Bruce Willis
The action star sits down with Pure Movies Editor Dan Higgins to talk about John McClane, terrorism, fighting women and the Die Hard franchise.

Bruce Willis sits down with Pure Movies Editor Dan Higgins to talk about John McClane, terrorism, fighting women and the Die Hard franchise.

It has been twelve long years since Die Hard with a Vengeance. What expectation was there on you? And did you ever feel in your heart that perhaps you couldn’t match that expectation?

Bruce Willis: I think that the “What if?” game is what you get to do. You can say “What if this?” and “What if that?” You get to compare actors, you get to compare films. It’s part of your job, it’s what you do. Fortunately, I don’t have to do that and I hate the “What if?” game. I’m so much a believer that everything is happening exactly the way it is supposed to be happening. I can give you examples from my life, and everyone has examples from their own life, of how sometimes the worse thing that ever happened to you led to the best thing that ever happened to you. So, my answer is that twelve years was exactly the right amount of time. Had I not done it now I might not have met Len at the right time and, if we had done it at any other time, we wouldn’t have the great cast that are in this film. That’s the way that I look at it. I look at the positive side that all of these things were meant to happen.

How exhausting was filming Die Hard 4.0?

BW: I’m not going to kid you, I used to bounce of the concrete a lot easier than I do now. I wish I kept a scrapbook because there was a couple of solid weeks in there where, from my hip to my ankle, both legs were black and blue…just beat to shit. I knocked out once and got stitches but I have souvenirs like that from all four films.

With that said, would you make a Die Hard 5?

BW: If they’re talking about doing another one, I’d better hurry up and do it. But there’s a thing they say about women and childbirth. They say “if women remembered the pain of childbirth there would be no more children born, everybody would have one kid and that’s it.” As time goes by, I forget I was hurt and cranky and irritable around the set at 5am when they wanted me to get excited about blowing the building up with me in, but now I am very excited about it.

What were you hoping for before you made the film?

BW: What I hoped for and what I got was way beyond my expectations. When everyone got hired, I was praying to God that everyone would show up and do a great job and everyone far exceeded that. I couldn’t have been more pleased.

How much of a coup was it having Silent Bob in the film?

BW: Yeah, we only had Kevin Smith for two days and a third day if absolutely necessary. Every scene we didn’t know what to do with got dumped in a Kevin Smith scene. So, on the day he turned up we had a 15 page scene that explained everything in the film that had no explanation. It was really good to have him in the film and he really helped us clean out the clutter and it turns out Silent Bob is not very silent (laughs).

I heard you looked in detail at the previous three films to determine the content of this one. Where there any rules you abided by? And which do you think is the best Die Hard?

BW: Well, I think, and I know you do too, that the first film has always been the best film. It has always been the film that is the high watermark of what all these Die Hards and a lot of action movies should be and seem to aspire to. Also, you have to remember that the second two films were done when the sequel business was just starting out and we were flailing wildly when we did the second one. So, there was one thing we said was an immediate rule; we cannot be self-referential and we can’t make any reference to the other Die Hards or any other action film that has come since. Die Hard 2: Die Harder was really self-referential…almost in a back-patting way. The third one, Die Hard with a Vengeance or, as I like to call it, Thank God Sam Jackson and Jeremy Irons are in the film, had a lot of cool components in it but, in my mind and in my heart, I always wanted to do another film to take one more shot at it and get as close to the first film as possible. So, we went through all three films and said “That’s good” and “That sucks, we can’t do that” and we narrowed it down.

Die Hard 4.0 turns away from CGI and uses real stunts that come across superbly on-screen. Who do you credit with that?

BW: Len Wiseman. He brought the series into the 21st century by giving it a really smart, shiny patina of technology and, at the same time, having the courage to do old-school stunts when it could have been really easy to do CGI stunts. While we do use some CGI, because you are not allowed to fly a fighter jet along the streets of Washington D.C., all the stunts are real stunts. We flew a real car into a real helicopter.

John McClane engages in hand-to-hand combat with a woman, Maggie Q, in the film. How did you feel about this?

BW: The stuff I do with Maggie Q is just bananas. First of all, I’ve never fought a woman in a film before. Second of all, I never got my ass kicked by a woman in a film before. Third of all, I don’t hit women in real life…never have, never will, but Maggie Q brought believability to it that just made it look like “Wow, he’s getting his ass kicked.” It’s an odd thing and I’m still waiting to see the reaction it gets. I hit her with my best left and she gets up and it’s like “Goddamn, this girl is rough.” So she really sold it, she was excellent.

In the film, you are old-school in a digital world. So, how computer-savvy are you?

BW: Medium. I can turn the computer on. I know where the disk goes…in that little slot. I can’t always get it out though. I have three really genius level computer-savvy kids who save my ass all the time. I don’t watch news on TV anymore, I get my news online and, like all of you, I can google anyone I want (laughs).

Despite your age, you look in the peak of physical fitness in the film. How much work in the gym did you do?

BW: You know what, as much as I have done films where I have had to get into shape for purely vanity-driven reasons, if you read a script and it says “rips his shirt off and casually throws it on the chair”, you are going to go to the gym the next day. Nobody wants to see your fat ass out there taking your shirt off. This film has less to do with vanity and more to do with just making my muscles stronger so my 52 year-old bones wouldn’t shatter on the concrete.

In comparison to the others, the swearing has definitely lessened in this film. Is there a particular reason for this?

BW: In the first film there is unbridled cussing. I wish that back then someone had said “Maybe we should do one without you saying (whispers) “cocksucker” a thousand times”. I got a letter from my aunt and she let me have it. The one out now just has less swearing in and that’s just the rules right now that we have to live by and if that’s someone’s criteria of what they need from a film then there are tonnes of films out there that cuss left and right and it has no meaning.

During the first film, terrorism was a concept. In today’s society, it is very much a reality. How did that effect the making or content of this film?

BW: You are absolutely right, that is a good question. In the first three films we said terrorism everywhere and, after 9/11, a lot of action movies that dealt with terrorism got put on the shelf. Die Hard would probably have been one of them. It was our task in trying to do the film and still talk about terrorists to not dishonour the memory of the people who lost their lives on 9/11…simple as that. We did that and I think it was a unique spin to turn it around and have the United States be attacked from the inside.