Die Hard Only Happened After Its Screenwriter Was Almost Killed By A Fridge

It’s not worth thinking about a world where ‘Die Hard’ doesn’t exist.

Not only did it ground the action genre after years of it being led by muscle-bound dullards, but it also includes numerous iconic scenes, lines, and one of the best villains in celluloid history.

But it turns out ‘Die Hard’ probably wouldn’t have happened if screenwriter Jeb Stuart hadn’t nearly been killed by a fridge. This revelation was made in Brian Abrams’ book ‘Die Hard: An Oral History’ (via Uproxx), which is a comprehensive breakdown of the film’s journey from book to screen to legendary status.

First we need some context, though. ‘Die Hard’ originally started out as an adaptation of Roderick Thorp’s 1979 novel ‘Nothing Lasts Forever’, which rather than being led by 30-year-old John McClane instead had 65-year-old retired cop Joe Leland as its protagonist.

Not only that, but at the end both Leland and his 40-year-old daughter die, with the latter meeting her grisly death after she’s dropped from a building by Anton ‘Little Tony’ Gruber.

Over the next 10 years various studios rejected ‘Nothing Lasts Forever’, primarily because it was so depressing. Jeb Stuart was soon tasked with bringing it to life, something that he struggled with immeasurably, especially since he was in so much debt that he had numerous other projects he was working on simultaneously.

In Abrams’ book Stuart reveals that one night he returned home to his wife and young children having made no progress with the Paramount, Disney, and Nothing Lasts Forever scripts he’d been working on during the day. Stuart needed to return to the studio that night to finish his work, which led to a furious quarrel with his beloved.

“It was one of those situations where I got in a fight with my wife and said, ‘Screw this.’ I got in my car to head back down to the lot. I didn’t apologise. She was right, and I was wrong,” Stuart explained to Abrams during his interview for the book.

“As I was driving down the 134, that’s when a Frigidaire box fell out of the truck in front of me. I couldn’t go anywhere. I can still imagine my heart stopping. I’m thinking, ‘It’s all over. I’m going right through the top of a Frigidaire,’ but the box was empty. It flattened. I pulled over to the side of the road, and suddenly I thought, ‘I know what this movie is.’”

“It’s not about a 65-year-old man whose 40-year-old daughter gets dropped off a building. It’s about a 30-year-old guy who should have said he’s sorry to his wife, and then bad stuff happens.”

After completing this revised version of ‘Nothing Lasts Forever’, Stuart insists that the script was “green-lit over a weekend.” Joel Silver joined on as producer, suggesting they rename it ‘Die Hard’, the original title for Shane Black’s ‘The Last Boy Scout’ that he had since been looking to use on another action project.

The rest as they say is history. Steven E. de Souza ultimately rewrote Jeb Stuart’s script after director John McTiernan requested more changes to the story. But the pair now share a co-screenwriter credit on a bona-fide classic that not even Bruce Willis’ money-grabbing sequels can diminish the impact of.

If you want to learn more you should immediately head over to Amazon to purchase ‘Die Hard: An Oral History’.

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[Image via 20th Century Fox]