Here's a couple of things a lot of people don't know about the classic
Bruce Willis action flick DIE HARD.
One, it really happened. Two, John
McClane, the NYPD cop portrayed by Willis in the film, wasn't by himself
during this amazing adventure because I, too, was there. That's
right--I have totally been cheated out of my rightful place in cool
action-movie history by being left out of that stupid movie. So now, at
long last, I have decided to set the record straight and recount the
thrilling details of my incredible exploits during the great Nakatomi
Tower hostage crisis so that the world will have yet another reason to
admire me for how awesome I am.
What happened was, I had gotten out of the elevator on the wrong floor
during my search for the secret office of a fly-by-night back-alley
bikini waxing technician named Wilbur Cranflanflan. I wasn't really
interested in getting a bikini wax, but I'd just lost a bet with a
friend of mine who insisted that there were only nine Bradys in "The
Brady Bunch" (including Alice), while I was certain that there were at
least five or six hundred.
I mean, who knew that they reused the same ones for every episode? You
don't reuse the same hypodermic needle when you're giving out flu shots,
and it seems only logical to me that the safety requirements for proper
sterilization should extend to the individual Bradys as well. But
apparently Sherwood Schwartz didn't share my concern, so, long story
short, I was obliged to get a bikini wax from this Wilbur Cranflanflan,
who, despite his silly name, had been highly recommended to me by my
personal trainer, Biff.
As it turned out, I was in the wrong building anyway, but I noticed that
there was a party under way when the elevator doors opened and, party
animal that I was in my reckless youth, I quickly jumped in and started
to mingle. People began staring at me right away, which I attributed to
both my stunning good looks and the fact that I wasn't wearing any pants
due to my impending bikini wax. "Please try to control yourselves,
girls," I said modestly. "There's only one of me to go around." Wary of
the growing sexual tension roiling within the female inhabitants of my
vicinity, I slipped into an office and came face-to-face with Detective
John McClane, who was walking around on the carpet barefoot, making
fists with his feet. "Fists with your feet," he muttered with amusement.
I held up my right hand in the traditional Apache greeting. "How, Fists
With Your Feet," I said. "My name is porfle, but my Native American name
is 'Dances Like Jeff Goldblum.' Are you waiting to get a bikini wax,
too?"
Suddenly, the sound of gunfire erupted from the main ballroom, followed
by piercing screams! When I finally stopped screaming, McClane (as he
preferred to be called, I discovered later) grabbed me by the collar and
we ducked into a nearby stairwell. "Terrorists!" he cried. "I have to
stop them!"
"And I have to find Wilbur Cranflanflan!" I added breathlessly as we ran
upstairs to a floor that was still under construction. McClane paced
around nervously, trying to decide what to do next, while I gaped in awe
at all the cool power tools that were just laying around waiting for me
to play with them. There was even an official orange hardhat for me to
wear! I barely noticed when McClane picked up a nearby phone and started
trying to contact the police, because I was in the process of hefting a
massive circular saw that I'd just flicked on and was sawing my way
through several stacks of expensive imported lumber along with various
items of brand new office furniture.
"CONSTRUCTION WORKER PORFLE ON THE JOB!" I screamed in giddy delight
over the ear-splitting din as the air was filled with billowing clouds
of sawdust. Momentarily distracted by McClane's frantic attempts to make
himself heard over the racket, I sawed my way right through one of
those fancy boardroom tables and neatly bisected the telephone. McClane
stood there dumfounded as the severed cord dangled from the receiver he
was holding to his ear. But before he could thank me or whatever he was
going to say, there came the sound of footsteps quickly approaching the
room. It was the terrorists!
McClane dived under a table. "DUCK!" he shouted.
"WHERE?" I cried, glancing around. That's just what we needed in a fix like this, I thought--some stupid duck flying around!
At that moment, a huge, blonde German guy with a machine gun leapt into
the doorway, his face twisted with rage. I wheeled around in surprise
and let go of the circular saw, which flew across the room and landed
right on the guy's foot. He barked in pain and started hopping around on
his other foot, unleashing a stream of German cuss words that sounded
even dirtier than the American ones, while McClane seized the
opportunity to run up behind him and hit him over the head with a large
potted plant. The German guy fell back against the wall and slid to the
floor, the plant still perched decoratively on his head.
A sudden thought struck me. "Omigosh! What if THAT'S Wilbur Cranflanflan?"
McClane glared at me, trying to catch his breath. "Who the hell's Wilbur Cranflanflan?"
"He's the guy that this whole thing is all about!" I shot back, rolling
my eyes. Then, while a puzzled McClane processed this information, I
began to formulate a plan. We would crawl around in the air ducts and
climb up and down the elevator shafts until we found a way to blow up
the whole building, and then everything would be okay. I quickly relayed
this plan to McClane, who gaped at me in sheer disbelief. I think my
cool plan had totally astounded him!
Suddenly, a cruel but snidely sophisticated voice came from behind us.
We spun around in unison to find a tall, dapper gent with a Van Dyke
beard backed by a gang of vicious-looking henchmen with machine guns.
"So," he said to McClane in an oily European accent, "you must be the
'cowboy' who has been running around trying to...how do you say
it...'throw a monkey wrench' into my nefarious scheme."
McClane stood up straight and coolly met the man's gaze with an
insouciant smirk. "And you," he said slowly, relishing the moment, "must
be Wilbur Cranflanflan."
The man's smug look wilted. "No, I'm Hans Gruber," he said uneasily. "Who the hell is Wilbur Cranflanflan?"
"There," I volunteered, pointing to the unconscious guy with the potted
plant sticking out of his head. "That's Wilbur Cranflanflan."
"No, he isn't," Gruber frowned. "That's my henchman, Karl."
"Well," I shrugged, "if it isn't you, and it isn't that guy, then it
must be one of these other guys." I indicated the henchmen standing
behind him. "Okay, which one of you guys is Wilbur Cranflanflan?"
The henchmen glanced around guiltily at one another for a few moments,
then turned to Gruber and shrugged. "We're not sure, boss," one of them
admitted.
"What do you mean, 'you're not sure'?"
"Well," he said sheepishly, "we don't know what this Cranflanflan guy looks like, and--"
"Okay, wait," Gruber said, waving them off with an impatient look. "I am
becoming tired of this game." He pointed at me and McClane. "Kill them
both. Now."
They all raised their machine guns. This was it. I had to think fast.
"FOOD FIGHT!!!" I screamed.
In the momentary confusion that settled over the group, I grabbed what
appeared to be a picnic lunch bag out of Gruber's hands and began to
throw its contents at them. "Yippie-ki-yay, melon farmers!" I cried.
Hans Gruber recoiled, eyes wide with terror, as the bag's contents came
flying straight toward him.
"MY DETONATORS!" he shrieked.
The explosion took out the entire floor and blasted every window on all
four sides of the building to smithereens. Black smoke churned from the
gaping blast holes while shattered glass rained down on the street
below. The shock wave could be felt for several blocks.
By some insanely unlikely freak of scientific happenstance, I was
totally unharmed by the blast. Some physics professors refer to this
rare phenomenon as the "Sub-Atomic Shield of Stupidity", while others
blame it on an ancient Mayan curse passed down through the ages by
living mummies. As for McClane, the explosion blew him into an air duct,
which he had to crawl around in for several hours until he finally fell
down an elevator shaft.
Hans Gruber and his henchmen, of course, were declared missing and
presumed dead--that is, until they turned up a few years later in the
small town of Miller's Crotch, South Dakota, delivering singing
telegrams in gorilla suits. They all had amnesia and remembered nothing
of their former lives save for the mysterious name "Wilbur
Cranflanflan", the mere mention of which sent them screaming
hysterically up trees and down manholes.
Anyway, you can see how markedly different Hollywood's version of the
events is from what really happened. They added a lot of stuff to make
it more exciting, but more importantly, they totally ignored my daring
and heroic actions during the crisis. The only explanation that I've
been able to come up with is that they simply couldn't find anyone great
enough to play me in the movie. One good thing did come out of it,
though--after miraculously surviving the explosion, I no longer needed
that bikini wax.
Is It A Christmas Story? Read "LIVE FREELY OR DIE HARDLY" And Decide For Yourself!