ABOUT

About the show

Die Hard With a Podcast may center around Die Hard, but it explores more than just what happened inside Nakatomi Tower that fateful Christmas Eve. This is a podcast for anyone out there with interest in the film – or even just action films, films from the 1980s, the evolution of the American movie hero, the portrayal of women and minorities in film, film production… Die Hard is at once a product of its time, and the start of a new kind of moviegoing experience.

About Simone

I can’t recall exactly when I became a die hard Die Hard fan. I think my story is probably pretty typical; falling in love with it as I watched the movie at home on VHS, or badly censored on TV. I do remember that when I moved to Los Angeles in 2006 to take an internship on the Fox lot, I never got over my excitement at driving past the Fox Plaza building – Nakatomi Tower – every day. I got a gray sweatshirt and a red Sharpie to make my own “Now I have a machine gun, ho ho ho” costume for my Christmas party. I attended the Alamo Drafthouse’s “Nakatomi ‘88” themed screening in San Francisco. And yes, I became one of those annoying drunks who’d go on at length about why Die Hard is a Christmas movie after a couple of cocktails.

After yet another friend asked me for quick notes on whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie in order to settle an office debate, I sat down with a (couple) glass(es) of whiskey, rewatched the movie, and hammered out a four-page, fully-cited essay on the matter. Yes, this is how I spend my Friday nights.

But the fact that I did that made something abundantly clear: I love Die Hard. I have a lot to say about it. And I want to share it.

When I’m not wishing I had my own John Phillips of London suit, I’m the producer and cohost of Black Mass Appeal, a podcast about modern Satanism and its intersections with American politics and culture. I work as a writer and marketing professional, and in a past life I worked in film, television, and radio. Outside of my tiny media empire, I enjoy going to tiki bars, boxing, sci-fi and horror books and movies, playing the bass, and competing in bar trivia. (I was on Jeopardy in 2014. It went all right.) And, as you can plainly see, I also enjoy doing wildly different things to my hair.