Len Wiseman on the set of Live Free or Die Hard Frank Masi/Courtesy of 20th Century Fox

I've read that you directed your own backyard version of Die Hard when you were a kid. True?
That's actually, pathetically, true. Bruce has outed me on it. I had said to him while we were shooting that I had directed this movie in my backyard when I was — oh god, I don't remember how old I was — and then Bruce said, "You've got to put it on the DVD, you've got to find it!" I can't find it anymore. I'm sure my mother will find it somewhere in the garage. But, actually, on the set, if there was something that I wanted different than what was planned for the day, or wanted Bruce to do something that was different than that script, it became known officially as "The Len Wiseman Backyard Version." The last thing I'll say is, if it ever pops up, I will hide.

Who played John McClane in your backyard movie?
Oh man, the story just goes downhill from here. I did. I couldn't hire anybody. My friends were not reliable to make call-times. I was the resident actor on my block.

So you did it all — director, star, producer, everything?
Yes. Not by my choice, but by what was available to me.

Justin [Long] plays Bruce's sidekick in the movie. Going from Jeepers Creepers, Mac commercials, and Dodgeball to Live Free or Die Hard seems like a relatively big leap, no?
I knew about [Justin] through the Mac commercials, and had seen him in Dodgeball. But mainly it was the Mac commercials. I really liked his approach to comedy, so I knew that was in him. But I hadn't seen him in anything that he'd done dramatically. They'd sent me this film he'd done called Dreamland, this small, independent drama that he'd done. I was impressed with that. I saw that he could do the dramatic side as well. I needed someone who could be sarcastic and funny and have that kind of wry sense of humor, but not come across like an asshole. A lot of times, when you have that sarcastic tone, you come across as smug and arrogant. You're not likeable enough. Justin has a way of being kind of crass and having a bit of arrogant flair with his comedy, and still he remains likeable.

Maggie Q mentioned that you tried like hell to not make her look too beautiful during her action scenes. How does one go about doing such a thing?
You can push it too far if you play up the whole beauty, badass action-hero bad guy thing. I tried to take it down a bit. You want the girl to be attractive, yet at the same time, you don't want to take away from fact that she's a hard-assed killer. So it's always a bit of a challenge. Maggie is obviously very beautiful. So there was a lot of messing up the hair and blood, makeup, and all that sort of stuff.