Bruce Willis Worked Some Really, Really Long Days

When Willis was cast in Die Hard, he was mostly known for his role as private detective David Addison (Willis, pictured with co-star Cybill Shepherd) with on the television series Moonlighting. Willis was still shooting the TV show when the film went into production, meaning he was working on Moonlighting during the day before filming Die Hard at night. Willis’ schedule may have inadvertently made the movie a better one because of it.

Screenwriter Steven E. de Souza explained the situation in an interview with SlashFilm: “The [subplots] are a direct result of the picture starting so late that they could not organize Bruce’s schedule,” de Souza said. “When the movie started, Bruce was filming Moonlighting in the daytime with a 10-hour shoot, and then he’s filming this. So after the first week, John McTiernan came to me and said, ‘We have at least another week of this overlap. Why don’t you go back into the script and see if you can find more stuff for all the other characters to do?’”

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