A Good Day to Die Hard‘s director John Moore has a reputation for enthusiasm for the tiniest details in his films. He makes big movies, with big bangs, that come from geo-politically accurate weaponry. In the latest Die Hard, John McClane is going to Moscow and within minutes is in the middle of another bad day. But with his fastidious attention to detail, Moore is making sure McClane’s bad day is one hell of a ride. We caught up with John to talk about his huge action set pieces, Easter Eggs buried in the film’s arsenal and how he almost left a military short on ammo. Read the full interview below and check out our exclusive look at A Good Day to Die Hard‘s Gun Bible.
(WARNING: Rough language and guns ahead)
Nerdist: Pardon my language, but there were so many great âOh, shit!â moments in this film. You played those very well. When you got the script, where did your brain go in how big you wanted to make these action set pieces?
John Moore: Now, thatâs interesting. I think kind of interesting is the …. On the page, I was like, âFuck, this is well writtenâ. I mean, Skip Woods, Iâve done a lot of work with Skip on films that didnât come to fruition, but weâve been in each otherâs lives for a while. He writes action where you smell the fucking gunpowder on the page.
Some of these sequences were like, Jesus, this is good writing, because action can be so fucking boring on the page. Really, yes, and then you actually get a little bit ticked off as a director when writers overwrite action. Itâs fine with me if somebody writes “car chase,” and then a car chase begins and then it ends.
This action was really descriptively written, beautifully written; the end sequence, the Chernobyl sequences, and then I started to think, okay, big isnât the thing here. Itâs visceral and a little bit crazy. I re-watched Die Hard, and, actually, the stunts arenât that huge. Itâs actually, âHeâs really not going to do that, is he?â Thatâs whatâs huge. Itâs only a fire hose, really, but itâs what heâs going to do. Itâs the audacity. I thought audacious. Everyone got an audacious tattoo. Iâll make the stunts audacious. Itâs not about big, itâs not about collapsing entire city blocks, things like that. Itâs the, âReally? Okay,” as opposed to scale. It was about the audacity of a couple of things.
My favorite stunt, I better not use your recording device. I donât know if you remember it, but in the car chase, (there’s) a little blue car, and thereâs a big gray tank. He pushes them, he clips them, and he pushes them. He swings around and you can clearly see the driver has no protection, and it looks like what it is, which is a real civilian getting caught in the middle of [all the action].
Itâs the audacity of that rather than blowing up shiny, chrome oil tankers. Thatâs what we tried to go for.
N: Now, I was actually going to say, great job showing the collateral damage.
JM:Â Thank you. Moscow is so big. The fun of it was you could probably do that in Moscow, and by the time the cops caught up with it, you canât go full Blues Brothers but you could go that big without… because it is, itâs fucking huge. Itâs the biggest city in the world.
N:Â In the Behind Enemy Lines DVD, you gave a lot of detail in the bonus featurettes. Your dedication to military hardware, realism, why a specific military wouldnât use a gun they donât have access to, gun dealers that have that gun donât deal with that sect, etc. You’re energetic about it. You had to be a kid in a candy store this time around.
JM:Â (laughs) Yes. Yes, if you like that, youâre going to love…. Yes, on Die Hard, yes. Iâm going to send you one of our first run DVDs because there are features… I think anybody who spends money on a DVD now, people should come to their house and shake their hand and give them a cake. If thereâs anyone who buys, who puts time and money and effort, they put some time into their home theater systems, and all that, they should get a fucking medal. What I try and do is gather as much of that material as possible and tell people those stories and say, âWe did this, we took care of that, and we made sure that was rightâ. Â Itâs saying we respect the time you took to watch the movie, so we got everything else right as we could get it. Thereâs a lot of that in Die Hard, and thereâs a lot, even from a technical weaponry point of view.
For example, the bad guy, Alik, the tall good-looking Radivoje, his weapon of choice is the Austrian made Steyr AUG A1. Now, if you look closely at Die Hard, Alexander Godunov, the blond, his weapon is the prototype of that gun. Itâs the first version of it. Itâs the Steyr AUG. Look closely, youâll see itâs basically the same gun 25 years later. Little touches like that are all over the movie. Iâm sure thatâs an Easter egg.
Thereâs little touches like that everywhere. We produced it, myself and Mike Papik DeArmara, whoâs in all the Die Hard movies, we produced the Die Hard Bible of weapons, which is 40 pages thick.
Nerdist: I would buy a copy. [Laughs]
JM:Â Iâll send you one. Give me your email. I will email you the Bible. (Editor’s Note: He totally did. And we’re sharing a few pages from it at the bottom of the article.)
Itâs full of Jackâs weapon choices, Johnâs weapon choices, Irenaâs weapon choices, and, some of which made it to the movie, some of which were so outlandishly expensive they didnât. Stuff like that is good fun. Movies are meant to be fun. People get a kick out of that.
N: There is something to be said, and personally, Iâm all for gun control, but thereâs….
JM:Â Me, too.
Nerdist: …Thereâs something sexy and fun about them in the right film.
JM:Â I know, take all the guns away. Keep the guns on the movie screen. Nobody should own one. Keep them on the fucking movie screen. Thatâs where they fucking belong.
Nerdist: You also had two really impressive Russian choppers as big parts of the action. The MI-26 and the 24 right?
JM:Â The 26 is at the end, and the 24 is in the middle. The MI-26 is a big cargo helicopter. Itâs unarmed. We took some license there, and we put a GSH KKK 30mm Canon, which we borrowed from the MI-24. The MI-24 (Hind-A), there are something like 30 variants of that helicopter in the Eastern Block. Most of them have a nose gun or a chin gun, which is a four-barreled Yak-B 12.7mm, which is basically a 50-caliber. It is a Russian Gatling Gun. Itâs only got four barrels, whereas something like the Avenger from an A-10 Warthog, or the Gatling Guns that would be on helicopters in movies like Enemy Lines, which are the N104s, Miniguns. This is the Russian Minigun.
Here we are, weâve got this helicopter with what would normally have a Russian Minigun on its chin. This thing puts so much lead down range, we thought, all right. Theyâre not going to survive, even for a Die Hard, itâs fucking ridiculous. We searched and searched and found this 30mm. Thereâs a rare variant of the helicopter where they did away with the chin gun and they hard-mounted the 30mm Twin Barrel Canon.
What they wanted to do was take out hardened targets, like armor on the ground. This is all Afghanistan era, the Russians in Afghanistan. The thing about this weapon is, it’s got a slower rate of fire: boom, boom, boom, instead of brmm. Now the McClanes have a chance. Also, itâs non-articulated. The chin gun moves wherever you want it to go. This thingâs fixed so you have to fly the aircraft. Now the McClanes have another advantage. We used technicalities to just increase their chances of survival.
Nerdist: Thatâs amazing.
JM:Â Itâs fun stuff, itâs fun.
Nerdist: That actually… the big bass broom, broom, broom brings up another thing I wanted to talk to you about. We have the joy of seeing the movie in Atmos.
JM:Â Itâs the future.
N: Sitting down with sound designers, how many new recordings did they have to make of these weapons and things like that? How much extra effort did you put in the movie because of that sound design?
JM:Â A huge amount. Atmos, if supported is the future. Where 3-D is faltering, visual 3-D will probably become the purview of a few live action, and mostly animated films. Atmos sound, 3-D sound, is the future. You got to be aware of that. Thatâs what you are going to be mixing to. Yes, we went out to firing ranges. We fired the helicopter for real, with live ammunition on a firing range in Hungary. It was funny because the Hungarian Air Force were getting nervous because they were running out of ammunition.
They were like, âCan you leave this stuff to defend the nation?â I was like yes, yes. Just hook him up. Yes, itâs a very big process. Atmos exponentially increases the amount of work you have to do. Whereas, a seven to one, a normal mix would be seven to one, which is LCR left center right, three speakers behind the screen, and then left surround, right surround, two and two, so thatâs seven points of sound. Atmos is 47.
Nerdist: Â Thatâs getting you from the entire….
JM:Â Everywhere. Itâs a box. Itâs a whole box around your head, and itâs a fascinating way to mix movies, and itâs the future. It is.
N: Youâre really pursuing stuff that fits you. Where do you see yourself going next? Are you going to try to approach another sequel or adaptation, or do you want to find something for yourself?
JM: Itâs funny, I donât really have a style. I think style is can be a little arrogant. What I try and do is serve the story. If the story calls for me to shoot it in a certain way, then thatâs the way Iâll shoot it. I wonât be so arrogant as to say, âNo, this is the way itâs going to be no matter what.â I find a piece of material Iâll adapt the way I want to shoot it, to suit the material. I could just as easily turn out up doing a 18th century period piece.
Iâve taken a lot of heat for that. People are like, wow. Nah, fuck it. It just means youâre just so fucking arrogant. I donât give a shit. Yes, I get paid. My point is I enjoy delivering. I enjoy taking something, and saying to my team, âAll right guys, someoneâs going to pay to see this. Iâd like we do a really good job, making it look and sound so they can get their moneyâs worth.â It means something to them to pay their money and go and see it, and now come out saying, âThat sucked.â
In terms of whatâs next and how do I approach material? With a fucking open mind, man.
A Good Day to Die Hard is in theaters Thursday, February 14th.
Bruce is one of my biggest action hero. However with my wish that the movie could continue throughout the coming generations like James Bond, I do feel they have to pick another main man to be the star of the next DIE HARD movie .
VIN DIESEL is the only guy I know is the closest to bring the role forward.
Hope you guys can help bring my tiny voice to the director JOHN MOORE
This is a nice detailed review. But John Moore is a horrible director. There is just no doubt about it, he kills franchises. Die Hard 5 was bad, because of the script and the directing. And I’m sorry, but bullshit like this is the reason he can keep making movies. Could somebody in the industry (or adjacent to it) please tell him to stop?
Love the site other than that, just tell John to switch careers please.