Hollywood head surrealist Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York arrives in cinemas this Friday.

It depicts another brain-stretching reconfiguration of the world, with Philip Seymour Hoffman's sadsack theatre director recreating New York inside a New York warehouse. Or something.

So what would Hollywood's straightest and most conventional hits look like if they had been penned by Charlie?

Die Hard (1988)

The original: Grimy New York Cop gets caught up in a terrorist siege of a corporate tower block during a Christmas visit to see his wife in Los Angeles. He sneaks through the building taking the bad guys down one at a time.

The Kaufman version: After the building is taken over by terrorists, detective John McClane uses the elevator to out-manoeuvre a pair of gunmen but finds himself stuck on floor 7½.

Investigating, he finds a portal which delivers him into the mind of head baddie Hans Gruber.

Here, he enjoys the sensation of having a beard for a few minutes before forcing Gruber to throw himself off the top floor and ejecting from his brain at the last second.