Welcome To The Party, Pal: Notes From A ‘Die Hard’ Tour Of Nakatomi Plaza And 30th Anniversary Screening
By Ben Pearson/July 30, 2018 10:00 am EST
Die Hard 30th Anniversary Screening
After a humorous false start in which the film began with the Spanish audio option selected, and then a second false start involving the wrong audio input altogether, the third time was the charm and the audience cheered during the first audible line of dialogue. It was smooth sailing from there – the sun dipped behind the horizon, and searchlights glanced across the surface of the Nakatomi building as the film played out before us.
Die Hard Tour
We began the tour outside, where a railing was destroyed during filming by this L.A.P.D.’s armored vehicle. It would have been where our guide (who greeted us with a hearty “Merry Christmas”) is standing in the second photo, and you can barely see some of the mangled metal in the third shot.
Inside the lobby area, the walls are the same marble as they were during filming in the late 1980s. The guides placed a Crunch bar on this desk to indicate this scene, where one of Hans Gruber’s lackeys steals a chocolate bar while waiting for the police to arrive outside. The metal phone panel on the left wall is still there, even though the phone itself has been removed.
The rivets in the elevators, with their distinctive criss-crossing patterns, are also the same now as they were during filming.
As we continued through the hallways, we stumbled across some shards of plastic made to look like broken glass and bloody footprints leading into a bathroom. Elsewhere, we saw an incredibly steep staircase, which one of the terrorists/thieves slides down in the movie. iPads were stationed throughout the building, repeatedly playing moments from the movie that took place in that specific location. Occasionally, our tour guide would hold one up for us as we headed through a corridor so we could see what it looked like on screen.
The loading dock looks the same as ever (those signs in the far background are visible in the movie), and the tour guides even set up a chainsaw and some fake wires to recreate the scene in which the phone lines are cut. A photo of some models was taped to a wall to replicate the one that John McClane passes as he races through the building, and our tour guide told me later that the photo on top is of the very same model who appears in the movie. It’s that level of detail that shows how much the team cared about making this a terrific experience.
As we headed deeper into the bowels of the building, we saw some miscellaneous props, a model that was used during production, and got a classic photo opportunity.
Super fans might recognize this as the stairway area where McClane fights Karl and hangs him with chains, which, in the movie, were attached to a pulley system that ran the length of the room. In the film, this location is made to look like it’s just before you arrive on the roof, but in real life, it’s underground.
Our guide, Arnold, carried a walkie-talkie that would sporadically pipe in Bruce Willis’s audio from the movie, and as you can see from the third photo, he marked himself up like McClane counting the terrorists on his arm.
As we traveled higher, the props became even more prominent. Graffiti mirrors exactly what appeared in the film, and a fake gun was placed precisely where Hans left his during the scene when he checked on the detonators and adopted an American accent to try to fool McClane. In a stairwell on the way to the roof, a walkie-talkie, lighter, and ammunition were positioned in a similar spot to where McClane would have searched Karl’s brother’s body after he killed him.
On the roof, a fire hose was placed to make it look like McClane had leapt off. Peering over the side, I noticed the 1980s police car in the parking area near the front door, just like in the movie. All it needed was a falling body to crash through the windshield – but we still had a bit higher to climb.
We ended up at the absolute peak of the building on the helipad, with incredible views of the city stretching as far as the eye could see.
