Die Hard not a Christmas movie, Bruce? Say it isn’t so

And so this is Christmas, John Lennon noted in 1972. Time once again then to watch the greatest Christmas movies ever made and debate that age-old question (at least since 1988): Is the explosive action thriller Die Hard (trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIOX44m8ktc&t=20s), starring Bruce Willis and the late Alan Rickman, the ultimate Christmas heart warmer, the greatest of them all?

I jest not.

According to a YouGov poll, conducted in 2021, “47 per cent of people who had seen Die Hard say it is NOT a Christmas movie, while 44 per cent of people insisted it is,” Radio X in London reported earlier this month.

Men and women disagreed with half of men (50 per cent) who had seen Die Hard think it’s a Christmas movie compared to just over a third of women (37 per cent), who had watched the film.

Michael Agger’s Dec. 13, 2007 post on Slate titled “Now I Have a Machine Gun. Ho Ho Ho” first made the case Die Hard is really a Christmas movie:

“This holiday season, some of you – no matter what anyone says – are still going to snuggle up on your couch with a mug of hot chocolate and watch It’s a Wonderful Life. That’s fine; there are worse Christmas movies out there. But for those of you who like to spike your cocoa, Slate has compiled a list of alternative Christmas classics. These movies fall into two categories: Christmas movies that never quite made it into the canon, and films that aren’t Christmas movies per se, but are set during the holiday and evoke it every bit as well as the old standbys. Why settle for Jimmy Stewart when you can have Bruce Willis?” (http://www.slate.com/…/now_i_havea_machine_gun_ho_ho_ho…)

Agger, now culture editor of the New Yorker, told Kaitlyn Tiffany, a staff writer at The Atlantic, last December, “I wasn’t even aware that this had grown into a huge thing. I had no idea.” He didn’t have a lot “to say about where the idea had come from,” Tiffany wrote, “and only remembered ‘bullshitting’ in the office – out loud! pre-Slack! –trying to come up with some easy holiday-week content to feed the web.”

Mark Hughes, a film and television screenwriter, who has also worked as a media specialist and campaign ad writer, 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” (https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhughes/2011/12/14/top-ten-best-christmas-movies-of-all-time/?sh=79c1a3fb5c60) 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….”

Falice Chin, then a producer with CBC Radio One for Calgary Eyeopener, weighed in an online analysis piece for CBC News Dec. 15, 2017 headlined “Why Die Hard is the ultimate Christmas movie – despite naysayers.” You can read it here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/author/falice-s-chin-1.3505737 Chin is now a senior producer of Edmonton AM.

“Among the many holiday nods – 12 bad guys, wife named Holly, giant teddy bear gift in waiting and endless Christmas décor – there’s also a film score featuring ominous renditions of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy sprinkled with the jingling of sleigh bells,” Chin noted.

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 on the 32nd floor of Nakatomi Plaza, a Los Angeles 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.

Sadly, Willis was diagnosed last March with aphasia – a brain disorder which impacts the ability to speak and other cognitive abilities – and revealed he was stepping away from acting. His enforced early retirement came as a huge shock to his fans, as well as his many friends in Hollywood. 

On July 14, 2018, Willis, in his Comedy Central roast, said Die Hard, the beloved action flick, isn’t a Christmas movie – “it’s a god damn Bruce Willis movie!” (https://www.indiewire.com/2018/07/bruce-willis-die-hard-christmas-movie-1201984149/ ) IndieWire reported at the time.

To this, I can only respond by paraphrasing New York Sun editor Francis Pharcellus Church 1897 reply to eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon, when she asked if Santa Claus is real. 

Die Hard not a Christmas movie, Bruce? Say it isn’t so. One can only hope Bruce Willis has an early Christmas morning transformation akin to Ebenezer Scrooge’s: “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me.’’ 

“And it was always said of him,” the narrator concludes Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, “that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!’’

Happy Christmas, Bruce!

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‘Tis the season for Christmas movie fare from Die Hard to Dickens

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 172^nd 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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