John McTiernan's last completed feature film was the mystery-thriller Basic, released in 2003.
21 Facts About John McTiernan
2.
John McTiernan pleaded guilty to perjury and lying to an FBI investigator in regard to his hiring of the private investigator Anthony Pellicano in late 2000 to illegally wiretap the phone calls of two people, one of whom was Charles Roven, a co-producer of his action film remake Rollerball.
3.
John McTiernan was incarcerated in federal prison from April 2013 to February 2014.
4.
John McTiernan attended the Juilliard School before graduating with a Master of Fine Arts from the AFI Conservatory in 1975.
5.
John McTiernan directed Medicine Man, about a medical researcher in a rainforest, starring Sean Connery.
6.
In 1995, John McTiernan rebounded with Die Hard with a Vengeance, the third installment of the Die Hard film series.
7.
John McTiernan's career was derailed in 2006 because of legal problems which saw McTiernan spend time in prison.
8.
John McTiernan had been in a disagreement with Roven about what type of film Rollerball should be, and had hired Pellicano to investigate Roven's intentions and actions.
9.
John McTiernan had asked Pellicano to try to find instances where Roven made negative remarks about the studio executives or said things to others that were inconsistent with what he said to the studio.
10.
John McTiernan was arraigned and pleaded guilty on April 17,2006, as part of an initial plea bargain agreement to cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for lenient treatment.
11.
John McTiernan then hired new counsel and tried to withdraw his guilty plea, saying that his prior counsel had not conducted a proper discovery in the case and had not presented him with the available defense approach of suppressing as evidence the conversation with him that Pellicano had recorded on August 17,2000.
12.
John McTiernan was ordered to surrender for incarceration by January 15,2008, but was allowed to remain out of prison on bail pending an appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
13.
The prosecution then agreed to allow John McTiernan to withdraw his plea rather than proceed with such a hearing, and his plea was withdrawn on February 24,2009.
14.
The judge said that the increased length of the prison sentence was related to the additional, more serious charge of perjury before her court, that John McTiernan's crimes were more than just a momentary lapse of judgment, that he still did not seem to have really accepted responsibility for his actions, and that she would have issued an even more lengthy prison sentence if the prosecution had not recommended less.
15.
John McTiernan was then released on bail pending an appeal of the adverse rulings.
16.
John McTiernan's defense tried to argue that Pellicano had made the recording for an unlawful purpose and that this made it inadmissible, but the district and appeals courts disagreed with that interpretation of the rules of evidence.
17.
John McTiernan surrendered to federal prison on April 3,2013, to serve a stated 12-month sentence in the Federal Prison Camp, Yankton, in Yankton, South Dakota, a minimum-security former college campus holding about 800 male inmates, most of whom were white-collar criminals.
18.
John McTiernan's supporters created a "Free John McTiernan" campaign page on Facebook, including expressions of support from Samuel L Jackson, Alec Baldwin and Brad Bird.
19.
John McTiernan was released from prison on February 25,2014, after 328 days of incarceration, to serve the remainder of his 12-month prison sentence under house arrest at his ranch home in Wyoming until April 3,2014.
20.
In October 2013, while in prison, John McTiernan filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy amidst foreclosure proceedings for his 3,254-acre ranch residence in central Wyoming, struggles to pay his past legal bills and IRS tax debts, and ongoing expensive disputes including the lawsuit by his ex-wife, a $5M claim against him of liability in a 2011 automobile accident, and his ongoing effort to reverse his felony conviction.
21.
John McTiernan's lawyers countered by saying that his potential for generating additional future income from new projects could enable him to eventually repay his debts, so a rapid liquidation of assets would be unnecessary and unjustified.