The secret story of Die Hard 3: a day in hell celebrates its 30th anniversary
Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson celebrate their birthday! The opportunity to come back behind the scenes and the secret of a cult film, released on May 19, 1995 in American theaters … not without difficulty.
March 1990. While filming 58 minutes to live is not yet finished, the producer of the saga Lawrence Gordon has already got hold of the subject which, for him, should be that of the next adventures of John McClane: an original scenario entitled Troubleshootingwritten by James Haggin, who recounts the hostage taking of a luxury cruise liner by a group of terrorists.
Summer 1990. While 58 minutes to live is a success in theaters and that the future of the franchise seems assured, Gordon hires the scriptwriter W. Peter Iliff (Breakstone) to transform Troubleshooting in Die Hard 3. But in full writing of the script, Iliff is contacted by the New Regency Production to rewrite a scenario entitled Dread Naught (which will give High seas trap), very similar to the one he is finishing for McClane. Panic on board! Iliff refuses the proposal of New Regency Production, but now, it is clear: a neighboring subject is in development and a real race against the clock begins between the two projects. The start of problems.
The secret story of Die Hard: the roots of the saga
1991. The idyll between the historic team of the first two Die Hard seems to have to end. Bruce Willis just turned Hudson Hawk For the producer Joel Silver (a failure) and when the latter commits the star on The last Samaritanhe causes the anger of Lawrence Gordon Who gets confused with the actor and with his producer partner. Worse: the trio discovers that the shooting of High seas trap begins (and that the Die Hard 3 De Gordon and Iliff has just been overtaken) and the situation degenerates. Fox refuses to finance Die Hard 3 Because of the competing project, too high a budget and the cachet requested by Bruce Willis. Gordon plans to shoot the film for a moment without Bruce Willishimself cold with Joel Silver ! The situation is now unmanageable and Joe Roththe president of Fox, is forced to intervene to save the film: Silver and Gordon are dismissed by the studio against a golden parachute of $ 750,000 each.
Hard Hard
For the studio, the urgency is to find a new producer. The Fox then turned to Andrew Vajna, producer of Ramboof Total recall and which has just finished Medicine Man of John McTiernan. Vajna’s first objective, who had already saved the saga Terminator of a similar situation, it is to convince the director of Die Hard original to return to the controls of the franchise. But for that, he must find a subject likely to make everyone agree. Problem: Hollywood seems determined to rush into the breach opened by the films of John McTiernan And Renny Harlin and the formula Die Hard is declined in all possible variations. From 1992 arrived successively on the screens High trap Sea (In other words Die Hard in a war boat), Passenger 57 (Die Hard on an airplane) and Cliffhanger (Die Hard in the mountains). Vajna must therefore not only find a good story, but make sure that it does not look like one of the clones in production. In a word: a headache.
Scriptwriters in hell
After the refusal of Shane Black (The fatal weapon, last action hero), It is John Milius (Revelation Now) who becomes the new screenwriter. Milius drops the idea of the liner (idea recycled in … Speed 2 !), To place John McClane in a new environment: the jungle! His film project – subtitled Tears of the Sun – was to take place in Laos, but again, the script is not selected (the title of the project will become that of a film ofAntoine Fuquaalways with Bruce Willisin 2003, after being envisaged as a subtitle of Die Hard 4). Vajna then replaced Milius with John Fasano And Doug Richardson (author of Die Hard 2) and their requests to develop each a different script … at the same time! In that of Fasano, McClane’s daughter is kidnapped by terrorists who think they are seizing the niece of a rich industrialist. For his part, Richardson works on a different pitch: terrorists take control of the Los Angeles metro, but their true intention is to rob the city’s federal reserve. “It was really on Die Hard 3 that I got to know each other Bruce Willis And that we sympathized ”explains to us Doug Richardson. “” I can tell you: Die Hard 3 should have had the title: “”Bruce Willis Don’t want to shoot Die Hard 3 – Please manage to convince me to do Die Hard 3 – I don’t want to do Die Hard 3! – Choose a Die Hard 3! “(laughter). My only contribution in the film is the burglary of the federal reserve. Apart from that, there are more times in my version of Die Hard 3 In Speedthat in the film Die Hard 3. You remember the final of Speedwith this crazy metro that can no longer stop? Well, it was my third act of Die Hard 3 ! ».
The attack of the clones
Finding an original subject for this third episode is all the more complicated as the clones of Die Hard continue to surge on the screens. Besides Speeddirected by Jan de Bont, Director of photography of Crystal trap (Die Hard on a bus and in the metro), we see appear The Beverly Hills 3 cop (Die Hard in an amusement park) written by the screenwriter of the first two Die Hard,, Steven de Souza. And producers of High seas trap go on their side with high speed trap (Die Hard on a train) and prepare Sudden death (Die Hard In a stadium) … De Souza even reports that a head of the head studio in the air would have tried to hire him to write a film derived from Die Hardwith a variation he believed unpublished: “Die Hard in a building”!
Fatal weapon
It is ultimately John McTiernan which comes across the scenario that will become A day in hellwhen the screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh leaves him a copy of one of his non -produced scripts, entitled Simon Says. Hensleigh is the providential man of Die Hard 3. The guy in the right place at the right time. Simon Says was sold at Fox, co-producer of Die Hardin January 1993, and the studio would use this scenario well for the rest of Rapid Fire with Brandon Leeor for the fatal weapon 4. History? A white cop is obliged to team up with a black activist to counter a terrorist poseur of bombs playing Jacques-A-Dit (“Simon Says” in English). As soon as the script is read, McTiernan, Willis and Vajna immediately see how the subject can become Die Hard 3. After validation by Fox, Hensleigh gets to work, gradually adding elements of the previous scripts, such as the heist of the federal reserve, before transforming the naughty into a brother of Hans Gruber. And the shooting is launched …
Die Harder
But the production problems will not stop there: the studio refuses for example the scene or McClane is forced by Gruber to wear a sign “I hate the negroes” in Harlem. Faced with the refusal of the producers, the director and the screenwriter, to remove it, the radicality of the character of Zeus, embodied by Samuel Jacksonis attenuated, and some dialogues retracing its past disappear on the assembly. They remain, luckily, visible in a rare making of. We can see in this video Zeus entrust to McClane that his brother was a respectable citizen, killed by a white cop in a Crack house. His crime? Having come to look for him (Zeus therefore) smashed to the marrow … Information that explains why the latter is now responsible for raising his two nephews, and why he hates both whites and particularly the cops.
The consequences of desire
At the same time, the violence of the film is watered down after passing before the MPAA. In the final assembly, most of the bullet impacts seem to have been brought from three to one, as in this scene on the boat where McClane descends one of Gruber’s men. We can see (always in this making of) that the iron tip that McClane plants in the leg of Targo, the blond giant, disappears in the next plane and that a passage during which McClane strangles his opponent with a chain has disappeared (make an image stop at 1 hour 37m 13s on the DVD: when McClane tears his watch after having finished it, Targo wears a pendant. neck !). Worse, the original end (visible in DVD bonuses), considered too brutal, is fully replaced by the current conclusion, which was turned only a few weeks before the exit.
Despite his cuts, A day in hell remains, by far, the best sequelae to Die Hardand undoubtedly the best performance of Bruce Willis In the role of John McClane, all episodes combined to date. His portrait of the cop-thickness, hanging out a headache, evolving in an atmosphere of urban civil war, and more and more physically deteriorated as history advances, has now become cult. And too bad if many fans of the saga seem to think that it is the worst episode of the series. There are days like that …
