GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #312: DIE HARD IS A SLASHER FLICK

This was originally published on Forced Viewing, may that site rest in peace.

DIE HARD 

Directed by John McTiernan 

1988, 131 min. 

4 stars 

 

 

Is Die Hard a Christmas movie? Of course. But it’s also a horror movie. [steps back and waits for the arguments to begin] 

 

 

It’s picture perfect: a Christmas party at the Nakatomi Plaza in California. Everyone’s happy and having a good time. Holly Genaro (Bonnie Bedelia) is getting ready to see her ex-husband, John McClane (Bruce Willis) for the first time in a long time, so the vibe is good. Enter Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) and his group of business associates. They’re here for a friendly corporate takeover with a healthy interest in sitting on the beach, earning twenty-percent. That’s a pretty good deal. 

 

There is, unfortunately, one thing that Holly didn’t plan on: New York changed John McClane for the worst. Something’s not right about him. He has murderous impulses that he can’t control, and for some reason in his head he has fixated on Holly. He thinks she’s in danger from Hans and his friends, and thanks to military training he has the means and the knowledge of taking them on. 

 

Thankfully Hans and company have taken advantage of the Second Amendment. They’re the good guys with a gun that the Republicans are always talking about. As John stalks among them, almost Jason-like, picking them off one by one, they have the power to fight back against him. 

 

But their chances are not good. John is a one-man army. Not even the cops and FBI who arrive to arrest him stand a chance. Al Powell (played wonderfully by Reginald VelJohnson) is the only one who seems interested in negotiating with John. He tries his best because he’s been there before. A while back he shot a kid dead. He felt lousy about it, but he knows what it’s like to take someone’s life, so he’s the only in the cops have with John. 

 

There’s a particularly gruesome scene near the beginning of the carnage when John kills a dude, straps him to a chair, writes NOW I HAVE A MACHINE GUN, HO-HO-HO on his shirt and sends him down the elevator so his friends could see their dead companion and know how far John will go. The guy’s brother, Karl (Alexander Godunov), is horrified by this, and he bravely pledges to get revenge for this. Who among us wouldn’t do so? Karl is a very relatable character. 

 

The acting is very good in this. Willis is very believable as a violent lunatic. One has to wonder if he was so dedicated to the role that he actually walked barefoot over glass. Bedelia is wonderful as the victim of John’s violent attentions. She has the fear down pat, but her resolve to move forward in the face of certain death is great. Rickman has a boyish charm despite the German accent. He’s a great, tragic hero. Rickman has a background in Shakespeare, so I’m sure he drew inspiration from the Bard’s work. And then there’s Hart Bochner as Harry Ellis. No one ever suspected that the guy trying to get into Holly’s pants would betray them all. How could he have sided with John? Hans had to make a tough decision, but judging by how dangerous John is, he made the right choice in shooting Ellis dead. 

 

The setting is wonderful. McTiernan’s choice to have this stalker movie take place in a city skyscraper, as opposed to the woods or suburbia, is very telling. This is very much a white collar world, and it makes John a bit more sympathetic. He’s a blue collar guy, and he has to negotiate the office in order to get what he wants. 

 

And then there’s the ending. Tread with caution. What follows are spoilers. 

 

It takes a lot of balls to go with a negative ending. When Hans feels relief to see an unarmed John McClane in sight, he does the merciful thing. He doesn’t kill John. His heart is bigger than his brain. John pulls the dirtiest trick ever when he reveals that he’s taped a gun to his back within easy reach. He shoots our hero and then drops him down the entire length of the skyscraper. That’s pretty dark and over the top. He even has a catchy quip, much like Freddy and Chucky, when he does this: “Yippie kie ay, motherfucker.” At least he’s got a sense of humor, unlike other slashers (*ahem* Jason). 

 

McTiernan plays a trick on his viewers, too. Just when you think John is going to be peacefully taken into custody, Karl, who we thought was killed earlier when he was hung by his neck from a chain, makes a sudden reappearance. Maybe John wasn’t going to get away with this after all. Heroically, Karl moved forward with his gun, ready to save the day . . . and Al Powell guns him down?! What the fuck? Maybe John got too far into his head, or maybe he wanted to kill someone again after shooting that poor child. Is he going to be taken into custody, too? Just like John? 

 

This is a harrowing film, and it seems like it could happen in the real world. That’s what makes this movie so scary. If you work in an office building, this could very well happen to you. 

 

And no, the world is not done with John McClane. Just like his slasher kin, he comes back for a few sequels in which he gets to kill again. And again. And again. 

 

Merry fuckin’ Christmas. 

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #311: THE THREE GARTH ENNIS BOOKS I MISSED

 Earlier today I talked about how difficult it was for an author I love to publish something and get past me. I remember earlier this year finally having money again after not working since Jan. 3, so I went to get my comics from my guy. Garth Ennis is my favorite comics writer of all time. So I figured I'd have a few new books from him.

Nope. But I did have the new series about The Boys, which was called Dear Becky. It's fucking great. Read it, even if you're not into the Prime series. It's the perfect level of insanity and melancholy.

But here's the thing: Ennis had three other books that came out this year. It slipped past me and my guy. In total, we're talking about 15 single issues that none of us knew about. I picked up the trades, and on Wednesday, I'm going to tell my guy about them. He loves Ennis, but his brother really, really loves Ennis's war books. They're all great, but I suspect I know why no one knows about them.

They are not technically part of War Stories. But they are war stories. I want to talk about them, but there are spoilers. So don't read this unless you already read the three books in question: The Stringbags, Out of the Blue and Sara.

I didn't expect much from The Stringbags, but I think this one made me cry the most. I know a lot about WWII, but I never heard about these guys. The technical name for their planes were Swordfish. They were all UK pilots, navigators and rear gunners. The problem is, they were stuck with these antique planes that were made more from cloth than anything else. They were just heavy enough to haul whatever they had to haul. In this case, it was torpedoes. You had to be either very brave or very insane to fly these fucking things. And here we have Archie, Ollie and Pops, the crew of their Swordfish. Archie is very serious and very good at his job. Ollie is certifiably insane and brave and relies on humor to get through the overwhelming violence they have to deal with. Pops is the vet who is equal measures of courage and humor but is also the guy who tries to talk sense into everyone else, even when they are on the ground. (And yes, he usually buys the drinks.) While these guys are fictional, they have very real counterparts, and for some crazy reason, the UK threw these lunatics at the fucking Bismarck. For real. The fiction story is told here, but it essentially really happened.

And then there was their last mission. The UK, knowing fully that any Swordfish they sent against the Germans in this situation would absolutely 100% die, sent them against the Germans. And all of them except for 5 died. They literally flew into Nazi guns just to drop their torpedoes and die. The UK fighters that backed them up later talked about the horror of having to watch these men literally and horribly die slow fiery deaths. For nothing. Hitler's stupid plan of running his battleships through the English Channel to German ports actually succeeded. But fuck him. The real men of the German army were shocked by the sheer bravery of these Englishmen. And they would give them praise long after these Englishmen died at their hands.

The last scene of the book is when Archie suddenly wakes up after being brutally shot. He keeps talking to Ollie and Pops as he tries to finish his mission before he dies. He says, "Chaps, we're almost there." Having no idea that Ollie and Pops are riddled with bullets and dead behind him.

I have tears running down my cheeks right now.

Out of the Blue. While not a War Story, it takes a character from the Avatar War Story books. Coincidentally named Archie, he's a UK pilot who was shot down in Russia and told his mates that he would go through Hell because there is a woman back home. Now he is married to that woman, and he's coming back to the UK but because of some cock up, while landing he accidentally crashes into two other British fighters and kills them all. It is absolutely not his fault, but the CO (do the UK call their commanding officers COs?) 100% blames him and sticks him with the worst ship in the fleet, the Bitch with a T. No matter how well planned things are with this plane, it always fucks up at least something vital during a mission. No one's fault. Sometimes tech just does that to you. Archie is also stuck with this navigator who is supposed to suck, but it turns out that he's from India, and the CO doesn't like him because he's not white. Naturally, Archie and Ranjaram make good friends and good shipmates. But the CO still wants to make things difficult for Archie, so he does his level best to fuck Archie's wife. And Archie, not being confident in his social skills (but being a ruthless fucking captain when he's going after Nazis to the point where Ranjaram suggests he might be schizo) almost fucks his marriage up.

But because it's an Ennis story, and I highly suspect that Ennis is a secret not-so-secret romantic, he figures it out. Just in time, as it turns out, since she's "up the duff" with his child.

Don't get high hopes. Remember, Ennis is great at war tragedy stories. This ends no differently than you expect. There is some hope, but chances are, Archie might have survived. Ranjaram . . . maybe not so much. You'll have to look at that last panel and decide for yourself.

Of all three books, I felt I was most prepared for Sara. Ennis is a huge fan of the female Russian participation in WWII. If you doubt me, read his story about the Night Witches. It's more or less true, and it's a great fucking story. This time he highlights the great female Russian snipers. I love reading their stories. Look this shit up. Don't just trust me. If you don't read about this, you might not believe it.

Sara is about a group of Russian female snipers after a Nazi supersniper. Of all three, I thought I knew how this would go best. I was fucking wrong. This might be the most tragic, yet the most heroic of the bunch. Because Sara is the Russian version of the supersniper. And she goes off on her own to get this fucking guy, mostly to save her sisters from having to do it themselves.

And there's the tragic ending. She finds him, but she only gets his second. And the actual guy shoots her mortally. And as she's dying, she has this vision of her sisters getting old and having families and knowing it's all just bullshit. But! She knows this guy will want to see the Russian woman who bagged 300 of his Nazi brothers. So as she's dying, she turns over and puts a live grenade under her, knowing that this guy will turn her onto her back. And there he is, approaching in the background in the final panel of the book,

WWII stories have a special place in my heart. Everyone seems to believe that this was the one good war in the scope of the world. And obviously I hate Nazis almost as much as Indiana Jones. I look back on stories I wrote as a kid, some when I was as young as five years old, and some of them had Nazis as the worst villains ever, so this concept is nothing new to me.

But goddammit,. Garth Ennis writes the best war stories. Dear Billy is probably my favorite (it's a Battlefields arc), but he never fails to nail me through the fucking heart.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #310: BLACK FRIDAY

 I remember a long time back. I was working at a telecom company specializing in conferencing, be it audio, web or video. I'd been there a long time, but I needed more money. So I went to a Sears. I'm OK mentioning it by name since, well, yeah. Sears bit the big one. Even the flagship Oakbrook Mall location where I worked at (666 ft. above sea level, no shit, I got bored one day and checked it on my GPS) is nothing but dust and the scent of old sweat and tears.

But it was thriving back then. I got the worst fucking job of my life: I started selling shoes at Sears. Just for the holiday. But I worked out so well that they wanted to keep me. I hated the job more than anything I've ever done, but I was good at it. I sold more than anyone else, and I did the best at ordering shoes online, which they really counted because they wanted us to be good at that. Also, I won a ridiculous amount of prizes from that. But it sucked. I felt lower than whale shit, if that's still a phrase.

Here's the thing. When I got hired, I told them I could only work weekends. I had a job that paid a fuck-ton more on weekdays. Everyone agreed with me, and they let me practically work whenever I wanted to. I mean, not really, but close.

Yes, I hear you thinking, "Dude, you were Al Bundy?" Yeah, I've heard that maybe a thousand times.

I fucking hated that job, but it gave me enough money to survive a little while longer than I thought. My favorite part was getting up super early so I could put the correct labels on each shoe display. Why? Well, because during that time we were closed. THERE WERE NO FUCKING CUSTOMERS. When I was done, the doors opened for the customers, and I could just go home and drink myself into oblivion. I also loved checking stock for the same reason. I had no customer contact. If that sounds weird, think of this. The customer always believes they are right. And they are NOT. Unless they are Michael Douglas shooting the ceiling out of a fast food joint. If you ever want to see someone's true face, look at them when they are trying to buy something. If you are the retail worker you suddenly become the focus of their ire. Although I have my problems with the job, at least my immediate boss had my side during these unrelenting situations. Every other job threw me under the bus.

If you have ever worked in retail, you know the golden rule. On Black Friday, it's all hands on deck. But, you know, it was Friday. Not the weekend. Hence, I was at my primary job instead of that fucking hell hole.

So I came in on the following Saturday. My boss approached me as I was putting new boxes on the shelves and making sure that the smaller sizes were on top while the bigger sizes were at rock bottom. He said to me, "So John. I saw that you didn't come in yesterday. You did know that Black Friday requires all workers to come in, right?"

No, I didn't know, and I told him that.

"Yeah, we needed a lot of people yesterday, and you weren't here. You were on the schedule."

I said, "I told management from day one that I could only work weekends. I will never, under any circumstances, work a weekday. Because from Monday to Friday, I'm at my real job. You know, the one that actually pays my bills."

That made him very nervous. But he said that he would let his boss know, and everything would be all right. Sure enough, she accepted my reasoning. And that made me the happiest motherfucker in the world. Because fuck Black Friday.

Here's another thing you might find interesting. You know that conferencing job I mentioned earlier? All of a sudden we were being offered 12-hour weekend shifts. Where we barely had to do anything. We'd just pick up if someone called, and usually it was the wrong number. I had never seen the bridges so fucking clean. One day a friend of mine and I watched I Come in Peace while working. It was fucking great. Well, there was also the pervert who kept calling that one day. If I picked up, he hung up right away. But if my female partner that day answered (and I listened in, ready to step in if need be) he would say all kinds of fucked up sex shit. As I recall, this douche asked my coworker if she wanted to, eh, fuck it. You can guess, and I'd rather not talk about it.

As this company, there were several levels. If you were hired, you were on a temporary Level One. You had to prove yourself to actually get real Level One status. Then there was Level Two, which made more money, but you had to deal with more complex things. Then there was Senior, where you got the toughest calls, like investor relations calls. But then they invented a new level. I was one of a select few who were on the Strike Team. We handled the worst and craziest conferences. Some had star-studded security lists. Others were major wrestling companies run by a dude whose first name rhymes with "prints." And at one point I handled calls for celebrities. One of our customers was a guy who used to be one of the most loveable people in the world and who now is a thoroughly reviled sexual predator.

The point is, I started making a shit ton of money at my real job to the point where I was ready to jettison that awful Sears job. Joy!

I went in on my day off with an envelope containing my letter of resignation. Normally I'd give the customary two weeks, but I needed out of the job immediately. Also, having my first novel, Strip, published helped back me up. I found my immediate boss (his boss was always hard to find), and I handed him the envelope. He was very sad to see me go, since I outsold everyone except for him, but he accepted it. (He was not eligible for the online sales prize because he was management.) I decided to use my employee discount before that was gone, so I bought a bunch of stuff. As I did so, I ran into one of my shoes coworkers. I told her the good news, and her reaction was so ridiculously out of left field.

"You can't quit. They're not allowing anyone to quit."

Briefly I felt like I was in Bentley Little's The Store. I said to her, "Good luck getting me in for tomorrow's shift." Not allowing to quit. Seriously? And yet if I fucked up at the job, I'd be terminated on the spot. So, you know. Fuck Sears and fuck the shoes department. I really liked the people I worked with, even my immediate boss. But I was wasting time at that job. So fuck it. I took as many 12-hour shifts at my real job that I could.

That company no longer exists exactly. It was absorbed by a global corporation named after a character in an Orson Welles book. There was a movie, but as I understand it, it was never released. I found it very weird because the character in question was a horrible fucking person. Why name your company after that dude?

But then this company was absorbed by yet another global corporation, and so it still exists today. You know who doesn't exist anymore? That fucking shoe department. In fact, that entire store. It's gone, baby, gone. So fuck 'em.

I got off into the weeds on this one, but this has been weighing heavily on me, especially given the time of year. Long story short, fuck Black Friday.

The Tales of Unspeakable Taste perk--finally revealed!

 

Did you buy a copy of my new book, Tales of Unspeakable Taste? Are you going to buy it? Are you on the fence? Maybe this neat little perk will help. The first 30 people to buy my book will get this handmade zine with my filthy poetry in it. There are only 30 copies, so first come, first serve. All you have to do is send me an image of your receipt and let me know where you want me to send it. These are already moving quickly, so if you want to get this, you should act fast. This will never be reprinted.

From the back:

Are you ready for Shit Poems? Then you've come to the right place. John Bruni, not known for his poetry at all, has put together this collection of gross, filthy, disgusting and hilarious verse. Don't worry. He doesn't do any of that fancy rhyming shit. Not usually, anyway. Be sure to have plenty of tissue on hand. Wait, that didn't come out right. Uh . . . I should clarify. I mean, John Bruni should clarify. This booklet is not for masturbation. Probably. I mean, you do you, right? Ah, I'm going off into the weeds. No one is really reading this anyway. And if you are . . . why? Put some gloves on and get into this lunacy. You know you want to.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #309: LIVE TO YOU FROM THE HOSPITAL!

 First point, yes, this is a weird time for me to be posting this, but after I do so, I am going to go to sleep, as I have not done so in a very, very long time. Bringing me to my second point. I am doing this from the hospital. Once again, my insides have risen up against me, but like the Pentahook, I'm a bastard who can't be killed.

Why am I doing this instead of sitting back and enjoying the morphine while my death wracked body begs for mercy? I found out something so horribly disgusting today about maybe the toneless and most greediest thing I have ever heard about.

So I'm in the ER, just about learning that I was to be admitted, when the nurse and the tech started talking about a possible raise they were going to get. I'm a personable guy in these situations because I know how difficult and sometimes horrifying their jobs can be. One of them said she thought they'd get a flat 3% raise. The tech said it had better be 5. I wished them good luck, as they were about to leave to handle a patient who wanted his fluids orally because he was scared of needles.

"I hope we're lucky," the nurse said. "They just took away our 401k plans."

Wait, now what? Who? And who suffers? Well, they were recently bought by a corporate entity, and while I believe the idea came from these new administrators, I highly think that they would never apply such a grim plan to themselves. Doctors? Lucrative, I'm sure, but somehow I feel that the doctors had the pull to keep them out of it. Nurses? Techs? You know, the guys who do the real work? When was the last time you saw a doctor put in an IV or one do a CT Scan themselves? No, they just make the big money from looking at the results and from sometimes making you say "Ahhhhhhhh."

Just so we're clear, the front-line responders at a hospital, the one who get most of the hands on experience, are doing so during the most deadly plague we've experienced in a while and having the most risk of getting it are now doing this with the sudden absence of their 401k plans?! What fucking CEO-in-Robocop prick came up with this solution? Did he laugh to hookers in chains while wiping at the cocaine ring around his nostrils? What kind of evil shit is this?

This hospital, I should mention, has proudly bragged about how awesome they score on national tests. It's a very effective place. I use it a lot, and it's only let me down twice. I've been here once a month at least every month of this year. In May, I went here a staggering four times in five days. I almost had you beat, October! Damn it! Damn you!

So every time you see all those children's signs on the outside, keep in mind that while those are pretty good, they would much rather have their 401k plans. (Hey, I did this all on morphine. I think I did a fair job.)