Lethal Weapon (1987) v. Die Hard (1988): Part 1

<v Speaker 1>All the leather outside.
<v Speaker 2>All right, everybody, welcome back to the Surely You Can't
<v Speaker 2>Be Serious Podcast. Jason, How you're doing? I'm doing great?
<v Speaker 2>How you doing tonight? I'm doing fantastic. I've gotten my
<v Speaker 2>Seagrum's golden wine cooler over here, and I'm practicing some
<v Speaker 2>martial arts.
<v Speaker 1>I guess we're gonna have to register you as a
<v Speaker 1>lethal weapon.
<v Speaker 2>Jason. I cannot believe it. We have reached the final
<v Speaker 2>comparison of season one. We have done our first season,
<v Speaker 2>and I'm so excited and so happy. It's been amazing, Man.
<v Speaker 1>I had a fantastic year.
<v Speaker 2>It's been great. It has been so fun to do
<v Speaker 2>this with you. And I can't wait to tackle season
<v Speaker 2>two coming up in in the year with two of
<v Speaker 2>our favorite movies of all times, right at Christmas time
<v Speaker 2>where they need to be.
<v Speaker 1>Wait to get into these two movies. Man, these are
<v Speaker 1>two of my all time favorite movies.
<v Speaker 2>What a great way to end the season.
<v Speaker 1>I know, Man, I literally have lost sleep thinking about
<v Speaker 1>these episodes, Like I lay in my bed going, I
<v Speaker 1>can't wait to talk about these two movies.
<v Speaker 2>I've lost sleep because I feel like I'm not going
<v Speaker 2>to do justice to these movies because they're so good.
<v Speaker 1>I know, right. Hey, before we get too far in
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<v Speaker 2>You, And we've got to give a special shout out
<v Speaker 2>to the Beckett Foundation. They on Twitter referenced something I
<v Speaker 2>said back in April. Back April twenty first, and we
<v Speaker 2>were doing coming to America versus Trading Places. I said
<v Speaker 2>something about Ralph Bellamy versus Bill Bellamy and that they
<v Speaker 2>were not related and post a picture and my gosh,
<v Speaker 2>these guys, what is it now? Eight months later they're
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<v Speaker 2>you guys for getting the joke, Thank you for being
<v Speaker 2>in on it. We really appreciate you. Check out them
<v Speaker 2>at the Beckett Foundation on Twitter.
<v Speaker 1>That was really cool. I had to refresh my memory.
<v Speaker 1>I was like, I don't remember what we were talking about.
<v Speaker 2>Why did they send us a picture of Bill Bellamy
<v Speaker 2>that's his same.
<v Speaker 1>Well, like you said, this is the end of season
<v Speaker 1>one one. We will be taking a break after the
<v Speaker 1>completion of the die Hard Versus Lethal Weapon comparison, and
<v Speaker 1>we will be back in February. Hopefully that'll give us
<v Speaker 1>a chance to get ahead, do some studying and see
<v Speaker 1>our families.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, yes, the good news is that right as we're
<v Speaker 2>coming to our pause, the Soundtrack Show is starting to
<v Speaker 2>drop some new episodes. Check them out because the Soundtrack
<v Speaker 2>Show is the bomb.
<v Speaker 1>Also check out our friends at the thirty something Movie Podcast.
<v Speaker 1>They're getting ready to start nineteen ninety one.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you've got to go. Check out thirty something guys,
<v Speaker 2>John and Pat and Bow and occasionally Jeff and some
<v Speaker 2>of the other guys. Always brilliant, always funny.
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<v Speaker 2>all right, So, so enough of the pledge drive campaigning
<v Speaker 2>that we're doing here, Time to jump into these movies. Jason,
<v Speaker 2>are you ready?
<v Speaker 1>Do you really want to jump?
<v Speaker 2>Well?
<v Speaker 1>Do you Well, that's just fine with me. Let's do it, man,
<v Speaker 1>Let's do it.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, I gotta say this. In this entire year, it's
<v Speaker 2>been amazing to learn about the different people involved in
<v Speaker 2>all of our favorite music and movies. The guy that
<v Speaker 2>I didn't know that I am excited to have learned
<v Speaker 2>about is Shane Black. He was a guy who was
<v Speaker 2>just a name up until we started doing our research
<v Speaker 2>for this. But what an interesting guy he is. You know,
<v Speaker 2>he's like your friend, that is this just this always angry,
<v Speaker 2>hating on life guy, but he is so intelligent and
<v Speaker 2>so funny that you still love him. And that's to me,
<v Speaker 2>that's Shane Black. You know.
<v Speaker 1>It's interesting that you say that I didn't know a
<v Speaker 1>whole lot about him before this. Of course, familiar with
<v Speaker 1>some of his movies, and we talked about him very
<v Speaker 1>very briefly back in our bill and Ted episode. Chris
<v Speaker 1>Mathison and Ed Solomon were in class with Shane Black
<v Speaker 1>at UCLA, and they would talk about how they would
<v Speaker 1>work and work struggle to come up with these ideas.
<v Speaker 1>And this guy barely came to class, didn't say two
<v Speaker 1>words in class, but when he turned in a writing
<v Speaker 1>assignment was the best thing that anybody in the class
<v Speaker 1>I've ever seen.
<v Speaker 2>So he actually shared a house with Ed Solomon. They
<v Speaker 2>weren't just in class together. They shared a house him,
<v Speaker 2>Ed Solomon, and Fred Decker, who's the guy who wrote
<v Speaker 2>Monster Squad and Knight of the Creeps and RoboCop three.
<v Speaker 2>They all shared a house together, which they called the Pad.
<v Speaker 2>Oh guys, and they considered it a fraternity for the
<v Speaker 2>movie Buffs of Ucla, and they would go out and
<v Speaker 2>recreate John wu fight scenes in their front yard at
<v Speaker 2>three o'clock in the morning. That sounds exactly like what
<v Speaker 2>my house was like when I was in college. I
<v Speaker 2>was a theater major, so I had a house full
<v Speaker 2>of actors And this is the kind of crap that
<v Speaker 2>we would do. We just did not become internationally famous afterwards.
<v Speaker 1>Tragic.
<v Speaker 2>Okay. So Shane Black starts off in childhood as a reader.
<v Speaker 2>He is a book lover and he likes the Hardy Boys,
<v Speaker 2>but he also likes the Mickey Spallaine grown up books,
<v Speaker 2>and so he becomes this big mystery thriller reader. And
<v Speaker 2>when he gets into UCLA, he becomes interested in writing
<v Speaker 2>and starts developing this screenplay. And he's got an older
<v Speaker 2>brother named Terry Black, who at the time was not
<v Speaker 2>a screenwriter, but at the time with somebody that Shane
<v Speaker 2>Black adored. And Shane Black was working on this screenplay
<v Speaker 2>that he was really excited about. And he actually took
<v Speaker 2>a break from college to finish up this scene and
<v Speaker 2>the screenplay that he was working on, and he showed
<v Speaker 2>it to his brother to see what he thought of it,
<v Speaker 2>and his brother said, I don't like it. It was
<v Speaker 2>this kind of weird mix of like a platoon of
<v Speaker 2>army guys in Vietnam and some sort of supernatural stuff
<v Speaker 2>going on. And so Shane is devastated. And he's sitting
<v Speaker 2>there in front of his typewriter contemplating whether he should
<v Speaker 2>bother to go on writing anything ever again, and the
<v Speaker 2>page is just staring at him, and he's staring back
<v Speaker 2>at the page, and he decides to write a sentence,
<v Speaker 2>and that sentence gets followed by another sentence, and then
<v Speaker 2>the words just kind of start flowing out of him,
<v Speaker 2>and he writes an entirely different scene, which becomes an
<v Speaker 2>entirely different script, which ultimately he shows to somebody who
<v Speaker 2>gets him an agent who then finds a way to
<v Speaker 2>get the script that he's written sold. And that script
<v Speaker 2>that he wrote at twenty one, which he sells at
<v Speaker 2>twenty two is the script for Lethal Weapon.
<v Speaker 1>It's fantastic.
<v Speaker 2>That moment in front of the typewriter was a moment
<v Speaker 2>of precarious history because he said, had I not typed
<v Speaker 2>that sentence, had I not typed that sentence, I would
<v Speaker 2>have given up writing forever. But something just was staring
<v Speaker 2>back at me that said, just type something. It is
<v Speaker 2>because of that that we have Lethal Weapon, and that
<v Speaker 2>we have Iron Man three, and that we have the
<v Speaker 2>nice guys. I mean, pretty huge deal. And the name
<v Speaker 2>of that script that he showed his brother that he
<v Speaker 2>changed the Shadow Company.
<v Speaker 1>Yay, all right, right, so those of the bad guys
<v Speaker 1>from Lethal Weapon.
<v Speaker 2>Exactly if you haven't if you haven't seen Lethal Weapon
<v Speaker 2>in a while, that is the company that all of
<v Speaker 2>the bad guys got together. In Lethal Weapon. Nice.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, you know one of the things when we were
<v Speaker 1>talking about prepping for this, So I know Shane Black
<v Speaker 1>as the writer of leth a Weapon. He wrote Kiss Kiss,
<v Speaker 1>Bang Bang, he wrote Long Kis Knight, he wrote Ironman three.
<v Speaker 1>But he's also he acts in Predator. He's the guy
<v Speaker 1>with glasses. He's like the one guy that's not totally musclebound.
<v Speaker 1>That's Shane Black.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, he's the first guy to die. He sold leth
<v Speaker 2>a Weapon and so he's got two hundred and fifty thousand,
<v Speaker 2>which is pretty nice for a guy who's twenty two
<v Speaker 2>years old. Right. And so Joel Silver, the producer of
<v Speaker 2>Lethal Weapon and the producer of Diehard, both the movies
<v Speaker 2>we're talking about, he says, hey, Joel, can I be
<v Speaker 2>in this movie Predator? And Joel's like sure, we just
<v Speaker 2>we want you to come in and we want you
<v Speaker 2>to help out with the script writing on this deal.
<v Speaker 2>And he's like okay. So Shane Black goes and he
<v Speaker 2>is the he's the first soldier to die in Predator.
<v Speaker 2>He's Hawkins, that's his name. But you know who. The
<v Speaker 2>director of Predator was John McTiernan, who then goes on
<v Speaker 2>to direct die Hard isn't amazing. So these movies, I mean,
<v Speaker 2>we just we jumped on these movies because they're the
<v Speaker 2>obvious comparison.
<v Speaker 1>Right.
<v Speaker 2>They're both Christmas movies.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, and they.
<v Speaker 2>Are both urban cowboy movies, right they are. They're the
<v Speaker 2>the urban gunslinger movies.
<v Speaker 1>Right, yep, for sure, hundred sent But.
<v Speaker 2>They're related in so many other ways. You have the
<v Speaker 2>you've got the overlap of at least three actors in
<v Speaker 2>both of movies. You've got the script writer of Lethal
<v Speaker 2>Weapon is in a movie directed by the director of
<v Speaker 2>die Hard, and later on he becomes a writer for
<v Speaker 2>Last Action Hero, which is also directed by the director
<v Speaker 2>of die Hard. It's all just they're just intertwined so
<v Speaker 2>so tightly. I've never seen two movies that were more
<v Speaker 2>closely related than these two.
<v Speaker 1>When you look at the casting. And I know we'll
<v Speaker 1>get into casting here in a minute. But Arne Schwarzenegger
<v Speaker 1>started Predator, directed by John McTiernan. John mctiernan's next project
<v Speaker 1>is die Hard. He was going to hire Schwarzenegger. This
<v Speaker 1>was going to be a Commando sequel, yeah, right, And
<v Speaker 1>instead of his wife being in trouble, it was Alyssa
<v Speaker 1>Milano his daughter. I mean these movies are from the
<v Speaker 1>same DNA.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you were talking to me earlier and said these
<v Speaker 2>two movies could almost be in the same universe. And
<v Speaker 2>they really could. I mean they're both in LA You
<v Speaker 2>could really see, you know, Sergeant al Powell walking in
<v Speaker 2>as Merton Riggs are walking out. Right.
<v Speaker 1>Oh, that would have been awesome. I would have loved that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
<v Speaker 2>I think for whatever die Hard Lethal Weapon sequel that's
<v Speaker 2>coming up, if they did some sort of overlap like that,
<v Speaker 2>I might just lose my freaking mind.
<v Speaker 1>Al Powell tosses Rigs a Twinkie on the way by,
<v Speaker 1>you know.
<v Speaker 2>Right, Yeah, we'd have to figure out how Agent Johnson
<v Speaker 2>who died now I guess he died in both of them.
<v Speaker 2>He'd have to.
<v Speaker 1>I know, they were twin brothers or something. Well, let's
<v Speaker 1>talk about that for just a second. So Agent Johnson, no,
<v Speaker 1>the other one he was in Diehard, right, Grandell Bushes,
<v Speaker 1>and he was also a cop in Lethal Weapon.
<v Speaker 2>Yes.
<v Speaker 1>Then you have Al Leon who was the guy who
<v Speaker 1>tortured Rigs with the battery cable. Yes, he was also
<v Speaker 1>ginghis Khanan.
<v Speaker 2>Written by Ed Solomon, who was the roommate of Shane Black,
<v Speaker 2>as we've established.
<v Speaker 1>And he was also the terrorist who, if you'll remember,
<v Speaker 1>reached under and got a baby Ruth right before they
<v Speaker 1>shot the two x two formation coming in the building.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Also, yeah, you have Roberts Mex's ex wife, Mary Ellen Trainer.
<v Speaker 1>She plays the police psychologist who says Riggs is he's
<v Speaker 1>on the edge. You don't want to be around him
<v Speaker 1>when he goes. And she's also the TV reporter in
<v Speaker 1>Diehard YEP, she's the one standing next to the news
<v Speaker 1>reporter who says, eat it, Harvey, right.
<v Speaker 2>And she's also the mom and Goonies, which is directed
<v Speaker 2>by Richard Donner, who's also the director of eth a Weapon,
<v Speaker 2>It's Amazing. And the police chief in Lethal Weapon is
<v Speaker 2>also the police officer in Superman One, which is also
<v Speaker 2>directed by Richard Donner.
<v Speaker 1>His name is Steve Kahan. He is the cousin a
<v Speaker 1>film writer, producer, and director Richard Donner.
<v Speaker 2>There you Go. I watched some of the interviews with
<v Speaker 2>Richard Donner on Lethal Weapon back when it was first out.
<v Speaker 2>He was rocking the mullet just like Mel Gibson was.
<v Speaker 2>It was the like mullet two point zero where it's
<v Speaker 2>all feathered. Oh yeah, like swooping. Who. Okay, So we've
<v Speaker 2>we've hit Joel Silver, who produced both movies with hit
<v Speaker 2>Shane Black, who wrote the the Weapon. Then we've hit
<v Speaker 2>John McTiernan, who is the director of Die Hard. Now,
<v Speaker 2>he had come off of Predator. As you said, he
<v Speaker 2>got that job because he had written and directed a
<v Speaker 2>movie called Nomads, which had Pierce Brosenan in it. This
<v Speaker 2>was Pierce Brosnan's first role. And you probably didn't see
<v Speaker 2>that movie. It wasn't really well regarded. But if you
<v Speaker 2>happen to watch it, there's a scene where a guy falls.
<v Speaker 2>You're it's got your point of view and you're watching
<v Speaker 2>him fall off of a buildings and I and I'm like,
<v Speaker 2>what this is the same Oh well it's the same director.
<v Speaker 2>And I listened to him. He's like, yes, I stole
<v Speaker 2>it from myself. I think I didn't. You think I
<v Speaker 2>didn't know what I was doing there? Of course what
<v Speaker 2>I was doing. You've got Richard Donner directing Lethal Weapon.
<v Speaker 2>And then the guy that we haven't mentioned yet but
<v Speaker 2>we have mentioned previously in some of our other episodes,
<v Speaker 2>mister Steve even Desusa, who wrote and really kind of
<v Speaker 2>rewrote Diehard.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, yes, you know, just to backtrack, just to touch
<v Speaker 1>Richard Donner. We have now covered Superman one, Superman two
<v Speaker 1>ish with Richard Donner, the Lost Boys, Lethal Weapon, and
<v Speaker 1>I promise you at some point we're going to cover the.
<v Speaker 2>Goonies, no question. It will be one of the movies
<v Speaker 2>for season two, for sure.
<v Speaker 1>Richard Donner has his fingerprints all over the eighties.
<v Speaker 2>Stephen Desusa was not the original writer of Diehard. The
<v Speaker 2>original writer was a guy named Jeb Stewart. Now, Jeb
<v Speaker 2>Stewart had signed a contract with Disney. It was a
<v Speaker 2>four movie contract, and so he's obligated to write four
<v Speaker 2>movies for them, and basically they paid him so little
<v Speaker 2>that he was about to go broke. And so after
<v Speaker 2>he completed his first script for them, he had like
<v Speaker 2>this six week time period that he could write a
<v Speaker 2>movie for somebody else. And so what he did was
<v Speaker 2>to go and find a novel that he liked, and
<v Speaker 2>he decided to write that script.
<v Speaker 1>He wrote Nothing Least Forever by Roder Thorpe Yes, which
<v Speaker 1>in that novel, John McClain is not named John McLain.
<v Speaker 2>He has a different first name.
<v Speaker 1>The character in The book is called Joseph Leland. I
<v Speaker 1>don't know if we want to dive into Yes, go
<v Speaker 1>for it, Joe Leland. Okay, so you're absolutely right. So
<v Speaker 1>die Hard is the movie version of a book called
<v Speaker 1>Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderic Thorpe. This is the sequel
<v Speaker 1>book to another book called The Detective. Now. The Detective
<v Speaker 1>was made into a movie in the late sixties starring
<v Speaker 1>Frank Sinatra. Frank Sinatra played Joe Leland and when they
<v Speaker 1>remade Nothing Least Forever as die Hard, contractually they had
<v Speaker 1>to offer the part to Frank Sinatra. Can you imagine
<v Speaker 1>a world where die Hard instead of Bruce Willis, we
<v Speaker 1>had a seventy three year old Frank Sinatra.
<v Speaker 2>Not a chance, and neither could Frank Sinatra. Hey kid
<v Speaker 2>me baby, give me another drink.
<v Speaker 1>Come on, I say, Yippika shooby dooby doo. Thankfully he
<v Speaker 1>had the good sense to say no, thanks, I no,
<v Speaker 1>I'm not doing that right.
<v Speaker 2>So Jeb Stewart takes this opportunity to write the movie
<v Speaker 2>die Hard, and really Joel silver is just kind of
<v Speaker 2>rolling this point. Joel Silvers is a producer that has
<v Speaker 2>suddenly come out with Predator and lethal weapon. He's literally
<v Speaker 2>out promoting them. At the same time, the studio calls
<v Speaker 2>him because they say, hey, we've got this book and
<v Speaker 2>we've got this script. That's okay, can you can you
<v Speaker 2>do something with it? And he's like, sure, let's put
<v Speaker 2>it together. So Jeb Stewart's script ultimately gets substantially rewritten
<v Speaker 2>by Steven Desusa. So, like you said, they had this
<v Speaker 2>plan that it would be Commando two, which was all
<v Speaker 2>well and good until Arnold Schwarzenegger said no, thank you.
<v Speaker 1>Right, he wanted to take a shot at comedy, and
<v Speaker 1>so he went and did the movie Twins.
<v Speaker 2>Right. Have you seen Twins?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>I like it, Okay, I have whatever.
<v Speaker 1>It doesn't blow my freaking doors off like Diehard does, though.
<v Speaker 2>No, of course not, because it's comedy. It's not an action.
<v Speaker 2>But he wanted he wanted to show his range, and
<v Speaker 2>that's fine. So you don't get Arnold Schwarzenegger. Obviously, the
<v Speaker 2>second choice has to be Sylvester Stallone and he says no,
<v Speaker 2>no thank you as well, and they're like, well, crap,
<v Speaker 2>who else do we have?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? I mean we want to go. I've got the
<v Speaker 1>list of go go go. Okay, so we've already talked.
<v Speaker 1>In its original incarnation, you had Frank Sinatra offered the part.
<v Speaker 1>At that time it was a father daughter relationship rather
<v Speaker 1>than a husband and wife, so they offered to Charles Bronson,
<v Speaker 1>Burt Reynolds. Richard Gear was Joel Silver's first choice.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. He pushed hard, pushed hard on Richard Gear, and no,
<v Speaker 2>I don't really like it. I don't want to be
<v Speaker 2>running around with the gun and doing my own stunts.
<v Speaker 1>No, thanks, okay, so let's keep going. Yeah, Richard Gear,
<v Speaker 1>So that's your salone. As you said, Harrison Ford, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>Arl Schwarzenegger. As we talked about, Clint Eastwood had a
<v Speaker 1>shot at this too old. At that point, Robert de
<v Speaker 1>Niro was very close to Diehard.
<v Speaker 2>That'd have been a different movie altogether.
<v Speaker 1>That would have been Don Johnson.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Yeah, So Don Johnson at this point is very
<v Speaker 2>hot with Miami Vice, and then Bruce Willis is very
<v Speaker 2>hot with Moonlighting.
<v Speaker 1>Hang Out. I'm not done. Oh sorry, so sorry, no, no, no,
<v Speaker 1>So speaking of hot on TV, you have Don Johnson,
<v Speaker 1>you have Richard Dean Anderson ring a Bell mcguiver.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, not gonna.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, and Finally, Mel Gibson was offered this part. What yeah,
<v Speaker 1>what mel Gibson.
<v Speaker 2>Ah, that's amazing, that is amazing.
<v Speaker 1>All those guys turned it down, all those guys not interested.
<v Speaker 2>And so Bruce Willis. Bruce Willis again was a choice
<v Speaker 2>of Joel Silver like he had seen him in Blind Date,
<v Speaker 2>which was the Blake Edwards movie that had come out before,
<v Speaker 2>and obviously he had seen him in in Moonlighting, and
<v Speaker 2>so he didn't have big a big box office pull
<v Speaker 2>at this point. But Joel Silver thought that he could
<v Speaker 2>make it happen. He thought that he could do it.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, we got to talk about this for a second.
<v Speaker 1>Were you a fan of Blind Date?
<v Speaker 2>Never seen it? Okay?
<v Speaker 1>I am an unapologetic fan of the movie Blind Date.
<v Speaker 1>I like Blake Edwards movies. They're freaking funny.
<v Speaker 2>Blake Edwards who did Pink Panther movies? If that helps
<v Speaker 2>anybody out.
<v Speaker 1>There, Yes, and the movie Skin Deep with John Ridder.
<v Speaker 1>I think they're so funny. And I think Bruce Willis
<v Speaker 1>is very charming and very funny in the movie Blind Date,
<v Speaker 1>and it kind of gets beat on a little bit.
<v Speaker 1>But I I am a huge fan of Moonlighting. How
<v Speaker 1>about you?
<v Speaker 2>Absolutely watched every single U episode. Loved it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, great, great TV show.
<v Speaker 2>So weirdly, this is kind of a weird thing that happens.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, they've gone through a whole bunch of people
<v Speaker 2>and are basically kind of left with Bruce Willis and
<v Speaker 2>Joel silver Is having to push to get him in
<v Speaker 2>the movie. But then they offer him five million dollars
<v Speaker 2>to play this part, which is insane. That's a crazy
<v Speaker 2>amount of money to offer even a star at this point.
<v Speaker 2>And he's a guy who has has done one movie
<v Speaker 2>that's been released. It's actually two movies, but one that's
<v Speaker 2>been released at this point, and it only did kind
<v Speaker 2>of good. And so Robert Murdoch, the head of the studios,
<v Speaker 2>green lights it. He's like, yep, go ahead, give him
<v Speaker 2>five million dollars. And so the next day Richard Dreyfus
<v Speaker 2>fired hiss agent.
<v Speaker 1>I heard this.
<v Speaker 2>What he's never done anything, and I've done all that.
<v Speaker 2>You can't get me five million dollars to fire. So
<v Speaker 2>the question is then at this point, hey, we've hired him,
<v Speaker 2>We've got him for five million dollars, but he's still
<v Speaker 2>in Moonlighting. I mean, that's a TV show that's constantly filming,
<v Speaker 2>but they've got this little miracle that happens. Sybil Shepherd
<v Speaker 2>gets pregnant and they have to stop filming Moonlighting for
<v Speaker 2>six weeks, and so they have exactly six weeks to
<v Speaker 2>film die Hard with Bruce Willis. They don't film the
<v Speaker 2>whole movie in that six weeks. They just filmed the
<v Speaker 2>Bruce Willis parts in the first six weeks, and then
<v Speaker 2>they go on and film the other parts after that,
<v Speaker 2>which is kind of I mean, you know, we watch
<v Speaker 2>movies and we kind of, you know, we have this
<v Speaker 2>image that it's all filmed chronologically, which of course it's not.
<v Speaker 2>But it's just kind of interesting to think that so
<v Speaker 2>much of the conversation that occurs on the radio between
<v Speaker 2>Al and John and Hans and John didn't really ever
<v Speaker 2>really happen. It was just the magic of movies.
<v Speaker 1>Magic.
<v Speaker 2>And so interestingly, the villain in die Hard this is
<v Speaker 2>his first major motion picture. Yep, mister Alan Rickman had
<v Speaker 2>never been in a motion picture before. He had done
<v Speaker 2>some British television. He had done quite a bit of
<v Speaker 2>stage work and that ultimately is how he got discovered.
<v Speaker 2>He was in Liaisons Desrouse as the bad guy in
<v Speaker 2>that on a Broadway production and John McTiernan and Joel
<v Speaker 2>Silver happened to catch the play and they see him
<v Speaker 2>being the bad guy and they're like, there's our Hans Gruber.
<v Speaker 2>There is our villain right there, and they offer him
<v Speaker 2>the part. So, as we just discussed, the first scenes
<v Speaker 2>that they're shooting are the scenes with Bruce Willison, So
<v Speaker 2>that means the first scene that they film with Alan
<v Speaker 2>Rickman is the scene where he meets John McClain as
<v Speaker 2>Hans Gruber pretending to be Bill Clay Clay Bill, which
<v Speaker 2>is weird because Bill Clay is of course nothing like
<v Speaker 2>Hans Gruber.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so there's an interesting story with this. So they're
<v Speaker 1>sitting around at lunch one day. Of course, Alan Rickman
<v Speaker 1>has a heavy English accent, but they're asking him, Hey, Alan,
<v Speaker 1>do you do an American accent? And he said, well,
<v Speaker 1>I don't. I don't really do an American accent, but
<v Speaker 1>I do do like a California accent. And he cracked
<v Speaker 1>everybody up and everybody was dying laughing, and they're like, man,
<v Speaker 1>we got to do this. The characters have to meet,
<v Speaker 1>and to me, this blows my mind. Okay, so we
<v Speaker 1>have this really amazingly well constructed action movie, maybe the
<v Speaker 1>best action movie ever. And they were building it on
<v Speaker 1>the fly. So Steven DeSUS is sitting right there and
<v Speaker 1>they're like, hey, we got to figure out a way
<v Speaker 1>to get these two guys together. They have to meet,
<v Speaker 1>and we have to use this accent so you know,
<v Speaker 1>John McLean doesn't know. And so Steven Jes Susan gets
<v Speaker 1>busy writing this scene and then they think and they're like, no, shoot,
<v Speaker 1>he sees him shoot Takagi And Stephen DeSUS is like, well,
<v Speaker 1>wait a minute, have we shot that scene yet. They're
<v Speaker 1>like nope, it's set for tomorrow. And so they have
<v Speaker 1>to play with the angles to make sure that John
<v Speaker 1>McClean never sees Hans's face.
<v Speaker 2>Oh, so that's why he's under the table. That's it.
<v Speaker 1>He's under the table. And then if you watch the scene,
<v Speaker 1>you don't see Hans from John's perspective.
<v Speaker 2>So they shoot that first scene between Bruce and Alan,
<v Speaker 2>John and Bill and John and Hans. Too many things
<v Speaker 2>going on there, and so they start showing dailies to people,
<v Speaker 2>and they've got people from the studio there, and when
<v Speaker 2>they're watching the scene with Alan Rickman playing Bill Clay,
<v Speaker 2>there's a casting director there named Nancy Klopwright who loses
<v Speaker 2>her mind. She gets like super upset, and it's like,
<v Speaker 2>we can't have this guy as the bad guy. He's
<v Speaker 2>too weak. And Joel Silver's like, that's what it's supposed
<v Speaker 2>to be. In a scene, he's he is playing Week.
<v Speaker 2>He's not actually week, He's playing Week. And she goes
<v Speaker 2>on this huge campaign to get Alan Rickman fired, which now,
<v Speaker 2>I mean, can you imagine that? I mean, if there
<v Speaker 2>is I love, love, love Bruce Willis, but if I
<v Speaker 2>got to pick one actor that made this movie, it
<v Speaker 2>was Alan Rickman. So that is kind of the beginnings
<v Speaker 2>of Diehard, which I don't know why we talked about
<v Speaker 2>it first, because it was the second movie. What had
<v Speaker 2>come out a couple of years before was a movie
<v Speaker 2>called Lethal Weapon.
<v Speaker 1>Yes freaking length Weapon, And this is the.
<v Speaker 2>One that Shane Black wrote that we were talking about.
<v Speaker 2>So Shane Black has this script. Richard Donner hates action movies,
<v Speaker 2>but he reads this script and he enjoys the humor
<v Speaker 2>and he enjoys the fault in each of the main characters,
<v Speaker 2>like you've you've got the guy who's suicidal and a
<v Speaker 2>little bit crazy, and you've got the guy who's too
<v Speaker 2>old for this shit, and so to him makes it
<v Speaker 2>a much more compelling story. And then, like I said,
<v Speaker 2>it's got the humor in it. And so Richard Donner's like, yes,
<v Speaker 2>this looks like a great movie. Now, they had wanted
<v Speaker 2>other people for this. You ready for casting on lethal Weapon?
<v Speaker 1>Heck, yeah, let's do it.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, you jump on it, man.
<v Speaker 1>So initially when they were hiring for Lethal Weapon, they
<v Speaker 1>had no ethnicity specifically in mind. So the black family
<v Speaker 1>cop and the white suicidal cop that wasn't necessarily in
<v Speaker 1>the script. They just kind of came together through casting. Initially,
<v Speaker 1>they wanted Brian Denahey to play Roger Marta.
<v Speaker 2>I could see that he had just.
<v Speaker 1>Done First Blood and thought, no, I've already done the
<v Speaker 1>cop thing for Riggs. They looked at Alec Baldwin, Jeff Bridges,
<v Speaker 1>Pierce Brosnan, Robert de Niro, Don Johnson, Michael Keaton. I
<v Speaker 1>could see him being the suicidal cop. Oh, for sure,
<v Speaker 1>you want to get nuts, Liam Neeson, Sean Penn, Dennis Quaid,
<v Speaker 1>Kurt Russell, I mean, Tom Seller, Charlie Sheen. These are
<v Speaker 1>all eighties action stars. But here's the one that I
<v Speaker 1>find the most interesting. Yes, Christopher Reeve was considered for
<v Speaker 1>the role of Martin Riggs. Right right, I worked with
<v Speaker 1>Donner previously on Superman. Yeah, seems like maybe a fit.
<v Speaker 1>But no, I don't.
<v Speaker 2>Uh uh, I'm gonna go ahead and disagree on that.
<v Speaker 1>Bob Well not a fit for the character. A familiar
<v Speaker 1>face with Donna, right right?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, no, but yes, very interesting choice. But I would
<v Speaker 2>say probably the most interesting consideration is Bruce Willis.
<v Speaker 1>See that's crazy, right, I'll tell you a little secret
<v Speaker 1>what I'm not crazy? These movies are so connected it's unbelievable.
<v Speaker 2>Right, So Mel Gibson was considered for John mc and
<v Speaker 2>Bruce Willis was considered for Martin Riggs.
<v Speaker 1>Do you know who Shane Black wanted to play Martin Riggs?
<v Speaker 1>William Hurt.
<v Speaker 2>I can see that, and as we know, William Hurts
<v Speaker 2>a guy who's not afraid to say no.
<v Speaker 1>Right, he turned down flashed back to our Jurassic Park episode.
<v Speaker 1>He turned down the role of doctor Grant.
<v Speaker 2>Oh is it doctor Grant? Oh?
<v Speaker 1>Okay, Grant, But he is the most boring actor in
<v Speaker 1>the world to me.
<v Speaker 2>Oh gos, that's funny.
<v Speaker 1>Castiing agent Marion Doherty wanted to cast Danny Glover after
<v Speaker 1>seeing him in the movie The Color Purple YEP. So
<v Speaker 1>she arranged to fly Mel Gibson from Sydney and Danny
<v Speaker 1>Glover flew from Chicago. They met in Los Angeles and
<v Speaker 1>the buddy Cop movie of the eighties was made.
<v Speaker 2>It was instant chemistry, like they were immediately playing off
<v Speaker 2>each other, riffing off each other and just immediately had
<v Speaker 2>that chemistry right meet your new partner. And that, by
<v Speaker 2>the way, is one of the things that makes this
<v Speaker 2>movie so good is they've got this animosity throughout the
<v Speaker 2>movie and that's you know, we talked. We talked in
<v Speaker 2>our Raiders and Back to the Future episode about the
<v Speaker 2>hero's journey and how characters, you know, have to go
<v Speaker 2>through this cycle of change as they go through the movie. Well,
<v Speaker 2>these two guys both go through that cycle of change,
<v Speaker 2>but it's really the relationship that goes through the change,
<v Speaker 2>because at the beginning of the movie, it's like, you
<v Speaker 2>know what, I don't want to work with you. But
<v Speaker 2>and by the end of the movie, he's given him
<v Speaker 2>back the bullet and he's going to eat the crummy
<v Speaker 2>Christmas dinner with the family. So when we get to
<v Speaker 2>Lethal Weapon two. By the way, they've become good friends
<v Speaker 2>at this point. So what are you gonna do to
<v Speaker 2>have bickering. Well, you're gonna have Joe PESHI. That's what
<v Speaker 2>you get to do.
<v Speaker 3>What you need.
<v Speaker 1>Leo gets, you get it. I use it all the
<v Speaker 1>time to break the ice when I meet people.
<v Speaker 2>You know.
<v Speaker 1>I asked my wife right before I came out here.
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, all right, I'm getting ready to record Leth
<v Speaker 1>the Weapon, die Hard, what's your favorite part of Leth
<v Speaker 1>the Weapon? And she's like, here's what she said. She goes, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.
<v Speaker 2>I thought you were gonna say they get the drive through.
<v Speaker 1>Leave the Weapon two takes it. So this this franchise
<v Speaker 1>is so great.
<v Speaker 2>Listen, we're not here to talk about Leth a Weapon Too,
<v Speaker 2>but since we're since you brought it up. The script
<v Speaker 2>for Leith the Weapon Too was originally written by Shane
<v Speaker 2>Black and they didn't use it. He got frustrated, walked
<v Speaker 2>off the movie, and they brought in Jeff Bauham, who
<v Speaker 2>we talked about in The Lost Boys. Yeah, right right,
<v Speaker 2>that's right at which you mentioned, makes and appears in
<v Speaker 2>Lethal Weapon because of Richard Donner. It shows up on
<v Speaker 2>the movie Marquee behind them as they were walking along
<v Speaker 2>having their hot dog. It says lost Boys hit of
<v Speaker 2>the year, and so Jeff Boheme is the one that
<v Speaker 2>comes in and rewrites this script to give it more
<v Speaker 2>comedy and not as dark. Shane Black had written a
<v Speaker 2>very very dark Lethal Weapon two that ends with the
<v Speaker 2>death of Martin Riggs, and they said thanks, but no thanks.
<v Speaker 2>You know, here's your money, thank you, have a nice day.
<v Speaker 2>But he maintains to this day that it is the
<v Speaker 2>best script he has ever written.
<v Speaker 1>Really, yeah, I would love to see that.
<v Speaker 2>I'm sure there are lots and lots of people who
<v Speaker 2>would love to see it, but I don't think anybody
<v Speaker 2>ever will. Man.
<v Speaker 1>Hey, just a little side note, mel Gibson turned down
<v Speaker 1>starring roles in the movie The Fly and the Untouchables.
<v Speaker 1>Can you imagine Mel Gibson as Elliot Ness and the Intouchables?
<v Speaker 2>Yes?
<v Speaker 1>Ye, kind of cool?
<v Speaker 2>Right, Yeah, he could have done that.
<v Speaker 1>I love all these what if scenarios, these eighties what ifs.
<v Speaker 2>Well, the interesting thing about mel Gibson is he had
<v Speaker 2>not done a movie in over a year at the
<v Speaker 2>time that they started filming Lethal Weapon. He had had
<v Speaker 2>some crazy success with Mad Max and he had done
<v Speaker 2>I think like four movies in one year, which is
<v Speaker 2>a huge undertaking, and he just he is like Russell Crowe,
<v Speaker 2>He's like, I gotta go back to the farm. He
<v Speaker 2>went back to the farm on Australia and just put
<v Speaker 2>a do not disturb sign on the door. And so
<v Speaker 2>there is there is an original opening for Martin Riggs
<v Speaker 2>that nobody unless you've seen like the outtakes or the
<v Speaker 2>special features, you haven't seen it. Where he is in
<v Speaker 2>a bar drinking and he gets into this fight with
<v Speaker 2>these other guys and he's looking in the mirror before
<v Speaker 2>all this happens, and he looks like he was roaded
<v Speaker 2>hard and hung up wet. He looks bad, and he says,
<v Speaker 2>I look that way because I had gotten any sleep
<v Speaker 2>the night before we shot this scene, because it had
<v Speaker 2>been so long since I filmed a movie. I was
<v Speaker 2>scared to death.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's pretty cool. I love that story. Hey, I
<v Speaker 1>want to drop a little eighties tidbit real quick, very minor,
<v Speaker 1>I say, a minor character. The whole plot revolves around
<v Speaker 1>this character, but she's only in it for a few moments.
<v Speaker 1>Jackie Swanson plays Amanda Huntsecker. She is the.
<v Speaker 2>Prostitute to her death, jumps to her death.
<v Speaker 1>Jumps to her death at the very beginning of the movie, right,
<v Speaker 1>you know, topless drugs, prostitute.
<v Speaker 2>Your growing boy needs.
<v Speaker 1>So the whole plot of the movie revolves around her death.
<v Speaker 1>Jackie Swanson plays Kelly on Cheers.
<v Speaker 2>She plays Kelly Kelly. Kelly, Kelly, Kelly, Kelly, Kelly, Kelly
<v Speaker 2>k e L L. Why because she's Kelly Kelly Kelly.
<v Speaker 2>She's Kelly.
<v Speaker 1>She's Woody's wife.
<v Speaker 2>On Cheers.
<v Speaker 1>She's the pretty little rich girl who's pristine and prude
<v Speaker 1>and sweet and playing absolutely the exact opposite of that character.
<v Speaker 1>I love it, okay, real quick. Gary Busey was hired
<v Speaker 1>as mister Joshua nephew. Would kindly tell me everything you know,
<v Speaker 1>I promise you I'll kill you.
<v Speaker 2>He asked for the part. Did he Yeah? So he
<v Speaker 2>hadn't done a lot like he was kind of on
<v Speaker 2>the downward slide. He had obviously had a lot of
<v Speaker 2>success with what's the Buddy Holly movie called.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's called the Buddy Holly Story.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, well that makes sense, all right, So anyway, he
<v Speaker 2>had quite a bit of success, but then he had
<v Speaker 2>not been getting good quality offers for a while and
<v Speaker 2>he saw a lot of promise in this script, and
<v Speaker 2>so he asked, He was like, can I be in
<v Speaker 2>this movie? I'm like, of course, sure.
<v Speaker 4>Because it's weird to think about both of these movies.
<v Speaker 4>They were not expected to be big hits. Neither one
<v Speaker 4>of them were expected to be big hits. It was
<v Speaker 4>just kind of, hey, see what you guys can do
<v Speaker 4>with this crazy bunch of stuff. And like you said,
<v Speaker 4>they were both of them throwing them together on the fly,
<v Speaker 4>And so that's why you get. I mean, Gary Busey
<v Speaker 4>you kind of think of as a major actor, but
<v Speaker 4>I mean, he does have the final fight scene, but
<v Speaker 4>he was number two in the movie, and so it
<v Speaker 4>was interesting to see him in that part instead of
<v Speaker 4>the head bad guy. He was just kind of the
<v Speaker 4>biggest evvy.
<v Speaker 1>His most memorable scene in the whole movie is when
<v Speaker 1>the general tells him to hold out his arm so
<v Speaker 1>he can hold a flame under his arm to show
<v Speaker 1>how tough he is and how devoted and loyal he is.
<v Speaker 2>So who's the other guy in that scene?
<v Speaker 1>You guys are gone, man, You're like out there.
<v Speaker 2>Edo Ross, Edo Ross is that guy, and I feel
<v Speaker 2>like I was. I could never figure out why that
<v Speaker 2>part wasn't bigger because he was. He was, I mean,
<v Speaker 2>obviously a major part in that scene, but he was
<v Speaker 2>a pretty big actor at that time. He seemed to
<v Speaker 2>be like, it was this big, big scene that goes on.
<v Speaker 2>I expected to be in more in the movie. But
<v Speaker 2>the interesting thing is the role he had done just
<v Speaker 2>before he did this movie was in Moonlighting. It had
<v Speaker 2>two episodes of Moonlighting as mister Navarone. So there you go.
<v Speaker 2>It's interesting again, intertwined these movies.
<v Speaker 1>Very intertwined, kind of. The next big movie that he
<v Speaker 1>did was Red Heat with Oro Schwarzenegger, who was in Predator,
<v Speaker 1>directed by Johnny Tiernan.
<v Speaker 2>I just cannot I still can't figure out why that
<v Speaker 2>was our one brief moment we got with this guy
<v Speaker 2>and then he wasn't in the rest of the movie.
<v Speaker 1>Other people that were considered for mister Joshua James Woods,
<v Speaker 1>Christopher Walkin, Tommy Lee Jones, Scott Glenn, John Saxon, I
<v Speaker 1>don't know. I like Gary Busey.
<v Speaker 2>Then the main bad guy. The only other movie that
<v Speaker 2>I can remember him in is liar liar. He's like
<v Speaker 2>the head partner at the law farm that gets roasted
<v Speaker 2>and he's his laugh and that is awesome. I think
<v Speaker 2>his comedy is great. I was impressed.
<v Speaker 1>Tracy Wolf plays Rhanne Murta in Lethal Weapon. I have
<v Speaker 1>not seen her in anything else that I can think of. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>every time I see her, I'm like, that's Roger Murta's daughter.
<v Speaker 1>She was twenty five when they filmed this. Playing a
<v Speaker 1>sixteen year.
<v Speaker 2>Old makes her upsession with Martin Riggs a little less creepy.
<v Speaker 1>Every time I see this, I'm so empathetic with the
<v Speaker 1>Murta character. Roger Murta, uh that. I'm like, yeah, she
<v Speaker 1>does need to go upstairs and put on small pers
<v Speaker 1>She's not going out dressed like that. Mel Gibson's character,
<v Speaker 1>Martin Riggs is supposed to be thirty eight in Lethal Weapon.
<v Speaker 1>H Gibson was only thirty at the time he shot this.
<v Speaker 1>Roger Murta is supposed to be fifty. They make a
<v Speaker 1>big deal of this. He even blows out a birthday
<v Speaker 1>cake candles while he's sitting in the bath with his
<v Speaker 1>entire family around.
<v Speaker 2>Most uncomfortable scene in both of these movies.
<v Speaker 1>And he makes a big deal fifty years old. Fifty
<v Speaker 1>years old, I'm supposed to be retiring fifty. Danny Glover
<v Speaker 1>was actually forty years old, how when he shot.
<v Speaker 2>This, Yeah, and was in incredible shape, Like they constantly
<v Speaker 2>talk about how good a shape he was in, and
<v Speaker 2>so you I mean, you know the scene where they're
<v Speaker 2>running down the road, right like Mel Gibson trucking along,
<v Speaker 2>sprinting down the road with the machine gun in his hand,
<v Speaker 2>and then Marta Danny Glover is kind of hobbling along
<v Speaker 2>down the road, dragging his foot out of breath, has
<v Speaker 2>to sit down, all this stuff. They shoot this scene
<v Speaker 2>and Richard Donner comes over to Danny Glover. He's like, okay, okay, Danny,
<v Speaker 2>can we can we try to do this one more time?
<v Speaker 2>And Danny's like, what do you mean, Mike? Okay? He
<v Speaker 2>gets up, runs around the block, comes back. He's like,
<v Speaker 2>let's do it.
<v Speaker 1>He's like, I think genius, Thank you, Okay, just a
<v Speaker 1>couple more things, fut back to Diehard really quick. Bonnie
<v Speaker 1>Vidilia was hired as Holly Gennaro. Bruce Willis really went
<v Speaker 1>to bat for her. He had seen her in a
<v Speaker 1>movie called Heart Like a Wheel where she played a
<v Speaker 1>race card driver. I don't know if you remember that one,
<v Speaker 1>but he really just loved her performance in that movie,
<v Speaker 1>and he personally recommended her to play his estranged wife,
<v Speaker 1>Holly Jennero. Other people that they were interested in were
<v Speaker 1>Linda Hamilton, Geena Davis, Debra Winger, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jamie Lee Curtis,
<v Speaker 1>Kelly McGillis, and Kerrie Fisher.
<v Speaker 2>My gosh, all of those just scream eighties movies. So
<v Speaker 2>it's interesting, you know the part of the wonderfulness of
<v Speaker 2>this movie is that it doesn't spoon feed you everything
<v Speaker 2>that's going on. Like, we know there's a problem with
<v Speaker 2>John and Holly, but we really don't know what it is.
<v Speaker 2>There isn't some big exposition as to what went wrong
<v Speaker 2>in their marriage, why they're a strange. We just have
<v Speaker 2>this kind of general idea that she's pursuing a career
<v Speaker 2>and he's not happy with that. But what we have
<v Speaker 2>is this fantastic, short little scene right before all of
<v Speaker 2>the action starts, where he's just finished walking around making
<v Speaker 2>fist with his toes in the carpet and they're doing
<v Speaker 2>their best to get along for about thirty seconds before
<v Speaker 2>he has to torpedo the ship and say what does
<v Speaker 2>he say? Do you remember what he says?
<v Speaker 1>She's like, she says, I missed you, and he's like,
<v Speaker 1>you miss me. I guess you didn't miss my name?
<v Speaker 1>Huh except when you're signing checks.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, So that the classic dumb head husband thing
<v Speaker 2>to say, and he does it, and they've got this vicious,
<v Speaker 2>short little exchange, but it informs so much as to
<v Speaker 2>their relationship, and you believe their love and animosity for
<v Speaker 2>each other in just that brief little scene and the
<v Speaker 2>way that they did that. Steven Desusa had Bruce Willis
<v Speaker 2>and Bonnie Badelia improv some stuff, and they would improv
<v Speaker 2>long bits that go into the detail. But then once
<v Speaker 2>they actually shoot the scene, they don't give you all
<v Speaker 2>that detail. They just let it be the subtext behind
<v Speaker 2>what they're saying, and they did it fantastically.
<v Speaker 1>I love how you even get a little bit of
<v Speaker 1>that with our gyle in the limo on the way there, right, yep?
<v Speaker 1>Why do you go with him?
<v Speaker 2>What's up?
<v Speaker 1>Because I'm a New York cop, I got a six
<v Speaker 1>month back log in New York's Scumbags.
<v Speaker 2>I'm still trying to put behind bars. I can't just
<v Speaker 2>pick up and go that easy. In other words, you
<v Speaker 2>thought she was gonna make it out here is he
<v Speaker 2>come calling them back to you?
<v Speaker 1>So why bother it back?
<v Speaker 2>Right?
<v Speaker 4>Like I said, you're very fast, I go.
<v Speaker 1>The actor dever White, who plays Argyle, is hilarious in
<v Speaker 1>this movie.
<v Speaker 2>Absolutely.
<v Speaker 1>A couple other people we really need to talk about,
<v Speaker 1>casting wise and Diehard. I want to talk a little
<v Speaker 1>bit about Reginald Villa Johnson.
<v Speaker 2>He'd making thirty to Dispatch.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that's a wild goose chase over here at knocking
<v Speaker 3>Tony pleasant everything he is.
<v Speaker 2>Okay over but nobody has let it.
<v Speaker 1>Snooker, who played a cop in Peri Strangers who then
<v Speaker 1>became the lead character in the TV show Family Matters
<v Speaker 1>That but he does an awesome job of kind of
<v Speaker 1>being in the heart of the movie, right everybody of
<v Speaker 1>Sergeant al Powell.
<v Speaker 2>I had this thought, you just you tell me what
<v Speaker 2>you think about this. So obviously, leitha Weapon is a
<v Speaker 2>buddy cop movie, right, right? Is Diehard a buddy cop movie? Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>Absolutely it is.
<v Speaker 2>With that I mean out, I mean, he's really like
<v Speaker 2>h Sergeant al Powell is the mentor, he's the guy
<v Speaker 2>who leads John McClain through all of this stuff. He
<v Speaker 2>leads him through the tough times. It's their exchange that
<v Speaker 2>leads to the character transition. I don't know. Maybe this
<v Speaker 2>is a buddy cop movie. I think it is.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's a buddy cop movie where the cops
<v Speaker 1>are separated and it belonged to be back together.
<v Speaker 4>You know.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. I love the relationship that they build and it's
<v Speaker 2>still again, like I said before, fascinating to me that
<v Speaker 2>they probably shot all of Reginald val Johnson's scenes after
<v Speaker 2>Bruce had gone back to the moon lighting and wasn't
<v Speaker 2>even there anymore.
<v Speaker 1>I do know for a fact on my research they
<v Speaker 1>Bruce Willis and Reginald vell Johnson did not meet until
<v Speaker 1>the last scene of the movie. They never ever met
<v Speaker 1>until the famous It's snowing Bear Bond scene. Right, let's
<v Speaker 1>talk about William Atherton for just a second. This guy
<v Speaker 1>played the world's greatest eighties butthole in every movie they
<v Speaker 1>give us a break thorn burden at Harvey, Right, he
<v Speaker 1>like tops himself in every movie.
<v Speaker 2>Well him or Paul Gleeson. It's a real toss up, right,
<v Speaker 2>But somehow the brilliance of Joel Silver or John mcturnon
<v Speaker 2>or whoever got both of these guys in the same movie.
<v Speaker 2>How freaking awesome is that?
<v Speaker 1>I'm telling you so. William Atherton plays the professor in
<v Speaker 1>Real Genius who is out to flunt Chris Knight Val
<v Speaker 1>Kilmer's character yep. And then he's also the health inspector
<v Speaker 1>or the safety inspector in Ghostbusters, the one who does
<v Speaker 1>not know the magic word.
<v Speaker 2>It's true, this man has to pick.
<v Speaker 1>And then, as you said, Paul Gleeson plays the principal
<v Speaker 1>in the Breakfast Club. Yeah right, don't mess with the bull,
<v Speaker 1>you get the horns.
<v Speaker 2>Also the corrupt inspector in Trading Places.
<v Speaker 1>Oh, I totally forgot about that. And then one guy
<v Speaker 1>I really wanted to bring up before we go any further,
<v Speaker 1>Alexander Gudanov. We could do a whole podcast and maybe
<v Speaker 1>we'll do a mini one off on him. He was
<v Speaker 1>a Russian ballet dancer yep, who effected yep. They hired
<v Speaker 1>him because they knew he could be athletic enough to
<v Speaker 1>do fight scenes.
<v Speaker 2>Right, and the fight scene between him and Bruce Willis
<v Speaker 2>was not like a choreographed thing. It was very much
<v Speaker 2>an improvisational. We're just fighting away, but they did a
<v Speaker 2>fantastic job with it.
<v Speaker 1>I saw an interview with Joel Silver and when he
<v Speaker 1>was discussing Alexander Gudanoff, he said, great guy, drunk all
<v Speaker 1>the time.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, which is hilarious until you learn that he died
<v Speaker 2>in the mid nineties of cirrhosis of the liver yep,
<v Speaker 2>which is tragic.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, just a couple more notes on pre production d
<v Speaker 1>before we wrap it up. I thought it was interesting,
<v Speaker 1>now this is this is pre production, it's also a production,
<v Speaker 1>but the fictional Knakatomy Plaza is actually the headquarters of
<v Speaker 1>twentieth Century Fox. Yes, this building was incomplete, but there
<v Speaker 1>were people working in this building. Yes, at the time
<v Speaker 1>they were filming this movie. The company actually had to
<v Speaker 1>charge itself rent to use this building.
<v Speaker 2>Had to or or used it as an excuse to
<v Speaker 2>spend money that didn't that was now tax deductible. I
<v Speaker 2>would say, yeah, there was a There was a lawyer
<v Speaker 2>downstairs who didn't represent anybody. He was a pretty high
<v Speaker 2>powered lawyer in la but he did not represent anyone
<v Speaker 2>in the picture, and so he was none too happy
<v Speaker 2>about the full sound effect blasts of all of them,
<v Speaker 2>the machine guns going on.
<v Speaker 1>Imagine trying to do work and you know you've got
<v Speaker 1>machine guns and people jumping off building with fire hoses
<v Speaker 1>and helicopters and missile launchers.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, here's something interesting. Nakatomi Plaza. Nakatomi is the
<v Speaker 2>name of a Japanese battleship. That's the way they got
<v Speaker 2>this name. They came across this list of and I
<v Speaker 2>think they're named after like Japanese clans of the past
<v Speaker 2>and stuff the battleships are. And so they're going through
<v Speaker 2>the list of Japanese battleships and they see Nakatomy and
<v Speaker 2>they're like, yeah, that sounds cool, let's go with that.
<v Speaker 2>So Nakatomi just look cool, and that's why they decided
<v Speaker 2>to go with it. But then the logo. I never
<v Speaker 2>realized this before, but Joel Silver was talking about how
<v Speaker 2>they came across the logo. He found it in a
<v Speaker 2>catalog that had Samurai helmets on it. If you go
<v Speaker 2>back and look at the logo, it's these it's these
<v Speaker 2>bars that kind of come up and two little circles
<v Speaker 2>in it above the name Nakatomi, and it looks like
<v Speaker 2>a Samurai helmet. I never noticed Inn till he said that,
<v Speaker 2>But I was like, holy cow, Nakatomy, the Samurai, pretty
<v Speaker 2>freaking awesome. And this movie did fantastic in Japan. You know,
<v Speaker 2>if there's any concerns about, you know, the weird kind
<v Speaker 2>of cultural things that go on with the Japanese comments,
<v Speaker 2>this movie killed one awards in Japan.
<v Speaker 1>That's awesome. So a couple of things on pre production.
<v Speaker 1>We've talked a little bit about how they kind of
<v Speaker 1>wrote this on the go. Bruce Willis and John mciernan
<v Speaker 1>talked publicly about how they didn't really know who John
<v Speaker 1>McLean was until about halfway through shooting. Who then just
<v Speaker 1>a flying the ointment Hans, the monkey in the wrench,
<v Speaker 1>the pain in the ish, right, But I thought this
<v Speaker 1>was interesting. Jib Stewart, who wrote the original screenplay for Diehard,
<v Speaker 1>was having difficulty writing the screenplay, and while he was
<v Speaker 1>driving at night in Los Angeles after a fight with
<v Speaker 1>his wife, he was driving behind a truck carrying refrigerators.
<v Speaker 2>The story no, this is good, go ahead, okay.
<v Speaker 1>So he was driving behind a truck carrying refrigerators and
<v Speaker 1>one of the refrigerator boxes fell out of the truck.
<v Speaker 1>He thought he was going to die. He like swerved
<v Speaker 1>and thought, I'm this is it, this is it for me.
<v Speaker 1>And it turns out the box was empty. He didn't
<v Speaker 1>have a fridge in it. It is just the box,
<v Speaker 1>and so he plowed through it with his car folded
<v Speaker 1>over the top. And he realized that if he had died,
<v Speaker 1>he would not have been able to apologize to his wife.
<v Speaker 1>And that made it into the movie, the whole thing
<v Speaker 1>about how she's heard me say I love her a
<v Speaker 1>thousand times, but she's never heard me say I'm sorry.
<v Speaker 1>That's because Jeb Stewart plowed through a refrigerator box.
<v Speaker 2>That's awesome. That is a great story. Wow, that's fantastic.
<v Speaker 1>The original script called for terrorists to hijack the building.
<v Speaker 1>John McTiernan he didn't like the idea of terrorists seizing
<v Speaker 1>control of Knokotoni Tower. Nobody likes terrorists, right, right, But
<v Speaker 1>if they're a bank heist is way more fun.
<v Speaker 2>Just a common thief.
<v Speaker 3>I'm an exceptional thief. Since I'm moving up to kidnapping,
<v Speaker 3>you should chose some more respect, You should be more polite. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>So that does it for pre production?
<v Speaker 2>Are you done?
<v Speaker 1>I haven't even got started yet, forget that, I forget that.
<v Speaker 2>You have to be done because that's the end of
<v Speaker 2>this episode. We'll start back up on the rest of
<v Speaker 2>it for our next episode. Thank you everybody so much
<v Speaker 2>for being here. Jason, you know what one shepherd said
<v Speaker 2>to the other shepherd.
<v Speaker 1>Get the flock out of here.
<v Speaker 2>We'll see you all next time.