Locals Cut From "Live Free or Die Hard"

I don't mean to turn this into an entertainment blog.  Regular readers will note that I tend to gravitate toward three things: Tennessee politics, technology, and tv/movie/music issues.

With that out of the way, today I want to talk about the new "Die Hard" movie.   "What?" you ask yourself.  There's a reason.  I met two people yesterday who shot scenes for the movie. 

Unfortunately, "Die Hard" underwent several rewrites, dating back to 2000.  One of the original drafts dealt with the John McClane character and three buddies fighting their way out of the Amazon without any weapons.  That plot ended up being the basis for another Willis movie, Tears of the Sun.  Then there was a plot involving terrorists that blew up something in New Orleans, causing a flood.  That script was written post Hurricane Katrina.  After that very real disaster, the plot changed to  deal with hackers trying to bring down America's technology infastructure.

What's unclear is when the movie decided to change characters.  At one point, McClane's grown son was to have a role.  Ben Affleck, Justin Timberlake, and others had been linked to the part.  The son is actually a daughter in the new movie.

That's where Eddie Swanson comes in.  The Erlanger security guard shot a scene for the film version with the "son" character.  Swanson was "hitman."  He filmed a sequence where he got on top of the roof of a building, put a gun together, and took aim on McLane's son.  But Bruce Willis intervened.  "He said, 'so you want to kill somebody today,' and I said, 'today's a nice day to die,' which was actually a line out of another movie," says Swanson.  The "hitman" character then reached for his gun and Willis shot him twice... causing him to fall off the roof and die.

Swanson says they nailed the scene in three takes.  It would have been his first speaking role, after appearing in non-speaking roles in The Fighting Temptations and Mortal Kombat.  He's hopeful an auditon for a new Tyler Perry project will work out.

The other aspiring actor from the Tennessee Valley is 4-year old Jaxson Vest-Gateley of Cleveland.  He had an extra role, walking around in the background.  He says he got to rub Bruce Willis' head after the shoot and saw lots of explosions, but his mother tells me she received an e-mail from the producers a few months ago telling her the scene had been removed from the final product. 

I let Jaxson rub my head too.  Bruce, take note... he didn't get cut out of my story.