Bruce Willis

Willis is only Classic for Moonlighting and Die Hard

So this Red movie.

might watch it in a few minutes... bad?

I had to watch Die Hard last night (my wife had never seen it and felt she needed to "get in touch with the zeitgeist")

and?

(i like to stay out of reach of the zeitgeist myself, esp from 1988)

this belongs to a subgenre of film that I like to call copaganda

on its own terms it succeeds v well and is expertly executed. my problem is I find the terms execrable.

Die Hard of the Will

a minor plot point centers around a cop who, consumed by guilt over his previous murder of an unarmed teen, has been unable to draw/fire his gun ever since that event, but in the closing minutes of the film finally manages to overcome this psychological block in order to shoot a bad guy in the face.

I mean, how am I supposed to care about that

prescient! i mean i had no idea a cop had ever killed an unarmed teen before

to yr objections, junk stans usu say "it's only a movie," dismissing the idea that ppl who see dozens of these are in fact influenced by them.

i don't think shakey needs you to tell him how a strawperson would respond

it's hard for me to say how many action movie cliches originated with this film vs. existing cliches it happily exploits but you can kind of guess them all without watching it - the top brass that do everything wrong, the underdog rogue protagonist, the helpless feminine totem (a barely written part representing female transgression against traditional gender roles and is thus punished/taught a lesson), the vaguely effete/european villain with an accent, the occasionally jarring bits of gore/uber-violence.

all in all I think I prefer Hong Kong's 80s action movies, maybe because I am more at a cultural remove from any baggage but man when it comes to the American stuff all the subtexts are nauseating.

that moment in the resolution is super fucked up jtbc, all the more for its gratuitousness

bits like that aside i still love die hard, but def wouldn't recommend it to anyone sick of american action film cliches

I once had a friend who insisted that Bruce Willis was the American Chow-Yun Fat but idk I can't think of any BW roles where he portrays the kind of sadsack/tragic figure the way Fat does. There's always the smirk or the suckerpunch with Willis.

xp

12 monkeys?

yeah that's kind of the closest I could think of - he's p much confusion/desperation the entire time, probably the least conventionally action-y of his action roles

also both his m night shyamalan movies

I think a few of his indie [sic] roles qualify on this score, eg Breakfast of Champions, Mooonrise Kingdom

could be a few more gloomy gus roles in the umpteen i haven't bothered to see

dude came into this world as a "bill murray" type (that's specifically what they were looking for when casting moonlighting), dude didn't really start showing his sadface in action until after tarantino

but Chow comparison is off then -- except he has done non-action roles as well

xp

haven't seen Breakfast

he's decent in MK altho I don't think there's a ton to that role

(this Chow comparison was made at least 15 years ago fwiw)

thinking about this did make me feel bad about Chow's career, he got the shaft coming to America afaict

couldn't bear to watch him when i checked out the corruptor

I guess he's still turning out star material in HK...? I haven't seen anything he's been in for at least a decade

watching him to try to be cocky while navigating english was so rough

i find this movie pretty unobjectionable except insofar as like, civilization is objectionable

also great

watching him to try to be cocky while navigating english was so rough

― da croupier,

rubbish, he does this very well in die hard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1daIIDQsXI

^ compelled to watch this every few months

die hard is a master class in a lot of ways, mctiernan is (was, i guess) a pretty incredible director.

mctiernan was great, but don't forget the script! it's not exactly shakespeare, but it's beautifully proportioned. i don't think mctiernan ever worked with a script that good again (though i do like hunt for red october).

it's hard to believe mctiernan directed rollerball before you get to the part that's arbitrarily shot in night vision

I'll defend the second Die Hard too, although if you're not down with its ridiculousness I understand.

HFRO is pretty great in how its two heroes spend the entire film trying to avoid getting into any kind of life-or-death conflict. also for its devotion to sharing little moments that give a sense of minor characters (also a die hard trait), and how it doesn't really have any straight-up bad guys (except for the stowaway agent on the sub, and i guess joss ackland's soviet diplomat, and probably tim curry's role.) i liked the scene with the hardass carrier commander who was being all cliched army swagger dickhead and then the admiral told him a story abt jack ryan, and then in the next scene they shared his swagger was gone.

mctiernan was great bc he didn't cut those bits for time.

i'd defend DH3 as well, based on its stature in my eyes as the 90s version of the taking of pelham 123.

the technical chops brought to bear are definitely apparent; there's no wasted scenes/shots, everything in the script and in the direction is economical and coherent, it's just all brought to bear in the service of something I find fundamentally objectionable (so, ban civilization I guess, in response to amateurist).

There was one line that did elicit a genuine laugh from both myself and the wife: "We're gonna need to get some more FBI guys"

xp

^^ I liked it at the time but rewatched it last spring and couldn't get past J-Irons as quasi-fag with peroxide do. Also: Pulp Fiction hadn't affected casting directors so Samuel L. Jackson still cast like he's in Loaded Weapon 1 and Amos 'n' Andrew.

kinda afraid to revisit 3 or 4 (which i'm tempted to defend as an '00s version of the searchers), but i'm sure 2 is the simple pro job i remember it being

5 was just atrociously boring

i guess i feel no need to revisit the sequels, you'd think one near-perfect die hard is enough, right?

whichever one w J Irons and SL Jackson was I saw that in the theater and hated it

i'd rather move on to other parts of the mctiernan canon, like uh the 13th warrior

xpost

2 ridic 4 ridic but both competent
13th warrior is GREAT

DH 2 was at the airport and co-starred John Amos as an evil but benign paramilitary officer helping a terrorist or something

john amos vs john stamos

if you haven't seen The Prince, get on that shit. kind of a student-film Taken

bruce willis is...... Out Of Death

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12528166/

??

In an interview with Vulture, director Mike Burns said that they planned to have Bruce Willis shoot all of his scenes across two days. However, due to COVID-19 shutdowns, Willis could only be on set for one day. Therefore, they filmed all of his scenes in a single day.

a new movie project can literally be "all in a day's work" for Bruce these days

morelike out of breath, amirite?

Out of Death is the best Helloween album imo

I don’t know if we can call what he does “work”

there was an amusing article in vulture abt these kinds of movies recently, calling them "geezer teasers"

Needs to do a movie with Steven Seagal IMO.

i fundamentally don't understand these movies. coming from the standpoint of someone who will watch shitty action movies: you have to have some standards. they tend to fail in being "so bad its good" also. like watch a recent nic cage or seagal, try and finish it, i dare you.

suggest remake of The Hidden Fortress with Bruce Willis, Nic Cage and Danny Trejo filmed in one day and then the rest deepfaked in the editing suite for 6 weeks

It bugs me how shameless Bruce Willis is about wasting his potential/ phoning in his performances. It's one thing to take roles in bad movies for the money, but he really goes out of his way to do the absolute bare minimum of acting in exchange for the paycheck. It wouldn't be so annoying if he weren't obviously capable of much more.

ClaudeRains.jpg

just to reaffirm the sentiment from the previous decade, Hudson Hawk remains a delight to watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd1eNS9HtXo

(Actually feature doesn't start until maybe minute 9)

Huh, I guess there are rumors he's been struggling mentally and physically? If so that's kind of sad that he's doing these shit movies rather than just retiring and enjoying old age. Though god knows, these movies can't possibly take much time out of his schedule.

The new category, titled “Worst Performance by Bruce Willis in a 2021 Movie,” includes the eight feature films that Willis made in 2021

https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/bruce-willis/razzie-awards-2021-nominees-bruce-willis-category-movies/

I found this comment under that video, so grain of salt, but:

I know quite a few people who worked on Apex. Most of the movie was shot with a picture double on Vancouver Island, with Bruce's coverage being shot by a different unit in Washington. The Vancouver Island shoot turned into an absolute nightmare, as they had hired an entirely unqualified non-union special effects department, which led to a couple of incidents where pyrotechnics went off without the crew on set being notified beforehand. This led to most of the camera department walking off the show, taking their carts and personal kits but leaving the rented gear behind. The rest of the movie was shot by the DP with the help of anyone who had any camera experience from the other departments. They were also unable to hire any union stunt performers or extras as an indie production during early covid, so most of the bad guys getting shot are actually random crew members in costume.

Jay is right in that Bruce's lines are being read to him through an earwig by the script supervisor, but unfortunately this is more due to dementia issues than laziness. The guy couldn't remember his lines if he tried, and often has issues interpreting direction and the instructions being given to him.

Other comments:

I have a buddy that worked on one of these movies last year in Vancouver.

He said it was really hard to watch Bruce struggle to just get his lines out. He was forgetting that he was filming a movie and they had to wait for him so they could record his lines.

They were not able to get everything they needed from Bruce because they only had him for a few days and then he was off the movie. They ran out of time to film all of his lines.

I'm not aware of the title of that movie but Bruce was actually in Vancouver for this one, in Nov 2021. Apparently the scripty would be reading him his lines as well as giving him direction on what to do, but he would often confuse the two and repeat his stage directions aloud. Kinda like saying "I'm getting too old for this shit. And now I'm sitting down on the couch to my right.

Pretty sad, honestly.

I generally like those Red Letter Media guys & that video was fun but yeah, even before reading those YouTube comments, I was surprised that it didnt occur to them as they were ripping on him that old age memory issues might have been a factor for the earpiece stuff

so basically elder abuse

I dont think Nic Cage is suffering from any mental issues (outside of just being Nic Cage) but it's a similar story for him, he's in a ton of movies that nobody knows about every year even outside of the cool critically acclaimed stuff like Mandy and Pig. Did you know there's a Nic Cage movie where he beats up a ton of animatronic animal robots that have been possessed by Satan? And that he does not speak an entire word throughout the whole film? And that it just came out last year??

The difference (and I am not a Cage fan at all, though I enjoyed Pig) is that Cage picks projects that are challenging — in an "I've never done anything like this, let's go" sense — and throws himself into them 100%, where Willis is clearly punching the clock and not the least bit invested in what he's working on. Whether it's because he's got dementia, or is just doing it for the money because his kids have no apparent life skills, the result is the same.

I never really thought of Willis as 'old', but he's 66, which is I guess is quite old, but not so old I would have immediately assumed memory issues were the reason he was having his lines fed to him through an earpiece. I didn't realize he's been mostly doing direct-to-video schlock for the last 8 years or so.

Yes that movie is good

Cage, though, famously (and publicly) spent millions on dumb shit like castles and comic books. I saw somewhere that claimed he burned through $150 million and also owed the IRS close to $20 million, so he def. needed the cash to maintain his lifestyle. But Willis? I have no idea. Looks like his most blatant cash ins began somewhere around 2008. 2012 he had both Moonrise Kingdom and Looper, but since then it's been pretty dire. The earpiece stuff is of course conjecture, but if you can't do your job, then ... retire, you know? Why do a high profile two-person stage play with a great actor if you can't do it? I wonder who is pushing him to do this stuff.

throws himself into them 100%,

This is an important distinction. Cage is def. in it to win it, no matter what loser of a movie he picks. But Willis? Those clips alone they show are so sad. He's barely acting, just reciting short lines with no enthusiasm.

Here's a look at that insane authorized deep fake Russian ad they mentioned:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp4jbs7ivSY

66 is old enough for dementia to be an issue-1 out of 5 of all Americans have signs of it by 60.

pacino also famously uses an earpiece

Yeah, but on stage I kind of get it. I mean, it's even a punchline in countless things I've seen since I was a kid: someone whispers "line" and some person at the lip or side of the stage gives it to them. That's really no different than having an earpiece. But that's also live theatre, basically one long take. These movies, not only are they not that, but the dialogue is pretty rudimentary, which makes it extra sad. The clips the RLM guys showed, it was like watching a NPC.

Dementia is also reportedly the reason that nearly all of Willis' DTV-era performances are given sitting down.

According to wikipedia, he's got at least seven movies due out this year. Is he hurting for money?

I mean, if it's such a struggle for him, for whatever reason, you'd think he could afford to coast for awhile.

If he’s mentally declining, and of course that’s just speculation at this point, he may not be in control of his career or life choices.

I think the first time I heard about an actor using an earpiece for as Johnny Depp some years back, which seemed unforgivably lazy. But maybe it’s commonplace?

According to wikipedia, he's got at least seven movies due out this year. Is he hurting for money?

― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Tuesday, 8 February 2022 20:44 (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean, if it's such a struggle for him, for whatever reason, you'd think he could afford to coast for awhile.

― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Tuesday, 8 February 2022 20:45 (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it looks like in a lot of these films he doesn't actually have much screen time and was only on set briefly? He was done filming this one in a single day, apparently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_Death

this Vulture article was referenced above, but I don't think it's been linked to yet

“With Bruce Willis, there’s almost a model for how he features in these movies,” Champ theorized. “One of my clients calls it a ‘geezer teaser’: You have Bruce Willis at the intro of the movie, so people are like, Great, this is a Bruce Willis movie. But he’s actually a secondary character who shows up sporadically.”

In most of Willis’s movies for EFO, “sporadic” would be a generous appraisal of his presence. The actor clocks just seven minutes of screen time in Hard Kill, and in Extraction, he spends less than nine minutes onscreen. In the home-invasion thriller Survive the Night, audiences get almost ten minutes out of the actor, even if they aren’t his best.

https://www.vulture.com/article/randall-emmett-movies.html

how the fuck do you make a movie where your lead is only on set for one day

Out of Death currently holds a 0% rating on movie aggregating website Rotten Tomatoes

oh

If he's really getting $1m each for these movies that only require a few days of minimal work, and he can do 10 a year, mentally declining or not, its not hard to imagine why he'd go all-in on them. It's not like if they're gonna offer him $15m for Die Hard 7 at this point.

Depp picked it up from Brando iirc.

I mean, if it's such a struggle for him, for whatever reason

Other factors aside, most of his current output is for the same producers, and apparently they will knock out 3 films at a time, with Willis going from set to set for his 2 days work on each. There have been glossy-magazine-type profiles about he and his current family moving in with Demi Moore a few years ago, so whatever else drives the decisions around his work, it seems nearly all of his time is spent in comfortable situations with faces he recognises.

Oh I'm not trying to disparage the guy, especially if he's suffering. Just struck me as an actor who had enough of a successful career that he could have probably pulled a Gene Hackman to just enjoy not working at all for awhile.

It seems probable that he's not making fully-informed decisions about his own career as a whole. Maybe the family are milking it while they can, maybe they're observing his desire to keep working by making it as low-impact as possible, like the business owner who keeps going in and sitting at the same office but is given fake documents to sign.

just say Donald Trump

honestly I was thinking Fred

I think another reason he's (reportedly) sitting down in so many scenes is that if he's stationary it's easy to cut and block around him.

Trying to frame this in a way that isn't We Need To Have A Conversation About style, but I feel like I've been encountering stories of elder abuse a lot in the past few years (Stan Lee, Nichelle Nichols, the Captain Tom stuff seems borderline) and it really sucks.

IIRC, Brando did the earpiece thing to make his line readings more spontaneous in style.

Christine, was that in The Score?

there was this incredibly depressing article about Mickey Rooney's later years published in 2015, the year after he died

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/mickey-rooneys-final-years-833325/

I distinctly remember reading this 2009 Tanya Gold interview with him at the time, when he was doing panto in Milton Keynes at the age of 89 and it seems obvious that he's confused and distressed and really shouldn't be there: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2009/dec/30/mickey-rooney-why-retire

Even pre-earpiece, theres that famous photo from the Godfather set of Robert Duvall with cue cards taped to his chest w/Brando's lines

Marlon Brando used an earpiece and cue cards.

On Don Juan DeMarco?

In the 1970s at the very least. Common knowledge at the time, part of his legend.

That whole Godfather production was pretty seat of your pants, with lots of changes happening all of the time. And Brando was on Double Secret Probation, so had to be careful to do everything right. But the cue cards, supposedly Brando used them a lot throughout his career, and did claim they helped with method spontaneity.

Willis ... he's 66. I don't think this is elder abuse. He's got a big family that he seems to spend a lot of time around. Then again, they could be taking advantage of him, if he's pretty far gone. There was that clip that went around last year of a maskless Willis mad at being asked to put on a mask at a drug store, but a story went out that he was just frustrated at forgetting it, and he (or someone) did release a pro-mask statement not long after the incident.

There are also stories that he just doesn't like acting that much anymore and is sick of being famous, and will just say yes to any easy script for easy money. Anyway, all theories seem equally or even simultaneously plausible: he has dementia, he's lazy, he's an asshole just in it for the money, etc. All a shame, because I really like him in a lot of things.

Wasn't he just in that M. Night movie? Was he acting in that, or just sitting there, mumbling? I saw someone note that he wears a hood almost the entire movie, which, sure, is his character, but also disguises ear pieces.

That came out three years ago. A lot can happen in three years.

I don't think this is elder abuse.

well i'm sold

I mean, who knows? But I need further evidence that it's elder abuse other than him (barely) working 2 days a week for 2 million dollars a few times a year.

The speculation here (and no one's suggested it's anything but) is based on the YT comments posted above, not his working schedule.

well i'm sold

as opposed to being sold because a couple of youtube commenters say so?

The youtube comments don't say anything about elder abuse, a rumor which iirc ... originated a few posts ago. They say he has trouble remembering his lines. Occam's Razor would suggest the reason Willis (and others in a similar situation) barely works a few days a year for millions of dollars is because he can. I mean

I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who has enjoyed my films. I am very proud of my filmography. I admit I’ve made some terrible movies but for the first thirty years that was just because the movie wasn’t as good as the script, and in the last 20 years it’s just because of money

— Richard Dreyfuss (@RichardDreyfuss) February 9, 2022

The youtube comments don't say anything about elder abuse, a rumor which iirc ... originated a few posts ago. They say he has trouble remembering his lines.

The rumours that Bruce Willis has dementia are out there, albeit pushed by not very respectable tabloids.

I don't think anyone itt is like "this is the only possible reason why he's making tons of bad movies for cash!", seems kinda needlessly condescending to frame it like that; it's just a sad possibility, is all.

xp As early as The Missouri Breaks, iirc.

and The Goodbye Girl

as opposed to being sold because a couple of youtube commenters say so?

i have no idea what bruce willis’s mental state is. which is why i’ve made no pronouncements about it, let alone ones based on the size of his family

is that a euphemism

i did see willis at a taping of the daily show about 15 years ago; he was pretty clearly drunk

Did seem that someone implied a larger family would make that less likely.

Maybe he's in a secret Brando biopic and he's trying method acting

If the rumors are true - and I find them at least plausible, because something weird is happening here and this is as good an explanation as any - it's very sad, but I don't know that it sounds like elder abuse to me. It would be hard to point to where the harm to him is in making movies like this, assuming he wants to make them. If he is declining, and he wants to keep working, this would give him a way to do a familiar job in a familiar environment, with minimal expectations, lots of support, and a lot of people involved who have an interest in making him look as good and with-it and normal as possible. And a big paycheck, of course. It's hard to see who or what that would hurt, other than the Bruce Willis legacy and reputation. And that gets you into the question about which is of primary importance, the person's current wishes or the probable wishes of the person they were pre-dementia.

Also, there is a wide clinical range of what constitutes "dementia," especially early.

I learned from that video that I guess he has considerable hearing loss in his left ear from a gun in "Die Hard."

Did you know there's a Nic Cage movie where he beats up a ton of animatronic animal robots that have been possessed by Satan? And that he does not speak an entire word throughout the whole film? And that it just came out last year??

That movie is fascinatingly bad tho. Against the odds, Nic Cage has benefited from owning his straight-to-Redbox status as part of his brand since the mid 2010s (a lot of people liked Color Out Of Space too), whereas these Bruce movies all seem agonizingly boring and unfun.

I’ve always had a bad feeling about whatever “red letter media” is meant to be just from the context but this is the first time I’ve actually looked at one and wow it’s way worse than I expected

(The contexts in which they’re usually cited I mean)

they're awful

Total ripoff of on cinema at the cinema too

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/bruce-willis-retiring-acting-apashia-1235219017/

CBS News:

According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, aphasia is a language disorder that results from damage in the area of the brain that controls language expression and comprehension. The disorder "leaves a person unable to communicate effectively with others," Johns Hopkins said, noting that the severity of the disorder depends on which parts of the brain are impacted. An aphasia diagnosis does not necessarily mean cognitive abilities, like memory or executive functioning, are impacted, according to the American Speech-Language Hearing Association.

However, in this case, it is "affecting his cognitive abilities," according to the family announcement.

It's a weird statement, aphasia is a symptom, not a cause, as I understand it. So it's probably a stroke or dementia and they'd prefer not to say that.

:(

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2022-03-30/bruce-willis-aphasia-memory-loss-cognitive-disorder

^ just awful.

Sad news. And yeah the story about his recent burst of productivity in low-rent movies is kind of alarming. But maybe it was just him trying to do whatever he could while he could. (As opposed to him being exploited.)

I can believe he was being exploited but yes maybe a different story will emerge over time.

Sad news indeed. About the concerns of possible exploitation, I can't help but think of this Philomena Cunk clip from Weekly Wipe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxTPEd_Skfc
It seems like, at least as far back as 2013 with "A Good Day to Die Hard" (15% on Rotten Tomatoes), he knew they were crappy movies, and he couldn't muster up a single crumb of pride (despite *acting* being his job) for them.
Philomena Cunk (sarcastically): "He's managed to make the same film five times without dying on the inside or looking like he doesn't really have much enthusiasm for the whole fucking thing anymore and just wishes it would stop. That's NOT what he looks like."

If someone wants to pay me $2 million for a morning's work, I'm happy to be exploited

Jordan it could be a diagnosis of primary progressive aphasia - it is indeed a symptom not a cause, but there is a diagnosis of the pattern (absent knowledge of the cause).

If someone wants to pay me $2 million for a morning's work, I'm happy to be exploited

Have you considered you might feel differently if your brain is in a place where you can't tell what's actually happening?

Or what if you had some other organ where things weren't right, like the heart?

My god, if this has been a known thing for years (as that article strongly suggests), I'm horrified to wonder what the inciting incident might've been that prompted his handlers to finally announce his retirement.

Or if he had injured someone else too, perhaps fatally?

I think they were trying to get ahead of the LA Times story.

It seems like, at least as far back as 2013 with "A Good Day to Die Hard" (15% on Rotten Tomatoes), he knew they were crappy movies, and he couldn't muster up a single crumb of pride (despite *acting* being his job) for them.

Moonrise Kingdom was right before that, and a few years later he was fired (and replaced by Steve Carell) after a couple days work on Woody Allen's Cafe Society. So he at least was trying re: better/more prestigious projects.

Looper was 2012...I wouldn't think he was declining then

He was increasingly super checked out/disinterested going back at least a decade mainly in shit like expendables & dh5 but the clips that were going around recently were p clearly a different thing entirely

nobody really brought their A-game to Expendables. besides maybe Terry Crews

Dolph Lundgren!

He was increasingly super checked out/disinterested going back at least a decade mainly in shit like expendables & dh5 but the clips that were going around recently were p clearly a different thing entirely

― wins, Friday, April 1, 2022 7:54 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I was watching some dorky youtuber going through all the zero budget terrible films willis has been in recently and the youtuber was mentioning that it seemed like he had dementia and having known people with dementia I had to agree, it really seemed quite shocking. it was obvious that they were probably doing everything in one take and bruce didn't care but it was quite beyond that

(this was a couple of weeks ago, before the announcement)

Tinseltown is usually very good at paying tribute to its bygone stars. But it seems entirely likely that Willis will miss the entire Hollywood lionization machine in the final years or decades of his life: no career achievement awards, no late-life Oscar nomination for a surprising indie, no wave from the balcony at the Kennedy Center. From 1988 to the end of the millennium, no one made bigger hits, flopped bigger flops, and grinned more shit-eating grins. He used to be one of the coolest movie stars around. It feels painfully unfair to watch his work end with this kind of whimper.

Willis is barely in Wire Room, whose actual star is the Entourage meathead Kevin Dillon.
But behind him he leaves a fascinating cinematic record. To look back at Bruce Willis’ career is to see a man who became a megastar in an instant and spent the following decades torn: searching for ways to complicate his persona, retreating to what was familiar. There’s nothing to see in a movie like Wire Room, no hint of the Willis who commanded $20 million per movie and, ever so briefly, deserved every penny. But you don’t need to watch Wire Room when you can watch so many other movies.

No mention of 12 Monkeys, weirdly.

yeah, 12 Monkeys is probably his best film

Well, besides Die Hard.

Bruce Willis made some really good choices to balance out his terrible choices.

Also: The Sixth Sense.

Jesus, I hadn't seen anything from the cognitive decline/aphasia movies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUTjfOkVu7E

Kevin Dillon! I remember liking Heaven Help Us as a youth, now sure how it holds up now

https://collider.com/bruce-willis-sells-rights-to-deepfake-firm-deepcake/

https://variety.com/2023/film/news/bruce-willis-dementia-aphasia-retire-1235525599/

I’ve been re-appreciating Bruce since “Moonlighting” went up on Hulu

also Blank Check podcast is winding up their McTiernan series and I’ve recently rewatched Die Hard & Die Hard With A Vengeance

Moonlighting is really the key to a lot of what made/makes him so great

It was his second acting job, first big role and if you watch the pilot, his character is fully formed, right out of the gate. There’s no “wait a season” or “in season four he really starts to pop”

No. Everything that we associate with the Bruce that hit in the back half of the 80’s is all right here.

Die Hard in a weird way is, character-wise like a slightly wearier David Addison walked off the set of Moonlighting and straight into Nakitomi plaza. It’s all there.

And McTiernan is great at giving Willis some character bears to carry some emotional weight & show the melancholy touches he’s so good at.

Willis is also one of the rare 80’s action heroes who shows you the cumulative weight of all those shootouts and falls by the end of a movie, like you get to see the very human, wearying effect it has on him

I guess I have also been reappraising because of the dementia, personally taking stock of what we had while we had it and how good it truly was, because when he was at his most affable, he made it look so easy

I was wondering to myself where we the cutoff of his filmography is, time-wise, with regard to his dementia?

*character beats … not bears lol

(all that’s not to say he didn’t make some bad movies too - i paid actual human dollars to see Color of Night in a movie theater in 1994)

He's in (and good in) at least a half dozen movies that I love, I like him in some stuff I don't love, but boy was he in a lot of stinkers. Even from the very beginning. But "Moonrise Kingdom" and "Looper" are outliers in his late career cavalcade of garbage, right? So my guess is it maybe started before then? He's later in "Motherless Brooklyn," I (and also nobody) saw that, is he acting in it?

If you’re a teenager in the early 90s with aspirations towards sassiness and an underdeveloped sense of taste, The Last Boy Scout is basically the greatest movie ever made.