(post)script: Is “Die Hard” a Christmas Movie?

Wes & Erin continue their discussion of “Die Hard.” The first (and much longer) part of this discussion can be found here. Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Aspiring filmmakers and screenwriters can learn more about their online courses at tischpro.smashcut.com/subtext. Most (post)script episodes are paywalled. To get them all, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Food with Former New York Times food journalist and bestselling author Mark Bittman; and Movie Therapy, in which Siskel & Ebert meets Dear Abby. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Thanks to Nick Ketter for the audio editing on this episode. Transcript 0:00 Wes: Welcome to Postscript, the subtext after show where we talk about things related and unrelated to this week's episode. Just got done talking about Die Hard. We're not really done, but we were almost done talking about Die Hard. We're going to talk about it a little bit more here. One of the things I got a little bit. I'm watching this movie, I watch it through your eyes a little bit and think, oh, yeah, Erin doesn't like that. 0:25 Erin: Oh, what parts. 0:26 Wes: There's the obligatory 1980s nudity, which somehow we moved beyond, thankfully. I think there was a time when the nude sex scene thing, there always had to be something in any given 80s movie. I think they thought it was, well, we can do this now. So we have to. This marks it as something for adults, right? People gave up on that, as far as I can tell. 0:48 Erin: And what is more adult but boobs. It's always boobs, right? 0:52 Wes: Exactly. Just a flash of the boobs and then you're done. You did your due diligence. Maybe they gave up on that for cynical reasons, like getting a PG13 rating or something. Or a PG rating. I don't know. But then there's the violence, you know, which I know you don't necessarily enjoy. I guess it's not too terrible in this movie. 1:12 Erin: Well, I really hate that Mr. Takagi's. That's like really bloody because it's displayed on the window behind him, all that blood and everything. 1:21 Wes: And it's also a very cruel moment, the way it's done when you see a bad guy get waxed, as McClane puts it. Does that you feel good about that the way I do? 1:31 Erin: Do I feel good about it? No, no, not personally. 1:36 Wes: You know, I guess when you're killing henchmen, you can't really feel good about that. It's just more. They're in the way. But, you know. And when Gruber gets his comeuppance at the end, which is a great, awesome scene, where. Another bit of film trivia is that they had Alan Rickman do that stunt himself falling from the building. 1:54 Erin: Oh, yeah, I know about that. Someone told me. 1:56 Wes: Yeah. And then they did the 1, 2, 3 thing, but they didn't get to the end of the count and let him go before so that he would genuinely look surprised. And then they also had. They invented this automated focus system because it was impossible to keep the focus on him as he fell. They wanted the focus, his face, to be the focus as he moved away from the camera. And it would happen too quickly to manually adjust it. So they invented some automated system which only worked partially, so you only get a little bit of that fall from that angle before it cuts away. Is that scene like a. Yeah. Moment. The bad guy. The bad guy is dead? 2:32 Erin: No, not really. It's cool, though. I mean, I think that's like someone maybe on Facebook or something pointed out that I'm inconsistent with my hatred of violence, because I did mention. Not that they were like, it was a gotcha moment, but they thought it was interesting that I talked about how Godfather 1 is better than Part 2 because the deaths in Part 1 are so much better. And it is true that I do. If it's an interesting and inventive kind of death, then maybe I appreciate the artistry of that. 3:00 Wes: So you can appreciate the aesthetics of violence. 3:03 Erin: Yeah. 3:03 Wes: Right. You must love Tarantino. I'm just kidding. 3:06 Erin: Oh, no, no, no, no. Well, that's terrible aesthetics. It's like cartoon violence. Not that I've ever fully looked. 3:14 Wes: I've heard. 3:16 Erin: Yeah, well. Cause that's the thing. Like, I've only ever half seen a lot of this stuff, so if it's, like, a cool thing and then I can sort of, like, peek at it, then it's interesting to me. But I think, like, Alan Rickman falling, that shot is really cool. But the idea of falling off a building is, like, the worst thing ever. I think my problem is I have so much empathy for anyone getting killed on film. Like, maybe it's actually. And I don't mean to compliment myself. I mean, maybe this is, like, a selfish thing, actually, that I just imagine myself getting killed in that way. And then I think that it would be terrible to have that happen. So. Yeah. I don't know what to say about that otherwise, except that I think that's an awesome shot, and I love the look on his face as he falls. 4:00 Wes: Yeah. 4:01 Erin: I think the funniest part, though, is the guy hanging from the chain who comes back out at the end so that Powell can shoot somebody. 4:08 Wes: So ridiculous. 4:09 Erin: It's so funny. He looks so crazed. He looks like a deranged He-Man after his head has been like. After somebody's sister has tried to give the He-Man doll a perm or. Or done something crazy with the hair, and he comes out and is. Oh, gosh. It's hilarious. 4:24 Wes: Yeah. It's such a Hollywood screenwriter thing to do as well. Right? There's like, we got to complete Powell's arc. We got to. You know, we got to have the story about the kid he killed pay off, you know? 4:34 Erin: Right. 4:34 Wes: And have him get over his. His hang up. But because the movie is a satire. Like just. Just in the same way that all the other caricature and silly stuff that happens is it. Is that it is what it is. It still, as far as I'm concerned, works within the context of a satire. So you. You get away with a lot once you enter that realm. And I think action movies work very well in that realm. I mean, that's. It's kind of the way James Bond movies, I think, used to function. Not so much anymore, but early on, almost a little like. Yeah. Even more. Not just satire, but very goofy. Right, sure. 5:12 Erin: Well, I think Star wars functions that way. Indiana Jones, anything with Harrison Ford as an action star. 5:21 Wes: Yeah. 5:21 Erin: My One True love. 5:23 Wes: Well, it's funny too. Cause right before that you get the embrace between Powell and McClane. And you can't help comparing his reunion with Holly, which is very passionate. There's that kiss. Right. But with his meeting of Powell, which is for the first time, but you know, in person. But it's powerful in a way. And inevitably, I think in a way it's more powerful than the reunion with Holly. Just because we don't see their relationship during the film, really. 5:53 Erin: Right, right. 5:54 Wes: That's one of the interesting things about the film is there's just no real development of their relationship because they're apart. Their relationship takes on the form, a very primal form, which is just me, man going to protect wife. You know, that's it. 6:08 Erin: I don't know. I do think that there's something interesting about the fact that she's hiding the marriage. Because she's hiding the marriage to begin with. Or rather she's cast it off. Right. By being. By going by her maiden name. And then there's something interesting and sort of like a communication through silence or subversion. Or like you, you know, she is trying to protect him throughout the whole film by making sure that nobody knows that he's her husband or what his real identity is. And he goes by Roy. Right. For Roy Rogers. But I do think that there's an interesting kind of communication in that because it takes what she was doing, which is casting off the marriage and makes the divorce into a plot to sort of keep the marriage together or to keep him alive anyway. 6:53 Wes: Right. I think that. Yeah, that's an interesting point. 6:56 Erin: It's kind of like a comedy of remarriage plot. Like a screwball comedy plot where the maiden name becomes the protective mantle for the husband and for her. Right. Cause he's trying to do the same thing too make sure that she's not implicated in him causing trouble for the pseudo terrorists so that she will not be singled out. 7:14 Wes: She's very well characterized. She's kind of the perfect hybrid of mother and career woman. Right. Because she's authoritative but not too harsh. Right. They just, they try to hit that, that mark and do it perfectly. And she's protective and she's intelligent and so she's well characterized during the movie. And I was thinking, well, they don't really communicate with each other. There's no relationship dynamics. It's not like a typical movie where they'd be interacting with each other through the movie. But yeah, what you've said about communication is very interesting because by virtue of she's altering his, the environment in which he's functioning and moving, right. She's affecting the events, she's affecting what's going to happen to him by protecting to him. So there is a, you could call that a, at some very primal level. That's the communication, right? 8:07 Erin: Yeah. She's changing the terms of their separation so that what was divorcing them literally is now uniting them in a shared effort to protect each other's, you know, identities. 8:18 Wes: Well, I was just thinking of this word, cooperating. They're actually engaged in a cooperative endeavor, interestingly enough, without direct interaction. So they can. And of course, that is what marriage is all about, right. If it's going to be successful. It's a cooperative endeavor to accomplish something. It's not just, you call it a relationship, but it's not just, hey, we're living together, have kids together, even that we love each other. It's an activity, one might want to say, of preservation. 8:48 Erin: So this idea of mutual preservation resolves, I think like the issue of career preservation or however you want to cast that conflict from the beginning of the film. So I think that his relationship with Powell also serves as, I don't know what happens in subsequent films as far as his relationship to la, if he then, if LA then becomes his home base or whatever. But I'm assuming that also the idea of his involvement in a friendship with another family man in the area and also having a like minded person in the LAPD is supposed to be a kind of an entree for him to feel at home in la. I mean, there's nothing like subverting a terrorist plot to feel at home in la. But there's also the, you know, needing a friend and someone, a like minded person who's also engaged in the life of the family to be a support System. And so he also gets that over the course of, you know, he gets like two. Two relationships for the price of one by the end of the film. 9:44 Wes: Yeah, we need that male bonding for him to be the family man and someone with heart. We need something like that. Cause again, he's. Otherwise, he's alone through the most of the film. But again, that's one of the things that makes his, you know, his meeting Powell in a way, more emotionally compelling than his reunion with Holly. 10:04 Erin: Well, I think it's really romantic though, that, like, it surprised me how not Powell. 10:10 Wes: I'm sorry, that's what I thought you were saying. 10:12 Erin: No, no, it surprised me at the end of the film when he gets in the back of the limo with her. And it just, I think because of the rapidity with which everything wraps up, that hearing that song, the Christmas song at the end, Let It Snow when they get in the back of the car is like very emotionally satisfying. I kept wishing that someone would put him on a fricking stretcher since he's still walking on his cut up feet. But when he gets into the car, the two of them together, I think it's. Yeah, I find that to be just as satisfying. As much as I love Reginald VelJohnson, I think it's just as satisfying. The romantic thread wrap up well for 10:49 Wes: me at that moment, it feels like the end of an allegory about a marital spat where we've had a knockdown, drag out fight. Both of us are really cut up from it, cut up, exhausted from it, but we've made up and now we are just going to walk away like nothing has happened. La de da da da. And everyone else is there cleaning up the mess. I don't know. 11:12 Erin: Heads are bloody but unbowed. 11:14 Wes: Yeah, there's something about the, you know, the way they leave the. And again, this is part of the comedic and satirical element of this. Right. It's not, oh, I'm traumatized. Let me sit with my special shiny thing, blanket that they put over trauma victims. Right. And this might as well not have happened. Do you know what I mean? Exactly. It's like the substance, I guess the thematic element of the film takes over. This really all along was about them making up and the scene that they're leaving behind. You know, it might as well almost be as if they had just made that movie together. You step outside the frame a little bit, right? 11:52 Erin: Yeah. No, this is part of the comedy of remarriage too. I mean, like, I think of, you know, for instance, the awful truth in which there's like a total demolition of their cultural standing in the community. You know, like Irene Dunne comes in and just like destroys Cary Grant's reputation in front of these very high class people and pretends to be his sister and. Right. So there's all this like crazy stuff that happens. But in the end, it's like none of it happened, none of it mattered. The point was just getting back together through whatever means necessary. Whether it's, you know, pretending to be your husband's sister and making a fool of yourself at a party or subverting a terrorist plot. It's all like coming out of the same unreal displacement of marital dysfunction in antics or whether those be like action movie antics or comedic antics. 12:42 Wes: Yeah, I think that's very good. And it, you know, I'm thinking now that it speaks to the prioritization of that relationship over social concerns. So society be damned. This is the fundamental unit. This is the family unit or the romantic unit. And the integrity of that unit is everything. And if it costs skyscraper, you know, if you have to destroy a skyscraper and if you have to endure a hostage crisis and quasi terroristic incident and all that stuff in order to preserve it, then so be it. 13:19 Erin: Right. 13:19 Wes: It is of ultimate value. I think that's what you're helping me understand, that feeling that I get at the very end of the movie. 13:25 Erin: And I think that's why this is all part of McClane's realization about how bi coastal culture clashes be damned, that ultimately the marriage and the children are the most important thing. 13:37 Wes: Right. 13:37 Erin: Yeah. So it's very, very satisfying for me. I was recently started watching Brooklyn Nine. Nine. Not recently, I guess I watched it with my mom while she was recuperating over the summer. And there's a very sweet relationship at the heart of that show. And I think if I'm remembering correctly, it's weird how much of a fog this past summer already is for me. The Andy Samberg character and his girlfriend dress up for Halloween as John McClane and Holly. And she has like the pink jacket suit and the big perm. It's really cute. Like, it's actually a really great couple's costume. I know it's after Halloween now we're talking about Christmas, but it would be a great couple's costume for people out there in the future if they're interested. Like the guy just has to wear a torn up wife beater and you just have to find a black skirt and some ugly 80s pink thing at the thrift store and a perm and You've got a wig or curl your hair. But we didn't get to the classic perms in movie history. Can we think of bad perms? Oh, I could think of one. Just one. 14:43 Wes: What are you thinking of? 14:44 Erin: I'm thinking of Annie. 14:46 Wes: Oh, really? 14:48 Erin: Right. That's like the worst hairstyle in movie history, I think. 14:51 Wes: Is that a perm that she has? 14:52 Erin: Oh, yeah, it's gotta be. It's not, it's gotta be a wig, but a perm wig. 14:58 Wes: Do people still get perms? Is that. Or is that just. Just the 80s? Is a perm something women do? 15:02 Erin: I think they do, but I. Maybe, but maybe they've gotten better now that they're more natur. Maybe not. Yeah, I don't. I don't know. I don't know what women do. 15:16 Wes: I just looked this up and the first one that came up was Grease. Olivia Newton-John in Grease. 15:22 Erin: Oh, but that's a good perm. 15:24 Wes: Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. It's actually not. 15:26 Erin: I can see that in my mind's eye. And that's, that's not a bad perm. 15:29 Wes: It's. It's good. Oh, oh. 15:30 Erin: Doesn't Mel Gibson have. Have a terrible perm in Lethal Weapon? Well, he has like a mullet. But isn't the top of it permed? Or am I thinking of Dog the Bounty Hunter? 15:40 Wes: Yeah. Is it tall? Does he have a tall. Yeah, I think you're right. 15:43 Erin: Uh huh. 15:44 Wes: It's pretty big. It's big hair. 15:48 Erin: You know, Mel Gibson can have his bad Lethal Weapon hair and he's still Mel Gibson. But I think that and Annie, you know, the perm is part of the whole thing. But Holly, her attractiveness is significantly diminished by the perm. So I think that is the worst. That perm is the real villain of the film because it takes a very attractive woman and really downgrades her. Like that's several points lower than she should be. 16:15 Wes: It should have ended with her sweating off the perm, you know, somehow. 16:19 Erin: Yeah. 16:20 Wes: With her hair wet. 16:21 Erin: And yes, if she had gone in the water in the Frank Lloyd Wright waterfall, then they would have undone the 16:28 Wes: perm and gotten her own wife beater and gone all Ripley on us. 16:31 Erin: There you go. Everybody should just be Sigourney Weaver by the end of the movie. Any action movie. 16:37 Wes: Yep. All right. Should we leave it there? Yeah. All right. Thank you. 16:41 Erin: Thank you.