‘Die Hard’ Christmas movie debate keeps NC native’s script merrily relevant

FOREST CITY, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) – A stroll in downtown Forest City is like walking in a window wonderland, thanks to artists like Toby Tyler.

“Oh, I’m feeling the spirit of the season this year,” he said recently, putting a few touches on a seasonal surprise. “Yeah, I’ll put a little detail on everything. ”

At his client’s request, Tyler painted a holiday movie moment, and it’s not “White Christmas.“

“This is a scene from ‘Die Hard,’ the first one. Bruce Willis is crawling through the ventilator shaft,” he described.

The scene is on the window at The Hoot Nannie on East Main. Owner Steve Soto says “Die Hard” protagonist John McClane is his bloody holiday hero.

“There’s a lot of debate whether ‘Die Hard’ is a Christmas movie, and I’m 100 percent on board that it’s a Christmas movie,” Soto said. 

Celebrating the movie

In the 1988 blockbuster, McClane delivers some epic one-liners.

“The classic line he says is, ‘Come out to the coast. We’ll get together, have a few laughs,'” said Tyler, painting those words below the movie character.

“Now I know what a TV dinner feels like,” Soto says, repeating another line from that “Die Hard” sequence.

“There’s yippie ki yay… ha-ha!” said Tyler.

Generations of movie fans can fill in the bleeps at the end of that sentence.

“Now I have a machine gun, ho-ho-ho!” Tyler said, repeating another classic.

Such lines for actors like Willis and bad guy Alan Rickman come from the mind of North Carolina native and screenwriter Jeb Stuart, who grew up in Charlotte and Gastonia.

“You’re asking a writer where something comes from, and it’s one of those things,” he said when asked about the most memorable “Die Hard” moments. “You’re almost scared to answer that question because that opens Pandora’s box.”

“There’s a whole culture of people who communicate with ‘Die Hard’ lines, you know, and it’s part of the zeitgeist, which I’m amazed at but also very proud of.”

The eternal debate settled here

But is “Die Hard” a Christmas movie?

“I say absolutely it’s a Christmas movie,” Stuart declared.

“It didn’t really evolve into a Christmas movie until maybe 10 years [after it premiered],” he says. “I started getting notes and later emails saying, ‘It’s become our family tradition.'”

It’s hard to believe that “Die Hard” was his first screenplay, written with Steven E. de Souza. Stuart currently executive produces the Netflix series “Vikings: Valhalla.”

“To take an action movie and make the core of it around family,” Stuart said of the premise.

But is it a typical Christmas movie you can sip Eggnog with?

“I wouldn’t put it up against ‘It’s A Wonderful Life,'” he said. “But I will say that it still has those kinds of family pieces to it, you know, that a classic Christmas movie has.” 

Clint Eastwood movies inspired the “Die Hard screenplay, so it was ironic when Eastwood rejected the McClane role. The movie legend said he didn’t get the humor. Willis got the part, and the rest is history.

The movie was so iconic that props, including the script and McClane’s shirt, are displayed at the Smithsonian.  

Imitation sincerest form of flattery

Over the years, it influenced many “Die Hard” copycats, from the “Speed” movies with Sandra Bullock to “Cliffhanger” starring Sly Stallone to “Skyscraper” featuring Dwayne Johnson. 

“I’ve heard ‘Die Hard’ on a ship,’ ‘Die Hard’ on a spaceship,’ ‘Die Hard’ on a plane,'” he recalls. 

They should have captured something central to the ’80s classic, said Stuart. 

“What usually is lacking is the everyman piece that John McClane was,” he said. 

Stuart admits he got a little sick of the Christmas movie argument.

“I went through a period where I got really tired of hearing that,” he said. “After a while, it was like, ‘You know what, I don’t ever want to stop that conversation because that means people have stopped watching ‘Die Hard.'”

That ongoing conversation and a restaurant owner’s admiration of the movie inspired a window painting at The Hoot Nannie on Forest City’s Main Street.

“I had to ease up on the blood,” Tyler noted, capturing McClane in action.

Tyler believes all the talk about “Die Hard’s” enduring legacy isn’t just window dressing. 

“A Christmas movie?… I’ll say yeah, I’ll say yeah,” Tyler says.

“It’s fun to have it as a Christmas movie,” said Stuart. “I’m very proud of it as that.”

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