Bruce Willis, star of three blockbusters, two infamous bombs, the coolest movie of the last five years and the new Last Man Standing, explains his new acting style, disses the guy who wrote a roman à clef about him, and once again complains about the wages of celebrity.
_________________________________________
Bruce Willis's assistant calls to say that he's waiting for me in the lobby of my hotel in a tony London suburb. I take a deep breath and head downstairs where Willis is slouching by the back door. As I make my way across a lobby crowded with vacationers and businesspeople, I see a woman recognize Willis--in slow motion, she just uncurls her fingers from her teacup and lets the steaming liquid fall into her lap. Willis doesn't see it happen, but he must have seen thousands of incidents like this, because he quickly beckons me outside, where it's windy and rainy, yet somehow preferable to the warm room crowded with people.
As we walk along the Thames, Willis is giving me the hairy eyeball. He doesn't exactly turn towards me, but I can tell that his eyes are glued to my face, searching to see if this is going to he one of those interviews in which, he'll explain later, "I relax and say what's on my mind and it comes back to bite me in the ass." I've read Willis's press on the flight over, and, I have to admit, this guy must have teeth-marks all over his tush. Women journalists in particular seem to take umbrage at not only what he has to say and how he says it, but at the mere fact that both he and wife Demi Moore are in show business and that they've had three children in seven years (daughters Rumer, Scout and Tallulah).
But I remember Willis as the affable bartender from New York's Cafe Central years and years ago, a guy so funny and breezy that even when you were falling-down drunk (and in the early '80s. almost everyone was), he could still make a joke that would have half the room in hysterics. When I bring up the old days, Willis says, "Stephen, my assistant, is a guy I used to tend bar with at Cafe Central. I have a pretty good close circle of friends and family. I don't really make new friends, rarely, and I've had most of my close friends for a long time."
"Before you were famous?"
"Oh yeah. From the New York days and some friends from college, some guys from high school. That's the only thing that seems real. I know a lot of people, but then there's a line between who I consider my friends and family, and everyone else."
"Those were some wild days, huh?"
"New York in the early '80s was like nothing else. Everyone would start drinking by nine sharp, and they'd stay there till five in the morning. There were no breaks, nobody calling the shots. I saw some things at Cafe Central, some famous people..." He starts to laugh. "Yeah, it was a time like no other, and I'm very glad to have been there."
"I remember times at Cafe Central when you were me only one who was still standing..."
"I was just sober the longest, that's all. When people talk to me now about why I don't drink, it's hard to explain. It's that I had done it all, two or three times! So, yeah, those were the days, and I'm glad I lived through them, and I'm glad I don't have to live through them again,"
We walk until the chill is too much for both us, and then turn back to the hotel. We are about an hour and a half from London, in a town that has neither good food nor a movie theater, but is close to where Willis has rented a house while he shoots The Fifth Element, a futuristic sci-fi movie directed by Luc Besson, a Frenchman most famous for La Femme Nikita and The Professional, among others.
When we get back to the hotel, we're led into the dining room, which won't be open for another hour or so. We have the whole room to ourselves. Willis eyes the tape recorder suspiciously. "I really hate to do interviews," he tells me.
"Me too. But that's why they pay me the big bucks.'' I push the "on" button and the tape begins to roll. "It's just that every time I do an interview, I wind up wishing I hadn't. Everyone has an axe to grind, everyone comes to the interview already sure of what they're going to write..."
"In your case that seems to be true. I read where one journalist said you came to the interview without your personality," I start to giggle.
"That's funny?" Willis asks, not amused.
"No, no," I sputter. "Well, yes, it's a good line, but no. it's not nice."
"I'm telling you, everyone comes at me and they already know what they want to say."
"Cross my heart, I come here with no preconceived notions, except that you're one of the few people I've interviewed that both my male and female friends love. The guys love you because you do all those 'dick' flicks and..."
'"Dick' flicks?" he asks, trying not to laugh.
"It's all right to laugh with me," I tell him, because while my whole intention is for us to relax and have fun, his intention seems to be that we have no fun at all. Right now, I'd rather be interviewing Harrison Ford, who has a habit of leaving the table if he starts laughing, in order to pull himself together and put the dour face back on. Willis has reset his facial muscles into that glare, and doesn't seem to want to budge.
"Dick flicks?" he repeats.
"Yeah, all the Die Hards and The Last Boy Scout and Pulp Fiction, all those movies that reek of testosterone."
"You don't like those films?" he asks.
"Some of them, sure, loved Pulp Fiction, thought you were great. I have to admit that the rest of them sorta rolled off my back. But then my female friends like you because you interspersed those films with 'chick' flicks, like In Country and Mortal Thoughts and Nobody's Fool. Lots of women only know you from those films, so they think you're a really sensitive guy who makes little movies that don't make all that much money."
"I am a sensitive guy," he says, without even the slightest wink. "People think they know the real me. but they don't. And then they write things that make me sound like such a schmuck..."
"You might have to become a little more thick-skinned as a celebrity in America these days."
Willis leans forward and tenses his whole body. "Where does it say that? I mean, actors are sensitive by nature--that's why they become actors. And then you get famous and you have all these assholes from tabloid television following you around and going through your garbage. Where does it say that in order to be in the entertainment business you have to give up your privacy and dignity?" His voice hasn't risen above a whisper, but I feel like he's yelling at me.
"Maybe that should be in the actor's training manual," I say. "Instead of talking about method acting, it should say that when you finally hit it big, you'll have to give up your precious privacy. Would that have stopped you?"
Willis shakes his head. "When I first started, I don't think anything would have scared me. I was so excited to be working. But it was different when I was in New York. And when I went to L.A. to do 'Moonlighting,' it was different there than it is now. The whole tenor of the press has changed in that time. It's become much more aggressively hostile. There's a reward for that kind of behavior. No matter what it takes to get that video to 'Inside Edition' or 'Hard Copy,' they'll take that risk, because (a) they might become semi-famous because of it, and (b) they're gonna make money."
"So, why do people want to be famous now?" I ask.
"Most of the famous people I know don't want to be famous. But I think the desire for fame is overwhelmingly obsessive in the United States. Look at all these people on these daytime talk shows, telling their darkest secrets."
"So you don't like being famous?"
"It's not that I don't like what I do... I love it. I love the movies and the acting. What I don't like is that when my wife was pregnant, we were walking down the street and a guy popped out of the bushes with something in his hand that he's aiming at her. So, it turns out to be a camera, big deal! By that point, your adrenaline is pumped. If you're a man and that happens to you, you just want to take a swing at him, it's just so out of control. But it's not up to me to say this. I'll just sound like another whiny actor. 'Oh, poor me.' It's you who should be saying these things. You should be wailing about the abuses, the stalkings, the invasions of privacy."
"You think the sickos who are bothering you give a shit what I have to say? 'OK, all you psychos out there who think Bruce Willis's life is a thousand times more interesting than your own, please stop making pains-in-the-ass of yourselves. Leave movie stars alone. These people are entitled to their privacy.' Is that what you mean?'
Willis ignores me. "We don't really live in Hollywood anymore and we don't do the whole Hollywood scene..."
"Wait a minute. Every time I see a picture of you and Demi, you're onstage at some Planet Hollywood opening, playing with your band (The Accelerators), and you're surrounded by movie stars."
"Yes, those are the times we do it. That's when being a... what?... celebrity?... whatever it's called, that's when it's the best, because then the fans are having such a good time, and you're doing what you do, and it's relaxed and contained You don't see us out a lot in Hollywood. Most of the time we're home with the kids or we're on location. Our friends aren't Hollywood people."
I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted already. What happened to the dishy small talk that precedes discussions like this? I try a different tack.
"Would you take off your hat, so I can see what your hair looks like?"
"Why?" Willis asks suspiciously.
"So I can describe you."
Slowly he slides the baseball cap off his head, revealing short blond hair with black roots. I write on my pad, "blond, with dark roots." Willis turns the pad around and reads it.
"Why would you say that?" he asks.
"Because our reader want to know what you look like in real life."
"But it'll sound so silly." "OK. I'll say that we both have blond hair with dark roots coming in." This seems fair enough.
"But your readers don't know what you look like, so it won't have the same impact to say we both have blond hair with dark roots."
"Duly noted," I say, feeling as if I'm on the witness stand.
"Anything else you want me to take off?" he asks.
"No. Is it so weird to ask you to take off your hat? I'm just trying to report what's up with you now."
"Not what's up with me. Just what's up with my hair."
I throw up my hands. "OK, fuck the hair. I'll just say that you're wearing a baseball cap, a white T-shirt, blue jeans and sneakers."
"That's it?"
"No, I'm going to say that you're very defensive about your hair. Is that OK?"
Willis rolls his eyes but flashes his $16 million smile. "When was the last time you took a swing at someone?" I ask, remembering what he said about that guy with the camera.
"Not for a long lime. I can't remember the last time, in fact. Just because you want to do something doesn't mean you will."
"Let's talk about your new film, Last Man Standing."
"It's a gangster picture, set in the '30s, directed by Walter Hill. Christopher Walken's in it. Bruce Dern, me. It's based on Yojimbo, the Kurosawa movie. It was an effortless film to do, fun every day. I was trying a different thing with this character, playing it very understated. He doesn't even speak unless he absolutely has to."
"Why is everyone so obsessed with gangsters in the movies?"
"Every [gangster film] is a little morality play, Good versus Evil. Most of the time, Good triumphs. It happened in Westerns like that, it happened in gangster pictures, World War II pictures, and most action pictures. People didn't judge Westerns as harshly as they judge action pictures. Nowadays, everyone knows the grosses on opening weekend. I mean, my dad will call me up and talk about the first weekend box office..."
"Your dad's a welder in New Jersey, right?"
"Yes. Well, no. Can we clear this up? Because he's really annoyed at me for this. I always say that he's a welder. And while he is a great welder, he's really a master mechanic. And because this keeps getting repeated, his friends who are welders are always giving him shit."
"Consider it straightened out. Is Last Man Standing the first period film you've done? Because I can't picture you in any clothes except modern ones,"
"Let's see... Man, I did a movie called Sunset--the second or third film I did--it was set in Hollywood in the late '20s. It didn't turn out very well, though."
"And then, right after that, you did In Country, which was a huge departure from everything you had done before."
"That was a fine movie. And it made money... I get a check from them all the time. I mean, it didn't make $100 million or anything, and there wasn't a lot of hoopla. It took a while, but it made its money back. My first child was born in Kentucky during the shooting of In Country."
"How do you keep your kids from being totally crazy? I mean, both their parents are megafamous, they must see what a stir you cause wherever you go."
"The way we work it now is that we only work in the fall and the spring, when the kids are in school. Then we get all the summers off with them and have time to do what they want. During the school year, they're home and their lives are pretty simple."
"Home being Idaho?" I ask, because it's been reported in all the newspapers.
"I'd rather not say. I don't like to talk about that stuff."
"Are you always this paranoid?"
"The way I see it, everyone's got a certain amount of airtime or magazine pages that they have to fill. And if there's nothing really there to report, they'll make up a little thing and then just make it sound very titillating. It's easy to take shots at a guy like me. I've seen it happen to other guys, too. It happened to Kevin Costner last year. Long before anybody had seen a frame of Waterworld, it had been reviewed, castigated and dismissed. And the same thing happened to Arnold Schwarzenegger in Last Action Hero. I thought that movie was really good. And in my own experience, Hudson Hawk received the same kind of treatment. People had decided that it sucked before they ever saw it."
I can't let that one slip by. "Bruce, Hudson Hawk did suck."
"You know, I've never chosen to comment on the real shit that went on during Hudson Hawk. But I'm almost pushed to now, because so many people have told their stories that I want to let the truth be known."
"Go ahead," I urge him. "Spill your guts. You'll feel better."
"But then it just opens the door for another story. And generally, my m.o. has always been, let it close. But there was some shit going on there that's never been said. At a certain point you just want to say what really happened. Here's what I'll do. Turn the tape recorder off for a minute."
"I'd rather leave it on."
But he's adamant, so I turn the tape off and he tells me an involved story about the making of Hudson Hawk, laying the blame where he thinks it belongs.
"Are they going to make any more Die Hards? Because I don't see what else they can do with them."
"I wouldn't be surprised if they did--$375 million worldwide, that's a pretty good return on their investment. Normally in films that have sequels, the third one has kind of a jinx on it. Historically speaking. But Die Hard With a Vengeance turned out all right, although I think at the end it kind of fell apart because they changed the ending at the last minute. But it did so well in the world market. So I haven't heard anything yet about a sequel, but when a film does that kind of business...that's why they call it show business. And it's easy to forget unless you work there, unless you're really inside. Then you're always aware that it's business, and that's the bottom line."
"There's a new book out, A Place to Fall," I say, "and it's about a nobody, Grade-Z actor who gets plucked from obscurity to play the leading role on a runaway hit TV show. The main character is a brawling, out-of-control asshole, and since the guy who wrote it worked as a writer and producer on 'Moonlighting,' everyone's assuming it's really about you. Have you seen it?"
"No. But I don't want to be judgmental."
"I hate when people say that. What the hell is wrong with being judgmental? I think it's what separates human beings from primates."
"Turn the tape off and I'll tell you how I feel."
"Do me a favor... don't. There's nothing worse than knowing a great story and not being able to tell anybody. Let's talk about The Fifth Element."
Willis is quiet for a few seconds, and then says, "Glenn (Gordon) Caron, who created 'Moonlighting,' had this fresh, exciting vision of the style of the show--his humor wasn't 'on the nose,' and it worked perfectly. After he left, all the people that were trying to fill his shoes just did stuff that was on the nose, and they repeated jokes that we had done from the first couple of years, and it fell apart. And there was a scramble for power. My loyalty was always to Glenn Caron, so I had lots of problems with that. And the guy who wrote that book, he's going around saying, 'No, it's not really about Bruce,' but everyone knows that's bullshit. Let me put it in really simple form: the guy's gonna write a book and make money off the book, and then turn it into a film and make money off of that. Fuck this guy. I mink he's a jerk-off who should have said, 'Yes, I am a talentless fuck and can't really create anything out of my own mind. I'm gonna fictionalize some shit that really happened and make money off of it.' Fuck him. And if I see him, in my mind. I'd have to give him a fucking shot, I really would, because this was one of the guys who really took advantage of Glenn and his position and was always so concerned about who was in charge. Enough said?"
"The Fifth Element is a big science fiction movie..."
"I can't really talk about it," Willis says. "They just want to keep it under wraps for a while. But it's going to be really good,"
"You're doing Combat! Next, right?"
"Combat! is a World War II picture based on the TV show in the '60s, and they're working on the script right now, and I think we're gonna do it over here."
"In England?"
"Yes, probably. I don't know if they can find anything in the States that looks like Normandy. It takes place two days after the D-Day invasion of Europe."
"When you were a kid. did you play 'army'?"
"Absolutely, Every single day. There was still a big emphasis in those days. I was born in '55, so I'm talking the mid-'60s. You could still play 'army' and it wasn't stigmatized. After Vietnam, it wasn't quite as popular. WWII had that glow, it was the last righteous war, where they were trying to do the right thing, get rid of a really evil human being. There's still tons of bad guys in the world today. And a war like World War II could happen tomorrow. Stopping evil is a very righteous cause. Terrorism is the next war. Whether it's American terrorists or foreign terrorists, it's still fueled by a political/religious engine. This stuff has been going on over here in Europe for over 50 years, since the war. And all of a sudden, Americans get so crazy, like, 'Oh God, terrorism's happening in the world,' because it happened in the States."
"How come you don't do love stories? You'd really be good in one of those, I think."
"Well, the first film I did, Blind Date, that was a love story, but it didn't work. There's always some sort of love story in the movies I do, but it's usually a sick aberration of love. I guess because I played that role on television for so long."
"I never saw 'Moonlighting,'" I admit.
"What do you mean?"
"Which part don't you understand? I never saw it."
"No, that's fine, it's not weird, I just don't often meet people who have never seen it."
"Do you know when a movie's not working?"
"Sometimes. Most of the time. It's easy to get lost when you're shooting a film. That's why it's so important to have a great script and just stick to that script. Once you start changing stuff, you're fucked. My experience has been that when the script's good, and they stick to the script, you'll be OK. 12 Monkeys was shot exactly how it was written. In Pulp Fiction, the places where you laughed when you read the script were the same places you laughed when you saw the movie. But I've had those other experiences where they just chuck the script out the window, and those movies are always trouble."
"Are you a romantic guy in your life?"
"Yeah, I think so. I think I am. I don't know, what's the opposite of that?"
"I mean, if you haven't seen Demi for a long time..."
"We don't go very long without seeing each other, no more than two weeks. And that's hard. We've been away for about 10 days now and I miss them to death. My biggest problem with us working apart and being in different countries is the whole separation, taking leave of her, taking leave of my family...that's very hard for me. But you get the other side of that which is getting back together, and that's always exciting and fresh and fun. So, I can live with that."
"What's one of the wildest times you've had as an actor?"
"What do you mean by wild?"
"I don't know, where things are exciting or not what you expected."
Willis thinks for a few minutes before saying, "I'd have to say when I went to Cannes with Pulp Fiction, which was my first time there. It was so cool. Everyone went... Quentin, John [Travolta], Uma [Thurman], Samuel [Jackson]. And they went totally wild for the film over there. Plus, Quentin wouldn't let anyone see the whole film until the night they showed it there. I had seen my own work, because I had to loop it, and everyone else had seen their own work, but none of us had seen the entire film. It was just breathtaking for me, because the film is so powerful and everyone's parts were finally brought together. I had done, what?... 23 films before that? And I have to say this was a very singular experience."
We look at our watches and realize how much time has passed, ''Anything else?" Willis asks, getting up to leave.
"Well, unless you'd like to tell me stories about you and Demi, and what you do when you're not working..."
Willis just laughs, puts his hat back on, and heads out into the wind and rain.
_____________________________________________
Martha Frankel interviewed Toni Collette for the July issue of Movieline.