This time I’m letting Renny Harlin talk.
This man’s films have been part of the pop culture fabric of my life dating back to the late 1980s. I’m not going to lie and pretend that I saw his first two films – 1986’s Born American and 1987’s Prison – when they were initially released, but I did rent A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master on VHS, and I most definitely saw both Die Hard 2 and The Adventures of Ford Fairlane in the theater, so…I guess you’ve gotten the idea by now that I’m very much a Renny Harlin fan, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to talk to him, even if it was only for a little over 30 minutes.
Harlin’s latest film is his fourth collaboration with Samuel L. Jackson, but it’s decidedly unlike any of the films they’ve previously done together. It’s called The Beast, and if you’re any sort of presidential historian, then you’ll recognize that the film shares its title with the highly-fortified state car that serves as the vehicle of the President of the United States. Well, in this case, our man Sam is the Commander-in-Chief, he’s inside the Beast, and he’s under attack from virtually the moment the film starts, so…buckle up. By the time this episode is release, the film should be in a theater near you, and if you’re listening to this a little bit down the line, then hopefully it’s available for purchase for you to enjoy in the comfort of your own home.
Of course, there was no way that I was going to have a conversation with Renny Harlin without asking him about some of the films that I mentioned earlier, so we chat about the budget battle of Nightmare on Elm Street 4, the rock and roll adventure of making Ford Fairlane, and how little he’s bothered by the aviation inaccuracies of Die Hard 2. We also discuss his shift to directing episodic television a few years ago, the time he had dinner with Billy Wilder, and the experience of working with Burt Reynolds on Driven, which was…definitely an experience.
No, I didn’t get to ask him about everything I would’ve liked to ask him about, but at the very end, I managed to make a closing comment that led him to tease me with a story that I sincerely hope will result in us doing a sequel sometime down the line, hopefully sooner than later. After all, he’s got a podcast now, too – Harlin House, which he does with his wife, Johanna – so it’s got cross-promotional opportunity written all over it!
Well, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Renny Harlin talk.
