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Writing on Die Hard.
From the Mouths of Babes.
So here’s the scene. It was a Saturday backyard birthday party and barbeque for a friend’s ten-year-old. The winter afternoon was crisp enough for sweaters. I’d assumed my usual posture, Diet Coke in one hand, enjoying a little adult conversation while keeping one eye on the unheated swimming pool. No kids were swimming. And that’s [...]
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F-Bombs on Mom.
Here’s the scene. It was night on a cold and windswept mountaintop movie set. Writer and movie star had found shelter near the playback monitors. I was passing on to Bruce Willis the conversation I’d had with the producers earlier in the afternoon. “They want you to dial back on the f-bombs, partner,” I said. [...]
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Live Free or Die of Pneumonia.
It was the day we burned the Hostage set. Bruce ambled onto the soundstage and dropped a script onto my lap. The title was DIE HARD 4.0. I could tell by the date it was the most recent writer’s attempt at the fourth installment of the series. “Do me a favor and read it will [...]
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The Incredibly True Story Of Die Hard 2 And The Uncashed Lottery Ticket.
Die Hard 2… Behind the Scenes I was actually hired to write DIE HARD 2 when the original DIE HARD was still in theaters. Like the original, the sequel was to be based on a novel. In DIE HARD 2’s case, the book was 58 MINUTES by Walter Wager. Days later I was parked in [...]
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Die Hard, Joel Silver and the Five-Thousand-Dollar Couch.
This is one of my favorite Hollywood true stories. It involves mega action producer, Joel Silver. Now, like most power players, Joel has a rep. Some good. Some negative. Some deserved. Some not. I was once sitting in on an American Film Institute discussion panel where Joel actually said, “Hollywood is a venal town. I’d [...]
Read More »"Doug Richardson never disappoints. BLOOD MONEY is fast and intense and compulsively readable, populated by an unforgettable cast of characters and a plot that twists so many times you'll get dizzy. A great story from a veteran tale teller." J.T. Ellison
"Richardson delivers the goods in BLOOD MONEY with his uncanny ability to glimpse into the brutality and instability not only of the criminal mind, but also a darkness in the heroes." Maya Fleischmann for IndieReader
Doug’s Blog.
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A Bitter Pill, Part 2.
June 17, 2013“Did he offer you the franchise?” asked megabucks writer Charlie A-List. As you read last week in (A Bitter Pill, Part 1) I’d just landed in Charlie’s office after a meeting with a Paramount executive who’d offered me the plum gig of writing the next installment of its blockbuster franchise based on a series of [...]
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A Bitter Pill, Part 1.
June 10, 2013Here we go again. The names have been changed for the most obvious of reasons. I met Charlie A-List just inside the threshold of his Paramount office. He was riding high on his mega-hit, which he’d adapted from one of a series of bestselling books penned by Mr. Superstar Novelist. For that and other work, [...]
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Truth, Terrorists, and Turnaround.
June 04, 2013This isn’t a sequel as much as it is a companion piece to last week’s A Funny Thing About Homage, where I recalled the late great John Frankenheimer’s brief attachment to a screenplay I’d developed with producer, Gary Foster. The script was initially titled Jackals. But maybe I should add a little context first. Gary [...]
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Funny Thing About Homage.
May 27, 2013What’s wrong with this picture? I was an unproduced screenwriter standing at the threshold to my antique, valley domicile. It was my tiny, first-timer bungalow measuring barely eleven hundred square feet. Across from me, standing on my front stoop, was none other than movie director, John Frankenheimer. You don’t know his name? Maybe you’ve heard [...]
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Big Bad Bruce.
May 20, 2013It was our first morning at the location. The set, a neo-modern house the art department had dressed up into looking more like a comfortable fortress, would serve as central focus for the next four weeks, most of which would be long and cold nights. The geography was pretty steep, a hillside high above Malibu, [...]
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