steal the line that I had highlighted the opening of the episode.
Oh, fantastic.

(03:46):
For those who might be new to our show, what we do is we explore a watershed film,something with a significant cultural impact, and then explore the films that followed it
and tried in one way or another to replicate its success.
And Die Hard is one of those movies that has been on our list from the very beginning.
From before the beginning, Rob.
mean, my good, we always were gonna do Get Me Another Die Hard.

(04:09):
Yeah, it was when you came up with the concept for the show is one of the first thingsthat popped into mind because it is a font.
Well, it's so clear, you have, like it's, you know, it became a sub genre unto itself.
Die hard on a blank.
Like that's the thing, whether it's a boat, a plane, a train, a bus, a mountain, anotherplane, an arena, still yet another plane, the president's plane, like the formula of a

(04:40):
lone individual trapped in a situation they didn't expect.
but in which they are the only hope to save the day is one that is immediatelyidentifiable.
And it signaled a giant shift, which I'm sure you're already having your notes from theAmerican action hero of Schwarzenegger Stallone style, very beefy dudes, jacked, if you

(05:04):
will, going into slightly more of an everyman, even if this everyman is also kind of, youknow, very capable, shall we say.
In fact, I was good, I was literally my next note, so that is perfect.
Yeah, it's, know, the 80s have been dominated by stars like Sylvester Sloan and ArnoldSchwarzenegger, had highly sculpted physiques that just did not feel at all like an

(05:28):
ordinary person.
And, you know, the funny thing is apparently when Die Hard was being pitched, it waspitched as Rambo in an office building, just to show how much the culture changed.
And could not be further from the truth for many, many reasons.
ah It is not that at all, but I can see where when you're trying to sell stuff, you justsay whatever has been popular and you jam it together with what you're doing and uh hope

(05:58):
for the best.
Hopefully somebody buys it is really what you know, that's what you're looking for.
And it's funny because both Stallone and Schwarzenegger were approached for the role ofJohn McClane and both turned it down.
Why?
have they said why or like revealed?
I have a suspicion.
My theory is that, and this is something I didn't pick up on until literally this viewing.

(06:24):
I've seen Die Hard numerous times.
And look, it's been, I've always known that John McClane is a hero who gets beat up andhe's not, uh you know, indestructible as Rambo kind of was sometimes.
But even Rambo had to cauterize his own wounds, right?
So those...
those actors weren't necessarily against, you know, getting beat up on screen to maketheir ultimate triumph better.

(06:50):
But there is one thing about John McClane that I cannot believe I never saw until thispoint.
Maybe other people have already seen it and written countless things about it, but I don'tread.
So for the first half of this movie, John McClane is constantly trying to call for help sothat he doesn't have to fight.
And I could see where
Both Stallone and Schwarzenegger might think of that as being too passive of a herocompared to the kinds of roles that they had played up to this point.

(07:21):
Yeah.
And it's interesting because they weren't alone.
The list of actors who were offered the role of John McClain include, besides Stallone andSchwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson, Richard Gere, Harrison Ford, Burt Reynolds,
Nick Nolte, James Kahn, Al Pacino, Paul Newman, Don Johnson, and Richard Dean Anderson.

(07:47):
Yeah.
Basically, they went to everyone before casting Bruce Willis, who at that point was knownfor his more comic role on the classic TV series Moonlighting.
And in fact, Willis was going to have to pass on the movie as well due to his Moonlightingcommitment.
But when co-star Cybill Shepherd became pregnant, the show shut down for 11 weeks and hebecame available.

(08:10):
we almost had a Tom Selleck Raiders of the Lost Ark moment.
I know.
I who would they, I don't know who they would have gone to next.
It's like they ran through it.
And apparently the film had a hard release date in the summer of 1988 because 20th CenturyFox needed a big movie for the summer of 88.
And so Willis's agent, who was aware of that fact, was able to negotiate what was then amassive $5 million payday.

(08:36):
And oh, and before that, before all those actors, there was another actor who had to turnthe movie down and that's Frank Sinatra.
Because as I mentioned, like the script started as a sequel to his film, The Detective,which Roderick Thorpe wrote the novel, Nothing Lasts Forever, specifically with the aim of
being it turned into a feature film.
So 20th Century Fox, which had the rights, were contractually obligated to offer it toFrank Sinatra, who at that point was in his seventies and, you know, respectively passed

(09:06):
on it, you know, but, you know, that was, like, God, I mean, if it had been made 10 yearsearlier, he might've done it.
Man, oh man, I would love to just get a peek into the alternate universe where Sinatra at70 said yes.
Right.
I mean, honestly, I'm thinking about it.

(09:27):
I'm like, that would be that would be fascinating.
It be a very different movie for for numerous reasons.
Yeah, and I can't do Sinatra, but I'm going to do this anyway.
Yeah, yippee-ki-yay.
It's not Sinatra, it's Phil Hartman as Sinatra doing the Sinatra Group on SNL.

(09:49):
Bing bang boom bubby.
Ring a ding ding, Hans, I'm coming for you.
I just went into like, I don't even know what the hell that was.
Good is what it was.
So like many books that are purchased, you know, to be adapted into film, Nothing LastsForever just spent a long time in development hell until around 1987 when Lloyd Levin, the

(10:10):
head of development at the Gordon Company, asked screenwriter Jeb Stuart to work on thescript for Nothing Lasts Forever.
And a lot of the novel, a lot of pieces of the novel make their way into the movie, likethe movie that we know, like the C4 being dropped down the elevator shaft.
uh Leland crawling through the air ducts, imagine 70 year old Frank Satcha doing that.

(10:33):
The leap off the roof of the building, all of that stuff is from the novel.
Where apparently where Jeb Stuart's, like his thoughts on the movie crystallized was afteruh he had an argument with his wife and he went out for a drive afterwards and nearly got
into a car accident.
And that's when he realized the core of the movie.

(10:56):
should be about a man who should have apologized to his wife before an unexpectedcatastrophic occurrence.
And that's how he kind of found what the movie was to be.
Yeah, I do think that that is also given the time period, but frankly, even for right now,building your action heroes emotional need around.

(11:20):
He needs to realize that he's been a jerk and has to apologize and like meaningfully sothat's unusual.
Yeah, I'll just say it.
Yeah.
I mean, and here's the thing about Die Hard.
I not to be hyperbolic because, you know, in this internet age, everything is the bestthing ever or the worst thing ever.

(11:41):
Whereas in reality, a lot of things are just okay.
But Die Hard might be the greatest action movie of all time.
Like it's so good.
And it's, it's an incredibly strong premise that is just executed with skill and
It's just incredible.
I will, I'll, I'll, I'll tick the hyperbole meter down just a half notch.

(12:06):
Okay.
For myself and say that, look, cause some people might love car chases or, you know, thereare different types of action movies.
So I could see there, you know, world war two movies, you know, great escape, whatever youwant.
And I always thought an adventure movie is a different thing.
Yeah.
Like that's a there's a slight distinction there.
But but go on.
So I would say Die Hard is for sure in the pantheon of the greatest action movies.

(12:31):
But I think what I'm willing to say is that it is the greatest action movie script of alltime.
I think the writing in this movie hands down beats any other action movie.
And I hate to say it, this is hyperbole, but by a country mile, this movie is as clockworkas...

(12:53):
like the screenplay to Back to the Future, but I think even more so.
If you wanted, as you often say, the platonic ideal of classic Hollywood narrative, DieHard fits the bill to a T.
Like the number of setups and payoffs, and the setups don't feel like setups in themoment.
And they meaningfully pay off.

(13:15):
It's not just meaningless callbacks.
It's amazing.
100 % agree.
No, this script is absolutely incredible.
Jeb Stuart was eventually rewritten by Steven D'Souza.
Now D'Souza started his career working on what I consider to be one of the mostinfluential TV shows of the 1970s, The Six Million Dollar Man.

(13:40):
He was later writer on Knight Rider and he created the show The Powers of Matthew Starr,which I...
vaguely remember, and he moved into feature films with 1982's 48 Hours, which like DieHard was a co-production between Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver.
And it was D'Souza that added a lot of the moments for supporting characters like Nakatomiexecutive Joe Takagi, reporter Dick Thornburg, primarily as a way to give the production

(14:08):
material to shoot while Willis was finishing Moonlighting, because the first two weeks ofproduction,
Willis was still finishing his commitment to Moonlighting and had limited availability.
that was like a lot of the really incredible character material between other characterscame out of the fact that they didn't have Willis full time for the first two weeks.

(14:31):
It's like the shark in Jaws not working.
Yeah, you know, sometimes the box forces you to get creative and, you know, necessity isthe mother of invention.
I could not imagine this movie without the smarmy TV character.
my God.
Yeah.
And.

(14:51):
Harry Ellis, the cocaine-addled, you know, Nakatobi executive who is just an amazing,amazing character.
The other thing that Stuart's version of D'Souza changed is that in the original script,it happened over the course of three days.
D'Souza compressed that all down to happening on one night, Christmas Eve, in fact.

(15:14):
Aristotelian, baby.
You know it, you know it.
Die Hard was directed by John McTiernan, who this was the second of an incredible threefilm run for McTiernan that started with 1987's Predator, followed by Die Hard, and then
The Hunt for Red October in 1990.
Predator was also a Gordon Silver production.

(15:35):
In addition to Bruce Willis, the film stars Bonnie Bedelia, Alan Rickman, AlexanderGuttnaf, Reginald Veljonsson, Paul Gleason, William Atherton,
Hartbockner and DeVarro White.
And incredibly, and this blows my mind, this was Alan Rickman's very first screenappearance ever.

(15:56):
He had had a lot of stage experience, particularly in the UK where he'd been a member ofthe Royal Shakespeare Company, but this was his, literally his first screen appearance.
And my God, is there a better debut movie than Die Hard?
Like a better debut role than Hans Gruber, my God.
What can you say?
Alan Rickman is amazing in this movie.

(16:20):
it's it is rare that someone is playing a villain and they are both completely understatedand grounded.
And yet also, you know, playing to the scale of this movie.
he's he's going big.
But in a with such craft that it doesn't feel that it's he's not.

(16:43):
He's never going over the line.
Yeah.
And you can see the roots of Snape from Harry Potter.
I mean, it's essentially the same performance minus long hair and with a beard.
the voice, the slow inflection, everything there, it's, Snape.
All my notes.

(17:03):
don't, I don't refer to him as anything but Snape throughout this whole thing.
And which I think he's one of the absolute best things in the Harry Potter films too.
He's such a standout.
yeah, then it's hard to imagine anybody else in that role.
uh You know, it's amazing.
Here's a little bit for the role of Hans Gruber, other actors that were considered, and Ijust wanted to put this out there just so you can think about the roads not taken.

(17:29):
uh Robert Duvall and Gene Hackman were the top two choices apparently.
Both of them could have been really good.
Obviously you might've changed it.
They wouldn't have probably been European.
can't see either of them doing a German accent.
But Rickman was cast after Joel Silver saw him as the character of Valmont in the Broadwayproduction of Dangerous Liaisons, the play Dangerous Liaisons, a role he originated at the

(17:54):
Royal Shakespeare Company.
here's the thing, Rob, you mentioned, and quite rightly, that this film represents achange for action movie heroes with the vulnerability of Bruce Willis' John McClane.
but it also represents a change in action movie villains.

(18:17):
Like there is this air of suave sophistication that will become a hallmark of many of thecharismatic villains we're gonna encounter in this series.
uh Like honestly, can you remember the villains of the Rambo series aside from maybe BrianDennehy in the first film?
Like 80s action movies, it really wasn't about interesting villains and that changes withDie Hard.

(18:42):
And what I think, Chris, just to throw you little catnip here, Chris, ah what I would sayis that Hans Gruber is a look, the serial numbers have been filed off, but he is closer to
a James Bond villain of that.

(19:02):
Yeah.
absolutely.
Yeah, 100%.
Yeah, the colorful James Bond villains had kind of, you know, like in American actionfilms had kind of become more sort of less distinct personalities in the action movies of
the 80s.

(19:23):
you know, this is definitely a throwback to, you know, some of the more sophisticated, youyou think of
Sean Connery sitting across from Joseph Wiseman in Dr.
No and the back and forth between them.
see that in, you know, here it's on the walkie talkies.
You you see that in this movie.
It's absolutely rewatching the film in advance of the show.

(19:46):
you know, the same thing struck me when you, Rob, you said earlier, it's just the scriptis so tight.
All of the pieces are just so well crafted, like right from the beginning.
The first time we see John McClane, he's flying into Los Angeles.
We learned that he doesn't like to fly.
In fact, our very first image is like him gripping the seat.

(20:07):
And that leads to the conversation with the guy next to him about walking around on thecarpet, making fists with your toes as a way of de-stressing after the flight.
And we learned that he's a cop.
I always thought that was weird that he would have a gun on a plane, but I guess it wasthe eighties.
And if you're a cop, you could do that.
Now it seems hard to imagine.
But like that whole thing with,

(20:27):
walking around making fists with your toes, you know, is a setup for him to essentially bebarefoot through most of the movie.
And you have no idea that it's a setup for anything.
It just feels like character moments.
because it's not just about his, his, uh, unease with flying.

(20:48):
That is just the initial thing they're hanging.
John McClain's complete unease with everything about this trip.
Right?
Yes.
It's his chance to try and repair things with his wife and get back with his family.
But you know, he does feel like a literal fish out of water coming from the

(21:08):
you know, New York to LA, they're playing on that a lot.
But then also just the he is a New York City cop and he's going to feel so uncomfortablein this, you know, world high corporate world that he's about to enter.
And all of that is going to play into things including so you buy that he is going to takehis, uh you know, going to try the carpet thing, which by the way, what I love about that

(21:35):
too,
is that John McClane uh
yeah, says, yes, he says something where it's like, actually worked.
it's, yeah.
Also, I want to point out a weird, a little detail.
The Ted, the giant Teddy bear that he's carrying with him on the plane is the same giantTeddy bear that Jack Ryan has with him on the, the, the plane at the end of the hunt for

(22:03):
an October.
It's literally the same bear.
I believe it belonged to John McTierney.
Man, the residuals that bear must've got.
We cut to the Christmas party at the Nakatomi Corporation, their high-rise headquarters inLos Angeles.
In reality, guys, the building is the Fox Plaza in Century City.
It's still there.

(22:23):
It looks exactly like it did in the movie.
And I mean, I've lived in Los Angeles now for 20 years, and I never get tired of seeing itwhen I'm driving in that part of town.
And you can see it because there's not a whole lot of, you know, like it's kind of alittle on its own.
And...
I just love it.
just love, I love the fact that it's there and just part of the landscape.

(22:44):
Yeah.
Sentry, Sentry city and, uh, the locale of our next movie in Beverly Hills are some of theareas in the city that are the least changed since these movies came out because they were
already very well developed and they, you know, they, they weren't able to be torn downand rebuilt again.
are some differences in century city.

(23:04):
for sure.
And I think it's in the fact that Holly works for a Japanese company is a great example ofthe list late 80s obsession with Japanese businesses taking over the world.
We got a hint of that in the first episode of our Fatal Attraction series, which wasanother late 80s movie that kicked off a trend which largely played out in the 90s.

(23:27):
And in fact, in the novel, it was not the Nakatomi Corporation.
It was an American company, Klaxon Oil.
And some of the plot actually focused on that company's misdeeds in Latin America.
Yeah.
What I find a little interesting about this movie and it is so thrown away is that um whenHans is searching for him amongst the guests, he kind of gives the little, the,

(23:55):
The biography of Joe Takagi.
Yes.
And it's, it's the blink and you'll miss it fact that, Takagi's family was in one of the US camps.
Yeah.
I also like that Hans mispronounces he correctly, he does the correct Spanishpronunciation of San Pedro, but if you live here, you know that locally it is the

(24:19):
mispronounced San Pedro is actually correct.
And I like that little touch.
You're right, you're absolutely right.
Yes, we meet John McClain's estranged wife Holly, who moved to Los Angeles as her careeradvanced and that John, an NYPD detective, did not move with her.
And all of this stuff, like all of this information about these characters comes out insuch natural organic ways in the early scenes of the film.

(24:47):
Like, you know, there's the office scene with Holly and Joe Takagi and Ellis, her horny,cocaine-loving
co-worker, and none of this feels like exposition.
It is exposition.
It is telling you about the characters you're going to meet and their relationships, butit does it so expertly, it doesn't feel like exposition, which is one of the great magic

(25:10):
tricks of cinema is making things you need to know feel just casual things that comeacross your transom as opposed to we're planting this for later.
And Die Hard is a master class of how to set up things without feeling like you're settingup things.
And this is one of those things that even if you write it, it requires every other part tobe firing on all cylinders, right?

(25:35):
You need the performances, you need the direction.
Um, you know, the camera work, the editing, the score, all of it has to combine because ifyou, and we'll get there, we're going to have a similar opening, uh, thought in our next
film.
It doesn't work quite as well.
really at the end of the day, all I can tell you

(25:57):
You can't go to a technical point on this.
It's just one of them was executed fantastically and one of them less so, and it feelsclunkier, but it's not, they're doing, they're trying to do the same things.
And it really, the, you know, it's just be excellent at it, execute it at the high level.
Absolutely.
Little touches like we're in Holly's office and there's the photo, the family photo on herdesk.

(26:24):
she hears from her secretary that John didn't call before the flight.
She hopes he made the flight.
And she gets frustrated because clearly John is a person who has made Holly frustrated atvarious times.
And she puts the family photo on the desk face down where it stays through most of themovie.
And it's just, is an action of someone frustrated with another person, but it's alsosetting up something that will be an important point later in the movie, both preserving

(26:55):
McClain's identity or Holly's identity, as well as revealing it to Hans later in themovie.
It's, it is, is a fantastic little bit of expositional business that doesn't feel.
And that is more highly visual.
In that same beginning area of the movie for Holly, she also has a phone call with Paulinaat her house.

(27:17):
Yes.
she tells Paulina asks, you know, about certain things in the home and Holly does tell herto make up the guest room.
Yeah.
And that's all that's said.
And we see Paulina kind of half smile about this, right?
And this, you know, in two separate little bits, you get Holly being pulled in bothdirections, right?
about how she feels about her husband.

(27:38):
Absolutely, absolutely.
And I might as well do it here because you guys knew I was going to bring this up and itmust be brought up.
Bonnie Bedelia's hair in this movie is absolutely incredible.
Oh my goodness.
There it is.
We get also get some exposition in the limo that is said to pick up John at the airport.

(28:00):
We have the limo driver, Argyle, who is maybe the great unsung hero of Die Hard.
And there is some great stuff between him and McClane.
So, your lady live out here?
About the past six months.
Meaning you still live in New York?
You always ask me many questions, Argonne.

(28:21):
Sorry, man.
I used to drive a cab and people would expect a little chit chat.
So you divorced?
Just drive the car, man.
Hey, come on.
You divorced?
You separated?
She beat you up?
oh
She had a good job, turned into a great career.
That means she had to move here.

(28:43):
You're very fast, Argyle.
So why didn't you come?
Well, why didn't you come with her, man?
What's up?
Because I'm a New York cop.
I a six month backlog in New York scumbags I'm still trying to put behind bars.
I can't just pick up and go that easy.
In other words, you thought she wasn't going to make it out here and she'd come crawlingup back to you.

(29:06):
So why bother to pack, right?
Like I said, you're very fast, Argonne.
Again, this is a master class in effortless exposition.
but in the conversation that these guys have and setting up what John's feeling about thisis, what's at stake, all of that is just done and it feels so organic.

(29:29):
And most importantly, introduced at least little Robbie to the magic.
Actually, no, didn't introduce me.
I think it had come out a couple of years before, but Christmas and Hollis, man, it'samazing.
Yeah, it is.
It absolutely is.
The other thing that this movie does, like I have never seen another movie capture thelook and feel of late afternoon in Los Angeles, as well as the early scenes of Die Hard.

(30:00):
Like it is really like when the sun's kind of going down, it's just like, that is likewhen I first moved out here, I'm like, and I found my skin.
was like, it'd be like kind of late afternoon on the West side.
Like, oh, it really feels like Die Hard.
Like, they really caught that right on the money.
The cinematographer, by the way, was Jan de Bont, who after lensing movies like Die Hardand The Hunt for October and Black Rain and Basic Instinct would move into directing and

(30:28):
would helm, we will talk about later in this series, 1994's Speed.
I also want to mention
the incredible score for this movie from Michael Kamen, who had previously written themusic for another late 80s action hit, Lethal Weapon, the previous year.
And the music in Die Hard is absolutely propulsive in terms of just the pace, you know,helping move this pace.

(30:56):
Because this movie is a long movie.
It's a two hours and 12 minutes, but it moves like absolute lightning.
It's so well paced.
One of the things I most love about the score is that the reuse and remixing of that linefrom Ode Joy, like essentially the dark version of that is the Emperor's March for Hans

(31:21):
and crew ah in this movie and the cues, but the thing is, I mean, the number and look, Iguess when I first saw this, was quite young or whatever and not always cognizant of these
things, but
You wouldn't necessarily know it the way that it's been repurposed unless you're listeningfor it.
It doesn't slap you in the face.
Um, and obviously there's more to the score than just that, but it's such a, it's sowonderful that that was kind of a motif that he picked up and threw in there.

(31:49):
It is, it is.
you know, with the holiday theme and all, like it just, I mean, guys, I, I, I've beenworking, I've been working on notes for diehard for what feels like a while now getting
ready for this episode.
And I've had owed to joy in my head the whole time continually, although I will admit inmy head it is Camilla and the chickens from the Muppet show doing owed to joy.

(32:14):
don't know why my demented head has.
has turned it into that, all I hear is, bawk bawk bawk bawk bawk bawk bawk bawk.
Like it's just like, it's, I eventually got to make it stop guys, cause it's driving me alittle, by a baddie.
Just think of hair, Chris.
It'll go away.
John McClane arrives at Nakatomi Plaza and thanks to the futuristic touchscreentechnology, he learns that Holly is using her maiden name of Gennaro.

(32:42):
And I say futuristic, guys, I'm not being sarcastic.
Like, touchscreens were novel in 1988 and they have become absolutely integral in ourlives.
It's one of those things where it's like, oh, they really were ahead of the curve on whereit's coming.
He goes up to the party and he meets Holly's coworkers.
And again, we get a little bit more of that fish out of water.

(33:05):
There's a great little moment where John McClane has handed a glass of champagne and hetastes it.
And it tastes odd to him.
He puts it down.
It's just this kind of odd reaction to the champagne.
I don't know if he's not used to it or if it's like, oh, this is some kind of weirdCalifornia champagne.

(33:26):
I don't know.
uh It's just like, it's a great little character moment of he is not comfortable in this.
world.
as long as we're talking about drinks at this party, uh slightly earlier, because I thinkit is before John shows up when Ellis is kind of mildly hitting on Holly.
Yes.
He says he wants, you know, he wants to bring her wine and a nice fine aged brie.

(33:49):
And in 1988, that was totally a yuppie signifier bad guy kind of a thing.
And now it's just shit you get at Trader Joe's.
It's like the world has moved on.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Another little detail that's set up early, when John meets Joe Takagi, Takagi mentionsthat Holly went to the vault.

(34:12):
So even early on, there's an early mention of a vault.
You don't connect that until later, but it's there.
And I love Joe Takagi.
He's such an affable guy.
Like they made him so likeable and I mean, honestly, a lot of the characters in this movieare really likeable.
Like even Ellis, even though he's doing like that corporate 80s sleazebag, the thing aboutEllis is he's not a bad guy.

(34:41):
He's just kind of weak.
Like it's a really interesting line to walk.
He's a little he's it's more annoying than uh and misguided.
Right.
Right.
Is he the Shelley?
But like, in the famous scene later, which we'll get to, what's interesting about thatscene is it just trying to save himself.

(35:06):
He's trying to save everybody, but he's just not the guy.
Yeah, he's wrong about how to go about it.
And he's wrong about what kind of guy Hans is because he thinks of Hans as a businessman.
And and that is not it.
Fun fact, Hart Bochner's father, Lloyd Bochner, was also an actor and played a major rolein the 1968 film of The Detective with Frank Sinatra.

(35:33):
So father and son each played key roles in the two Roderick Thorpe movie adaptations.
I just really like that.
Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy.
Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln.
So then it's about 14 minutes into the movie where we get our first glimpse of the film'santagonist.
Although we don't even know that yet, we just see the Pacific Courier truck headed towardsthe building.

(35:57):
Like this movie is a movie that really takes its time telling you what kind of movie itis.
It's not like we start with Hans and company preparing to take over the building.
You put in the time with the other characters first.
I also want to point out when Yandemant was directing Speed, which was another 20thcentury Fox film, he made sure to put the Pacific Courier truck in that movie as well.

(36:24):
There's also an Atlantic Courier truck in the New York set Die Hard with a Vengeance.
So it's all part of the Pacific Atlantic Courier shared universe.
So John and Holly talk about as he's washing up in her private bathroom and there's acouple of things here.

(36:44):
First,
John McClane has taken off his shirt and he has his tank top undershirt that he'll wearfor most of the movie.
And what I find interesting about this is that becomes in a sense, John McClane's uniform,like not literally, but like in the sense of that is the image that people have of him.

(37:07):
And it often happens with like characters who are in recurring roles.
Think of James Bond in the tuxedo.
James Bond doesn't wear a tuxedo in every Bond movie, but that is sort of the image peoplehave.
And so much so that when, although he does not wear that in the second film, which is setin a much colder climate, the third film made a point to put him back in the tank top.

(37:30):
even though it wasn't motivated in the same way as it is in this first one.
What I also love about this spot, you know, when he's kind of arguing with Holly and shegets called out to deal with something at the party or whatever, and he's left there.
So a lot of movies will have a character in a room away from the action when something badhappens in that way they're on the outside and can, you know, do action stuff.

(37:56):
know?
But what I love about this one is, how motivated it is and what a negative motivation is.
He's waiting to finish having an argument with his wife because they were, it was, and sothey left not on great terms and it's their, their mid fight.
And so his, he's already queued up for a fight and he's going to get a much different one.

(38:17):
And here's the thing is like, you know, it looks at the beginning of that scene, it lookslike things might be going well for John and Holly, and then he brings up the issue of
Holly's last name.
And you can just feel the conversation going bad.
Like in my head, I'm like, don't do it, John, don't don't don't do it.

(38:40):
And as soon as she leaves, he knows he fucked up.
Like he even said, you know, real mature, John, real great.
Who knows what would have happened when, you know, if, if, if Hans and company had notintervened, what would have happened when she came back into the office, which eventually
she would have.
But Hans and his crew do arrive at the building and they begin their takeover withabsolutely precise efficiency.

(39:06):
Like Carl and Theo, they go to the main entrance.
They take out the security guard.
I love the contrast between the talkative Theo.
and the silent Carl.
One detail, as the main group exits the Pacific Courier van, if you look close, you'llnotice there is no ambulance inside that van.
And that is because when they shot that, they had not yet figured out script-wise whattheir exit strategy was going to be.

(39:33):
It's one of those
It's one of those things, like it wasn't until later in production that they figured out,they're going to, they would have gotten out in, part of the, an ambulance as part of the,
the chaos of things, but it's clearly not there.
Here's the thing.
It's a flaw, but I don't care.
Like Mo Green's ADR, like is the Mo Green obvious ADR in the Godfather?

(39:59):
I talked to Barzini.
The movie's so great, things like that don't bother me.
by the way, originally Hans and company were gonna be dressed in quasi military uniforms,but Alan Rickman thought he wouldn't dress that, his character wouldn't dress that way
because he was management.
So instead they put them all in sort of well tailored, well styled, you know, of theeighties, which means well styled period, know, outfits.

(40:26):
And it draws a great contrast.
to the blue collar John McClane.
Like there is an element in this movie that is you see throughout eighties movies of, I'llsay it, the snobs versus the slobs.
mean, this is not exactly, it's not Caddyshack here, but the idea of the bad guys arewealthy and well-heeled and sophisticated and the good guys are more average Joes, replete

(40:54):
throughout eighties cinema.
Yeah.
And this one also combines that form of populism with the other form of populism at thattime.
This is the end of the Reagan era.
Although, you know, some might say that that ball has never stopped rolling here, but withthe, uh, a very, very common, uh, thing in many movies during that decade was, you know,

(41:18):
here, the LAPD and then the FBI, all the government agencies are
super incompetent and cannot do anything right.
And in fact, always make things worse, which is, you you combine those in and you, get,uh, you get some, uh, a version of populism that I don't even know that anyone was
conscious about at the time.
It's just that stuff was in the zeitgeist.

(41:38):
Absolutely.
And not just the authority figures.
Authority figures in this movie are completely, as you said, completely ineffectual andoften hinder the efforts, but also the press.
We've talked about that in many, many movies of this era.
The press is, you know, makes everything worse.

(42:00):
Yeah.
I mean, you don't cast William Atherton in a role that you want people to like.
It's like his trifecta of 80s a-holes with Ghostbusters and real genius and diehard.
He was so good at playing.
And oddly enough for me, his pinnacle is real genius that.

(42:22):
He's like the main antagonist of real genius.
He's amazing and he gets to play the smarmy charming stuff first and then slowly getrevealed to be a William Atherton character.
Yes, absolutely.
love, again, this movie has so many great little character moments for everybody.

(42:42):
Like I love the moment when Carl, like as they're doing their takeover of the building, hecomes down and cuts the phone lines with a chainsaw.
And there's the other guy who's trying to do whatever he's trying to do.
And he clearly has to finish before Carl makes his cut.
like, you can see him sort of panicking because Carl, you know, give a shit.
and he's like relieved when he finishes just in time.

(43:06):
like the movie is just full of these wonderful little character.
And that moment is played with no dialogue.
You get it all just from the characters faces.
The actors do a great job.
Meanwhile, John is upstairs walking around barefoot making fists with his toes when theparty outside is taken hostage.
He's able to grab his gun and escape up a staircase, but without his shoes, which will beanother thing that McClain has to contend with.

(43:31):
And it's just like the setup on this movie is so perfectly calibrated because John McClainisn't a Rambo type as we've been talking about, but he's a cop.
So he has just enough special knowledge.
to be able to fight back a bit against these supposed terrorists.
And what I love in addition to the first, you know, the first half of this movie, he'strying to get help any which way he can.

(43:58):
what I, what I like is that to have someone with the background of they are a policeofficer.
think that he's being very professional because look, I am not a cop, but I have known afew in my day.
And I, if you are in a messed up situation.
professionally, you call for backup.
And that's what he is trying to do for the first hour, which a lot of times I think inother movies it's, they have some sort of law enforcement or military background.

(44:26):
And then that just means, oh, I am going to decide to do everything myself no matter what.
Yeah, I really appreciate the fact that he doesn't just immediately set his own plan intomotion.
It's similar to Burton in Big Trouble in Little China.
for sure.
He's not incapable.
He is fallible, but he's learning as the movie goes on, which is very different.

(44:52):
Like you mentioned earlier, Chris, that there was talk of Rambo in an office building orwhatever.
Rambo never had a moment of
self doubt.
Rambo never had a moment of, don't know what to do here.
He just clicked into motion and every one of those movies, he immediately has an actionplan that that gets set up.

(45:12):
So I really appreciate that here.
And I think that that helps the audiences bond with the character in a huge way becauseMcClain in a way is relatable because he's kind of stumbling around and feeling his way
out.
And he makes a lot of pretty
bad decisions throughout the movie too.
It's not like everything he does is smart.

(45:35):
mean, even to his, there's a lot of self-talk very loud as he's first encountering allthis stuff.
how he talks to himself and then throughout this movie.
It's great.
Well, it saves the audience a narrator, right?
You're like a voiceover of him looking back on the day or whatever you might have happenin some other hands.
But him doing that, I mean, that's ultimately would be putting him at risk.

(45:57):
And so it adds tension, even though it's not a tense moment necessarily, because theaudience is like, well, wait a minute, shut up.
And then he starts smoking at a point to which, you know, that's going to that emanatesthat goes everywhere.
in the environment.
So people are going to be able to track him that way.
So he's not just in here kicking ass, which I think in a way has become the reputation ofthe film and of his character.

(46:24):
But I appreciate that that's not the case.
It's you know, we will we will talk about some of the diehard sequels later.
but I and I like some of those movies.
None of them are as good as the first film.
But I also feel like that reputation of John McClane as this sort of kickass action hero,a lot of that comes from the subsequent movies.

(46:46):
If they had only made one diehard, if it had just been this movie, I don't know if itnecessarily would have been the character would have that reputation.
I love the scene where Alan Rickman, Rob, you mentioned it earlier, where Alan Rickmansort of introduces himself.
He's looking for Joe Takagi, gives that little bio.

(47:06):
And God, Alan Rickman is absolutely magnetic in this movie.
Once he finds Takagi, they go up in the elevator to the next floor and they have thatexchange.

(47:31):
Nice suit.
John Phillips, London.
I have to myself.
The rumor has it Arafat buys his death.
By the way, I want to mention John Phillips, fictional tailor.
That is not a real, a real brand.
They go into the boardroom with all of the scale models of like Nakatomi projects,including Nakatomi Plaza.

(47:57):
Gruber makes a special note of that bridge that Takagi mentions in Indonesia.
I have to point out the bridge because I didn't ever think about this.
until like this viewing.
But that bridge is so stupid.
It's like a highway bridge with several lanes going in each direction and the middle, theykind of like bend outward and there's a park in between.

(48:21):
It looks great, but who's going to a park with highways running on either side with ariver underneath?
Like how do you get there?
Do you just walk along the highway?
Where do you park?
Like there's nowhere to park.
If they built that bridge, would eventually, it would just be like, it's that bridge withlike that park wouldn't be used.

(48:41):
I'm telling you.
I never thought of it until this, this viewing that park, that bridge is so stupid.
Just enjoy the giant models.
They are great.
I do love giant models.
But this is the scene where it is revealed that the group are not in fact terrorists, butactually thieves who intend to steal the $640 million in negotiable bearer bonds that are

(49:09):
in the building's vault.
And we have this, one of the best scenes early in the movie is when McClain sneaks intothe boardroom as Gruber is trying to convince Takagi to give him the code to the computer,
which is the first of seven locks on the vault.
I will count to three.
There will not be a four.
And I'm watching this scene and there's something so sinister about the way Gruber takesthe silencer off the pistol.

(49:37):
It's like,
It's really unsettling when he does that and Takagi doesn't give him the information heprobably should have and Gruber, you know, shoots him in the head.
it's like, wow.
mean, early on this movie spent time setting up the character of Takagi.
You get a little bio of him to kill him very quickly and brutally.

(50:01):
it shows instantly that these people are serious.
And the brain splatter on that window.
yeah, this movie has the best squibs.
Like later when he shoots the guy from under the table and like it hits him all in thelegs and chest.
Like this movie has the best squibs I've ever seen in any movie, period.

(50:21):
Like it's amazing.
I might, there might be one that I would put higher than this.
Right.
is, mean, you're right.
They are kind of apples and oranges because one is attempting realism and the other isattempting Gonzo.
Nope.
No, that is absolutely fair.

(50:42):
It is.
They are going to share the podium for best squibs.
There's no question.
You mentioned the silencer, Hans taking that off and what I love and it's directlycommented on by any character, although they do, think, cut away to show you he wants, if
he has to fire that gun, he wants all of the hostages to hear it.
Yes.

(51:02):
That is the purpose of doing that.
And I think it does play down below.
I believe that they cut to them.
Yeah, you hear Holly and the hostages hear it.
Yes, for sure.
Um, so they do show it, but they don't have any character, including Hans, you know,specifically state it.
And it's just one of those, you know, nice touches, uh, where you can show without tellingnecessarily, although it's, it's not exactly subtle, but it, but it works great.

(51:31):
Absolutely.
This scene, it's interesting, this scene had to be reconceived a little bit as originallywritten.
Once they decided, and this was fairly late in production, that McClain and Gruber weregonna meet prior to the climax.
So they had to stage the scene so that McClain would not see Gruber's face.

(51:52):
That scene was, that we'll talk about in a little bit, was written at the behest of JoelSilver, who wanted them to meet earlier, and Steven D'Souza had to figure out.
a way to do that and the way it's done is fantastic.
We'll get to that in a short while.
We mentioned him talking to himself and I love what he, like after the Takagi thing, he'slike, why didn't you stop him, John?

(52:17):
Because then you'd be dead too, asshole.
that line is such a departure from the action films of the time.
It's like, he's like, I should have done something, but no.
m
they would have killed you at that point.
And it helps build John McClane as being a smart hero.
Yeah.
Like calling for help is smart.

(52:37):
Not rushing in to just get killed is smart, but they're hard moves for him to make becausethey are defensive moves, but it sets us up for when he is forced to go on the offense and
is also still smart.
Absolutely.
Yes.
Yes, absolutely.
So like, yeah, he spends the first part of the week trying to alert the authority.
He pulls the fire alarm, which doesn't work because they call and cancel the alarm.

(53:01):
But it does bring one of the terrorists up to the floor.
think he's on the 32nd floor, which is unfinished.
And it brings one of the terrorists up there to look for, hey, a fire alarm went up, wentoff up there.
I love when he puts the gun to Tony's head and says, it's the police.
Like there's something so satisfying about that.

(53:22):
It's the police.
The guard that's sent up there, by the way, is Jeffrey Dorn.
He looks just like a Viet does.
At least the guy who played Jeffrey Dahmer in that Netflix series.
I was like, Whoa.
This leads to that knockdown drag out fight with Tony.
And this fight is short and brutal.
What I love about it is McLean wins it almost accidentally.

(53:47):
Like they go careening down the stairs and Tony breaks his neck.
But like it's not that John out fought this guy necessarily.
He will get a chance to do that later.
It's how much stuff in a situation like this is just by chance.
And also by chance, the fact that the one
Terrorist he kills has small feet and his shoes don't fit on McClain.

(54:09):
It's great.
And what he doesn't know of course is that Tony was the brother of Alexander Gudinoff'sCarl, who is now to quote Holly's secretary, really pissed.
And you know that Carl's a badass?
You know how you know that Carl's a badass?
Because he has his own special machine gun that he has to put together.

(54:29):
It's interesting to consider.
what this movie might have been like if it had been made immediately after the novel waspublished in 1979.
Like whether it starred, you know, Frank Sinatra or not.
Like what I think is super interesting, we talk about how this movie is a change in 80saction films, but I think as a departure from 80s action films, but the flip side of that

(55:01):
is that
I don't think Die Hard could have been what it turned out to be if movies like Rambo andCommando hadn't come first.
Like, if this had been made in like the 70s or very early 80s, it probably would have feltmore along the lines of The Taking of Pelham 123, which is a terrific movie, but it's a
different kind of movie than Die Hard.

(55:23):
in the 70s you had a lot of anti-heroes and so it probably would have felt more refreshingto just make this a hero.
I don't think it would have been as qualitatively as good of a movie.
I probably would have enjoyed the hell out of the Hal Needham Burt Reynolds version.
Right.
It would have happened in 1979 to 80.
Oh yeah.

(55:44):
You know, but that would not have been this movie at all.
Yeah, it's like the action genre needed to undergo the evolution that it went in the 80sfor a movie like Die Hard to exist.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
So now that McLean has a radio, he goes up to the roof to contact the police, which ofcourse the bad guys over here, I absolutely love the whole back and forth with the police

(56:10):
operator.
It's fantastic.
Like he can't get them to believe him.
Like it's like, I have to report this is an FCC violation.
yes, I get so like.
The fact that they won't believe him, again, what you're saying, the authorities are neverhelpful, they're always a hindrance, but at the same time, who would believe him if some

(56:30):
guy calling off, know, crank call?
It all makes sense from multiple points of view.
Yeah, because while the authorities are never a help and usually hurt, it's oftenportrayed as, for the most part, it's the system at work.
Right.
The rare exception would be, I think, the whatever, deputy chief of police of the LAPD.

(56:54):
Dwayne.
Yeah, it is more about that character's stubbornness or whatever.
But everywhere else, it is the reasonable system at work and failing.
Yeah, which is part of building Hans up.
Not specifically this walkie moment, but that Hans is counting on the rigidity of thesystem and is going to exploit that it is literally.

(57:19):
Yeah.
And it's not until they, like the operator hears gunfire that they even think of sendingsomeone.
And who is that someone?
Guys, it is Sergeant Al Powell, the Twinkie-loving, you know, former beat cop who was juston his way home and gets, you know, gets roped into this.

(57:41):
And man, Reginald Vel Johnson is just, he's so good as the affable cop.
It's hard to think of him as anything else because like he played a cop as on FamilyMatters.
I'm like this guy, this guy feels like a real cop.
Like that's, that's,
And just such a great rapport with Bruce Willis in this movie.
I don't know, you know, did they even shoot most of their scenes with each other on set?

(58:06):
I'm going to guess no.
Yeah.
So the fact that it comes across as well as it does when you're cutting from, you know,walkie to walkie, it's, it's pretty amazing.
It is.
And while Paul is driving up to the building, McClane is engaged in a chase and firefighton the roof.
am always, one of the points of this movie that always makes me anxious is when he has togo through that giant fan near the, like it just inside the roof and it's just like, oh

(58:34):
man.
And then with the bad guys on his heels, McClane finds himself trapped in the air shaft.
A lot of this movie is the cat and mouse through the building.
And here's the thing.
Again, what we talked about before, a lot of the times John McClane survives because ofluck.
Like they know he's in the air ducts.
They know he's crawling through the air ducts.
We get that iconic line, come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs.

(58:58):
He's amusing himself as he kind of goes along.
Like he kind of has that rye line, but it's also a mistake because, you know, they see thelighter go out and they know he's in the air ducts.
Carl shoots all through the air ducts and it's just by chance that they don't hit him.
so much of this movie is just he gets lucky.

(59:19):
Some key moments.
AC
And you could, you lock him in the elevator shaft, the elevators are locked off, he'll beneutralized and Carl's, but you know, his brother's dead.
I don't want neutral, I want dead.

(59:42):
It's my Carl.
Powell is unaware of all of this happening.
Like there's a, he encounters two other terrorists in the boardroom.
We have that great scene where he's crawling underneath the boardroom table and he shootsthe guy through the table.
Powell is about to leave.
Like he goes into the front, you know.
the front desk area and he's like, everything seems quiet.

(01:00:02):
uh By the way, the one terrorist who is like the fake security guard who's watching thefootball on television looks like a cross between Huey Lewis and John Cena.
It is amazing how much like Dark Huey Lewis he looks.
It's the evil doppelganger.
Right.
Yes.
uh Yeah, you know, how everything looks fine.

(01:00:23):
He's like, forget about this.
This is nothing.
And then as he's getting ready to drive off in a last desperate gambit to contact theauthorities, McClain throws one of the terrorist bodies out the window and onto the car.
And then one of the terrorists shoots the car.
Like it's a curious thing, like that move.

(01:00:44):
I remember when I first saw this movie, I thought McClain was shooting at the car, but I'mlike, that doesn't make any sense.
It's one of the terrorists, I guess once the body was out there, well, I guess they'll tryto take out the cop, seeing that he doesn't call for help, which of course he does.
This marks a fundamental shift in the movie as the authorities and the press become awareof the situation at Nakatomi Plaza.

(01:01:06):
And we just get this succession of a-holes, you know, representing various authorityfigures.
The first is Dick Thornburg of KFLW News who hears Powell's emergency call over the radioand jumps on the story.
Basically, William Atherton is playing the same role that Giancarlo Predi played in thelast show.

(01:01:27):
Like, I think they both say, tell me you got that at some point.
And then McLean starts communicating with Hans by walkie talkie, taunting him.
trying to bait him.
This is another thing that's going to be a hallmark of the films in the series.
We'll see it in the second film, the hero and the villain communicating by radio ortelephone.

(01:01:50):
And it allows them to interact before actually meeting face to face.
And of course, again, these moments are so well written and die hard.
The way the European Gruber looks down on the American McClain, it's fantastic.
And I will, cause this is the moment at which we get the famous uh Yippee-Ki-Aimotherfucker.

(01:02:11):
Yes.
Which I wanted to just bring up briefly because it, while it is in many ways justridiculous fun, it also just feels like a little bit of weird poetry, right?
Yeah.
Because in those four words, if you can, know, Yippee-Ki-Ai mother, yeah.

(01:02:33):
Yeah.
words.
You're bridging the myth of the American hero from the wild west to the modern era in fourfucking words.
It's fantastic.
Absolutely.
Fun fact, they debated whether it should be Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker, orYippee-tie-yay-yay, motherfucker.
they chose correctly.

(01:02:55):
Can you imagine?
Oh, yeah.
And McClane, this is a point where McClane realizes one of the guys he killed in theboardroom has the bag with the detonators in it, although he doesn't know how important
that bag is going to be.
I love the scene where Holly goes to Hans with the requests for the hostages, like bothBonnie Bedelia and Raoul Micken are fantastic.

(01:03:20):
She is absolutely made of steel in this scene, and it gives that little, there's a littleglance to the picture behind the desk reminding the audiences there.
Again.
set up without feeling like it's set up is the greatest sleight of hand in movies.
One thing that bothers me is the character played by Paul Gleeson, Dwayne, as the policechief.

(01:03:44):
Yes.
When he shows up, it, man, I hate this trope of the authority figure who just blindlydisregards what they're being told.
Yeah.
Because if you're a police chief, I'm not, we know plenty of stories of crooked cops andwhatever else, but.

(01:04:05):
you would at least be listening to one of your men in that scenario.
And I understand that this is not some high level police officer, Powell, but at the sametime, man, it is so frustrating because it's just not real that someone in that position
would walk up and do that.

(01:04:26):
then you talked about the writing and the writing is generally great in this film, exceptin this interaction.
It just drove me crazy between Powell and Depp.
Chief Dwayne T.
Robinson.
Yeah, this is the movie's second major asshole.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Where he's, he's disregarding what he's being told by Al by a Powell.

(01:04:49):
Yeah.
And Powell doesn't just give him the information like, no, hear me out here.
He kind of talks around it, which is another really annoying trope in a lot of movies andTV shows, especially in horror.
It's so present where someone will say, I saw a guy in the woods.
We've got to get out of here.
And someone goes, no, we're going to go in the woods.

(01:05:10):
they go, right.
man, like they, but what they could say is he had a chainsaw, he was covered in blood,three people are missing and it is very real and absolutely happening.
But in this, it's just very annoying how that happens.
And the only little sliver of sensibility is when Powell says, well, what about the bodyout the window?

(01:05:30):
And then.
some stockbroker got depressed.
Yeah, maybe some stockbroker got depressed.
okay, it was just coincidence to you.
Yeah, there's evidence all around that something really fucked up is happening in there.
And any cop would be like, OK, at the very least, we need to figure this out.
Yeah, that part of this movie, I think, is really poorly written.

(01:05:54):
The idea that this guy is so disbelieving and then blindly sends the guys in and all thatstuff.
That kind of thing drives me crazy.
It fits into it.
It's part of something that generally bothers me in in movies or TV shows.
The character who exists for no other reason than to be wrong.
we need someone to say the wrong thing.

(01:06:16):
Right.
So that our hero or whatever can say the right thing.
And literally all they do is is be wrong.
And and Robinson is kind of that because everything he says is wrong.
I give it a little bit of a pass because Paul Gleason is so good, like I enjoy, like Ijust kind of enjoy him anyway.

(01:06:37):
But like, I think that's 100 % right.
Like it's just, like, oh, he's just a little too obtuse about things that he shouldn't beobtuse about.
Yeah.
I don't disagree, but you know, if recent history has taught me anything, it's that peoplecan totally ignore all sorts of data points around them.
Right.
Right.
But I also, for me, I, also actually works because up to this point, we have had our, asensible hero trying to avoid conflict as much as possible and call for help.

(01:07:10):
And that there's probably a certain amount of the audiences is, you know, especially atthis time it was like,
just go in there, storm the castle and get these motherfuckers.
And so you have that happen and you are shown, well, and look, that is a legitimatepossible form of action.
They've got swap trucks and all this kinds of stuff, right?

(01:07:33):
So you've had one character choosing different action and then another character choosingaction action.
And they do storm in blindly because they think they can because they have force andthey...
They don't know what they're up against.
And, and the FBI, when they come in, have a completely different playbook from, from theLAPD guys.
And so, which is also incorrect.

(01:07:55):
Right.
And for me, it's just kind of the iterations on there are way, you know, there aredifferent ways of attacking this problem.
And the guy on the ground closest to the problem is the one who knows what to do.
Yeah.
Oh, it's interesting because we get to that scene with a squat try and go in the buildingand it's so like, it resonated with me even more now because you have these sort of like

(01:08:21):
macho squat guys, you know, that are kind of those phony macho guys that John McClane isit like the number two guy behind Robinson is like, begin your reconnoiter and he's full
of like this wannabe military bravado that
Honestly, you see a lot of in America right now.
Yeah.
Honestly, it may be more so now than even then.

(01:08:43):
Like it's just this, these people who think they're, you know, they're bad asses because,you know, they, don't know.
I don't know why it's just because they do.
of course Gruber and his men are well prepared for this assault and we have thisincredible action sequence where the, the, they repel the attackers.
Well, first with the machine guns, then they, the LAPD has that tank, which

(01:09:06):
Fun fact, the LAPD at the time in 1988 didn't have a tank.
Now we've undergone the militarization of the police in America, but at the time theproduction had to create that tank.
They couldn't borrow it from the cops.
But Hans and his men, got rocket launchers.
And I love the sequence when the guys are putting the rocket launcher in a position.

(01:09:28):
You have the Michael Kamen score there.
It is just, it's absolutely propulsive.
And it's funny because I know they're the bad guys.
but there's an element of sort of competency porn in this sequence.
Like there's something oddly thrilling watching people be very good at what they're doing,even if they're the bad guys.

(01:09:48):
It's uh the classic heist stuff, but they are the pure antagonists in this.
But there is that joy of like an Ocean's Eleven or Thomas Crown Affair, take your pick.
Absolutely.
You're seeing how well their plan was.
The big difference for this one is, except for one tiny tease about the seventh lock,we're never given the tee up about what to expect from their plan.

(01:10:15):
And that's part of the fun too.
We don't have the briefing sequence that most heifers movies have, you know, like at theend of act one to be like, here's what we're going to do.
And this is of course where McLean decides to take more direct action.
You know, he, he's got the plastic explosives.
He ties it to the chair with some detonators, throws it down the elevator shaft, blowingup the two guys with the rocket launchers and blowing out most of the front of the

(01:10:40):
building.
It's going to need a paint job and a shitload of screen doors is one of my favorite linesin this movie that.
I will occasionally quote.
And this is where Ellis, you know, coked up and scared, decides to take matters into hisown hands with terrorists like Hart Bochner.
Oh man, is he really amazing in this scene?

(01:11:01):
I figure you're here to negotiate.
Am I right?
You're amazing.
You figured this all out already.
business is business.
You use a gun, I use a fountain pen.
What's the difference?
Let's put it in my terms.
You're here on a hostel takeover, you grab us for some green mail, but you didn't expectsome poison pill was gonna be running around in the building.
Am I right?

(01:11:22):
Hans?
Booby?
I'm your white knight.
I must have missed 60 minutes.
What are you saying?
The guy upstairs is fucking things up, huh?
I can give him to you.

(01:11:44):
Hans.
Bubby.
I'm your white knight.
Might be one of the best line readings of 80s cinema.
Funny, John McTiernan originally envisioned Ellis as a suave, capable Cary Grant type, whoin the novel was actually having an affair with the protagonist, Jo Leiland's daughter.

(01:12:07):
It was Hart Bachner.
came up with the idea that Ellis was driven by cocaine and insecurity.
Which is just so fantastic.
It makes that character pop in a way that he wouldn't have otherwise.
Yeah.
And what I said before is like, think Ellis is going to sell McLean out and he reallydoesn't.

(01:12:28):
Like he could have told them that Holly was John's wife.
He could have done much more serious damage, but it was that he really thinks he couldtalk his way out of
Yeah, he's still under that mistaken belief that this is a hostage situation.
Right.
And these guys are going to want to trade the hostages for whatever they really want.
And he does not realize that these bad guys, their plan does not hinge on anyone making itout alive except themselves.

(01:12:55):
Right.
I love the detail of they bring him a can of Coca-Cola.
in the cut, like clearly he asked them for Coke and that's what they brought him.
I love that detail.
I did not realize that when I was younger.
And now it's like, off screen he clearly asked for some Coke and they brought him aCoca-Cola.
But you know, of course there's nothing McLean can do to save him.

(01:13:17):
He's not going to give up the detonators.
you know, Ellis goes, uh Ellis goes down.
This is where Hans makes his demands to release the comrades in arms imprisoned around theworld and it's all bullshit.
I absolutely love Asian Dawn.
Karl said, Asian Dawn movement?
I read about them in Time Magazine.

(01:13:38):
It's so great.
It's also interesting that Die Hard as a movie makes a choice to be decidedlynon-political.
In the novel, Roderick Thorpe's novel, the Klaxon Oil Company is involved in illegalactivities in South America, dealings that Joe Leland's daughter is directly involved in.
Here, if the Nakatomi Corporation is up to shady shit, it's never even hinted at.

(01:14:04):
Yeah.
What matters is that have that money.
Those VARIBONS.
And we get some satire on the way media covers events like this, which feels genuinelyahead of its time considering this movie was made before the 24-hour cable news network
concept really took off in the 90s.
There's the whole bit with the expert who wrote the book, Hostage Terrorist, TerroristHostage, a study in duality.

(01:14:30):
I want to mention that the female anchor
In the studio, Gail Wallins, she's played by actress Mary Ellen Traynor, who is also inThe Goonies.
She was the police psychiatrist in the Lethal Weapons series.
She also played the same character in the 1991 film Ricochet, starring Denzel Washington,another film produced by Joel Silver.

(01:14:52):
What?
That's crazy.
So the Die Hard series, Ricochet, and the Speed films could all be part of the same shareduniverse.
and hunt for red October and hunt for
because the bear like that the McTiernan bear the the FBI guys show up next again they aresort of they're the final authority assholes to show up special agent Johnson and special

(01:15:16):
agent Johnson played by Robert Davi and Grand Al Bush respectively not related uh andthese guys are such jerks you actually feel a little bit bad for Dwayne Robinson like when
we commandeer your men we'll try and let you know
which is a great little, little, little character reversals that happened in this movie.
Yeah.
That this movie bothers to do it with uh tertiary characters.

(01:15:40):
So that it makes those scenes when you're away more interesting because you see the powerdynamic shift and you know changes are coming.
Yeah.
And it's, it just makes it more interesting and fun.
Speaking of fun scenes, we have the scene where McClane catches Gruber checking theexplosives that will brawl up the roof and Gruber fakes the American accent, playing as

(01:16:04):
like a scared employee who got lost.
And it's such a great scene.
my God, it is one of the most tense scenes in the movie.
Because the whole time you're wondering, does McClane know?
You don't work for Nakatomi.
one of them.

(01:16:26):
Cop from New York.
Yeah.
Got invited to the Christmas party by mistake.
Who knew?
Yeah, better being called your pants down, huh?

(01:16:48):
you
I'm John McClain.
You're a...
play.

(01:17:13):
Now to use a handgun, Bill.
spent a weekend at a combat ranch.
You know that game where the guns that shoot red-pink?
Probably seems kind of stupid to you.
It's time for the real thing, This is a scene that's in the movie because Joel Silverwanted Gruber and McClane to meet before the climax.

(01:17:38):
So Stephen DeSousa had to figure out a way to do it.
And he didn't know how they were going to do it until he heard Alan Rickman doing anAmerican accent over by the craft service table one day and was like, that's it.
Like, and that's where we get Bill Clay from.
And it's it is fantastic.

(01:17:59):
So not all producer notes are necessarily bad ones.
That's a great one because it made this scene come into being.
That's fantastic.
you know, just drawing from something he heard on set, you know, drawing from your cast inthat way is almost always a right move.
Absolutely.
Yeah.

(01:18:19):
And the way it plays out, like you don't know if McLean knows.
you know, he gives him the weapon.
Did he know when he gave him the unloaded weapon?
Was the unloaded weapon a test?
In the original script, all of Hans's people were wearing the same tag you were watch.

(01:18:39):
And that was how McLean realized that Hans was one of them.
But that bit was cut out.
And I just think the scene plays so much more
Hence, if you don't know if he knows or not.
It's so great.
It is one of the best sequences in the whole film.
And that moment is almost like a cheer moment for the audience.
Yeah.
Oh, absolutely.

(01:19:00):
Like it's just when you hear him talking in German on the walk and then he's got the gunand then it's, no bullets.
And, know, there's an amazing gun battle.
ah know, this is where McClain's feet get all cut up by the broken glass.
Hans gets his detonators back.
And this leads into one of the scenes that I think is is just if there's a signature scenein Die Hard, like this movie has some of the most incredible action scenes.

(01:19:28):
but it's the quieter moments that really set Die Hard apart.
And that brings us to the bathroom scene in which McClain and Powell, over the radio, openup to one another.
Powell confessing that he no longer walks the beat because he accidentally shot a kid.
And McClain, for his part, telling Powell, listen, man, I'm starting to get a bad feelingup here.

(01:19:52):
I want you to do something for me.
I want you to find my wife.
Don't ask me how, by then you'll know how.
I want you to tell her something.
I want you to tell her that...
uh

(01:20:15):
I it took me a while to figure out what a jerk I've been.
But, um...
That...
The one thing started to pan out for her, I should have been more supportive and uh Ishould have been behind her more.

(01:20:44):
you
Tell her that, That she is the best thing that ever happened to a bum like me.
She's heard me say I love you a thousand times.
She never heard me say I'm sorry.

(01:21:06):
I want you to tell her that, Alan.
I you to tell her that, John said that he was sorry.
It's so good.
And it just, it, this was a watershed.
That line, she heard me say I love you a thousand times, but she never heard me say I'msorry.
It's just like, that's a hell of a line.
It is.
Yeah, it is.

(01:21:27):
It's funny, we sometimes on the show talk about the one-two punch.
I think in a way Die Hard is kind of the after the second punch in terms of humanizingmovie action heroes after Leave the Weapon, which had come out the year before.
Because Leave the Weapon, you have the damaged cop, Martin Riggs, who's suicidal, theyhave that scene in his

(01:21:53):
where he's really thinking about uh killing himself.
And I think those two movies, even though there are different kinds of movies and thosetwo series go in very different directions, I think they are the one-two punch
representing humanized action hero characters from the 80s.
Those are the two.

(01:22:14):
Both produced by Joel Silver, I might add, which is interesting.
So the FBI, they carry out the terrorist playbook to cut the power to the building, whichultimately doesn't matter because the building has emergency lights, but that opens the
vault because the seventh and final lock needed to be cut.
Yeah, they needed the power to get cut to the building.
I love the scene where the vault sequence opens.

(01:22:35):
mean, Rob, you mentioned Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, de joy.
I mean, just the way it weaves into the score here, it's incredible.
And I'm sure someone can tell me why this actually is real and motivated, but I think it'snot and I love it anyway.
When that vault opens a vault, it's completely sealed from the outside.

(01:22:57):
It causes Hans's hair to blow with a little wind of financial windfall.
But you know what?
I don't care that it's not motivated.
It looks cool.
It's the moment.
Yeah.
mean, you know, honestly, another thing that looks cool, this movie, another thing that isa superlative for this movie, it might have the best lens flare in cinema history.

(01:23:19):
Like, I'm not always a lens flare guy, but my God, it's awesome in this movie.
Yandabun.
So the FBI planned to attack the terrorists on the roof with helicopters while Gruber isgoing to blow the roof with the hostages on it, making it appear as if they were all
killed in the explosion.
And meanwhile, Dick Thornburg finds John and Holly's kids and puts them on television.

(01:23:41):
that gives like her reaction to seeing that gives away her identity.
And Gruber at last flips over the photo that's been faced down the whole movie and havingmet John McClane realizes, oh, this is McClane's wife.
And you know, it's just, it's so good.

(01:24:02):
McClane gets to the roof.
as the FBI arriving in helicopters, the shot of the helicopters flying low through CenturyCity is genuinely amazing, was done for real.
Apparently people in Century City hated the production of this movie.
was a real, it really was a pain in the ass back in 1987.
Oh, I believe that I would not have wanted to be living in an apartment down there.

(01:24:25):
my God.
And you know, like again, talking about little moments for the tertiary characters, whenRobert Davies like, just like fucking Saigon.
And then, you know, the other agent Johnson, I was in junior high dickhead.
Like even the FBI guys with the same name have great lines in character moments.

(01:24:46):
we get the fight with McClain and Carl, which finally gives us this, this brutal likeknockdown drag out.
And then things come to the head in the roof with the FBI agents firing at McClain.
The roof is wired to blow.
He's trying to get the hostages to go back inside and it culminates in one of those imagesthat ends up in like movie highlight reels where McClain out of options ties a fire hose

(01:25:10):
around his waist and jumps off the building just as Hans blows the roof.
And you know, here's the thing about this movie.
It's spent so much time.
setting up that John McClane is not a superhero, that when he does this, you absolutelybelieve it.
It's not a superhero act.

(01:25:31):
is he is a tenacious guy who is out of options.
You never hear Rambo, who doesn't really talk a lot anyway, ask, what the fuck are youdoing on top of this roof, John?
You never hear characters like that.
He doubts himself the whole way.
And there's something that McTiernan and the editor as well do here that I think for me,the most important part besides that shot, because it's awesome of, you know, Willis going

(01:25:59):
in the building exploding behind him.
to give you the gravity of what that shot means is in this little sequence of the roofexploding, they have one shot that is from so far away that Nakatomi Plaza is
in the background horizon and you just see the explosion happening there.

(01:26:20):
And you're so far away that it just drops the sound effect of it, you know, very little.
you just, just to get the scale of how big that fire still looks on the city skyline, evenwhen you're that far back, it's just, you know, I think gives you the scale.
And it also plays into the media coverage because people are now hearing about it.

(01:26:43):
The city is aware and they'd be looking out for it.
So it's an immersive element to include that stuff that a lot of filmmakers wouldn't.
They wouldn't necessarily do that, but it's like, yeah, there are a lot of people payingattention to what's going on here, a lot of mystery around it.
And to see that off on the horizon, horrifying, terrifying, because what's next?

(01:27:06):
Imagine being up in the hills and looking down on Century City.
Oh my god.
When the helicopter gets taken out by the explosion, Dwayne T.
Robinson, Paul Gleason's character has what might be my single favorite line in the movieand it's not one of the more famous lines.
"-Gonna need some more FBI guys, I guess." Like it's so dead padded, earnest.

(01:27:31):
just like, it's like, I just love it.
And it's from Give Me Another Jaws.
Yes, we're gonna need a bigger boat.
That's it.
And so McClain, he inks the jump, he shoots out the window and swings inside.
love the movie throws on another layer of jeopardy when like the thing that the hose iscoiled around falls down the side of the building and he has to undo it before it takes

(01:27:57):
him with him.
We have Argyle gets his moment of glory when he sees the ambulance coming out of the truckand he crashes into the limo and knocks Theo out cold.
Apparently in the original script, Argyle was killed by the terrorists much earlier andI'm so glad he was not because, you know, he gives this moment that is just, it's one of

(01:28:17):
my favorites when he knocks the guy out.
And then we're left with McClain confronting Hans and uh Huey Lewis in the vault.
He's got two bullets left and uh Hans has the pistol pointed right at Holly's head.
The bit with
the gun taped to his back, the way, straight out of the Roderick Thorpe novel.

(01:28:41):
There are a lot of things, a lot of set pieces and stuff straight out of the novel.
And then, you know, he shoots, he shoots Louis and then Hans, and then the latter crashesout the window.
And then in the final struggle, John undoes Holly's Rolex watch, which was mentionedearlier.
And I neglected to mention that.

(01:29:02):
sends Han plummeting to the ground.
The watch that was given to her by the company for her work.
This is the one bit of uh metaphor, symbolism, however you want to slice it, that Iactually think doesn't quite fit with what the movie set up because this whole movie has
been in part about how John needed to accept that his wife's career was taking off and besupportive.

(01:29:24):
And then at the end, in order to save the day, he has to remove the symbol of her successat work.
You know, I could see where you could squint and say that
It's a symbol of her work coming between them.
like, you know, anyway, it's small potatoes at the end of it all.
ah it's the one thing that kind of, you know, I think doesn't quite fit.

(01:29:49):
I love your writer brain, I really do.
Love it.
I don't know about you guys, but there is one moment in Die Hard that genuinelyemotionally affects me where I get a lump in my throat.
And that is when McClane and Holly, now everything's, know, McClane and Holly are comingout of the building, everything is chaos, you know, there's, and McClane and Powell meet

(01:30:15):
for the first time in person.
And of course they don't know what each other looks like, because they haven't seen, youknow, like.
You know, like he doesn't know what Powell looks like and there's that moment that it's sogood.
And it's like it's it's not there's no words.
Like it's just played with the two of them.
And and and they it's it's so good.
It's it is my it is the emotional core of this movie for me is that is that moment wherethey meet for the first time.

(01:30:43):
But that meeting is almost interrupted by the still alive Carl, who tries to take one lastshot at McLean.
but then is shot by Powell who is able to find the, you know, within him to pull out hisgun.
It's like a classic move out of a James Bond movie where the villain or the henchman triesto take out the hero after the plan has already been foiled.

(01:31:07):
And I love that moment.
Again, it's the perfect capper to this movie.
I want to point out that if the music in that moment feels familiar, it's because that wasa
piece of music that was not written for this movie.
It's actually a piece of temp music that Michael Kamen decided to keep in the film.
Like when Carl gets shot and then you close up on the gun and you pull back to see Powell,that is an unused piece of music from James Horner's score for Aliens.

(01:31:38):
Which means that little piece of music has its roots going all the way back uh to BattleBeyond the Stars, which is just amazing.
Roger Corman really did touch everything there for a while.
You know it.
You know it.
We have one last moment when Dick Thornburg tries to interview John and Holly.
Holly hits him across the jaw.
Again, this is straight out of the final scene from The Last Shark.

(01:32:02):
Like, it's literally the straight out of final scene.
And, you know, I mean, this movie is just, it's amazing.
It's great movie.
You know, I've watched it how many times?
You know, it's one of those rare genre movies that's so excellent, it elevates the genre.
You know, this elevated action films, not necessarily every action film that followed itwas of this caliber.

(01:32:26):
Definitely not every action film that follows.
wasn't a miscalculation, but it is still a superlative for the genre.
you know, as we'll see, like the wave of imitators, you know, came because the concept isso damn good and variable.
You know, there's so many different diehard, I mean, we're going to see it.

(01:32:50):
It's amazing.
Before we go to the first of those imitators, I have one final question for both of yougentlemen.
And it's one that seems to come up.
every holiday season for debate, is Die Hard a Christmas movie?
How can anyone even debate that?
course, it's got Christmas music, it's set during Christmas, it's a Christmas party.

(01:33:12):
I mean, I've never understood the debate about this at all.
I agree.
It seems like it's something that gets debated every year.
Somebody is like, the answer is a clear yes.
I Rob, unless you're, I mean, am I?
No, I agree.
And I'll even say beyond the surface level amount of Christmassy stuff in this movie.

(01:33:34):
A husband and wife reconciling feels very Christmassy.
Henry!
uh of peace and coming together.
ah And then a spirit of brotherhood between
You know, uh two cops who've never met each other before from opposite sides of the coast.
You know, it's I think there are things in here that are Christmasy.

(01:33:56):
The only thing I can think of is that to much of the nation, particularly in the Midwest,this doesn't feel like a Christmas movie because it's an LA Christmas movie.
Yeah.
And that's the same thing that people have complained about with like Silent Night, DeadlyNight, part two and three.
And uh et cetera, et cetera.

(01:34:16):
It's just, yeah.
But if you had grown up there.
Sure.
Yeah.
mean, there isn't snow.
Okay.
But.
There's no doubt that this is Christmas.
It's not like they're putting a veil over whatever holiday is happening.
And we have to piece it together as we watch the movie.
It's very clear.

(01:34:36):
Yeah.
mean, those are the same monsters who I bet don't think Bluey's Veranda Santa isChristmasy enough either, Because Australia does not have snow.
I'll send you the links later.
It's, but it is the probably number one children's animated show in the world for the lastcouple

(01:35:00):
my god.
Wake up!
Yeah.
Wake up and smell the bluey.
there's two reasons that the Christmas is integral to the plot.
Hans' plan doesn't work if you don't have the Christmas part.
It doesn't work if the building is empty.
It doesn't work if the building is full.
They wouldn't be able to take over the whole building.
full.
They needed the building to be mostly empty with a small group of people clustered in onearea, hence the Christmas part.

(01:35:27):
It is a little Halloween too-y in that sense though, if you think about it.
Yes, there's a Christmas party happening, but business still goes on.
at the very least, maintenance in the building goes on.
That's true.
And I don't know.
Now before we switch our gears, I want to mention one other reason why Die Hard is aChristmas movie.

(01:35:48):
It is a Christmas movie because it is a movie that people watch at Christmas, which to meis the ultimate test of a Christmas movie.
Is it a movie that people watch at Christmas?
Not necessarily is it a movie about Christmas.
That to me is the ultimate test, and I wanted to put that out there.
But we're going to switch gears because our second film today is not set at Christmas, butit takes place a few short miles away from diehard Century City location and also revolves

(01:36:19):
around a fake emergency, in this case an environmental incident rather than a terroristone, which is actually the cover for A Daring Heist, which only one man, played by an
actor on a then successful television series, can stop.
Also, both films feature Robert Davi.
This is The Taking of Beverly Hills.

(01:36:46):
home of Boomer Hayes, football's hottest quarterback.
Do you have any champagne?
It's in the refrigerator.
But tonight, while Boomer is going for the score, Beverly Hills is hitting the skids.
The truck's gone over.
We got a spell.
We got an emergency.
You are hereby ordered to evacuate your homes immediately.

(01:37:09):
Get Boomer into the house.
Look at him.
Who in the hell is Boomer?
Tell me or die.
Disaster is no accident.
Take it.
It's a smokescreen for the biggest heist in history.
All right, beautiful.
And every house, every shop, all of Beverly Hills would have been theirs for the taking.

(01:37:34):
700 million.
Way past Jared Lewis.
Except for one tiny detail.
Truly.
The one man they left behind is the only one who can stop them.
Ken Wall.

(01:37:56):
Overly Hills.
There goes...
The Taking of Beverly Hills was produced by Nelson Entertainment and was originally set tobe distributed by Orion Pictures in the summer of 1991.
But when that company was faced with bankruptcy, the film moved over to Columbia, whichgave it a limited release in October of that year.

(01:38:20):
The film was directed by Sidney J.
Fury, a Canadian-born director who came to prominence working in the UK in the 60s.
There he directed a movie that I know, Rob, you are a
big fan of and that we will talk about on this show down the road eventually, IPCRS file.
I love the IP Chris file.
It is one of my favorite Michael Caine movies, one of my favorite sixties spy movies and amovie that one of my film professors, and this was mean of him, mentioned to all of us as

(01:38:53):
being visually fantastic.
And then of course said, and don't watch it because you'll try and do it and you won't begood enough to.
Wow.
So that's the kind of, yeah.
You best believe I rendered the shit out of that as fast as possible.
Ha ha ha!
It is a great movie, the first of three spy movies featuring Michael Caine as British spyHarry Palmer.

(01:39:16):
And that will definitely come up in our eventual Get Me Another James Bond series.
The uh little known fact, the second uh Harry Palmer film, Billion Dollar Brain, is theone that our world has turned into.
That is actually the third.
It's a funeral in Berlin is between the two.
funeral second?
Yeah.
Rob, your teacher would be so disappointed and yet clearly delight in the failure of thatmoment.

(01:39:39):
One of my teachers beloved he has since uh you know since passed on from this world butPete Giovanni at Emerson College beloved by all and would frequently do things like that
where this was a guy who was not going to you know give you straight line encouragementbut he was going to lead you there like uh you know Pai Mei and Kill Bill or something so.

(01:40:03):
I know the type.
I certainly had professors of that ilk uh myself.
In the early 70s, Furey was for a brief time attached to direct a little film called TheGodfather, but left that movie over budget disputes.
He later directed one of the earliest films about the Vietnam War, The Boys in Company C,as well as the 1981 film The Entity.

(01:40:28):
He later directed an iconic
80s movie about fighter pilots and aerial combat.
No, not Top Gun.
I'm talking about Iron Eagle.
In fact, Fury directed three out of four Iron Eagles and you're probably learning rightnow that there were four Iron Eagle movies to begin with.

(01:40:53):
I saw both Iron Eagle and Iron Eagle 2 in the movie theater, I will admit, as well asanother Sydney J.
Fury film.
Canon films Superman for the quest for peace.
So, you know, that's quite a career.
I mean, you know, from if Chris file to Superman for and that career is still going.
His latest movie was called Finding Hannah and was released in 2023.

(01:41:17):
He is still working in North and 90.
Wow, that's amazing!
I don't him.
The Taking of Beverly Hills was written by Rick Natkin, David Fuller, and David J.
Burke from a story by Natkin, Fuller, and Fury.
Burke was a writer for the TV series Wise Guy, whose lead is also the star of this movie,Ken Wall.

(01:41:40):
Now, Wise Guy is notable for a couple of reasons.
One, an early example of serialized network television.
It's about an undercover FBI agent.
who infiltrates various organized crime outfits.
And rather than being like a different assignment every episode, his assignments would gofor like, you know, eight, 10 episodes with the same supporting cast.

(01:42:02):
And then he would, you know, then he'd get another assignment and get involved with that.
It's also notable for being the reason that Martin Scorsese's film, Goodfellas, has thattitle.
Because that film was based on a book by Nick Pileggi titled Wise Guys.
The title was not used for the movie in order to avoid confusion with the then current TVseries.

(01:42:26):
Wow.
And Burke wrote for another early serialized television series that I personally loved,which was not on for very long, Crime Story.
I And I love that one.
I think they paired it with Miami Vice and the two audiences did not mix, if I remembercorrectly.
It was created by Michael Mann, who while he didn't create Miami Vice was sort of theshowrunner, or I don't know they use that term at the time, but sort of the creative

(01:42:55):
director of Miami Vice.
then went on to create Crime Story, which Burke wrote for as well.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of Crime Story.
Absolutely.
And here, Wall stars as Los Angeles football quarterback Boomer Hayes.
Although we're never told which of the two LA-based football teams at the time.
he's supposed to be playing for.

(01:43:16):
And the colors don't matter.
and change his number 12 jersey is at times red or green or white colors that do not mix.
And then it's just generic jersey.
be Homer away man maybe they have very different jerseys for Homer away that's gotta be it
and the city throwback edition, didn't exist as a concept in 88, but we're or 91 even.

(01:43:40):
Yes.
And Chris, I'm going to get ahead of you on the hair front here.
my god yes, please.
So when you first see Boomer, you're struck with the fact that he's probably not going tobe very good as a leading man, A.
And B, he has the most magnificent mullet in probably action cinema history, or certainlyone of them.

(01:44:02):
And it's not the only Sterling mullet in this film.
This movie's got a surfeit of mullets.
This, this movie could be called like mullet.
If I had to rename the movie, that's what I would.
And the fact that his name is boomer is so fucking stupid.

(01:44:25):
the only other boomer that I know is from meatballs, which I hope someday, I hope somedaywe do get me another meatballs or for sure.
Cause I would absolutely treasure the opportunity to talk about it because it is magical.
But the guy in there is boom boom.
Well, and there was a boomer a science and was an actual American football quarterback forthe the bank Rob stop uh

(01:44:54):
See, we've gotten past that initial first superlative movie which kicks off the trend andnow we're into the taking of Beverly Hills and it's gonna be a good time.
we go here.
It was it was jumping into the icy deep end for sure.
Like right off the bat.
I'll say one thing just to tee it all up.
I already think I texted you this.

(01:45:14):
did.
It was I was struggling with this movie in the very beginning.
I don't blame you.
Because spoiler alert, it is not die hard.
It ain't.
It wants to be, but it ain't.
When I realized that the taking of Beverly Hills is like an American trying to do theItalian ripoff of Die Hard.

(01:45:36):
then I got it.
And then I could just sit back and enjoy this.
I was ready for you to say that because you did in fact text it to me and I, when you didthe other day and I had watched it and it was like, reoriented all of my thinking on this
movie.
I'm like, it's still not a good movie, but yeah, as the American version of an Italianknockoff, it's kind of amazing.

(01:45:58):
also, Justin, you did a little Schwarzenegger when you were, there was a littleSchwarzenegger before and I wanted to mention that they originally wanted Arnold
Schwarzenegger for the lead role in this movie.
So that's another thing it has in common with Die Hard.
Can you imagine what a pain in the ass it would have been to be his agent during this era?

(01:46:19):
I mean lucrative, but a pain in the ass.
Lucrative yeah, but I mean good lord keeping up with it.
How many films are we going to talk about in this series that were originally pitched forhim?
It's amazing.
don't think he's in any movies in this case.
That's not the kind of action he did.
No, but he was the default guy.
He was the one that you would first think of.

(01:46:40):
It was him and it was Stallone.
And these are two guys who, I mean, and I would love a show hearing them, like having themwatch these movies and then talk about them afterwards considering because they were the
source point for so much of this.
oh
That said, in addition to Ken Wall, this movie has a genuinely incredible roster of, ohshit, it's that guy, guys.

(01:47:07):
Like there's so many, shit, it's that guy.
Like you have Robert Davi, who we just saw in Die Hard, and by this point had played aBond villain in 1989's License to Kill.
You have Max Headroom actor, Matt Fruer.
You have Lee Ving, who played Mr.
Body and Clue.
Lyman Ward, who was Ferris Bueller's dad.

(01:47:28):
George Weiner, was Spaceballs Colonel Sanders, William Prince from Spies Like Us,Branscombe Richard from TV's Renegade, and Harley Jane Kosik, who played Billy Crystal's
ex in When Harry Met Sally.
This movie is full of, shit, it's that guy.
You don't know their name, but you know their face.

(01:47:49):
oh
wish.
I need to like IMDB this.
But also I noticed in a very small role in the control room later on, it's fake RichardNixon from 24.
Yes, yes.
And apparently, this I read, but I could not find her, Pamela Anderson, this was her firstscreen appearance as like a cheerleader, I guess in one of the football like flash, you

(01:48:14):
know, cutaways to like the football game or something, you like when they're the footageor whatever, I don't know.
But apparently, yeah, I couldn't find her in it, but apparently she is in the movie.
As well as Michael Bowen, the guy who tries to rape.
uh, the bride in kill bill when she's unconscious in the hospital, he is one of the copson the perimeter of Beverly Hills.

(01:48:38):
So here's the thing about the taking of Beverly Hills.
This is why I think it's the perfect second movie for this episode, because it does a lotof the same things that diehard does, but not as well.
And by comparison, it illustrates how expertly diehard is put together.
So we open.

(01:48:58):
with this very fancy looking typeface.
Because you know, it's Beverly Hills and it's fancy and we get all these shots of BeverlyHills.
We have Matt Fruer doing a voiceover telling us about the city.
Chris, Chris, we don't get all these shots of Beverly Hills.
We get over five full minutes of shots of Beverly Hills.
Yes.

(01:49:19):
It turns into almost it.
I don't think it veers into parody.
think it just.
And I love I love hearing Matt Fruer's voice because in my notes, wait, is this MaxHeadroom?
And then I pulled up.
It's totally.
It is Max Headroom.
And that's the voice.
I love that show so much when it was on the air.

(01:49:41):
absolutely loved that show.
And to have his voice over the start of this was a real comforting element.
But Jesus did it today fast.
Just seeing rich people in cars.
cars and walking dogs.
Like Beverly Hills was sort of like cinematically very big at this time.
Beverly Hills cop movies, the first two Beverly Hills cop movies were only a few yearsold.

(01:50:04):
Beverly Hills 902 and just started its decade long run.
But here's the thing that tipped me off from the jump, the kind of movie this was going tobe is we get a Corvette wipe from one shop.
the next in this montage at the beginning.
uh And I mean, it's kind of amazing.

(01:50:25):
And you can tell it's Beverly Hills, because later on when shit hits the fan, all thesecars blow up except the Lamborghini.
It's clear that they had these very expensive rentals that they were just protecting fromany of these scenes with the real craziness.
So you will get to it and it's crazy that the budget rent a car in Beverly Hills you canrent you Lamborghinis and Rolls Royces.

(01:50:47):
I mean, I know it's Beverly Hills and all, but it's still a budget rent a car.
That's what I do.
When I go to LA, that's what I rent.
Hell yeah.
So yeah, Matt Fruer is a Beverly Hills cop.
He's giving this narration and he mentions that, know, Beverly Hills is his own city.
It's got its own police force.
And then guys, we get this song, this song, which I don't know what the hell it is.

(01:51:11):
It's like some kind of easy listening Billy Ocean knockoff.
And again, lots of people driving, dogs.
I mean, honestly, in some ways the vibe could not be more different.
than the opening of Die Hard.
This movie came out three years later than Die Hard and it feels like it came out fouryears earlier.
It is, this movie feels more 80s than Die Hard.

(01:51:32):
That's a great point.
Yeah!
Like Die Hard is bending the curve to the 90s.
This movie's going backwards.
It is, and the fashion is more like what we were doing in the...
that we saw over and over again in Give Me Another Fatal Attraction.
Older pads and suits.
my god.
Yeah, I think Laura at one point has giant shoulder pads, takes off her jacket and stillhas giant shoulder pads on her shirt.

(01:52:01):
occasionally had dual shoulder pads on in this era that is
we knew who wore the shoulder pads in your family.
Oh, I'm out of here.
So that said, like Diyar, we have this big fancy party at the beginning with Robert Davi'scharacter who is arriving.

(01:52:22):
His character, by the way, is named Bat Masterson.
Like, like the Western?
Yes!
His character is named Bat Masterson.
And like he's on his way to this big charity fundraiser, which they have shut down RodeoDrive for and set up the party in the middle of Beverly Hills.

(01:52:44):
And I got to say, if this movie has one thing going for it, like really and truly, likenot ironically, the recreation of downtown Beverly Hills is fantastic.
This movie was not shot in Beverly Hills.
It would have been impossible considering the mayhem that will ensue, but instead,
The area around Rodeo Drive was recreated outside Mexico City by production designer PeterLamont, who spent months photographing Beverly Hills in order to accurately recreate it.

(01:53:13):
is a genuinely great piece of production design.
no, you would not know that it's not there.
Yeah.
Again, a great job recreating things.
But as far as this party goes, you know, I'll just say this, this is a fully enactedversion of like a title crawl before 1999, the Bronx warriors or something.

(01:53:37):
It's orienting you to everything you need to know.
Right, right.
Oh god.
It's like everyone is giving Hart Brockner's performance, but no one is giving BonnieBedelia's.
It's just everyone is balls to the wall.
They know what movie this is.
No one's fucking around.
I found the beginning part of this movie so confusing because like, like, like just thecharacters relationships of one another, all the stuff that die hard seems to do so

(01:54:04):
effortlessly.
This movie does.
And it is like uh a, it's like someone with a leaf blower outside my apartment, you know,and it's, has that effect.
Like we start with Robert Davi who is involved with this unnamed Los Angeles footballteam.
At first I thought he was the coach.
But then I came to realize he owned the team.
And I only figured that out because there's a conversation between the mayor of BeverlyHills and the coach who helpfully refer to each other as mayor and coach.

(01:54:33):
That's what.
And then we have William Prince's character, Mitchell Sage.
He doesn't like Bat Maxterson because he thinks Bat was involved with his daughter and hethinks his daughter was slumming with him.
And he just tells him so.
You know, Mitchell, I still haven't given up on the idea.
My daughter was slumming.

(01:54:56):
Why do you treat me like this?
Something wrong with my money?
Then take it.
You don't understand.
Nothing's wrong with your money.
But you...
You're in the insurance business, That's the fucking protection racket.
You sell fear and paranoia.
You'd see it that way.

(01:55:17):
Oh, the local clergy is giving Rushmore a truckload of shit about your wall.
I'm afraid the boy's going to ask me to cancel your policy.
I don't know what, like, and then there's something about Bat's wall.
He's talking about his wall and I had no idea what the fuck was going on.
Like I started to wonder, my God, is all of this going to revolve around some like reallyweird, powerful HOA in Beverly Hills?

(01:55:44):
That is not what happens.
But that's what I was thinking for like the first like 10 minutes of this movie as we'regetting all these people who I don't understand what their relationships are.
But the one person who is not there is quarterback Boomer Hayes.
So Bat Masterson tells his lackey, played by Lee Vink to go get him, who then in turntells Beverly Hills police officer Kelvin, played by Bat Fruer, to go get Boomer.

(01:56:11):
So Bat Masterson owns the football team.
and the Beverly Hills police?
My head was swimming uh with all of this.
The who's who and the what's what and what do they want?
Just absolutely swimming.
Yeah.
And it, I guess it does eventually become clear, but it is, let's just say this isn't,it's not the, you know, wedding scene at the Godfather setting the stage for you in a

(01:56:41):
clear fashion.
No, no.
We learn that Lee Ving's character is not a cop anymore, but he used to be.
And he has a conversation with the actual chief of police, who's Ferris Bueller's dad.
We get a reference to Pacoma, which is a neighborhood in Los Angeles.
I suppose Pomona would have been a little too on the nose because that was referenced inDie Hard.

(01:57:05):
And then boomer soon arrives with, as Justin points out, one of the most spectacularmullets I've ever seen.
I mean, this thing is just something.
And I don't know if you guys noticed this, this movie has a ton of weird, awkward ADR.
It's like a lot of the curse words were dubbed over in various places, but the movie israted R, so I don't know why they bother.

(01:57:30):
It's like they were getting ready for the TV cut in advance.
Yeah, one of, yeah, I just, was very weird, although um not as weird as like the sexysaxophone that's going to show up on the sound track.
there's so much sexy saxophone.
There's so much sexy saxophone in this movie.
It's...
yes.
Like, and the guy like Sage, the guy addresses the crowd, he talks about how they'veraised two million dollars to fight homelessness, which honestly doesn't seem like that

(01:57:58):
much considering how rich this crowd must be.
It's like, oh, really?
Just two million dollars?
And Boomer and Bat Masterson have a conversation how Boomer didn't win today's game, theteam didn't.
You know I've had it with your grandstand plays as the clock runs out.
Well, I won, didn't I?

(01:58:18):
See, there's your problem, Team one.
Every effort you make, you make for the team.
Now I've had it with this.
Okay, I won't tolerate any more of these flaming games, Jamie.
If you were smart, you would've made me your ally.
But that's over.
Well, tell me something.
Why am I here?
Bat Masterson has a much better sense of teamwork than Boomer and his mullet.

(01:58:43):
Like, honestly, I'm starting to think Boomer's a real asshole here.
and you're correct.
and he just speaks in sports.
there's so much football jargon.
It's it's just
His vocabulary is sports.
It's like going to a social event in Iowa City.

(01:59:04):
it's, is where University of Iowa is, or really, I mean, a lot of places in Iowa, likeespecially in Iowa City, you're going to either have intellectual fascinating
conversations, or you're going to be in a room with people who just live Hawkeyes.
Okay.
And it's going to be very hard to relate if you don't find a way to straddle those twoworlds.

(01:59:27):
But yeah, it's very odd that they just wrote this guy.
I get that he's he is what he is, but all sports the whole time, every line.
even know why they made him a quarterback.
it's like, I don't know why this guy had to be a sports guy.
Is it just so he can throw Molotov cocktails later?
Is that really what it is?

(01:59:47):
Must be.
Yes.
That's exactly what it is.
Even more strange, it's like when they're announced that Bat Masterson, that name, my God,is making like a million dollar donation, which is literally like increasing the night's
take by 50%.
And Mr.
Sage announces it by saying, this gift means so much to so many, but we know how little itmeans to you to give it.

(02:00:16):
What the fuck?
The guy just donated a million dollars.
Don't be a jerk.
I mean.
Like at this point, you're kind of guessing that Robert Davie is going to be the bad guy.
That's that he's the big bad, but like, kind of hope he takes this whole city of assholesfor all their worth.
And he will try.
But it is, yeah, I, do wonder if, you know, they just in the grand tradition of flashGordon and Johnny Utah, if they thought that the football thing was going to work.

(02:00:47):
And he does football as much as flash Gordon does in the the eighties film.
Yes, which at least that movie had the stones to make Flash Gordon the quarterback for theNew York Jets, which is just so gloriously ridiculous that it never stops being
entertaining to me.
God, the scene where they're playing, the football fight scene in Ming's Palace.

(02:01:10):
Yep.
I could watch that every day.
I could watch it every day.
Unlike the taking of Beverly Hills, which I could not watch every day.
We're introduced to Sage's daughter Laura, who was involved with Bat Masterson, but nowtells him we're not in sync that way.
Ouch.
That's a cold line.

(02:01:31):
and by the way, important thing about Bat Masterson is he has asthma, which is going to beimportant later.
checkoffs inhaler.
Yep.
It's, here at the beginning.
It is.
is.
Now, Boomer tries to pick up Laura and he does so in like the most obviously likeegotistical way possible.
Like he actually tells her that her fundraiser is bullshit.

(02:01:54):
This is bullshit.
You raise a few bucks, you put these people in shelters, you think you're a saint.
Who's self-centered?
You know, if you really cared about these people, you'd be after me to do something forthem.
What?
Toss them a ball?
They have kids, don't they?
Do you realize how important it is for children to physically touch self-esteem andsuccess with somebody they can identify with?

(02:02:17):
A day with Boomer Hayes.
Yes.
How nourishing.
No thanks.
You'd actually be after me to do something for them.
This guy, like he's just the worst.
He actually uses the words quid pro quo in terms of like
He offers his charitable involvement in exchange for a date.

(02:02:41):
And shockingly, it works.
And then he, and then on the date, he mansplains football to her.
He doesn't like getting knocked down, Justin.
That's what he said, he doesn't like getting knocked down.
Well, and I get a lot of time trying not to get knocked down.
He's got a football sled rigged up in his home to just randomly come after him like he'sinspector Clouseau in a pink panther movie except it's in his bathroom

(02:03:11):
It's in his bathroom slash gym.
Yes, which is dominated by the giant hot tub.
Which he has put bubble bath in heat.
Well, OK, we're going to get there in a minute.
But he had all over his apartment is it's just littered with workout stuff.
Yes.
And there's boxing gloves hanging on the wall.

(02:03:32):
And it really tells the tale that his whole world is just cluttered up with sport.
And it's the Chris, the scene where he's masturbating in the tubs in the in the bathroom.
uh
don't actually see it
No, you see it.
You see his arm moving up and down under the water.

(02:03:54):
The water's sort of moving above it.
And that's why I think they had to put like an Ernie making a bath for his nephew amountof soap in this fucking tub.
my god, this tub is gigantic!
It's gigantic and he, it must've been a whole bottle bubble.

(02:04:15):
Make that much soap, but he's definitely whacking it.
you got, you got boomer rubbing one out in the tub, which is weird anyway.
And that goes back to my point about filthy places to touch yourself and to touch otherpeople.
Because you can't tell me that a guy with this much rotten.
Filth covered gym equipment, which all of it is.

(02:04:37):
All of it.
No matter where you are and how clean you think it is.
Let's not wipe that shit down, you know it.
And beyond that, the soap suds are, it's so plentiful that that water must just be an oilslick of whatever's in that stuff.
And he should not be manipulating his genitals in that kind of environment, Chris.
No, no, no, no.

(02:04:57):
he clearly.
He's I mean, it's only slightly less toxic than the big truck being driven by a guy in asuit, which has helpfully printed on the side toxic chemical.
That's a trauma move.
It really is.
really is.
ah Yeah.
So Boomer takes, you know, they takes, uh, Laura back to his place.

(02:05:20):
She's, she goes from being antagonistic to being all into him so fast.
Like there's no, there's no, it's zero to 60 for her immediately.
He's a fascinating guy.
I mean, he's a good looking guy and he's got, you know, he's got that tub.
I mean, that's a big, big tub.

(02:05:40):
That's tub for more than one.
And, know, like all this is done to the sound of a lot of smooth jazz.
And, uh, you know, at the same time, officer Kelvin, he pulled, hassles two people makingout in a car.
Like he's like, you know, this is a safe sex zone.
And then he pursues the big truck.
The truck goes by, he pursues it until it just overturns in the middle of downtown BeverlyHills.

(02:06:06):
And we get the line, there's shit leaking out all over the place, which I guess could alsoapply to boomer in the tub.
And apparently the tanker is filled with fluorine, which the resulting gas will mean thata three square mile radius of Beverly Hills will have to be evacuated.
And like, you know, so we go to the police station, everything's chaos.

(02:06:28):
They're going to have to evacuate Beverly Hills.
I mean, that's a lot of people.
It's still a lot of people who live in bed.
Like this is an urban area.
I know it's like big houses and stuff.
It's a lot of people to move.
The phone line goes down.
The police guy says all the flaming phone lines are down.
They already done the TV edit.

(02:06:48):
I have no idea why.
and I should mention there's two guys in the station.
who have stolen a big boy from a Bob's Big
That strangely looks like it has its hands handcuffed behind its back.
I thought one of them was reaching for the big boy's ass.
that comes into play later.
Yeah, so it's very possible.
There we go.
And there is a scene later on when there's people being arrested and they shaft big boyright in the middle of it and it looks like he's been cuffed too and that's what my notes

(02:07:15):
are like.
shit, they even got big boy.
Damn David Lynch is gonna be so mad.
oh
So while Boomer is entertaining Laura, the city of Beverly Hills is being locked down andan evacuation has begun.
They have school buses ready to go to evacuate the residents to a hotel in Century City.
And the cops, they're getting their hazmat suits, but you know, gone.

(02:07:38):
And the guys with the big boy statue, they pull guns out of the big boy's ass and lock thecops in the changing room.
Apparently these are the good cops who aren't in on what's going on.
This is real movie.
This is a real movie, Jack.
It's, this is, it's, I...
you know, they should have just been putting people on those buses and taking them toNakatomi Plaza.

(02:08:00):
I mean, honestly, the kids, so they have to go to the hotel, you know, the, hotel that isalso owned by bat master.
So Laura, Laura goes down to get some champagne from the refrigerator and she hears thisall happening outside.
So instead of telling, boomer, there's something going down.
You might want to get out of the bubble bath.

(02:08:21):
She puts on the coat and opens the door and immediately gets put on a bus and leaves.
And she keeps saying how a boomer's inside.
But the cops say that she's talking about a dog, which is insane given that the starquarterback for the city is a guy named Boomer and they think he's a
Well that makes sense though because boomers boomers a stupid fucking name for a person,but

(02:08:44):
knows who the quarterback for the LA whatever the fucks.
Chris, who's the current quarterback for the LA football team?
Yeah, exactly.
So you wouldn't know either.
And if someone said boomers in the house and needs to be saved, I'd be like, what breed ishe?
I would know it if his name was Boomer!

(02:09:04):
But also Chris isn't a Beverly Hills cop.
a former cop, I guess.
That's true.
I am not a Beverly Hills cop or former Beverly Hills cop.
Brewer even says that in the voiceover at the very beginning.
He says, I'm a Beverly Hills cop.
That phrase was in the zeitgeist, guys, back in 1991.

(02:09:25):
sure.
See that these cops are being led by Lieving's character, Varney, who dramatically takesoff his gas mask and says, take it.
Presumably he means Beverly Hills.
and has a spectacular model.
Second place, he's runner up.
And then all the cops start typing into these little calculators strapped to theirforearms.

(02:09:50):
It's so strange.
Like it turns out all of these are bad cops who are all ex-cops because I guess the moviewas too afraid of having the real Beverly Hills cops turn around and rob the super rich
people they're paid to protect and serve.
That actually might've been a bold choice.
Yeah, you can't follow up your lead masturbating in a tub full of soap with real copsbeing bad.

(02:10:14):
Well, and technically Matt Fruer's cop is a Beverly Hills cop who is on the inside, but heis on the will have a change of heart and a redemption arc.
Yeah, it's the, it's, he's the weirdest Powell character of, of I think this whole seriesbecause, you know, he's like, he's part of the, of the group.
And then what happens is like the mayor of Beverly Hills is trying to get into the city,but the city's been roped off and, and Varney, Lee Ving's character comes out and he does

(02:10:44):
a Joe Takagi on him where he just shoots him in the head.
Although it's so unconvincing because it looks like he shot a ball of like a paintballonto his forehead like a ball of red paint.
And Matt Frew's character seen this and like, I didn't think anybody was going to die.
Honestly, it's the only good line in the movie is when Boomer says like, you know, allthese guys with guns and you thought nobody was going to get hurt.

(02:11:07):
Like it's, that's not a bad line.
For all of the money they spent in this movie, does make me wonder if that uh gun effecthas now you mentioned it.
It's fairly like bloodless, not gruesome movie.
Yeah, I wonder if that has to do the same thing with the dial.
Were they going for PG-13 and just didn't make it?

(02:11:29):
they got it.
weren't whatever, whatever pushed it over to an R.
I don't know.
Yeah.
There's not a lot of blood.
There's a lot of explosions.
There's a lot of shit blowing up in this movie.
And here's the thing.
Apparently they have 70 minutes to pull off this robbery of all the houses and businessesin Beverly Hills, uh which is just like, that's a lot to get done in 70 minutes.

(02:11:54):
Like,
And they have this absolutely massive group of ex-cops stealing things.
They're packing stuff up in biohazard drums to ship it out.
I don't buy any of this.
And it stands in such stark contrast to Die Hard, which makes a great, takes great painsto at least give the illusion of verisimilitude.

(02:12:14):
Like I'm not saying Die Hard's a realistic movie, but it feels realistic.
And here I'm like,
this movie, I don't buy any of it, but it could have worked.
Like, they could have made it little more plausible if they just narrowed the scope alittle bit.
Like, don't make them evacuate the whole city.

(02:12:35):
You make it a smaller area just around downtown, like with Rodeo Drive, because you don'thave that many people live there.
You don't need to do the mass evacuations.
But if you just robbed Rodeo Drive, you would net hundreds of millions of dollars.
Like, why did they have to go house to house stealing like valuable artwork that you wouldnever be able to sell?

(02:12:58):
Like, who's going to be able to sell that to?
Like, Diyar, you had the bare bonds.
Like, well, that's basically like cash.
Like, it's maybe even more liquid than cash.
Yeah, well, and especially because the ultimate point for, uh, Bat Masterson isn'tnecessarily the loot itself, although he needs that to pay off the guys who are doing all
this stuff.
Right.
we'll get to the ultimate point at the end of the movie.

(02:13:20):
there's a little bit of a twist at the end, but it's so dumb.
But we'll get-
confusing.
just to touch on a couple of things since we're talking about their plan and how it is, itdoes feel not as real.
One of those things is all of Hans' henchmen in Die Hard are uber capable.

(02:13:42):
So there's the one guy who comes in talking football with a real security guard and thenkills him and takes over that spot.
Things like that where everyone in there is professional and executes things very well.
Yeah.
Here, you know, the guy that they have pretending to be the fake EPA guy in century city.

(02:14:04):
And this guy is I'll just, uh, to not belabor the point, let's just say he's very bad andthey literally have him stumbling around, not knowing what to say.
And then like the mayor or the chief of police or whoever, uh, chief of police, guesswe'll just,
fill in the blank forum and he'll go, yeah, that and then, Oh, I guess he sold it.
But it does stretch the believability.

(02:14:26):
I don't know if it was meant to be comic.
It's not funny.
No, but in any event, there are a lot of little things all throughout this.
In addition to the big ones of it does stretch a little bit of credibility, you know, onthe taking of Beverly Hills.
Boomer wanders outside in a towel looking for Laura and is immediately spotted by LeeVing's character who hates Boomer for reasons we don't ever really understand.

(02:14:52):
He sends some guys to kill him, but Boomer hides in his gym bathroom, positioning thetackling dummy so it knocks a guy clear out the window.
It's something.
And then, you know, second bad guy comes in and he's going to gun him down in his bubblebath.
Uh, and then Kelvin comes in and saves him and Kelvin then confesses the whole thing toBoomer and they decide they have to get out of Beverly Hills for some reason.

(02:15:19):
Like, honestly, it makes no sense.
Cause like the gas isn't real.
Kelvin knows that the crooks are not equipped to do a house to house search.
Just like go hide somewhere till the whole thing's over.
Like there's no reason for Boomer to like, John McClain gets involved in the situation ofNakatomi cause his wife is in danger.

(02:15:40):
Boomer gets involved in this situation for no reason I can discern.
Like he even knows that the girl is safe at Century City.
Like it's not even like that.
The girl he just met that night and picked up with, you know, threatening, you know, towithhold charitable services from her organization.
Cause that always goes over great.

(02:16:02):
No, I don't know.
It's funny.
It's the second movies in this.
lately have been kind of cursed like Tinturera now we're with taking a Beverly Hills.
The second movie in the series is never the strongest one.
No, but uh when Benitez gets involved, it really kicks this up a whole nother level.
Yeah, Benitez is the guy who was driving the truck that crashed and then he shows up againdriving a tank, a Beverly Hills SWAT tank.

(02:16:32):
Like he is literally just a maniac.
He is in this tank.
It's not like the one in the first in Die Hard where like it's, it's, it's a, you know, anall terrain vehicle that, you know, is armored.
It's got a literal turret and gun and he is gleefully firing it and blowing up houses.
and chasing down Boomer and Kelvin who hide in the world's largest garbage cans.

(02:17:00):
All right.
The tank, the tank is the, the tank is like something that some kids would build whenthey're playing army and they have some boxes available to them.
And cause it's kind of small and it, looks kind of weird.
it doesn't help that the way they kept shooting the tank was like poor man's process whereit would be Varney in there, like looking out through the

(02:17:30):
this visor rectangle in the front where he looks like a kid inside of a box for allintents.
And then they cut to this thing and the way that it moves is so fast and it's absolutelyhilarious.
And then these two dildos jumping into this needs a yard receptacle that's that big.
Why would it be round?

(02:17:51):
Right.
They get in there and it's just a bunch of like dried moss or something.
compost.
Beverly Hills garbage smells the same as everywhere else.
I think it's the separate compost.
I'm buying it.
That's where this movie turns into Three Stooges.
my god.
this point forward, is going to be like a Three Stooges blended with an insane clown posseconcert.

(02:18:16):
That's how I describe the rest of taking a bath.
That is, that is, yeah, like the, the, the, the, the can of garbage can get swept up infront of the tank.
the guy in the suit.
swept up, gets, it just pushes.
it and then it after the side.
And you see these two guys peeking out of it like our gang hiding from the...

(02:18:38):
uh
then meanwhile, all the residents have been evacuated to this hotel in Century City ownedby Bat Masterson.
Laura is there, the chief of police is there, and a guy who manufactures spermicide, butwas previously a biochemist.
What I would like to know is what the hell the truck was doing on our street in the firstplace.

(02:18:59):
Thank you.
I don't know.
I wish I could tell you.
I wish, I really wish I could.
Our evacuation bus drove by that truck.
You know, there were dogs around it.
What's your point?
Well, if this gas is so poisonous, wouldn't animals avoid it?
I don't know.
Not all dogs are as smart as Benji.
No, on the contrary.
Animals have a very keen sense of a disrupted environment.
One whiff of fluorine would send the dumbest dog running.

(02:19:21):
What are you saying?
It's not fluorine.
Tobias, are you manufacturing contraceptives?
Yes.
Well, that's sort of a big leap to chemical spills, don't you think?
Well, you've heard of Checkmate, haven't you?
As a matter of fact, I produce a patented spermicide, which I developed.
Prior to being a CEO, I was a biochemist.
I didn't know you were a biochemist.
I'll tell you something else you don't know.

(02:19:42):
At the rate a dog metabolizes, inhaling fluorine would...
kill it before it got from its nose to its lungs.
So you're confident enough to put on a suit and go in there?
With the proper tools, yeah.
Wait, we're not sending anybody in there.
So we'll just ignore the fact that the EPA is telling us that this is I don't think theEPA knows what the hell it's talking about.
Listen, I've been here all night and haven't even seen the EPA.
Well, how the hell long are you gonna wait for them?

(02:20:03):
Why don't you shout a little higher and talk loud enough everybody will hear you.
I wish you would.
Look, Toby, I have a suite upstairs.
You can go there, rest, wash up if you want.
I'm not going anywhere.
Good idea, Toby.
Well, then I'll just have them bring a key in you change your mind.
Excuse me.
I'm staying right here.
All right, stay here quietly.
Excuse me.
Sure thing.

(02:20:24):
Do you know how to play gin?
No, I don't.
But I want to tell you, my wife really liked your products.
I'm glad you're still having fun.
We have this whole bit where the police chief thanks him for his products and says howmuch his wife enjoys using them.
Makes sense to me.
Yep.
That all happens.
um And you know, but it's enough to put the seed of doubt in Laura's mind about what'sgoing on.

(02:20:47):
You know who doesn't have the seat of doubt?
Any other cop in Los Angeles.
No, they're all just waiting on the perimeter to make sure nobody gets in or out, whichdoesn't make any sense.
Okay, let's just presume it's a chemical spill and the area has to be quarantined.

(02:21:12):
it doesn't make any sense because you would want to stop people from going in.
You wouldn't need to stop people from getting out!
Like, it's not a plague!
They're not carrying a virus!
Like, getting out shouldn't be a problem!
And there are helicopters at the very least like the news presence that was in Die Hard.

(02:21:34):
capturing this tank driving through.
up houses!
Blowing up Beverly Hills, which is not that big an area.
to the point of that great shot from Die Hard from a distance where you see the explosionhappen, you can't tell me.
I mean, it's not like Beverly Hills is out on an island somewhere.
No!

(02:21:54):
It's blended with everything else and it's a small area.
And if you saw this quantity of explosions and in any way saw a tank blowing throughhouses and stuff like that, somebody somewhere would go, wait a minute, maybe what?
What's this about?
They're not just going to be like, no, don't go there.
Don't, nope, nope.
fluorine gas explosions.

(02:22:17):
It should have been the taking of Catalina.
Oh, mullet tank.
That's what it should have been.
Cause then you have an island.
could have the whole island.
don't know if there's, you I don't know.
It's just like we have them steal a Rolls Royce for a budget rental car and then blow upthe whole place, except the Lamborghini's.
uh The heist continues is just this absolutely massive amount of people involved in thisoperation.

(02:22:44):
Like breaking into banks and stores and houses.
And so many of these guys look like they're in Romero's film The Crazies.
Yeah!
They're wearing those white outfits from The Crazies the whole time.
Well, they're masquerading as EPA guys, like the fake EPA guy at the hospital, which likehas a conversation with Bat for no reason except for Laura to overhear it and get more

(02:23:06):
suspicious.
And then she follows Bat down to the basement of the hotel where he's controlling thewhole operation in Beverly Hills.
And, and, and Boomer hears Bat giving orders over the radio.
So now we get the whole walkie talkie bit, like the back and forth over the walkie talkiesfrom Die Hard appears here.
with Bat and Batma- I can't believe they named him Batmasters.

(02:23:28):
I can.
Bat is the nickname, right?
It's Robert Bat Masterson.
They call it Bat for the movie.
It would be like if, you know, your character was, you know, we call them Wyatt Earp forfuck's sake.
Like it's just, yeah, Bat Boomer.
Bat hears Laura listening outside and chases her down.
And we get this absolutely bizarre conversation.

(02:23:52):
You're crazy, Bat.
And don't you forget it.
You know, Laura, you're just another notch on his jockstrap.
You're just a genital obsessive.
Aren't we all?
Anyway, I owe it all to you.
You've made all this possible.
Thank you, Laura.
Thank you very much.

(02:24:13):
Thank you very much.
It's the nicest thing that anyone's ever done for me.
Guys, isn't everybody just genital obsessed, I guess?
Like, just guys, guys, I just don't know.
I just don't know.
We're not going to have answers for you.
We're supporting you through this, we don't have.

(02:24:35):
We'll have flamethrowers.
We'll have flamethrowers.
Yeah, the guy from the tank shows up again with a flame thrower.
Benitez, he's in the back of a pickup truck.
chase, they chase the Rolls Royce up like a uh parking garage and then across, like theygo across to the next building and crash back through the bottom floor of the building.

(02:24:57):
But the weird thing about that whole thing guys is that when, when boomer has the flamethrower in the back of the truck, right?
Yep.
He's spraying it everywhere and hitting nothing.
Most of what he's just shooting it off in the air and a significant amount of it is justhitting these brick walls in, in this parking garage.

(02:25:19):
It's like the war on parking in LA, which I can't argue too much with that sentiment, butfair.
It's kind of ridiculous because just stop pulling the trigger, man.
There's no one around you.
Hold on because you're turning lots of corners here.
He doesn't know what to do with things in his hands except for his wiener.
I like the fact that he doesn't know how to use a gun.

(02:25:40):
in some ways it's like, okay, cause he might not.
He's like, I don't know how to do it.
He knows how to throw things.
He knows.
Yes.
He's got the Molotov cocktails that he makes out of the the liquor decanters.
They crash that car crashes down like through multiple floors of this building and landsin a sushi bar, which has got a display of throwing stars on the wall that he takes.

(02:26:07):
And he's good.
He's good with the throwing stars, I guess, because he's, know, like, it is even like theyeven have like a like him and Kelvin have this big heart to heart.
conversation while they're putting the Molotov cocktails together.
And even that is just like, it's so, like it's so totally empty.
Like, like it's crazy.
Like it's like they're doing these beats, but they have no substance whatsoever.

(02:26:32):
Uh, but Hey, let's get back to the dude with the flame thrower, you know, tear it apart,Beverly Hills.
mean, Rob, I think you're right.
It's, the American version of the bad Italian knockoff, but it lacks that Italian this.
that makes those Italian movies so enjoyable.
You do get Faith No More's epic blasting over an explosive action sequence.

(02:26:57):
When that kicked in, I was just, I was all in.
I'm telling you.
Honestly, guys, this movie has the soundtrack of a 90s strip club.
It just it's yeah.
So so it and now we do come back plot wise to what Bat Masterson was talking about earlierin his wall.

(02:27:19):
The wall and the wall is actually like this.
It's it's like this priceless mural that has been painted on this wall that Bat Mastersonactually owns this mural.
And he has his goons like take it out of the bank and they're going to bury it in hisyard.
And then he's going to claim it was stolen and collect the insurance.

(02:27:44):
That's the plan.
plot for a movie.
don't understand how they couldn't have just destroyed it and he still could havecollected insurance because he's never going to be able to do anything with this wall.
Because he says he doesn't even give a shit about it.
Yeah.
And the wall is insured by the insurance company owned by Laura's father.
And this is the final piece of the plan.

(02:28:06):
He knows that the insurance company is not going to be able to pay the claim on thispriceless wall, which will that allow Bat Masterson to take over the company.
Hehehehehe
So it's all a corporate takeover, I guess.
But like this guy is wealthy enough to own an NFL team and a hotel.
why do, like, what, like, listen, I'm not saying that rich people can't be greedy, but ifyou have all that money, why would you risk it on this absolutely bunker scheme that if it

(02:28:35):
goes wrong, you lose everything?
I don't know.
have you talked yet?
Have we talked about the fact that he is proposed that he's either going to kill Laura orshe can marry him?
No, we were just getting to that point.
was, that was, was.
Yeah.
He's going to, he either needs to marry her because she then can't testify against herhusband in court or he'll have to kill him.

(02:28:58):
Yeah, which is not exactly how spousal
No, I was gonna bring that up.
It doesn't mean she can't be compelled to testify against her husband, but she can if shewants to.
If she chooses to, she can do it.
then, and by the way, during that whole scene, he's confronting her with a crossbow thathe has in his house.

(02:29:21):
Yep.
Yeah.
So then Boomer shows up at the house.
have the most anticlimactic fight between the two of them.
It culminates with Boomer stabbing back.
with one of those air pressure corkscrews?
And then he hits the button and he injects it with an air bottle?
Well, that causes a fatal asthma attack.

(02:29:42):
The villain in this movie dies from asthma.
We completely skipped over the portion that gave Rob and I our opening, our shared openingstatement on this episode.
When Boomer gets the tank.
Well, okay.
First, Varney and Boomer have this confrontation on the street.

(02:30:02):
And Varney's like, you sick burn coming guys, you lame son of a bitch.
And then he says, say something.
And he goes, I hate football.
That's all Varney.
And then boomer shoots him and he goes, you know, I really hate guys who don't likefootball.
And I think that was supposed to be his yippee-ki-yay moment in this movie or something,but boy.

(02:30:26):
Great throws our QB one boomer throws explosive like downfield to hit and kill the fleeingVarney in that moment.
Well, because yeah, it's just oh god by this movie I swear
like later when he kills Benitez, he throws a rock straight to-

(02:30:46):
Hit him with a rock!
Straight in the face!
Hit him with a rock in the face!
I just hit s-
That reminds me of a deadly friend.
When she throws the basketball that throw mama from the train lady's head and just...
Anne Ramsey, that's good stuff.
I wish, honestly, there's part of me that wished this was the first of a series and eachone was the taking of another like high end neighborhood somewhere in the world.

(02:31:17):
And Boomer always finds himself in the middle of it.
But in each movie, he's gotten involved in a different sport.
So that line can be, I hate people who hate baseball.
I hate people who hate hockey.
I hate people who hate curling.
The curling one would have been like it's set in the Alps.
This is, my God, it's all coming clear to me now.
Like it's set in the like, like Stade or one of these Alpine, you know, winter sportscities.

(02:31:44):
And he's there engaging in curling and he uses the curling stone to kill the bad guy.
I people who.
I have a movie for uh you.
There's a movie starring wrestling legend Bill Goldberg called Santa's Sleigh.
Oh my god.
S-L-A-Y.
I kind of figured.

(02:32:05):
I kind of figured.
That movie, okay, I'm gonna, first of all, I'm just gonna tell you who's in the cast.
In addition to Bill Goldberg from WCW.
Terrible wrestling.
This movie also has Dave Thomas.
wow.
Rebecca Gayhart.

(02:32:26):
wow.
Chris Catan.
Holy shit.
Fran Drescher.
Robert Culp.
Hey, you know what?
Robert Culp, that's a big wh-
And the best, James Kahn.
And the plot of this movie is that Santa is a demon.
What?
there's a kid who plays hockey, to your point, a moment ago.

(02:32:48):
Nice.
Who's central to the whole story.
Also central to the story, even more than hockey, is curling.
Oh.
There's all of this, like the way that the portal to hell is actually opened up is duringa curling match.
That's amazing.
And so curling comes into play several times.
I cannot recommend Santa's sleigh 2005 enough.

(02:33:11):
I will check it out for sure.
I'm still thinking about the Boomer Hayes series that never was where he goes around theworld.
Because imagine the one set in whatever the high-end neighborhood of Tokyo is where he'sengaged in sumo wrestling.
my God.
I want a multiverse jump over to the universe where this movie was a big hit and thatseries became a thing.

(02:33:39):
I wanna pitch the taking of Kefisia, upscale neighborhood in Athens, and we can go Olympicon this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no
be shot put?
I don't know.
We're going there.
no, javelin.
Oh, yeah.
It's gotta be jamble.
Daaaang!
So, I this was a kind of ridiculous movie, obviously, but like, you know, it illustrates apoint because it does so much of the same stuff that Die Hard does.

(02:34:10):
How expertly Die Hard does those things?
And in comparison, it's like, well, it's not that easy.
It's like how finely tuned of a machine the script for Die Hard is, because taking aBeverly Hills is doing a lot of the same stuff.
But my God, is it insane?
And the execution is far different.

(02:34:31):
Like at the end of this movie, you can't have a more stark AB where boomer aftereverything is all done, he's got like one thin blood streak, like going down from his
hairline down his face.
And there's like a little bit of scuffing on his Jersey.
But essentially he, whereas John McClane just looks like total ass and he's like reallylike hurt, you know, and all of that.

(02:34:56):
Um, it's just, and that's, think.
a just good visual difference between how these two movies execute this kind of thing.
Although if you do watch this movie, anyone listening, you haven't already, stay for thecredits.
I'm just saying.
ah
Yeah, we get the credits roll, you know, with like a scene that was clearly shot to be theend scene of the movie, but it plays over the credits without dialogue.

(02:35:25):
It's so bizarre.
It's just, there's some amazing music.
It's just something, this movie.
This movie is so weird.
I don't want to say not to, like it's not a good movie, but it is kind of fascinating inits way.
Yeah.
I settled in and could enjoy it.
Right.
I'm not gonna watch it every every Christmas.

(02:35:46):
No, no.
And it's, it's weird in that for all of our, you know, comparing to diehard and howdiehard, you know, executed things probably in a, uh, you know, a better fashion.
It's not like I can point to things and say that this is a poorly made movie.
It's not.
I still think the recreation of downtown Beverly Hills is genuinely an amazing piece ofproduction design.

(02:36:10):
And given, you know, the budgets and all of that, like the action is relatively, you know,up, up, you know, moving and et cetera.
It's not, it's not like it's poorly shot action or anything.
mean, they're working within their constraints, but it just is, you know, sometimes, youknow, you just can't fake the funk.

(02:36:31):
Indeed, And yeah, I mean, that's probably the place to stop for today.
Cause my God, I have to lie down from the taking of Beverly Hills.
But like, we're just getting started in our exploration of these movies because the waveof movies that utilize the diehard formula, there's going to be, it is really fascinating

(02:36:52):
because you have some very big budget studio movies and some very good studio movies.
And then you have some direct to video and direct to TV movies utilizing the same formula.
It really covers the gamut and we are gonna explore all of those kinds of movies in theweeks ahead.

(02:37:13):
There's some really, really interesting stuff ahead as we move into uh the weeks to come.
Yeah, we have some great guests who will be joining us and it is gonna be a blast.
Come back next week when we're going to look at two films that revolve around airports andairplanes.
John McClane will return and have us asking how the same thing can happen to the same guytwice in Die Hard 2, Die Harder.

(02:37:44):
And that's right, guys, always bet on Black with Wesley Snipes in Passenger 57.
As always,
We are your hosts Chris Iannicone, Rob Lemorgis, and Justin Beam.
If you've enjoyed the show, please consider subscribing and following us on Blue Sky,Instagram, Threads, and Twitter at Get Me Another Pod.

(02:38:05):
We also have a Facebook page as well now.
Make sure to check out Justin's new album, Phantom Lightkeeper Shore Ghosts.
You can order it at JustinBeam.com, and it is absolutely fantastic.
And if you like the show, tell your friends about it.
Tell your enemies about it.
Tell that guy next to you on the plane about it and say it's even better than walkingaround barefoot and making fists with your toes.

(02:38:30):
And join us next time as we continue to explore what happens when Hollywood says, get meanother.
the weather outside is frightful But the fire is so delightful And since we've no place togo Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow It doesn't show signs of stopping oh And I

(02:39:02):
brought some corn for popping The lights are turned way down low Let it snow, let it snow,let it

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Die Hard Ep. 01 - Die Hard / The Taking of Beverly Hills

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Die Hard Ep. 01 - Die Hard / The Taking of Beverly Hills