Die Hard | The Imperial '80s Episode 21

Jay: Thank you. Welcome back to the Imperial 80s to me. How are you doing?

Speaker 2: I'm all right. You know, it's Monday. It's December. We doing doing OK. How are you doing, bro?

Jay: Yeah, I've had better days years. I'm doing all right. But good to be with you. Excited to finally do Die Hard, which is one of the ones that, you know, we knew we would have to do from the beginning and how we were excited to. um and yeah i mean the thing too is that it is also a movie that you know i also enjoy watching oh yeah yeah myself um but yeah there's it's obviously really messed up in a lot of ways and so we'll talk about that um before we do that we should i just want to take a minute and just acknowledge and laugh a little bit that uh you know i've mentioned this before on millennials but like the manhattan institute has been like trolling us and our guests for about a year like they have this guy they probably pay 15 an hour to make like youtube like clips you know of from our shows to um I think most of it is done using AI, both in terms of the clipping and the article writing that happens as a result of this. I mean, it's flattering in some respect because I guess it means that they think that whatever we do means enough that they need to try to counter it. It's also annoying because it leads to these sort of harassment campaigns of our guests. um but anyway the i just it's noteworthy i think that you know last week was our 20th episode so we've been doing this for a while we've done a lot of movies that um you know are near and dear to a lot of people's hearts and um that plane trains and automobiles was the one that finally got uh an attack campaign, you know, going for him to me.

Speaker 2: So, yeah, that was the last straw was planes, trains and automobiles. It it it set off the right wing bots and trolls and people that that was a bridge too far. I think we, you know, Rambo, Lethal Weapon, Poltergeist, Empire of the Sun. I mean, you name it, the even Indiana Jones. I mean, I know things. We talked about how Indiana Jones is a pedophile and George Lucas beat him that way. Exactly. We talked about the anti-communism of Red Dog. John Milius is one of their patron saints. We went in on Milius, but it was planes, trains, and automobiles that was the thing that set them off. Yeah, you know, you're never really going to know, huh?

Speaker 3: You're never really going to know what it's going to be. You could not have paid me a billion. You know, come on.

Speaker 2: No, no. I would never have guessed that one.

Jay: Yeah, I'll never know. I mean, maybe it was just a slow week at the Manhattan Institute, but...

Speaker 2: You know, maybe there is something very particular about John Hughes and, you know... Well, what they took exception to, though, what they took exception to, which I found interesting, was the ideas that this was some kind of... At Planes and Automobiles, the whole idea of the bourgeois... working person and this film being a kind of conduit for their own you know emotional petting and they were just like no this is absolutely just terrible how are you making these kinds of ideas going about you know so which is funny because in certain ways i would say like i think it's revealing a little bit of the class politics of the manhattan institute too right because like if they were actually in touch

Jay: with like working class, you know, conservative rural Americans. Right. Then they would be like, yeah, these guys have a point. This movie is pretty fucked up in its portrayal of like working class white folks. But no, they're like really mad that we are very mad.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's it's weird. It's like they they they Even when reading... And granted, I do agree. Much of these things felt like they were made with a bot-generated argument thing. Like, make this argument for this argument. When you read it, it just doesn't have any real... It doesn't feel like a real person. It feels like an aggregate. But even when they're editing or saying what they like from the aggregate, what is revealed is their class politics and that they do see themselves as a kind of ushering of good morals, even for... the working class which is hilarious because they basically just proving us right even in their you know dismissal of our critique of the film which is i just find really funny but you know it's wild because it's like what like what do you care i mean that's the thing that i'm just like you know like i feel like there's a lot of analysis that we've done on this show

Jay: that but i mean i think that's the thing is i think that it's probably their first time like really watching it and digging into it you know well i even i even went back to the episode with the she-hives because they they love to go after lara like you know long time but like um they didn't do anything when we did uh uh what's the chuck norris uh why am i blinking a delta force you know like they didn't even you know so anyway

Speaker 2: no weirdos um all right now on to the actual topic at hand which is die hard so um yeah early memories of of watching die hard i mean i think it's probable to say i'd have to check with my dad that i've been watching die hard since it came out i don't i didn't see it in the theater you know like i said i've said before on the show that my parents didn't really have a watching filter. And if they did have that like selective film that they wouldn't want me to see, I could find my way to it pretty easily. And this is a movie that my father, I think to this day is still obsessed with. Like, it's like a ritual film in my house. Like, Die Hard was one of those movies that seasonally or even just like, hey, you know, it's been three months. Die Hard has not been on. Put Die Hard on, right? It just had this weight. I do wonder and we'll talk about it. I do think because of the kind of like action, of course, the kind of maleness that is really exuded in the film at a really high, nasty level. But I also do wonder if three Black characters in really significant sidekick roles, even if two of them only have so many lines, but they have key functionalities. right i wonder if that played a role in the kind of like acceptance in my home um but yeah i mean i watched it a lot i watched it as a teenager it was like a ritual to watch die hard um over and over again Once I got a bit older, I think it was a film I still would watch casually and enjoy on its action merits. And then I didn't watch it for a while. And then when I came back to it, and we'll talk about this, I'm pretty sure, a lot. When I came back to it as like, oh, let me go watch this action movie that I knew was fun. I had already started reading about a lot of the anti-colonial movements, the anti-imperialist struggles and the European end. I started reading about a lot of that stuff already. And I got fascinated by. that the film would mention Arafat in passing, kind of suggest that they were part of these, you know, well, the book, we'll talk about the book that it comes from also, Red Army Faction and things like that. um groups that i had like been looking at but then suggest that these people had no real interest in and they were using him as a cover so i got really was like i was i was taken aback by it right and i think when i started thinking about the 80s as a kind of project of a certain mentality when it came to ideology and like what they believed in like ideological struggles and this kind of cynicism that I think that they wanted to kind of present globally. It then became a more pernicious picture. Use pernicious, drink, drink. The pernicious drink game. It became a really weird picture. And then the other thing that I will also say, and we'll talk about this, is that I did also, and while like, if I watch it, and I do probably watch it every couple of years, the violence of it is just so overwhelming. And I do think by like my mid thirties, when I would like look at it, I would just be like, this movie is like a bit overwhelming when it comes to like how violent it is. I mean, when I watched it, This is a movie I didn't need to watch. I watched it. I didn't need to watch it during the week and watch it again. I've seen it so many times. So I rewatched it last night. And there's a lot of it, but there's three sequences of the movie where the kind of energy level, it has no... It's just affinity of hard, high violence. It has become very overwhelming. so that's kind of where i've sat with it and i do think though it is like politically a really interesting movie about the kind of political unconscious of the united states couple of years before Soviet Union, you know, dissolves before we get to the end of history, because like, I'm not going to say it's prescient. I'm not going to say that. But it I think it previews what would to come in the American mentality towards the globe, I think kind of where we were trending. And then when certain things happen, I think Die Hard, kind of becomes attached to like the the predominant mentality that would exist um kind of going forward that's a long answer towards that no i appreciate that a lot um

Jay: Nora, good to see you. Shout out to Nora on Electronic Intifada. Yeah, I also forgot to do this at the beginning. So do the things like share, subscribe, make sure more people can see this, join in the conversation, support the Patreon if you want access to bonus episodes and to support the work. um yeah i mean for me i also saw this fairly young which is interesting because uh like i have said i did have more filtering in my family and so i don't remember exactly um and i'm not sure my father is still watches tv like this so i don't know whether i would have seen all of it right because my father what he would do is my father's a massive sports watcher right and he actually, we lived way out in the country. So he bought one of those big satellite dishes because we didn't, we couldn't get cable where we were at. And so in the early days of satellite, like people, this, this is a, this is an eighties conversation here in the early days, like eighties, late eighties, early nineties, like, you had this massive dish. It was not the little, it's not like dish network or these little times, like you had this big dish and it had to rotate. And so it had this, this, I don't even know what you call it, receiver, I guess, where you typed in the satellite and it was literally like G617, right? Which was like you're pointing at satellite G6 channel 17, right? And then you would watch the satellite turn outside on this like rotor to like go get the signal. Like it was crazy. And in the very early days, you could get everything. everything in the world. Like I'm not saying every everything because there's probably local channels that you couldn't but like, you know, you could you could go to any country, you know, and it was all there and it was all at that point unencrypted. And so there was no... You didn't have to subscribe to anything in the very beginning of it. It was just... I mean, the thing cost a significant amount of money. My parents were both teachers, so I don't actually know how they afforded it. But they bought it. But they... you know i guess it was my father's dedication to sports and like a long-term investment so he would be going around watching different sporting events but then every once in a while he would check like what okay the games are boring right now or it's half time like what's going on and so it would have been in one of those blips that i first like got a glimpse of die hard and my dad would do his typical thing of like oh yeah it's a dumb action movie but then he'd be like into it you know and you could tell that you know he liked it and so we i remember watching it in those like kind of you know kind of circumstances like bits of it not all of it at once and then when i was a little bit older that's when i would have like had more mobility to go over to my friends houses more and stuff like that and would have seen it because my friend andy in particular had hbo and so we would always watch stuff on there um but And also, the funny thing about the unencrypted satellite is that they figured that out pretty quickly, and then you had to buy another box and pay for subscriptions, right? But there was this little window. It's kind of like Napster for the 80s, right? When you could just get everything. so yeah i mean you know impressions as a young person was just that it was yeah for action movies like it was great you know what's what's not to like about it uh i do think you're muted by the way but i do think that um you know bruce willis was a step above other action figures of the 80s in terms of his his acting actually right like he's not the like sylvester stallone where or well sylvester stallone which you know we've talked about has some kind of limited acting chops right but like very very specific range um he's not arnold who's just one-liners and you know he actually you know, can, can act a little bit and deliver lines and doesn't come out, which I know you'll talk about, I'm sure. But like, he was not the first, second or third choice for this movie.

Speaker 3: Um, yes, I think he was, it was, they, they went through the whole cupboard. Yeah. Um, Bruce Willis.

Jay: Yeah. And he was like a TV, like he, he was a TV actor primarily. Yeah. Um, and not an action one. Um, And yeah, so I, you know, I liked it. I mean, I think the, as far as when I started becoming more critical on it, I mean, I was always a little bit, I always had the critique or the, the critical lens on action movies in general coming from my father mainly is like, he really did understand that they were like kind of, you know, promoting violence and policing and military. And like, even if he wasn't, you know constantly he wasn't like you know debunking all of this and providing me with counter propaganda for all of it but he would just sort of say like that's like i think on some level to him is like that's a lower class of cinema is sort of my father to some extent but it's also he did understand that it was promoting things that were bad right and i think that came from him being opposed to the vietnam war and like all of his kind of political trajectory out of that um And I think particularly when I started paying more attention to copaganda, like it's it's it's like a template, right? Or it's like something. So, I mean, a lot of what we'll say in terms of the analysis of this as propaganda is like so obvious and, you know, clear and tropes that we see through various forms of propaganda over and over again. So, you know, that part of the analysis of this film is actually, I think the easy part of it. And so, yeah, I mean, from that lens as well, but I also have admitted many times that, There's a lot of copaganda that I really enjoy watching, you know, despite how I shouldn't. You know, it's just it's also that there aren't any movies made in the United States anymore or TV shows of the United States anymore, really, that are not copagandistic in some way, it feels like. But, yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah. When we get to Beverly Hills Cop, we'll get into my complicated film because I... I enjoy the shit out of that movie. I do think Beverly Hills Cop is the most effective piece of copaganda ever made. It's just so well oiled to get you to totally root for a cop in that kind of way. Die Hard, the other thing that began to intrigue me was when I began to look at the source material of Die Hard. That ended up being a real fascinating rabbit hole that I took a couple of years ago Um, and so we'll talk a little bit about if it's making and things like that, because it's actually like, it's actually kind of fascinating because there's a, the source material. And then there's also kind of like what Jay was, was, was mentioning. I think the qualitative shift of action stars, because a film that we talked about already, 87 is one, I think like the first stage in the shift that's lethal weapon, um, Right. And then die hard becomes like the second kind of step towards this shift. And these shifts are like lasting to even today there. I think there are shifts that have become mainstays and we'll talk about that. So. the screenwriter and I'll go to him, but then I'll go to the source material in a second is a guy named, uh, Jeb Stewart, right? He, I think he's still alive. He is a, he was at the time. He hadn't really done anything. He had sold a script. He was struggling so forth and so on. He was like looking for a project and his agent, um, convinced him to work on the adaptation of a novel that is called Nothing Lasts Forever. So this novel was written in 79 by a guy named Roderick Thorpe. Thorpe, if I'm remembering correctly, was he a detective? Was he a retired detective? He was retired something in law enforcement, right? And he wrote these novels. He wrote these kind of, you know, the novels that you get at the store, you buy for a dollar, these kind of pulpy novels. And he wrote one called The Detective. which became a film with Frank Sinatra. And this becomes a hilarious story. And Sinatra is going to come back at this story in a funny way when the movie gets made. It's actually really hilarious. The detective. I've never actually seen this film. It's a film starring Sinatra as an NYPD detective named Joe Leland, right? And the film, the book Nothing Lasts Forever was written by Thorpe. in thinking that it could also be one day made into a movie starring Sinatra. And we'll get to that in a moment, right? So the Nothing Lasts Forever plot is very similar to Die Hard, but it's also different, I think, in really significant ways. The original plot is about an NYPD detective named Joe Leland. He's visiting the office headquarters of an oil corporation in LA on Christmas Eve. The person he's going to visit is not his wife in the movie. It's his daughter, right? Stephanie Leland Gennaro, which they do keep in it, right? Upon arriving to it, the building is taken over by the German Autumn. They're an era terrorist group that they kind of liken... Well, I can't remember. They might even actually specifically say Red Army Faction actually in the book. I'm not exactly sure. I've looked through the book, but they definitely direct actual... Look at actual history, right? But in the book... The Joe character, who later becomes John McClane, is actually a counterterrorism familiar person, right? He knew him through a counterterrorist conference, right? He has all this information on his dossier about him. So he... he basically is in the building and they take it over. The big other difference, though, is the Gruber character, and he's called Anton in the book, but he'll be Hans later, we know, played by Alan Rickman in the film, is that They are looking to expropriate funds, but they're not looking to expropriate funds for their personal gain. They're actually anti-imperialist revolutionaries. Now, I'm not saying this book is like really painting them. It's it sounds and what I from what I've read of it in bits and pieces, a very reactionary book in its own right, just like this movie is a very reactionary different way. But, and also, they, yeah, like I have it written here, they proceed to steal documents that will publicly expose Claxon, that is the corporation's dealings with Chile Junta. And this has to do directly with like Pinochet and all of that, right? About supporting dictatorial governments. So, Nothing Lasts Forever is a kind of right-wing pulp novel, right? You know, talking about the need to kind of smash the anti-imperialist struggle as this kind of crazy thing. Another big difference, and we'll talk about, is the Gruber character in the book. I don't know if it's all of them, but the majority of his followers are women. So he has like this like this like this like, you know, band of like armed armed women and they kind of go into it. It's very like salacious in that kind of way. And the other big difference is the daughter in the book is a kind of bit of a coke head. Right. She has a relationship with Harry Ellis, who is a character in the film. We all remember Ellis. You know, I think if you've seen the film, man, we're going to talk about Ellis, man. Poor Ellis. Not really. Right. But you have Ellis, but she's in a relationship with him. So they they they shift the book in this way. So kind of why the book shifts. I mean, some of it, I'll tell you explicitly why it happens. But then there's also, I think, politically, you have to think about it because that book was released in 79. And, you know, you're still kind of in. the presence of that's all the situation that was happening in Western Europe. And we've talked about this when we talked about Nighthawks, right? This kind of fear mongering that, you know, what's happening in Europe could one day happen here. And the Euro terrorists, and I put those in quotations, will come here and do the same thing. That kind of left by that time, right? That's not as much in the kind of popular imagination, right? in the american moment i remember i asked my dad about this and he was like yeah yeah i remember that was a thing of like you know the 70s and the 80s i don't really remember it being a thing by that time right so the the writing of the the when when when when they go to um work on the the the screenplay one of the things that was kind of said was like yeah like keep the christmas thing Christmas in LA, they like that backdrop. Keep it in one building. We're into that idea. Yeah. and he's also named john ford in one of the scripts and they were like well you can't name him john ford because you know john ford the the really famous uh filmmaker and they don't think it was respectful so they go with mclean and they go with mclean and we'll talk about this i'm sure you will talk about this because they said because of like scottish working classness and this idea that they wanted to make mclean into a kind of working class hero And I think this is really important when we think about John McClane as now a figure. He's a pop culture figure as a kind of symbolizing of working class enforcement in male virility and upholding the law and American-ness. So they do this. Another big thing, and they bring in John McTiernan, and we talk about McTiernan because he was the director of Predator. This is the film he does after Predator. I believe it's his third film overall, if I'm correctly. And of course, the success of Predator helps him get this. McTiernan was like, look, I'm into this. Right. But what I would like you to do is like give it a little bit of funny. he basically requests the kind of like jovial nature, right? Let's not make it too serious, so forth and so on. Let's like give it a little bit of this. And then I forget which one of the film's producers, they said they're fine with like the terrorists, right? But they want to kind of get rid of the whole political edge. And they said they felt it would make a more fun film. I'm sure that's part of their thinking, but I is a part of me that thinks that this I'll talk more about this later, that this kind of comes from a certain kind of unconscious when they think about these kinds of acts. That they don't think that they're inherently prince. They could be ever inherently principled, even if they're I'm not advocating for the act as much as I'm saying they couldn't come from an ideological place outside of like, I just want to get my money, get rich. And what does he say? What does Han say? You know, we'll be on a beach getting 20 percent. Right. That's their mentality, that these people just want to get rich, which I think becomes a thing that people always say about, you know. groups and things like that. And I'm trying to think if there's any if you if you have anything. Oh, the other thing to mention is that it also is under the wing of Joel Silver and Lawrence Gordon, who had the huge success of Lethal Weapon the year before. which was also a film that was not supposed to be as big. So they, then Die Hard becomes their next thing. And then a funny thing, and I call it an industrial complex, because if you watch Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, and another movie that we have to do, Action Jackson, if you watch the three of them, and they're made in, I think it's 87, no, Action Jackson's the same year as Die Hard, I'm sorry. You'll find a cast of characters that are, some of them that are in all three films, some of them that are in two of the three it's really funny there's like a little musical chairs of like of like character actors who are in all who are in the films it's really really hilarious but this is part of their new action industrial complex so if you haven't watched our um Lethal Weapon episode, you want to know more about Joel Silver, Lawrence Gordon, definitely check that out because this is the next shift for them. This is their next big project. It has more money Because of the success of Lethal Weapon, though, this film was not something that they thought would be a huge success. And we can talk about that as well. I don't know if you have some things, Jay. I probably have some more. I want to look in my notes. But Jay, you can jump in if there's anything you want to add in this kind of pre-section.

Jay: Just quickly, like, so this is Roderick Thorpe. He looks quite a bit like Lennon, to be honest with you. There's like a striking... Lennon in a jean jacket. But he was, as you said, he was a detective, but it was not a police detective. Private detective? Yeah, his father owned a detective agency, and then he taught literature and lectured on creative writing at you know in new jersey and california and it's just this wikipedia page but um anyway yeah that's interesting it is interesting too what you said about um the that the book you know has more Like that the politics are there, even if they're demonized, right? That the politics are a little bit more prevalent within the book. Whereas, yeah, I mean, the film... I mean, I know we'll talk about this as we get into it, but it's quite obvious that there's a real attempt and it goes... I think the kind of nighthawks to this film are really kind of interesting to look at in a lot of ways because... the Nighthawks has kind of the seeds of this film in terms of, you know, seeing the, you know, the, the revolutionaries as like unprincipled and as, you know, sort of being about like saying they're about prisoner swaps and liberation and all of this other stuff, but not really, you know, being clear that they aren't really obviously here. It's, They're quite, they're quite clear that that's a veneer, right? That like, you know, and it's, yeah, we'll talk about that a little bit as we get into the movie. The only other thing that I, yeah, wanted you to talk about a little bit too is, is ending up with Bruce Willis because of all of the other people that were asked. And I also found it a little bit interesting, sort of the, you know and i don't know if you saw this or dug into it at all the sort of reasons that were given as why right because also it would seem like obviously in hindsight we look at it and say this is another one of those vehicles right in the same way that you know rambo or rocky or uh well those are good examples right become it's like it makes this actor and gives them a franchise and a career as well as like an ability to have you know all kinds of you know spin-offs and merch or whatever else although the actor may or may not benefit from that stuff that much personally but certainly it makes them famous on a certain level which like bruce willis before this film is basically nobody i mean like he is he is an actor he does work right he would have had a career but you know the bruce willis as we think about him now you know as like an icon it would not be who he is without this film quite clearly, I think. So obviously that vehicle was open to the taking for a lot of other people that said no to this.

Speaker 2: Yeah, so when the film was written, the first hurdle they had to go over was the film was actually contractually obligated to Frank Sinatra. because of the detective um the book was written he owned the rights to the character it was like on him but when the film was about to be made sinatra was 70. so they go to frank and frank's like bro come on you know like it was an easy conversation to be like this is not gonna happen so then they move sinatra out and they go through all of them they go to all of them i mean from stallone to um like richard gear schwarzenegger they went through with tons of people they asked mel gibson i don't have the reasons why a lot of them turned it down um i think part of it was i even though lethal weapon was successful there was still this kind of not quite sure if these films could really be something that was going to go mega. So I think even though they would do some of these films, I think there would be additional factors why they would and would not choose to do them, right? And it would be very arnold oh no arnold turned it down because they said he was trying to not do as many action movies so i think he opted to do twins which for his own right ended up being a success i think right i think twins is like a success but yeah he it was a success to me as a child i will say exactly i mean yeah my dad watched a ton but like but also like i think i do think you have to ask would die hard have been die hard with arnold because part of what i think makes die hard are its two leads and the fact that they're kind of qualitative shifts because not just Bruce Willis I do think the Hans Gruber character being different is also super significant and a lot of like film critics kind of credit the Gruber character in that way too they write about it a lot in many ways he's written more about than John McClane to be honest with you um so Bruce Willis, at that time, if people remember, he was huge on a TV show called Moonlighting with Sybil Shepard. And Moonlighting was kind of Sybil Shepard's comeback after her movie career had kind of hit a big speed bump. She was supposed to become a really huge film actress, and she did good stuff in the 70s. It hit a speed bump, then Moonlighting became this big sensation. uh and then bruce willis was on that show and and bruce at the time and if you read about him he he grew up in like he's like an army brat then he went to he grew up in jersey working class guy he's like he has a very unremarkable kind of upbringing you know did like the acting classes went to montclair state you know to like study some acting and then like got a tv show you know people liked him and he was a heartthrob at that time and i remember moonlighting like and i remember his vibe on moonlighting like How we see Bruce Willis now is not how anyone imagined that he could become in this kind of action vehicle. He was this kind of heartthrobby, white duty, you know, kind of like, you know, he's the bartender that everybody wants to, you know, that the ladies chat with, you know, and he tries to be cool or something at the spot, right? He's like, he's the, you know, he's that guy. And they go to him and, With many people saying no, like they have this thing called CinemaScore, and they basically said, if you cast Bruce Willis, it's probably going to be a failure, right? And they kept telling him, like, this is not a good idea. But Silver and Gordon at that time really felt that it was probably really smart to kind of change the quality of the action star. They wanted to kind of like do this kind of working class, working man. And like, they don't say this, but I do kind of think, their experience with Lethal Weapon made them think this. I think the kind of shift they made with Lethal Weapon and the fact that it was a success and they could have this kind of character, I think they thought, yeah, we could probably do something like this. And it's also just kind of their politics. We've talked about the two of them. They're they're into this kind of like concept that like, you know, the rugged individual who's not polished with the, you know, West Point military or some kind of, you know, big old muscular Arnold. Those are the people that are probably going to like. be the ones to really do to knock out the real threatening shit that's coming into our society right that's the other thing this is also another film about people coming in right and who are going to be the best and the brightest and the film takes a clear position it's not going to be the rank and file no not going to be the upper end of the cops um it's not going to be the fbi which is also hilarious in this movie it's going to be the the street soldier john mcclain right the the singular street soldier and powell i also think powell is another one too him and pow played by original bell johnson are gonna be the ones They paid Willis a lot of money, though. That's like the one of the interesting things. He got paid a ton of money because he turned it down. And the only reason why he ended up doing it is because he didn't want to leave Moonlighting yet because Moonlighting was very successful in making a lot of money on TV. He didn't want to leave Moonlighting yet. But I think Cybill Shepherd, she got pregnant. So they were gonna have to take some time off. So he shot some of it with moonlighting and then also they had a big break and they were able to finish it. And then also it killed moonlighting by that point. The film, it just launched Bruce Willis into being a major action star. But yeah, I mean, it was like this risk, but I think it was this risk that had a calculated want in how they wanted to start thinking about action stars as not needing this requirement of like big muscles, but like grit, right? and really what the idea of maleness is like like a maleness that may be more relatable right because you know bruce willis is not you know he's not popping out big muscles but he's tough as nails and i mean we talk about every time he's like fighting somebody he's like cursing you like he's like beating the people up but it's so vulgar you know and just like you know yeah i i remember my dad watching this movie and like you know He gets into it. And I can think of probably when I was 15, I was like, yeah, yeah. You know, I could think that I could do it too. Because, you know, me imagining that I'm like Arnold ain't happening. I don't got pythons that big on my arm. You know, I don't got big old arms. So that's the thing with Willis. I just think there is this shift in that they wanted to push. And ultimately it was successful for them. And it changed the quality of how we deal with movies now.

Jay: yeah i mean i read somewhere and you know i don't know how reliable but some of some of the reasons some of the bigger names turned it down allegedly was that it was like too um that they thought that willis that the character right was like not not strong enough, like, you know, that there was this, the kind of emotional, psychological stuff with his wife. He's also, I guess it's actually in the, in the script and you see it in the movie too, that he's, he's actually looking for help. Right. Like, so he's actually trying to get, you know, the, the police to come in and he's trying to get, you know, more support from law enforcement, send in the cavalry. Right. And, the argument being that like you know if it's arnold or if it's stallone it's like we don't need help right like we are the the military which you could see through you know obviously films like rambo and commando and all of that kind of stuff this kind of like i am a one-man army which in many ways this movie has but the you know I guess they're just saying narratively within the script and again I don't know how true this is that when they were pitched it they didn't like that you know he's trying to sort out stuff with his wife and that you know he is you know and you know admitting he's wrong in the relationship and he's seeking help and all of these kind of things that they felt like it was like a kind of a weaker or like I guess as the right would say a sort of beta male they gear in a certain way, which is hilarious. But, and I don't, again, like, I don't know how, how true that is of, you know, Arnold or Stallone or anybody else. But that was kind of one of the things that I saw written up.

Speaker 2: I couldn't see Stallone wanting to take this movie. This, this totally is anti his project and the same, and same with Arnold and Arnold. And then when probably would have came in, then in there and like totally made them rewrite it, he'd have been like, look, like you got to change this, you know, like, you know, You know, like the whole thing, like with even like the end scene with the gun, the hide gun. Nah, man, there's no hidden gun. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 3: Like, bruh, I'm walking there, guns blazing, right? I just did a movie where I beat an alien that's double my size. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm like this skinny little motherfucker from Germany.

Speaker 2: He's like, it's not happening. Like, it totally doesn't fit the script, right? And, you know, I think probably for someone like Gibson, it probably had to do more with the risk factor of just doing an action film and doing another one a year later. It probably was too much for him to kind of comprehend. And they probably told him, like, tone it down. You might have gotten lucky with Lethal Weapon, right? This one, you know, we don't really know about. Yeah.

Jay: And Willis does kind of get typecast for a little while, I think, because of this film, too, right? Well, yeah.

Speaker 2: I mean, his career is very... We can talk about that a little later. His career is very weird. He has a very fits-and-starts career. I mean, for him, even with... I mean, the second Die Hard is not successful, really. It wasn't really... That's with the third, right? That they kind of reformulate the film, you know, the series to kind of, like, be successful. But he has a very fits-and-starts career, though he stays... a megastar for a really, really long time for a multitude of reasons. So I think another thing to kind of bring in is, and we can start talking about the movie maybe from there, is Alan Rickman's character. And Alan Rickman plays Hans Gruber in the film, the main villain. So Rickman, this was his first film um and the director mctiernan saw him in a play i think of dangerous liaisons and so this guy is a phenomenal actor he could be really good rickman at first did not want to do it either rickman was very not into the film's kind of original kind of like uh delivery of the character um He made suggestions. Oh, it actually was Joel Silver who saw him. He made suggestions to Joel Silver. He says, don't put him in like the classic garb of like the terrorist, right? He says, put him in a suit, right? Can we... he said he liked the kind of mercenary thought, but like, even on the time when they were shooting, he was doing onset rewrites of like certain parts of like things that he would say. Like the whole thing they discovered about the part where he speaks English is actually something they discovered that Rickman was like, he was, he would play around and speak in an American accent. I'm not speaking, speaking in an American accent. He would like just do it. And they were like, we got to do that. And yeah, one of the interesting things that was that Rickman has said is that he didn't see Hans as a villain. He said he didn't want to play him as a villain though. I think the film frames him as a villain, but he said he didn't want to play him as a villain. He said he wanted to play him as a, as a, as a, as a person who just kind of wants what he wants and he, he needs to get what he gets and he's kind of smarter than everybody else. Um, Oh, the other thing he was really objectionable to, he says he understood the scenes where Hans would have to shoot somebody or really kill somebody, like when he kills Takagi and when he kills Ellis. But he said like him, like he objected to like, there's like a scene, I think it was supposed to really like throw Bonnie Bedelia's character. He's like, I'm not doing that. So he kind of also like shifts the villain character. And we can talk about this when, when, when we get into the film a bit more. But a lot of that was driven because of Rickman. Rickman wanted to kind of go in a different direction with the villain. And it's interesting when you like kind of read postmortems about the movie, people have this like perception of Hans Gruber as like, one of the also big shifts in villains and i'm actually not opposed to that kind of like perception i do think it's a huge shift um because the other thing that's really interesting is that people tended to root for hans and i honestly honestly often i watch the film i feel like i do like i feel like i do end up rooting for him kind of in the movie in weird ways Like, especially, or in a period of my life, he's definitely, part of it, I like, you know, rest in peace, Alan Ripman as an actor. I think he's just a really phenomenal actor. But there's something about the way he's framed and he's played in the movie that he becomes something you root for. But what's weird about it is the fact that it becomes devoid of politics. It's this kind of devoid of politics individualism that you end up rooting for. And that's where the film gets really sneaky, in my opinion.

Jay: Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, heist movies in general, which this isn't, I mean, this is a weird movie in, you know, because it's like not really heist genre, even though it is a heist. I think it's the, it's like, it has to do with kind of the locus of the film and who you're focusing on as characters, right? Because usually a heist movie is more focused on the thieves as like, the tragic you know figures or whatever who like you know are just trying to you know their mom has cancer whatever like in a lot of ways this is why i like heist movies is a lot of times there is kind of a critique that capitalism is a rigged system and you're trying to get something back you know from it and so i say that to say i usually do root for the people the villain you know the people who are doing the heist and heist movies um but it's funny because i don't for me it's it's like i do find myself rooting for bruce willis of these movies even though i know i shouldn't um yeah because they're devoid because they are devoid of

Speaker 2: because there's no devoid of anything yeah there's no there's no justification like yeah you have no reason why these guys are doing this thing right like it is not other than for their own gain right i'm only rooting for him because how because because like because honestly he's a good actor like he played is because of how he plays it and then also like honestly sometimes especially with the character of ellis you just like him more than the other guy right or the or and we'll get into it like probably start the film now or like the fbi i mean the fbi or the the head of the the police the the deputy chief they're just so trash right you know it in the way the way these films are kind of situated they make you have to try to root for someone in a moment so you have to so i'm like well you know get them hans get them you know

Jay: Ah, yeah, fair enough. Yeah, so let's go, let's work into the movie and we can talk about other stuff later.

Speaker 3: So, the film, you know, I find it funny, like, the music comes on and there's, like, this, like, really low tone, with, like, the jingle bells, die hard, right? It just, I mean...

Jay: I will say, it's such a Christmas movie. Like, anybody who says this is not a Christmas movie, like, what the hell is wrong with you? Like, it is, like...

Speaker 2: sounds you know christmas songs throughout it a christmas party like yeah you know so many references ho ho ho i got a machine gun but i think what i think throws people off is like i think two things so like the film is shot in this really interesting like anamorphic stretch Right. It's like it's like a really wide screen film. Right. So there's a way that the images have this like distortion because of the anamorphic lens that I think it always throws people off because when they think of like, I think a Christmas movie, they're thinking something that has a bit more. you know, at least maybe pungent, like kind of saturation, but a kind of like a neutral saturation. While this is like very desaturated, there's not a lot of bright colors in the film. And if they are, they're kind of, they're totally toned down. Um, This goes, I think, into a trajectory that was started with, I think, To Live and Die in L.A., which is a film you have to do of shooting L.A. in that kind of yellow haze. In the early sequence, when you see the limousine going to Nakatomi, which I actually find very consistent with L.A., the you can feel the smog when you watch the film even when you get in on the plane because like one of the one of the first sequences is you see him arrive in la on a plane um and there's this guy that he talks to the fist with your toes guy um and like there's like this like haze to the air there right so they're not shooting la as like a promised land they're kind of shooting la as a as a weird site where strange things happen because like one of the very first things that um john mclean sees is like you know this woman run up and like hug her man and all this up in the thing and he goes california you know he he makes all these like jokes it's like he's like he's being the typical new yorker that i have been i will admit when i've gone to la he's being the typical new yorker slash east coaster going to california and like complaining about it's like over jovialness it's it's kind of new americana capital stuff Which is like a total difference from saying like Beverly Hills Cop, which came out like three years before, which has this kind of look of Beverly Hills and L.A. as like, you know, really popping energy. Right. Like, yeah. Even though even though Eddie Murphy and Beverly Hills Cop is like the fish out of water, he's kind of like, yeah, I can fuck with this, though. I can fuck with this, though. He's got to let me be me. Right. You know. McClane ain't having none of this. This is weird, right? These people are weird. They do weird shit. And it looks weird. It feels weird. You definitely get a vision of LA as like this oddball civilization.

Jay: Yeah, for sure. I mean, you have... I mean, on the plane, there's the scene where he sees the gun, right? And the guy's like looking at it like all crazy. He's like, it's okay. I'm a cop. I've been doing this for 11 years, which I can't remember what he was responding to, but something about a guy who was like, I've been doing this for 10 years.

Speaker 2: He's been flying for nine years. Right.

Jay: It's the toes thing. It's like, yeah.

Speaker 2: It's your toes, which is like becomes like the long, which one of the like the longest like threads ever in a movie.

Speaker 3: They really start the no shoes thread like in the first scene of the movie.

Jay: like really y'all really want to make this very significant absolutely um and then yeah i just noted too he's smoking a cigarette in the lax terminal too which of course you you know you could do in 1988 but um the and yeah it was somebody somebody kissed him on the cheek at the christmas party that's when he's like california you know and the second time it's the second time okay he says that he says it

Speaker 2: First, when the woman runs to her boyfriend, and then the second time he does it, they keep stamping it, but it's the second time he says it. The part where the guy kisses him is totally contrived, making everyone in LA and in corporate America look weird.

Jay: Yeah, and then you get Argyle, the limo driver. This is kind of funny in it, too. There's these hints to... that he's a little racist, because he's like, why is this black guy driving my limo? You could just see it on his face, right? And then, yeah, I took that as a homophobic thing, too, when he gets kissed on the cheek, that it's like, you know, everybody in Hollywood is gay or whatever, right? The kind of conservative tropes that are still ongoing, but... Um, yeah, there's a lot of those little elements and it is very, it's very New York also. I mean, it's like, I think that's a real thing for a lot of New Yorkers for sure in terms of going to California and anywhere, anywhere outside of New York, honestly.

Speaker 2: I mean, totally. And look, man, I probably have said it right. And I'm sure this movie probably influenced it when I've when I've done it. But there is but there is and I think it becomes significant. I think when we start getting into Nakatomi, I think they're using it as a way to comment about kind of like new business, new capital, which becomes associated with. And we got we'll have to talk about Japan at the time again in their kind of financial situation with the U.S., But Japan and then attaching that also to then his wife's character played by Bonnie Bedelia, her as like kind of like new working girl era feminism. Right. And that kind of like lumping all the L.A.,

Speaker 3: right ellis and the cocaine weirdos japan women wanting to have work like it becomes this big clout of what the is going on with society and it's such a reactionary like vision and there's a way that like you could kind of suggest that oh they're kind of admitting it

Speaker 2: that there's a reactionary thinking but the film when you think about it cathartically it still defends that the core basis of that attitude right and you get you get totally sucked up into it the other little thing that i want to bring up because it goes throughout the movie that always kind of fucks with me with this movie is how they deal with Bruce Willis as a kind of like sexual creature. So he's leaving the plane, right? And there's this look with a stewardess, right? And she gives, and like, she's just like, just eyeing him and he gives the eyes back and boom, right? and throughout the film like i i tried to like count it it was like every 20 minutes there's these like weird references towards like sex in the movie where like you can get it if you want or i kind of want it or there's like a sexual thing about maledom that they need to do like when he sees the picture of the naked woman inside nakato mini that's like girls right there's this constant like refrain towards like male aggressive sexuality that's in it a heterosexuality also i want to say too and i'm it's it's so weird to me because it totally just in some ways it comes like totally out of character or out of character out of like left field but i feel like it's necessary for this movie that is so bent up on just like hyper action and hyper violence to also remind you that yeah he's also a sexual being right you know he can bust guns and what else do you think he can do as well

Jay: Yeah. It's also an interesting thing a little bit about New York in this time period versus LA in this time period because it's very different now. I feel like New York in the eighties, right. It's coming out of the major financial crisis. Like is a little, like you could buy houses at this time in, in Manhattan and in the boroughs for very little money. Like it was not, uh, it's, it's so different now. Like nowadays it is just sort of like Disneyland for rich people, you know, like it's like global capital, like, you know, where do you want to buy your, your floor or your flat or your, you know high-rise apartment or whatever um in a way that just makes it you know very difficult for working-class people to even live in right whereas in the 80s like it was still trying to get back on its feet as a place that was like worthy of you know big capital investment in a certain way i mean i'm i don't want to overstate that but like there is a kind of i think dynamic too between like you know, Bruce Willis as being in this movie, being seen as this like very sort of working class, you know, white beat cop, whatever, or I don't know what he's a beat cop, but cop from New York. Right. And then coming into LA where it's all, you know, mega corporations and high fashion and cocaine and, you know, and it's not, it's not as though these worlds are like that different. But what I would say is there was a, I feel like there was a bigger difference, like in certain ways, culturally, but, and, and just in a class, I mean, obviously there's always lots of working class and poor people in LA area as well. But, you know, LA in the, in the eighties, I felt like had a very different, you know, I don't know. It's just, it's just different from New York now, New York is, Change with like the Giuliani and Bloomberg like mayorships and where it is now is like a very stark difference.

Speaker 2: Yeah, 100 percent. I mean, there's also like I mean, I wonder how much like 80s is still dealing with like the austerity kind of of the late 70s kind of thoughts like in terms of like the kind of like the ideology of New York. But I also always feel like it's like this old capital versus new capital thing, which I think goes right into Nakatomi, right? This idea that like New York is like an old capital place, so thus it's more rugged. So it has a more, I don't wanna say ethical, I would say a more rooted towards like classical American values capital, right? With all of the weirdness that statement means, right? And then L.A. is, like, this era of new capital. Because, like, so one of the things to kind of point, and he gets into the conversation with Argyle, his limo driver, about his wife. So his wife, and they're never really clear about what she was doing before. She's a very weird, the wife is such a weird, like, typical of these movies. They're a really weirdly written character. Played by Bonnie Bedelia, Holly McClain. So Holly has a job in L.A. that she got, and she had to move And Argyle, I do find it funny. A shout out to the cat who played Argyle. I always forget his name.

Speaker 3: He does play it really well, like roasting him, you know, about questioning, like questioning his, like, you know, his kind of trying to be stoic. And he's like, well, what'd she do? She beat you up? You know, like, like, why are you there?

Speaker 2: Right. And, and then he calls about, right. He basically is like, yo, I have all these things, you know, with my job and I'm a, I'm a cop. And i can't just leave everything he's so you basically thought that she wasn't gonna like work you know figure it out that she come running back to you basically so but there's this idea that la is like this new capital because what kind of ends up setting up is when you realize that she's working for this japanese company right and they have like a new high-rise skyscraper in la and i think the other thing to think about is is like the whole like skyscrapers are things that are like not necessarily thought about for la right it's not a skyscraper city in the way that new york is so like this kind of shot of you like rolling up to downtown la with a big-ass skyscraper and they they make sure to isolate the nakatomi like image as to say that it's like it's kind of singular it's like the new capital right and The fact that they're like open to a kind of like newer, you know, feminist leadership played by Holly, Holly Gennaro McClain shows that it's like a kind of like a new new thing with L.A. Right. And, you know, we have to go back to basically this is the time of, you know, Japan and their kind of economic leadership. which was like all the rage in growing up you know in movies tv show episodes newspapers japan's winning the trade war the economic war sony and then also like really you know xenophobic stuff is japan taking over the u.s you know i remember i remember like you know sony and all that is somebody gonna infiltrate the us and all this type of stuff and and don't know what you're feeling is jay on this one like they definitely show that this company has power in terms of economic like weight like they have tons and tons but i don't feel like the film goes fully into it into like the it's like the worst of the reactionary positions towards like the japanese takeover as much as like they don't really deal with it, I think, after a while. Like, they kind of set it up as, like, a thing. Like, Japan has this kind of, like, stronghold financially here in L.A. They're part of the new capital. Like, so when he comes to the building, one of the things that Takagi tells him is that, you know, the building isn't even finished, right? Like, it's like a new project, right? And then, I mean, there is the great line. What does he say? What is it? The Pearl Harbor line? It's so good.

Jay: Yeah, it's we couldn't get you with bombs. So we got you with Walkman or something like that. Like tape decks. It was something with tape.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I do. I do.

Speaker 2: I do have it here. I got to find it. I'll find it. Right. Well, yeah, well, you're looking for that.

Jay: yeah i mean i agree i think the there was so for people who don't weren't there or don't remember this there was a certain type of like u.s capital-based anxiety about japan overtaking the united states um that was very similar to what people see now with china and it was always a little bit complicated because it was very clear that japan was an ally right so it like was very clear that they were not anymore i mean which is it's all fascinating right because of course japan actually did you know attack the united states right but the but you know after after pearl har i mean not after after the the atom bombs are dropped right and the united states of course commits like the worst war crime and you know history basically in those in those two bomb droppings um you know, then you get the peace deals and whatnot, and they really become what certain scholars, I think Samir Amin has referred to this, other people have as well, like, kind of like the triad, right, or whatever of, like, looking at the United States, Western Europe, and Japan as, like, kind of the three heads of global capitalism and imperialism. And obviously, Japan, like, sort of demilitarized in this arrangement, right? That was like, kind of part of it, but then became very heavy in terms of like, you know, investment technology and all these other kinds of areas. Um, and yeah, so there was this concern that you would see even on like, you know, 60 minutes or nightly news or these kinds of things, morning news, right. About the rise of Japan and whether the United States would be overtaken by Japan. And I do think that this movie is, you know, like you said, not like going too far into it, but is definitely like, that is sort of what is represented by this company and this corporation.

Speaker 2: So the line that McClain, so he gets to the Christmas party and Ryan is like, it's buck wild. Like you got, you see people doing Coke and, you know, more him ogling at women, like long stares at the ladies there. The guy kisses him on the cheek, you know, and he is looking for his wife and he basically meets the, the, the CEO of the business Takagi. Right. And they're in this conversation where they also will meet Ellis, and we'll talk about Ellis a little bit. And he asked Takagi, he says, I didn't realize they celebrated Christmas in Japan. And Takagi's response is, hey, we are flexible. Pearl Harbor didn't work out, so we got you with tape decks. So there's, like, this acknowledgement of, yeah, like, you know, we is trying to do something. But, you know, I'm going to make a joke about it, you know. But then the other thing we'll get to when Gruber singles out Takagi is they're very clear to make Takagi someone who immigrated before the war. Right. Which I think is very interesting that he's not someone who's come after the war. He was someone who came before World War Two and grew up. So he's very much an American Japanese person, which I found very, very interesting. And I that's something that I don't know because the book doesn't have them in Japan. It's an American oil company. So it doesn't even matter. But it's an interesting kind of like thread line that they kind of use in it. But.

Jay: yeah like the go ahead just quickly good point made here by chidi macha that you know technically the united states was you know pearl harbor was not part of the united states it was really a project of the united states putting a military base on land that was not theirs right so yeah no that's that's solid analysis and correct myself on that yeah so

Speaker 2: you also have you begin to get kind of like the people who work for the corporation right so you get to see that like holly is like very much the the like like the systems operational person of like the entire corporation right and i'm like it's if you look at it it's like mostly white people and like mixed sprinkled in with like japanese people right right or asian people right um in in in the business i feel like you don't see a lot of other races there if i'm if i'm correct you definitely do see a good amount of women right so i definitely think that they're trying to kind of paint this idea of like you know new capital has this kind of like you know a mixture it has like more white women more this and this and that right white woman in leadership like she's in a blouse she's also not like in a suit which I found very interesting. And like, it's like a, it's like a, it's like, it's like a red or like a peachish kind of color. I found that very interesting, like the kind of color they have her in her. She has like a, you know, reddish hair. Her name is Holly. Like there is, but, but then she's also, she's strong because then they have their, their conversation. Right. And it's, there's always this thing with her of like being, and then even with her name, like Gennaro, I find like, you know, like not making her like, like Stewart or something very like, you know, It's Gennaro. There's like this like ethnic thing that they're trying to play with about the two of them. And I put those in quotations. It's like, it's all very like weirdly coded towards, I think, all of like Silver, McTiernan's, all of their different kind of ideologies around who are like the socially mobile people that we need to have as like the new like role models towards everything. But the other person to bring it is Ellis though. Because I think Ellis is like, Ellis is a classic character who's changed from the book. So apparently they said Ellis is significant in the book. And they said that because they got rid of the daughter thing, he basically loses a certain kind of purchase. But they were like, we got to keep this character in there. Because in the book, he's a Coke user. So he's like the head of international relations. And I do find it hilarious. that the international relations dude is the most capitalist the most you know selfish you know cokehead there is right like they walk into the office and he's doing coke right it's just like

Speaker 3: fucking hilarious but like honestly i can believe it like he's totally that dude in that corporate like he feels like a very exact real character i'm like yeah i do think there were lots of ellis's in the 80s like businesses were rampant with ellis's yeah i think he's the most 80s character in the whole movie honestly like it's like you want to know what the 80s is all about like in america

Jay: Look at Ellis. At least white corporate America.

Speaker 3: Dude, and he's funny. The guy plays him so funny. He's hilarious. His little lines, he's so good. He's like, he has this laugh.

Speaker 2: It's so funny, right? And you see he's trying to kind of flirt with Holly. And they do this. This is where, like, you know, when they make women characters, it's only for the self-serving of men. Because what they want to do with Holly is... say that she's like defiant in a particularly like, like, I don't want to say justified because I don't know if they justify her, her, her, her defiance of her husband as much as they give her like a position. Right.

Jay: she's she's i think i think she's a representation of like just sort of progress right right so it's like like so you know this is this is the the like 70s 80s thing right as women moving out and i mean like there are some real realities that have to be discussed like you you know i mean i realize these are both media you know, representations or whatever, but like, go watch how women are treated in Mad Men. Right. And then like, look at this. Right. And like, again, like, both fictionalized, both like, you know, propagandistic pieces of a different sort. But I think there is some truth to that, that like white women within corporate America, that for, you know, a long time, right, you were the secretaries and you also were treated like shit by all of the men who were over you. And like, had to worry about you know people trying to do weird sexual to you and everything else right and obviously i mean this stuff still goes on right we we have all of these you know me too things coming out from hollywood and all these other things like um music industry etc but So she, I think, is supposed to be that very, like, liberal white feminist, you know, image of progress, right? And it's interesting because Bruce is both representing, like, kind of the reaction to it, right? Like, he didn't move out, even though she got the job that was obviously, like, the better paying, more socially mobile position, right? decided he's gonna stay in new york and like his wife and them kids like basically like they can just go and do their own thing and hopefully they'll come back to me the man but but then also as the movie progresses, like, you know, it's particularly in that moment when he feels like he's going to die and he tells Carl Winslow, I'm sorry, I'm just going to call him Carl. But he tells him that, you know, you have to get a message to my wife that, you know, that it, you know, I feel like things are going to go bad. And then he kind of, does the whole like you're the best thing that ever happened to me and some of it is like really just classic bs kind of like you know macho groveling back that you don't really necessarily believe but in that little you know monologue or like letter that never really gets delivered because he doesn't die um you know he is sort of saying like you were right like you did the the right thing and i should have gotten over myself and my ego and come with you you know i was being the macho you know whatever reactionary or whatever and i think so that like thematically within the film i think that's kind of what the the two of them represent and they're trying to show that vision of progress as like yeah she is doing the right thing by doing this he's the one that has the issue

Speaker 2: Yeah, and because they have this conversation in her office where she basically says, you know, I would love for you to stay over. And because one of the big things that they show is when he goes into Nakatomi... when he searches for her name, her name isn't, and the name that, the married name, McClain, it's not there. So then he goes for her maiden name, Gennaro, and he finds it and he does the Bruce, like, you know, like so disgusted, right? And he holds this until they have this, this meet, this, this, this conversation that's like, seeming very warm, like they're gonna reconcile, that she misses him and she's being very open. And he's like, you know, you ain't gonna have my name, you're not gonna keep my name except when you wanna use checks and all this type of stuff. And it gets very male and she stands up to him in totally justified ways and to be correct ways. But what's interesting is, and we'll get to the end of the film, there's a way that they do both that I think is kind of funky. is that they are able to give her her position, but also suggest that his kind of right to a certain kind of traditional familial familial like vision and conduct is also justified. Like he actually should be able to have that right and there's like two key moments at the end of the film that kind of happened that like totally it doesn't invalidate what she says is basically we can meet a middle ground right around these kind of like old american values and the kind of liberal progress

Speaker 3: which in a way is kind of true to liberalism in this kind of way it actually is the truth if you think about it how they think about uh charting progress within you know liberalism yeah because he's also like you know the whole thing is because he's in in the film he's like the most manly like you know he

Jay: literally the name of the film is die hard right like you can't kill this guy right like you know and and so there is this you know i can't remember you know and i don't know if this is one of the lines you're thinking of but there is the whole thing of like kind of like you got a good man like there or whatever at the end of the film um you know so there there definitely is this you say like kind of meet in the middle of like he needs to recognize what he has in her and she needs to recognize what she has in him and that's kind of the the love story arc of the film you're muted so by that point you you get that and then they really like rush in to like hans and like the crew basically taking over the building and

Speaker 2: It's so interesting how it's painted because you also meet Theo, you know, and Theo is like another. And like I said, this film has these three black people positioned. So you have Argyle, who's the limo driver. He's kind of like the funky. He's like the funny guy in the car. And he's he's he's it's funny. Like McClane is two black helpers. our guy with powell really which is hilarious right and then hans has his own black helper right he has theo and it's basically like the two i don't want you to call them second in command i mean carl definitely is second in command i think to hans right in the in the in the in the film fio is like the specialist right like he's the one who has the talents that no one else has so they come in and he does this you know uh this monologue about magic and johnson and this is the other thing about the movie that i think people like it It's all these like jokes, but they're better to me than like Schwarzenegger jokes because like Schwarzenegger jokes are like one lines. They're like these like long through line jokes and also just done by better actors.

Speaker 3: Like the guy, like, you know, you know, he's this nerdy dude. He passes to magic. You know, he has this really like nerdy ass voice. that i've always found so funny and he's such a weird character because you know you're used to like black people having a certain kind of vibe to them and you get this nerdy brother with glasses right and he walks in and he's part of the terrorist troop right it's just kind of funny so you have the the whole crew start to be able to like take over the building and

Speaker 2: and one of the things that i began to think about was like wow man remember the world before like security before metal detectors right and the world before like you know certain types of like armed security guards but then i have to say the film and we'll talk about it it's totally stoking the the open borders are a problem

Speaker 3: These open borders are a problem. This lack of security is a problem because, you know, if we didn't have these open borders, you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 2: Then, you know, maybe we wouldn't have people taking over Nakatomi Plaza and, you know, and terrorists trying to, you know, take over buildings, which is like the part of this movie that's real. really wild to me like this is what Americans imagine this like part of the American imagination right that your building can one day get taken over by a group of terrorists who have rocket launchers I'm like bro like when does this happen that's why like watching this movie again and I'm like what the fuck am I watching like there's a moment where I feel like I would love everyone that I take a step back from Die Hard like even as a piece of fantasy to just go wait a minute this is kinda fucking nuts

Speaker 3: And a big-ass crew of people are going to come up here with rocket launchers. They have missile launchers, right? Right? Like, they have a missile launcher and C4 out the wazoo. You know? Yeah. That could really happen at my office. Right? It's just nuts.

Jay: It is really wild because also, like, every... you know, terror plot or bank robbery. It's like so much humbler than this when you actually think about like what the people have and like, you know, and it, and it is a, I think it's a form of that in itself is a form of copaganda, right? It's this idea that like, first of all, that the cops are so sophisticated, which they're not shown as sophisticated in this film, which is another thing we'll talk about. But like, but that they you know that that you that the idea that they have to be able to battle like go to war with this right like and that's kind of one of the things about the level of violence in the film um is that this idea that like the people who are going to do this criminal conspiracy have somehow like yeah like you said like everything like rocket launchers c4 they have this hacker who knows how to break into everything like all this kind of stuff you know when most of the major heists or um you know are just way more or or you know terror plots or you know whatever or actual anti-colonial revolts or struggles right are much less the people are always operating with lesser technology and less sophistication and so the idea too is that like there's also embedded in that is this justification of this surveillance infrastructure, right? But then the funny thing is that even that, we have this belief that these systems are impenetrable, right? Or that they're like so difficult to overcome. And that is something that we've internalized too, right? Like it's just not true. Like people get away with stuff, you know? And I mean, obviously, know whatever but like things happen within the world that are not stopped by all of this surveillance and policing all the time and it doesn't require people to have the kind of like arsenal of weaponry that people have here

Speaker 2: Right. And that's what then makes the film really interesting, because on on that level, you can see that they use these radio communicators. They're very coordinated. They basically you basically you pretty much figure out in the film that they basically studied the building, all of its mechanite, all its machinations, how to thwart them and how to get by them. Right. and i don't know if there was ever a moment when i watched the film but i'm sure other people did before the reveal comes out that they don't really care and the reveal happens pretty early in the heist that they don't really care about anything political they're just doing this for the money right it comes pretty early um That like it's interesting to be able to thwart that for people who have principle, like they would never do that. They would never show that like people who have really deep principle also could like develop the skill to really take out a business or like like like like the state. They would never put that in a big mega movie because they don't want to push that. They only want to push that. It's like the people who want to do who have those kind of skills who are that slick are these like degenerate unprincipled politically nebulous at best or politically totally nihilistic and they're just out for self right because when they go in there like they're like paramilitary like they they're rocking they're shooting they're doing all this and then the funny thing is when you like the makeup of the group you have a lot you you're hearing like the german spoken which also is funny that the movie throughout the entire thing they don't subtitle the germans which I think is, which I know is purposeful because they want it to be like this like scary foreign thing. And they want you to never actually emotionally connect with them. And the way they speak to German is like so guttural.

Speaker 3: Like I can almost see McTiernan say, really, I want you to stretch out the, they're really like stretching out the German. It's so funny.

Speaker 2: like i don't want to do it because like it's like offensive to like make fun of it in that kind of way but like i'm in the house like they're really taking it to like the highest level right but you have german guys i think one of the other guys is italian the marco i think he wants to be italian i'm not quite sure if he's italian or like spanish right you're the chinese guy you have a white american but he has a southern accent and a black man

Speaker 3: Right. So the makeup of this crew is odd, but also kind of like what they would think. Right. Like the black man is going to defect. Probably it was going to be an American different to be a black man and some weird guy from the south. Right.

Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying? So he won't be a city refined person. The German we all know because they're German people. Right. And then an Italian because, you know, Italians are, you know, they do weird shit also. And then a Chinese guy. Right.

Speaker 3: Well, you know, it's perfect.

Speaker 2: yeah the chinese they're the you know it's totally like it's like playing with everyone's weird very very strange like latent stereotypes of who would be a terrorist without principle also i do think that without principle thing is like so major in this movie like it's like it's like the big thing that like kind of like underbellies the entire thing um yeah

Jay: Well, I mean, I think, I mean, we can go there. Cause like, so yeah, I mean, thematically in terms of what happens in the film, obviously like you have the Christmas party, you have Ellis doing Coke, you know, you have this and then you have, you know, them come in and yeah, of course Bruce Willis is, is, you know, turning his, he's, he's making fists with his toes. I don't understand why he can't just grab his fucking shoes as the, like, like this is the thing. the the thing that bothers me the most about this movie right is just that like what did he get separated from his shoes i mean i know he's taking them off to do the thing and i know the terrorists come in in that moment right but i think i would have just taken a moment to get my shoes

Speaker 3: Yeah, like, they should have had a shot where, like, a quick thing where, like, the shoes were, like, in the room and he couldn't get them.

Speaker 2: Like, a quick shot that the shoes were, like, in the other room and he can't run in there because maybe he left the shoes in the part and he couldn't get it. But I know it is such a life.

Jay: Yeah, exactly. If he saw his shoes and there's a terrorist between him and his shoes, I'd be like, okay. Now I can go with the whole thing.

Speaker 3: I can't get my shoes. They don't do that.

Speaker 2: It becomes the longest gag in the history of action films. The fact that they get it from the first scene all the way to

Speaker 3: 90% into the movie, the big final moment they want to have with the shoes is getting his feet fucked up, right? It's like, it takes like, so like minute, like hour, one hour and 45 minutes into the movie to get that to happen.

Jay: When the terrorists figure out that he doesn't have shoes and are like, oh, let's break glass everywhere. Shoot the glass!

Speaker 3: It's like so fucking funny, man. But, so...

Speaker 2: i will say when rickman comes into the movie i'm with like like i gotta say like all these years i've just loved watching him in the movie like he's so he his looks his gaze what they credit about the qualitative shift about his character is that he they said he changed the kind of what they would call like the intelligent villain Right. His like nonchalantness towards the kind of, you know, whole kind of situation. The fact that he, you know, he doesn't show like brute force in terms of like you know him having to like you know go be with them shooting the gun they usually do that with like the villains right they're like the most talented like you could probably guess that maybe hans isn't the most talented that probably be carl carl is the assassin know we go send out carl to go out and kill someone but hans is deadly because that sequence with takagi where he where he where he where he shoots takagi is like pretty brutal and it's like he doesn't okay right he just doesn't care right so they really credit i mean there's people who say things like this is like the greatest movie villain of all time there's like it's like really like lauded in like movie villain i don't really care i don't have a a thing in that i just know alan rickman as an actor i enjoy watching him like i'm on the screen with him and like you know he's saying his little lines right and it's he's just funny right and he sets up very quickly like that he doesn't really care about this stuff right because so they come in they like you know the guns and it's like shooting and all this stuff is happening. And like, they're collecting all the people, the terrorists. Right. And he's kind of like center mass. He doesn't move a lot. And then eventually he gets to where he has to go find Takagi. Right. And that's the sequence where he begins reading out Takagi is like bio bio. And in it, I don't have it written down, but they mentioned that he was, he immigrated like before the war. Right. And I find that very interesting in the kind of narrative of him. because they make him...

Jay: He was also interned.

Speaker 2: Interned, yes, and interned. So he's distinctively Japanese-American in that way. And I find that really important. They didn't want to make him the other kind of character in it. And I found that... Yeah, it's really interesting, especially also if you're thinking about... Because they also make the point that Hans is West German. He's not East German in the film. i also found very interesting and i'd be curious jay if you had any thoughts around that right um they make him west german so they have that japan west germany japan and this like kind of reconstituting of like of like the world's situation right and it's like the movie's like it's like drawing on politics but then like not really dealing with them in any kind of way but like this like needle pointing in politics, which I just think is just so indicative of really of movies writ large, but definitely of like 80s America, like they really wanted to, like, poke on these little ideas that we would immediately have towards a Japanese person in internment camp, a West German who because he says I have a classical education, Hans, right, who has a classical education. they're like pinpointing all these little triggers to kind of get you to think about things, but never really landing on anything. So like for a person who may not know anything, it doesn't mean anything for a person who knows like a couple of things, it might spark something, but it, what I think it ultimately does is it like positions them in like really two dimensional ways that you can look at them as characters that are all subservient to the kind of overall really reactionary politics of this movie.

Jay: yeah i mean i think the we talked about this a little bit um with nighthawks too but i think there is something to the west german thing um i mean i think one as somebody noted in the chat earlier bruce willis is actually west german so his his mother is well he's born in west germany his mother's german his father was an american soldier right so like he he's he's german american but um the uh but in terms of of thinking about terror right it actually was the case as as far as i can think of or you know examples i can think of where especially well i don't want to say so the gdr did have you know east germany did have like some support of anti-colonial movements for sure but i don't it wasn't in my limited study of it it wasn't as often in the term in the form of like them they participated in certain groups right like uh support for say Palestinian liberation or things like this right um in kind of supportive roles more but like the i think it's it's red army faction right and so like it is the and they come out of west germany and i think that's the thing is it's more the communists that are in these european these western european countries that they're more worried about terrorism from partly I think because there is the politics of the Cold War and so while there is always this fear of like espionage and sabotage and like stealing secrets and all these kind of things it's less that there's a fear of like the soviet union or the gdr committing a terror attack in the united states because geopolitically that would just be so disruptive right that it would you know lead to a sort of ladder of escalation essentially between two nuclear powers and so i think That's some of it is that the people who they think as more likely to do something like this would be something like, you know, the Red Brigades or the Red Army Faction or these different, you know, these kind of groups. I mean, it's still not like based in much evidence other than that there was stuff like that within Europe that happened. But again, with the Nighthawks thing and this, it's like kind of the importation of this. It's like a fear more than it is based in any kind of reality. And the people who would be likely to do stuff like this in a U.S. context would be part of U.S. movements, right? Like whether it's Black Liberation Army or know weather or may 19th or you know these kind of organizations and they also i mean that is one of the the copagandistic elements of it um or the ways that the film is propagandistic in my view is that you know When they did those things, like when they did expropriations, it was to support like their movement or to support further anti-colonial activity. Right. It wasn't just to like, you know, self get a bunch of money for myself. Right. Which is like very clearly what the what's happening here.

Speaker 2: yes because like so one of the like so the scene of the elevator with takagi and and and hans is really interesting and i've always noticed even as a kid i just had no context because you know arafat is a name that i've been in my consciousness since i was a kid because my dad watched west television my dad you know for a lot of the weird problems that would happen in my my house my dad was always very pro-palestinian right that was something that he always had a very strong pro-palestinian you know someone like arafat would be someone that would be like discussed in my home and looked at you know um from at the very least a supportive position but when they bring up arafat in this context they bring him up about wearing an expensive suit right he looks at takagi suit and he goes nice suit right and he names the name of the suit and he says you know I have a few myself, right? And that's a kind of showing you, like, what are Hans' interests? They're not politics. They're into these kinds of bourgeois, you know, trinkets. And then when he walks out and passing us, I heard that's where Arafat Baez is as well, right? And it's doing this thing where saying that all of that shit is real bullshit. Like, none of these guys are for real. None of this stuff is real. It's all honestly, people trying to get shit for their own there are no revolutionaries and i do really do think this movie is saying that like we're there maybe there was a time maybe there was a time we could discuss that another place but in this moment in 1988 that shit is gone it is now a heist for capital we all people want capital and this is a very also

Jay: For sure. Yeah. And I mean, I purposely put the book on the jackal behind because this is like the whole argument around the jackal as well. And he did have these Germans that worked with him and stuff like that. But the. It's a very long right wing project to to divorce. I mean, it goes back to, again, that interview I keep referencing. It's in Safiya Bukhari's book, The War Before. There's a debate that takes place between Safiya Bukhari, Ted Cruz, and Peter Thiel, and a few other people. But in that whole debate, like, Thiel and Cruz's line, and this is in 98, right, is all about, like, And it would become also their, like, Cruz's project as a lawyer, right, which people don't know that, was to basically make it so that the United States had no responsibility to international law whatsoever, so that states could not be subordinated to international law, right? And so there was this long project that they were engaged in, in saying, if you commit a crime, then you are prosecuted according to that crime. And this again, this like Frank Kitson talks about this in low intensity operations. Like it was a form of judicial counterinsurgency, right? To say, okay, we have two options as the rulers of a state. We can directly repress revolutionary movements and just obliterate them and attack them. And of course they do do that. But the other is to treat everything treat everybody under the rule of law, right? And so then it says, okay, you kill somebody, you're a murderer. I don't care if you're a revolutionary. I don't care what your cause is. And this is exactly like what they're sort of arguing with Safiya Bukhari in this. And she's talking about, you know, well, under your rubric, right, there would have been no American revolution. There would be, you know, South Africa would still be under apartheid. Like she goes through all of these kind of examples of, when violence is necessary historically, right? But their project, so this right-wing project is always to say like that the revolutionary shit, that ideological shit, that doesn't matter at all. Your struggle, like that doesn't matter. It's about whether you commit a crime or not, and we're gonna prosecute you according to those crimes, right? So it is connected to that, I think in terms of trying to make

Speaker 2: people's brains also go to that place of oh like they're not really about some revolutionary shit they're criminals right yeah yeah and like i do think it's a thing that like you said it it's just traveled on right you know except when you get to the 90s and you get to islamophobia when you get to, like, true lies and things like that, it becomes about, you know, like, global jihad and things like this, right? You know, they want to blow everything up, so forth and so on, right? But they do keep that, right? I mean, and, like, it didn't exist. I mean, you kind of had it with the taking of Pelham 1 through 3 in the 70s a little bit, right? But I don't want to go down that rabbit hole too much. But this is definitely a big, like, qualitative shift in, like, how they want to think about these things. So you have Hans, you have the crew, like, they're ruthless. I mean, he just shoots Takagi. And the movie's violence is really, I mean, it's really visceral. And, like, that's a thing that, like, with this film that, like, watching this much i mean it's movies two hours and 12 minutes this like high pitch level of like violence for about an hour 40 minutes because like maybe the first 20 half an hour doesn't have it and then it's like pretty straight throughout with like a couple of likes breathing breathing motions it's just so violent and it's so intense right and then one of the things that they start doing, and we could talk about this, which I think is really interesting, is the nature of other cops in comparison to McClain. Because one of the things he starts doing, and Jay mentioned, is that he starts trying to get help. He, like, realizes, like, I'm in a fucking building with a bunch of terrorists who are also really good. And that's the one other thing that he acknowledges, like, when he talks to Powell the first time, that, like, they're really slick. They know what the fuck that they're doing. Like, these guys are, like, as Ellis says they're happening you know like they know what they're doing right oh man the Ellis scene is the best his his scenes with Hans are like my favorite thing in history dude it's so good right but um he tries to basically like through fits and starts until he gets Powell you know to basically you know realize through a dead body coming out of a window um that like they're not to get them to come so he first tries with like a a fire alarm right to get them to come and like the the the fire trucks come and he sees it and the shot from like the roof and right and then you know this is when hans begins to get a little they get aware they they see the fire alarm happening and you begin to see like the like dimensions of the building what they've taken over right but then they're able to kind of call it back right um and then this is where you know uh mclean gets his like first like interaction and he basically just starts fighting the the and he's like these like grudge matches i mean like they're not fights they're all out grudge matches of like brute force and profanity it's all it is like every time he punches one of them he basically i'm gonna break your like it's just so vulgar i'm like watching this movie like damn but it's like it's like it allows i think an audience member who like I think it's someone like my dad, right? Who would never go out and just get into a fist fight on the street.

Speaker 3: But when he has that, that itch that needs to be scratched of wanting to like fist fight on the street and like curse somebody out, he puts on die hard. You know what I'm saying? Like you get to watch McLean.

Speaker 2: Cause like the first guy he takes out is big ass Carl's brother. Right. I forget what his name is. Right. The big, the big, the big, the, and then the guy's big. Like they, They shoot him from a low angle. They, they really like, even though he has like a sweatshirt, you can see he's muscular too. Right. And like, he gets into this grudge match with him with like machine guns and they're like shooting, like they're hitting, they're hitting stuff. And they, they, they tumble down a stairs and like breaks his neck. And I'm like, oh, this is just like weird transference for dudes, right? Who like, you know, they want to break somebody's neck and they get to watch Die Hard and just go, yeah, right? I mean, it's so brutal, right? And it's so much.

Speaker 3: Fritz, right?

Speaker 2: Fritz is his name.

Speaker 3: fritz i mean also the names right like hans fritz carl like they're just like they're not even creative right uh the the head of nakatomi is ozu which is like you know ozu was the great japanese filmmaker like they're just not creative in any way with with with with these names they're just really we're just gonna throw some names out there you know

Speaker 2: use them they're they're they're they're very typical and known um but yeah so like you know he's getting into these fights and i might be skipping over some things we can go back but then like he then goes and tries to radio the cops on the roof right again right with this lady and the lady you know and it's always a woman

Speaker 3: Why is it always a lady? Like, why is it always like a dumb and like a young woman? It's either a young woman or like an old lady.

Speaker 2: No, I think it's almost always a young woman, right? And they give her this like, sorry, sir, you know, you need to call 911, right? They always make it like she's like the ball buster, right? Because she's not just like, you know, stopping a terrorist act. It's like this very sensible man is telling this woman what's happening and she just doesn't get it.

Jay: She's going to call the FCC and report him to the FCC. He's like, good, send him down here.

Speaker 3: Get him out here, you know?

Jay: I mean, that's true. I do think there's probably some truth to the gender. Like, I think... those operator roles like were very heavily gendered and like almost everyone who worked in them was women you know it's just just like yeah yeah there's probably probably some there was probably some reason for it actually like a cycle like you know whatever like a good point you know men you know want to hear from a woman you know whether it's good or bad news as opposed to like another guy you know like i don't know it's probably some like very patriarchal thing probably

Speaker 3: Well, 100 percent. I was really put in that position.

Speaker 2: But it's also just so convenient for the movie. You know, the idiot young woman is going to be the person who's just not going to get it. Right. And it's just like this, like these constant ways that he's getting in these fits and starts of like police incompetence. Right. Which like turns up once the police get there. And then the last one is when we get Reginald Bell Johnson's character, Powell, he he. he um the woman basically is like send a black and white you know to go um and see it and then you get reginald johnson you know carl winslow right he he rolls in the first thing you see him is buying some twinkies you know in a store right it's kind of like a 7-eleven it might be a 7-eleven

Jay: It's an AM PM, which is definitely what we had those in the West Coast.

Speaker 2: I remember those. I do remember those when I would go visit my cousins out West. Yeah, the AM PM. So you wouldn't got that. And, you know, he's in there and like, you know, it definitely is poking all the like, you know, the joy writing donut or Twinkie eating, you know, slightly overweight cop, you know, who's like, you know, rolling through and he's kind of joy writing, you know, and it's there's a way that at first you're, you're also to position that he's probably not going to be as smart as like, you know, or be, or be unintelligent as like the rest of them. But then they show you why he's like that. And we'll definitely get to why Powell is in the position that he is his psychological trauma, right. That Powell has, but he, you know, he, he joy rides through Nakatomi and, you know, he,

Jay: go ahead before that he's looking at the building and there are machine guns going off on the roof and i just have to say that anyone who has ever been around gunfire of any kind but particularly automatic weapons or semi-automatic weapons like There is no fucking way. I don't care that it's 50 floors up, like that he wouldn't hear that shit. This is also a good point.

Speaker 2: And you know what? Yo, if any of our L.A. folks are watching this, I've been in downtown L.A. Downtown L.A. that time of night is very desolate. So I feel like if there was a lot of gunfire happening, you would hear it.

Speaker 3: Like, you would hear it. Like, I've been in downtown LA at, like, 8 o'clock at night, and I'm sorry. It's like there's no one there, especially in 88.

Jay: You can hear gunfire from, like, miles away. Like, you would hear it, absolutely. You know, especially at night, like you're saying. And there's other... like there's the whole question of whether they would hear it because they're shooting them off while he's in the building too i mean i i guess you could make the argument that like this is a really special soundproof building or something but like he's looking at it from a few blocks away and they're on the roof shooting and he doesn't hear like it that along with the shoes really bothered me

Speaker 2: Also, LA's the land of helicopters, man. It's the ghetto bird area.

Speaker 3: Like, just send it, yo, could you leave South Central for a moment and roll over into town to Century City and go see what's happening on up there, right? Like, a lot of it is just nonsensical, and you're kind of like, this is annoying, right?

Speaker 2: So, Powell gets there, right, and this is where the movie, even, like, the shift of the violence just goes up to me, because, like, even, like, the way they use violence and comedy at the same time is just really like it's demented to me like this like i don't know i i always have these fantasies of like someone who has never um seen american culture and then you show them something like die hard is like the first thing about american culture that they would watch and they would go are y'all crazy are y'all weird Because the sequence that happens is, you know, McClane, they find him in the thing and he gets into this like gunfight under the table with the dude and the dude rolls and he shoots him under the table. Right. So Powell's about to leave. Right. So McClane's like, I got to get this. So he's like busting open the window. He had that. That's kind of how we got caught the first time.

Speaker 3: so you see the body of the dude that mclean just killed like fall onto the car which then goes into these like chaotic shots of like pow like driving back and he's shooting at him through the glass and it's like and then there's the shot the best shot though is the shot of argyle missing the whole thing on the phone listening to stevie wonder It's so it's funny, but it's so it's so demented.

Speaker 2: We said, like, it's Carl, you know, Carl Winslow or Powell, you know, to basically crash into the ditch. Right. Which is like, you know, the movies, it's set off now, like basically, you know, and what does he say? Welcome to the party, pal. Right. You know, like, you know, the very famous line, actually, that that shot of him out of the window. But it's just so insane. Like I'm watching the film and I'm like, this is like the hyper-violence mixed with comedy as a kind of... adrenaline rush but also like release it's like this is what american culture has come to like this is where like i don't know they would call me conservative or something like that in that kind of way where i just get very like i'm like this is a lot y'all like i'm watching and i'm just like i was sitting there with my partner she was just like because she's seen it before but she doesn't watch it often and she was just like oh this is a lot you know like this is just too much

Jay: It is, yeah. And I mean, it's also like a whole, you know, like I think about things like John Wick movies and stuff like this, right? Like it becomes a whole thing in this kind of genre, these genres of film that sort of come out of this era, right? to just like okay like how many like what can we do in terms like how do we up the bullet count up the body count like how high can we get it i mean it's actually made fun of in one of i don't know if it's the first one or the second one the hot shots movies like they have the whole scene where they're you know doing the thing of rambo and they actually have like the counter up and like we set the record for the most people killed in a film right like it has that kind of edge to it. I mean, obviously this film, there aren't that many people. So it's, it's more just like the pressure, the, the violence of the fighting. I mean, I think that this serves a couple of roles and I think it's interesting because like you said, like what do people think in other parts of the world? I mean, one, yeah, I do think that they think that we're crazy, but what's interesting always is that, you know, America society obviously is like, one of the most violent in the world on a kind of per capita basis right and people will say well why is that because everybody watches our movies right so you they'll use that as the argument that like you can't say it's just the movies right because they're watching the other places too but when you watch it in other place, you're like, oh, those are those crazy Americans, right? You're not watching it as a representation of your own society and of like your own like heroes, right? Of what heroism is within your culture, right? Which is what this is. I mean, John McClane is supposed to be this American hero, right? And so then, I mean, obviously there's like the propaganda side of just like the whole narrative and acceptance of like you know brute force and violence as necessary to the job of actually doing policing right because this is what you're up against right um but then actually i lost the other one but that's the that's the that is one of the main things aside from like this i think you know cultural meaning making around you know americans which as you said like it is demented like it is actually disturbed like being an empire you know and being a settler colonial country and having this legacy of slavery like all of these things require you know, violence workers. Right. And so you have to have films to sort of cater to that, that reality and the necessity of lifting those people up as really important and fundamental to the maintenance of the society as well.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Cause then the other thing, and this kind of goes back to, I think an additional comment that I wanted to make about like the woman on the phone and how they take it to like, even like the deputy chief, um, is this idea that the thing that's also keeping our civilizational stability away is our bureaucracies. Because it has this very libertarian kind of bureaucracy issue critique too. Like, oh... I can't get these terrorists, you know, terrorism issues solved because I got to go through a phone operator who's following the rules. Right. Or, you know, I'll get to, you know, the deputy chief. You know, he has a certain kind of bureaucratic way and very stupid kind of way of dealing with something. So. Because of that, we need and it's the same thing with the Martin Riggs thing. We need the the improviser. This one is like the street smart guy because you have no really evidence. I mean, one of the things that my partner also she was like, wait a minute. She was like, how does he know how to use all these guns? Was he in the military? And I said, that's a damn good question. You don't know where McClane is, but like the assumption that they want you to make is that he's just so street smart. It's almost like innate. He's like this special human. Like he basically can figure out C4 detonators and, um you know machine guns of any kind how to get through the shafts of a building just because he he he's been he's been a cop on the new york city streets and he's just adapted to like terror because you know also what's in people's brains that new york is a is a war zone itself right so he's basically war zone adapted right it it's it's it's such a strange libertarian fantasy of like who the heroes are going to be but then you also get to see why bruce willis really worked for this film because he can really give off i mean he said he also said he said he leaned into i think i think he's from hope whole book i think is where he grew up He said he leaned into kind of his Jersey working class upbringing, he said, for the characters that he really poured it into there. Right. So I also just find it interesting that like, you know, the pro proletariat working class imagery that we're going to be able to get has to come through a cop. you know like it has to be john mcclain the cop right and then and then powell even too i think he's also giving off that energy right like these working men right um family men right uh they have morals but you know powell shoots kids um with toy guns um we'll get into that in a minute uh Well, now you've said it, so we have to get into it. I know. I mean, we haven't gotten there just yet, but I'd probably move on. But it's a big part of it. But yeah, it's just all very funky. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe there's a few things. We can maybe keep going with the other cop parts, and then we can get to that.

Jay: yeah i mean i guess for me so so not too long after that i mean so one like early on i don't think we've said this yet but hans gruber um you know when he finally gets to because they're they're walking with so yeah carl winslow and and bruce willis um you know they're they're on the walkie-talkies together they're on cb radios together um and yeah there's the whole you know roy rogers like the whole the whole cowboy thing yeah yeah exactly right that's right you know and um so there's that back and forth so they all kind of because the the terrorists are also on the same cv line which like i do have to say like why didn't they just use a separate channel like like

Speaker 2: so that's never made sense to me and I've always just took it that I don't understand it but I actually think that's I also think that's bad movie making and when it when it when it gets that convoluted I think that's also just bad storytelling but yeah like I had the same I always had the same experience I mean I understand their why they would want to monitor like why the the terror like like I could understand sort of switching back and forth or something I mean and I and I get logistically why it's like it's difficult to

Jay: it just is it just makes it very funky because they're all on the same cb and anybody who's ever operated a cb if you haven't cbs have multiple channels on them so you could be like switch over to channel nine right and then you're talking on your own channel now obviously if if uh if mclean says that to winslow's character then you know i'm i'm just gonna keep calling him carl winslow i'm sorry but um then they would hear it. So they might want to transfer over to hear what they're talking about. Like I do, I do get that, but them all just sitting pat on one channel is, is funny to me. So there's, there's discussion between all of them on this open channel basically. Um, and like you get the, the demands, like I'm trying to think of the sequence of this a little bit. I may have it a little bit off, but we can jump around if we need to. But yeah,

Speaker 2: oh you know the demand yeah so the demands are for the release of but that's not until the fbi gets there right so yeah go ahead no it's when it's it's when it's we can bring this bring him in now it's when the deputy chief comes in okay yeah so then like the deputy so so winslow's been there you get the cops coming in like there's like there's like shot of all the cars coming in the downtown nakatobi you also get the media we have to bring in the media at some point and how the media is portrayed in this movie which is like you know typical And I'm not saying negatively. I mean, it is a negative portrayal. But it's part of that general cynicism about everything that they like to have.

Speaker 3: So I also find the deputy chief's name hilarious is Dwayne Johnson. And it's a white dude. I'm sorry. For me, that's always been hilarious. But it's Dwayne Johnson. And it's played by Paul Gleeson. And Paul Gleeson is always playing, like, the bureaucratic jackass. Like, we will remember him from The Breakfast Club, right? Like, he's the dude in The Breakfast Club who, you know, was cracking skulls, right? That is his job. So he's the deputy chief, and he comes in in, like, a limo, right? The limo kind of, like, goes up, right? Or, like, a sedan. Is it a limo? No, it's not a limo. It's a...

Speaker 2: like an Oldsmobile type car, right? An official car, right? He gets out the back of the car, right? And he goes right to Powell. and you immediately find out that like this guy is like a real bureaucrat jackass he's not he doesn't go to Powell and be like you okay man how you feeling do you need to go home have you seen he just starts railing into him asking him questions you know um Powell's trying to give him his assessment which like we have the foreknowledge of knowing that Powell's guesses are correct

Jay: right that he thinks he's a cop and that he can do this but like johnson's like totally dismissive of it he's like what are you talking about he's a but like to be perfectly honest even though he's an they are sometimes reasonable considerations in my opinion yeah totally like he doesn't know who the guy is like he's like he thinks he's like he thinks he's a cop because he talked about like an id like being able to scope a fake id you know like yeah

Speaker 3: Right.

Speaker 2: So, like, we do have the vantage point of knowing that Powell is right, but it also is, like, reasonable. But the way they put it, the guy's just a total, like, just, like, strong-arming idiot. And it's just, like, furthering this moment that, like, cops... outside of like maybe like the singular rank and file people like a Powell are basically useless like you watching this like the whole police department system, it is a kind of a useless bureaucratic and then eventually you see when the basically he calls in like which i'm guessing is like the SWAT team. to basically take out the terrorists to infiltrate the building, they basically get their ass kicked, right? And like tactically, like when they're like shooting at the lights and like the only person who knows what it is, like they're shooting at us and he goes, they're shooting at the lights, right?

Speaker 3: And like it takes one light getting shot out for Johnson to realize they've been shooting at the lights. And it's fucking funny because the guy, Paul Gleason, to his credit, he played these roles really well. He's like the shooting at the lights. He's really good at playing an idiot.

Speaker 2: Right. But it is part of what I and it's a general theme in the 80s that they really got into that our bureaucracies are essentially in our way. We've created a kind of bureaucratic system where we have people in principled places that don't know how to do their job well. But we've talked about this. It's all a slick way to justify a fucking overzealous, breaking the law, hyper-violent cop. Right. It's all it's the it's the it's the Riggs thing. I mean, this is where Riggs and McLean, in my in my view, kind of fill the same void when it comes to propaganda. Right.

Jay: Yeah, I agree. And it's also like. It's an interesting moment because obviously neoliberalism is on its ascendancy in this period. Right. So there is a way in which like cutting cutting all the bureaucracies and, you know, this is just like this is part of the line of. know both con especially conservative in this period but increasingly also like you know democratic party you know discourse and whatnot um but it's interesting because i always was sort of taught by folks within the abolitionists sphere and stuff like that that never really applied to police right that they never really took that but it's interesting because there were these moments when you got what people would call like the blue flu, right. Or like police basically going on strike, right. Because of attempts to like, you know, cut their budgets or, or whatever else. Right. And so I actually think it's a little bit too simple to say that it never involved cops to any degree that, that, but I think it's that they, like cops were better organized and they also were more effective in terms of calling kind of the bluff of capital of like hey you need us actually like we're we serve your interests and so don't fuck around and forget it basically um but it's funny in the films because it's sort of like you know i don't know i i guess it like you said it just sort of fits in i mean the critiques of the fbi are heavy Not not heavy, but just like because they're they're not deep, but it's obviously very critical towards the FBI. And also, you know, the LAPD in general looks pretty bad here, which is an interesting thing. Right.

Speaker 2: But it's not bad in a way that I think. I think it's what you're saying. It's not bad in a way that's sufficient to any kind of real radical read that would explain what happened with Rodney King in a couple of years. It's bad in this... there was a cynicism in the late 80s by this point that like, yeah, America's a good society. We just have a lot of idiots running it. Like, I mean, and you heard a lot of 90s, right? We just need smarter people running, right? This is like a big thing you hear liberals say all the fucking time that like, it's not our system, it's not our society. We have too many dummies in office or too many dummies, you know, running the police departments or too many dummies in business, right?

Jay: yeah it's also this whole i think probably cynicism not cynicism it's really an assault by the right against the public sector to just broadly you know to just sort of because it's like if police are like this like what do they think about teachers unions or whatever you know it's it's yeah anyway we can keep going

Speaker 2: Thank you, Steven. Dwayne Robinson. That's even more black.

Speaker 3: I'm sorry. Dwayne Johnson is the rock. Exactly. That's why I had that head in my head. But Dwayne Robinson. I'm like, wait a minute. Why is there a white dude named Dwayne Robinson?

Speaker 2: It's so weird, right? It's always felt so strange to me. Yeah, the Johnsons are the FBI, which I also think is really funny. So... I mean, the film is also weird because like, yeah, like a lot of these action films, like you get these plot lines and then you just get like, just violence. Right. You have like the big sequence where, and it's, and also, and then with this movie is violence and the funny, right? Like you get Theo narrating the, the cops coming in.

Speaker 3: Oh, they have themselves an RV, you know? And like, you get to like watch Theo and I'm watching it. I'm like, Oh,

Speaker 2: actually like neil's like one of my favorite characters in this movie like you know you you you they do this thing to endear you to the villains right like they they're brutal right but there is this way that you kind of like get into them like you if you're kind of into rooting for the villain this is one of those movies where you really can because they're witty um them actually not having a political read i actually think like actually helps you want to identify with them they can just be greedy and like a bit you know know unprincipled and you can just kind of excuse it but you can like have that kind of cathartic role play as you watch the movie right so yeah they he narrates that he beats the thing and then like this is the other thing with the movie like that sequence is so much like bullets and then like when you think the scene is just gonna kind of die out you have bruce willis take a computer take these c4 sticks and then literally throw it down a an elevator shaft and there's an explosion that just destroys a building and i was like man my heart rate this is a lot i was like why i'm like this is like american entertainment like i'm i'm serious it's like one of those moments where i had to step back a few times and just go this is a lot and like what is this like you know doing to this your your brain or satisfying in your brain in terms of your own anxieties about what could happen in society think about we're still in cold war era where we're still in a little definitely nuclear clock is still running around you know like it's it's a lot yeah no it is i mean this film comes out three years after the move bombing

Jay: right so the thing the thing that i think about when i watch that scene as well as the helicopter and the roof um is that like if you study the move bombing stuff like part of what he so it is c4 and it is a satchel bomb which that one is, although, yeah, he wraps the monitor or whatever onto it as well to make sure that it really, you know, goes down. I mean, there's, like, the, again, the, like, the need to suspend logical disbelief or whatever because, you know, of course, you're, like, you're dropping a bunch of C4 down an elevator and you're 30 floors up. Like, what do you think is going to happen to you in this and why isn't the building on fire after it and all this kind of stuff, right? But then, yeah, I mean, it's like that was so close within cultural memory that that kind of like satchel C4 bomb being dropped by law enforcement would have been within three years. And then when they do the helicopter, which is at the end and the FBI brings that in. they dropped it from a helicopter in the move bombing, and ostensibly the argument was that they were going to blow the roof off of it, basically. So it's a similar, I mean, in this case, it's the terrorists that are going to blow the roof off in order to, like, blow up the helicopters and kill a bunch of the hostages, I guess, or whatever, like, because they want people to think that they died in it, right? So there's, like, this whole thing of them believing that in order to get away with 600 million or whatever it is that they have to actually, that people have to think that they die too. But yeah, when I think about that, like the C4, the explosions blowing up the roof, helicopters being involved, all of that, like there's all of these elements and sure they're rearranged from the actual story. But again, like if you think about it in the context of the film, like, all of that is justified i mean the only thing that's not justified is blowing the roof off because the terrorists actually do that but you know like nobody but who are the ultimate but who are the ultimate victims in it the fbi who's unprincipled right so basically jokes on you who had no principle yeah and they said like i guess we got to get some new fbi guys whatever they make a joke about it as well um yeah so it's i do think that that's a huge like yeah you know i don't know how many i mean i know people in that era definitely knew about the move bombing but i don't remember personally growing up in that era like i my wife grew up in philly so she does remember like very clearly But if you didn't grow up in Philly, I don't think it was like as much on most people's radar until later on, until you know, I didn't learn. I didn't learn about it.

Speaker 2: I was a teenager because I had family in Philly as well. And they were kind of involved in some of the politics, like, you know, supporting them and. It wasn't until I went, I think one, like maybe like Thanksgiving or something. And they were like, they were talking about it or something like that, that I found out about it. But no, even, even from New York,

Jay: yeah and that because they also in that siege which was the second siege on a move house actually the first one was in 78 but they also had like those like kind of tank like armored personnel carrier type vehicles which is like what they use of course in the movie to go into to try to go into the house and i think like you know narratively within the movie it's like hey you're know your armored personnel carrier is not going to matter at all when you come up against some real terrorists like what you really need is a bunch of c4 to drop on the building like it it has you know it has its own kind of justifications of that level of you know violence and just the need for police to have all of these tools and weapons right because right yeah nothing is ever enough right and then in the context of this movie

Speaker 2: Because there are a group of foreign terrorists who are able to smuggle in rocket launchers. Hey, what do you need? You have that sequence, right? And then you get to, which is honestly one of my favorite sequences of the movie is Ellis. It's like Ellis is his want to basically broker a deal with the terrorists, right? And it's funny, like you watch it because I know what they're trying to do. It's like, these are like Hollywood guys, right? i'm sure they've met all of them their fair share of that coked up junior executive who tried to like you know get them to do some they found them annoying as hell and they were like yeah let's you know let's make a character like that and have them get shot in the head right like you could totally tell it's like they're they're playing on like a trope that they've seen but like It's so funny because you have these characters. I mean, Wall Street is two years before that, right? So you have the Gordon Gekko image is definitely big in the kind of popular imagination. And I think there's also... a real disdain for like the corporate asshole in like public imagination so seeing him get like a public execution um is like something that i think audiences really craved and i think that's a way that people honestly end up rooting for hans i can't lie because he executes this corporate asshole right like they they I remember like watching it with my dad and my dad being like, this guy's such a jackass, right? You know, like, and you're watching him. I mean, his lines are just absolutely, you know, like, so well, I've watched 60 Minutes and I'm saying to myself, they're motivated. They're happening. You know, he calls them boobie. these names right I mean the guy plays it so well he like and he thinks he's smarter than them too right he when he says to Holly that he's gonna go in there he's like dude you know I I think he says like he says something like a like a fake like he tries to make like a fake German word up right or something to like ask the guy something it's like not even really a word you know it's like but like It's this weird thing that Hollywood does with the violence is that like they're able to position people that I don't like corporate assholes at all, but like they're able to like get me on the side of violence by watching him get like a public execution on screen.

Speaker 3: and it's really really manipulative which is what they're doing because every time i watch it i go i'm like ah yeah you got it ellis and i'm like oh my god no you gotta be rooting for someone getting shot in the head stop man these movies man this is like so bad right but this is what they do like they take a kernel of like your dis your your like disgust and get you to like root for someone getting shot

Jay: and it's so bad and not like you know it's not like in a war or revolution it's like because he got shot because you know the guy couldn't could he couldn't get a deal right yeah it also i mean it reminds me of trump too honestly like the whole art of a deal like yeah you know like yeah but yeah no i mean he's he's you know

Speaker 3: It's so funny. I mean, like that scene is just so well done. I mean, like, it's just so funny. Right. Even how Alan Rickman plays it like, oh, I don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 2: And like the eye, the eye lines, Carl, you know, because all the other thing we didn't talk about the the names of the groups that he asked to be freed. Yeah, they're all like... Yeah, I didn't write them down, did you? No, I didn't. I mean, it's like Sri Lanka, a Sri Lankan group. Well, there's... A group from Quebec.

Jay: And Northern Ireland.

Speaker 2: And Northern Ireland.

Jay: They're all not real groups. They're not real, right? Yeah. But they are, you know, close... like kind of analogs to other things that were going on at the time um yeah yeah i mean i think it's i can't i can't remember what they use some weird terms but yeah it's like supposed to be like go back nationalists yeah you know um basically like an ira type group and then one that might stand in for the tamil tigers you know or whatever but yeah um yeah asian dawn that's right that's what's what they used yeah um for one of them but

Speaker 2: yeah and and then he has the line right of like yeah i read about him in time magazine right you know and it's like it's like to add to like it's like maybe there are those people out there but like the people who really are are happening like uh like ellis likes to say they're not here right people who are happening wants to basically steal capital right you know and And I think it also begs to say that like attaching Holly to this, like new capital, it like gets people who are like on the social rise to basically join the capital force, right? Well, look, these people just want to steal from me too. You know, I'm on the rise, right? Big business is actually better for me. It's better for progress. These people are anti-progress because they want to steal it for themselves. I mean, it's just the, it's the trick.

Jay: I did laugh too when Ellis is going through like the lists of people that he thinks maybe, you know, Hans has issues with. And he says, maybe it's the Hebes.

Speaker 3: Yes, like what? What? What? What? I mean, he says, like, another word, the sea with camels.

Speaker 2: I was like, what the fuck?

Speaker 3: You're just watching. You're like, they really went full-fledged on the corporate asshole here. Oh, man. They're happening. It's so funny. I mean, it's played so well.

Speaker 2: I mean, I think the last couple of things, I mean, there's other things, but like one of the things we haven't talked about, we haven't talked about the feds. Powell, we can talk about Powell in his revelation. Because that's like another thing. I mean, I don't know if you want to jump in. You can start it, maybe, Jay, about Powell's revelation that we all find out.

Jay: I mean, it's in a scene. So like it comes after Bruce Willis, his feet are all cut up with glass because they've, you know, there's a scene where they figure out, you know, shoot the glass, um, that they just have to, you know, litter the floor with glass because he doesn't have shoes on. So whole movie, he's trying to get shoes off of people he kills and all this stuff. And he can't find anyone who is his shoe size. Um, yeah and and so he's picking the glass out in the bathroom and he's it's it's the vulnerable scene it's also the scene i think or it's at least like part of it because i think goes back and forth to other things but that um you know bruce does his like you know confessional to his wife or whatever It's really like kind of like the soldiers who are in the trench together. Right. And he's like, I need to tell you what to tell my wife if I die kind of thing. But yeah, he does this thing where he kind of actually he's kind of actually talking shit about Carl Winslow a little bit because he says that, you know, he's kind of I can't remember the exact line, but it's something along the lines of, you know, you you know, why are you on a desk job? Right. Like the, and Carl Winslow says, you know, this is because, uh, you know what, you don't think that that's noble police work or something like that. Um, and yeah, I mean, the thing about it obviously is that he just reveals like, no, I shot a kid, you know, and he was 13 years old and he had a ray gun and he, you know, but it was dark and I couldn't tell the difference. And obviously it's such a disgusting scene. I mean, and I don't remember it that way as a kid, you know, be curious when him to me hops back on his thoughts on that too. You know, I don't remember it that way as a kid, but obviously in, in hindsight, right. It's the, you know it's it's the tamir rice you know kind of story like you know just projected out of you know i mean he doesn't say that it's a black kid but he just said i shot a kid he was 13. um and you know he had a ray gun and it was dark you know which is just like i mean it's it's insane you know it's like the yeah but but then but then you what what happens in the film right is that you are made to feel sorry for him right that like this has because he's such a good man he couldn't go back out and raise his weapon again which is i think is what he said i could never raise my weapon again you know knowing that i could possibly so he's just distraught and torn up by this he doesn't leave the profession he becomes you know a desk cop basically uh paper pusher you know and um but you yeah and so then of course i mean we'll get to the end right which is very important for his his arc right um but yeah as somebody said in the chat this is why he had to relocate to uh chicago and harass steve urkel for you know the next for the 90s

Speaker 2: yeah honestly like that so when i was a kid i i i was totally made to empathize for the cop like it's like the immediately the immediate assumption you make and the way the sequence is truncated it would make you to believe that the kid would do something that would make the cop have to shoot him right because if if this nice jolly guy who's like being so good to john mcclain um who seems like such an angel would shoot um my thought process as a kid maybe even as an early teenager is that the kid did something like threatening that basically it was unmistakable but then of course as i got older and i watched the movie my thought is like i I mean, it's kind of obvious where it's just like, okay, you did not hear a gunshot. Why are you shooting? Why is your gun open? Why? Huh? Like, there's so no context for it that even in the context that they give it, it's just like, well, then this guy is... He killed civilians because he... is a shitty human right like and but the kind of what you would talk about the ending the fact that it's used as this like crutch or this like trauma that he has to overcome in order to kind of find his manliness again because like the way the final shot is done it's so violent and like phallic Like it's so, it's so like brute force. I mean, it's, it's, it's almost like Magnum force. It's very dirty, hairy. Right. And it's funny when we get to, we could talk about it. Even the music uses, that's kind of hilarious. What, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what track it's from. Right. Like it's, It's all used to kind of, like, about this, like, arrival, right, of, like, his maleness. He lost it by killing a kid on accident, right? And he gets it back because he has to defend this family of this white dude and his wife who might get shot by some Euro terrorists. It's really... I mean, it's demented thinking. It's truly demented thinking. But it also kind of shows you where they think about where cops do have the life priority over civilians, right? Like, that's a mistake. I mean, you've heard right-wingers say that, right? We need to have guns, you know, and every now and then there's a person who gets killed. It's okay because of the overall good it happens. If there's an innocent person who dies, well, you know... It's a trade-off. It's breakage, as the FBI calls it. Which is another wild sequence, right? With the FBI, you know?

Jay: Yeah, we should probably talk about them, because they're in the film at this point, you know? And there are these two officers, both named Johnson. I mean, again, like you said, the thing about this movie is it is funny. I mean, this is why a movie like this has... the kind of staying power i think that it does right is like that it you know it's not just like it is it is all the brute force all the violence all of that so it like it gets that like action movie crowd all into it um somebody else referenced the fact that it's a vertical action movie which is an interesting you know innovation in terms of like okay let's put it all in this one building and like you know do all that um But yeah, I mean, there's the comedic elements of it. There is the kind of, you know, they managed to get you invested in Carl Winslow's story and his redemption arc. You know, there's the relationship that you want to see. And so, I mean, you know, it kind of reminds me of Speed. Like, Speed is a good kind of, like, follow, like, following in the lineage of a movie like die hard i mean obviously there's other die hard movies but um you know where you have like a lot of different things within it that can kind of pull you into it even if you just are not somebody who's like super into action like it's like there's a big difference between this i guess what i'm saying and like Arnold Schwarzenegger movies or Van Damme movies, in my opinion.

Speaker 2: It's the high concept, right? I think they rely on the idea of the high concept and the characters, the peripheral characters, the character actors. I mean, that's the thing. It's like the two Johnsons. the what's his name who's in the goonies i always forget his name um he he's the he's the white johnson right he oh he's always like a classic guy you have in your movie for like 20 20 20 to 30 minutes of screen time i mean he's in it longer than in the goonies but he's always good at these kind of like weird davi right right robert robert davi right he plays these characters well like

Speaker 3: He's a total... I mean, that sequence, he's in the helicopter. He's like, it's like Saigon! Right? And, like, you just... It's what you kind of imagine these guys are like. He's like, I was in junior high, dickhead. Right?

Speaker 2: But, like, it's the thing.

Speaker 3: It's, like, what it is. Because, like, you're like, okay, so the FBI, for people who don't quite know, the FBI in the film come in to take over...

Speaker 2: from the cops, which is like a trope they always use in movies. So basically, um, The movies start, you know, the cops prove that they can't get shit done. So there's always a takeover of a higher thing. And it's a comment, I think, on bureaucracy as well, right? The FBI takes over. So the FBI will then come in, right? So you have the agent, the two agent Johnsons, right? One's a little older, the other one's younger, right? The first thing they do is something that Hans wants done, which also shows that Hans is smarter than everybody. that they shut off all the power which is another side thing i want to get to is like why do all the people who work like the municipal services sound like they're from new york and the east coast this is la hey what we're down here at nakatomi you're like this looks like why do they sound like they're from that from new york city right but hans needs in the shutdown the um the electricity so the um the vault can open after theo has basically gone through each of the this i think it's six six locks and it's like a seventh that can only be done by the electric braking right and he knows that the FBI will do this you know and then Hans I mean it's also it's like this Hans is those great like I give you the FBI like he's constantly showing that your bureaucratic system is dumb it can be debunked right and everything right it can be totally like figured out you're all stupid So the FBI's whole thing is like you have the hostages up there. Right. And then we're going to come out. We tell Hans we're going to basically like airlift the mount. Right. And at the same token, we'll let you, you know, all your comrades out. The FBI is like, no, we're not going to do that. Right. We're actually going to basically when we see that, see the terrorists up top, we're basically going to like take them out because we're going to have gunships. And they say it like they're not expecting gunships. We're basically going to roll up in there and kill them. They also don't know that Hans has basically double crossed them, that he's actually going to send the hostages up there. They're not going to go up there. And when they get to the top, that's why they have the C4 already. They're going to blow up the roof and then everyone will be dead. And they'll think Hans is dead. And he says, you know, when they all figure it out, we'll be sitting on a beach. Was it collecting 20 percent or something like that? Right. so but when that the helicopter sequences of like the fbi rolling up in there i mean these dudes like they're like yelling he's like ah like and like they're so absolutely like bloodthirsty that it's like it's the hawk thing i mean it's the thing you kind of see into live and die in la which is really what that movie's all about is like this idea that At a certain level of law enforcement, you just basically go into, like, a red position of just, like, I'll even kill innocent people to basically get what I say. Because they ask him, he says, well, what's the breakage? And he says, 20 to 25%.

Speaker 3: I can live with that. And as a kid, I never really paid attention to it. It wasn't until I got older, I was like, yo, this shit is fucked up. this is up right but what happens the fbi bites it they get they get got right by hans and you end up giving me like well good for y'all y'all are going to kill everybody anyway and of course who's the one who saves them mclean right mclean's the one he saves the hostages

Speaker 2: right yeah yeah he's the one who saves the hot sorry he said he's the one who saves the hostages because he he realizes it's a double cross because that's when he when he sees hans on the roof he's like that's why he's on the roof and he basically gets anybody down and then who tries to shoot him yeah he's like i'm on your side you motherfuckers like how would they know i'm like honestly how would they know it's like right he's on the roof with no shoes on with like an ak like shoe to get a yeah like it makes no sense right then you have the famous you know uh thing of him jumping off the roof when it falls with the you know i mean like the stunts in this movie Which is also... I don't want to go too deep. If you want to read about... This is also a film that they had to redo how they did stunts because of what happened on Poltergeist. It was a lot of stunt fear because of the stunt death. So they basically did this... Because it was so many heavy stunts, they had to redo the entire philosophy with the stunts on this movie.

Jay: Yeah, he lost... There's a... I have to look at which one it is. But this is actually, this film is responsible for Bruce Willis losing hearing in an ear, basically. Right.

Speaker 2: Right, right, right. Right. I mean, I think the last bunch of stuff, I mean, we haven't touched the media, and then we pretty much have the ending of the movie. The kind of ending sequences of the movie. I mean, the other thing with the media... is just that like they're opportunistic and like absolutely you know also stupid you have the like the really opportunistic um lead reporter guy who basically you know doxes uh the mcleans gets them on tv he's the one who basically let's let hans realize that that they're married

Jay: threatens threatens their maid which i i i do oh yeah we gotta bring the maids in it i forgot to bring this up too because it is this is the other thing about the kind of imperial feminism right is this like the the white woman gets to be this corporate like vp or whatever she is right like a high up corporate job well and then she she leave she moves to the to la Bruce Willis stays in New York to be a cop, right? And so she has a full-time live-in domestic worker, basically. They don't say where she's from, but Mexican, Latin America, somewhere is what's implied, obviously. yeah so so he threatens to deporter he the the media guy says i'll call ins if you don't let me in to to interview the kids right which is like such a scumbag move and obviously they're they're showing it as a scumbag move like you're supposed to think of this reporter as a total scumbag but uh yeah but then like but it also works on like double levels because then like you have this like illegal immigrant and this is what

Speaker 2: the corporate people do is they go out and they hire, I can see a right winger who watches this movie, who enjoys it, who would, cause like these movies also can't change people's perceptions. Right. So like a reactionary who doesn't think women should work in the workforce can still look at Holly McLean as a ball buster. right so like that'll be and look what she's doing out there she's up for higher any legal em you know like you could totally see that reaction everything get like but then also there's like the liberal feminism thing that happens early when she she calls her and she's like i already have it ready for you and like she's like you know she's so like happy to be working for her and what would i do without you and i'm like oh man like i'm like i'm watching that i go oh this is like so disgusting like this is

Speaker 3: it's that bad shit that gives away the liberal feminism of the of the of the whole film but oh that's what it is that's what that's what you did you know have to bring in the domestic worker you know who's super happy with this white woman who's treats her great and you know loves the kids more than she loves herself it's so fucked up yeah

Jay: yeah and that is the vision of progress again like we we talked about holly as like representing this sort of vision of progress within the film right which yeah yeah again i'm not saying progress in terms of i think this is actually progress but this is like again that liberal feminist sort of view yeah um thank you for the the super chat appreciate it very much um so there's that uh let's see if there's i mean the other thing one thing i want to say before we get to the end too obviously this is like very you know you get the yippee-ki-yay motherfucker you know thing um that both he and rickman you know say as well um but there is this whole thing of rickman kind of you know challenging him of like you think you're a cowboy right and know you have thoughts on this as well but i do think that this is kind of the 80s is that era the 70s and 80s really are like the period in which you see the traditional western start to fade away it doesn't completely go away we get new vert you know lonesome dove is 89 i think like you get um know you get other iterations you get unforgiven in 92 94 something like that um you know and then obviously nowadays we have you know yellowstone and all the spin-offs of this kind of stuff so it's not that like but it was a huge genre in american cinema for uh for decades like it really had purchased i think as kind of the like really sort of before you get what we think of as action movies not that there weren't individual ones but it kind of held that that role you know and obviously you know i don't need to say the the sort of settler colonial roots of that sort of film and all of that right um but this is a film in which mclean is clearly very much taking on that cowboy role being sort of the instrumentality of justice and the law, but like, I mean, he's not, he is a police officer, but he's outside of his jurisdiction and he's not underneath the purview of like the LAPD can tell him stuff, but he doesn't actually have to listen to them, you know? And so he is in this weird, he is kind of a vigilante person. figure in this film and that's supposed to give him license I think to be more outside of like procedure and like having to listen to chain of command and all of that kind of stuff but I do think so I think all of that is important as well within this film no but that's part of the trope Beverly Hills Cop

Speaker 2: right he goes to beverly hills from detroit right he does get chastised for breaking the rules but in the film it's shown to be necessary and one of the things is like his his boss won't let him do it one of those lines in lethal weapon is when um after murtaugh's kid daughter gets kidnapped i can't remember the exact line but riggs says to him that we we pretty much have to break from the rules here he pretty much says to him in that scene in the house right after the phone it's gonna get bloody right and i do think that's the thing here it's like it's necessary for um mclean to break from the structure because it is has just gotten so haywire we need mclean's and when they happen We need to support them, right? And I think that's kind of, you know, like, I think I one time saw, I one time saw, like, a comment on YouTube about something to do with, like, BLA and, like, the Panthers, and some reactionary wrote a comment defending, like, the cops, like, They admitted that cops did excessive force against political movements, but their reasoning was that the political movements were so out of hand that extra force was necessary. Right. Like we had to stomp it out. So like, yeah, maybe they did plan a few drugs on people and maybe they did have false charges and maybe they did slap a few people's faces and break a few jaws inside, you know, the jail cell to get information. But, you know, it was necessary because this thing was going to destroy our culture.

Jay: Yeah, and that is I mean, there's a lot of people who think that way. like it is you know there's more people who think that way than i think a lot of people realize um you know i mean israel is an entire society of people who think that way that part right exactly like 100 right you know so

Speaker 2: And it's funny when you get to the cowboy thing, it's kind of gets us to the ending. One of the things that I find I was thinking about when I was watching it was that McClane invokes the cowboys, the cowboy kind of imagery with like Marshall Dillon and like Roy Rogers and things like that. And Hans always gets it wrong. And he always has to correct him, right? Even in the last scene, right? He says, this person doesn't do this person. He says, no, that's, yeah. He says, Grace Kelly doesn't walk away with, I forget who it is, right? But basically he gets them wrong and he has to correct him.

Jay: Yeah, it's Gary Cooper.

Speaker 2: Gary Cooper, right? See how much we know this shit. Clark Gable. Yeah, I don't remember. But yeah, he gets it. He gets it wrong. And I think that implants it shows is one of the things that they do constantly in the film as like the back and forth between McClain and Gruber is that Gruber is definitely more intellectually polished. He has more, like, finesse and pizzazz in many ways, right? But McClane has a stronger kind of knowledge of, like, self to a certain degree, and he has a street innate smartness. But then also, I think the American thing is, like, you think you know America, but McClane is, like, America's soul. So, basically... i always read this film that like if mclean wasn't there hans would have won easy like no one would have known right it'd have been it but since you get the mclean who was like this unique part of like america's soul right he's the one thing that a gruber can't take You know, he's the one thing that will thwart all of the classical European education, the real slick, the high funding. That's one of the things that they they they're able to they made a point out that they have a lot of money. that they're well financed. He does point that out so that like he, McClane can be all that. Cause when you're in American soil, if you have a real Americana, he can defeat it all just by his will, you know, of everything. So they use that to constantly do it. And then like, cause like that, like that final sequence, which like I will admit would just come from the book where he shoots him with it, with the, the, the tape gun in the back. It actually is from the book. It's one of the things that they kept. It's slick, right? It's slick, and then, you know, yeah, you say it's like the final, like, showdown, right? He comes down. Oh, well, you know, they do the draw, right? You know, and he'd be able to take out two guys, and he –

Speaker 3: blows on the gun and goes happy trails hans right which i find it hilarious that like he just shot someone where his wife is right there and he has all the time in the world to act like he's a cool while his wife is right next to this guy he killed him it's just so perverse yeah the only thing i add is like they're that

Jay: like we didn't really talk about this too much i don't think it's just you referenced it um but just to go back to the like by the book etc like so hans has studied the manuals right and like this is there is sort of a critique here partly of like why did these you know why did these places sort of publish or make you know known how they all operate um But then – and who knows whether it's published or not, right? But he's clearly read the books and how they're going to move in this conflict against them, which is part of what he has to know to know that they'll cut out the power because they can't get the last piece of the safe, whatever to call it, like the last – don't know it won't they can't unlock the safe ultimately without the power being taken out basically and they take out the power within the building but they need it to be cut from the grid basically um but that and so this then opens up of course for john mclean right because because he doesn't operate by the book right he's the one who can actually solve the problem with his violence that doesn't go by the book right and um you know obviously in that again it's like a very elementary propaganda technique on it honestly of just sort of this notion of you you know he is the thin blue line right like he he is the one that's like he's gonna do whatever you you can to save literal hell from coming out from under the earth right to you know take apart western civilization um which is nuts right because also he's the one who's dropping satchels of c4 down you know an elevator and and shooting everybody and you know but that's that's all all justified it's all necessary you know so yeah so like one of the final things that i find really interesting is so when people remember he shoots hans han stumbles back towards the window and

Speaker 2: the thing that keeps hans from dropping is he's not only holding on to holly he's holding on to holly's rolex and remember that the rolex was given to holly by ellis and the corporate people right and i'm sorry this is total cinematic imagery right like you see then him hanging on the gun he's like doing in the nice you know slow motion shot and they take off the rolex right and that's what makes hans drops to his death in the other line god i hope it's not a hostage you know like and they always like throw in these like little coffee lines when you're to kind of like soften off the violent death it's really perverse but This is, to me, where I kind of go back to the beginning. You get the nasty patriarchal kind of read to the film, right? It's that... john goes through a change right through it because he has that monologue where he says you know tell her i'm sorry if i die right um and that i should be more understanding so forth and so on but holly also has a change because she like relinquishes what is probably negative of her new kind of business life right and it's represented through the Rolex right it's like the Rolex was like basically like a wall because what you see happen in the in the sequence after he dies then they hug and they kiss and you get like the kind of you know reconciliation of the two of them but when you go outside and when she introduces herself he goes John says Holly no she goes Holly McClain She takes the name back. And what's interesting about the film is that it's basically saying through this like excessive violence ritual where he gets to save his wife. Right. And kind of prove his manhood. He gets his wife back. And it adds to what we're talking about, about this kind of American violence. It's like a baptism, right? It's like a baptism or a washing or an exorcism is maybe two of like the demons that you have. So kind of vibe. But John doesn't also just have a change. It's like Holly has a change. And in the film, they basically make it like, because there's two other lines in the film that I think are really significant with Holly is that, no, really one, when she sees, after Carl is unable to kill John with like the glass part, he smashes the bar cart and she says, you know, he's still alive. She goes, what do you mean? Only John can make someone this angry. And she smiles and, And it's like her accepting that John's faults are also his virtues. And this is a really nasty thing they do in American movies constantly. It's like, it's not that like someone has to change. It's like they need to actually keep the shitty part of them because it's going to be needed when the... foreign terrorists come in to take over nakatomi plaza that's when you need you know his hyper masculinity his you know brute force is breaking the rules he's not listening to people right you know the family doesn't listen to me well we're gonna need that when you know hell comes

Jay: yeah no absolutely yeah um i mean the only thing left right is the the carl winslow redemption scene his his last act before he has to relocate to chicago and argue with steve urkel i hope i can one thing i will say even as a kid i've always struggled with carl coming back out when we see him hanging from his neck for like like like there's like three shots of it

Speaker 3: I'm like, okay. That is weird. Yeah. There's like a shot when all of them are coming back down and the assumption he's been there for like at least five or six minutes. And I'm like, how's homie alive?

Speaker 2: I don't get it. You know, like, but I guess, you know, superhero, superhuman Euro terrorists, you know? but yeah like you see you know carl come out and he's right and he's about to shoot mclean and then you just get you know i mean the way the gun is i mean it's like it's like the biggest handgun i've ever seen in a movie it's like and like the way the way it sounds like all right like it really way it shoots in but like and you see the like the scrolling shot and the music so this is the other thing that's always bothered me and i gotta confirm today i was like that sounds like the song from aliens And it is. It's an unused James Horner version of one of the score pieces of Aliens. It is. It's the exact same thing. But I know James Horner didn't do the music for this. So I always find it weird. They must have just bought it from him. But, like, he gets this, like, glorious, like, thing come down.

Speaker 3: And, like, you see him, like, arrive, right? And, like, you know, he's down.

Speaker 2: And it's, like, to the point you made earlier, Jay, it's... It's really disgusting because basically it's like when you do sequences like that, one of the implicit things is that for him to kind of like hit a new level of humanity, also the bad thing he did was necessary. So basically killing the kid was also necessary in like his life trajectory. And it's just... It's just fucked up, man. Right. And then also the other part that I find hilarious is like, he's now supercharged. So when Argo crashes through, he's not ready to shoot him.

Jay: No way. He's with me. Yeah. it's so gross it's so gross like i was watching it so i was like oh man this is and i thought it went for a while now but i was like this is so gross and it's not necessary either to the movie i mean it's only like you know because if the movie's over right like it's like a false ending essentially like you think things are just gonna be like you know okay and then and then out comes carl from the dead like very much like uh Yeah, like horror movies, right, where, you know, you have to actually see the person, like, you know, like you never assume somebody's actually dead, right, in a horror movie. They could always come back, you know. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I do think that, you know, one of the things about the super, super villain, you know, stuff in the German stuff I mean, that is where the Nazi shit always comes back to a little bit, you know, of like this idea that like, you know, they who knows what they've what kind of drugs that they've taken to make themselves into super soldiers, you know, or whatever, you know. And I mean, it's obviously like a lot of that is just displacement to of like shit America actually does of like, oh, the Nazis, you know, then, you know, they're the ones who would do stuff like this. um and that's always we've talked about this before but it's always kind of there when they pull in these German terrorists and German figures in the 80s right is this like still this like you know we haven't we haven't quite gotten over like we haven't gotten over Vietnam yet but at least we can harken back to World War II and we have these this one group of

Speaker 2: white people who are not us that we can point to that are like this is where you get the really evil white people yeah yeah yeah i mean like and there's also a sense with carl compared to hans that like carl still he probably doesn't have those political beliefs but he has a certain like ideological code Right. Because he's willing when his brother gets killed, he's like, not all bets off. Right. Rather, like Hans is like, you know, he says it literally stick to the plan. Right. Right. And so Carl is like this, you know, he is that super soldier guy. you know primitive you know and like the nazi is like this like primitive they're you know they're because there's also that shot of him where he's like walking with like the gun on the roof i mean it's so like i'm like y'all are weird like these these like visions you have of people that you make and like i just imagine these guys writing these screenplays and just going oh that'd be cool i'm like walk across the roof like he's like a dancer right i want you to be like baryshnikov or someone you know like i can hear like the directorial lines right and it's such a it's a way kind of what you said like they also think of them as like these like weird like other humans right like i mean that's not how the comic books look if you read comic book stuff on like nazis they love the whole the occult nazi stuff too but they love that stuff like red skull right that like you know you know, they were all really looking, I mean, the Indiana Jones stuff.

Jay: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Jay: Yeah. And then there's a whole thing too, which is done very much in Marvel of like, they actually meld the Soviet union and the Nazis together in the form of Hydra. Right. So there's like, there's both, you know,

Speaker 2: yeah it becomes this like communist fascist alliance or whatever which is which is crazy i mean when we get to rambo too i i also think that's a thing like because he's supposed to be russian but he give to me he always gives off more fascist the the guy right and he's played by a brit played by a brit

Jay: The only other note that I had too, is this another copaganda thing too, is just that, that, you know, that at the end of the day, you know, cops are just trying to get home to their families, like just trying to get home to their wives. Right. Like you're just trying to get there for Christmas. Right. Like that's, you know, then, and again, like this is why among many other reasons that this is absolutely a Christmas movie. Right. It's like, it's sort of like got to get home for Christmas. You know, that's like the, at the end of the day.

Speaker 2: Right! Like, yeah, how is it any different than Plays, Trains, and Automobiles in that kind of way, right? Like, they'll credit that as a holiday movie, right? Like, you're trying to get home, right? It's the thwarted journey movie. It's totally fucking... It is, you know, what did Paul Verhoeven say about Robocop? It's American Jesus. Die Hard is American Christmas.

Jay: Right. I mean... There's an argument to be made that it is like the most American Christmas movie. I think so.

Speaker 3: I'm willing to put my money on that. My hat is placed that this is the most American Christmas movie there is. It is the movie of American Christmas.

Jay: Alright, let's see. Chat, you've been great today. This is definitely the same movie as Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Um... yeah this was the comment i brought up earlier about yeah so paul was the one who brought this up about it being a vertical action movie contained in one of the uh building even the concept just seemed wholly unique yeah um and i don't know if it's totally unique but it's the first movie i can think of like that well there was towering inferno which is in inspired the book

Speaker 2: that this came from but it's not it's this is different in that kind of way but no it is wholly unique in in how this is executed right and it's been trying to be copied 8 000 times um they they believe in nothing they believe in nothing exactly i read it in forbes it's only money um

Jay: Yeah, so Yippee-Ki-Yay was from Roy Rogers, which also, like, that's why he has them call him Roy over the radio, too, right? And he said he liked Roy Rogers with the... Settler Orange is a good point, yeah. Sparkly outfit. Yeah, and this is always the thing that I like about heist movies, is, like, even though they are not... Again, there's no... there's no super political thing about it. Right. But just the notion that, you know, like banks and all this other shit, like that, that these all these capitalist institutions thrive off of stealing money from everyday people. And so any movie where you have everyday people stealing, Trying to get money back from them. I'm rooting for them.

Speaker 2: Well, I'll give you a good heist movie that I root for. It's The Red Circle by Melville. Jean-Pierre Melville. French film. Really good movie. That's a really good movie. Heist film.

Jay: I'll have to check it out. Yeah, it's a classic. Colin, this was so... Shout out to Colin. He's the one I got. Carl Winslow was a guilty LA cop who changed their name and moved to Chicago. That's so funny. wanted to bring this up this good good catch so this clarence gillier jr is the name of the actor and yeah he's in top gun he was in 196 episodes of walker texas range yeah he's a big character in it i remember i mean i didn't watch it but i remember like tried looking him up and being like oh he that that was and then gave his career and then 84 episodes of matlock the you know the old one um he was he was conrad mcmaster's uh yeah the andy griffith one um which i used to watch as a kid sometimes that's my grandma's favorite shows yeah it was definitely i watched it with my grandmother or my dad or whatever but yeah um Cop Carl went on to be harassed by Steve Urkel and be catty with police who almost liquidated his son, Eddie Winslow. Yeah, the logical suspension of disbelief is why I don't make movies. I hate every single time those things will bother me.

Speaker 3: But they don't have to. Some of it is just bad writing. It's just bad writing.

Jay: It's when it becomes... like so they're using all these instances like not being able to hear the gunfire or you know not having the shoes like it's an obvious plot device right it's like something that they intentionally do so that you will have something you know so the movie will play out in a certain way um and i i just don't want it to be so sloppy is is my main thing like i would like to be you know i don't know somebody said the point that it was he knew that they were coming and they were coming quick so he didn't go to get his shoes and like maybe i i go back and watch the scene maybe i maybe i miss a little bit of that but i just think it would have been nice for me i would have liked something of like you see the shoes sitting on you know a bench in another office or something where he's like oh fuck i can't get to them you know um all right um let's see what else do we have we only have a couple more um yeah i know m2 may already answer this question but i just wanted to raise this up because if anybody can find the debate that happened um off the top of my head i can't remember the name of the program maybe somebody in the chat will um but it was a pbs like debate show basically and um never look forward it has to exist like in some archive somewhere um but i don't think it's on the internet anywhere i think that chini macho is right about that because we had a whole bunch of people looking for it when we did um did the did the study group on that book and um but i i have to believe that somewhere in the archives it's there um Davi is like Timu Ray Liotta. I loved this one. Shout out to that Family Matters theme song. Yeah.

Speaker 2: now it's in my head no so i'm going to invoke red dmc's christmas song to get that back in my head as our this is christmas music right that argyle says to him at the very beginning shout out to argyle good comment here by samantha yusuf um

Jay: the the hypersexualized made a big push to associate that level of violence as being sexy as well and i think that's a really good point like all of these people you know were seen as like sex symbols um I can't, you know, thinking of Arnold Schwarzenegger as a sex symbol is just weird to me. But I imagine that there were people who did it.

Speaker 2: Bruce Willis definitely was. And then remember... For sure.

Jay: Stallone, too.

Speaker 2: Within a year of that, he also marries Demi Moore. Yeah. So he becomes like a really big icon of that kind of like male... you know sexual accomplishment and um so like connecting it to violence because that's to be the way that he would you know be able to most exude it right like and like i said like in the movie like there's like all these little things where he you see the possibility of like his male you know sexuality right like that you know he sees like the naked woman he goes girls right there's like all these like little like little quasi moments of his sexuality like exuded right and that women recognize it too the fact that you have like a couple of key scenes where the women look at him like give him the look and it's funny because it happens in in die hard 2 also it's like there's even longer sequence where he has like a long flirt with one of the airport clerks and she basically does what she wants because she thinks he's he's he's hot right even though he's in that film he's in a happy marriage but that's him and holly are together in in die hard 2 they're like at a happy marriage it's like totally so there's that other kind of like uh we talk about with um what's his name chevy chase in the in the national lampoon's movies that he's allowed to kind of have this kind of extra marital you know energy at the very least with like other women while while you know that can't happen yeah that's it yeah and i think that's an interesting thing too i mean chevy chase obviously like that's a different

Jay: different genre but I feel like there's a special license given to that within cop films in particular and cop TV shows too of you know and it's always sort of dealt with in this way of like oh well you know Their life, their work is so traumatic, right, that they you've got to let them blow off some steam and like, you know, hang out with, you know, sex workers and, you know, all this kind of stuff. And but it's like deep and it runs through a lot of films. And I think about that in terms of also like. The type, you know, because these movies are marketed to young men. right and and there is a role within the society of you know bringing more people into the military bringing more people into cops like there is a recruitment element to all of this stuff um it's why you know the department of defense invests in these kind of films and and other um you know there's a lot of involvement of police within within hollywood and all of that too and um you know it's just interesting because it's like on one level it's it's we've talked about these things where, you know, or you've, you've talked about this idea where sometimes within films, it's like, well, is it imitating life or is it producing certain outcomes? Right. And like, and then where do you, Where do you draw that line? And obviously there's just a relationship between these things too, right? So it's like on one end you could say, well, this is based on a reality that a lot of cops are, you know, they are more predisposed to domestic violence, they are more predisposed to being bad partners, like all of those things actually do have empirical bases for them. But then you create movies that really kind of like justify or, you know, present the heroes in this kind of fashion. And I mean, Die Hard's not the worst, you know, in that line of film. But it comes up in a lot of movies that center around cops as lead characters.

Speaker 2: Yeah, there's this line in this Al Pacino movie called Sea of Love. I don't even remember this movie. He plays like a cop. And he's like, it's like, we maybe should do that. That's a fun movie to do. It's like one of these like New York, you know, who's the killer? Actually, we should do that movie. What movie is it? Sea of Love with him and Ellen Barkin. It's like, you know, he's a cop. And like, you know, there's like a killer of like men. Oh, actually, we should definitely do this movie. And they think it's a woman. Right. And it might be the woman that he's sleeping with, Ellen Barkin. But he has a line in the film where he says, in this town, I'm everybody's daddy. And he says it like admonishing her, not understanding him being a cop. And there is this way that like it's presented for us to think about like cops as the basically like the fathers of all of us. And in this idea that, you know, father gets to basically do extra things because life has so much pressure. Right. Right. The existence. So if you're like the daddy of New York City. Right. You know, he does it in the classic Al Pacino in this town. I'm everybody's daddy. You know, it's like really admonishing this woman for like not understanding his pressures and the fact that he does something that's a bit fucked up. Oh, because in the context that he does, he basically like embarrass her at her job. Right. And he has to let her know I'm everybody's daddy. I got it. I got to do shit that's fucked up every now and then. You got to accept it. Right. I got to go the extra mile a little bit. And it is that mentality and it's pretty shit. yeah that's i i i feel like i probably have to have seen it because i've seen um but i don't really remember it all that oh man you should see we should definitely do it it's a classic we have to kind of know you know yeah and it goes into that panic that panic it goes into that that that like uh it tries to flip the night stalker panic but put it on men

Jay: it's weird and i haven't seen it in a while yeah yeah i mean you know these these kind of things that come up in like heat they come up in ten of thieves like it's it's yeah it's a it's a lot of movies that have this shit um so this was this is the Safiya Bukhari debate if it's yeah America's war on drugs on PBS 98 um you know the name of the show my immediate guess is Texas A&M has it and cruising them have cruising them have basically made it that they can't release it that's my immediate guess Somebody needs to sneak in there with a camera phone and just record clips and upload it anonymously to YouTube. Call Theo, man. We get Theo.

Speaker 3: Theo didn't die. He didn't die. Theo's not dead. He just got punched by Argyle.

Jay: Call Theo. I was trying to think if we've had... This is one of the first hip-hop songs we've seen in a movie that we've done so far. um run dmc's christmas and hollis which is early on in the film it can't be the only one we've had but second that i can think of probably maybe yeah i mean it's also part of it is that like that was the thing about rap music because it wasn't really you know it wasn't really ready for hollywood for several years except for well we will get to some early we'll do

Speaker 2: know we got to do wild style at some point some of the early stuff but um but those are like those are niche films it's not like big hollywood films yeah and this is and it's being invoked here as a kind of a joke like to kind of like to be you know what the is john gotten himself into you gotta totally got a fast-talking slick young black man riding the limo who plays rap music

Jay: And he's the one from New York, and he's like, what is this shit? And the LA black man is the one playing it, yeah.

Speaker 3: This is Christmas music.

Speaker 2: Shout out to Argyle, though. Argyle is funny, man.

Speaker 3: And we have to do Action Jackson. I'm telling you, watch Lethal Weapon, Action Jackson, and Die Hard in the same week or say a couple of weeks, and you'll see the same people.

Speaker 2: Like the newscaster, she's in all three. Because she's the, whatchamacallit, I'm always forgetting her, she's the mom in Goonies, too. Like super character actress.

Jay: You know? I'm gonna... I'm going to start an online petition to get or Sammy Burton to come on and do action Jackson with us because he's he said that he wanted to but then you know, he sometimes we have to cook so worry to get on the show.

Speaker 2: But how do you like your ribs? Well, look, look, if you if Ori, I want Ori to do it with us. And if we do it that we have to clip because dumb fucking stem seeds.

Speaker 3: There are so many.

Speaker 2: Oh, man, how do you like your ribs?

Jay: and then he just eviscerates Duke with the with the flamethrower to Goonies references Stevie yeah man I'm sorry dude Goonies is a major part of my childhood which we have to do that as well we're gonna do Goonies yeah so let me before we go let me just point to the upcoming so first of all I've put a bunch of stuff on the upcoming videos stuff on millennials so folks check the schedule and turn your you know you can individually clip to be notified on all of them um but i'll first just go through imperial 80s upcoming so we've sorted this out so next week we're gonna do scrooge and then we're gonna we weren't initially gonna do one on the 22nd but lara shihai very much wanted to do christmas story which is great because that's a perfect additional perspective to have on christmas story so we will do a christmas story on december 22nd which will probably be i think the only thing that i will do that week um for the show so anyways look forward to both of those so next week scrooge and then on the 22nd christmas story um there's a few other things i have to get up on the conversation having a conversation about um the the hunger strikes in the uk with kala walsh tomorrow but also that's not on the schedule yet tomorrow on the schedule um we have a conversation on the so-called Malaya or Malaya emergency with Fadia Nadwa Fikri, which I'm really looking forward to. She wrote this piece on Vox Amma. And for folks who don't know, like this is a very like, The development of counterinsurgency doctrine almost always points to the Malaya emergency as like one of its key origin points. So that's going to be really good. And then obviously we'll be connecting it into like current counterinsurgency tactics with Palestine and everything else too. Duane Monroe is going to be here on Wednesday to talk about why the term in shitification is actually not a very good concept. And so I'm looking forward to hearing him talk about that. um and he'll i'm sure we'll talk about some other stuff too and then yeah alex avenia is gonna be back on also later that day i'm too busy this week um to uh do imperialism genocide you know and sports washing and and peace so we'll talk about fifa giving trump the the peace prize and all the other madness and then the only other thing that I didn't mention that's on the calendar is Gemma DeCristo is going to come on to talk about her book which just came out you know a couple months ago actually at this point but the aesthetic character of blackness which is going to be a really interesting discussion because she really frames that all of this stuff about you know people talking about black art you know serving as this kind of like you know there's been a discussion particularly which she talks about in the preface of the book of like amid the george floyd um you know uprising stuff all the ways that like black art was commissioned or used to to like change the scenery of the space right um but she her analysis which is really fascinating is really a much longer argument that this is not actually something new and that we have to actually go to the origins with like frederick douglass um you know writing down like spirituals and stuff like that to like the very kind of introduction of black art from moving it from the slave community right or the you know the enslaved population nation into spaces of like white art and white consumption. And to really understand the role of that, that black art serves within us society, which, so I just look forward to talking to her about her work around that. I think it's going to be a really interesting, but yeah, the book is interesting. Yeah.

Speaker 2: That's dope.

Jay: All right, man. Anything else you want to plug?

Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we're still going strong. I have a couple. I put out a couple. Jerry Ball and I recently did something from Within Our Gates that you check out about hip hop. I have a good interview with Leigh-Anne Follin from Socialist Program and the People's Forum talking about the stuff going on over there. I have a new one coming out this week with my homie Jason Smith. We're talking about the film Top of the Heat. which people have not seen. It's one of the best unseen films. You can see it on Tubi from the 70s. But it's about a black cop, but it's the black cop in the different kind of way. It's really, really good. Made by Christopher St. John. It's a really great film. And then I have some other stuff coming up pretty soon. I'm doing some recording, some good stuff coming in. So yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what we got. But looking forward to the next couple of weeks. I honestly, you know what's funny, Steven? I just haven't seen it in a long time. So, like, I couldn't really. We watched it in my house growing up. I just don't remember it. but it was, I don't know that I did. It was a social phenomenon though. Like it was a big deal. People were pissed that it got canceled because Bruce Willis career. And then there was a lot of stuff. I mean, then it like simple shepherd, like lost her career again. After that, it was supposed to be her, like come back. And then like, because of the way it should, it gets talked about, you know, women get talked about in Hollywood. It's just like the double, the double end career.

Jay: All right. Well, thank you again to me. This was good. Yeah, yeah. Sure. And then next week we will hit Scrooge. And then on December 22nd, if the Manhattan Institute hasn't shuttered its offices for the holiday season, then I'm sure they'll be very disappointed. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. They're going to be. okay we'll have to get be extra spicy okay i'll get the cayenne out all right man have a good one peace y'all