Bruce Willis was born on 19 March 1955.
Willis is suffering from frontotemporal dementia and probably is not long for this world. And I think this is incredibly sad. I’d rather people (including myself) just be quickly killed by a car. At the same time, he suffered from survivor bias late in his life. And his choice of films became poor even while his self-image went off the charts.
That was clear as early as 1996. He starred in the wonderful Walter Hill film Last Man Standing. Everything about that film is flawless. Except for Bruce Willis who almost destroys it. It’s still a good film. But with an actor who cared, it would have been great.
The same is true of the Die Hard franchise. The first two films were excellent. The third was watchable but bad. And the last two are crimes against humanity. Willis’ performances aren’t so much bad as nonexistent. And despite his claims to be something of a moderate Republican, we see him again and again choosing roles that glorify reactionary politics.
But there is one film that shows what Willis could do: 12 Monkeys. Terry Gilliam has discussed the problems they had getting a good performance from him. He was shooting Die Hard with a Vengeance at the same time. And they had to throw out a lot of footage because Willis just wasn’t engaging. But the end result is excellent. And combine that with the rest of the cast (which was excellent) and one of the best screenplays ever written, and you get something great.
So let us wish Bruce Willis well. And let’s enjoy what is definitely the high point of his career. When he is gone, it is how I will remember him.
Image cropped from Bruce Willis by Gage Skidmore under CC BY-SA 3.0.
When I was in high school, in drama class, I made some comment about how I hated “Moonlighting” because of Willis’s smug-ass persona. And my theater teacher said “hold on a second.”
It was one of those teachers you actually listen to. Because they give a shit about kids. That guy always gave me roles in school plays, not because I could act at all, but because my home life was Oook and I needed an excuse to stay late after school; rehearsals were a good excuse. His wife was the head school librarian and got me a job in the library for the same reason.
I never mentioned how awful my home life was. But the really good teachers have a sixth sense (Willis gag!) for this.
The theater teacher agreed; “Moonlighting” sucked. But he’d seen Willis in a college performance in a famous play and Willis killed it.
(Willis went to drama college in New Jersey, Wiki tells me. In the late 1970s. How did my drama teacher see that, then end up teaching drama in Oregon in the late 1980s? You don’t ask questions like that when you’re a teenager.)
He WAS a good actor. But John McTiernan said he brought major TV star smug to “Die Hard”; that had to be corrected. In a way, it’s a shame “Die Hard” became a hit and Willis became a “bankable action star” for the rest of his career. I think he might have become a terrific character actor, given the opportunity. His talent was kinda wasted as an “action star.”
But I’m glad he made gazillions of dollars before he got sick. Character actors don’t make as much money, and I’m sure his illness has been financially devastating, because we are the greatest country on Earth.
I remember Terry Gilliam saying that Willis had to leave 12 Monkeys to go work on the third Die Hard film. And the couple of days shooting before he left were useless because he was in the process of becoming that character. He definitely had great talent! Most people would make the choice he did.