We Got This Covered: Everybody’s always waiting for you to say your signature line whenever a Die Hard movie comes out. Is it already in the script or do you have to figure out where the most appropriate place is to say it? Also what was the line’s origin?
Bruce Willis: It was an ad lib. Alan Rickman from the first film, he was such a good bad guy. He was constantly picking on me and he said something to me and I just happened to let that line slip out, and it just became part of the fabric of the film. John Moore (the director of A Good Day To Die Hard) had an idea that we should say it right away and get it out of the way, and I tried that. But it always comes at a moment of high danger. It’s just amazing to me that that line has lasted this long. People say to me in the street, grandmas, football players, basketball players, but I’m happy that they say it.
We Got This Covered: Over 25 years and 5 films, you’ve really had this chance to play this great arc in that John McClane was separated with his wife, got back together with her and then get divorced, he was an alcoholic, and in the last two movies he’s repairing his relationship with his kids. Can you tell us about playing a character over that stretch of time and getting a chance to naturally develop that arc?
Bruce Willis: Well that stretch of time is a pretty large one. It’s hard to compress it into a few sentences. I remember every film and I remember everything that we did and where we were, and 25 years is a life in itself. I have really great memories of it, and it’s all been good. As crazy as it is and as crazy as they continue to make these films, there have not been many injuries and not a lot of people get hurt. I have a warm place in my heart for Die Hard.
We Got This Covered: John McClane is a guy who will do anything to protect his family. Can you talk about how you draw upon being a father yourself for this role?
Bruce Willis: It’s my favorite job being a father. I have four girls now and they are a captive audience. They can’t really run away from you even if they don’t like your jokes. I love making my kids laugh and I still do, and I still do the dumbest things in the world to make them laugh. One is a job, it’s a film concept, and the other one is real life. You want to try to get them ready to get in the world and grow up to be women that have good morals and good intentions and are nice people that are kind. I never knew until they got older that I was having any impact on them.
We Got This Covered: This is actually the first time that you have had an adult son in a movie. Being the father of four daughters, how different was that for you and how much did you enjoy that? And Jai, what does being in a Die Hard movie and being John McClane’s son mean to you?
Jai Courtney: It was pretty unreal of course. I never imagined I would be a part of this franchise, especially not one of the McClane family. Yeah it was a pretty daunting prospect but I certainly had fun doing it, and Bruce was a great onscreen dad.
Bruce Willis: It was fun. I just remember it being fun. I like the ideas you guys are talking about how it is being a dad and how was it being a dad onscreen. I think that I was just an okay dad for most of my life with my character’s son Jack, and we really set some obstacles for ourselves. We really did not have a very good relationship from the time he set Philadelphia on fire till the time I see him in this film. I thought he was a gangster and I thought that he was in much worse trouble than he happened to be in in Moscow. Regardless of my feelings for him as a child, it seemed like the right thing to go to Moscow and try to help him.
We Got This Covered: Throughout these Die Hard movies we have seen John McClane beaten up, bruised and covered with a lot of his own blood. I couldn’t resist but ask you that after A Good Day To Die Hard, how many pints of blood would you say are left in John McClane’s body?
Bruce Willis: Well we’re up to liters now. As a matter of fact I have to leave early today because I have to go get another transfusion. Apparently there is a leak somewhere and the blood continues to trickle out of me, so if I look a little pale today…(laughs0. Sometimes it’s real blood and sometimes I get a little scratch or get kicked. I think on the last one I got kicked in the head pretty early in the morning and I had to get some stitches. I hardly ever really bleed, did you bleed?
Jai Courtney: I don’t think we bled much. I opened my hand up on that wheel of the van. That was one of those overzealous moments where John Moore gave me license to just get angry at it, and six takes later I’m like “we got it right because there’s no flesh left. John, my skin is in the Mercedes emblem on the wheel! That’s enough!”
We Got This Covered: Well you’re both looking good today.
Bruce Willis: Thank you.
We Got This Covered: What was the experience of bringing that fish out of water aspect about John McClane to a country like Russia?
Bruce Willis: Well Moscow was really built for a couple of fish out of water like us. I can’t imagine a bigger ocean of non-communication than Eastern Europe and Russia. I think we were all excited about the idea of getting out of the United States and having the film being more international, so we set Jack in a job that was pretty obscure and undercover and it just made a lot of sense. I don’t speak any of the languages really and we got a couple jokes out of it. It just opens it up.
I like seeing myself not being able to figure things out and not being able to figure out how the car works or not being able to figure out what someone is saying to me. I can hardly understand English, so trying to shoot in Moscow brought that along. We had the opportunity to get Yuliya Snigir in the film, and she’s a big star in Moscow and is awfully cute in this film. She’s a great helicopter pilot, so we had that going. And John Moore contributed the biggest ballroom on earth. It was huge and we filled it with glass. But it was great and it never felt like there were any hiccups.
We Got This Covered: This franchise has been around since the 80s, and it seems like the only action franchise that studios are doing. Why do you think this is the only franchise of this ilk or genre that really interests studios today?
Bruce Willis: Well I think that those kind of questions are what you guys do. This is how you earn your money; you come up with questions about why this works or why that doesn’t work. I’ve had the opportunity lately to think about those things in terms of action movies and how they compare or compete with each other. But I have come to this understanding; I don’t compete with anyone, I compete with myself and I just try to improve my work and try to do better than I did the last time. So I’m not really competing with Moonrise Kingdom or Looper or any other film. I just try to make it look like I believe what I’m saying in the film.
I wish everyone well. I still am a big film fan. I still go to see films and I go to see other action films. I go to see comedies and all kinds of weird things. There is no competition. I have been talking a lot about this the last couple days of how does it feel to be in a film that has stretched over 25 years. You can only see that from the end of it. No one ever knew at the beginning that we were going to be doing five of these films. It’s such a strange, great honor to still be able to run on the street and do what we do and make it look fun and scary sometimes and interesting and still have the core the character in there.
That concludes our interview but we’d like to thank Bruce and Jai for their time. Be sure to check out A Good Day To Die Hard, in theatres this week.
