Bruce Willis’ Die Hard was forced to face a lot of conflicts from spectators during filming due to their need for authenticity.

Bruce Willis’ Die Hard is certainly a classic. Being a film set around the time of Holidays, following a Detective named John McClane, the film falls under a number of genres. It features an exceptional cast, with actors like Alan Rickman, Bonnie Bedelia, Reginald VelJohnson, and William Atherton, playing prominent roles. It also had a significant impact on the action-movie genre, a wave that can be felt in cinema to this day.

Bruce Willis in a still from Die Hard

This movie was shot in 1988 when action films were not easy to make. As revealed in the Netflix documentary The Movies That Made Us, in the episode Die Hard, everything seen in the film was actually done in real life. From the action, the fight sequences, and even the explosions, everything seen in the film was executed in real life. Since most shooting of the movie was done at an office building, there were a lot of people whose day-to-day lives were getting disrupted by filming.

Bruce Willis Annoyed A Floor Full Of Lawyers

While it is true to say that the real explosions and gunfire provided a level of authenticity to Bruce Willis’ Die Hard, the sounds that they produced were not appreciated by those who were forced to spectate. In The Movies That Made Us, Jan de Bont, the cinematographer on this film, revealed that the other people who were occupying the building were getting extremely frustrated will all the noise the shooting of the movie was making.

Bruce Willis in a still from Die Hard

“Everything that you see in the movie is real. The SUV comes out from the police, the big explosion the first time. That’s all real fire. Real explosion.” Jan de Bont went on, “The people who were occupying the building, they were really mad at us.”

John McTiernan then said “There were one bunch of lawyers on the 25th floor. We’d do any gunshits or anything and they’d go nuts.”
John McTiernan, who was the director of the project, revealed that there was one floor, twenty-fifth, to be precise, that was full of lawyers who were objecting to the noise that projection made. They put forth a condition that the explosions and bullets could continue after five o’clock when they had all vacated the building. This was where they started using sound effects for those clips, and using the real thing when the time was past five. 

The Neighbors Weren’t All Too Happy About The Lights And Explosions Either

As production dealt with one problem about the filming of the movie, another one arose, going from dealing with lawyers, to dealing with the people living in the neighborhood. Jan de Bont revealed that people who lived there did not like how much light was present in the late hours of the night, something that is a necessity on a film set. Though they tried to tolerate this, what came next was too much for them.

Bruce Willis as John McClane in Die Hard

“The people in the neighborhood initially got really pissed off having lights on all night long while they were trying to sleep. Then when the explosions started to happen, that was it for them” said Jan de Bont.

After the production moved on to the explosion aspects of filming, the neighbors had had enough. They were finding it difficult to live their lives with the constant noise and light that was coming from the set of Die Hard the entire day. What they did not know was that soon, helicopters would join the party. It was here that the police interviewed and the production was forced to limit the description they were causing.