WEBVTT - Episode 1: His Own Private Idaho 0:00:03.440 --> 0:00:12.079 This is an I Heart original. It's the fourth of 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:16.440 July in Hailey, Idaho, and the town's residents are lining 0:00:16.520 --> 0:00:20.560 the streets, although admittedly the streets aren't that big, so 0:00:20.640 --> 0:00:24.040 it doesn't take many people to accomplish that. Haley is 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:28.320 a small town. It's got a population of about five thousand, 0:00:29.160 --> 0:00:34.120 and on this sunny Independence Day in the residents are 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:38.720 probably getting more commotion, more action than they've seen all year. 0:00:39.400 --> 0:00:42.800 Every year. We had a nice Fourth of July parade. 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:46.800 Wayne A. Dare is among those watching from the sidelines. 0:00:47.400 --> 0:00:50.400 Wayne is the news editor of the Wood River Journal, 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:53.440 one of the papers of record in this part of Idaho, 0:00:54.120 --> 0:00:57.120 And while he's standing there taking in the site, he 0:00:57.240 --> 0:01:00.880 sees something in the parade that's never quite left his mind. 0:01:07.440 --> 0:01:15.919 It's Bruce Willis Diehard, Bruce Willis moonlighting, Bruce Willis Planet Hollywood. 0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:21.200 Bruce Willis a guy who makes twenty million dollars a movie. 0:01:22.280 --> 0:01:25.640 He was in the parade Roddy, this big, beautiful probably 0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:29.319 of a hundred thousand dollar horse. You know, he kind 0:01:29.319 --> 0:01:31.600 of joyed the parade, riding right down the middle of 0:01:31.600 --> 0:01:36.559 main Street, and literally the middle of main street. Bruce 0:01:36.600 --> 0:01:40.680 Willis is not only in the parade. He's leading the 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:45.160 parade dressed as a cowboy. It's not like Bruce Willis 0:01:45.160 --> 0:01:48.080 was a Western star though, not like Clint Eastwood or 0:01:48.240 --> 0:01:52.440 John Wayne A tough guy, sure, but Bruce Willis grew 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:55.440 up in New Jersey. I can't remember if you had 0:01:55.440 --> 0:01:57.480 a cowboy hat on, but it seemed like he was, 0:01:57.600 --> 0:02:00.360 you know, kind of Western e He had cowboy boots 0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:04.480 at the best I remember, like a grand marshal. Willis 0:02:04.520 --> 0:02:07.520 waves to the crowd, turning his attention from one side 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:10.119 of the street to the other, and the people are 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:13.240 eating it up. He was having a hell of a 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:15.520 good time. You could tell from his body language and 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:18.840 from his smile, and you know, he was waving to 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:22.880 the crowd like a homecoming queen. And uh, our photographer 0:02:22.880 --> 0:02:24.640 got a really nice image of then we put it 0:02:24.639 --> 0:02:28.920 on the front page. But Wayne isn't that impressed, not 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:32.960 by Willis anyway. I mean, I enjoy looking at the 0:02:32.960 --> 0:02:35.240 horse board and I looked at Bruce Willis. It was 0:02:35.320 --> 0:02:41.160 just such a beautiful creature. Now there's probably a level 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:44.760 of celebrity where someone feels diminished leading a small town 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:48.360 parade A kind of has it come to this melancholy, 0:02:48.919 --> 0:02:53.000 but that's not what's happening here. Willis could not be happier. 0:02:53.480 --> 0:02:57.160 The smile, the trademark smirk that's familiar to hundreds of 0:02:57.200 --> 0:03:01.880 millions of people, is genuine. He's totally in his element, 0:03:02.400 --> 0:03:05.520 totally confident in his status as one of the biggest 0:03:05.680 --> 0:03:10.880 box office attractions in the world. One hit like Pulp 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:15.880 Fiction follows another like die Hard with a Vengeance, which 0:03:15.919 --> 0:03:19.200 is in theaters at that very moment. There's almost a 0:03:19.320 --> 0:03:22.520 kind of irony in someone as famous as Willis ambling 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:27.200 along on horseback in Idaho. Would Sylvester Stallone have done this? 0:03:27.680 --> 0:03:31.480 Would Harrison Ford? Would Meryl Straight be seen riding at 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:35.080 Clydesdale in a town with just a handful of traffic lights. 0:03:36.120 --> 0:03:40.200 Probably not. But Bruce Willis isn't here to preserve the 0:03:40.240 --> 0:03:43.800 mirage of the Hollywood actor, which is in these pre 0:03:43.920 --> 0:03:49.040 Instagram days, something that still feels larger than life. At 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:52.360 age forty, He's not worried about denting his reputation in 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:57.160 the movie business, which has never been stronger. He's John McClain, 0:03:57.760 --> 0:04:00.640 one of the most iconic action here of the late 0:04:00.760 --> 0:04:05.080 twenty century. He's married to Demi Moore, making him one 0:04:05.120 --> 0:04:09.760 half of the classic nineties power couple troupe. There's not 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:13.640 a street in America Willis could walk down or gallop 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:20.120 down without being recognized. But here in Haley, Willis believes 0:04:20.160 --> 0:04:23.120 he's found the one place in the world he can 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:28.440 go to be well himself, and Haley has welcomed him 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:33.240 with open arms. But when Wayne A. Dair published that 0:04:33.320 --> 0:04:36.200 photograph of Willis on the horse on the front page 0:04:36.240 --> 0:04:40.400 of the Wood River Journal, maybe that's when both Willis 0:04:40.640 --> 0:04:45.680 and Haley realized things weren't going to be easy. We 0:04:45.800 --> 0:04:48.560 got a call that David was published from one of 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:53.200 his angry attorneys saying we had no right to publish 0:04:53.240 --> 0:04:57.840 his image because he based his living based on selling 0:04:57.880 --> 0:05:02.039 that image. And day gorham Field is that called on 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:04.960 paper day I was not there in the morning. Then, 0:05:05.560 --> 0:05:09.320 paraphrasing the conversation, said, you know, when somebody rides down 0:05:09.360 --> 0:05:11.400 the middle of Main Street on our horse in the 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:13.719 fourth a job parade, we can take their picture. We 0:05:13.760 --> 0:05:15.960 damn what I want to And that's the last we 0:05:16.080 --> 0:05:25.560 heard her. Yeah, not exactly. For Bruce Willis, Haley was 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:28.320 the thing he had been searching for since he became 0:05:28.440 --> 0:05:33.240 a household name, a place to escape, a place he 0:05:33.279 --> 0:05:37.200 could mold and shape to fit his needs, to make 0:05:37.240 --> 0:05:41.080 it not just a small idahotel, but a place worthy 0:05:41.240 --> 0:05:44.919 of being the home of a global movie star. He 0:05:45.080 --> 0:05:52.359 found it in tiny Haley, Idaho, population five thousand, well 0:05:52.920 --> 0:06:00.680 five thousand and one. For I Heart Radio, I'm Anishwarts. 0:06:01.240 --> 0:06:07.920 Welcome to Haleywood, an I Heart original podcast. On my podcast, 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:11.640 Noble Blood, I tell the true stories of historical royals. 0:06:12.200 --> 0:06:16.080 This series is a little different, a few centuries and 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:22.159 an ocean apart. It's a story of Hollywood royalty, about 0:06:22.200 --> 0:06:25.080 a man who, for the better part of two decades, 0:06:25.400 --> 0:06:29.080 had millions of people lining up for his movies, making 0:06:29.160 --> 0:06:31.919 him one of the highest paid actors in the world, 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:36.440 and about someone who was a brand, the everyman action 0:06:36.520 --> 0:06:40.400 star who could seamlessly switch from firing machine guns to 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:44.919 intimate character dramas, a man who got so famous he 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:50.159 ran out of places to just be Bruce until he 0:06:50.320 --> 0:06:54.600 came to Haley. What happened next is something the people 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:59.000 of Haley have never been eager to talk about until now. 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:06.000 It's a strange story about Hollywood and identity, the need 0:07:06.080 --> 0:07:10.680 for privacy, and the trappings of ego and much much 0:07:10.720 --> 0:07:22.320 more episode one his own Private Idaho. Of all the 0:07:22.400 --> 0:07:26.760 places near Sun Valley, Idaho, Haley is the most serene. 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:31.800 Cars don't speed, people don't walk too briskly. Depending on 0:07:31.880 --> 0:07:34.760 where you are, the only noise you hear would be 0:07:34.800 --> 0:07:39.680 the gentle current of the Big Wood River. Some places 0:07:39.760 --> 0:07:43.560 can seem idyllic, but only in your imagination, only when 0:07:43.600 --> 0:07:46.760 the mood is just right. Haley is not like that. 0:07:47.320 --> 0:07:50.880 It's the real thing. The town was founded in the 0:07:50.960 --> 0:07:55.600 late eighteen hundreds by John Haley, a gold prospector who 0:07:55.640 --> 0:07:57.960 thought that the area would soon be a hub of 0:07:58.000 --> 0:08:02.400 mining and transportation. And that's what happened. For a while, 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:06.280 Hailey was full of blue collar workers who got their 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:11.040 hands dirty and then closed the local bars. Businesses catered 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:14.000 to the miners. Then the mining gave way, and only 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:19.200 families remained. By the early nineties nine nineties, it was 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:21.720 the kind of town where when you turn onto Main 0:08:21.760 --> 0:08:26.080 Street you see mountains where you'd half expect to see 0:08:26.080 --> 0:08:29.640 Bob Ross putting the finishing touches on the scene, where 0:08:29.640 --> 0:08:32.320 one of the landmarks is a museum holding one of 0:08:32.360 --> 0:08:37.800 the world's largest collections of political campaign buttons, where most 0:08:37.840 --> 0:08:41.200 of the residential streets are lined with trees, and homes 0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:43.960 are set twenty five ft from the street to keep 0:08:44.000 --> 0:08:47.640 their occupants safe. Where people at the diner know you, 0:08:47.840 --> 0:08:51.560 and you know them, and probably their siblings and parents 0:08:51.640 --> 0:08:55.840 and kids too. When you hear the phrase small town values, 0:08:56.200 --> 0:08:59.920 someone is thinking of a place like Haley. It's May 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:03.800 Street was hallmark movie quaint, with a surprising amount of 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:07.240 traffic thanks to the Sun Valley Ski Resort, a kind 0:09:07.240 --> 0:09:11.800 of alternative to Aspen about fifteen miles away. A lot 0:09:11.840 --> 0:09:15.400 of people would go through Haley, but not many stopped. 0:09:16.040 --> 0:09:18.760 If they did, they'd see a lot of historic buildings 0:09:18.840 --> 0:09:23.280 made of brick, some still with tin ceilings. An old bar, 0:09:23.600 --> 0:09:28.559 still home to career drinkers, stood tall nearby. A rundown 0:09:28.640 --> 0:09:32.560 movie theater opened since the nineteen thirties, but in dire 0:09:32.600 --> 0:09:37.840 need of renovation. A community planner once described Haley as 0:09:37.880 --> 0:09:42.520 being just one breaststroke away from being vibrant, like a 0:09:42.600 --> 0:09:46.240 painting that needs just one more color to come to life, 0:09:47.400 --> 0:09:56.360 or maybe someone with a vision. That's what made such 0:09:56.400 --> 0:09:59.920 an interesting year. That was when a number of proper 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:03.439 these around town that had been sitting dormant or ignored 0:10:03.600 --> 0:10:08.160 for years began to rumble with activity. Someone was buying 0:10:08.280 --> 0:10:13.319 them That old miner's bar, the Mint was picked up, 0:10:14.120 --> 0:10:16.160 so was the building next to it, which used to 0:10:16.160 --> 0:10:20.120 house Mama Riley's Pizza. So was the Rundown Movie Theater. 0:10:21.120 --> 0:10:26.559 Other commercial buildings followed, some promising but empty lots too. 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:31.480 It was clearly a concerted effort to acquire choice pieces 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:36.440 of Haley, but for what purpose no one knew. A 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:40.440 cursory search revealed that the company behind the purchases had 0:10:40.480 --> 0:10:45.160 a strange name. Here's Wayne A. Dare. We kept hearing 0:10:45.520 --> 0:10:49.360 that a corporation named x may I x in a 0:10:49.720 --> 0:10:53.719 Y was making offers to to buy some properties right 0:10:53.720 --> 0:10:57.840 on Main Street, and we couldn't find out who was 0:10:57.880 --> 0:11:03.840 the force behind XNY the xnay Investment Trust. That's the 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:07.360 pig Latin version of Nicks, which means to put a 0:11:07.360 --> 0:11:11.600 stop to something. It was kind of strange. Everyone in 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:15.280 Haley was used to knowing everyone else's business. The fact 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:20.080 that xnay was a mystery was well a mystery. Rumor 0:11:20.120 --> 0:11:22.640 had it that Kmart was after some of the lots. 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:28.000 A month went by and then two Haley wondered if 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:32.239 they would soon be overrun by national chain stores. Goodbye 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:37.440 main Street. What Haley needed was someone who could sniff 0:11:37.480 --> 0:11:40.840 out the truth, someone who could peel back the layers 0:11:40.960 --> 0:11:45.200 of bureaucratic red tape, someone who could figure out who 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:51.040 was behind XNA. This was a job for Wayne's top gun, C. J. 0:11:51.240 --> 0:11:56.160 Carra Margin, reporter for the Wood River Journal, and he 0:11:56.320 --> 0:11:59.840 was just a bulldog at at going after the stories 0:12:00.559 --> 0:12:03.880 and uh he did some really outstanding work for a 0:12:04.120 --> 0:12:10.280 you know, small town newspaper. Carra Margin worked the phones 0:12:10.480 --> 0:12:15.079 and came to an unlikely suspect, a guy named Joe McAllister, 0:12:15.600 --> 0:12:20.480 a relatively recent transplant to the area. McAllister was behind 0:12:20.880 --> 0:12:24.800 x Nay for what purpose, care Margin wasn't quite sure, 0:12:25.520 --> 0:12:30.520 but the acquisitions were definitely newsworthy. Someone was looking to 0:12:30.640 --> 0:12:36.920 invest in Haley in a big way. The denizens of 0:12:36.960 --> 0:12:40.280 Haley were talking. It was the kind of diner and 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:43.880 coffee shop talk that the town hadn't enjoyed since Bruce 0:12:43.880 --> 0:12:50.160 Willis bought a home there a few years prior. Willis's 0:12:50.240 --> 0:12:53.680 private home was in the housing subdivision known as the 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:57.920 Flying Heart Ranch. Flying Heart Ranch was a place between 0:12:58.000 --> 0:13:02.960 two mountains. A river literally ran through it. With his 0:13:03.040 --> 0:13:06.760 wife Demi Moore and a growing family. Willis had escaped 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:09.880 to Haley to avoid the spotlight cast on the mega 0:13:09.920 --> 0:13:13.959 famous Willis was a huge star thanks to a hit 0:13:14.040 --> 0:13:18.280 detective show, Moonlighting and then the die Hard films. So 0:13:18.320 --> 0:13:20.680 a quiet house in the mountains to get away from 0:13:20.679 --> 0:13:23.760 it all. Who doesn't want that? He was just outside 0:13:23.760 --> 0:13:26.960 of town. You know, I'm not quite sure i'd called 0:13:27.000 --> 0:13:29.640 her mansion, but he probably was was close to one. 0:13:30.440 --> 0:13:34.160 And I've never been one whose star struck. I wouldn't 0:13:34.200 --> 0:13:38.360 walk across the street commutic as movie star. But I 0:13:38.440 --> 0:13:42.319 liked his uh TV series bood Lighting. I love die 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:44.720 Hard and some of these other movies at all. Bruce 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:48.080 Willis this year, that's kind of fun. He wasn't in 0:13:48.120 --> 0:13:50.400 the news much for a couple of years. He just 0:13:50.520 --> 0:13:56.120 was living there now. Reporter c J. Carra Margin was 0:13:56.200 --> 0:14:00.960 on the trail of Haley's next big story, the XNA 0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:06.680 property grab, but Joe McAllister was elusive. He wouldn't say 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:12.640 much of anything. Then Cara Margin noticed something something big. 0:14:13.760 --> 0:14:18.080 C J. Uh, you got some paperwork on Xnay and 0:14:18.320 --> 0:14:22.560 noticed that there was a mailing address attached to the company, 0:14:23.360 --> 0:14:27.560 and he did a little uh research and realized that 0:14:27.600 --> 0:14:32.320 the the address for the company was the same post 0:14:32.360 --> 0:14:35.880 office box that the Willis's head. So you know, put 0:14:35.960 --> 0:14:37.920 two and two together and you got a pretty solid 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:43.040 for there. Bruce Willis was the one on the spending spree. 0:14:44.080 --> 0:14:49.640 This was unusual. Sun Valley definitely attracted celebrities, some of 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:53.400 whom bought seasonal or permanent homes in the area. Arnold 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:57.200 Schwarzenegger had a place nearby, so did Clint Eastwood. But 0:14:57.280 --> 0:15:01.280 that's all they did. They bought homes, old bars, not 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:05.920 empty lots, not vacant drug stores. So what exactly was 0:15:06.000 --> 0:15:10.880 Willis doing? Carr Margin tried to dig deeper, but he 0:15:10.880 --> 0:15:14.640 couldn't get anywhere, couldn't breach the wall of silence surrounding 0:15:14.640 --> 0:15:19.800 Haley's most famous resident. Then suddenly he didn't have to. 0:15:22.760 --> 0:15:25.840 Dan gorm got a call. He was the papers editor 0:15:25.920 --> 0:15:34.040 and publisher. Carr Margin's phone rang two. It was Bruce Willis, 0:15:35.600 --> 0:15:38.840 But instead of explaining what he was doing, he tried 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:42.040 to get them to lay off the story, to brush 0:15:42.080 --> 0:15:45.560 aside the fact that Bruce Willis was becoming Haley's premier 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:50.080 real estate investor. The Wood River Journal wasn't going to 0:15:50.160 --> 0:15:57.840 do that. Bruce Willis, once a quiet resident of Haley, 0:15:58.280 --> 0:16:03.280 was now suddenly in probably a developer. Not only that 0:16:03.400 --> 0:16:07.520 he had an entire company devoted to his business interests 0:16:07.680 --> 0:16:12.160 in Haley, a company that had seemingly materialized out of nowhere, 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:15.840 and he had a growing staff attending to all of it. 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:20.760 It had been happening right under Haley's collective knows Willis 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:24.720 did let a few things slip out. He told Gorham 0:16:25.040 --> 0:16:27.600 he didn't want to live his life in the public eye, 0:16:28.360 --> 0:16:31.640 that he had moved to Haley to avoid exactly that. 0:16:32.320 --> 0:16:36.120 Willis also told Gorham that while he understood the interest, 0:16:36.600 --> 0:16:39.320 he didn't want to be price gouged by sellers who 0:16:39.400 --> 0:16:42.760 had built the movie Star. However, you know, he was 0:16:42.800 --> 0:16:45.240 buying properties right on Main Street, and he was going 0:16:45.320 --> 0:16:47.520 to have to go to the Planning and Zoning Commission 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:51.440 and the city Council for you know, for any kind 0:16:51.480 --> 0:16:56.640 of approval. So, uh we failed. It was our duty, 0:16:56.680 --> 0:17:01.560 our journalistic responsibility to let our readers know exactly who 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:07.560 was buying property on Main Street. And uh, I think 0:17:07.880 --> 0:17:14.720 he was less than happy with us over that. Willis 0:17:14.800 --> 0:17:17.120 and the Wood River Journal would soon have a dust 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:21.520 up that made the carra Margin incident seem quaint in comparison. 0:17:22.160 --> 0:17:26.160 It makes you wonder what exactly happened to Bruce Willis 0:17:26.200 --> 0:17:28.959 that made him so reluctant to deal with the press, 0:17:29.560 --> 0:17:33.639 and why was he so insistent on Hailey's reporters staying 0:17:33.680 --> 0:17:38.480 out of his business. There's an answer, maybe not the answer, 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:43.000 but an answer nonetheless, and it involves Tom Hanks being 0:17:43.160 --> 0:17:59.639 just a little bit of a jerk. A couple of 0:17:59.720 --> 0:18:02.840 years before Willis began what would grow into a love 0:18:02.880 --> 0:18:06.760 affair with Haley, he had already decided he wasn't going 0:18:06.840 --> 0:18:11.000 to be overly cooperative with the press. Stardom had put 0:18:11.080 --> 0:18:14.919 him in the sights of the tabloids. Reporters seemed to 0:18:14.920 --> 0:18:17.800 want to know who he was sleeping with, not who 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:21.800 he'd be working with. His transition from being anonymous to 0:18:21.880 --> 0:18:26.560 famous had happened virtually overnight. Once Moonlighting premiered in March 0:18:26.840 --> 0:18:31.360 nineteen five. The show was a hit, but Bruce seemed 0:18:31.440 --> 0:18:36.359 completely unprepared for the scrutiny that accompanied being a successful actor. 0:18:37.280 --> 0:18:40.240 The media had made a big deal of his relationship 0:18:40.280 --> 0:18:45.320 with Sybil Shephard, his Moonlighting co star. Moonlighting Wars Jealous 0:18:45.359 --> 0:18:50.400 set turns into battleground. That kind of thing. The rumors 0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:54.600 sold papers and magazines. Willis estimated he was on a 0:18:54.640 --> 0:18:59.200 tabloid cover at least once a week. People enjoyed reading 0:18:59.200 --> 0:19:02.280 about Bruce Wood Willis being a jerk, even if virtually 0:19:02.320 --> 0:19:08.320 all of it was embellished or made up. Bruce Willis's 0:19:08.359 --> 0:19:12.600 shocking arrest, the untold story Bruce Willis and X rated 0:19:12.640 --> 0:19:16.800 actress Bruce Willis and Miami Weis Galley in new romance 0:19:17.200 --> 0:19:22.399 Pals warn He'll break your heart. Rather than cope with 0:19:22.440 --> 0:19:25.879 the press, it became easier to ignore it. He felt 0:19:25.920 --> 0:19:29.480 the media sometimes made actors a target, that there was 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:32.199 a certain time when it became someone's turn to be 0:19:32.280 --> 0:19:36.160 cut down a peg. For Willis, it came with Hudson Hawk, 0:19:36.480 --> 0:19:42.320 a crime caper musical he released. In That's Right, a 0:19:42.480 --> 0:19:48.160 musical starring Bruce Willis, Willis played a cat burglar who 0:19:48.240 --> 0:19:52.280 enjoyed a little singing during his art heists. Willis helped 0:19:52.320 --> 0:19:55.240 conceive of the story and even helped write the theme song. 0:19:55.800 --> 0:19:59.159 His producer was Joel Silver, who had made Willis a 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:02.880 box office star with the die Hard Films, and Willis 0:20:02.960 --> 0:20:07.000 loved shooting the movie mostly because while on location in Hungary, 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:10.920 no one really knew who he was. But the director, 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:14.960 Michael Lehman, complained that his ideas would be challenged or 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:19.520 vetoed by Willis, who wielded so much influence in Hollywood 0:20:19.560 --> 0:20:22.480 that even a director would have to defer to him. 0:20:22.520 --> 0:20:27.119 At one point, Willis insisted his character Hudson Hawk needed 0:20:27.119 --> 0:20:30.640 a pet monkey named Little Eddie. No one else really 0:20:30.680 --> 0:20:33.439 wanted the movie to have a monkey, but Willis wouldn't 0:20:33.480 --> 0:20:37.880 let it go, so producers decided that Willis's character Hudson 0:20:38.400 --> 0:20:42.840 had a monkey past tense. The monkey was never shown 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:46.360 on camera because it turns out Little Eddie had been 0:20:46.440 --> 0:20:50.840 murdered while Hudson was in prison, So yeah, you couldn't 0:20:50.840 --> 0:20:54.720 maybe see where this might be going. One source on 0:20:54.880 --> 0:20:58.400 set said that Willis thought he was making a hip 0:20:58.520 --> 0:21:01.719 MTV style movie, but it was really more of an 0:21:01.720 --> 0:21:05.640 homage to the fast talking caper comedies of the nineteen forties. 0:21:06.320 --> 0:21:10.439 He had trouble describing it in interviews. It was, he said, 0:21:10.840 --> 0:21:16.960 a film that needed to be experienced more than explained. Yo, 0:21:17.359 --> 0:21:21.080 did I miss anything? Gates dries a blackmail me. You 0:21:21.200 --> 0:21:24.840 asked me, did I miss anything Gates. Gates killed you say, 0:21:25.000 --> 0:21:26.960 did I miss anything? I bet you? Going up to 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:29.439 Mrs Lincoln at the Fourth Theater said how is the show? 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:36.320 Did I miss anything? No one felt like they missed 0:21:36.320 --> 0:21:41.159 anything With Hudson Hawk, critics were unkind It flopped at 0:21:41.160 --> 0:21:45.600 the box office, making just seventeen million dollars against a 0:21:45.680 --> 0:21:49.159 fifty million dollar budget. Today it has a score of 0:21:49.200 --> 0:21:55.879 just thirty three on Rotten Tomatoes. To Willis, it seemed 0:21:55.920 --> 0:21:58.399 like there had been a concerted effort by the media 0:21:58.800 --> 0:22:01.879 to curb his start um. It would happen with Kevin 0:22:01.920 --> 0:22:05.680 Costner and water World and to Arnold Schwarzenegger in Last 0:22:05.720 --> 0:22:10.119 Action Hero. The press seemed to relish those moments, and 0:22:10.200 --> 0:22:14.640 Willis resented them for it. They'd cut him before too, 0:22:14.880 --> 0:22:18.639 during the fallout from The Bonfire of the Vanities. The 0:22:18.720 --> 0:22:24.320 film released in starred Tom Hanks, Melanie Griffith, and Willis, 0:22:24.720 --> 0:22:27.560 all three of them actors at the top of their games. 0:22:28.840 --> 0:22:34.639 Seemed like a recipe for a hit. Bonfire was an 0:22:34.680 --> 0:22:39.000 adaptation of Tom Wolfe's novel about greed and corruption among 0:22:39.080 --> 0:22:42.920 the powerful and protected class in New York's high society. 0:22:43.359 --> 0:22:47.480 Willis played Peter Fallow, a predatory tabloid reporter, a not 0:22:47.680 --> 0:22:51.120 very subtle jab at his adversaries in the press. When 0:22:51.119 --> 0:22:54.120 Willis was asked why he took the part, he'd shoot back, 0:22:54.440 --> 0:23:01.479 why do you think, Oh, excuse me, I have introduced myself, 0:23:01.480 --> 0:23:05.760 have I? My name is Peter Fallow. I'm a writer. 0:23:07.000 --> 0:23:09.800 But you know that already. Unless you haven't read a 0:23:09.840 --> 0:23:12.119 newspaper or seen a television in the last few months, 0:23:12.520 --> 0:23:15.960 you know exactly who I had. But despite how well 0:23:16.000 --> 0:23:19.840 regarded the novel was, some people considered it too complex 0:23:19.920 --> 0:23:23.960 to be adapted. They warned it might even be unfilmable, 0:23:24.400 --> 0:23:27.600 and it looks like they were right. The film was 0:23:27.640 --> 0:23:31.080 a disappointment, blown out of the water during the holiday 0:23:31.119 --> 0:23:34.879 season by Home Alone. To be fair, every movie was 0:23:34.920 --> 0:23:38.159 blown out by Home Alone, but still it was a 0:23:38.240 --> 0:23:41.800 black mark for all involved, and Willis was no exception. 0:23:42.520 --> 0:23:45.120 But he had reason to regret the film beyond its 0:23:45.160 --> 0:23:50.320 box office. The movie's director, Brian de Palmer, had allowed 0:23:50.359 --> 0:23:55.480 a journalist named Julie Salomon, unprecedented access to observe the 0:23:55.520 --> 0:24:00.280 production from casting to release. It was an opportunity Nitty 0:24:00.560 --> 0:24:06.040 rarely afforded to the media, because well filmmaking can be messy. 0:24:07.320 --> 0:24:10.679 Salmon got to see it all and report on it all, 0:24:11.000 --> 0:24:17.280 all the creative tension, all the tumultuous exchanges. Salomon even 0:24:17.359 --> 0:24:20.359 captured a moment between Willis and Hanks, who were both 0:24:20.400 --> 0:24:24.520 watching playback of a scene on a monitor. Hanks, with 0:24:24.600 --> 0:24:27.919 some apparent glee in his voice, made a show of 0:24:28.040 --> 0:24:31.960 pointing out when Willis smirked in the scene. It was 0:24:32.040 --> 0:24:34.360 the same smirk that had made him such a hit 0:24:34.560 --> 0:24:38.520 in Moonlighting and die Hard and in other films. Hanks 0:24:38.560 --> 0:24:42.959 playfully pointed it out there. It is that big sing Gren, 0:24:43.160 --> 0:24:47.880 he said. It was not very Tom Hanks thing to say. 0:24:48.640 --> 0:24:52.800 A brooding Willis said nothing. Smirk was a Willis trademark. 0:24:53.240 --> 0:24:56.560 It was sacra sanct Tom Hanks was reducing it to 0:24:56.600 --> 0:25:01.719 a crutch. Salomon's book was released in nine It was 0:25:01.760 --> 0:25:05.720 titled The Devil's Candy, A great book. The Bonfire the 0:25:05.800 --> 0:25:09.600 Vanities had become a bad movie, and thanks to Salomon, 0:25:10.000 --> 0:25:13.480 a bad movie had inspired a pretty good book. It 0:25:13.560 --> 0:25:18.960 was well received by most everyone except Willis. He hated 0:25:19.000 --> 0:25:23.000 the fact Salmon had observed him, had criticized him. He 0:25:23.080 --> 0:25:25.840 hadn't even granted her an interview, and he still got 0:25:25.880 --> 0:25:30.000 bad press. If he was pressed shy before Salomon may 0:25:30.040 --> 0:25:35.159 have made him press loathing, Hollywood loathing. Even when he 0:25:35.240 --> 0:25:39.639 consented to an interview, he usually regretted it, and so 0:25:39.720 --> 0:25:44.639 did the journalist. A thousand its views, and I would say, 0:25:45.000 --> 0:25:47.800 there's a handful four or five that were just a 0:25:47.800 --> 0:25:52.960 complete nightmare. Bruce was one of those nightmares. That's Martha Frankel. 0:25:53.240 --> 0:25:56.280 Martha writes books now, but in the nine nineties she 0:25:56.400 --> 0:25:59.920 was focused on entertainment journalism and she was good at it. 0:26:00.560 --> 0:26:04.520 She wasn't fawning, she wasn't insulting either. She was just 0:26:04.760 --> 0:26:07.760 doing her job, and she laid out what she perceived 0:26:08.119 --> 0:26:11.959 as a mutually beneficial transaction. I used to say this 0:26:12.000 --> 0:26:14.080 one when I would sit down with somebody, I'd say, listen, 0:26:14.359 --> 0:26:17.360 here's how it works. I'm getting paid five grand. You're 0:26:17.400 --> 0:26:20.120 getting paid five million. My job to make you seem 0:26:20.240 --> 0:26:23.320 even cooler than you are. Some more people go and 0:26:23.359 --> 0:26:25.959 you can make six million next time. So let's just 0:26:26.000 --> 0:26:30.160 have a conversation. This is what I would say. And 0:26:30.440 --> 0:26:34.160 most people were like, that sounds great. Bruce Willis did 0:26:34.200 --> 0:26:38.320 not think it sounded great. When Movieline Magazine sent Frankel 0:26:38.400 --> 0:26:42.600 to interview Willis in Europe. In it was the beginning 0:26:42.760 --> 0:26:47.280 of one of the most torturous experiences of Frankel's professional career. 0:26:47.680 --> 0:26:50.320 And I went to England to do a story about him, 0:26:50.960 --> 0:26:53.600 and like, I thought we were going to be like, 0:26:53.960 --> 0:26:56.000 you know, it was gonna be cool. We had this history, 0:26:56.119 --> 0:26:58.080 and you know, we knew a lot of people in 0:26:58.200 --> 0:27:00.800 common and a lot of my friends of Kiss directors 0:27:00.840 --> 0:27:03.760 and actors. And he wanted no part of that. He 0:27:03.760 --> 0:27:06.240 didn't want to talk about it. He wanted no part 0:27:06.280 --> 0:27:10.440 of it. I was in a spa in Windsor waiting 0:27:10.480 --> 0:27:12.600 for him, supposed to be there one night. I was 0:27:12.640 --> 0:27:17.000 there for nine Frankel stood vigil as Willis seemed to 0:27:17.000 --> 0:27:19.919 weigh whether or not he really wanted to be interviewed. 0:27:20.080 --> 0:27:23.760 I had the two bitchest editors in magazine history, so 0:27:24.200 --> 0:27:27.439 they would spend fortune sending you around the world in 0:27:27.480 --> 0:27:30.960 the hope that you hated your subject. So I mean 0:27:31.040 --> 0:27:33.000 I kept calling them every day and saying, I don't 0:27:33.000 --> 0:27:35.800 think this interview is happening. I think I should come home, 0:27:36.080 --> 0:27:38.440 and they were like, nope, you're staying because even if 0:27:38.440 --> 0:27:40.080 you never get to interview, and that will be the 0:27:40.119 --> 0:27:46.000 story Martha persisted, tried different tactics to appeal to Bruce. 0:27:46.440 --> 0:27:49.440 It was raining, pouring, and there was no good food 0:27:49.480 --> 0:27:52.280 to eat, and I was stuck in the spa. I 0:27:52.320 --> 0:27:55.119 mean all I did was swim, so and every day 0:27:55.160 --> 0:27:57.040 I would write to him and say, let's do it today, 0:27:57.200 --> 0:27:59.520 Let's do it today. And I had some funny ideas. 0:27:59.560 --> 0:28:01.560 I thought, you know, he has a big entourage. He 0:28:01.640 --> 0:28:04.040 always had a very big entourage. And I was there 0:28:04.080 --> 0:28:06.160 all alone. So I said, why don't we just sit 0:28:06.200 --> 0:28:08.760 down me, you and your people will play poker for 0:28:08.800 --> 0:28:11.199 an hour, the interview will be over. It'll be a 0:28:11.240 --> 0:28:13.880