And how we signal to the audience what the characters want, both in the very near term and long term. How you find the beats in those arcs, the motivation behind characters. John: So today on the episode I want to talk through a couple different areas. But a lot of the times while he’s doing it he’s just tossing out these sardonic one liners. When he needs to be heartfelt and care about a person and a relationship he can. When it is time to punch and get serious he can. So he’s in great shape, he can run, he can shoot, he can kill if he needs to. I mean, you could say that all Ryan Reynolds movies should pay a little bit of money to Die Hard every time they happen, because Ryan Reynolds’ character is kind of the best evolution of the wise-cracking tough guy.
#That 70s show season 1 episode 23 script movie
There’s that sense that you kind of don’t make an action movie without some sense of what the comedy is going to be owes a debt to Die Hard.Ĭraig: Yeah. John: I would also say the comedy that’s consistent throughout the movie, and characters who show up very late but are given very specific character comedy bits, has had an influence on sort of how we think about all these kind of movies. We’re going to dump all the things we normally do in a big cops and robbers movie and we’re just going to stick it inside a building and let the confined space and the weird specifics of that building work to our benefit. We’re not going to be doing car chases, running around. We’re not going to be out in the open field. It is one of the most Reagan era movies possible.Ĭraig: But the fact that it said we’re not going to be in space. Now, when we look at it we’re going to look at it also through the lens of its time. Die Hard gave us a sense of action pacing that I don’t think we were used to. And I think you can’t look at a lot of modern action movies without having some sense of what Die Hard did.Ĭraig: I agree. And so I think it has had an influence on even things beyond the normal action movies. John: So we just did a special live show and Kevin Feige actually mentioned Die Hard as being the first time he saw a “normal” movie that he really liked, so a thing that didn’t involve super heroes, or fantasy, or elves, or gnomes, or dwarves.
And I thought like, oh my god, this is like the best version of Commando ever. In fact, I remember thinking this is just a really good version of for instance I think around that time I remember going to see Commando in the theaters with Arnold Schwarzenegger who gets weirdly name-checked in Die Hard. I don’t know if I thought that when I saw Die Hard. I mean, I remember thinking that when I saw The Matrix. And we were standing in Ethan’s kitchen and Andrew said like, “I saw the future of movies and it is Die Hard.”Ĭraig: That’s kind of crazy. His older brother, Andrew, came back from seeing Die Hard in the theaters. I was over at my friend Ethan Diamond’s house. So weirdly I don’t remember seeing Die Hard the first time, but I do remember the first exposure I ever had to Die Hard as a concept which was summer of 1988. I mean, it was fun, and you got the sense that you had shown up for a dumb movie and gotten something that wasn’t dumb at all. I don’t remember when it came out.Ĭraig: Yeah, so it was a Christmas movie in Summer. John: So, Craig, what is your first exposure to Die Hard? Do you remember seeing it the first time? What was it for you?Ĭraig: Yes I do.
And in the early ‘90s there were a few movies that you were lectured about over and over. You and I both started in the early ‘90s. I just want to know what about this works so well. This is not going to be a detailed look at the history of the film or its place in cinematic canons, because we’re not that interested in that kind of stuff, are we?Ĭraig: Yeah. We’re going to focus on what screenwriters can learn from it and some of the mistaken lessons people have tried to learn from it. On this very special episode we are going to be looking at the 1988 film Die Hard, how it works on a story level. John: And this is a special episode of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. My name is John August.Ĭraig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin, ho-ho-ho.
The original post for this episode can be found here.