Ironically, it was another Twentieth Century Fox action picture that gave me the hook I needed for Sewer, Gas. I enjoyed Die Hard immensely and must have seen it half a dozen times while it was still in theaters. Around my third or fourth time through after I had memorized all the fight scenes I noticed something funny about the casting. The Amusing Black Man is a comic bit player who just happens to be African-American. Whichever, the Amusing Black Man is typically the only black man in the entire story, and that's the problem while there's nothing wrong with minor comic roles, there is something wrong with ethnic typecasting.
Most films limit themselves to one or two.
Die Hard has five. This is Special Agent Johnson. And then there's Officer Al Powell, who starts out as an Amusing Black Man but later graduates to Tonto status. I felt sorriest for. In the years since I started working on Sewer, Gas, a number of folks most of them white have suggested to me that this is not a tasteful line of speculation.