Scene 17
- We cut to a news studio, where a local reporter is listening to a police scanner.
- He hears the cop call for backup on the radio and knows he's got a story.
Scene 18
- Well, we're all in for it now. Dozens of cops descend upon the scene.
- Gruber seems unfazed, though. He even refers to the cops' showing up as "necessary." Hmm.
- All that unflappability gets a little, well, flapped when McClane radios Gruber. He tells him he's killed "Tony and Marco and his friend," and refers to Hans, Franco, and Karl by their names.
- Karl's worried. How does he know so much about them?
- But Gruber plays it cool. He guesses that McClane is a security guard.
- Um, not so much.
- Gruber wants to know who McClane is. Smartly, he won't say. He's "just a fly in the ointment."
- Gruber sends his cronies off to suss out the situation while he continues to chat with McClane.
- They banter. Gruber calls him "just another American who saw too many movies as a child. Another orphan of a bankrupt culture who thinks he's John Wayne."
- McClane confesses he was a Roy Rogers fan, and when Gruber asks him if he really thinks he has a chance, McClane responds with the iconic line, "Yippee-ki-yay, m***********."