'I Just Put a Drone under Him...': Collage and Subversion in the Score of 'Die Hard'

'I Just Put a Drone under Him...': Collage and Subversion in the Score of 'Die Hard'Author(s): Robynn J. StilwellSource: Music & Letters, Vol. 78, No. 4 (Nov., 1997), pp. 551-580Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/737639 .

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'I JUST PUT A DRONE UNDER HIM...': COLLAGE AND SUBVERSION IN THE SCORE OF 'DIE HARD'

BY ROBYNN J. STILWELL

WHEN IT WAS released in 1988, Die Hard was regarded as just another action film, albeit a whopping good one. Time has proved that it was something more significant: Die Hard was not the first great blockbuster action film, but it swiftly emerged as a virtual template for those that followed. As with Singin' in the Rain (1952) for the musical, however, there was enough history behind Die Hard for the film both to epitomize and to comment upon the genre.

Action films tend to be based on simple juxtapositions of hero and villain. As in musicals, so much of the film's running time is taken up with set pieces-songs and dances, chases and demolitions-that a fairly schematic plot, individualized only by local detail, is essential for narrative clarity. But while the identities of the key players in Die Hard are clear, just who is antagonist and who protagonist is not so clear, and music is one of the primary elements undercutting the nominal hero and elevating the 'villain' to anti-hero. Yet, as has been pointed out time and time again, approaches to film have traditionally been very visually orientated.' Even though film-makers have often compared their work to music,2 scholarly analogies have been to photography, painting and sculpture. This approach tends to negate music, not only because music is aural rather than visual but also because it evolves through time. In the past ten to fifteen years, more attention has been given to sound, but largely concerning the voice and usually in highly theoretical terms, drawing heavily on the formulations of Freud and Lacan.3 Although these psychoanalytical methods have shattered the hegemony of the auteur-based theories of early film studies and have focused attention on the receiver-subject, they are based on highly contentious theories that are at the very least deeply ingrained with patriarchal tendencies. Even within the study of 'sound', sound effects are generally ignored, and music tends to be separated from sound altogether.

While protesting against the visual bias of film studies, many scholars of film music make the same mistake in reverse and examine only the music. In the past decade or so, there have been some attempts to deal with the interaction of sound and vision, I would like to thank Nicholas Cook, Peter Franklin and Claudia Gorbman for their thoughtful comments on drafts of this essay, Philip Tagg for his encouragement in its early stages, Victoria Vaughan for tipping me off about the Nick Hansted article in The Guardian, and the anonymous reader for Music & Letters who provided the Kamen interview in Musiscfrom the Movies. Various versions of this essay have been read as papers at the joint meeting of Screen and IASPM in Glasgow on 2 July 1995, at the 'British Musicology' conference at King's College London on 20 April 1996 and at the conference on 'Cross(over) Relations: Scholarship, Popular Music and the Canon' at the Eastman School of Music, Rochester, NY, on 27 September 1996.

' A concise critique of the visual bias of film studies may be found in Rick Altman, 'Introduction: Cinema Sound', rale French Studies, xl (1980), 3-15.

2 For a historical overview, see Chapter 3, 'Musik des Lichts', of Helga de la Motte-Haber & Hans Emons, Filmmusik: Eine systematische Beschreibung, Munich & Vienna, 1980; for a more philosophical approach, see David Bordwell, 'The Musical Analogy', rale French Studies, xl (1980), 141-56.

3 Representative works include Mary Anne Doane, 'The Voice in the Cinema: the Articulation of Body and Space', rale French Studies, xl (1980), 33-50; Kaja Silverman, The Acoustic Mirror: the Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema, Bloomington, 1988; and Amy Lawrence, Echo and Narcissus: Women's Voices in Classical Hollywood Cinema, Oxford, 1991.

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although these have been somewhat general in scope and isolated in detail, and in any case they have rarely been very much concerned with music. Two of the best such studies are Elisabeth Weis's The Silent Scream: Alfred Hitchcock's Sound Track and Michel Chion's Audio- Vision: Sound on Screen.4 Weis's study is bounded by the auteur theory, as can be seen in its subtitle, and it is musically rather naYve, but this was an admirable early attempt at integration; Chion's work is more sophisticated in theoretical terms, but it deals very little with music and concentrates on single events rather than on large-scale structures over time. In contrast, Claudia Widgery provides a detailed analysis of the kinetic, rhythmic interaction of music and film, but since she is examining documentaries with a particular political outlook, she touches only upon musical and film-musical rhetoric and not narrative.5 It seems that many of the methodological pieces of the analytical puzzle are present but are hardly ever brought together.

Although integrated analyses of film with music are still rare, there has been something of a revolution in this area in the past decade, particularly by way of the work of Claudia Gorbman and Kathryn Kalinak,6 who have combined music analysis with film analysis, explicating in some detail how musical and narrative-cinematic processes interact in classical film practice (roughly in the period 1930-60 and predominantly in Hollywood). Discussion of the interaction of film and music has traditionally been conditioned by the theories of Sergey Eisenstein,7 polarizing music that is parallel to (in agreement with) the image and that which is in counterpoint to it (contradicting the evident meaning of the scene). Although scholars have frequently noted the unsatisfactory nature of this duality, it has persisted with only slight modification since the dawn of the sound era.

The theoretical weakness of this duality is in some respects a result of the modernist, auteur-based approach of film studies (and musicology) given that it focuses on the point of creation rather than reception. The receiver gets all the codes-audio and visual-at once, and the impact of the composite is more complex than a simple additive function: it involves the dynamic interaction of both sound and image, wherein lies the slipperiness of the parallel/counterpoint duality. How can one distinguish 'parallel' from 'counterpoint' when the music is one of the determinants of the meaning of the scene? But at least at one point in the film-making process, the duality of parallel and counterpoint, however slippery, does indeed come into play: at the stage of scoring the music (I use 'scoring' in the broad sense of everything required to provide a film with its musical score). Composers are in an intriguing position in the creation of a film; most of the time, they see the film as a complete or nearly complete visual statement, if often lacking sound effects and special photo- graphic processes. They then have to decide whether to reinforce or to contradict what they see on the screen. Their perceptions, and the way they respond to a film,

stand between the visual-dramatic text and the audience, at least as a filter or a lens. Die Hard is an excellent example: like any film score, Michael Kamen's for Die Hard is both an interpretation of the film and a part of the complete text. As I shall show, an

The Silnt Screen: Alfred Hitchcock's Sound Track, Rutherford, NJ, 1982; Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, ed. & trans.

Claudia Gorbman, New York, 1994. 5 The Kinetic and Temporal Interaction of Music and Film: Three Documentaries of 1930's America (unpublished

dissertation), University of Maryland, 1990. 6 Claudia Gorbman, Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music, Bloomington, 1987; Kathryn Kalinak, Settling the Score:

Music and the Classical Hollywood Film, Madison & London, 1992. 7 See '[Rhythm}' and 'Vertical Montage' in Sergey M. Eisenstein, Selected Works, ii: Towards a Theory of Montage, ed.

Michael Glenny & Richard Taylor, trans. Michael Glenny, London, 1991, pp. 227-48.

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examination of the scoring strategies in the film reveals an unusual emphasis on the nominal villain, assisting in a subversion of the dominant narrative laid in the text by the film-makers themselves. The music also highlights a network of issues in and of the film centred on class but complicated by national identity, gender constructions and film history. But in order to understand the score's operations in the film, it is first necessary to understand, as far as possible, what Michael Kamen saw before he responded to it musically.

WHAT MICHAEL KAMEN SAW: 'DIE HARD WITHOUT THE MUSIC

Die Hard is set in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve. A New York policeman, John McClane (Bruce Willis), has arrived to spend the holidays with his estranged wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) and their two small children. He goes to her office in the huge, newly built Nakatomi Plaza only to discover that she has reverted to her maiden name, Gennaro, because the Japanese company where she works does not favour married women. Their reunion is prickly, with an angry confrontation about her name and about the successful career that has necessitated her move across the country while his not-so-successful career keeps him in New York-although it is implied that he could have moved with her if his pride had not stood in the way. Holly's secretary interrupts the argument: Holly is required to put in an appearance at the Christmas party. McClane sulks in her office.

During the party, a dozen men descend on the building like a well-oiled machine, taking the party-goers hostage. They are led by an elegant German intellectual, Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), whose chief sidekicks are a chatty young African-American computer specialist, Theo (Clarence Gilyard Jr.), and a sullen, graceful German, Karl (Alexander Godunov). The terrorist band is composed primarily of Europeans of different nationalities, but it also includes an Asian-Uli-and Eddie, who seems to hail from the American Southwest and who looks like the rock singer Huey Lewis. Hans is evidently an equal-opportunities terrorist. His plan is also brilliantly conceived; he and his band seek to heist $640,000,000 in negotiable bearer bonds from the Nakatomi vault. Theo efficiently works his way through six of the seven security barriers, but he warns Hans that he cannot disengage the last one: there is no way to cut the electromagnetic lock locally. But Hans has his angles covered: in the case of a terrorist attack, all power to the building will be cut by the FBI and the electromagnetic lock will fail-this explains the cover of terrorism taken by the thieves. As the film's advertising campaign proclaimed, the only thing Hans 'hadn't figured on is John McClane', who escapes up into the unfinished floors of the building above the vault.

The film evolves in a series of cat-and-mouse encounters between the two, mediated by hand-held CB radios and escalating in the amount of damage caused to property and to Hans's band of terrorists. Sub-plots abound: McClane's friendship with the off- duty police officer Al Powell (Reginald Veljohnson), also conducted by CB radio; Karl's desire for revenge when McClane kills his brother; an arrogant television reporter's ruthless pursuit of the story; the incompetence of the deputy police chief; the short-sightedness of two hot-dogging FBI agents; interdepartmental rivalry between the police and the FBI; the machinations of a cocaine-snorting executive who almost destroys any chance of the hostages getting out alive; and Holly's growing appreciation of her husband's derring-do. This dramatic structure diffuses the central conflict through the intertwining of the subplots and the mediation of McClane and Gruber's interaction by CB radio, delaying their face-to-face confrontation.

Die Hard has an unusually complex narrative for an action film, and indeed it is

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somewhat more complex than the 1979 novel, Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp, on which it is based. This 'surfeit' of narrative-the abundant and often contradictory sets of codes operating in the film-may well be one of the reasons why the film has emerged as so influential, giving imitators a wide variety of elements to draw upon. However, a schematic 'Die Hard' formula emerged very quickly. A chart entitled 'If at First you Don't Succeed, Die, Die Again' appeared in the May 1996 issue of Empire (No. 83, p. 117; see P1. I), breaking down the formula into five rules 'that must always be obeyed': a location in peril; a plot in which renegade [blank]s take [blank] hostage; a misunderstood hero; a 'cerebral but demented villain (preferably English)'; and a distinctive, soon-to-be-soiled garment for the hero. Although the chart lists sixteen films, it only includes the most blatant copies.8

A certain amount of fading has set in with all these copies. Bruce Willis's John McClane was an unusual action hero, neither an obviously super-developed physical specimen like Schwarzenegger or Stallone nor specially trained like James Bond, a Green Beret or a martial-arts expert, although he has become more invincible with each sequel. But the most profound influence of Die Hard, reaching beyond the blatant copies, was Alan Rickman's portrayal of Hans Gruber. Hans is intellectually brilliant, ruthlessly efficient and disarmingly charming. But unlike his many imitators, he is neither psychopathic nor immoral; he is the amoral embodiment of Will. In an ambiguous conflation of actor and role, the critic Nick Hansted remarked that 'he was refreshingly anarchic, not pausing for an agenda, relying instead on charisma'.9

Bruce Willis came to the role of John McClane with an established persona as a wisecracking detective from his hit television series Moonlighting. By contrast, Alan Rickman was making his screen debut as Hans Gruber; he was a veritable blank slate to film audiences. His only exposure to American audiences had been as the seductive Vicomte de Valmont in the Broadway production of Les liaisons dangereuses, and the audience of Die Hard was unlikely to overlap significantly with that of the Royal Shakespeare Company. But the film-makers were quick to credit the debutant with creating the most imitated character in modern cinema. According to the script-writer of Die Hard, Steven de Souza, 'Alan Rickman was just fascinating. You can't take your eyes off him, and that's very important in these films [that imitate Die Hard], which are driven by the villain."0 The producer of Die Hard, Joel Silver, was even more specific: 'We were very, very lucky when we got Alan, because it . .. set the stage for that kind of evolution of the bad guy'." Indeed, Rickman has become the touchstone for villainy, though villainy with depth. Quentin Curtis noted that Jeremy Irons's Simon Gruber (ostensibly Hans's brother) in the second sequel, Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), is, 'like so many villains before him, a pale shadow of Rickman','2 and without even mentioning the Die Hard trade name, Mark Salisbury commented that John Travolta

8 The 1974 thriller The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 has a plot similar to that of Die Hard, with a band of terrorists taking

a subway train hostage for one million dollars in ransom. But the earlier film, in its 1970s-style realism, lacks the

spectacular friction between the antagonists that drives the engine of Die Hard. Walter Matthau's world-weary hero is

virtually immobilized in a communications centre, lacking Bruce Willis's active physical presence; and although the

head baddie Robert Shaw is appropriately cerebral and demented (and English), he lacks Alan Rickman's aesthetic

flair. 'The Crazy Gang', The Guardian, 1 July 1996, ii. 10. Moving Pictures, BBC2 television 19 March 1995. The 'Late Show' Special: Truly, Madly, Alan Rickman, BBC2 television, 3 October 1994. The post-Die Hard villain may

have reached its peak with Rickman himself; his outrageously flamboyant performance as the Sheriff of Nottingham in

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) proved so popular with preview audiences that the titular star Kevin Costner had the

film recut to remove a significant proportion of the sheriff's scenes.

2 'Flash Bangs Go up in Smoke', The Independent on Sunday, 20 August 1995, p. 14.

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as the villain of Broken Arrow (1996) was 'unable to make an Alan Rickman out of his ... baddie'.'3

The two antagonists are diametrically opposed. Whereas Hans is articulate, well educated and elegantly dressed, he is pitted against the distinctly proletarian McClane, who is shown to be unable to express himself verbally with his wife and who is left barefoot in his vest early on.'4 Both prominently engage in humour, but Hans's is the arrogant wit of control, McClane's the flippant wisecrack of the subordinate.'5 McClane, in short, is a classic underdog. One can argue that Hans's dominance merely gives the hero more to surmount, making him that much more the hero. But de Souza stated unequivocally that Hans Gruber was the protagonist of Die Hard.16 It is his plan which drives the film, and the audience is given every opportunity to read the film against the grain, to root for the villain; as Nick Hansted noted, 'Rickman's agendaless appeal [is] at the heart of his film's momentum'.'7 Each of McClane's attacks is met with a calm, efficient plan of counter-attack from Hans-it is his minions who fail-and the seven security barriers which must be breached to open the vault resonate with the mythological seven tasks faced by the heroes of so many fairy-tales. Theo may actually break down the barriers, but only under Hans's direction, and Hans holds the secret- the magic key-to the final barrier.

Even the film's conventional resolution seems to protect Hans's status as an anti-hero rather than a villain. If we follow de Souza's indications of his dramatic intention, the vault-breaking sequence is the structural climax of the film: Hans's goal is achieved and is not thwarted by the 'hero'. This scene is certainly celebrated musically, as we shall see below. Classic Hollywood closure, however, demands two things: that Hans die, and that Holly and John McClane are reconciled. This, of course, happens, but through the most strained of plot contrivances; Hans seems no more likely to be distracted by McClane's trite tactics than does Holly in capitulating to her husband's heroism (in fact, despite the 'happy ending' in this film, Holly is still not back 'in her place' in the sequels). But these conventionally crucial plot points are echoed more dramatically in another death and reunion. The resolution of McClane's conflict with Karl, resulting in Karl's death, and the first face-to-face meeting between McClane and Powell are both dwelt upon in more detail and with greater musical and incendiary bombast. The effect is to mitigate the impact of Hans's death, as indeed does the on- screen depiction of that event. Rather than plummet 29 floors, as any normal villain

13 'Review: Broken Arrow', Empire, No. 83 (May 1996), 31. 14 The high-low class split is even, perhaps unconsciously, carried out at one level of remove. Willis was a television

star whose film career was faltering until Die Hard transformed him from comic lead to action hero; Rickman, however,

graduated wth a gold medal from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and went directly into the Royal Shakespeare

Company. Even Hans's sidekick, Karl, is portrayed by Alexander Godunov, a defector from the Bol'shoy Ballet.

'5 From the beginning, McClane is shown as a fish out of water. He hates Califomia for all sorts of reasons he can

name (the sultry Christmas weather, the uninhibited behaviour of the natives), but the underlying reason is

undoubtedly Holly's 'defection'. More immediately to the film, he dislikes the Nakatomi building and its complex

computer system which reveals to him Holly's name change. After the siege begins, he is shown either in darkness or in

bright, harsh fluorescent light as he creeps through the building's empty offices, unfinished floors, roof, and elevator and

ventilation shafts. Hans, on the other hand, is seen in the soft, glowing lights of the Nakatomi executive suite. On three

occasions, McClane and Hans are in the same place, and, each time, the lighting tells us who is in charge. In the first

sequence, just after the 'terrorists' arrive, McClane is crawling along the floor of an office to find out what is going on.

The lighting is warm and subdued in these inner sanctum offices. Near the end of the film, the two meet face to face for

the first time, but McClane has never seen Hans's face: at first he is not sure who he is, and Hans's masterful American

accent allows him to pass himself off as another escapee from the terrorists. When they first meet, it is on an unfinished

floor where the harsh lighting is softened by steam. As McClane gains confidence and control, they move into a brightly

lit office. The final stand-off takes place in darkness, McClane's 'lighting'. 6 Moving Pictures, BBC2 television, 19 March 1995. 7 'The Crazy Gang'. Note, too, that Hansted awards possession of the film to Rickman.

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would do, Hans floats downwards in slow motion, seen from above in an extreme high- angle shot superimposed on a matte painting of the great distance he has to fall; we never see the body hit the ground, nor do we see it afterwards:18 his death is neither as messy nor as gratifying as that of the other terrorists,'9 and thus it is easier to disregard emotionally.

THE COWBOY AND THE CORPORATE PIRATE

Die Hard is unmistakably a product of the socio-political atmosphere of the USA in 1988. It was an election year: the selection of Ronald Reagan's successor would be seen as either an affirmation or a rejection of the policies of a president who was at once one of the most loved and one of the most loathed in American history, and, it must be remembered, a president who had been one of the most popular film stars in Hollywood, an actor who specialized in playing such archetypal American good guys as cowboys. By 1988, American politics and the movies had blended into one, rather surreal ethos. Hollywood in the 1940s, the era of Ronald Reagan's heyday there-an era of Westerns, of World War II movies and of mothers who cared for their children in patriarchal homes behind white picket fences-was melded with conservative Republican concerns of the 1980s. In Die Hard, the distrust of big government is evident in the portrayal of law-enforcement agents as buffoons,20 while the need for the economic protectionism of business is embodied in the nationalities of the villains. America's biggest competitors in the world markets were Europe, particularly West Germany (Hans is explicitly West German), and Japan: near the beginning of the film, the Nakatomi executive Joe Takagi jokes that since Pearl Harbor 'hadn't worked', Japan would conquer America with tape decks. In a resonant circular reference, the very fact that Hans is German harks back to World War II, as does the ominous hive- like presence of the japanese-owned Nakatomi Corporation.2"

18 In an almost comically similar resolution to the film Strange Days (1995), the villain hangs from the balcony of a Los Angeles skyscraper, holding on to the hero's tie. The hero cuts his tie (a running joke about the expense and the personality invested in the tie makes it as significant as Holly's watch (see below)), causing the villain to fall to his death in real time. The audience receives confirmation of his death with a shot of the broken body. In another blatant copy of (or homage to) Die Hard, Richard Loncraine's Richard III (1995), the king, portrayed by Ian McKellen, falls in slow motion to his (unseen) death in the same overhead camera shot, superimposed on a fiery background. This reference is made even more involuted by Rickman's association with the role of Richard III dating from his RADA audition and most obviously carried through in his stated intention to pitch the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves as somewhere 'between Richard III and a rock star' (interview with Jeff Powell in the Daily Mail, 2 August 1991, cited in Maureen Paton, Alan Rickman: the Unauthorized Biography, London, 1996, p. 127). Hans Gruber's fall may itself be a homage to the climax of Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942), as is suggested in the liner notes to the laser disc (Die Hard, FoxVideo 8905-85, 1995).

'9 Intriguingly, Theo emerges relatively unscathed, knocked unconscious by a punch from the chauffeur, Argyle. In an apparent fit of political correctness, two subsidiary black characters cancel each other out, removed from the action but neither acting upon, nor acted upon by, white characters.

20 At least once in Die Hard, McClane's own stupidity is glossed over: he gives away the police's plan of storming the building in his CB conversation with Powell, although perhaps this bungle is mitigated because the terrorists have already figured it out.

21Sitting uncomfortably amid the World War II references are the untidy traces of Vietnam, During the helicopter assault on the building, FBI Special AgentJohnson whoops 'Just like Saigon!' to the amusement of his younger partner, Agent Johnson, who reminds him, 'I was in junior high, dickhead'. Inside, a battered McClane thrashes through an indoor water garden lushly fumished with tropical vegetation as the building's activated sprinkler system showers the scene with 'rain'. For 'Big' Johnson, the attack is clearly a heroic 'John Wayne' moment, yet he is immediately undercut by the cynicism of 'Little' Johnson, a man of a generation for whom such moments are merely laughable; and McClane is Everygrunt on the ground, abandoned both by the gung-ho heroes and by those who would protest the futility of the heroic gesture. The interaction of these moments suggests that the film-makers could not contain Vietnam: they could not leave it unuttered, yet the utterance is ambiguous and contradictory. On the whole, the film is a celebration of the sort of heroism for which Big Johnson stands and an accusation of the inaction of Little Johnson (who is comfortable with the idea of losing twenty per cent of the hostages in a firefight), yet both of them crash to their deaths in the helicopter moments after the crucial exchange. Here McClane's appearance and narrative positioning strongly recall

557



The film's overt awareness of Hollywood convention is established almost immediately. Upon delivering McClane to Nakatomi Plaza, the chauffeur Argyle expresses the McClanes' reconciliation in classical Hollywood terms: he says that 'you run into your lady's arms, the music comes up, and you live happily ever after', which recognizes scoring cliches as well as narrative ones, the upward-surging flourish of strings as 'The End' is superimposed over the final clinch in any number of Hollywood classics from Westerns to so-called women's pictures or melodramas. McClane may be a policeman in the story, but he is really an older hero type, the cowboy-not the historical cowboy, of course, but the Hollywood version.22 In their first radio conversation, Hans accuses McClane of being 'Just another American who saw too many moves as a child? Another orphan of a bankrupt culture who thinks he's John Wayne? Rambo? Marshall Dillon?' McClane replies, 'I was always kinda partial to Roy Rogers, actually. I really liked those sequined shirts.' Not only does he not deny his identification with these movie cowboys; he also chooses, however ironically, to be identified with the most artificial kind of move cowboy of all, the singing cowboy in the sequined shirt. His parting shot to Hans, 'Yippee-kiy-ay, motherfucker!', is a reference to Rogers's cowboy yodel. And Hans delivers this line back to McClane in the final confrontation, his precise diction casting both the yodel and the profanity in multiple ironies-the foreignness of both kinds of expression to his vocality, the resulting shock and ridiculousness of his speaking them, and dramatically, the reversal of their positions at that point, with Hans in control, his gun to Holly's head. McClane comments with grudging admiration that Hans would have made 'a pretty good cowboy', but Hans demonstrates that he is unworthy of survival by displaying a faulty knowledge of Hollywood history: he confuses John Wayne and Gary Cooper in his movie analogy, and McClane shoots him.

Striking as he is, the character of Hans, too, has a classical Hollywood lineage. The elegant European aesthete is a stock villain type of the 1940s, usually played by the English actors Claude Rains or Basil Rathbone, and Alan Rickman-also English- combines Rains's petulance and meticulous, almost prissy, attention to detail with Rathbone's gleeful menace and swashbuckling flamboyance, overlaid with Paul Henreid's sophisticated charm. Hans, like McClane, associates himself with a hero, but one befitting his classical education, Alexander the Great. However, despite his demonstrable skill at marshalling men and mat6riel, and despite the overtones of Nietzsche's Superman, another canonical archetype seems more apposite: Hans is far more the fallen angel than a military hero. He is Lucifer: intelligent, elegant and seductive, with a hint of sexual deviance in his androgyny. His appearance-neat beard, greying temples, light hazel eyes overemphasized by eyeliner, and beautiful clothing in shades of grey-and his slightly twitchy way of moving reinforce the traditional image (see P1. II, below), and Hans's final appearance in the film is a long fall.23

another Reaganite hero, Rambo, trying to extricate prisoners from a hostile enemy without assistance from-and even

experiencing active irnterference from-government agencies which one would expect to help him. A distinctive feature

of 1980s Republicanism is the inherent contradiction between 'traditional' values that would imply deep patriotism and

respect for one's elders and for institutions-all conspiring to make the government a focus of loyalty and honour-and

a distrust of centralized 'big government'. 22 Mark J. Durnford's brief analysis of the film and its score ('Die Hard: the Original', Film Score Monthly, No. 58

(1995), 16) is a variant on the dominant reading, with McClane reclaiming American 'space'. Durnford casts McClane

as an 'Indian' engaging in guerrilla warfare against foreign incursion; while acceptable on a basic level, the historical

and racial implications mean that this interpretation cannot be sustained.

23 Reptilian adjectives and analogies cluster strikingly around Alan Rickman, going back at least to the London Times

critic Irving Wardle's description of him as the 'reptilian admirer' in Les liaisons dangereuses. In the entry on him in

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This film's regressive conservatism is as obvious in its gender codes as in its political and film-historical ones. Although the treatment of the film's one main female character at first seems progressive, it is, in fact, a way of reasserting patriarchal values. Holly's success in her career is mitigated by her apparent unhappiness in her private life; and the strength she shows with Hans is contained by the way she goes all gooey over her husband's physical bravery and reverts to his name at the end of the film. The way the two men react to Holly defines them as well. McClane is a completely physical character: almost all his actions are defensive rather than offensive, even with Holly. He is angered by her independence and by her unwillingness to conform to his idea of what their marriage should be; even the moment that should have been their reconciliation-his admission that he was sorry (not that he was wrong, but that he was sorry)-turns into a male-bonding moment as it passes through the intermediary of Powell on the CB. In contrast, when Holly defies Hans, the latter responds with growing admiration and respect, rendering him complicit in female independence. And Hans's death and Holly's containment are achieved in one fell swoop. A watch given to her as a bonus from her libidinous colleague Ellis-therefore a symbol both of her business success and of her attractiveness to other men-literally becomes Gruber's downfall as McClane strips it from Holly's wrist.

The male characters are just as circumscribed. Susan Jeffords has discussed the manner in which the muscular male body constructs the masculinity conditioned by and reiterated in Hollywood films during the Reagan era,24 and this is graphically represented in Die Hard. John McClane is one of Jeffords's representative 'Reaganite' hard bodies; but in reality, Willis is not particularly tall and is rather slimly built. The film emphasizes his muscularity by having McClane strip to his vest in the first fifteen minutes. His ally Powell is a rotund, jolly black man, not muscular, but substantial; in order not to overshadow his white 'superior', however, he is chubby and non- threatening, although his male potency is established through his unseen, unnamed wife, who is characterized only by her pregnancy. In contrast, the three primary villains-Hans, Karl and Theo-are all tall, but very slender. Although they are individually quite different, they are each suggestive of emasculation or effeminacy by Reagan-era standards. Theo is represented as a typical computer nerd, in wire-rimmed glasses, jumper, jeans and tweed jacket. Karl, played by the ballet star Alexander Godunov, appears somewhat gangly: his muscularity is hidden by a loose black sweat- suit which makes him look much thinner than he really is. And with his elegant double-breasted suit accentuating the extreme narrowness of his body, Alan Rickman portrays Hans Gruber as a fashion model; he is interested in clothes and concerned about his appearance, and even his neatly styled hair becomes a symbol of control.25

Quinlan's Illustrated Directory of Character Actors (London, rev. edn., 1995), Rickman is alliteratively characterized as 'light-

haired and lizard-lidded'. Duncan Fallowell refers to his 'reptilian authority' ('Closing his Eyes to Fame', Premier, No. 28 (May 1995), 66); Allison Pearson describes him as an 'icebox lizard' in Die Hard ('The Prince of Darkness', The

Independent on Sunday, 30 August 1992, p. 16); and the director David Giles praised his 'snaky sexiness' in the role of

Anthony Trollope's 'slithy tove of a cleric', Obadiah Slope, in the 1982 BBC production of Barchester Chronicles (quoted by Pearson). Pearson, it might be noted, describes him in the same role, with some approval, as an 'upended cockroach', and the title of her profile of him is an epithet synonymous with Lucifer.

24 Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era, New Brunswick, NJ, 1994. 25 As small a detail as Hans's hair shows how tightly constructed Die Hard is. Throughout the film, the state of his

hair indicates the state of his control, only becoming ruffled when his control slips, as in the vault-opening sequence when it is blown (see Plate II, below) by the air rushing out of the vacuum vault (an apparent continuity error: the air

should be rushing in). This sign of vulnerability is amplified in the first confrontation scene. When Hans is caught unarmed, but anonymous, by McClane and pretends to be another escape fiom the party, his hair flops down in his face as he falls to the floor and begs McClane not to kill him; almost immediately upon regaining the upper hand, he

runs his fingers through his hair, restoring its order.

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All these men also exhibit a grace at odds with McClane's forceful but awkward charging or Powell's solid stasis. Theo is controlled, athletic and rather gymnastic. Karl stalks like a panther. Hans either moves swiftly, like a snake striking, or he glides: his confident stroll down the Nakatomi corridors with his hands in his pockets is the strut of a catwalk model.

The Reaganite aspects of Die Hard seem so integral that it is surprising that it was based on a book published in 1979. Some of the unimportant details are remarkably similar between the book and the film (such as McClane's spectacular leap from the roof tied to the firehose), while other, more substantial features have changed radically, and many of the ways in which the film departs from the book significantly reinforce the Reaganite interpretation. In the novel, the company under siege is Klaxon Oil; in the film, the Nakatomi Corporation evidently deals in banking-American economic insecurity in each decade is highlighted through its chief vulnerability. The archetypal qualities of the two antagonists are heightened even by their names: in the novel, the characters are called Joe Leland and Anton 'Little Tony' Gruber, while in the film, both men are given the very common, almost blank name John (Hans is the diminutive of Johannes, the German equivalent to John; note that the diminutive is retained even though the name is changed). Other than the fact that it is difficult to call Rickman-at over 40 years old and over six feet tall-'Little Tony', there seems no reason to change the characters' names unless it is to achieve some sort of symbolic parity. Joe Leland is a security expert in his fifties; although he lacks the physical stamina of John McClane, who is in his thirties, he is able to respond intellectually to the terrorists, and therefore the match is more a contest between equals than the contrast of opposites at the centre of the film, with brute force and native cunning (McClane) versus intellectual sophistication and aristocratic education (Gruber).

Some of the most startling changes from novel to film are in the characters of Gruber and of the female lead, whose fates are intertwined. In the novel, Stephanie Leland Gennaro is Leland's daughter; at the climax, Gruber kills Steffie, provoking Leland to kill Gruber. By turning Holly Gennaro into McClane's wife and changing the

daughter's married name to the wife's maiden name, the film makes explicit the threat to the American nuclear family by foreign economic powers and by female

independence. Moreover, the relative independence of the women in the novel extends

to Gruber's troops, which include several females. Leland also displays anguish at killing both male and female terrorists, while in the film McClane displays no regret whatsoever at killing anyone-they clearly 'deserved it'-and he is never given the

opportunity for anguish over killing a female terrorist simply because no hero could be

seen killing a woman. The lack of female terrorists in Gruber's band in the film seems not to be a reflection of his attitude towards women but a larger negation within the

film of women's ability to be political;26 but then, even the male terrorists have been

stripped of their political beliefs. Although he is a rather underdeveloped character in the book, appearing on only a few pages, Anton Gruber is a genuine terrorist, planning to steal six million dollars from Klaxon Oil and to 'redistribute it to the people' rather than have it used to pay for weapons bound for Chile (another political resonance with the 1970s). Hans Gruber is a 'grown up' Tony, according to Republican ideals, a one- time left-wing radical who is 'conservatized' by becoming a thief. In the Wall Street

greed-is-good atmosphere of the 1980s, he has given in to the allure of money.

26 Simon Gruber's sidekick in the second sequel, Die Hard with a Vengeance, is a beautiful, graceful and charismatic

woman (played, intriguingly, by a singer, Sam Phillips), but she has been mutilated so that she cannot speak, a

remarkably blatant and literal manner of silencing a strong female character.

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McClane and Hans, then, represent the two sides of the Reagan era, the cowboy- hero and the corporate pirate. While we are conditioned to admire the former, the latter usually comes out on top. In Die Hard, it seems that only Hans's bad luck keeps him from winning: if John McClane had not happened to be there, he would have pulled off a breathtaking heist. Although the conventions of the action film intervene at the last moment and Hans is stopped during his get-away, we are given every possible opportunity to read Hans as the hero of a caper film. And as we shall see, the music is certainly on his side.

THE MUSIC OF 'DIE HARD

When the composer Michael Kamen first saw the film in rough cut, he reacted as both an audience member and a member of the creative team:

Die Hard was about this phenomenal bad guy, Alan Rickman. It was peripherally about John McClane in a bunch of air conditioning ducts ... I mean, Alan Rickman was as bad as you get. He was a delicious bad guy. He had such personality, so many funny lines and such a great attitude. You were really sorry for him to go because you knew that was the end of him.27

Kamen's response is deeply imprinted on his score: the music is far more concerned with Hans Gruber than with John McClane, even though it is clear that Kamen knew that, in the end, Hans would have to go.

The score of Die Hard contains hardly an original note of music in thematic terms. It is a collage of quotations from a wide variety of sources. At the most obvious, even banal level, the holiday season is evoked by the use of several Yule-tide songs- significantly, none of them religious and all of them evoking a snowy landscape that could not occur in the Los Angeles setting. The song 'Jingle bells' is heard only once, as McClane whistles it to himself near the beginning on his way to the Christmas party, but orchestral sleigh-bells are prominent in the percussion throughout the score; in fact, they are the very first musical sound in the film, heard as McClane's plane lands at Los Angeles International Airport. The opening phrase of the seasonal favourite 'Winter wonderland' (by Felix Bernard and Dick Smith) appears in a minor-mode transformation as a brass fanfare that occurs during suspenseful situations; it is not associated with any particular character, but with the actions of the baddies. The last holiday song to be introduced is the most prominent, and it is associated with Al Powell, McClane's policeman friend. 'Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow' (by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne) is first heard on Muzak as Powell goes into a convenience store to buy Twinkies for his pregnant wife, and he sings it to himself several times throughout the film. Vaughn Monroe's familiar version appears at the end of the film as the credits begin to roll; at that point, papers and glass from the final explosion rain down over Nakatomi Plaza, providing the only kind of snow possible-or at least probable-in Los Angeles.

Hans's appealing sidekick, Theo, also has a prominent theme, 'Singin' in the rain' by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown. This theme is put through a number of transformations, played in the minor mode, subjected to octave displacements, and sequenced in quasi-Baroque Fortspinnung as the four-note descending motif is transposed down by successive major sevenths (see Ex. 1). In keeping with Theo's

27 'Kamen Hard: Interview by Will Shivers', Film Score Monthly, No. 58 (1995), 13. This interview appeared only during the course of my work on this essay: remarkably, it confirmed a number of ideas I had feared might be too far- fetched to prove conclusively, including not only the centrality of Hans in Kamen's musical conception but also the connections to A Clockwork Orange discussed below.

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Ex. 1 Some of the transformations of 'Singin' in the rain'

I r> w.. i Jsi. original version

A

fanfare version (horn)

'A ~ al

escape-note' version

! 4 * --~~~~~~-L i I A --

Fortpinnung ;:

humorous running commentary on the police's efforts to combat the 'terrorists', a variant of the fanfare version sounds like laughter at the police as the terrorists shoot out the spotlights trained on the building. But unlike the other characters, whose singing stamps their ownership on a song-theme, McClane's (significantly sub-vocal) whistled attempt at 'Jingle bells' falls noticeably silent in the underscore. In fact, John McClane has no theme at all. He has a few musical associations-a guitar strum, a rhythmic pedal in the low brass-but these are of very low-musical distinctiveness and are inconsistently applied. (The guitar disappears after about the first third of the film, and the pedal is a general tension-building device.) Indeed, McClane is accompanied largely by such stock suspense signifiers as low, indeterminate rumblings, string tremolos and figurations, percussive outbursts and screeching brass interjections, but nothing so dignified as a fanfare. At one point, early in the siege, he almost seems to be acquiring a theme which sounds suspiciously like a minor-key version of An American in Paris (see Ex. 2). However, this theme is not very highly profiled (it could easily pass unnoticed as simple tension music), and it is heard only three times in quick succession, with the last iteration transferred to Holly as she watches Hans and Karl arguing and deduces that they are upset over McClane's interference. Then the theme disappears altogether, leaving McClane essentially powerless in terms of classic film- music syntax; this vacuum is highlighted, rather than filled, by his panicked banter.

Ex. 2 McClane's An American in Paris 'theme'

An American in Paris

arco arco McClane's 'theme'

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But by far the most prominent theme belongs to McClane's nemesis, Hans Gruber; it is not just a Christmas song, either, or even a jolly Hollywood classic, but the 'Ode to Joy' from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, one of the fundamental works in the canon of great classical masterpieces. The 'Ode' is first heard being played innocently enough by the string quartet at the Nakatomi party in a simple, straightforward arrangement similar to the section around bar 140 in the last movement of the symphony, but transposed to E flat and with a rhythmicized dominant pedal. However, Hans wrests control from the string quartet even before his appearance on screen.

The bad guys arrive, bringing the underscore with them: until this moment, except for the aforementioned sleigh-bells and a few almost subliminal string harmonics underneath McClane and Holly's tense reunion, all the music has been source music. As the quartet plays at the party, fragments of the 'Ode' theme, augmented and played in the lowest regions of the orchestra, form the basis of the suspense music as the terrorists invade Nakatomi Plaza. Beginning on C (setting the theme in a melodic A flat major, although supporting harmonies are not present or are contradicted by a minor setting), the theme is largely limited to the opening three pitches (C-Da-E5). The greatly augmented 'Ode' motif serves as a drone through much of the opening siege, supporting a texture in which the melodies of the 'Ode', of 'Singin' in the rain' and of the 'Winter wonderland' fanfare intertwine almost parodically, rendering escapades of the terrorists balletic as the music sculpts their precise, silent movements into dance. Perhaps the most intense moment of the first half of the film comes when Hans pauses at the front door of the Nakatomi building, the electronic key poised over the latch as he surveys his surroundings; his power is demonstrated by the sudden cessation of movement among the terrorists and a long pause in the music, as if everyone, including the non-diegetic orchestra, were holding their breath. Then, decisively, Hans swipes the key downwards, spinning to toss it to a henchman as the bass drone returns, and the camera pulls up and back in a graceful, superior move that holds Hans in the centre of the rounded foyer as the terrorists disperse purposefully under his controlling eye. The camera angle shifts to the opposite end of the corridor leading towards the heart of the Nakatomi Building, and Hans turns on his heel, his hands pushing back his long coat as he slides them into his pockets and strides confidently towards the floor-level camera to the sinister strains of the 'Ode' in the basses.

The two versions of the theme, the diegetic string quartet playing in E flat and the non- diegetic suspense music in A flat, come together as the 'terrorists' emerge into the party (see Ex. 3). The C-D6-Et motif is further fragmented to the first two notes (a technique certainly associated with Beethoven), the Dl serving as a sort of breath-marker in the

Ex. 3 The bad guys disrupt the party gunshots start

D ,6. ^, ~~~~~I __^ x,i __ ,90 0- I I , Str quarkt et b i i d J t I i I Jf l J J J

F A;SUbU f t? ? [ S7~~~~~~~~~~~~~(inaudible) I I i~ ~ ~~ ~ I I I I

Orch. bass EJ

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pedal C.28 The sustained C from the orchestral basses creates an affective dissonance with the pedal B6 in the string quartet, but it also forms a link between the two: Da is the flat seventh of E flat, and in the symphony the theme is harmonized by a flat seventh in this very bar, although from its beginning. The 'right' harmony appears, but out of step with the theme, creating another sort of dissonance. Dramatically, this scene forms a striking contrast to McClane's earlier, hesitant entry from the same elevator. He was obviously uncomfortable and intimidated, and the classical music was one of the things that alienated him. Hans, however, enters with amused self-satisfaction, bringing his own music with him and overpowering the music that had overpowered McClane.

Hans jauntily sings the tune himself while toying with Takagi, but the complicity of the 'Ode' with Hans's control of the film's major narrative drive is most strikingly demonstrated in the two ends of the central dramatic arch. The set-up is Hans's first look at the vault. This is an intimate moment between audience and terrorist, a rare vulnerable expression on his face. The solo bass playing the 'Ode' gives voice to Hans's feelings, not only through dramatic association (the prevalence of the low-string version of the theme in connection with his activities and those directed by him) but also by way of a semiotic association both more literal and more subtle: the instrument coincides with the register of Rickman's voice, and the musical disposition of the bass reflects Hans's own personal state. This 'voice' is quiet, resolute and solitary, as well it might be, for at this point Hans is the only one who knows his plan. While Theo outlines the security system, Hans gazes contemplatively at the vault as the outer doors roll back. Distracted by Theo's practical reminder that the seventh lock cannot be cut locally, Hans smiles calmly at his colleague and says: 'Trust me'.

The pay-off comes when his intricate plan reaches fruition. The scene builds from a reiteration of the solo double-bass statement of the theme. The theme's connection with Hans's strategy is now made explicit as Powell comments angrily over the CB to McClane: 'That's the FBI. They's got the universal terrorist playbook, and they're running it step by step.' The FBI may be following their plan, but we know that in doing so they are following Hans's plan too. As the electricity is cut in response to the 'terrorist' incident, the emergency systems come on line. Theo warns 'It's gonna go! It's gonna go!', then thrusts his first in the air and shouts 'Yes!' as the lock fails. The clanking sounds of the vault as it begins to open and Theo's rhythmic speech build with the music towards a full orchestral statement of the 'Ode' in its familiar Beethoven harmonies. A klaxon provides a dominant pedal, and, shot from a low, powerful angle, Hans rises slowly, awestruck, to his feet, a little breeze ruffling his hair in the halo of the brilliant emergency light (see P1. II).29 Theo smiles with satisfaction as the lights from inside the vault cross him, and he whispers 'Merry Christmas' in a rest between a dominant preparation and a dominant chord. This dominant is briefly extended as we see the FBI arrogantly proclaiming victory outside, and then the orchestra breaks into an instrumental version of the 'Turkish march' variation of the 'Ode' while the terrorists gleefully go through the vault's contents (which include Degas paintings and Asian statuary as well as the bonds) under Hans's complacent eye.30 Although this

28 The similarity of the D-ES motif to John Williams's famous J7aws theme is probably coincidental, as it is clearly

derived from the 'Ode' theme, which is gradually shortened through the siege sequence. However, given the prevalence

of quotation in the score and the reference to Hollywood scoring conventions discussed below, it no doubt struck

Kamen as fortunate. 2 Plate II has been captured from the laser disc (Die Hard, FoxVideo 8905-85, 1995). 30 Although it might be tempting to draw a connection between the exotic contents of the vault and the orientalism of

the Turkish march, I would not like to press the issue: as a musician, Kamen would be aware of the implications, but

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PLATE II

Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) before the open vault

sequence sounds as though it is a direct quotation from the symphony, it is not. The bars accompanying the opening of the vault form the only section of the film which seems to have been cut to pre-existing music, but it is actually an extremely sensitive example of post-scoring, with Kamen arranging Beethoven to fit the dramatic action. The 'Turkish march' accompanying the rifling of the vault has been recomposed, eliminating the voices and dissolving subtly into the more tenuous underscore as dialogue returns.

This is easily the musical highlight of the film and-largely because of the music- perhaps its single most memorable moment, and yet the 'hero' McClane is stuck in a dark bathroom, completely out of the action. Taken out of context, one would think that this scene must belong to the hero of the film. The full orchestra swells with the loudest musical sequence in the body of the film, and through the music, the lighting, the camera angles and even the expressions on Hans's and Theo's faces, the audience is invited to share in the exhilaration of their success. This scene clearly constructs Hans Gruber as a sympathetic, heroic figure as aural and visual cinematic cues and narrative drive come together. We, like Kamen, may recognize that he will eventually have to go, but the film makes that as easy to negotiate as possible. Even the end- credits allow him his position as tragic hero, with a full choral rendition of the 'Ode to Joy'. Hans Gruber may be dead, but his triumphant music plays the audience out. The film's title appears with the final, forceful cadences of his theme, emphatically welding the two together.31

FORMAL CONVENTION AND DRAMATIC SUBVERSION

Kamen may admit to having 'grow[n] to love the bad guy', but he still seems somewhat unaware of, or at least disingenuous in, his part in undermining the good guy: '[Willis] got a lot of music, Rickman takes very little ... I just put a drone under him, and he's as bad as he needs to be.'32 This comment is intriguing on two counts: first, it hints that Kamen felt that Willis's performance needed some shoring up, although clearly he did

the sound is probably not exotic enough to modern audiences to be an overt signal. The stirring rhythmic and timbral qualities of the Turkish march are probably sufficient in themselves to explain Kamen's choice here.

31 Indeed, when Die Hard II: Die Harder was shown on American television in 1993, the advertisements used the 'Ode to Joy' even though it is not heard at all in that film.

32 Quoted in Fred Karlin, Listening to Movies, New York, 1994, p. 18.

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this with volume and business rather than with thematic material; and second, it suggests that he was unconscious of the extent to which he was in fact responding to Rickman's performance, and not merely on a large-scale thematic level.33 For the truth is that Hans is never merely given a drone. Although the film is scored almost end-to- end, and therefore most speeches are underscored, the volume is often simply turned down beneath the other characters. But Hans's speeches are scored as if they were operatic recitatives. The most striking of these occurs the first time we hear Hans speak (see Appendix I, below).34 Although the musical accompaniment is tenuous and would seem quite fragmentary on its own, when placed in the context of the speech it is remarkably sensitive, responding to and interacting with the rhythmic, almost hypnotic delivery, and even mickey-mousing the actors' movements.

Hans addresses the assembled hostages with the cadences of an Anglican priest (something of a slip for an English actor portraying a German terrorist, but effective nonetheless); the top of the steps above the sunken area where the hostages are assembled serves as his pulpit, and his Filofax, which evidently contains his plan, serves as his Bible. With the C-D; movement, the notes change with each of his raised hands as if he were conducting the non-diegetic orchestra, leading dramatically to his first utterance. As he speaks ('Ladies and gentlemen'), a rich, surprising D; chord supports his legato delivery on a clearf% This is the first real major triadic sonority in the entire underscore, and it recalls Beethoven's dramatic shift to the flat submediant in the 'Ode to Joy' at 'vor Gott', resonating with Hans's priestly demeanour. The chanted pitch shifts down to e6 on the second 'Ladies and gentlemen', suggesting a C minor triad, 35

although this implication is reinterpreted by the string interpolation of the 'Ode' motif in A flat. After this arresting opening, the accompanied recitative becomes a secco recitative (predominantly aroundf) for Hans to explain his purpose. As he threatens to demonstrate the 'real use of power', Hans gives the word 'real' special vocal emphasis (a stress accent, a pitch flex downwards, and a short silence afterwards), an emphasis amplified by the C in the strings, which momentarily seems to be a pedal point but is reinterpreted as the first note of a repetition of the 'Ode' motif in A flat. Therefore, although the string motif is repeated, both times it is introduced deceptively.

Much of the recitative's orchestral accompaniment not only punctuates the spoken monologue; it also kinetically imitates, or mickey-mouses, the movements of the actors and even of the camera. The pulse on the downbeat of bar 12 picks up Hans's twitch; the flute-string interjection in bar 13 echoes the camera's track down to show Holly's hand tightening on Takagi's arm, and the downward tumble in the low strings graphically depicts Hans's downward step and the convergence of the other terrorists into the frame. The pseudo-horn fifths in bar 14 and their monophonic echo in bar 15 underline the similar rhythmic structure of the two spoken phrases and build tension as Hans moves through the hostages. As he 'gets into the groove' of his recitation, the basses play through the first phrase of the 'Ode' theme beginning on D (i.e., in B flat, one step higher than the previous motifs), though with syncopations at the beginning and end: the opening syncopation picks up the camera's stop with Hans and his eye contact with a Nakatomi executive; the more extensive syncopation at the end, intervallically intensified by the augmented second, highlights the more charged

" Another possibility is that Kamen felt that Rickman only needed a drone but that he enjoyed writing something

much more complex for him, although it is still not clear why he would not say so.

3' This scene is such an effective vocal set piece in establishing Hans's (and Rickman's) villainy that in 1996 it featured

in a BBC Radio 2 tribute to great film villains. 3 I owe this detail of the reading to the sharp ears of Victoria Vaughan, who first pointed out the vocal shift to e.

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contact between Hans and the petrified Ellis, the staccato final note catching Ellis shaking his head. The descending part of the theme coincides as well with Karl's apparent motion along the shoulder of a foreground hostage. The next two musical phrases build intensity to the high string iteration of the 'Ode' motif beginning on B (i.e., in G) and Takagi's interruption. The sustained dissonances in the last few bars also build tension, the first resolved deceptively with Hans's sudden smile, the second accentuated by Karl's and Takagi's motion through the frame and resolved with the electrifying eye contact between Hans and Holly. The suspense builds through the rest and the edit, and the stinger (a short musical attack emphasizing an on-screen action) accentuates the subtlest of contemptuous gestures, the almost imperceptible, dismis- sive flick of Hans's eyelashes as he looks away from Holly. By the most sparing of musical means, Kamen draws attention to the musical qualities of the actor's speech and responds to small but telling physical gestures.

The camera movement and editing during this sequence, while unobtrusive, also help to generate a musical structure, though one far more rigid than the through- composed recitative. A static shot, a high angle shot and a more animated return to the original shot 'cadences' with an insert of Holly and Takagi (Shots 1-4). Then the high angle shot returns, animated by more movement, and again comes to rest with a static shot of Holly and Takagi (Shots 5-8). The next phrase is characterized by inexorable motion to the right, punctuated by Karl's descent to the left and Hans's pause near Holly, and finally the whole sequence cadences with a static but dramatically charged shot/reverse-shot/shot of all these characters together (Shots 9-15). This is basically a Bar form.

This recitative is soon followed by what, to develop the operatic analogy, might be termed an 'aria' in which Hans reveals much of his character (see Appendix II, below). Hans enters the Nakatomi boardroom humming a rhythmically jazzed-up version of the 'Ode' over a bass pedal; he possessively caresses the tables bearing the ambitious architectural models, and long, cantabile phrases of the 'Ode to Joy' in the basses underpin his arrogant yet charming speech, even imitating his self-satisfied chuckle as the theme disintegrates with the same augmented second that dissolved the theme in the recitative. In contrast to the short, contained shots of the recitative, the camera follows Hans in long, flowing shots analogous to the musical phrases.

The aria is in a little da capo form. In the 'A' section, the theme is in the bass as Hans expounds upon Alexander the Great, while the 'B' section is the more agitated move to the model on the table (at 'Oh! That's beautiful!'). The camera, which has been following Hans, now shifts into countermotion, still holding him centre but moving left as he moves right. A brief interruption focuses on McClane skulking in the corridor, but the da capo (not transcribed) brings a return of the theme in the bass (and a return to the camera's following shot) as Hans puts his hand on Joe Takagi's shoulder, says, engagingly, 'Mr. Takagi-I could talk about industrialization and men's fashions all day, but work must intrude . . .' and then pushes Takagi firmly through the office door. This aria, like the recitative, fulfils not only the technical requirements of the traditional form (ABA') and musical content (positive 'A' section, more agitated 'B' section) but also the dramatic convention: it elaborates Hans's character through a juxtaposition of his overweening sense of superiority and expansive, theatrical charm (A) against his love of detail and meticulous planning (B), all strung together on the thread of his aesthetic sense. While the recitative and aria are perhaps the most conspicuous musical structures, these scenes are typical of the eloquent way in which Hans is scored, particularly in the fine interaction between music and speech.

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Kamen's score, while drawing on the high-art forms of ballet and opera, also shares in the film's self-conscious awareness of Hollywood convention and film history. Perhaps the most obvious musical model is that of cartoons. The technique of quotation collage, the mickey-mousing and even the theme of the hunted who outwits the hunter recall in particular Bugs Bunny; meanwhile, McClane survives things that should have killed him and, like Wile E. Coyote, he devises fiendishly clever traps for his prey, leaving the relatively unperturbed Hans Gruber to get away like the Road Runner until the last confrontation. As in the Road Runner cartoons, then, we admire the elusiveness of the Road Runner while sympathizing with the coyote's intricate plans. Beyond this, however, Hans's physical and temperamental similarity to elegant 1940s villains is emphasized by scoring strategies drawn from films of that earlier era. His ownership of the 'Ode' and its deployment in the score recalls the use of 'Deutschland, Deutschland uiber alles' in films like Casablanca or Night Train to Munich, a noble anthem of classical provenance only partly transmuted into an ominous march for the villain. Hans's thematic prominence allied with his Lucifer aspect also recalls anti-heroes such as Dracula inspiring fear, fascination and sympathy. But another, more recent and more surprising cinematic connection is made through the villains' music.

WHY BEETHOVEN?

Hans's and Theo's themes both come to Die Hard with a complex of associations filtered through Stanley Kubrick's film A Clockwork Orange (1971), based on the novel by Anthony Burgess. Although terribly violent, A Clockwork Orange has a liberal message of anti-violence, making it a curious source for a raucously violent, right-wing film like Die Hard. Theo's 'Singin' in the rain' is routed from Gene Kelly36 through Alex, the 'ultra-violent' youth at the centre of the Burgess-Kubrick narrative. The first time we hear Theo singing the song, he is ripping the guts out of the Nakatomi mainframe computer, kicking in its panels and pulling out its wires as sparks shower over him; this strongly recalls the scene in which Alex beats a man while imitating Kelly. Theo often hums the song at the computer keyboard as he knocks down security barrier after security barrier, still figuratively dismembering the computer, a technological equivalent of the adolescent 'ultraviolence' in Clockwork Orange. But of course the most famous musical association of A Clockwork Orange is with Beethoven, whom Alex adores with the fervour with which a Midwestern metalhead adores Megadeth, and in Die Hard Hans Gruber is intimately identified with Beethoven, a music which not only gives him voice in the underscore but to which he also gives voice on screen.

The Clockwork Orange connection was initiated by the director of Die Hard, John McTiernan. Kamen had originally resisted McTiernan's suggestion to use Beethoven in the score: 'When he said he had a notion to use Beethoven's 9th for the bad guys, I was flabbergasted. I actually said to him, please, if you want me to fuck with some German composer, I'm very happy to take Wagner to pieces. I'll do anything you like

36The presence of two themes associated with Gene Kelly-An American in Paris and 'Singin' in the rain'-may well be a coincidence, but it is a highly appropriate one for Die Hard. Not only is Kelly a Hollywood icon; he was also the creator of the 'heel-hero' title-character of Pal Joey on Broadway and brought the ambiguous character to Hollywood. In his first two musicals, he played a draft-dodger (For me and my Gal, 1941) and a deserter (Thousands Cheer, 1943)- surprising characters for a leading man in the World War II era, particularly in musicals-and in the dramatic film Christmas Holiday (1944) he portrayed Robert, a charming, vaguely homosexual serial killer, an early appearance of the stereotype found in much more recent films like Basic Instinct. Kelly embodied both the flawed hero and the likeable villain, two sides which are schematically played against each other in Die Hard.

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to Wagner but can't we leave Beethoven alone?'37 But in the end, Kamen felt that McTiernan's vision of the bad guys as lineal descendants of the adolescent gang members in A Clockwork Orange was 'so cool that I had to go with it', and he then insisted on also using 'Singin' in the rain'.38 However, the use of these musical materials in Die Hard is quite different from that in A Clockwork Orange.

Stanley Kubrick is famous, if not notorious, for using 'temp-track' scores. Temp[or- ary]-tracks are compilations of recordings used to score working cuts of a film, often so as to give the composer an idea of what the director wants. Kubrick frequently eliminates the composer by scoring his films himself, using recordings in the style of a temp-track, and he has been the target of a great deal of animosity from film composers, and even film scholars, for this practice. The arguments against temp- tracking have been numerous: it does violence to the original material; pre-existing music will never be appropriate to a purpose for which it is not written; familiar music draws too much attention to the music, which should be 'invisible' to the 'spectator' (note the visual bias of the classical film terminology); using the cultural connotations accrued to pre-existing music is either impossible, because music is supposed to be above such worldly connections, or a cheap prefabricated effect; and, more practically, it eliminates a job for a composer. With the possible exception of the last, realistically legitimate objection, these arguments are clearly rooted in modernist conceptions of the autonomous work, both the original piece of music composed for another purpose, and the film which should create a self-contained world of its own. This modernist perspective was emphatically articulated by Theodor W. Adorno and Hanns Eisler in their book Composing for the Films (1947), for a long time the most influential book on film music among film-makers, both directors and composers, and film scholars. However, an obvious crack in Adorno and Eisler's logic appears with their complaint about film and music's relationship 'which requires continual interruption of one element by another rather than continuity'.39 The possibility of interaction, rather than interruption, between film (visuals and sound) and music does not seem to occur to them.

Postmodernist conceptions which move from the autonomous work to the text-a nexus of cultural processes only loosely bracketed by the boundaries of the 'work'- neutralize these objections to the use of pre-existing music. Even the distinctions between the separate objections disintegrate. If the original material is a potential for interpretation, rather than a monolithic authorial statement, then its use in an unfamiliar and unexpected context is merely another interpretation; thus, there can be no violence to the original and the question of 'appropriateness' does not really arise. Because music does interact with other cultural manifestations, including other elements of the cinematic apparatus, and because the accrual of meaning is a recognized function of this process, using a familiar piece of music should draw the attention of the viewing/listening subject, for those accrued meanings are being referenced whether intentionally or not and new meanings are generated from the juxtaposition. Relying on these meanings for effect is not a cheap stunt but is the very reason why the text presents itself for use, because, in contrast to the concept of the autonomous art work, it is impossible for the text not to have accumulated cultural connotations, since the text is actually a nexus of cultural processes. This argument is not so much circular as a black hole in which the carefully constructed edifice of 'the work' collapses under its own weight.

3 'Kamen Hard: Interview by Will Shivers', p. 13. 3 Loc. cit. 3 Composing for the Films, London, 1947 (repr. 1994), 5.

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One can easily anticipate the objection that Beethoven did not write his symphony in a postmodern context, and therefore that it is inappropriate to apply such criteria. However, the Ninth Symphony has not existed in a vacuum over the past two centuries, and given that it still functions in present-day society, it has become, in a sense, a postmodern text. Or perhaps it is perched on the event-horizon of the black hole, held in stasis between its exalted position as perhaps the corner-stone of the canon of Western art music's 'masterworks' and its populist position on the football terraces of the 1996 European Cup. As Nicholas Cook has demonstrated,' an internal tension between the overt meaning carried in Schiller's words and the musical processes of the setting has always caused a fair amount of conflict in the interpretation of the meaning of the 'Ode to Joy', but the simple, forthright tune and the incantatory words have tilted reception towards the celebration of unity and brotherhood, exemplified by its consecration as the anthem of the European Union. Kamen himself felt uneasy about using the theme in Die Hard specifically because of these connotations. He recalls saying to McTiernan: 'This is one of the greatest pieces of music celebrating the nobility of the human spirit of all time and you want me to aim it at a bunch of gangsters in an American commercial film[?]'.4"

According to Kamen himself, it was the intertextual connection with A Clockwork Orange that convinced him to go along with McTieman's idea. Yet the operation of the music in the two films is quite different. When Beethoven's Ninth was used in A Clockwork Orange, it was bracketed in huge quotation marks. The music is clearly identified as 'Beethoven', a symbol of high art perverted, or at least endangered, by Alex's apparently inexplicable identification with it (yet the identification is not so inexplicable if one recognizes the sheer kinetic power and drive of the music-a manifestation of the rampant masculinity found by Susan McClary in her interpretation of the symphony42-or the possible Fascist implications of a piece so strongly Germanic in origin and style). More prosaically, the music is excerpted from recordings; therefore its placement in the film is literally a quotation. Another sort of quotation occurs in the infamous torture scene in which Alex is forced to watch violent films: Alex's 'glorious Ninth' is subjected to the ignominy of a synthesized version by Walter Carlos. Even 'Singin' in the rain' is an obvious parody of Gene Kelly's well-known performance, a connection the audience clearly is expected to make.

It is always dangerous to underestimate the knowledge of an audience-and American audiences in particular are often considered insultingly stupid by Hollywood studio executives and European film critics-but it is difficult to discern how much the audience was intended to comprehend musically in Die Hard. Kamen obviously recognized the cultural weight of the 'Ode to Joy), but McTiernan seemed mostly concerned with the connection to A Clockwork Orange. Yet that film is not common currency in the United States,43 at least among the young male audience at which blockbuster action films like Die Hard are primarily targeted; but then again, Die Hard

"' See Nicholas Cook, Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 ('Cambridge Music Handbooks'), Cambridge, 1993, for a historical overview.

41 'Kamen Hard: Interview by Will Shivers', loc. cit. 42 See McClary's 'Getting Down off the Beanstalk: the Presence of a Woman's Voice in Janika Vandervelde's Genesis

IT, reprinted in her Feminine Endings: Musi' Gender, and Sexuality, Minnesota & Oxford, 1991, pp. 112-31, esp. pp. 128- 30. The earlier version of this essay, which appeared in Minnesota Composers Forum Newsletter (February 1987), was considerably more emphatic, equating the recapitulation of the first movement of the Ninth Symphony with rape, an interpretation that certainly would have appealed to Alex's brutal sexuality.

43 The film was banned in the United Kingdom, making the connection even more tenuous in this market.

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is an intelligent enough film to draw a wider audience, even if that was not immediately obvious from the publicity on its initial release. If the audience missed the extra-filmic connections, then at least they are cued to the music's high-art status by its first intelligible presentation by the string quartet at the party.

The variation in the methods of quotation between the two films is not merely a technical, musical choice but is also a dramatic one, serving both narrative drive and characterization. In A Clockwork Orange the quotations are, in a sense, islands of stability; the relative lack of interference with the original music makes it familiar, an emblem. When we hear a portion of the music, we-at least, those of us who know it- are aware of what follows, and because the quotation is so direct, we do not expect, nor do we receive, any musical surprises. This shifts our attention to the disturbing acts on screen, emphasizing the irony of the juxtaposition of Beethoven's 'sublime' creation and Alex's vile destruction. The quotation technique in Die Hard is more subtle and acts more like a classical Hollywood film score-as a character's theme manipulated to fit the dramatic action. Thus the string-quartet arrangement of the 'Ode' is its most straightforward adaptation in Die Hard, but it is interrupted and immediately co-opted by the terrorists. For the rest, Kamen uses only the melodies of the 'Ode to Joy' and 'Singin' in the rain'; even their original harmonies are frequently altered. The climactic vault sequence is a clever pastiche: it sounds as though it could be a direct quotation, but it is not. The only appearance of Beethoven as Beethoven is in the end-credits, the one time we hear his chorus and therefore its words (but in German). Kamen has used the theme as his basic material for the score, subjecting it to Beethovenian fragmenta- tion and motivic development.' Furthermore, the familiar motifs recur in fragmentary variants throughout the score, coalescing towards the 'full' presentation in the vault sequence (and the end-credits), much as Beethoven treats themes from the first three movements of the Ninth Symphony in the orchestral introduction to the final- movement 'Ode'. It is pastiche, but at a more sophisticated level than stylistic parody.

One could interpret the difference in the quotation technique between the two films as a measure of maturity or sophistication in the characters with which the music is associated. Alex revels in pure Beethoven, but he is in an infantile state of repetition, and one way or another, the music controls him: in his normal state, it is catharsis and incitement to violence; after his conditioning, it has been turned on him and provokes only revulsion. Hans, however, has so completely absorbed the music that he is capable of fluently recomposing it to suit his actions, subordinating it to his own will. Dramatically, however, the conceit of allying Hans with Alex does not quite work. Hans has far too much intellectual depth and discipline to have been Alex or one of his ilk. Whereas Alex was a pure sensualist-raping, torturing and killing for pleasure- Hans kills efficiently and wastes no more than the count of three on torture. Hans's pleasure comes, one might say, from his superior sense of style; when Holly accuses him of being nothing but a common thief, he loses his composure for the only time in the film and snarls 'I am an exceptional thief, Mrs. McClane'. He asserts his class in all things-if he is going to be a thief, he is going to be an exceptional one-and the

4 In the final episode of the short-lived cartoon series The Critic, the composer Alf Clausen extended this technique even further. In Die Hard, Kamen had created a distinctive horn orchestration of the three-note opening motif of the 'Ode to Joy', and to score The Critic's parody of Die Hard, 'I Can't Believe it's a Clip Show', Clausen shortened the motif to the first two notes with the same distinctive horn orchestration. The subtlety of the musical parody is not out of keeping with the clever episode, which includes a villain (clearly drawn to resemble Alan Rickman) whose German accent occasionally slips into an English one, and which features a scene in which the villain literally steals the show, wresting control of the microphone from the 'hero' and wringing tears and a standing ovation from his hostages through his moving performance.

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references to A Clockwork Orange reinforce his point of view in the structure of the film. While giving us yet another route into the identification with villains, by allying them with the anti-hero of A Clockwork Orange (and by extension, with Gene Kelly), it is also a very 'classy' reference for a blockbuster action film, and it once more emphasizes the aesthetic bent we are led to admire in Hans. But how we react to this depiction-and how much we recognize its construction-is in turn a function of 'class'.

Class is constituted differently in America and Europe. To couch it in terms of a gross generalization, one might say that in America class is a result of money, style and education, while in Europe class generates money, style and education. In contrast to countries in which the tradition of aristocratic rule establishes upper-class tastes as the norm, in America the egalitarian ideal has ensured a very ambivalent feeling towards 'high class' pursuits. Conservative American society has always had a mistrust of classical music in particular, associating it with effeminacy, an association reinforced by the images of the male characters in Die Hard. (It is also noticeable that the film's one substantial female character, Holly, is not allowed to have her own theme but is forced to share her husband's, such as it is.) This ambiguity and mistrust of 'class' is exemplified in the current debates in Congress about the importance of the arts to 'average' Americans and the demonization of the so-called 'cultural elite' in the 1992 presidential election.

The musical class-split is introduced at the very beginning of the film. On arriving at the airport, McClane is met by the first-time limousine driver Argyle, a young black man who used to be a cabbie. They are both uncomfortable with the luxury of the limousine, and McClane chooses to sit up front with the driver, in the work-space of the car, so to speak. Argyle clears away the remains of his McDonald's meal, joking that 'It's the [maid's] day off', referring to an affluence that the car implies but that Argyle's culinary tastes-or financial limitations-deny. When McClane requests Christmas music, Argyle plays 'Christmas in Hollis', a rap by Run-DMC. Although McClane questions its appropriateness to Christmas, he does not complain about the music itself. At the Nakatomi Christmas party, however-where McClane can find no place where he doesn't feel like a fish out of water-the string quartet is playing Bach's Third Brandenburg Concerto.

Classical music is inextricably associated with wealth in the United States, for without government subsidies it is predominantly the wealthy who patronize concert halls, both literally and figuratively. Classical music is also explicitly associated with money in Die Hard, both with Hans and with the Nakatomi Corporation, which might be viewed as the only unequivocal villain in the film. While Nakatomi is represented by polite chamber music-depicted as pretentious, stale and suffocating-the terrorists practically erupt with music: they are unable to restrain themselves from singing. Even the sullen Karl hums, if tunelessly; and Hans may be associated with the loftiest of classical music icons, Beethoven, but he has no compunction about 'jiving' Beethoven in the lift with Takagi. Like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, Hans does not regard Beethoven's music as a stuffy museum artefact; it is a living, joyful thing.

THE COMPOSER AS LENS

Nick Hansted in the Guardian remarked of Alan Rickman in the role of Hans Gruber that 'Like Die Hard itself, he was intelligent, spectacular, and empty'.45 Conflating Rickman with Gruber-an understandable consequence of Rickman's redefinition of

4 'The Crazy Gang'.

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the role of villain-Hansted also conflated the actor and his role with the film. An implicit equals sign stands between the 'Die Hard' and the 'he'. The intelligence of the film does indeed reside to a large degree in the intelligence of Hans Gruber, his plan, his wit, the complexity of his personality; in fact, the film is most stupid when it has to get rid of him for generic reasons. The film certainly is spectacular in its extravagantly explosive set pieces, but it is no less so in Hans Gruber's plan and its execution. However, Hansted's notion of emptiness is questionable. Perhaps Hans is indeed empty; it is difficult to conceive of him outside the role of megalomaniacal master- mind. Only his charged encounters with Holly give any hint of a personal existence, although the sparks are generated by her challenge to his powers. Yet however proscribed the character, there is great depth within that narrow scope. And a film that speaks so strongly of a cultural moment as Die Hard does, no matter how unpleasant or vacuous one might find that moment itself, can never truly be considered empty.

Rather, the film offers a multiplicity of possible readings, all with enough coherence to provide satisfaction, and this must be at least part of the reason for its success. Of course, most of the audience, especially those to whom the film is primarily targeted, are likely to read it as a straightforward good- versus bad-guy story. Yet, and despite the dangers of sounding elitist, there are other, more complex interpretations. The political strains may be obvious enough, but the notion of reading Hans as the hero requires subversion, conscious or unconscious. This may be a response to his aristocratic aesthetics or even his easy amorality, but it could just as well stem from resistance to political and cultural conservatism. Either way, such a subversive reading places one solidly in the ranks of the liberal 'cultural elite' (the same cultural elite attracted to A Clockwork Orange?) demonized by Reaganite Republicans. But no position exists 'outside' the text, in fact, for the undeniably brilliant conservative coup de gradce of Die Hard is that the Reaganite message is inescapable. Those whose intellectual, aesthetic or liberal leanings tend towards their inclusion in a cultural elite (itself a term the evident meaning of which has been subverted) may enjoy the illicit delight of rooting for the elegant villain (himself a member of that elite), but they will also find themselves in the position of cheering the 'real' Reaganite hero. The paradox at play may be pleasurable or painful, but recognizing that paradox is likely to require the sort of cultural capital that would lead one to the subversive reading in the first place. The cowboy may be foregrounded as the archetypal working-class hero, but the aristocratic corporate pirate is celebrated with glee, and with a great deal of music. Part of that celebration is purely kinetic. In the vault sequence, for example, practically any simple anthem-like tune building to a rousing 6/8 march variation against those images would create an exhilarating effect, but the 'Ode to Joy', of course, is not just any tune. As with all the major musical themes in Die Hard, it comes with considerable cultural baggage which rather untidily contains-or fails to contain-American anxieties about the economy, class and gender roles, and about how those have been constructed and constricted by the movies.

Like all film composers, Michael Kamen stands between the film-makers' conception of the film and the audience. ProducerJoel Silver, screen-writer Steven de Souza, director John McTiernan and composer Michael Kamen all admit to perpetrating a wilful subversion in the structure of the film, but it is perhaps Kamen's contribution that most affects our perception of the characters and events. This argument is, in effect, an extension of the auteur theory, shifting the role from director to composer, but I want to emphasize that the assignment of that role is only a practical one. In fact, this

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analysis has turned out to be a more auteur-based project than I ever expected, but only because the interpretation that I derived from watching and listening to the film was later reinforced by statements from the film-makers themselves.' Kamen happens to have admitted to falling in love with the bad guy; but if he had never admitted it, or never even realized it, the evidence is still there in the score, and it is the music which affects the audience. Kamen's reading of the film acts as a lens, refracting and focusing what we see on the screen. To make his desired effect, he draws heavily on the cultural connotations of the music that serves as his raw material and on conventions of film scoring that we have absorbed in the manner of Argyle, who constructs the McClanes' reunion in terms of the classical Hollywood film score. The hero always has a theme; therefore the characters who control the music are the heroes. Are they not? But Hans has the power even to control the non-diegetic music like a conductor, which seems a very dangerous power to give to a villain, no matter how charming. That 'misassigned' power can lead us to question the very basis of the action film-who is the villain, and who is the hero?

John Fiske has described the truly popular text as one which offers multiple points of reference to its audience, one which contains internal contradictions, one that is 'in a very real sense, beyond its own control'.47 In its dominant narrative, Die Hard is clearly a conservative document, but it is one which also offers tremendous scope for a subversive reading: in the structure of the film by giving the villain the active role and assigning the reactive role to the nominal hero; in a complex and appealingly drawn villain amplified by a particularly charismatic performance; and, not least, in a score by a composer who was seduced by that performance. Like Kamen, those who would resist the overt message and the obvious physical hero may escape by cheering on the intellectual who, in the end, is only bested by a strained contrivance of the script. The score, in turn, reinforces those elements by shifting, or reorientating, conventional scoring techniques. This demonstrably popular, and hugely influential, text is one that is 'beyond its own control' by design.

46 On the other hand, running counter to the composer-as-auteur is another statement by Kamen that 'In fact very little music in Die Hard 1, 2 and 3, that was written for a given sequence actually wound up in the right scene. John McTiernan is one of those directors who you will make a cue for and he'll say that's great, and he'll take it, and chop it, and move it around. And nobody's complaining, least of all me . . .' (Jason Needs, 'Interview: Michael Kamen with a Vengeance', Music from the Movies (Summer 1995), 7). 'Very little' is a difficult quantity to assess. I would find it almost impossible to believe that the music underscoring Hans's speeches was ever written for another sequence, given that the

interaction between voice and music is so intricate; however, there are other scenes-particularly loud action- sequences-when earlier cues are repeated (and there are a number of cues from the original Die Hard repeated wholesale in Die Hard with a Vengeance). In terms of the effect on the audience, however, it does not matter whether the music was written for a particular sequence or not. If stretches of Hans's 'recitatives' were written for other sequences, then one can only marvel at John McTiernan's remarkable ear in transferring them.

4 John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture, Boston, 1989, p. 104.

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'I Just Put a Drone under Him...': Collage and Subversion in the Score of 'Die Hard'

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Transcript of 'I Just Put a Drone under Him...': Collage and Subversion in the Score of 'Die Hard'