Movie Exchange of the Day (“Die Hard”)

Hans Gruber, terrorist (played by Alan Rickman): “Attention Mr. Cowboy, or should I call you... Mr. McClane? Mr. Officer John McClane of the New York Police Department?”
John McClane (played by Bruce Willis): “Sister Teresa called me Mr McClane in the Third Grade. My friends call me John... and you're neither, s--thead.”—From Die Hard (1988), screenplay by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza, based on the novel Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp
(Just my kind of action hero—an Irish-American wiseguy! Die Hard opened 20 years ago today, turning Bruce Willis from a TV star with an indifferent box-office record in films into an A-list star—sort of like what happened with George Clooney a few years ago. For my money, this first of the “Die Hard” franchise is still the best of the lot, because you don’t know until the final seconds of the movie if John McClane is going to survive.

Fans of the movie might be surprised to learn that McClane is based on Joe Leland, the protagonist of Roderick Thorp’s novel The Detective (1966), which was made into a film starring Frank Sinatra. Thirteen years later, Thorp—who taught creative writing at Ramapo College in the early 1970s—reprised the character in Nothing Lasts Forever, only this time the character was an office building security consultant. Instead of an estranged wife, he has an estranged daughter and grandchild. At this point in his career, Willis is a lot closer to playing that character as originally conceived.)