Mac guy reveals he really is a computer klutz

Justin Long tells the Washington Post that he is often assailed by putative wiseacres with questions like:

"Sooooo, Mac Guy, do you actually own a Mac?"

"Hey, man, look out, I'm a PC."

"I'm having a funny thing happen on my screen saver…"

Well, you took the gig, Justin, now meet your public.

But it can't be that bad because he is following the typecasting route by starring in the latest in the Die Hard franchise, imaginatively titled Live Free or Die Hard.

The rather excellent trailer website for the film says this one is about terrorists that shut down US national infrastructure such as power and computer networks. However, the “mysterious figure” behind the plot “never figured on an old-school ‘analog' fly in the ‘digital' ointment”. Those quotes are there in case the reader wonders what an analog fly and digital ointment are, we assume.

Long plays a hacker helping to save the free world (© United States of America). Bruce Willis runs his usual gamut of emotions from A to B, doubtless, playing the analog fly, John McClane. Hm, can you smell potato?

Despite these geeky roles, Long says he is really no nerd and only has a tenuous command of keyboard, mouse and the box thing that shows the pictures. And although Willis plays a hard man with no computer knowledge in the movie, Long says that in real life, the roles are reversed.

“Bruce knows far more about computers than I do and was always on the computer, working the webcam.”

What, that 50-year-old bloke can't really save us all in real life? Those Hollywood movies - they get you every time. µ