The Screengrab : die hard

John McTiernan Jailbird Update

Phil Nugent — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:30:00 GMT

The last time we checked in on John McTiernan, the director of Die Hard and Last Action Hero (as well as his 1986 debut Nomads, which has a special place in my heart as the first movie that ever put my date to sleep), he was waiting for the hammer to come down, again. As we recounted just the other day, in 2006 McTiernan pled guilty to the charge of lying to the FBI in the course of their investigation of rogue Hollywood P.I. Anthony Pellicano, only to subsequently withdraw his plea, explaining that at the time he entered it, "he didn't have adequate legal representation, was jet-lagged and under the influence of alcohol," all of which probably amounted to a replication of the condition he was in when he made Nomads. It took until two months ago for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to rule definitively that he did have the right to withdraw his plea. Now, to the surprise of no one, McTiernan has been indicted on two counts of lying to the Feds and a shiny new charge of perjury, which is based on statements he made to a federal judge in the course of withdrawing his guilty plea to the FBI-related charges. McTiernan's lawyer complains that "The prosecutor has taken one count and tried to expand it into more charges in a new indictment. There seems to be retribution because John refused to play ball the way the prosecutors wanted and because we were successful on appeal." Either that or the prosecutor just saw Nomads. Hey, if you don't like hearing about it every two sentences, take up a collection and give me back my eight dollars.

As we also mentioned last week, McTiernan has set up a web site to showcase his charges that he is but one of several victims of Republican schemer Karl Rove, who, McTiernan alleges, had his minions hard at work on the Pellicano case trying to shake out dirt that could have been used against possible presidential contender Hillary Clinton last fall. McTiernan has made a documentary pressing his case, The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove, which you're supposed to be able to watch at the website. I tried watching it myself, but when I hit the "Play" button, I got a pop-up ad in which a woman appeared on my screen and asked, "Hi! Are you a genius!?", which under the circumstances felt kind of like she was adding insult to injury. Then I found what appears to be the movie at YouTube, starting here, where I watched enough of it to feel confident that I'd gotten to the bottom of why McTiernan, who narrates the film, doesn't do voice-over work for Pixar. Personally, I'd recommend waiting to see if McTiernan tries to show it in court as part of his legal defense. If he does, and it gets him off, I will sell off my body one organ at a time in order to fund the making of Nomads 2.

New World Order Update--"Die Hard" Director to Karl Rove and the FBI: "J'accuse!"

Phil Nugent — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:00:00 GMT

John McTiernan used to be best known as the director of Die Hard and its second sequel, The Hunt for Red October, and (shudder) Last Action Hero. The last ten years have not been kind; his 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair had its modest, reheated charms, but the other movie he released that year, The 13th Warrior, sank like a stone, and the two films he's released since then, Rollerball (2002) and Basic (2003), both hit with a splat. McTiernan would of course love to redeem himself by getting back to work and turning out a new string of hits, but McTiernan says that his career has been sidelined by his legal problems stemming from the Anthony Pellicano case. In 2006, two years before Pellicanos was convicted on charges of illegal wiretapping and racketeering, McTiernan pled guilty to charges of lying to the FBI about the case. Sometime after that, he entered into a prolonged legal battle over whether he had the right to withdraw his plea, and last February, his request was granted. According to McTiernan, the FBI, which has indicated that it will continue to pursue its case against him, has stuck him in a position of legal limbo that has rendered him insurable, and therefoere unemployable, by Hollywood studios.

Now McTiernan has finished a film, a change-of-pace project called--breathe deep--The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove. As the New York Times reports, the movie is a personal screed "that accuses the Bush administration of having pursued the Pellicano case as part of a far-ranging conspiracy under the direction of Karl Rove to prosecute Democrats." The film's argument ties the Pellicano prosecution to highly publicized instances of what some have seen as politically motivated prosecutions during the Bush administration, and specifically charges that l'affaire Pellicano was part of a plot to generate embarrassing publicity that could be used against Hillary Clinton if she had been the Democratic nominee for the presidency. McTiernan narrates the film and also appears on camera at the end to lecture the audience about the dangers of using the legal system as a political tool. Rather than try to distribute this baby to theaters, McTiernan says he hopes to soon post it on a web site , which "will be maintained by the group Victims of Karl Rove Prosecutions." Although Karl Rove himself declined to speak to the Times about McTiernan's charges, one of his elves did issue a statement saying that, “I suspect Secretary Clinton and Mr. Rove are in agreement that Mr. McTiernan is off his rocker.”

Hollywood "P.I. to the Stars" Sent Up the River

Phil Nugent — Fri, 16 May 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Hollywood private investigator Anthony Pellicano has been found guilty of 77 out of 78 charges including racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud, and identity theft. (He was acquitted of a single count of unauthorized computer access. He still has a racketeering-related charge yet to be decided.) The case attracted much in show business circle because of the high-profile nature of some of Pellicano's clients, and also some of his victims. Among those who hired him included Brad Grey of Paramount Pictures and Michael Ovitz. Pellicano's downfall began with Ovitz hired him to "handle" a reporter named Anita Busch, who contacted the FBI after she "walked out to her Audi outside her home to find a dead fish under a pan, a hole in the windshield, and a note saying 'STOP.'" Pellicano also placed taps on Busch's phone, as well as on the telephones of Sylvester Stallone and Keith Carradine (the last at the behest of Carradine's ex-wife, who Pellicano was dating) and conducted a smear campaign against Garry Shandling in response to Shandling filing suit against his own former agent.

Prosecutor Daniel Sanders told the jury that "This case is not about Hollywood", and as Carla Hall notes in the Los Angeles Times, the government did its best to see to it that it wouldn't be about Hollywood by not charging or investigating Pellicano's rich, powerful employers, whose knowledge of just what he was up to remains shrouded in mystery. A few notables, such as Die Hard (and, more recently, Basic and The 13th Warrior) director John McTiernan, who thought it would be at least as good idea to lie to feds about the case as it was to remake Rollerball, were scooped up and convicted of charges related to Pellicano months ago, but most of the big names dragged into the case managed to steer clear of legal involvement. Charged alongside Pellicano were his associates and co-defendents Mark Arneson, a former member of the LAPD; retired telephone company field technician Ray Turner; computer expert Kevin Kachikian; and a former Las Vegas businessman, Abner Nicherie. As Carla Hall dryly puts it, "No one in the group was likely to be spotted dining at the Ivy or skiing in Aspen."

Video of the Day: Requiem

John Constantine — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 23:33:00 GMT

If you went to the movies or watched television this past summer, chances are you’ve heard a Guyz Nite song. These comedy-rockers managed a little bit of non-Youtube notoriety thanks to their John McClane tribute song “Die Hard” being part of promotions for Live Free or Die Hard. This video comes from Guyz Nite’s metal incarnation, Holy Light of Demon. It is the funniest, and most accurate, song you will hear about aliens and predators today. Probably tomorrow too.

Take Five: We Love The '80s

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:30:00 GMT

American moviegoers can't get enough of the 1980s, apparently. Those of us who had to live through it the first time remember it primarily as a time of bad metal, worse sitcoms, and waiting around to see what dumb-ass thing Ronald Reagan would say next, but to the generations that followed, it is a time for richly veined cultural nostalgia. From what we can recollect through the haze of drugs and alcohol that coat our memories of the decade, the hallmark of 1980s cinema was very loud explosions punctuated by the occasional car chase or wise-cracking black transvestite. It's not something we thought anyone would be eager to repeat, and yet there have been, in recent memory, new installments of the Die Hard and Rocky franchises; a new TV series based on The Terminator; an upcoming Indiana Jones picture; and, opening all across the country this Friday, a new Rambo movie. Even the Screengrab is getting into the act, with Gabriel Mckee posting his top ten action heroes who deserve a comeback, many of whom hail from the Decade That Time Refuses To Forget. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em: so says Take Five as we present a fistful of '80s action movies that we. . . well, we don't love, exactly, but we at least look back on with something less than severe brain trauma.

ROCKY III (1982)

Sure, the first movie had heart and soul. And the second movie had a ruthless determination to capitalize on the first movie's heart and soul. But do you know what they didn't have? Do you know what they lacked, which made the third installment unquestionably the best of all the Rocky movies? That's right: MR. T. They didn't have Mr. T, and as such, they suffered, as do all artistic projects not involving Mr. T. Here's a little secret they don't teach you at film school: sure, Citizen Kane might have been the greatest movie of all time — but it would have been even better if it had been able to feature Mr. T yelling at people. And Rocky III, whatever its other faults — and it had hundreds, from its hamhanded TV-movie direction (by Sly himself) to its predictable storyline — at least gave us Mr. T yelling at people in abundance. When his Clubber Lang (a savage, media-loathing brute allegedly inspired by young George Foreman) wasn't yelling at people, he was beating people up, and Rocky III brings us the double pleasure of seeing Sylvester Stallone clobbered by Clubber and Hulk Hogan as "Thunderlips". Just turn it off halfway through.

BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (1986)

If it wasn't the most exciting or accomplished action movie of the 1980s, it was at least probably the most enjoyable: Big Trouble in Little China was brought to us by an uncharacteristically light-hearted John Carpenter, and worked both as a straight-up pseudo-mystical punch-'em-out and as a loopy parody of same. Carried largely on the back of Kurt Russell's endearing performance as antihero "ol' Jack Burton", a trucker who's chock full of bogus wisdom delivered in a ridiculously over-the-top John Wayne accent. Part of the reason it plays so well as both sincere action and goofy action send-up is because the script was written by W.D. Richter, who originally conceived it as a sequel to his own The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension from two years earlier. Legal and financial issues kept the sequel from being made, but Big Trouble features some of its characteristic touches and clever bits of dialogue. It also features swell performances from a young Kim Cattrall and James Hong, everyone's favorite inscrutable Asian. Besides, how can you not love a movie featuring a wizard named Egg Shen?

ACTION JACKSON (1988)
Where is the love for Sgt. Jericho Jackson, we ask you? Where? This compelling saga of America's forgotten black action hero was released in the same month as Bloodsport, making 1988 — which also brought us Die Hard, Above the Law, Red Heat and They Live — a banner year from cheesy guilty-pleasure action movies. This one had it all: a post-Rocky, pre-Arrested Development Carl Weathers playing a tough Detroit cop who was also an all-American track star and a Harvard-educated attorney; former Prince plaything Vanity making hay while the sun shone as a sex kitten; Sharon Stone, doing the thing that she was best known for doing before everyone all of the sudden decided to take her seriously; and villains Craig T. Nelson and Robert Davi overacting like there was no tomorrow. (Which, for Robert Davi at least, there probably wasn't.) Action Jackson had everything you could have wanted out of a 1980s action flick: a wisecracking tough guy hero, naked dead chicks, tons of explosions, people dying in extremely creative ways, egregious use of narcotics, and a protagonist whose name rhymed! Come back, Carl Weathers, all is forgiven.

BLOODSPORT (1988)

Before Jean-Claude Van Damme was a full-time crazy person, he was America's next big martial arts star. Bloodsport was the movie that put the rubber-groined Belgian on the map, portraying real-life martial arts semi-star Frank Dux. The plot of Bloodsport — well, it's giving it a lot more credit than it deserves to even call it a plot, involving (as does every other martial arts movie ever made) a bunch of well-toned Asians out to kick each other in the face. It's not much for memorable acting, either; Van Damme had already, in his first starring role, perfected the self-satisfied smirk that would carry him through the rest of his career, and while the movie does feature a young Forest Whitaker as a federal agent tasked to stand around looking exasperated, it also features Leah Ayres failing to become America's sweetheart, Donald Gibb trying to make the transition from hooligan to lummox, and Bolo Yeung (the former Bruce Lee nemesis known as Yang Tse) putting in the kind of performance only a trunk full of steroids can deliver. But it does feature some stunning martial arts battles, which is really all you can hope for in a movie like this.

ROAD HOUSE (1989)

In all the calls for a revival of action movie heroes like Rocky, Rambo, Ryan, and Indy, where are the legions of fans clamoring for a return of James Dalton? Patrick Swayze desperately needs something to do, people. Believe it or not, there was once a time when women would line up around the block to get a load of this chunk-headed 'King of the Sleepers' with his shirt off, and nowhere was he more chunk-headed or shirtless than in this deleriously zany action flick about a Zen-influenced tough guy ("Pain don't hurt") who is hired, despite his small stature and philosophy degree from NYU, to act as the bouncer at an out-of-control bar. Directed by a former electrician named Rowdy and co-starring Kelly Lynch at the height of her blondeness, Road House transcends its shortcomings by being so completely indifferent to its own craziness that it chugs along on its own energy with nary a look back. Ben Gazzara is the bad guy in this thing, clearly bombed out of his coconut, and it features the immortal line "I used to fuck guys like you in prison".

The Top Ten Action Heroes Who Deserve A Comeback, Part 1

Peter Smith — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 22:30:00 GMT

This week's top ten comes to us from guest writer Gabriel Mckee, friend of Nerve and author of The Gospel According to Science Fiction. Read his fantastic blog here.

Recent years may well be remembered for bringing back the over-the-top action hero. New sequels to Rocky, Die Hard, and Rambo have revived long-dead franchises, and the trend is continuing. Indiana Jones 4 has started filming, and a fourth Mad Max film would have wrapped by now had scheduling conflicts not led director George Miller to make Happy Feet instead. Though it's an easy trend to mock, it opens the door for other action heroes to be resurrected — here are some top candidates.

10. Scott McCoy (Chuck Norris), The Delta Force

Before he was a meme, before he was Walker, Texas Ranger, even before he was a Karate Kommando, Chuck Norris was Maj. Scott McCoy of the Delta Force. This elite antiterrorist strike force, led by Lee Marvin, consists of some thirty soldiers who are highly trained in standing around in the back of a cargo plane while Chuck Norris rides around on a motorcycle killing terrorists. Delta Force came out in the pre-Die Hard world, before we expected our action heroes to have pathos, depth or family troubles. There's not much character to this character, but when it comes to straightforward ass-kicking, Norris is the undisputed master. Norris is ripe for a Stallone-style comeback, and in the and in the age of the War on Terror, a new entry in the Delta Force saga is the perfect vehicle for his revival.

9. Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy), Beverly Hills Cop

Remember when Eddie Murphy made movies that people enjoyed? Barring Dreamgirls, his film career has been on a losing streak for over a decade, putting him just below Robin Williams on the list of actors who need to be rescued from their own careers. A return to the role of Axel Foley, the detective/con man of Beverly Hills Cop, might be the best way to ensure that Norbit never happens again.

8. Jack Carter (Michael Caine), Get Carter

Michael Caine has made a major comeback in recent years, but in most of his recent roles — in Batman Begins, Children of Men,and The Prestige, for instance — he's played the Kindly Old British Guy. It's easy to forget that he made his name playing jerks — first a heartless cad in Alfie, then a brutal-but-suave thug in Get Carter. This story of a London gangster who travels to Newcastle (Britain's equivalent of South Jersey) to investigate his brother's murder isn't as flashy as more recent tales of the U.K. underworld. But Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham nevertheless owe everything to Get Carter's blueprint and Caine's cynical performance. A return to the character of Carter would give Caine a chance to recapture both the grim violence and the effortless sexiness of one of his greatest roles.

7. Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman), The French Connection

The most successful action film of the '70s didn't star Clint Eastwood, Bruce Lee or any other established veteran of the genre. The French Connection owes much of its success to Gene Hackman's performance as hot-headed bad cop Popeye Doyle (which earned him his first Academy Award). More than just a tough guy, Doyle is a contemptible bully, and instead of an invincible supercop, his temper makes him a bit of a screw-up. Hackman is still more than capable of this kind of complexity (as proven by The Royal Tenenbaums), and it would be thrilling to see what he could do with this character after thirty-five years.

6. Foxy Brown (Pam Grier)

The 1973 film Coffy established Pam Grier as the undisputed queen of '70s blaxploitation. Foxy Brown (originally intended as a sequel entitled Burn, Coffy, Burn!) justified her ascension — whether infiltrating a high-end call-girl ring, shooting her drug-dealing brother in the ear, or hijacking a drug runner's crop duster, Foxy is "a whole lotta woman." At turns smiling and sneering, she violently opposes an oppressive society symbolized by a white-operated heroin syndicate. Grier has had a slightly higher profile since Quentin Tarantino reintroduced audiences to her charms, but it's been far too long since she's kicked ass like she did in Foxy Brown.

Read PART 2.

Trailer Roundup: Die Hard 12: Die Hungry

Paul Clark — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 16:30:00 GMT

I love Die Hard as much as the next guy, but this is pretty hilarious. Now that Stiller has become the star of such comfort-blanket fare as Meet the Fockers and Night at the Museum, it’s hard to remember what a brilliant comic mind he used to be. Not to much a wicked impressionist- despite looking and sounding almost nothing like Bruce Willis, he manages to perfectly mimic Willis’ most famous mannerisms- the steely-eyed squint, the pained grimace, the smartass cackle. This spoof trailer originally aired on the short-lived Ben Stiller Show, and Stiller smartly enlisted the services of Taylor Negron, the baddie in the Willis-starring The Last Boy Scout, to serve Die Hungry's nefarious archvillain. Fifteen years later, in the wake of Willis’ own fourth Die Hard movie, this isn’t exactly cutting-edge anymore, but the familiarity only makes it funnier.

Morning Deal Report: Hear the Lamentations of the Women, Etc

Peter Smith — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:00:00 GMT

Rumor has it Die Hard director John McTiernan might direct the new Conan. Funny, I thought he was in jail.

Meanwhile, John Singleton will direct the A-Team movie. Of all the franchises to milk.

The Writers' Guild strike has now killed forty-seven of the fifty-two active scripted TV shows, according to Variety. Just give 'em the money, for Christ's sake. We need our fix!

— Peter Smith