'Live Free Or Die Hard': Star Justin Long and Director Len Wiseman Ready to Blow Up Big
By Fred Topel, Hollywood.com Staff
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Monday, June 25, 2007
Justin Long |
Bruce Willis is a pro at the Die Hard business – Live Free or Die Hard is his fourth time at bat, after all – but this time he welcomes a few newbies to John McClane's explosive world. Len Wiseman directs his first Die Hard film and Justin Long, playing a computer hacker that McClane must protect from terrorists, does his first action movie, period.
Wiseman comes from the Underworld franchise, where he earned his CGI stripes pitting vampires and werewolves against each other, while Long has stolen scenes from Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston in films like Dodgeball and The Break-Up - and of course he's best known as the Mac in the “Mac vs. PC” commercials.
The duo joined Bruce Willis in Van Nuys' Woodley Park, where MTV was filming a car crash stunt for their promotion of the film. While Willis did his action hero thing, the costar and director riffed off each other in an effort to hype the film, as Wiseman was still racing to finish for the June 27 release.
Hollywood.com: What was the most challenging thing about this type of large-scale action film?
Len Wiseman: The scale of it wasn’t so much the problem. I found that it was honestly more fun to have the ability and the toys to use to do the action the proper way and all that so that was fun for me. I guess the most challenging would be because it is part of a trilogy and one that I’m very close to and the biggest challenge I would say is that I kind of have two responsibilities, I thought. One is to direct the film, the other is to watch it as the fan that I am...The other stuff was just, you know there can be headaches and they can be challenging but for the most part it’s fun to blow sh*t up.
Justin Long: I had never done a movie like this. It was just crazy for me to see how long and involved all these stunts and sequences were. You see the movie, you sort of forget what you're doing. You forget what the means to the end is, or what the end is going to be. And then you see it, and all those weeks and weeks of waiting and setups and da da da, just fades in seconds of film. These scenes that I freaked out about where I was doing push ups and trying to get in character to deliver all these lines, they're just like “Bah!” and then cut to another guy and back to me, going “Bah!” I have a friend who works on the show CSI: Miami, I was freaking out about the character and he said, "You're not going to have time to look good or bad. It's just going to be like a quick shot of you going ‘Bah!’ and then that's it."
Live Free or Die Hard |
HW: Justin, you're the Mac guy on the commercials and you're playing a computer hacker in this. Did people make fun of you for being the geek?
JL: In terms of people making fun of me, they did for many reasons. Not just the geek thing. There was a whole effeminate thing, the whole “I have three testicles.”
LW: But just don't show your testicles.
JL: I can't help it. I win a lot of money that way. No, I don't think anybody ever really [made fun of me]. Everyone was bugging me about getting an iPhone. I remember one day when it was announced, everyone went, "I want an iPhone." People that had never talked to me were like, "Hey, Justin." But people do often come up to me. The funny thing about people recognizing me with the Mac thing is they're always very casual about it. They never seem at all impressed. They're just very like, "Oh, there's a tree, there's a bowl, there's the Mac guy, there's…" It's very nonchalant about it. I don't know why they wouldn't be. People also ask me a lot of questions about computers. I play a hacker in this movie and I have to deliver a lot of exposition about like "Well, the algorithm is contracted into…"
LW: That was the one thing I was surprised most about when we met is how much you don't know about computers.
JL: Yeah, I'm very, very computer illiterate. So I just think it's sort of funny that for somebody who is as retarded as I am is playing the smart hacker guy. I get the worst of both worlds. I look like a geeky hacker but I don't know anything about computers.
HW: Justin, did you improvise any lines?
JL: Yeah, there was. They always wanted us to do a bunch scripted, but the script was sort of in a constant state of flux so there was definitely [improvising]. Bruce did it too. There was a lot of that going on. In those moments of sort of like extreme, I'm always scared for my life, it's kind of hard to stick to [the script]. You kind of have to bring something a bit more natural. Some of the dialogue was not exactly solidified…I'm just surprised he left a lot of it in. I was really, really surprised.
LW: A lot of the comedy is really just you get there on the day and the script is a road map, but then just the energy of what comes out of that day, different ideas and things –a lot of it made the movie.
Live Free or Die Hard |
HW: Len, you're a fan of the franchise. What are your favorite Die Hard moments?
LW: I like the icicle through the eye [in Die Hard 2]. One of my favorite parts of Die Hard, when people ask me like, "What's your favorite action sequence?" and it comes down to a shot in Die Hard 1 that I had never seen before in any kind of action film. When he's down on the ground and shooting at the guy running at you and it pops the guy in the knees. He gets popped in the kneecap and then he falls forward, he doesn't go through the glass, just his head goes through the glass. I'd never seen anything like that.
JL: I've seen that in real life.
HW: Finally, Justin: are the computers in the movie, are they PCs or Macs and is it a conflict of interest?
JL: I think they're PCs. I'm sure they were aware of it. It's a great job for me, but people are very passionate about airing on one side or the other. It's serious. I can't really even relate to the people. I suppose I have to. I have to choose a side. But I think they probably made a conscious [decision]. I don't think they'd want Macs everywhere in the movie - listening to iPods while we're running away from things.
Photo(s) by Dave Edwards- © 2007- DailyCeleb.com- All Rights Reserved
Photo(s) by Twentieth Century Fox- © 2007- 20th Century Fox- All Rights Reserved