Old habits ...die hard.
November 12, 2015 5:12 PM   Subscribe

 
That's almost as embarrassing as the time I went to see a talk by one of the writers of The Simpsons back in 2001, and some guy insisted on handing her his spec script in front of the entire crowd while she told him over and over again that she would not take it.
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:19 PM on November 12, 2015 [5 favorites]


New rule, if you can't piss hard without prostate meds you are too old to do a die hard sequel.
posted by BrotherCaine at 5:27 PM on November 12, 2015 [3 favorites]


It'll never work. You can't just write a Die Hard script, you have to write a script for some other franchise and then edit it into a Die Hard movie when that falls through.
posted by ckape at 5:32 PM on November 12, 2015 [37 favorites]


This reminds me of Patton Oswalt's insane and impassioned ad-lib pitch for a new Star Wars movie.
posted by schmod at 5:37 PM on November 12, 2015 [13 favorites]


It'll never work. You can't just write a Die Hard script, you have to write a script for some other franchise and then edit it into a Die Hard movie when that falls through.

Sure. Fuck it. Whatever. Probably better than whatever they had slated for the next Bond film, use it for that.
posted by Artw at 5:51 PM on November 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


Also... A DIE HARD POST IN NOVEMBER? You are worse than Starbucks. What's next, a Gremlins recap?
posted by Artw at 5:54 PM on November 12, 2015 [27 favorites]


What a hack.

He's hired!
posted by clvrmnky at 5:59 PM on November 12, 2015


Gremlins, yes yes yeessss, that's brilliant!! Ok, for a reboot we'll get, who for the father? Oh yes, Bruce Willis, maybe with his actual children, they're in the biz right? Let's see, set it around christmas, hey set it in a skyscraper. Then the president is being threatened by a nefarious gremlin plo.... oh never mind....
posted by sammyo at 6:04 PM on November 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


That's almost as embarrassing as the time I went to see a talk by one of the writers of The Simpsons back in 2001, and some guy insisted on handing her his spec script in front of the entire crowd while she told him over and over again that she would not take it.

I'm certain he thought this was "moxie" or "hustle." "Getting a foot in the door," perhaps.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:06 PM on November 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


Super-convoluted, but gutsy. I like!
posted by triage_lazarus at 6:12 PM on November 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


You really shouldn't be using that tagline unless it's some sort of Sister Act or Cadfael the Detective Monk crossover.
posted by howfar at 6:14 PM on November 12, 2015 [4 favorites]


I like a go-getter with moxie as much as anybody, but his story pitch is convoluted, cliché, too long and did not inspire me to want to see that film.
posted by Flashman at 6:19 PM on November 12, 2015


I'm glancing through this, and it mentions two fictional characters in prison who masterminded the two worst terrorist attacks on American soil, and I'm thinking...okay, so, in the Die Hard universe, Osama bin Ladin and Timothy McVeigh were framed? Oo-kay.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:20 PM on November 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


I want to see a meta Die Hard, a-la JCVD, where Bruce Willis gets trapped in an apartment building full of aspiring screenplay writers trying to pitch the next Die Hard, and he has no choice but to fight his way out.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 6:20 PM on November 12, 2015 [33 favorites]


Black Die Hard from the makers of The Sickening.
posted by Artw at 6:31 PM on November 12, 2015 [3 favorites]


The Terminizer: An Erotic Thriller

(Ron Howard is attached to direct)
posted by Servo5678 at 6:47 PM on November 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


Just kidding it was probably a terrible erotic thriller with guns thrown in to make it edgy or something.

You're on your own, Potsie.
posted by rhizome at 6:50 PM on November 12, 2015


BRB, calling number.
posted by loquacious at 6:54 PM on November 12, 2015 [4 favorites]


And he answered an that was a bad idea and about as close as I want to get to Bruce Willis. Oh god, he's calling back. Please don't leave a crazy voicemail.
posted by loquacious at 6:59 PM on November 12, 2015 [11 favorites]


Eric D Wilkinson is clearly a nom-de-plume for this guy.
posted by aeshnid at 7:14 PM on November 12, 2015


Ten Sided Die Hard: Die Hard with a Halberd
posted by howfar at 7:17 PM on November 12, 2015 [4 favorites]


The Terminizer: An Erotic Thriller

(Ron Howard is attached to direct)


Please tell me he will also be narrating.
posted by dephlogisticated at 7:28 PM on November 12, 2015


Man, Rob Schneider has way too much time on his hands these days.
posted by jenkinsEar at 8:08 PM on November 12, 2015


The sad thing is that it's not even like this idea is knee-slapping genius. "Yeah, I got a great idea for a new Die Hard movie, it's gonna blow your mind. Get this: Bruce Willis is stuck in a large but strictly bounded location. It's been taken over by bad guys and he has to stay ahead of them and uncaptured so he can foil their terrorist/mercenary plans and incidentally save a family member who has gotten mixed up in all this. But it turns out their apparent plans are just a distraction and their real goals are mercenary/terrorist!" The only new part is the framing story, and it's not like that's a rarely-seen structural device.

I mean it could still be a great movie, if formulaic. But the parts that would make it great are exactly the parts that would not fit on a full-page Variety ad.
posted by No-sword at 8:16 PM on November 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


Oh, I see. So it's like a psychic political thriller comedy with a heart.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 8:29 PM on November 12, 2015


The content of the pitch isn't terrible, but the method of the pitch is one of the worst imaginable. Funny thing is, if these dudes reversed that they would have a much better chance.
posted by dogwalker at 8:36 PM on November 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


The sad thing is that it's not even like this idea is knee-slapping genius.

On the creative imagination scale it's actually two or three notches below not having any ideas at all.
posted by Segundus at 9:13 PM on November 12, 2015 [3 favorites]


Wait. Part of the reason producers won't take spec scripts is that if they inadvertently later use some of the ideas in a different movie, they may be forced to pay royalties, right? But if you put the entire idea in an ad in the newspaper, they can never prove they didn't read it. I mean, every single person working on the movie probably has a subscription to this paper. And the script is general enough that there is bound to be some overlap. This may be the best money-grabbing scheme since patent trolling.

Also, why would Holly go to great lengths to protect John? I mean, last we saw, they were barely on speaking terms. The riot scene seems like a great spot for them to kiss and make up, but it happens after she tries to defend him in court, so... doesn't make sense? Maybe we can edit her out in post.
posted by miyabo at 9:18 PM on November 12, 2015 [5 favorites]


odinsdream: Came here to ask this. Maybe one of us could act like a real old-fashioned reporter from before the days of clickbait and ask the Hollywood Reporter people.
posted by BiggerJ at 10:09 PM on November 12, 2015


I think this project can be salvaged. Not the movie, that's awful. & pointless But the stalking-all-of-Hollywood-at-once writer, his story has potential. Just record a series of equally failed screenplay writers calling him up & pitching their movies to him. I kind of wonder what his response to that would be?
posted by scalefree at 10:51 PM on November 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


You could even capture the whole dialog visually if you sent a crew to his home to make a documentary film of the making of his film. Of course he'd be narcissistic enough to let them in & then you get the other writers to call in.
posted by scalefree at 10:57 PM on November 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


Still better than Prometheus.
posted by zippy at 11:12 PM on November 12, 2015 [8 favorites]


"Look I got it, it's a thriller about Hollywood, you could film all of it here on the studio. You wouldn't even need sets! It takes place right here and there's some guy sending his screenplay to everybody and I Mean everybody. The screenplay appears in people's car. in people's offices, shoved under the stall in the bathroom, waiting for them when they come back from the bathrrom at the diner's club.

It's strange but no one takes it seriously. It's so awful no one can get past page three. TERRIBLE. Our mains are a young director with no prospects and a contract player being ill-used in silly melodramas. They get the screenplay in the mail and laugh it off, they jokingly read it aloud to friends at drunken parties. It's an in-joke until there's a little accident on set, someone filmin' gets hurt bad. And it looks like negligence but you can't be sure. Ten another accident happens on the set of our hero's latest B-picture, and he starts to read the script in detail.

The script turns out to be a chiller about a cursed movie production strangely similar to the studio our heroes work at. Cursed by the ghosts of an angry showgirl and her screenwriter beau. The screenplay has the entire studio devoured in flames by the vengeful ghosts of Hollywood's hasbeens and never-wasses. Our hero realizes the script is coming true and has to race to figure out who's sending out the scripts and staging the accidents all the while worried his girlfriend is starting to act and look like the dead showgirl in the script and moving to ensure the "movie" gets made.

Whatya say? It's bare budget we could use everyone the lot, come up with an ending later?"

"It's a bit ...RKO don't you think?"

"RKO is doing good stuff."

"But not our stuff. What was the other idea you had?"

"It was uh-"

"yes?"

"Frankenstein Wolfs the meatman."

"Sorry?"

"Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman."

"Excellent, get started on that right way. "
posted by The Whelk at 11:13 PM on November 12, 2015 [18 favorites]


Open on 78 year old John McClane waking in bed, alone. We see from his sheets he has somehow got at least a semi., a fact Willis confirms with trademark facial expression. Pull back, to reveal gun pointing at McClane's head, IR fires repeatedly, definitely killing him.

Close.

This has everything! Shooting, comedy, violence, sexiness, but most of all from the perspective of character resolution McClane dies hard and this bloated, washed up franchise just dies.
posted by biffa at 11:19 PM on November 12, 2015 [5 favorites]


Man, Rob Schneider has way too much time on his hands these days.

Little known fact: it is impossible for Rob Schneider to be under-employed.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:57 PM on November 12, 2015 [8 favorites]


So it's like a psychic political thriller comedy with a heart.

Well, the talking pie is your heart.
posted by rhizome at 12:18 AM on November 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


Dear Sid Sheinberg,

When are you going to release my film, "Old Habits Die Hard"?

                        Eric D. Wilkinson & Richard Schenkman
posted by Bugbread at 12:20 AM on November 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


Sod the movie.

What this portends is LV8R!, the print magazine composed of nothing but one-page pitch adverts, sent free to every pissant exec in LA whether they like it or not but charging $$$ for the ads. It's win-win - they can complete a week's 'work' while sitting on the john on Monday morning, while the wannabe scriptwriters get a shortcut through the whole process of dressing up as Candygram for Mongo to slip their opus to the man. Or, y'know, working at building a reputation by demonstrating creativity for a few years.

It's a complete scam, of course, feeding on laziness and narcissism and desperation and greed. A perfect fit for the industry.
posted by Devonian at 2:35 AM on November 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


I mean it could still be a great movie,

I take it from this that you've never actually seen a Die Hard sequel.
posted by brennen at 4:44 AM on November 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


If the actual movie has any similarities to this pitch (which it has to, being a Die Hard movie) I assume that the poster of the ad intends to sue for plagiarism.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 5:26 AM on November 13, 2015


... In a well known Boston hospital an 80 year old man lies in a coma on life support (notes: we may have to hire a younger actor than Willis for this) . The doctor turns to a young woman and says, "Miss Ferguson, It's been several weeks now and I really recommend that we take your grandfather off life support at this point". The daughter reluctantly nods her head as the Doctor moves towards the wall plug which is when the old man's eyes open as he grabs the doctor's wrist while pulling out an Uzi from under the sheets saying, "Did you really think it was going to be that easy, Doc?" ...
posted by AGameOfMoans at 5:54 AM on November 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


missing a talking pie
posted by bitteroldman at 7:05 AM on November 13, 2015


Bruce Willis is stuck in a large but strictly bounded location

Except that in every sequel, the location gets larger:

Die Hard: Office building
Die Hard 2: Airport
Die Hard: With a Vengeance: New York
Live Free or Die Hard: Most of the US West Coast
A Good Day to Die Hard: Russia

If it's a prequel, the location has to be smaller than the Nakatomi building and if it's a sequel, it has to be larger than Russia.

The pitch itself is fine and would probably make a decent Die Hard movie. The problem is that the character has gotten reconned into this unstoppable badass. In the first three, he knows that he is in WAY over his head but doesn't see anyone else in a position to do anything about it so it falls on him. He doesn't really beat the bad guys so much as he out-survives them. If they can back to that treatment of the character, the movie would be fine, maybe even good.
posted by VTX at 8:22 AM on November 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


A Good Man is Hard to Die - crotchety old John McClane is on a road trip with his long-suffering family when their car is waylaid by a notorious serial killer.
The Harder They Die - John McClane teams up with reggae star Jimmy Cliff to take down his biggest opponent yet: structural poverty in Jamaica.
A Hard Day's Die - John McClane tries to patch things up with his wife by taking her to a televised Beatles concert in 1964, but there are East German terrorists or something.
Live By the Sword, Die Hard - Basically Die Hard, but at the 1165 siege of Rochester Castle.
posted by Iridic at 8:51 AM on November 13, 2015 [6 favorites]


The good thing about the pitch is that with only small tweaks in character and location, it could be the sequel to The Rock. That's efficient thinking.
posted by peeedro at 9:02 AM on November 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


Diet Hard - we can all empathize with this.
posted by Artw at 9:03 AM on November 13, 2015


I was in a screenwriting group once where we all read from and reviewed each other's work. There were crime thrillers, would-be tentpole movies, attempted indie dramas... and one guy came every goddamned week to workshop his unauthorized script for Eddie and the Cruisers III.The first two Eddie and the Cruisers movies (as you may or may not remember) were cheesy B-movies in which the myth of the dead rock star who faked his death is explored (I), and then the fantasy of that rock star coming back is explored (II). What was Eddie and the Cruisers III about? Eddie was being cheated out of his royalties due to a bad contract and had to litigate. I'm serious. It was a legal drama where Eddie and his lawyers went from boardroom to boardroom arguing with other lawyers and trying to poke holes in a bad contract.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:06 AM on November 13, 2015 [5 favorites]


Charles and Di-e Hard. A prequel set at Christmas 1983, in which terrorists take over Buckingham Palace and capture the bickering Prince and Princess of Wales as a distraction to steal the crown jewels, or something. So efficient at one point they wipe out a crack team of SAS, McClane ends up inside the palace after being there on a taxi tour. A cantankerous but lovable cockney black cab driver is also stuck in the grounds. McClane rescues Di early on and has to keep her hidden from pursuers, inevitably she develops feelings for him which can never be requited, or perhaps just the once.
posted by biffa at 9:07 AM on November 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


odinsdream: So, how much did this terrible idea cost? I just want to possibly feel better about a big investment I'm thinking of making.
Ten grand, plus production costs.
posted by ob1quixote at 9:14 AM on November 13, 2015


This old viral video is the ne plus ultra of movie pitches by an insane person and if you can tell me more about it, you will be the coolest person in my world today.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:16 AM on November 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


DirtyIldTown - I think we have our post-Nakatomi Plaza inspired fame Die Hard script!
posted by Artw at 9:16 AM on November 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


It is Christmas Eve, and John McClane is alone. Having alienated his wife and grown children, he finds himself wandering around LA, passing Nakatomi Plaza, now slated for demolition. But what's this John hears? Poorly-translated German! That's not a demolition crew, but an all new group of international mercenaries after the hidden treasure of Nakatomi Plaza that Hans Gruber missed all of those years ago! It's now up to John to stop the criminals and save the hostages!

Obligatory Die Hard twist: There is no twist, that's just a regular demolition crew and John McClane has well and truly snapped. It's up to Al Powell and Argyle, the only two people John still trusts, to talk him down.
posted by ckape at 10:04 AM on November 13, 2015 [8 favorites]


There is no twist, that's just a regular demolition crew and John McClane has well and truly snapped.

Get Darren Aronofsky to direct and expect some Oscars.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 10:10 AM on November 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


Did the Die Hard series start out R-rated and get softened to PG-13 in the sequels?
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:20 AM on November 13, 2015


Yippi-ki-yi-yay, Mister Falcon.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:23 AM on November 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


All of the movies are rated R except for "Live Free or Die Hard". I remember there being concerns about the rating when the movie came out. Near the end, McClane delivers his trademark line but a gunshot drowns out the naughty part. SPOILER ALERT The gunshot is from John grabbing the bad guys gun and making him shoot himself through the bullet wound in John's shoulder.

That was also the movie that set the new "John McClane as an unstoppable badass" standard. And, looking at when the movies came out, it's easy to see why. The first three came out in 1988, 1990, and 1995. The next one doesn't get made until twelve years later, in 2007 so it was made by fanboys of the original rather than by the people that made the original such a success.
posted by VTX at 10:50 AM on November 13, 2015


The Hard Die Boys - John passes the torch
posted by rhizome at 1:39 PM on November 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


Or perhaps this:

It is Christmas Eve, and John McClane is alone. Having alienated his wife and grown children, he finds himself wandering around LA, passing Nakatomi Plaza, now slated for demolition. In fact, the demolition (via futuristic ray guns, no less!) has begun! But what's this John hears over the din? A loud, clear singing voice pierces the night -- a gorgeous croon, two parts Frank Sinatra, one part Bing Crosby, and one part Tony Bennett -- and the words he hears words seem to float in the air, as if from nowhere or everywhere: "Hello! ma baby, Hello! ma honey, Hello! ma ragtime gal! Send me a kiss by wire, baby my heart's on fire!..."

He follows the voice and is amazed to see that the source of this majestic singing is none other than a frog (!), dressed curiously in a small tux and tails and incongruously strutting a cakewalk! Dollar signs float before his eyes as he scoops up the frog and its shoebox home, places the bundle under his arm, and heads off into the night, in pursuit of the undoubtable fame and fortune he will reap once he convinces a talent agent to observe his singing and dancing frog...
posted by mosk at 2:01 PM on November 13, 2015 [4 favorites]


Ok, stay with me now people...

Die Hard.

Again.

Like the first time.

In an airport.
posted by dgaicun at 4:31 PM on November 13, 2015


Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt: Dag Hard.
posted by zippy at 11:10 AM on November 14, 2015


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