Hollywood sometimes writes right with very crooked lines. This was the case of the many comings and goings that culminated in the casting of Bruce Willis in the main role of his glorious career – interrupted prematurely in 2022 due to aphasia (soon after, the star would also be diagnosed with dementia and completely withdraw from the spotlight).
Policeman John McLane was Willis’ starting point to become one of the biggest movie stars in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. The first film in the ‘Die Hard’ franchise (1988) is a milestone in the genre for humanize the hero figure – who no longer looks like an armed-to-the-teeth version of Superman – and add irony and sharp humor in huge doses.
In other words, the then young actor from the series ‘The Cat and the Mouse’ would be a “no-brainer” choice, right?
Wrong. The hiring of Bruce Willis for ‘Die Hard’ – which later became a million-dollar franchise with four more films, the last one released in 2013 – was more accidental than anything. The producers had the most varied ideas about who should play the New York detective who, on a trip to Los Angeles to try to save his marriage, ends up getting into trouble with a dangerous international gang.
In total, nine names could have played the character and the history of cinema would certainly be different.
The first is probably the most surprising, but it has to do with the long wait that ‘Hard to Kill’ faced before getting the green light from a studio. Twenty years before the first film was produced, the script was already circulating in Hollywood and its rights were provisionally acquired by Frank Sinatra – that’s right, the singer and, at times, actor. The idea was to make a kind of continuation of one of his last successes on the big screen, ‘Crime sem Perdão’ (1968).
But the crooner renowned for “My Way” wasn’t excited enough and the project was shelved for many years.
Then, of course, in the 1980s, with the explosion of the action genre at the box office, the most obvious choices fell to those responsible for the phenomenon. “Rivals” Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger were on top of jerked beef and received dozens of scripts for this type of adventure in their mailbox every week.
Sly, as he is affectionately called by friends and family, found ‘Die Hard’ too similar to war veteran Rambo and declined without delay. He was also afraid of being too marked by doing just one type of production, one of the main reasons why critics constantly picked on him and made him the biggest winner of the anti-Golden Raspberry award.
Arnie even showed interest in the film because he had just worked with producer Joel Silver on ‘Predator’ (1987), which was hugely successful. But the script still had several points open and the horse, as the popular saying goes, “passed saddled” and the Terminator didn’t catch it.
“We talked about ‘Die Hard’, but in the end they ended up hiring Bruce Willis”, said the star and former Governor of California, years later.
Did Willis, following the denial of the two strongest names in Hollywood at that time, have an easy life and just run into the embrace of the terrorists led by Alan Rickman at Nakatomi Plaza? None of that. The executives still had many other brilliant ideas in cabinet meetings and stars in their vest pockets with the intention of lending prestige or popular appeal to the still unreleased, unknown and risky ‘Die Hard’.
The first category includes Robert De Niro, considered the greatest American actor at the time, still young and with two Oscars on the shelf, for ‘The Godfather 2’ (1974) and ‘Raging Bull’ (1980). However, at that time, Bob clearly prioritized more artistically daring roles and productions and the “no” was automatic.
From the 1990s onwards, this would change a lot, as fans clearly realized – oh, if the producers waited a little longer…
In the other, many alternatives. Harrison Ford – owner of the main film franchises, ‘Indiana Jones’ and ‘Star Wars’, who knows, was looking for another one. Mel Gibson, also experimented with a formula very similar to ‘Lethal Weapon’, humor with action.
Richard Gere, heartthrob of the moment and who could also get involved in the action to make money. Don Johnson, who could make a similar transition to Willis and stop being a TV star (he starred in the police series ‘Miami Vice’) and go to the big screen. For one reason or another, none of these negotiations progressed.
And finally Clint Eastwood, with the aim of renewing himself as a star of the genre whose foundations he helped found in the 1970s with his ‘Dirty Harry’.
Apparently, the artist – at the time definitively establishing himself as one of cinema’s greatest directors (he would release ‘Bird’ that same year, the biopic of jazz legend Charlie Parker, which won him a Golden Globe) – would not have understood what funny tone of ‘Die Hard’.
“They went to Clint Eastwood first. Ironically, his response to the producers was, ‘I didn’t get the humor.’ Which to me was a shock because, if you pay attention, he’s one of the only people in the world who can deliver a joke like the one McLane says (‘Come to Los Angeles and have fun…’). All that kind of thing that the character says in the film. You can materialize him saying these things were my inspiration”, said Clint. screenwriter Jeb Stuart, in an interview, decades later.
The truth is that Bruce Willis was the “last resort”, as defined by a Hollywood insider. Well, as the old saying goes, the last will be first and that was never more true than behind the scenes when choosing the lead actor for ‘Die Hard’.
Check out the trailer for the five films in the franchise below, with Bruce Willis as the protagonist, of course.
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