Bruce Willis

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.