Bruce Willis Stepping Away from Acting - Phone Bill to Dramatically Decrease

So...there goes Die Hard 6 and Sin City 3.

Now, I love Bruce Willis. I really do, despite the shit I give him for the latter part of his acting career. But...

Were either of those going to give you something you haven't already seen done many times before and better?

True...

I wonder if THAT somehow contributed to the rapid-fire string of appallingly bad movies he's attached himself to in the last couple years. Didn have the heart to list them in the Worst Movie thread.
:sad:

Maybe. He apparently has some cognitive decline, and that may have made him unsuitable for better roles. It's possible that his condition has been an open secret in the industry for some time.

It could be a vicious feedback cycle: cognitive decline keeps him out of better, higher profile roles, forcing him to take lesser ones, which makes him even less suitable for the higher profile roles as his reputation declines.

It may be that in accepting roles in lesser films, he's able to better manage perceptions of his health. With a smaller budget film--financed only because Willis signed on-- the producers might be more willing to let Bruce have a day if he wasn't feeling up to it. That's hard to do with a big budget picture on a tight schedule, where delays are very expensive.

He’s also deaf in one ear and they have to feed him his lines through an earpiece so I’m guessing all of these crappy movies he’s been making is due to declining health.

What was that movie we watched with the space bugs? That was terrible. And it deserves to be in the worst movie thread.

Starship Troopers?

I don’t think that was the name, but it could be. It was that bad a movie.

Also, I don’t think Loopers was a bad movie. Though, Willis’s screen time is limited.

I think it was Fortress, but apparently he's been in 10 more since then. I slogged through two film school abominations and then I revoked his benefit of the doubt status.

The joke in the industry is that if you show up on time, know your lines and don't bump into the furniture, you're going to be just fine. (My own very limited experience seems to confirm that) Sadly the condition as described makes it sound like he was in danger of not being able to meet any of those conditions. Of course he wouldn't be the first star to have this happen. Bela Lugosi was so far gone that he had to appear in Plan 9 From Outer Space. To be fair to Bruce though, Mr. Lugosi's issues were mainly self-inflicted. Bruce may have lived the good life during his time as A-Lister, but it doesn't sound like that's the root cause of his problems.

Yep, as I suggested above: issues are long-standing, an open secret, and producers worked around them.

Hmmm, this story may need to be reconsidered in light of Willis' illness. Could be he just wasn't up to it, and that's just about the time his descent into lesser fair began in earnest.

My guess? He knew the writing was on the wall and the big studios were aware of his growing limitations, and so he's been taking on the lesser films just to earn as much as possible before his inevitable forced retirement.

I can't find it now, but there's video of Orson Welles trashing Woody Allen in an interview. Orson was a bit of a pretentious fuck, but the sumbitch knew how to make a movie, and could also laugh at himself. Woody lost the ability to laugh at himself decades ago. I can see Woody firing Bruce Willis, even when Willis was at the top of his game. Simply because Willis wasn't conforming to Woody's "vision" for a part, Welles would have just sat back, smoked his cigar, and said, "Let's see where this asshole goes with it. If it's good, we'll keep it, if not, we'll fire him."

Certainly though, this story about Bruce spending lockdown with Demi Moore instead of his wife needs to be re-examined. If his brains were coming out of his ears at that point, he's lucky that Demi was willing to take care of him.

Bruce Willis’s ‘worst performance’ award from Razzies show revoked after diagnosis

So, they only act like assholes to people who do not have a high public regard.

The awards are designed to poke fun at really shitty movies. Like the Golden Turkey Awards.

At least two actors were able to laugh at themselves enough to actually show up at the award ceremony where they won an award:




Now, the initial response of the folks who hand out Razzies was a bit dickish (though I think that they were right to suggest that Willis might have been exploited), but rescinding the awards is more than what the Oscars have done in the cases of Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, and Harvey Weinstein, to name but a few cases where winners have gone on to be credibly accused of horrific actions.

Your explanation doesn’t make the award any less assholeish for the people who probably worked hard to make the move.

Just because they worked hard on the movie, doesn't mean that they didn't know it was a shitty movie. It's entirely possible, nay, probable, that they took the job because they needed a quick buck. I know that more than one actor in Hollywood has claimed that the script they signed on for, and the script they were given at the start of production were vastly different and that if they had been given the version of the script that was shot before signing on, they never would have done so. Maybe they were lying, maybe they were telling the truth. Given the things said by various folks connected to Hollywood, I'm inclined to believe that they were telling the truth.

What?

Apparently he has earpieces in not only his deaf ear, but also his good ear. They feed him lines.

Come again?

Who the fuck cares? If you want to act like an ass, do so. I’m just pointing it out. If you’re sure enough in your opinion that this kind of mockery is ok, why fight with me so hard for saying it an asshole thing to do?

For the same reason you feel the need to call people who hand out Razzie awards assholes: We’re using a medium designed to allow us to slander one another anonymously and exchange porn!

These awards are given out by assholes who are failures in their own life so they must insult everyone else. They never progressed passed that psychological milestone and are forever stuck in that childish mentality. And so are you for liking it.

And you calling me an asshole for liking the Razzies makes you different from me, how, exactly?

No. Why are you taking it that way. I remarked that the awards were assholeish. Why you continue to insist my comment is about you is beyond egotistical.

I SAID GO FUCK YOURSELF!! DID YOU HEAR THAT. JACKASS?

One could not be faulted for thinking Bruce Willis had simply fallen into a lazy "write me a check, I'll appear in your direct-to-video piece of crap" mode. I certainly thought that. (Look at my thread title.)

But, in retrospect, that's probably not the case. He's probably been neither able nor allowed to take on big studio roles because, as I said, his illness has been an open secret for some time. In his state, low budget films that will work around his condition were likely his only option to keep working.

I think once the Razzies realized that was the case, they made a classy move and retracted their mocking insult of a prize.

If Willis were just a lazy, unconscientious actor making bad films to collect a check, the mockery would be just. But as he has an illness that may have taken the choices away from him, it seems like cruel piling-on.