Die Hard aka 'The Bin Men Awards'
Merry Christmas, from me to you
It’s almost Christmas! What movies are you watching to get in the mood? Muppets Christmas Carol is the only correct answer.
I am still going to be writing to you over the holiday period, and next week I really want to share with you my favourite songs of 2023 and why I’m changing how I listen to music in 2024. So stay tuned.
But back to Christmas.
The whole ‘Die Hard is a Christmas movie’ argument totally passed me by for years because I hadn’t ever seen Die Hard (as you will see, below). I watched it for the first time with my Dad a few years ago and finally all those little pop culture references clicked into place.
But before then, some time ago, my cousin Rory sat me and my aunt Arlene down and asked us to describe what Die Hard was about. Neither of us had seen Die Hard. Here is what we came up with:
🎅 Die Hard, As Told By Two People Who Have Never Seen Die Hard
Olivia: Bruce Willis is standing on a cliff and he's got like a grenade in his mouth or something and he like takes it out and he takes the thing and it goes “plink!” and he's like “it's a good day to die hard” then he throws the grenade at a helicopter.
Rory: …and this is how this is how we start the film?
O: Yeah. Honestly, I think Die Hard has got a lot of helicopters in it.
Arlene: Um, he loses his shirt at some point? And it’s Christmas Eve, is it? And they're in Towering Inferno as well.
O: Right. So he's like a renegade secret agent, who's also a dad, and he wants to kill… the guys…. who own all the helicopters. And he's hanging off the helicopters, and he's hanging off, like, vehicles. That's like his main way of getting around.
R: [laughing] I'm gonna catch a flight, okay? ‘Here's your ticket.’ No, I'm good, I'll just hold on!
O: He just goes to the runway and jumps on the bottom of a plane. He's always hanging off the bottom of vehicles. Maybe at one point he’s having to like, oh, wear a mask! And then he just, like, I don't know, slides into one of those baggage carousels.
R: Are you thinking of Toy Story 2?
O: Yeah.
A: I know he's pissed off. I don't think he wants to be taking on all the bad guys on Christmas Eve.
🕺 Was Bruce Willis Hot?
R: When did the first Die Hard movie come out?
A: In the early 90s?
R: Do you remember it coming out, Mum?
A: Yeah, Bruce Willis was hot.
O: No…
A: Yeah, there was a thing called Moonlighting.
R: Oh, that's right. Sorry, mum has four references. Three of them are 1970s sitcoms.
A: But Bruce Willis was massive.
O: But he was always, like, bald?
R: And he uses it to his advantage.
🏆 Prize for the Bin Men
O: Maybe he's like a bin man or something. And he's got a little girl and he's a single dad and he's got really large jackets. That’s just what he wears, with loads of pockets.
R: Where are we?
O: [with full confidence] In New York.
R: Arlene, can you—
A: Yeah, yeah, no, go with that. New York.
R: Okay. Mum, now you mentioned Towering Inferno…
A: Well, I always seem to mix them up. I think there’s like a really tall building, with ducts and things like that.
R: Who’s the the main villain in die hard?
A: Eh, Rutger Hauer.
O: No wait, no, no. The Matrix.
R: Hugo Weaving?
O: Yes.
R: Okay. So it's Rutger Hauer and Hugo Weaving. How do we get to the tall building then?
A: He's in it. He's in a dinner jacket, so he's at some event. It must be like a ‘Prize for the Bin Men’ or something like that.
O: The Bin Men Awards.
A: The prize giving for New York Metropolitan Bins.
🚁 John Reaper vs The Helicopters
R: What’s Bruce Willis's name in the film?
O: John…
A: Reaper.
O: John Reaper. And Bruce Willis sees the bad guys and then he just like runs and jumps out of the window of the building, smashing it with his bald head.
A: I don't think they're after him. I think they're doing something and he's kind of tripped over it. He's discovered it by accident and he's like, ‘Oh shit, I'm gonna have to deal with this.’
O: Yeah, it was like, experiments…
R: Helicopter experiments.
A: Yeah, they probably want to rule the world but the pesky kids keep getting in the way, and Bruce, eh, John Reaper. So it's all kicking off really, and he does it single-handedly. Because he's got one hand tied behind his back. He's trying to adjust his, you know with trousers, you can get that wee catch at the back that make them tighter? He's trying to do that.
O: He hangs off a lot of vehicles.
A: He's packing a lot of grenades I think. That's why his jacket—
R: That's why there's a catch.
A: Yes, right. And you just click it, it's almost like a bottle opener at the back.
R: Are there any catch phrases or any kind of sayings that caught on from the movie?
A: Um… nope, nope.
O: Oh! He goes, ‘yay!’
To quote John Reaper: “yay!” You can support my work by doing one of these things:
buy a ‘Gneiss Guy’ tote bag on my Bandcamp
listen to my music on Spotify and add it to your playlists
forward this newsletter to a friend!
and if you haven’t already, subscribe:
Merry Christmas!
Olivia 🌈✨🏔🎶
“O: But he was always, like, bald?
R: And he uses it to his advantage.”
Nice. Where do I learn how to do that?
omg OLIVIA we are on the same wavelength bc I’m also writing something about die hard 😂 love me some John Reaper, that guy simply cannot die hard enough!!
Also I think you’ll be delighted to hear that in die hard 6 or something, he starts the movie on vacation, which of course turns into an action-packed emergency that only John Reaper can handle, and while flying (you guessed it!) a helicopter, Mr. Reaper, always the reluctant hero, delivers the iconic line: “I need a vacation from my vacation!!” And for years I’ve said that on every vacation #relatable!!