There are, of course, many quotable lines in the greatest Christmas movie ever made, Die Hard. One of them is queued up in the video below.
Carol and I watched Die Hard on TV the other day, chillin' after our booster shots, and it just occurred to me that I don't know who would have said to John McClane, "Come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs..."
There are only two possible suspects among the characters seen or referenced in the actual film. We know this because McClane doesn't know anyone at the party and the movie (more or less) identifies everyone he knows in California.
The first is McClane's former superior at the NYPD, Cappy Roberts, who is mentioned as having retired to California. In one of the opening scenes, we're told that if things don't work out with his wife, Holly, McClane has been invited to stay with Cappy. The second person is McClane's estranged wife, Holly.
I have a hard time believing an older, retired, New York City detective chief would say "Come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs..." I've always interpreted the line as a dig at Californians, and Cappy isn't a native. So I'm rejecting him as the source. It is possible that Cappy said the line sarcastically to McClane, but then McClane saying it sarcastically in the movie doesn't work.
I also don't believe Holly would have said it. Holly and John are estranged after he didn't support her moving to California to take her high prestige position with the Nakatomi Corporation. It's clear they miss each other, but are unhappy about the state of their marriage, and they are both unclear about whether their reunion will be a happy one. "Come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs..." isn't something an estranged wife says to her husband.
Plus, the entire point of McClane's trip is to hopefully reconnect with Holly. He's not in California because someone invited him to have a few laughs.
So who said it to McClane?
A suspect would have been the preening, pretentious dumbass Ellis, who gets himself killed, but McClane doesn't know him before the party. It's also possible that no one said it to him, he's just saying it to make fun of Californians. But that's a weird thing to do while hiding in an air vent avoiding criminals trying to kill you.
I guess the source of the comment will continue to be a Die Hard mystery, along with how Alexander Godunov survives hanging by his neck from a chain for 20 minutes, but is still alive to let Officer Powell get his gun-killing mojo back.
Greatest Christmas movie ever. The end.
2 comments:
I would suggest that an equally good question is how Godunov managed to untangle himself from the chains and then get down from them without breaking a bone or two.
I always assumed the "Come out to the coast" line was said by Holly and that he was probably paraphrasing or misremembering.
Good question. I haven't decided yet if I should be happy or appalled that the movie celebrates Officer Powell's re-learned ability to kill. His very real grief over shooting a child is played very sympathetically, but the ending, where he is "made whole" by shooting Gudonov, suggests that he was less of a man when he couldn't bring himself to shoot anyone.
I think Holly is the general consensus.
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