SU Member Charlie Picerni was the stunt coordinator for Die Hard (1988) and choregraphed this KILLER fight scene. He went on to 2nd unit direct and stunt coordinate Die Hard 2 and 3.
From the Die Hard DVD documentary, Decoding Die Hard (2013)
"The climactic scrap between McClane (Bruce Willis) and Tony’s brother Karl (Alexander Godunov) was a Picerni-driven fight. Again, the violence seems raw and real, with McClane head-butting and punching Karl, smashing his face into pipes and finally strangling him to (apparent) death with a chain.
“I choreographed the whole thing,” Picerni says. Stunt doubles Keii Johnston (McClane) and Don McGovern (Karl) rehearsed the moves, although it was Picerni who demonstrated it to McTiernan, Willis, and Silver. Picerni recalled that producer Joel Silver said, ‘That’s it! You double Bruce! You double Bruce!’ I said, ‘No, Joel. It’ll work out fine. Keii will do it. And that’s how we did it. Bruce, he saw what I was doing, he got right into it and it was terrific. That fight was one of the best fights I choreographed . . . and Bruce did a lot himself.”
