It's The 30th Anniversary Of Die Hard - Did You Know The Director Came Up With It In A Dream When He Fell Asleep In A Movie Theater?
INDEPENDENT - Die Hard is nothing short of a phenomenon, spawning four sequels to date and a loyal fan base, many of whom claim it as their favourite Christmas film.
What is perhaps less well known, is that the film was based on a novel: Roderick Thorp’s 1979 thriller Nothing Lasts Forever.
Thorp’s book is a sequel to his previous work The Detective (1966), which is a tale of New York gumshoe Joe Leland, who is hired by a femme fatale and drawn into a web of deceit.
The Detective was also adapted into a film by Gordon Douglas in 1968 and starred Frank Sinatra in the lead.
Me finding out this fact that everyone probably already knows already:
Whatever I love trivia!
The idea for a sequel featuring the same character came to Thorp while watching The Towering Inferno (1974), John Guillermin’s quintessential 1970s disaster movie about a high-rise on fire, starring Paul Newman and Steve McQueen. According to legend, Thorp dozed off in the theatre and dreamed of Joe Leland being pursued around a skyscraper by armed hoodlums.
The resulting work, Nothing Lasts Forever, is largely similar in plot to McTiernan’s masterpiece, barring a few name changes. Leland of course became McClane, Gruber is there too but is known as Anton “Little Tony the Red” Gruber, while the tower itself is the Klaxon Oil Corporation headquarters, not that of the good people at Nakatomi headquarters.
Sergeant Al Powell, memorably played by supporting actor Reginald VelJohnson, is also there, fully formed on the page.
I’ve fallen asleep in one movie and one movie only. Slumdog Millionaire. Which sucks because it’s an awesome movie and I’ve watched it On Demand like 4 times since then to make up for it. It was in college and I was tired from studying so much, lol.
I only woke up having no idea what was going on with this game show and pissed that half my popcorn was on the floor. I didn’t come up with a billion dollar movie franchise idea. Which sucks.
Also the main role was originally offered to Frank Sinatra and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Producers had hoped Sinatra would return as Leland for the sequel, but the actor was realistically too old by the time it was offered to him in the mid-1980s, and so the part was offered to Arnold Schwarzenegger instead. He too turned down the offer, and instead Willis was cast in the leading role.
Learning cool stuff today!
Little trivia fact about myself too – Die Hard was the first movie I owned on DVD. Going to buy an old school DVD player and another copy of it as soon as Amazon Prime Day hits.
PS,
#TeamNotAChristmasMovie