Daily Dialogue — November 16, 2011
John McClane: [Getting out a pack of cigarettes] Do you smoke?
Hans Gruber: [while mimicing a hostage] Yeah.
[McClane hands him the pack of cigarettes]
Hans Gruber: Thanks. Now, you don’t work for Nakatomi, and you’re not one of them.
John McClane: I’m a cop from New York.
Hans Gruber: New York?
John McClane: Yeah. I got invited to the Christmas party by mistake. Who knew.
[laughs]
John McClane: Better being caught with your pants down, huh? I’m John McClane, and you are?
Hans Gruber: [Quickly thinks of a name which he got from a nearby Bulletin board] Clay. Bill Clay.
John McClane: [Takes out his handgun] You now how to use a handgun, Bill?
Hans Gruber: I spent a weekend at a combat ranch. You know where they shoot red paint, but it sounds stupid to you.
John McClane: Well, time for the real thing, Bill. All you gotta do is pull the trigger.
Hans: [Hans pulls a gun on McClane after impersonating a hostage] Put down the gun, and give me my detonators.
John McClane: Well, well, well… Hans.
Hans: Put it down now.
John McClane: That’s pretty tricky with that accent. You oughta be on fucking TV with that accent. But what do you want with the detonators, Hans? I already used all the explosives. Or did I?
Hans: I’m going to count to three…
John McClane: Yeah, like you did with Takagi?
[Hans pulls trigger]
John McClane: Ooops. No bullets. What do you think, I’m fucking stupid, Hans?
Hans: [elevator opens] You were saying?
— John McClane (Bruce Willis), Hans (Alan Rickman), Die Hard (1988), screenplay by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza, based on a novel by Roderick Thorp
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is cop meets crook, suggested by Désirée. Die Hard suggested by David Proenza.
Trivia: The scene in which Gruber and McClane meet was inserted in to the script after Alan Rickman (Hans Gruber) was found to be proficient at mimicking American accents. The filmmakers had been looking for a way to have the two characters meet prior to the climax and capitalized on Rickman’s talent.
Dialogue On Dialogue: When you have a cat-and-mouse plot of cop vs. crook (or in this case, crook vs. cop), there’s always the issue of how to intersect them. This scene was a great idea to create a first meeting between the two characters.
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