Random Movie Trivia - Die Hard

Here is the next edition in our weekly Random Movie Trivia post.  Enjoy:

Die Hard

• This was Alan Rickman's feature film debut.  He was 42 years old at the time and had only done some British TV up to this point.  Not a bad way to start a film career considering Hans Gruber is easily one of the greatest movie villains of all-time.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Burt Reynolds, Richard Gere, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Nick Nolte, and Tom Berenger all turned down the role of John McClane.  Out of all of those actors, not a one of them could have done a better job than Bruce Willis did with the character.
• Sam Neill turned down the role of Hans Gruber.
• The scene where Hans Gruber and John McClane meet up on the roof was inserted after the movie started filming because the director was impressed at how well Rickman could imitate an American accent and wrote the scene because of his talent.
• Believe it or not, this movie was based on the book 'Nothing Lasts Forever' and the movie was originally supposed to star Frank Sinatra.  But because Sinatra was 73 years old at the time, he passed on the role.
• Also, this movie was originally supposed to be the sequel to Commando, but Schwarzenegger turned down the role and it eventually was renamed Die Hard after many more re-writes.  And that is why the main character is named John instead of Joe like in the book because Arnold's character in Commando was named John Matrix.
• Director John McTiernan was forced to cut away from Alan Rickman every time he fired a gun in the movie because he had an uncontrollable problem of flinching every time a gun fired.  If you look closely during the scene where he shoots Takagi, you can see him flinch.
• The Nakatomi Building is actually the headquarters of 20th Century Fox and during filming, they charged themselves rent on the unfinished building.
• The reason the movie takes place entirely at night is because Bruce Willis was also shooting the TV show Moonlighting.  So, during the day, he would go do the filming for the TV show and would then show up at night for Die Hard.
• Only a couple of the actors playing German terrorists were actually German and at best could speak broken German.  All the actors were cast because of their size and scary-looking nature.
• Bruce Willis and Demi Moore got married during production of this movie and Little Richard presided over the ceremony.

"Yup, they wanted this guy to play John McClane.  Something tells me it would have been a completely different/terrible movie."