Die Hard at 35: How a near-miss on the freeway inspired an action classic
Die Hard screenwriter Jeb Stuart talks to The A.V. Club about the film's enduring appeal, why Clint Eastwood said no, and whether it really is a Christmas movie
Film Features die hard
When Die Hard hit theaters 35 years ago, it was like Christmas in July. The action classic, directed by John McTiernan and starring Bruce Willis, established a new standard for popcorn blockbusters when it opened wide on July 22, 1988. Willis’ leading man status was forever cemented in his role as New York City detective John McClane, the underdog everyman pitted against thieves who take over an L.A. high-rise on one incendiary Christmas Eve.
Die Hard spawned a franchise, but the first movie still stands as a monument to Hollywood’s heyday of director-driven, star-powered attractions—and with its yuletide setting, it remains an unexpected holiday favorite. For Die Hard screenwriter Jeb Stuart, the secret of the film’s evergreen appeal is in both its craftsmanship and its heart. Take away the guns, exploding rooftops, and profane cowboy catchphrases, and Die Hard is about a husband who wants to make up with his wife. “It’s about a 30-year-old guy who should have said something to his wife before something really bad happens,” Stuart told A.V. Club in a recent phone interview. “It’s a family story.”
A novel approach to a movie adaptation
Officially an adaptation of Roderick Thorp’s 1979 noir novel Nothing Lasts Forever, Die Hard follows roughly the same plot with a few key differences. In the book, sixty-something protagonist John Leland must save his grown daughter Stephanie, an oil executive, from terrorists who seek vengeance against her employers. Spoilers: Stephanie falls to her death, and the book’s ending implies Leland also dies from his various wounds.
Die Hard was born out of Fox’s rights to Thorp’s book, which were in place before Thorp even wrote it. Stuart was an up-and-coming screenwriter with both a project at Columbia and a four-picture deal at Disney. Neither was bringing in enough income for Stuart to support his wife and two children. With a six-week period to fill with work, Stuart’s agent put him in contact with Lloyd Levin, a producer at 20th Century Fox, who hired Stuart to adapt Nothing Lasts Forever. “I would have taken the Dead Sea Scrolls if they offered it to me,” Stuart jokes.
Stuart liked Thorp’s book, but found it too grim to faithfully turn into a Hollywood movie. In the weeks he had to finish a draft, he struggled to crack the story, straining to reconcile the visceral nihilism of Thorp’s book with the demands of a summer crowd-pleaser. The effort took a toll on Stuart and his marriage. “I was burning the candle at both ends,” Stuart says. “I was working on the Columbia project from 8 [a.m.] until 6 [p.m.]. I’d come home, put my kids to bed, have dinner with my wife, and go back to Burbank at whatever hour [to write Die Hard].”
An inspiration that almost killed him
One night, Stuart got into a fight over a trivial matter with his wife, the late Anne Bryant Stuart, who supported her husband through grad school and his dream of becoming a screenwriter. Stuart knew she was “completely in the right,” but his pride still had him storm off and drive down L.A’s Ventura Freeway. “It didn’t take me five minutes to go, ‘She’s right, and I’m wrong.’”
Before Stuart could turn around, he saw the cars ahead of him violently swerving. “There was a Frigidaire box, and I went over it at 65 miles an hour,” he says. Mercifully, it was empty. But with his heart racing, he pulled over on the freeway and saw the Century City skyline—where Nakatomi Plaza would stand—glistening in the distance.
“I suddenly knew what Nothing Lasts Forever was,” he says. The protagonist doesn’t lose his daughter—he has to save his wife. That night, Stuart typed through 30 pages. “Once that was in place, it was easy to take what Thorp had in the novel and build it out.” Ironically, this kept him from doing what actually had to be done: apologize to his wife. “I made the mistake of not calling as soon as I got to the studio,” he says. “She was angry.”
Stuart believes this point of view underscores everything about Die Hard. McClane is only driven to stop Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber because he just wants to talk to his wife, Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), one more time. “I always saw John McClane and [his wife] Holly as a very personal thing,” he says. It’s also why he sides with audiences who champion it as a Christmas movie. “Ever since I pulled over on [the freeway, Die Hard was] a family story. It’s that idea of bringing the family together for the holidays,” he says. “I wanted everybody to be okay in the end and off to new beginnings.”
(Stuart recalls Fox producer Lloyd Levin wanted Die Hard to end with snow, California climate be damned. Stuart stopped short of writing snow into the movie, but he still granted Levin his holiday wish. The torn-up bonds and office papers floating down Nakatomi, he says, “is L.A. snow.”)
‘Don’t hire the guy that just won the Oscar’
Stuart doesn’t take all the credit for Die Hard. After he submitted his draft and started work elsewhere, writer Stephen de Souza came aboard for rewrites. Bruce Willis was cast after an exhausting process that first courted actors like Clint Eastwood (who, Stuart says, didn’t understand its humor). Willis knew he was no one’s first choice, but he wanted to prove he was the right choice.
Similarly, John McTiernan was fresh from Predator and wanted to prove he could direct the hell out of a movie sans aliens shooting lasers. “McTiernan was enormously hungry,” Stuart says. “He had done Predator, but felt the effects got all the credit. He wanted to do a movie where the director [got the credit]. Everybody brought on wanted to kick the doors down. That’s how you get successful movies. Don’t hire the guy that just won the Oscar, you want the guy dying for it.”
Adds Stuart, “I love working with people who aren’t just punching the clock. No one was punching the clock on Die Hard.”
Thirty-five years later, Die Hard is still the gift that keeps on giving. It explodes like the 4th of July while radiating the warmth of a Christmas spectacular. For Stuart, it is a reminder of his first wife, and the importance of opening up to those you love in the time you have left. “That’s why the origin story [of Die Hard] means so much to me,” he says. “Die Hard wouldn’t be Die Hard without a refrigerator box on the freeway.”
48 Comments
Pippy-poopy motherfucker, I have bologna too!
Bologna II: The Luncheoning!
Man I wish there’s Die Hard 6 to tie up all of his broken family loose ends, especially making up with Holly Genarro even if they never get back together. Considering Bruce Willis’ medical issues, that may never happens.Oh well.
They should make a Die Hard 6, but it’s not an action movie, it’s just a drama about Holly living her life and dealing with the fact that her ex-husband is now suffering from dementia.
John keeps seeing terrorists and catastrophes everywhere but really he’s just in his slippers and dressing gown, standing on the lawn, in the middle of getting the paper.
“When Die Hard hit theaters 35 years ago, it was like Christmas in July.”I see what you did there, A.V. Club.
“We’re flexible. Kinja didn’t work out so we got you with slideshows.” – A.V. Club
Funny enough, no mention in this article that they were contractually obligated to offer the main role to Frank Sinatra first — since he had a right of first refusal option after playing Leland in the first movie based on Leland…Wisely he knew he was too old for the role and passed gracefully.
It’s a good story, but I feel like at this point mentioning it in a Die Hard article is kind of like talking about how Harrison Ford was sick with the flu for the swordsman “duel” in Raiders; most people already know.
Also, I doubt there was ever really any serious thought of actually making it with Sinatra in the lead. If he had insisted, they probably just would have bought out his contract or shelved it.
I didn’t.
So the title should have been “Die Hard, but Only If Frank Sinatra Says So”
Well, he was the chairman of the board.
This is still one of the all-time great action movies, especially coming from a time when the action movie protagonists might get a little scuffed but never as beat up as McClane was. The sequels slowly turned him into a superhero which is why they were never as good as the original.
Yeah McClane always looked like he was feeling every last thing that happened to him. The glass-in-feet thing was brutal that way.
“Stuart liked Thorp’s book, but found it too grim to faithfully turn into a Hollywood movie. In the weeks he had to finish a draft, he struggled to crack the story, straining to reconcile the visceral nihilism of Thorp’s book with the demands of a summer crowd-pleaser.”How about make it so they don’t die at the end? I didn’t even need a refrigerator to fall on me to come up with that.
Fine, you write a movie!
Hey, we got a strike buster here!
I could tell from the onion tied to his belt.
As is currently the style of the time.
Scab!!
Oh sure, let’s all listen to Mr I Don’t Need To Be Almost Killed By A Household Appliance To Have Creative Ideas over here.
I do not think there’s a single spot from the Ventura Freeway from which the Century City skyline can be seen, unless somehow the Santa Monica mountains have become transparent.
Warning: SoCal freeway geekery ahead.
Yeah, I squinted at that too, but it might be right. The actual “Ventura Freeway” consists of two portions: US 101 from the edge of Ventura County to the 101/134/170 interchange near Studio City; and California SR-134 from there to its eastern terminus in Pasadena. If you’re driving west on the 134 from Pasadena, then in the stretch between the 210 and the 2, you can indeed see the towers of Century City from the westbound side of the 134. Especially in the afternoon, when they’re backlit by the setting sun, and if there’s minimal smog/haze, they can be clearly seen; I used to take that route home from work and could clearly see Century City’s towers (including Nakatomi Fox Plaza) from there many times. So this might be what he meant.
If so, then what’s perplexing is that in the article, Stuart says this happened “one night,” and I don’t think at night you can really make out the skyscrapers of Century City from that location; they would be a tiny cluster of lights amidst all the other lights of the city and wouldn’t stand out. It might have been “night” in the sense of “early evening” with enough light to still make out the buildings’ silhouettes. Or it could have been actual dark night, and he might have been familiar with seeing them from that location during the day, and happened to stop in a location where he knew what he was looking at, so he was “seeing” them more in his mind’s eye than with his actual eyes.Alternatively, he could mean that he got on the Ventura Freeway in the Valley (e.g. Sherman Oaks), heading east, and then took the 101 south from the 101/134/170 interchange (at which point the 101 becomes the Hollywood Freeway), such that he was actually on the 101 when the incident occurred, and pulled over somewhere that you could see Century City from. I just don’t think there are any such places on the 101 as it heads down into Hollywood; the freeway is too low and there are too many buildings in the way.
Thank you for this bit of localized nerditry (not meant pejoratively). The internet has a lot of NOT-HELPFUL people on it, who seem to want nothing more than to make everything worse, so thank you for using your 2 cents to make it all a bit better. This is what we need more of in the world, and I applaud you for it kind Sir or Madam.
That was fucking beautiful. And now I miss California even more!
Alla you who kept arguing that Die Hard wasn’t a Christmas CAN SUCK IT LONG AND HARD!
“Jingle Bells” was also not written as a Christmas song (it’s a Thanksgiving song0, but it has become one through custom. Thus, maybe Die Hard wasn’t intended to be a Christmas movie, but it has now become one. People can get over it.
Tell me you didn’t read the article without telling me you didn’t read the article.
Ho Ho Ho. Now I have a machine gun.Christmas movie.
John McClane is in LA because he’s visiting his family for Christmas, the movie takes place on Christmas Eve at a Christmas office party, Christmas In Hollis is a prominent song in the film, McClane specifically asked his driver to play Christmas music. Santa Clause is referenced, characters talk of hoping for Christmas miracles. Frankly, it seems weird to not to think of it as a Christmas movie, the whole plot of the movie revolves around Christmas, how is this even a debate?
how is this even a debate? It’s debatable because even with all of the Christmas trappings that you list, Christmas movies canonically involve a theme of redemption, in some tiny and human way reflecting the redemption of Christ himself. While Stuart’s identification of the family themes make it more than just an action or revenge story, it still lacks the kind of transcendent epiphany that is at the heart of stories like A Christmas Carol or It’s a Wonderful Life. It doesn’t even have the holiday nostalgia that makes stories like A Christmas Story a Christmas movie.
Sounds like special pleading to me. You say Christlike redemption is canonical, but then make a special exemption for A Christmas Story because of nostalgia. You might as well just say a movie is only a Christmas movie if you say it is.
I only said that it’s debatable, not that it’s definitively not a Christmas movie. Lots of films take place at Christmastime, and have all of the trappings of the holiday, yet don’t resonate as a Christmas movie, at least for me. Let me ask this: Could Die Hard take place at any other time of the year, yet still be the same film? I think that it could, but I don’t think that any of the other films I named would be the same if the Christmas backdrop was removed.
With some tweaks, sure it could take place at different time of year. But so could the movies that you named, A Christmas Story could have just as easily been about Ralphie wanting a BB gun for his birthday rather than Christmas. Ghosts could have showed up over new year’s eve to convince Ebenezer to be a better person (it would need a different title, obviously). There’s really very little about Christmas in It’s a Wonderful Life, like Die Hard, it wasn’t even released at Christmas time. The ending is set at Christmas, but it doesn’t have to be.But I get your point, it can be debatable. For me, all of the Christmas imagery, Christmas music, Christmas references, and plot details revolving around it being Christmas time make it a Christmas movie. But to each their own.
How is Die Hard not a redemption story?
I have never heard of Christmas movies involving redemption before. The redemption of Christ is most strictly signified by Good Friday, and more generally by Easter since no one is making Good Friday movies.The definition for the genre of “Christmas movie” that I am familiar with is bring a family or community back together.
“how is this even a debate?”Beats me. But for some people, it is.
Fun Fact: Nakatomi’s daughter would go on to star in Parks & Recreation.
i think I need this explained to me.
Die Hard. Nakatomi Plaza. Aubrey Plaza.
You monster
Technically I’m Dr. Frankenstein, the creator of the monster.
The Ventura Freeway isn’t anywhere near Century City. Especially to be able to see it.I know you guys are new to LA and all, but c’mon.
I posted in a thread up above, but it actually is plausible, because the 134 is part of the Ventura Freeway, and given proper lighting conditions (low smog, time of day) you can clearly see Century City from the 134 west above Eagle Rock. It’s unclear if this is what he meant, though.
I looked up it and you’re actually right. He was actually on the 134. He was heading to Burbank so it makes sense.