FatHARD: A Christmas Special - Die Hard (1988) vs. Fat Man (2020)

2023 has been a great year for us. We've gotten into a groove. We're putting out at least one episode a month. So, if you have not listened to the rest of our episodes, we've got a little bit of a bank now, so you can binge if you'd like. Well, this was a fun episode. I'm gonna get right into it, and while I get the film roll going so you can listen, I just want to tell you that we are working on 2024, so come on back after the new year. Fat Hard, the Christmas episode.

Welcome back to the Silver Screen of Happy Hour. I'm Chris Wiegand, along with my brother Jerome.

no. In perfect holiday fashion, I'm friggin sick. Yeah. And actually I'm getting over it now. It's a little bit of a cold. Are we gonna lead is this my lead in, is this our segue into what we're drinking today? Yeah, we might as well. Okay, I'm going with NyQuil. Just kidding, just kidding, just kidding. So Aside from green, being mucus, what color would you associate with Christmas? Red? Yes, look at what we're wearing, right?

For those of you that can't see us, we're actually decked out in Christmas outfits today. I'm wearing my Dwight from The Office Christmas sweater, and he's got a big red nose, and the caption says, With your nose, so Dwight. But anyway, so, I have here A very nice bottle. It's called Red Breast. Oh, nice. It's an Irish whiskey, right? Because John McClane is Irish. So, oh, we haven't even talked about the movies yet. Duh. But we will in a second.

So anyway, Red Breast single pot still Irish whiskey, age 12 years. This will be my NyQuil today. And I will be backing it up with some of my usual lightsabers. You know that. I would not let the folks over at Anheuser Busch down. I would never let you down. You know that my backups are McUltraTolls. Here we go. Are you ready? Yeah, I'm

But I will be adding a whiskey of my own. So let me pour a little bit of the Southern Comfort eggnog into my cup. Oh boy, I'm gonna make a mess. I don't wanna do what I did last time.

On a previous podcast, I did try Blackened Whiskey with, it was the Sound of Metal, and Sound of a Lesser God, that was the name of our episode. And I enjoyed the whiskey. So here we go. There we go. Ooh. Ooh, yeah. A little pour here. Let me get closer to the microphone. Clack, clack, clack.

So we kicked around some other Christmas movies, and you know, we were like you know, we enjoyed Home Alone and different movies when we were younger. But I don't know. I was like, I would love to do Die Hard. So, we decided we're going with Die Hard and a movie not too many people have heard about for probably good reason. Yes. Very good reason. Called Batman. That came out in 2020. Jerome, when did Die Hard

So, Die Hard is 1988. My First memory of Die Hard was mom rented it from Skips Video. Oh god, I remember Skips. Yeah, in Centerline, Michigan. What was that? Was that 10 Mile Road? Yeah, that was on 10 Mile. So Skips, Skips Liquor, Skips Video Store was a convenient store that had a video store in the back. And it was on 10 Mile Road in Centerline, Michigan. And, She brought it home one night and on Friday night or whatever and we watched it.

And, those were the nights, those were the days when Dad used to play hockey on Fridays. Oh yeah. Right? So he'd be gone, and then we would just you know, we'd watch movies. And I can't remember if, I don't think Amy was there. I don't know where Amy was. I don't know where you were either. To be honest with you, I don't know where either of my siblings were. But Mom and I watched Die Hard. Yeah. From Skip's video.

Now this was 1988, it must have been maybe Christmas time because, and we'll get to this later, but Die Hard was actually released in July of 1988, and by the time it hit video it had to have been around Christmas time. Oh yeah, makes sense. Um, And Good time for a Christmas rental. Yeah, good, good time for a Christmas rental, exactly. So, cause dad was playing hockey and he always played that in the winter time. So I was, geez, what was that then? 88, I was 13? 13 years old.

A little young for an R rated film, but there wasn't too much, I mean, aside from violence and language. You know, that was pretty much it. You know, that's, who cares about that when you're 13. You're already getting ready to get into high school. So, who cares. What about you? What was your first experience with Die Hard?

And we're pairing it today with the 2020 masterpiece. Master piece of shit. Fat man. Um, I'm just kidding Mel. I'm just kidding Mel, it's not a piece of shit. It mostly is. But and we'll go over it. This is not exactly like when we did Jaws vs. Jaws 4. If you, if any of you haven't seen our YouTube video, it's about two and a half hours long. It doesn't sink to that level. Yeah Fatman is not on the level of Jaws 4. No. But if there was a Jaws 5, then Fatman might be rare. However, however,

Second half was so much better. Overall, it's a good movie, right? This this is kind of one of those things where fat man is a fun movie to watch it is fun It had a fun concept.

And remember, why is the logline important? Because the logline is your premise. It's the movie. It's the reason you came to the movie, right? It's the reason why you went to go see it. It's basically your act two. Because act one is all set up. And then you have the thing that drives the character into Act 2, and Act 2 is your logline. That's what the story's about. And that's gonna be important. Because listen to this logline.

A rowdy, unorthodox Santa Claus is fighting to save his declining business. Meanwhile, Billy, a neglected and precocious 12 year old, hires a hitman to kill Santa after receiving a lump of coal in his stocking. So right off the bat, we have a problem.

Now I get that the writers of Fat Man did not write this logline, but you have two stories going on already in the logline alone. Yeah. And I think whoever writes loglines for stuff like IMDb or the back of a DVD or whatever, they have to determine what the damn movie's about. Right. And even they obviously had trouble because they gave me two stories in one logline. And the reason why they have trouble? I can't tell you. What the story is. I don't know if it's one or the other.

Because I can't even tell you who the damn main character is. And I'll tell you why. Because there's no arcs. There's no structure to it.

As long as you hit the beats in order, everything should work fine. Alright, opening image, usually a mirror flip of your closing image, but the opening image here is ice being scraped off a windshield. A little maybe subtle, subtlety there. Theme stated. I can't really put my finger on one. Did you, could you really pick out a theme stated? No. So, and I, this is what I wrote down in my notes. Mostly it's because, I don't know whose story this is. Alright?

If it's Santa, the closest thing we have to a theme is when Mrs. Claus says to, by the way, he's outside, practicing, like, shooting his gun. He's firing off his gun. And Mrs. Claus says to Fat Man, You have fun shooting in the trash. That's what she says to him. That's not really a theme. To me, it's kind of a setup and payoff, right? Because of the climax of the movie. Yeah. Right? So, it's kind of like a setup. A little foreshadow. Yeah, a little foreshadow. You have fun shooting the trash.

But, that's not really a theme. Mm hmm. That doesn't, at least that doesn't carry throughout the film. If he is the lead, and he's, and he's clearly Like, if you watch the film, he's pining for a world that has sort of changed on, on his watch, and he's not happy with, right? The world is different now. Kids don't earn their presents, there's no love in the world anymore, it's all crap. And I get it, and that would have been a cool story too, right?

A Santa sort of like trying to deal with how the world has changed.

I love her. I think she's great. And a perfect fit for Mrs. Claus. Yeah. Because it catches you off guard. Like, I think even Mel said in an interview, he's like, A British black woman as Mrs. Claus. I thought it was great too. Yeah, he's like, we couldn't have picked a better person. It's pretty funny. It was a great casting choice. And she's great. She really does serve as sort of the B story throughout the film.

He, he checks in a couple of times just for updates. How's it going? Have you found him yet? The whole first act is about this kid and then he just, like, we forget him. He's not even part of the story anymore. I even threw in here a third one. What if the main character is Skinny? That's the name of the hitman by the way, Skinny. Yeah, cause he had a story arc too. Right, I said if so, there is some backstory to show the motivation. But certainly unfulfilling resolution, right? Right.

Like, if he is built up as one of the main characters, his resolution is shit. Yeah. He doesn't get any payoff for his motivation.

This would be cool if it was Skinny's story, that he got hired to kill Santa, and on his journey to go kill Santa, he realizes the pain in his childhood, right? Yeah, he's redeemed somehow, you're right. Right. And then he gets redemption somehow and he becomes a better person. None of that shit happens. It's got great setup and then his resolution is absolute garbage. And it's, and it's almost sad because, well, we'll get to it. We'll get to it.

So I wrote on here, right at theme stated, I wrote, so right off the bat, we have problems with who's the lead and what's the theme. Right. All right. Inciting incident, which is normally the catalyst. The government presents itself to Santa for a deal to make military weapons, but If Billy's the lead, then it would be when he gets coal in his stocking, right? That would be the catalyst. Yeah. So we have two catalysts, because we have two stories going on right now.

And I put, which based on the log line, suggests Billy is the lead. So the real catalyst would be he finds coal in his stocking. Now, why did he get coal in his stocking? They spend an awful lot of time in Act 1 on showing how spoiled and bitchy he is, and that he will torture. A classmate in order to win a science fair project. Not just

Yeah, Mike Ehrmantraut, or I was actually thinking Pulp Fiction. Yeah. I tell the character, right? The fixer the wolf. You know, that's all Billy's gotta do is hire the wolf, you know, and fix his problems. So, yeah, so, alright, so hang on, let me, I need, I need, I need another sip of scotch here for breaking into Act 2. Alright, so Act 2, we break into Act 2, Billy hires Skinny to kill Santa. Meanwhile in perfect confusion on whose story this is, Santa decides to take the government job.

So now in two stories being told at once, and by the way, and here's another problem with this, Santa doesn't even know. That Billy has hired a hitman to kill him, until the climax of the movie. He's completely oblivious to what's going on. So it's one thing if you're like, well it's cool that there's two stories, shit, you know, Magnolia's like, you know, eight stories going on at once, and blah blah blah. Yeah, but there's usually some sort of interweaving connection.

Like Santa's story has got literally nothing to do with Billy. At all. In his story, at all. Except for the fact that he exists. Okay. I write in here, here's the biggest problem in poorly written scripts. Act one set up takes so long that by the time we get to the break into two, a scene or two later, you're already at the midpoint scene. Right? And we, and I think we mentioned that before, that your midpoint scene comes in the middle of the film.

That's why you can't Push that, again, Norma Rae had this problem. You can't push your, your break into two, which is your basically your act two, start point, your log line starting point. You can't push that too late. If you spend your entire act one on setup, it becomes not just act one, the first half of the film. Right. On setup. And then you get to the inciting incident, and then like a scene or two later you're already at the midpoint scene, and your story has to change direction again.

Remember, the midpoint scene is not just clock. It's not just, oh, it's a two hour film and it came at the one hour point. It's an actual story shift. There is something that happens at the midpoint to change the direction of the characters. Right, right. So, midpoint scene. Santa's offered a long time gig to work with the government. So here's what happens. So, Santa accepted this one time deal. He made money on it. He got excited because, you know, Santa needs money.

And because of it, he thinks, okay, well, we'll do this long term. All that happens between the first turning point. And the midpoint, not very exciting. So who is it? Is it Santa's story? Or is it fucking Billy's story? I did put though, that does sound like Santa achieved his tangible goal. If Santa is the lead, that was his tangible goal, right? He needs money. He wants money. He needs money to keep the operation going. And he achieves that at the midpoint scene.

We always say that you should get your tangible goal at the midpoint scene. Spiritual goal is something you're going to learn later. Right, right. But he does get his tangible. If he's the lead, he got his tangible goal at the midpoint scene. And I

Second half of the film, everything goes to shit. Bad guys closing in. Approximately an hour and five minutes into the film, Billy makes an appearance again. One hour and five minutes in. We see Billy again after not seeing him since basically the turning point, the first turning point. This is the first time we've seen him since Breaking into Two. He tells Skinny he wants a souvenir. That's it. He just called Skinny to say he wants a souvenir of the killing after he killed Santa.

That's all we get from Billy. And then he disappears again for a

And I put, but then, who's the lead? Is Skinny the lead now? There is no all is lost for Billy, since he's still not around yet. Other than that one check in, we don't see him again. So, he doesn't have an all is lost. And if the all is lost is the worst possible moment, it could be that the assassin finds him. But Santa doesn't know the Assassin's looking for him. So that can't be Santa's all is lost. Right?

Like, again, if he had known, then they could be like, We discovered that Skinny knows where we are. Like, that could be Yeah. Oh my god. Yeah, he's gotta know that Right. Like, now we have to be on alert. We have to get the elves all machine guns. And we have to, you know, whatever. Yeah, but none of that shit happens. None of that. We don't even know. Santa doesn't even know Skinny's looking for him. So there is really no all is lost.

DaRk Night of the Soul is supposed to come right after the All is Lost, where your main character has lost everything and now has to figure out how to win. Obviously, if we didn't have an All is Lost, we're not going to have a Dark Night of the Soul. I even put, says, Fat Man is unaware of the bad things that's about to happen. Odd for someone who sees everything, by the way. I don't know if you noticed that little plot point.

Everybody he sees in the movie, he's like, Hey, Denise, how are the kids? And Denise would be like, Who the fuck is this guy and how does he know I have kids? Cause he's Santa, so he sees everything. Can he see that Skinny is coming to kill him? No, he doesn't see any of that. Alright So I put away, I have no dark night of the soul. Break into three, Skinny reaches the compound. This is the best part I can amount to say that this is the third act now. Right?

Is that Skinny gets to the compound, loaded up with his guns, and he's ready to take out Santa Claus. I'm assuming this is now the third act. There is no storyline to push that. I'm just guessing based on time. It's like the last half hour. We're running out of time. I'm assuming it's the third act now. Alright, what are we talking about? The third act always has what? Five point finale. Here we go. Point number one. Assembling the team. or Gathering the team.

Skinny takes out the guards and enters the compound. So, he doesn't really gather the team, he's already there. But he just kills guards to get in. Okay, fine. Execution of the plan. Skinny kills many elves and people and blows up the workshop. High tower surprise. Wait! I've I'm telling you this as if Skinny's the lead, by the way. So, in this version, Skinny's back to being the lead. What, what is Fat Man doing at this time, by the way, since you asked? Nothing.

Like he's not, like, when the workshop blows up, that's when they discover there's an intruder in the compound. Yeah. Right? Okay, so wait, so is this Santa's Hightower surprise? Or is this Skinny's Hightower Surprise? I don't know! I don't know who the lead is! Okay, Dig Down Deep, let's assume the mano a mano face off between Fatman and Skinny is the Dig Down Deep for both, right?

Because they do have a moment, and again, what's so frustrating about that scene is it might be the best written scene of the movie, but because it had shit for setup and shit for payoff, it falls flat. He knows who he is when he sees him. He calls them by his name. Yep. And Walt Doggins does give this great, I'm here to kill you, fat man! Great moment. But then there's this really heartfelt moment where he's like, you know, even, even, there's, there's limits to even what I can do.

And I can't bring your parents, or I couldn't bring your parents back. Man, what a loaded line, you know, you get this idea that when Walt Goggins was a child, when Skinny was a child, he'd lost his parents. Yeah. And he asked Santa for new parents, or to bring his parents back.

In a kitchen, with very little fanfare, very little hoop, hoopla, or hype, or excitement, all she says is I'm sorry for this, or something like that. Like I'm sorry, and then she kills him. So he has no redemption. The fact that his parents died when he was a child, he doesn't earn that redemption back. Mm hmm. There's no regret. He doesn't earn the regret, you know, like oh, I'm gonna pull probably a bad example here. Dogma, which was a Kevin Smith movie.

Won the Catholics off, very much said it was sacrilegious of a movie, because they poke a lot of fun at religion. And in the movie, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck play, play fallen angels. That want to pretty much destroy the universe, right? And when they get to the end, and they're about to do it, they're about to open the doors of the church, and that's gonna allow all the bad shit to happen, blah, blah, blah. I mean, I'm not, I'm just paraphrasing at this point. God comes out.

Of course, God's played by Alanis Morissette, for anyone that's seen the movie. But the second he sees her, Matt Damon's character, or no, it's Ben Affleck's character, he starts crying. And he falls to his knees, and he's like, I'm sorry, like, he was filled with rage the whole movie, but when he sees God face to face, he crumbles.

This could have had a perfect moment like that, where he's there to kill Santa, and he's killing elves, and he's killing the military guys, and he's blowing up the workshop. But when he gets face to face with Santa, could have been a great heartfelt moment about, I asked you to bring my parents back. Right. And you couldn't even do that for me, you know? Like, man, they had so much opportunity! And they fucking blew it, and I'm mad now!

But so you get my point, like, there was so much there that could have happened that didn't. Instead he dies in a kitchen, with no redemption, no follow up, and then, resolution, surprise to nobody, Santa isn't dead. He just has a big hole where his eye used to be. And then he goes, and he goes to yell at Billy. That's the first time now we've seen Billy in a while. Right, where he's back to being the lead again, I guess.

He and Mrs. Claus kind of mend their feelings about the cruel world which, by the way, hasn't changed, and he hasn't saved. So, if Santa's storyline Was in regards to how the world has changed, not much has changed there either, other than he's in a better mood now, I guess. Because he's, he's under government contract, so he has money now. I don't know. But that was his tangible goal. He achieves that at the midpoint scene.

So, by Mrs. Claus killing the hitman that came to kill him, Somehow gives him this new lease on life. I don't know, because he couldn't have been killed anyway. Right. The whole movie they talk about how people shoot at him on Christmas Eve, whenever he goes out. Yeah. And sometimes he comes home with new bullet holes.

So I don't know any spiritual goal that was achieved, at all. So, yeah, I mean, so there's no, there's no resolution. Nobody has achieved any sort of a spiritual goal. That's the shitty part of it. THe closing image, which is the opposite of the opening image. There's kind of one there. The opening image was scraping ice off of a windshield. The closing image, they're rebuilding the workshop. So, scraping off, building up. Kind of opposites, which is kind of cool.

But again, there's no real storyline finish, just that they have to rebuild the workshop, and they're gonna continue being under government contract. Pretty much nothing that happened in the movie really mattered. It didn't really change anyone's life except, I guess, kind of Billy's. Because he, Santa came and told him to stop being such a prick, basically. Right. Right? And he says, I'm keeping my eye on you, right? And he pulls up the eye patch and shows that

Like, that's what I get pissed off about. Because there was so much potential with this. Now, all that shit aside, there is some fun to this movie. Yeah, absolutely. So, Skinny, I think, Had the best change, at all, somewhat. He didn't, again, there was no resolution. But, he had the, kind of, he had the most at stake. Sort of, like his personal demons, with Santa. He had the best opportunity for growth. More than Billy, I think. A hitman never cares for anything, right?

He's got no affection for life, that's why they're a hitman. And because of Santa's neglect, He's going on this journey. It could help him grow and care for something. So that whole subplot about the hamster, that could have been, that would have been better served if that came near the end of the film. And he kind of learned an appreciation for living things. Right? Right. Right. But somehow they kind of shoehorn this in throughout the whole film.

He's got this running gag, sort of this running story, that he loves his hamster. I don't know why, but he does care for something. Yeah. Right?

Yeah. It's hamster. Well, like I said

And because they, maybe because they're a captive audience and they couldn't yell at the, at the TV, and they actually enjoyed it. And, anyways, I'm gonna let them share their thoughts on Fat Man.

Yeah. I thought that was pretty funny. And then so the elves, to me, like I said earlier, the elves steal the show. The elves are, provide some of the best humor. When they're talking about their diet and their sleep schedule, for example, they're talking about all the carbs and sugar they eat. And he's talking to the military guy who's like, well, you guys need eight hours of sleep a night. And the elf seven, that's the leader elf seven. He goes every, this is a quote.

Every elf takes a 20 minute nap every eight hours, keeps our bodies fresh and allows us to work in a 24 hour rotation. And then at one point, Santa's talking to elf number seven. And he says they're, they're, they're happy how things are going, right? They're, they're building all this shit for the military. And Santa says, when have you ever seen it go perfect? And Elf 7 goes, 1910 was close. Like, I just saw a random obscure line, like, Right.

Kind of gives you an idea how many centuries, you know, how long they've been doing this, how many years has Santa been around. Right. But it was just funny, 1910 was close. Like, they almost had a perfect Christmas in 1910. Um. The military guy asks L seven why he wasn't promoted to Elf one and he gets offended. Elf seven's like, we don't reissue numbers. It would be unethical and disrespectful. Yeah.

But when he's sparring, they show him sparring, like, MMA sparring with an opponent. Yeah. At the gym, and he breaks this guy's arm. Oh

he's happy. He's like, I broke his arm. I broke his arm. I broke his arm. Yeah, yeah. He's letting, he's letting everyone know that he did it. Later, like he said when he says, I'm here for the fat man, and the guy asks, who? And he goes, Santa Claus, motherfucker. I actually laughed out loud when that happened.

So yeah, so Walt Goggins provides a lot of the humor. Elf 7 provides a lot of the humor. The only one that provided virtually no Fun parts was Billy. Yeah, and and in some cases Fat the fat man himself. I mean, he's got a couple of funny lines Like I said, the steroids line was pretty

funny. But again, there's so much there that they could have done Yeah, it's almost like there was three different stories and they didn't know which one they wanted to tell So they tried to rush all three of them Into one mishmash pot of shit and, and none of them, virtually none of them have a payoff. Right.

Like there's virtually no resolution other than, the only resolution I can see comes halfway through the film and that's the fat man gets the government contract so now he's government funded for the rest of his life. Yeah. Like up until then they were trying to earn money. You know, government funded to make weapons. Yeah. To make weapons throughout the year, 11 months outta the year. And then of course the 12th month they'll make Christmas gifts. Oh

man. So, alright, I have a little bit of trivia. I have just a couple things of trivia. I don't have a lot. I got

So the character of Billy played by Chance Hertzfeld. Mm-Hmm. Hertzfeld. Do you know why he was cast No idea. The filmmakers cast him because he looks like Ben Shapiro. Ah, he does!

at. Like, unless they're Like, staunch liberals, and this was like some sort of an attack on Ben Shapiro, I don't know. Or, they're staunch right wingers, and they love Ben

Mel Gibson is the eighth Academy Award winner to play Santa. Can you name any of the previous seven? Billy Bob Thornton. Billy Bob Thornton played Santa in Well, that's correct, although he doesn't ever play the real Santa. He just plays Santa in Bad Santa. I saw him in the Santa suit. In Bad Santa 2, right. So he plays Santa twice. Yeah. Well, I said a fake Santa, but he still plays Santa. Billy Bob Thornton, correct answer. Yes, he is one of How about Ed

My god, that was gonna kill me. He plays John Hammond in Jurassic Park. Anyway, he played Santa in Miracle on 34th Street. Right. Oh

Art Carney, who's an Oscar winner, played Santa three times. In three different movies. Of course, we already mentioned Richard Attenborough and Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Hanks. And the last one to do it, the seventh one before Mel Gibson, is Jim Broadbent, who's an Oscar winner. He played Santa twice in two different movies, Arthur Christmas in 2011 and 2014's Get Santa. So, couple interesting things there. Yeah so the

So you want to move on? I kind of want to. I'm dying to get to die hard.

Alright, here we go, Die Hard. So written by Jeb Stewart and Steven, Steven I. D'Souza. It's based on the book Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorpe. Directed by John McTiernan. Logline. New York cop tries to save his estranged wife and several others taken hostage by terrorists during a Christmas party in Los Angeles. You can't get a better logline than that. Right. That's simple. Clean. To the point. Clean and it's your act too. It is setting up the premise, right? And the

Will he live happily ever after or won't he? With his wife, mind you, I don't mean physically. And this is a point I'm going to make here. That, interestingly enough, this movie is really not about terrorists. And the front of an action film it is. But really, this is John McClane trying to fix his marriage. Right. Right? That's what this movie's truly about, which is why it'll kind of key into the Christmas theme a little bit later. But anyway It's the idea of change.

At the beginning, McClane is filled with a lot of stubborn anger, and on this journey, he'll learn how to put his personal feelings and ego aside, and think about what is most important in his life. Like all people do in Christmas movies. But anyway, we'll get to that. Hey, inciting incident slash the catalyst. The terrorists take control of the building and make their presence known to everyone. It just occurred to

I'll stay with her, with all the other terrorists. We'll let the cops do their job. You know, and as long as I got Holly right next to me, I just want to make sure she's okay. I'm not going to try to get away. You know, like, what's the point of that? Like, I want to make sure my wife is okay. He could have done all of that. He's not a threat at this moment. They have no idea he's a cop. They have no idea he's any sort of a threat. He could just say, let's let the LAPD handle this.

I just want to take care of my wife. Best way to do that is to protect her. No. that's his debate. He changes his mind. He's, he decides he's gonna escape and, and battle these terrorists, right? Trying to figure out what is happening. He goes on this sort of covert mission. At that point, I gotta find out everything I can and somehow alert the cops.

Side point, and this is very important. I want to take a break for a second just to, just to nail this down, because I've heard this on the internet, I've heard this from other people, and it pisses me off every time. That debate that I just gave you, I have heard people argue, if McClane did nothing, the movie would have ended just fine.

If he didn't involve himself, No. He would have met up with Holly with all the other hostages at the end when the bad guys left and escaped with all the money And everything would have been

And then he gets off the radio, and he says to his henchmen, as soon as those things touch down, we blow the roof, they spend the next six months sifting through the rubble, when they figure out what went wrong, we'll be sitting on a beach, earning 20%. Yep. His intention is to kill everybody. Yeah, 100%. Because he even tells McLean later, if you steal 600, you can disappear. When you steal 600 million, they will find you unless they think you're already dead.

He wanted them to not be able to, to, to, to, identify which bodies were the hostages and which bodies were the terrorists. He wanted the cops to believe that everybody died when the roof blew. So he was gonna kill everybody. Yeah. So I cannot argue this enough, if McClane doesn't make that debate, doesn't make that decision, they're all dead. Yeah. He had to do what he was gonna do to save everybody. All right. Sorry, I had to take a little break there. Break into two.

Takagi's killed and McClane sees it and he kind of hears Han's plan, right? When he's listening, he can hear that they're trying to get into the safe. That's the whole point. He's trying to get into the vault. And when Takagi refuses to give up the vault, they kill him. After escaping, he sets off the fire alarm in hopes of alerting the cops. This is now officially the mirror flip of Act 1. We are now in Act 2. Right? Officially. He's on the run in the building alone.

And the concept, the premise is being delivered. Terrorists have hostages, McClane has to try to alert the cops, and he battled the hostages one at a time. Right. That's your fun and games, which is the next beat. Fun and games. This is what we call the promise of the premise, is when the scenes from the trailer happen. That's when you know you're in Act 2, right? Okay. McClane battles some bad guys, he kills Carl's brother, there's the rooftop shootout scene. Oh,

And the sweatshirt that you can buy, it looks like it's a sweatshirt. Just like that, written in blood, a replica of that. Now I have a machine gun, ho ho ho. Yeah. So that's a, what a Christmas sweatshirt

So he knows this is a chance to find out who the boss is. Find out his name. He's writing down everything with a sharpie on his arm. On his arm, right. So he can get information. So there's a lot of reasons why you do that. Right. But ultimately, other than getting information, he's ruffling their feathers. He's letting them know, like, whatever great plan you had. He even says later, I'm a fly in the ointment, Hans.

She's supposed to relieve some of the pain and stress from the main character. The B story is often romantic. interest in, in, in romance movies but in a lot of times in buddy films, or it could be a partner. Jaws, we talk about how Hooper is introduced right at the 30 minute mark, right? Richard Dreyfuss character has come to sort of relieve some of the pressure from Roy Scheider's character. So enter

right.

That happens at the midpoint scene. And why is that a false victory? Cause we know everything's gonna go to shit. Everything bad's

Ellis tries to help, he gets killed. Hans finds out John's identity. All this is happening in The Bad Guys Closing In. Yeah. So the fake plan gets laid out to the cops, where the hostages, er uh, Hans is only doing this because he wants his revolutionary brothers and sisters. They're captive around the world released. He's acting like that's why they're doing this.

So all that gets laid out and it it all sort of culminates in the all is lost again It's the moment where the main character feels like all hope is gone. Yeah now

To say nothing of the fact, he takes a huge shard of glass to the bottom of his bare foot. Right? Not to mention

Tell her, she's the best thing that's ever happened to a bum like me. She's heard me say I love you a thousand times. She's never heard me say I'm sorry. Huge, right? Talk about Dark Knight of the Soul. And of course, he gets the realization, right? Because again, this is another beautiful element to the Dark Knight of the Soul. Is when the main character believes all is lost, and they got nowhere to go to win. They're pretty much accepting death, or whatever. They've lost, they've failed.

Something happens, or somebody says something, or even they say something, that gives them an idea. The man upstairs. And that idea is what pushes them into Act 3. And sure enough, he says, Just make it out of there, and all, you know, everything will be fine. And he says, that's up to the man upstairs. And then almost a literal fucking light goes off. Right. He's like, what was Hans doing upstairs? Right? So now he's got an idea. Wait a second. There's another element here I'm missing.

There's something I gotta go investigate. Right? So now we break into Act 3. McClain tells Powell to lay off for a while, okay? Realize, that's the last time he talks to Powell. Hmm. Well. He screams at him, right before his fight with Garl, but that's basically the last time he talks to Powell in a conversation until the end. So he says, lay off for a while, and he's gonna go plunge himself into Act 3 by trying to investigate what the hell Hans was doing and what's going on.

Act 3, 5 point finale, here we go, you ready? Gathering the team, McClane is investigating and finds out the roof is wired. Okay, why is that gathering the team? Because the second he sees the roof is wired is his last connection with Paolo when he says, Paolo, Paolo, double cross, the whole roof is wired. So he's trying to let the cops know, that whole plan you guys had? Don't do it. Don't do it.

Execution of the plan, face to face with henchman Carl John knows he's gotta take this guy out and save his wife, right? They've sent Carl to kill him. Now, Carl, of course, is the henchman. He's the, the right hand man of Hans. And he wants revenge. Played wonderfully by Alexander Goodenough, by the way. Right. Who's a, who's a ballet dancer in real life. And, obviously, that translates into martial arts fighting. So he, yeah, he wants revenge for the fact that McLean killed his brother.

Hightower Surprise! After he kills Carl, he's feeling pretty good. I got rid of the henchman. I know what the plan is. All I gotta do is get all the hostages off the roof, save Holly, and we're good. High tower surprise, he gets up there to find out what? Holly's not up there. She was taken hostage by Hans separately to the vault.

That's a high tower surprise for him, because now he's like, Fuck, I came up here to get my wife, and now instead of my wife, I've got 30 hostages of people I don't even know. Right. Right? But I gotta get him off there somehow. I know what you're thinking. Wait a minute. You said he lost his machine gun. Doesn't he use his machine gun to fire over the heads of the hostages to get them off the roof? Not his machine gun. Right. When that, when that one guy opens up the roof door.

And he shoots him. He takes his machine gun. So then he gets up there, fires off. You know, to try to get everybody to go down. The FBI thinks he's a terrorist. They try to kill him. She was taken hostage. Holly was taken hostage. That was the uh, Hightower surprise. Now he's gotta get the hostages off the roof. And he's gotta get off the roof himself. The FBI's trying to kill him, so they're shooting at him.

And of course we have One of my favorite scenes of all time, action sequences, where he ties the fire hose around his waist. Yeah. And jumps off the side of the building as it's blowing up. Yeah, what a great scene, man. As the roof is blowing. Yes. He fires his way into, back into the 30th floor, where he was just at. Where he has to crash through more glass. Grass through more glass. And now he's got the dig down deep moment, right? He's got two bullets left in his gun. That's it, two.

anD he doesn't really know how many ter he knows there's two or three terrorists left. But what is he gonna do? He only has two bullets and his machine gun, the machine gun that he took off the other guy, is empty. So that's useless to him. Execution of the new plan. One of the terrorists comes running out with the Bonds, Kristoff. He belts Kristoff in the face with the butt of the machine gun, knocks him out cold. Okay. By the way, Christophe and Theo are the only two to survive.

every other terrorist dies, right? Anyway, so he knocks out Christophe uh, and then he has this big climax with Hans and Eddie and the whole gold watch thing, and we're gonna talk about that in a second. So, of course, the big, the big execution of the new plan. Two bullets. He finds the seating. Greetings, season greetings, tape tapes, the gun to his back. Yep. It's a great moment where Hans gets to deliver the Yippee Ki Yay, motherfucker. And then of course, he starts laughing.

To try to keep this going a little bit. Let me see if I can keep the banter going a little bit. Because the longer I make them feel relaxed, the better shot I have. If they're pointing their guns at me, I might not survive this. But if they know that they've got me, Right? They know they got me by the balls. They might relax a little bit, then I can get them. So he introduces that line of dialogue, and when Hans jumps right in it, he falls right for that trap.

Cause that's when Hans says, Wait a minute, what did you say to me before? Yippee ki yay. Motherfucker. So then they all start laughing, right? They all start laughing and that relieves the tension of the moment. There's only one person in that scene that's not laughing. Holly. Holly, yeah. She's like, what the fuck is going on here? And that's when he yells Holly and she gives, you know, a little chop in the ribs there to get away from Hans. You know, climactic moment John kills both.

Nice shot between the eyes on Eddie, by the way. And then Hans goes over, and we have what can only be known as the Nakatomi moment. It's not Christmas Eve until Hans Gruber falls from Nakatomi Plaza. I have a couple of parts on that. I want to make sure I listed it down. I didn't. I missed it, so I'm going to tell you right now. One of the trivia things. When they shot that scene, okay, they were on a soundstage. And, they knew they were going to blue screen it.

Yeah. Obviously, you can't really drop him out of a building. But, the drop was still, on the soundstage, a good 30, 40, 50 feet, something like that. Yeah. But, it was on to one of those big air mattresses, you know, or whatever. So, they wanted the realism of his face. Yeah, yeah. Because even the real actor Alan Rickman, said In an interview, he's like, I still wasn't very happy about, they still wanted to drop me like 40 feet. Right.

He's like, so even though, so he's like, so I was tensing up and preparing myself for it. Right, right. Well, they got up there, and they said, okay, we're gonna drop you on three. Okay? One. And they drop him. They don't even keep counting. So his reaction is real. He didn't know it was coming. So when they drop him, he's got that look on his face like, Oh fuck! Like they're dropping me. So he didn't know it was coming. That's why his face is authentic like that. That was really his face.

He really didn't know they were dropping him. So it's a pretty funny, pretty great moment. Little trivia there. Alright, so let me, I, I jumped over it real quick, this kind of goes into the theme of Christmas, we're gonna talk about it a little bit.

Well, why'd you make him go through the computer thing? So, so dad I know why, I know why.

He could have been like, they went home already. They're already gone. You know what I mean? So when he says 30th floor, he says, Oh, she's at the party. Well, I

So instead of typing it in, he could have said I'm looking for Holly Gennaro. And he says, just type it in there. He could have said, well, she works for Nakatomi. Isn't, you know. Yeah, does she work for Nakatomi? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. She works for Nakatomi. What floor are they on?

He's like, I don't like the look of this, Sarge. And then when it happens, he's like Christ! We need some new FBI guys, I guess. Right? So that is a funny moment. But wait, we've kind of skipped the end here, so. Okay. Resolution, of course. McClane wins. He happily finds Holly. You know, of course we get to the part where Paul puts his demons to bed by killing Carl. Holly takes out Thornburg for just being Thornburg. Right?

And then, the closing image, mirror flip of the first one, instead of McClane arriving as an estranged husband, he's now leaving as a happily married man. Yep. A complete flip of the opening image because of the journey that happened in between. Okay, other trivia.

By the way, before we get to the trivia, I already said one piece of trivia. Do you see how clearly the beats are laid out? Yeah. And how the structure is perfect and clean? Yep. Right? Fatman does none of that shit, pretty much. You know, and again, we had this argument when we did Jaws vs. Jaws 4. Jaws has such clear beats. And, and plot points, and nailing the beats down, and then you get to Jaws 4 and none of that shit happens, and it's just a mess because of it.

And, and for anyone that wants to be a writer, that's why you have to nail these beats to keep your story clean. Alright, trivia. The 1966 book, The Detective, was the first, well I don't want to say his first book, but it's the book about this, the author wrote that book that wrote Nothing Lasts Forever. It was centered around a cop named Joe Leland, who's played in the 1968 film, the Detective by Frank Sinatra. Sinatra wanted a sequel, okay?

But by the time Roger Thorpe wrote, nothing Lasts Forever, which came out in 1979, Sinatra was already a little too old to be playing this cop, Joe Leland, and he, so he was too old to play the part. Also, what took so long is that Roger Thorpe had later said, I think in an interview. He had trouble writing a sequel because he kills everybody in the detective. Yeah, right. The detective, almost everybody dies off except the lead. So he's like, how am I going to write a sequel?

You know what I mean? So he kind of had to hash up the sequel where it's actually not his estranged wife. He's going out to see his daughter. Who I believe in the book. She's who falls off the building, not Hans Gruber. Oh my god. So, yeah, it's kind of bleak. This had a much better ending. So Sinatra was a little too old to play him by the time it came out. So by the time they were kicking around Hollywood, who's going to write the script? It went through several different writers.

When these guys got a hold of it, they turned it into what you know today as Die Hard. Stevie Wonder's song, Skeletons. Which is kind of about lies and deceit, is played twice in Argyle's Limo. So, it's, you're suggesting it's either an hour long song, which it isn't, or Argyle likes it so much, he plays it twice. Yeah. It's, it's heard two times when Argyle's in the limo. The very first time is when John McClane calls down to the limo, and he says, hey Mac, how's it going?

He's like, yeah, the boat's not in yet. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's when the bad guys are cutting the phone lines. Yep. In that scene, you hear Stevie Wonder's song, Skeletons, playing. Hmm. In the background. That same song is playing when Powell's getting his car shot up, and he's going in reverse, and he's like, Ah, dammit, Jesus H. Christ! Right. I need backup assistance now! You know? Wow. They do a shot of Theo in the limo, Yeah.

And he's on the phone, he doesn't even know what's going on behind him. Yeah. That song

And he's rockin to the song, you can hear Stevie Wonder's lyric of Turnin up the heat uh, gettin ready to pop. That's the line of the lyric. So, John McTiernan specifically used that song for two different parts of the movie to, you know, basically designate what's going on in the story. Genius use of a song, by the way. Okay, so, I have an interesting little thing here before we talk about Whether or Not It's a Christmas Movie. This is for writers.

If you want to know why Die Hard is so awesome, and you can do this with other of your favorite films and see if it works, in a really well written screenplay, do the beats work for other characters? Not just your lead. So we're gonna do, real quick, little fun little exercise, we're gonna do a quick beat sheet for Sergeant Al Powell. Okay. Are you ready? Yeah. Opening image. He's buying snacks to take home to his pregnant wife. Theme stated. Thought you guys just ate donuts.

That's what the clerk at the store tells him. Why is that a theme? Here's why. He's signifying the theme is, Is Powell A regular old cop. And I'll tell you why. Let me dig into this here. This is the scene because Powell's carrying around that regret that we don't even know about yet. Right, right. But it's got him off the street. So he doesn't have the respect of his fellow officers. Cause he's a desk jockey. He refused to go out on the streets anymore, right? He, he just mans a desk now.

So is he like every other cop? Or not? That's his personal theme. Can I be a cop like everybody else? Or am I the guy that just sits at a desk all day because I'm afraid to go out on the street? Because I had this, this accident, this trauma in my past. Inciting incident. Given the task of checking out Nakatomi Plaza, a body falls on his car. Boom. He's now in act two. Debate begins. He's got a debate here. He could easily say, I'm going home guys. Here's what's going on. All the

cops show up. The deputy chief of police shows up and he says, this isn't my thing. I'm a desk jockey. I'm gonna take my Twinkies and go home to my pregnant wife, which is where I was going when all this happened. You guys take care of this. This is real police work. He doesn't do that though, does he? He makes the decision to stay, right? Okay, break

into two. He makes contact with McClain. We're now in his second act of his story, where he's now talking back and forth with McClain after the cops show up. Deputy Chief of Police Dwayne Robinson hasn't shown up yet, but the other cops have. Fun and games. Premise, information goes back and forth, including the cops raid on the building.

Midpoint scene, Powell tells off his boss. This is important as a midpoint scene. In his story, being the tough cop instead of a desk jockey is what he wants. Though he hasn't actually earned the respect yet, right? But that's a false victory for him. I got to tell off my boss. That's when the cop said, when the deputy says, I'm really going to go after McClain now. And he says, you think he gives a damn what you're going to do to him if he makes it out of there?

Why don't you wake up and smell what you shoveling? You know, the cop says, anytime you want to go home, Sergeant, you consider yourself dismissed. No way! You couldn't, or no, no sir, you couldn't drag me away. Midpoint scene. Right, right.

Bad guy's closing in, the FBI comes. They're in charge now, which makes it harder for Powell to achieve his spiritual goal. Because if the FBI comes in and takes over Powell has no chance to, to redeem himself.

And he has one sort of big scene, all is lost, break into three, the roof blows, the FBI agents die. It's a false defeat because you think, well this is bad, we lost the FBI agents.

But in reality, he cannot reach his redemption with those FBI guys around. Right.

Five point finale. Are you ready? Even Powell has a five point finale. Here we go. Gathering the team. You have to work with me on this one. Gathering the team. He's going with all the other cops to see all the hostages coming out. Right? He's, he's, he's assisting in saving and getting the hostages out of the building. He's really looking for McLean. But he doesn't know what he looks like, and he hasn't talked to him in a while, so he doesn't know if he's dead. Right. Right?

He could be thinking, McClane's dead, but I gotta go find out for myself. Execution of the plan. He makes actual face to face contact with McClane and hugs it out. That's the execution of his plan. He feels important, like he's a regular cop. High tower surprise! Carl is alive! And he rises up with his gun, he's gonna kill McClane! Dig down deep! Everybody loses their shit, except Powell, right? Yep. As McLean covers over Holly, and everyone else is in fear and shock, Powell must take control.

Execution of the new plan! Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! And one more good one? Pow! Powell takes out Carl. Resolution. Powell saves the day, and has earned the respect of the other cops, and he's reached his spiritual goal of redemption. Yep. Closing image, he puts his gun away, and he goes back home to his pregnant wife, which is where he was going when it started. Yep.

So tell me, doesn't Powell have a clear beat three act structure?

Yeah. So every time something bad happens, that's good for Hans, right? Every time something bad happens to McLean, that's a plus for Hans. You know what I mean? You could almost come up with the same beat sheet, only reverse the highs and lows, and you would have Hans Gruber's beat sheet, right? Yep. And which brings me to the gold watch. Hans Gruber's If you were to do a beat sheet for Hans Gruber, I can tell you what his spiritual goal would be. What lesson he needs to learn.

And this is one of the points of whether or not it's a Christmas movie.

The gold watch signifies materialism. Right? Money. And they try to throw it in John's face in the beginning of the movie. When Ellis says, show him the watch. Yeah. And she's like, later, and he's like, It's a Rolex. It's just a token of our appreciation for all our hard work. It's a Rolex. Ellis is such a douche. Fuck you, dude. Such a douche. But here's the thing. It represents material things.

What does every Christmas movie teach us? Family over material things. Right? To learn what you truly need to respect. Is attention, affection, love, family. Those are the things that matter at Christmas. Not money, not gifts, not material things. Right? How is this signified at the end? Hans Gruber is holding on to that watch. When he's dangling from the building. Yeah. And it's signifying that he's still grasping at the reason why he was there. Yep. He wants money.

He wants the material things. And John McClane unlatches the watch. Right? And that's what causes Gruber to fall. So if you were to create a beat sheet for Hans Gruber, it would end with him realizing his spiritual goal was you shouldn't have been chasing the money, honey. You shouldn't have been chasing material things, or you wouldn't have fallen to your death. So gratifying. Right? And you could have, and again, if we had the time, we could come up with a beat sheet for Hans.

Yeah. And that would be his spiritual goal. Yeah. Is learning that lesson. Unfortunately, he learns the lesson in the ten seconds or so it takes for him to drop

And she says, Jesus, when she sees him, like, everything he went through to save her, she realizes her arc is, he's not selfish. He's not egotistical. He did all that shit to save me. You know what I mean? Yeah. And that's when she realizes, you know, her arc is to accept that. You know, sometimes he's brash, sometimes he's egotistical, sometimes it's, he's stubborn and it's his way or no way. But when it comes to family, he is willing to put everything out there for her.

You know, so, you know, there's a lot of growth in this film between those two and that's why it's not really about the terrorists. It's about their marriage. Right, right. Right?

Um, Okay, are we ready to get into the reasons why it's a Christmas movie? Yeah, let's go for it. All right, here we go. I have nine points and I don't think any of them mention the gold watch. So that's actually a tenth one that I just told you ahead of time. Okay. So we actually have ten then. So the gold watch is a Christmas theme. Chasing money and not family. Right. So if we include the gold watch, it's actually ten reasons why it's a Christmas movie. But here we go.

I'll assume that was number one. Here's number two. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Called the Ode to Joy. It serves as part of the unofficial soundtrack for the movie, right? Right. While it was not written specifically as a Christmas song, In Japan, that song is strongly connected to the idea of opening of presents.

Just like at the end when he is got the gun taped to his back. You hear the jingle bells jingle. Oh yeah, I forgot. Yeah, that's a sound effect. And it's used only when John's about to do something. Yeah. So he's got jingle bells. That's his o personal soundtrack. Specifically the opening arrival at the airport. You hear them then, too. Okay, next part. There are four Christmas songs that play in the movie. Including a rap song at the beginning. Yeah, Run DMC.

Yeah, Run DMC when Argyle's driving him there. Okay next. The word Christmas is said 19 times. Which is an average of once every six and a half minutes. Damn, that's crazy. Five, a website, or actually this is six if you include the gold watch. The next point, a website called StephenFollows. com which rates movies on their level of Christmas. Depicted in them, Die Hard was rated as having 99 percent more Christmas vibe than any film released in the last 30 years.

The cinematic image of this is releasing the gold watch so that Hans Gruber falls to his death. He, he was clinging to the material object as John protector of his family lets him go. So that was actually one of the elements. Okay. That was the sixth

Nine, the ninth and final. An article in Men's Health, on the Men's Health website, suggests another idea that other people overlook. McClane is serving as a Christ like character. One who is, A, put under trial by forces of evil in his attempts to redeem everyone, B is often barefoot and cut with glass, thus stigmata marks are like Christ's wounds during crucifixion. This is all off a website, by the way. I'm not making this up.

C, McClane must be delivered like a child, and Powell treats McClane as he might his own son, though removed a Joseph like character. If you can see the connections between Religious Undertones and Die Hard, Die Hard is. A Christmas movie. Alright, that last one was a stretch, but I didn't include it. So, alright, three reasons why it is not a Christmas movie, and I can debunk all three of them. Number one, Bruce Willis himself said it was not a Christmas movie.

My argument is, if we start believing now everything celebrities say, then, you know Right. We'll never find our way out of this world. Yes. Willis has kids. And likely wanted to spend their youth watching other holiday fare and not his vulgar laced film. So his opinion is compromised. Two, the distribution company 20th Century Fox obviously didn't see it as a Christmas movie as it was released in July of 1988. Well I have a debunking for that too.

The 1947 Miracle on 34th Street was released on the 4th of July

It could have been a child's birthday. It could have been Easter. It could have been Fourth of July. It didn't have to be Christmas. However, here's how I debunk that. If you take the basic theme of It's a Wonderful Life widely considered the ultimate Christmas classic and you take Christmas out of it That movie still works too. It's about a suicidal man who's shown by an angel how his life would be if he never existed. It really has nothing to do with Christmas, basically.

In fact, Christmas isn't even mentioned in the It's a Wonderful Life logline. But it's mentioned in the Die Hard logline. So suck on that, people. Suck on that. Die Hard, I have just proven to you, is a Christmas movie. I think the argument is dead now. We can move on. Yes, well done. Any final thoughts on Die Hard before we get to Six Degrees? Nope, just watch it. I feel like, as usual, I feel like I've been monopolizing the conversation. Yeah, I came

That's awesome. So, so when I say guys, I mean, yes, I mean guys and gals, dudes, everyone, writers. DO you see the difference? Again, we talked about this on Jaws vs. Jaws 4. Do you see the difference between these two? Fatman had very little structure at all. And the frustrating part of Fatman is that it had great opportunity. It had some fun themes. That could have been explored. With some amazing payoffs.

What I love most about a movie like Scrooged Is, even though it's Bill Murray at his finest and it's filled with so many funny parts, there's sad parts in it too. A lot of the character development is sad. He's a sad person and he has to deal with this sadness that's inside of him. In order for him to reach his spiritual goal, fat Man had that opportunity. Fat Man could have been. Our era's Scrooged, which also came out in 1988, by the way. We could have done Scrooge vs. Diehard.

That probably would have been more fun for us. But

Fat Man delivers some funny parts, but it doesn't really, aside from some action scenes, it doesn't deliver enough of the drama. We don't care enough about any of these characters. Sad to say, even Santa Claus. I didn't care enough about these characters. Right, right. You know? Because Santa is played by Mel Gibson might be the only reason why I cared. Right. Because, because I like Mel Gibson! You know what I mean? Like, I, I like him in movies and I like when he plays characters like that.

But there was so much that they could have done and didn't. They failed on so many parts and that's the frustrating part. Die Hard delivers. Right Die Hard delivers on its premise. It delivers on everything. It's supposed to do and fat man simply does not right so from a writing standpoint, I mean, especially if we you know as we talked about if you can do the beats The, the three act structure and the beat sequences with other characters like we did for Powell. Right.

Then you know it's a damn good script. It's, other characters have arcs. Yeah. They have goals that they need to achieve. Fatman, first of all, can't seem to figure out who the damn lead is. Yeah, if you can't figure

Now Lee from Lights, Camera, Rant, who is out of Melbourne, Australia. He was gracious enough to give us the audio and the video. We love you, Lee!

It's gonna probably take me a bit before we get it up on our YouTube channel so I just would suggest, and I'll put it in these show notes, if you want to watch the YouTube, we'll send you to his YouTube channel, probably for the first month or whatever that it's, it's out, we just want to send the traffic to his YouTube channel and give him all the love because it was a fun episode.

Yeah. He, I know Lee enjoyed just us breaking down Both movies and comparing a really, truly great movie with a really, truly awful movie. And it was, it was frickin awesome. So, and that was a long one. It was like what, two and a half hours?

Again, you can't really see us, but we're wearing

What do you got for me today? So, I threw a couple

So, so you can't use Die Hard or Fat Man in these movies, er, in the Six Degree Connections.

And James Shigeta, who actually been around for a long time. A lot of people think because he played Takagi so well, he must be Japanese. He's not. He's actually an American actor. He was born in Hawaii. And he died in 2014 at the age of 85. So, good long year for him, good long career for him. Not a lot of huge movies though. When you Google him or Wikipedia him, most will say best known for playing Takagi in Die Hard. But, I got news for you. James Shigeta was in Midway in 1976. I saw that.

Midway is loaded with people. Right. One of which is James Coburn. Who was in eraser 1996 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. He's in that with James Conn. And James Conn was in a 2014 movie called Prego Land that featured Chance Hertz Field. Wow.

But, another one of the things he said that I liked was when he met with the brothers. By the way, you did have a little bit of trivia you forgot to mention. The brother's last name is Nelms, is it? Yeah. And there's a was it a

He said that when he sat down to talk with these guys, they had lunch somewhere, and they're trying to pitch this movie to him. He said what won him over Was how excited they were. About the movie and about making the movie. And that just, you know, I mean, you can imagine a guy like Mel Gibson who spent his career in film How many big wigs he must have dealt with that see it only as a business? Right, right, right, right.

We're gonna do this movie because it's gonna make money and blah, blah, blah. It must be refreshing to see young guys come along and be like Dude, we got this script. It's not that great. But man, it's gonna be fun. You know what I mean? He probably looked at the script and was like, This script's a mess, but these guys are fun. And they're, they're excited, and they're enthusiastic about making movies. Which, which brings me back to Jesse's criticism. Which is funny about, what'd she say?

It bothers me that people can make movies? Yeah,

It took him out of the film because he said everything he said and did is something that a real police chief wouldn't do. Like, a real police chief wouldn't be so combative to somebody that's trying to help them. You know, so it really took him out of the film, and he thought he was the worst written character in the film. And he just couldn't deal with it. Siskel, of course, was like, I didn't care about none of that shit. It was a great movie. I loved it. Thumbs up.

And, you know, it is what it is. We all make mistakes

it's a perfect film, man. I don't care what anyone says, Die Hard is a perfect movie. And nowadays you can have up to 10 nominees for best picture. Up until 2008, 2009 actually, in 2008. Here's a little bit of side trivia. The Dark Knight did not get nominated for Best Picture. It didn't make the final five. There was only five nominees for Best Picture up until then. There was such an outrage that the Dark Knight did not get included for Best Picture, that they changed the rules at the Oscars.

So there could be more added, yeah. Up to 10 films could be nominated for Best Picture, so that more inclusive films, more films that people have seen.

Diehard is a Best Picture nominee in 1988, if the current Academy rules existed then. Right. But we all know who won Best Picture in 1988. Rain Man. Oh yeah. It's hard to beat Rain Man. It's not gonna win Best Picture. Diehard wouldn't win Best Picture. Right. But it would be nominated, right? Yeah.

On the all time top 250 list on IMDb, it currently ranks 118. 118 out of 250 of all time. These are all time. Mm hmm. So that's pretty good. 118? It was nominated, it did not win any Oscars. Right, right, right. It was nominated for four. Yeah. Best sound? Best film editing, best sound effects editing, and best visual effects. Again, this is prior to the CGI era. Yeah, yeah. So so real special effects had to be used, right? Yeah. They actually had to blow shit up.

With the exception of the green screen of Hans Gruber falling, which, by the way, by today's standards You can tell that's a blue screen, right? You can tell that he's not really falling off a building. Today's special effects, that would have looked a hell of a lot better. So yeah, I don't know. I it's classic, man. It's a classic and it's a Christmas classic. I watch it every year at Christmas. Do you watch it every year at Christmas?

And those are the three movies I watch every year while I wrap presents overnight. Any holiday movie traditions

Because I have a neighbor, here's one shout out I will give, Siri Mitchell, who lives a few houses down from me, is adamant Die Hard is not a Christmas movie. I'm giving her a shout out on my platform to let her know, officially, she is wrong, and I've proved her wrong.

So my brother and I want to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a very safe and Happy New Year. So if you're going to keep drinking and watching, make sure you do it right and get a designated driver.