Die Hard: An Oral History (Kindle Single) by Brian Abrams

Author:Brian Abrams [Abrams, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2016-06-09T16:00:00+00:00

1988–

As post-production was seeing Die Hard through its final stages, lesser Bruce Willis fare lingered on television and the big screen. Ratings had fallen for season four of Moonlighting. In February, the one-hour HBO mockumentary The Return of Bruno didn’t exactly dazzle. (“Springsteen he ain’t,” wrote People magazine. “Funny he is.”) That April, Sunset performed disastrously at the box office, somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 million worldwide gross. “I do remember some horror in the corridors of TriStar that [president] Jeff Sagansky had been bamboozled by [Blake] Edwards, who glommed onto Bruce to star in his next turgid project, Sunset, and got Sagansky to green light it,” admitted one screenwriter. “It was referred to, long before the cameras rolled, as a ‘career-tainting bomb.’”

This kind of uncertainty, leading up to the release of Die Hard, had one Philadelphia Daily News columnist pose a question in the headline, “Has Bruce Willis Gone Flat?”

ROBERT DAVI

Bruce Willis, at that time, needed a hit. His films were not hitting. It was a problem, and I didn’t even want billing. I said, “Nah, it’s a cameo.” I had just shot the Bond film [Licence to Kill], and my ego was such, like, “Yeah, it’d be nice just me showing up.”

JOHN MCTIERNAN

Two weeks before the movie opened [on July 15, 1988], the studio took his picture off of the fucking poster. They came up with a new poster that didn’t have him in it because they were so scared that he’d have a negative reaction on the audience, and blah, blah, blah, blah.

DAN MAZUR

I remember two posters. One had this low-angle look up at the building with Bruce Willis smaller down below. Then there was the one that had Bruce Willis’ face, and he’s holding the gun and looking off-camera.

ANDY LIPSCHULTZ

They had a fundamental change in the one-sheet. It was after the first trailer came out. They didn’t get a great audience reaction. I heard it was Barry Diller or someone very high up at Fox [who] advocated making the building the star. That’s why, on the first poster, Bruce was in front of the building. In the second one, his head is peaking out from behind the building, which was how they wanted to sell the movie: Make the building the star, not Bruce.

JEB STUART

They couldn’t figure out what this was. At first the buzzword was “adventure.” Then it was “a disaster movie” because the building blows up. Then it was a cop show. It was just a strange movie. They couldn’t figure out how to sell it.

KELLETT TIGHE

Rupert [Murdoch] was going to shelve it. He came to one of our audience screenings in the Valley and brought his sons, who by that point were already two 16-year-old sharks with little buzz cuts. And we showed this black-and-white work print with grease marks, and the audience went fucking crazy. They loved it.

GLENN GORDON CARON

I went off to direct a movie with Michael Keaton called Clean and Sober, and when I came back Bruce said, “They’re previewing a mix of my movie tonight.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.