Turns out my friend Kevin Lewis, a music and senior band teacher since 2009 at R.D. Parker Collegiate in Thompson, is right after all. When it comes to Christmas movies, Die Hard, made in 1988 and starring Bruce Willis, is the holiday ticket.
I must say when Jeanette first shared Kevin’s Christmas holiday movie classic preference with me three or four years ago – later confirmed to me by Kevin himself – I was a touch surprised. My thinking in the area was a bit more conventional; more along the lines of watching one of the six movie versions of A Christmas Carol made since 1938, or perhaps enjoying Jimmy Stewart, with Lionel Barrymore and Donna Reed, in the 1946 black-and-white movie classic, It’s a Wonderful Life.
Die Hard, directed by John McTiernan and written by Steven E. de Souza and Jeb Stuart, follows the Christmas Eve exploits of John McClane (Bruce Willis), playing an off-duty New York City cop visiting in Los Angeles for the holidays to see his estranged wife, Holly Gennaro McClane (Bonnie Bedelia), and two daughters, as he takes on a group of highly organized criminals, led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), at a holiday party in the L.A. skyscraper that is the American headquarters of the Japanese-owned business Holly works for, as Gruber and his men stage a heist under the guise of a terrorist attack using hostages, including Holly, to keep police at bay.
Die Hard is based on Roderick Thorp’s 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever, and was the sequel to 1966’s The Detective, which was adapted into a 1968 film of the same name that starred Frank Sinatra. Willis, not the first choice for the role (Sinatra declined to reprise his role 20 years after The Detective and action star Arnold Schwarzenegger turned the part down) was known primarily as a comedic television actor in 1988, particularly for co-starring as a private detective with Cybill Shepherd in Moonlighting on ABC between March 1985 and May 1989.
Die Hard changed all that and made Willis into an action star. Made for $28 million, Die Hard has grossed more than $140 million theatrically worldwide. The film’s success has spawned four sequels to date: Die Hard 2 in 1990; Die Hard with a Vengeance in 1995; Live Free or Die Hard in 2007 and a Good Day to Die Hard in 2013.
My friend Kevin Lewis’ opinion of Die Hard as primo Christmas fare is shared by Mark Hughes, a film and television screenwriter, who has also worked as a media specialist and campaign ad writer. Hughes penned a piece for Forbes magazine on Dec. 14, 2011, where he picked Die Hard as number one on his list of “Top Ten Best Christmas Movies Of All Time,” as the story was headlined.
Wrote Hughes: “Die Hard is everything every Christmas movie should always be forever. It’s a mix of the baddie from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas; the unbeatable hero who shows up to teach everyone a lesson from Miracle On 34th Street; the ghosts of past, present, and future who bring insight and change from A Christmas Carol; plus every redemptive struggle about family and personal evolution and good versus evil, all wrapped up in a big shiny box with a bow made of explosions and bullets. There’s Christmas, and then there’s Christmas with punching terrorists in the face and winning back your entire family – which do YOU prefer? It doesn’t matter what you prefer, actually, because Bruce Willis prefers the latter, and Bruce Willis always wins. You’d know that if you watched the Die Hard movies. So start watching now, beginning with this one….”
While I’ve added Die Hard to my annual Christmas viewing list (at some years), Dickens it ain’t. Charles Dickens, a heterodox Anglican if ever there was one, wrote A Christmas Carol after he journeyed to Lancashire at the age of 31 in the summer of 1843 to see for himself how life was lived in the industrial north of England. On the train back to London, impacted by the poverty and misery he had seen, he conceptualized A Christmas Carol on the eve of revolutions throughout Europe, counselling that hearts must hear and eyes must see for society to change. He began writing the classic Christmas story a week later. He completed the book that fall in six weeks and the book was published on Dec. 19, 1843, the 172nd anniversary of which fell last Saturday. Since the book was published in 1843, Christmas has never been the same.
“A merry Christmas, Bob!” said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. “A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you, for many a year! I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of Smoking Bishop, Bob!”
Jeanette has a particular fondness for Linus, Charlie Brown, Lucy and Snoopy in A Charlie Brown Christmas, made in 1965 and one of the most successful animated Christmas specials in TV history. Peanuts creator Charles Schulz and animator Bill Melendez wrote the outline in one day, and the musical score was written by jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi. ABC celebrated its 50th anniversary with a special showing Nov. 30.
Me, I also like It’s a Wonderful Life, produced and directed by Frank Capra, based on the short story The Greatest Gift, written by Philip Van Doren Stern in 1939.
The film stars Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey, a man who has given up his dreams in order to help others, and whose imminent suicide on Christmas Eve brings about the intervention of his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers). Clarence shows George all the lives he has touched and how different life in his community of Bedford Falls, New York would be had he never been born. Film historian James Berardinelli has commented on the parallels between It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol, noting that in both stories, a man revisits his life and potential death (or non-existence) with the help of spirits or angels, culminating in a joyous epiphany and a renewed sense of purpose and life.
It’s a Wonderful Life is one of the most acclaimed films ever made, and was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture, and has been recognized by the American Film Institute as one of the 100 best American films ever made.
Initially, however, it did middling business at the box office and opened to at best mixed reviews.
For their part, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) weighed in on May 26, 1947 with a memo stating: “With regard to the picture It’s a Wonderful Life, [redacted] stated in substance that the film represented rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a ‘scrooge-type’ so that he would be the most hated man in the picture. This, according to these sources, is a common trick used by Communists. [In] addition, [redacted] stated that, in his opinion, this picture deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters.”
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