Speaker 1: This is an I Heart original. It's the fourth of
Speaker 1: July in Hailey, Idaho, and the town's residents are lining
Speaker 1: the streets, although admittedly the streets aren't that big, so
Speaker 1: it doesn't take many people to accomplish that. Haley is
Speaker 1: a small town. It's got a population of about five thousand,
Speaker 1: and on this sunny Independence Day in the residents are
Speaker 1: probably getting more commotion, more action than they've seen all year.
Speaker 1: Every year. We had a nice Fourth of July parade.
Speaker 1: Wayne A. Dare is among those watching from the sidelines.
Speaker 1: Wayne is the news editor of the Wood River Journal,
Speaker 1: one of the papers of record in this part of Idaho,
Speaker 1: And while he's standing there taking in the site, he
Speaker 1: sees something in the parade that's never quite left his mind.
Speaker 1: It's Bruce Willis Diehard, Bruce Willis moonlighting, Bruce Willis Planet Hollywood.
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis a guy who makes twenty million dollars a movie.
Speaker 1: He was in the parade Roddy, this big, beautiful probably
Speaker 1: of a hundred thousand dollar horse. You know, he kind
Speaker 1: of joyed the parade, riding right down the middle of
Speaker 1: main Street, and literally the middle of main street. Bruce
Speaker 1: Willis is not only in the parade. He's leading the
Speaker 1: parade dressed as a cowboy. It's not like Bruce Willis
Speaker 1: was a Western star though, not like Clint Eastwood or
Speaker 1: John Wayne A tough guy, sure, but Bruce Willis grew
Speaker 1: up in New Jersey. I can't remember if you had
Speaker 1: a cowboy hat on, but it seemed like he was,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of Western e He had cowboy boots
Speaker 1: at the best I remember, like a grand marshal. Willis
Speaker 1: waves to the crowd, turning his attention from one side
Speaker 1: of the street to the other, and the people are
Speaker 1: eating it up. He was having a hell of a
Speaker 1: good time. You could tell from his body language and
Speaker 1: from his smile, and you know, he was waving to
Speaker 1: the crowd like a homecoming queen. And uh, our photographer
Speaker 1: got a really nice image of then we put it
Speaker 1: on the front page. But Wayne isn't that impressed, not
Speaker 1: by Willis anyway. I mean, I enjoy looking at the
Speaker 1: horse board and I looked at Bruce Willis. It was
Speaker 1: just such a beautiful creature. Now there's probably a level
Speaker 1: of celebrity where someone feels diminished leading a small town
Speaker 1: parade A kind of has it come to this melancholy,
Speaker 1: but that's not what's happening here. Willis could not be happier.
Speaker 1: The smile, the trademark smirk that's familiar to hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions of people, is genuine. He's totally in his element,
Speaker 1: totally confident in his status as one of the biggest
Speaker 1: box office attractions in the world. One hit like Pulp
Speaker 1: Fiction follows another like die Hard with a Vengeance, which
Speaker 1: is in theaters at that very moment. There's almost a
Speaker 1: kind of irony in someone as famous as Willis ambling
Speaker 1: along on horseback in Idaho. Would Sylvester Stallone have done this?
Speaker 1: Would Harrison Ford? Would Meryl Straight be seen riding at
Speaker 1: Clydesdale in a town with just a handful of traffic lights.
Speaker 1: Probably not. But Bruce Willis isn't here to preserve the
Speaker 1: mirage of the Hollywood actor, which is in these pre
Speaker 1: Instagram days, something that still feels larger than life. At
Speaker 1: age forty, He's not worried about denting his reputation in
Speaker 1: the movie business, which has never been stronger. He's John McClain,
Speaker 1: one of the most iconic action here of the late
Speaker 1: twenty century. He's married to Demi Moore, making him one
Speaker 1: half of the classic nineties power couple troupe. There's not
Speaker 1: a street in America Willis could walk down or gallop
Speaker 1: down without being recognized. But here in Haley, Willis believes
Speaker 1: he's found the one place in the world he can
Speaker 1: go to be well himself, and Haley has welcomed him
Speaker 1: with open arms. But when Wayne A. Dair published that
Speaker 1: photograph of Willis on the horse on the front page
Speaker 1: of the Wood River Journal, maybe that's when both Willis
Speaker 1: and Haley realized things weren't going to be easy. We
Speaker 1: got a call that David was published from one of
Speaker 1: his angry attorneys saying we had no right to publish
Speaker 1: his image because he based his living based on selling
Speaker 1: that image. And day gorham Field is that called on
Speaker 1: paper day I was not there in the morning. Then,
Speaker 1: paraphrasing the conversation, said, you know, when somebody rides down
Speaker 1: the middle of Main Street on our horse in the
Speaker 1: fourth a job parade, we can take their picture. We
Speaker 1: damn what I want to And that's the last we
Speaker 1: heard her. Yeah, not exactly. For Bruce Willis, Haley was
Speaker 1: the thing he had been searching for since he became
Speaker 1: a household name, a place to escape, a place he
Speaker 1: could mold and shape to fit his needs, to make
Speaker 1: it not just a small idahotel, but a place worthy
Speaker 1: of being the home of a global movie star. He
Speaker 1: found it in tiny Haley, Idaho, population five thousand, well
Speaker 1: five thousand and one. For I Heart Radio, I'm Anishwarts.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Haleywood, an I Heart original podcast. On my podcast,
Speaker 1: Noble Blood, I tell the true stories of historical royals.
Speaker 1: This series is a little different, a few centuries and
Speaker 1: an ocean apart. It's a story of Hollywood royalty, about
Speaker 1: a man who, for the better part of two decades,
Speaker 1: had millions of people lining up for his movies, making
Speaker 1: him one of the highest paid actors in the world,
Speaker 1: and about someone who was a brand, the everyman action
Speaker 1: star who could seamlessly switch from firing machine guns to
Speaker 1: intimate character dramas, a man who got so famous he
Speaker 1: ran out of places to just be Bruce until he
Speaker 1: came to Haley. What happened next is something the people
Speaker 1: of Haley have never been eager to talk about until now.
Speaker 1: It's a strange story about Hollywood and identity, the need
Speaker 1: for privacy, and the trappings of ego and much much
Speaker 1: more episode one his own Private Idaho. Of all the
Speaker 1: places near Sun Valley, Idaho, Haley is the most serene.
Speaker 1: Cars don't speed, people don't walk too briskly. Depending on
Speaker 1: where you are, the only noise you hear would be
Speaker 1: the gentle current of the Big Wood River. Some places
Speaker 1: can seem idyllic, but only in your imagination, only when
Speaker 1: the mood is just right. Haley is not like that.
Speaker 1: It's the real thing. The town was founded in the
Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds by John Haley, a gold prospector who
Speaker 1: thought that the area would soon be a hub of
Speaker 1: mining and transportation. And that's what happened. For a while,
Speaker 1: Hailey was full of blue collar workers who got their
Speaker 1: hands dirty and then closed the local bars. Businesses catered
Speaker 1: to the miners. Then the mining gave way, and only
Speaker 1: families remained. By the early nineties nine nineties, it was
Speaker 1: the kind of town where when you turn onto Main
Speaker 1: Street you see mountains where you'd half expect to see
Speaker 1: Bob Ross putting the finishing touches on the scene, where
Speaker 1: one of the landmarks is a museum holding one of
Speaker 1: the world's largest collections of political campaign buttons, where most
Speaker 1: of the residential streets are lined with trees, and homes
Speaker 1: are set twenty five ft from the street to keep
Speaker 1: their occupants safe. Where people at the diner know you,
Speaker 1: and you know them, and probably their siblings and parents
Speaker 1: and kids too. When you hear the phrase small town values,
Speaker 1: someone is thinking of a place like Haley. It's May
Speaker 1: Street was hallmark movie quaint, with a surprising amount of
Speaker 1: traffic thanks to the Sun Valley Ski Resort, a kind
Speaker 1: of alternative to Aspen about fifteen miles away. A lot
Speaker 1: of people would go through Haley, but not many stopped.
Speaker 1: If they did, they'd see a lot of historic buildings
Speaker 1: made of brick, some still with tin ceilings. An old bar,
Speaker 1: still home to career drinkers, stood tall nearby. A rundown
Speaker 1: movie theater opened since the nineteen thirties, but in dire
Speaker 1: need of renovation. A community planner once described Haley as
Speaker 1: being just one breaststroke away from being vibrant, like a
Speaker 1: painting that needs just one more color to come to life,
Speaker 1: or maybe someone with a vision. That's what made such
Speaker 1: an interesting year. That was when a number of proper
Speaker 1: these around town that had been sitting dormant or ignored
Speaker 1: for years began to rumble with activity. Someone was buying
Speaker 1: them That old miner's bar, the Mint was picked up,
Speaker 1: so was the building next to it, which used to
Speaker 1: house Mama Riley's Pizza. So was the Rundown Movie Theater.
Speaker 1: Other commercial buildings followed, some promising but empty lots too.
Speaker 1: It was clearly a concerted effort to acquire choice pieces
Speaker 1: of Haley, but for what purpose no one knew. A
Speaker 1: cursory search revealed that the company behind the purchases had
Speaker 1: a strange name. Here's Wayne A. Dare. We kept hearing
Speaker 1: that a corporation named x may I x in a
Speaker 1: Y was making offers to to buy some properties right
Speaker 1: on Main Street, and we couldn't find out who was
Speaker 1: the force behind XNY the xnay Investment Trust. That's the
Speaker 1: pig Latin version of Nicks, which means to put a
Speaker 1: stop to something. It was kind of strange. Everyone in
Speaker 1: Haley was used to knowing everyone else's business. The fact
Speaker 1: that xnay was a mystery was well a mystery. Rumor
Speaker 1: had it that Kmart was after some of the lots.
Speaker 1: A month went by and then two Haley wondered if
Speaker 1: they would soon be overrun by national chain stores. Goodbye
Speaker 1: main Street. What Haley needed was someone who could sniff
Speaker 1: out the truth, someone who could peel back the layers
Speaker 1: of bureaucratic red tape, someone who could figure out who
Speaker 1: was behind XNA. This was a job for Wayne's top gun, C. J.
Speaker 1: Carra Margin, reporter for the Wood River Journal, and he
Speaker 1: was just a bulldog at at going after the stories
Speaker 1: and uh he did some really outstanding work for a
Speaker 1: you know, small town newspaper. Carra Margin worked the phones
Speaker 1: and came to an unlikely suspect, a guy named Joe McAllister,
Speaker 1: a relatively recent transplant to the area. McAllister was behind
Speaker 1: x Nay for what purpose, care Margin wasn't quite sure,
Speaker 1: but the acquisitions were definitely newsworthy. Someone was looking to
Speaker 1: invest in Haley in a big way. The denizens of
Speaker 1: Haley were talking. It was the kind of diner and
Speaker 1: coffee shop talk that the town hadn't enjoyed since Bruce
Speaker 1: Willis bought a home there a few years prior. Willis's
Speaker 1: private home was in the housing subdivision known as the
Speaker 1: Flying Heart Ranch. Flying Heart Ranch was a place between
Speaker 1: two mountains. A river literally ran through it. With his
Speaker 1: wife Demi Moore and a growing family. Willis had escaped
Speaker 1: to Haley to avoid the spotlight cast on the mega
Speaker 1: famous Willis was a huge star thanks to a hit
Speaker 1: detective show, Moonlighting and then the die Hard films. So
Speaker 1: a quiet house in the mountains to get away from
Speaker 1: it all. Who doesn't want that? He was just outside
Speaker 1: of town. You know, I'm not quite sure i'd called
Speaker 1: her mansion, but he probably was was close to one.
Speaker 1: And I've never been one whose star struck. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: walk across the street commutic as movie star. But I
Speaker 1: liked his uh TV series bood Lighting. I love die
Speaker 1: Hard and some of these other movies at all. Bruce
Speaker 1: Willis this year, that's kind of fun. He wasn't in
Speaker 1: the news much for a couple of years. He just
Speaker 1: was living there now. Reporter c J. Carra Margin was
Speaker 1: on the trail of Haley's next big story, the XNA
Speaker 1: property grab, but Joe McAllister was elusive. He wouldn't say
Speaker 1: much of anything. Then Cara Margin noticed something something big.
Speaker 1: C J. Uh, you got some paperwork on Xnay and
Speaker 1: noticed that there was a mailing address attached to the company,
Speaker 1: and he did a little uh research and realized that
Speaker 1: the the address for the company was the same post
Speaker 1: office box that the Willis's head. So you know, put
Speaker 1: two and two together and you got a pretty solid
Speaker 1: for there. Bruce Willis was the one on the spending spree.
Speaker 1: This was unusual. Sun Valley definitely attracted celebrities, some of
Speaker 1: whom bought seasonal or permanent homes in the area. Arnold
Speaker 1: Schwarzenegger had a place nearby, so did Clint Eastwood. But
Speaker 1: that's all they did. They bought homes, old bars, not
Speaker 1: empty lots, not vacant drug stores. So what exactly was
Speaker 1: Willis doing? Carr Margin tried to dig deeper, but he
Speaker 1: couldn't get anywhere, couldn't breach the wall of silence surrounding
Speaker 1: Haley's most famous resident. Then suddenly he didn't have to.
Speaker 1: Dan gorm got a call. He was the papers editor
Speaker 1: and publisher. Carr Margin's phone rang two. It was Bruce Willis,
Speaker 1: But instead of explaining what he was doing, he tried
Speaker 1: to get them to lay off the story, to brush
Speaker 1: aside the fact that Bruce Willis was becoming Haley's premier
Speaker 1: real estate investor. The Wood River Journal wasn't going to
Speaker 1: do that. Bruce Willis, once a quiet resident of Haley,
Speaker 1: was now suddenly in probably a developer. Not only that
Speaker 1: he had an entire company devoted to his business interests
Speaker 1: in Haley, a company that had seemingly materialized out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: and he had a growing staff attending to all of it.
Speaker 1: It had been happening right under Haley's collective knows Willis
Speaker 1: did let a few things slip out. He told Gorham
Speaker 1: he didn't want to live his life in the public eye,
Speaker 1: that he had moved to Haley to avoid exactly that.
Speaker 1: Willis also told Gorham that while he understood the interest,
Speaker 1: he didn't want to be price gouged by sellers who
Speaker 1: had built the movie Star. However, you know, he was
Speaker 1: buying properties right on Main Street, and he was going
Speaker 1: to have to go to the Planning and Zoning Commission
Speaker 1: and the city Council for you know, for any kind
Speaker 1: of approval. So, uh we failed. It was our duty,
Speaker 1: our journalistic responsibility to let our readers know exactly who
Speaker 1: was buying property on Main Street. And uh, I think
Speaker 1: he was less than happy with us over that. Willis
Speaker 1: and the Wood River Journal would soon have a dust
Speaker 1: up that made the carra Margin incident seem quaint in comparison.
Speaker 1: It makes you wonder what exactly happened to Bruce Willis
Speaker 1: that made him so reluctant to deal with the press,
Speaker 1: and why was he so insistent on Hailey's reporters staying
Speaker 1: out of his business. There's an answer, maybe not the answer,
Speaker 1: but an answer nonetheless, and it involves Tom Hanks being
Speaker 1: just a little bit of a jerk. A couple of
Speaker 1: years before Willis began what would grow into a love
Speaker 1: affair with Haley, he had already decided he wasn't going
Speaker 1: to be overly cooperative with the press. Stardom had put
Speaker 1: him in the sights of the tabloids. Reporters seemed to
Speaker 1: want to know who he was sleeping with, not who
Speaker 1: he'd be working with. His transition from being anonymous to
Speaker 1: famous had happened virtually overnight. Once Moonlighting premiered in March
Speaker 1: nineteen five. The show was a hit, but Bruce seemed
Speaker 1: completely unprepared for the scrutiny that accompanied being a successful actor.
Speaker 1: The media had made a big deal of his relationship
Speaker 1: with Sybil Shephard, his Moonlighting co star. Moonlighting Wars Jealous
Speaker 1: set turns into battleground. That kind of thing. The rumors
Speaker 1: sold papers and magazines. Willis estimated he was on a
Speaker 1: tabloid cover at least once a week. People enjoyed reading
Speaker 1: about Bruce Wood Willis being a jerk, even if virtually
Speaker 1: all of it was embellished or made up. Bruce Willis's
Speaker 1: shocking arrest, the untold story Bruce Willis and X rated
Speaker 1: actress Bruce Willis and Miami Weis Galley in new romance
Speaker 1: Pals warn He'll break your heart. Rather than cope with
Speaker 1: the press, it became easier to ignore it. He felt
Speaker 1: the media sometimes made actors a target, that there was
Speaker 1: a certain time when it became someone's turn to be
Speaker 1: cut down a peg. For Willis, it came with Hudson Hawk,
Speaker 1: a crime caper musical he released. In That's Right, a
Speaker 1: musical starring Bruce Willis, Willis played a cat burglar who
Speaker 1: enjoyed a little singing during his art heists. Willis helped
Speaker 1: conceive of the story and even helped write the theme song.
Speaker 1: His producer was Joel Silver, who had made Willis a
Speaker 1: box office star with the die Hard Films, and Willis
Speaker 1: loved shooting the movie mostly because while on location in Hungary,
Speaker 1: no one really knew who he was. But the director,
Speaker 1: Michael Lehman, complained that his ideas would be challenged or
Speaker 1: vetoed by Willis, who wielded so much influence in Hollywood
Speaker 1: that even a director would have to defer to him.
Speaker 1: At one point, Willis insisted his character Hudson Hawk needed
Speaker 1: a pet monkey named Little Eddie. No one else really
Speaker 1: wanted the movie to have a monkey, but Willis wouldn't
Speaker 1: let it go, so producers decided that Willis's character Hudson
Speaker 1: had a monkey past tense. The monkey was never shown
Speaker 1: on camera because it turns out Little Eddie had been
Speaker 1: murdered while Hudson was in prison, So yeah, you couldn't
Speaker 1: maybe see where this might be going. One source on
Speaker 1: set said that Willis thought he was making a hip
Speaker 1: MTV style movie, but it was really more of an
Speaker 1: homage to the fast talking caper comedies of the nineteen forties.
Speaker 1: He had trouble describing it in interviews. It was, he said,
Speaker 1: a film that needed to be experienced more than explained. Yo,
Speaker 1: did I miss anything? Gates dries a blackmail me. You
Speaker 1: asked me, did I miss anything Gates. Gates killed you say,
Speaker 1: did I miss anything? I bet you? Going up to
Speaker 1: Mrs Lincoln at the Fourth Theater said how is the show?
Speaker 1: Did I miss anything? No one felt like they missed
Speaker 1: anything With Hudson Hawk, critics were unkind It flopped at
Speaker 1: the box office, making just seventeen million dollars against a
Speaker 1: fifty million dollar budget. Today it has a score of
Speaker 1: just thirty three on Rotten Tomatoes. To Willis, it seemed
Speaker 1: like there had been a concerted effort by the media
Speaker 1: to curb his start um. It would happen with Kevin
Speaker 1: Costner and water World and to Arnold Schwarzenegger in Last
Speaker 1: Action Hero. The press seemed to relish those moments, and
Speaker 1: Willis resented them for it. They'd cut him before too,
Speaker 1: during the fallout from The Bonfire of the Vanities. The
Speaker 1: film released in starred Tom Hanks, Melanie Griffith, and Willis,
Speaker 1: all three of them actors at the top of their games.
Speaker 1: Seemed like a recipe for a hit. Bonfire was an
Speaker 1: adaptation of Tom Wolfe's novel about greed and corruption among
Speaker 1: the powerful and protected class in New York's high society.
Speaker 1: Willis played Peter Fallow, a predatory tabloid reporter, a not
Speaker 1: very subtle jab at his adversaries in the press. When
Speaker 1: Willis was asked why he took the part, he'd shoot back,
Speaker 1: why do you think, Oh, excuse me, I have introduced myself,
Speaker 1: have I? My name is Peter Fallow. I'm a writer.
Speaker 1: But you know that already. Unless you haven't read a
Speaker 1: newspaper or seen a television in the last few months,
Speaker 1: you know exactly who I had. But despite how well
Speaker 1: regarded the novel was, some people considered it too complex
Speaker 1: to be adapted. They warned it might even be unfilmable,
Speaker 1: and it looks like they were right. The film was
Speaker 1: a disappointment, blown out of the water during the holiday
Speaker 1: season by Home Alone. To be fair, every movie was
Speaker 1: blown out by Home Alone, but still it was a
Speaker 1: black mark for all involved, and Willis was no exception.
Speaker 1: But he had reason to regret the film beyond its
Speaker 1: box office. The movie's director, Brian de Palmer, had allowed
Speaker 1: a journalist named Julie Salomon, unprecedented access to observe the
Speaker 1: production from casting to release. It was an opportunity Nitty
Speaker 1: rarely afforded to the media, because well filmmaking can be messy.
Speaker 1: Salmon got to see it all and report on it all,
Speaker 1: all the creative tension, all the tumultuous exchanges. Salomon even
Speaker 1: captured a moment between Willis and Hanks, who were both
Speaker 1: watching playback of a scene on a monitor. Hanks, with
Speaker 1: some apparent glee in his voice, made a show of
Speaker 1: pointing out when Willis smirked in the scene. It was
Speaker 1: the same smirk that had made him such a hit
Speaker 1: in Moonlighting and die Hard and in other films. Hanks
Speaker 1: playfully pointed it out there. It is that big sing Gren,
Speaker 1: he said. It was not very Tom Hanks thing to say.
Speaker 1: A brooding Willis said nothing. Smirk was a Willis trademark.
Speaker 1: It was sacra sanct Tom Hanks was reducing it to
Speaker 1: a crutch. Salomon's book was released in nine It was
Speaker 1: titled The Devil's Candy, A great book. The Bonfire the
Speaker 1: Vanities had become a bad movie, and thanks to Salomon,
Speaker 1: a bad movie had inspired a pretty good book. It
Speaker 1: was well received by most everyone except Willis. He hated
Speaker 1: the fact Salmon had observed him, had criticized him. He
Speaker 1: hadn't even granted her an interview, and he still got
Speaker 1: bad press. If he was pressed shy before Salomon may
Speaker 1: have made him press loathing, Hollywood loathing. Even when he
Speaker 1: consented to an interview, he usually regretted it, and so
Speaker 1: did the journalist. A thousand its views, and I would say,
Speaker 1: there's a handful four or five that were just a
Speaker 1: complete nightmare. Bruce was one of those nightmares. That's Martha Frankel.
Speaker 1: Martha writes books now, but in the nine nineties she
Speaker 1: was focused on entertainment journalism and she was good at it.
Speaker 1: She wasn't fawning, she wasn't insulting either. She was just
Speaker 1: doing her job, and she laid out what she perceived
Speaker 1: as a mutually beneficial transaction. I used to say this
Speaker 1: one when I would sit down with somebody, I'd say, listen,
Speaker 1: here's how it works. I'm getting paid five grand. You're
Speaker 1: getting paid five million. My job to make you seem
Speaker 1: even cooler than you are. Some more people go and
Speaker 1: you can make six million next time. So let's just
Speaker 1: have a conversation. This is what I would say. And
Speaker 1: most people were like, that sounds great. Bruce Willis did
Speaker 1: not think it sounded great. When Movieline Magazine sent Frankel
Speaker 1: to interview Willis in Europe. In it was the beginning
Speaker 1: of one of the most torturous experiences of Frankel's professional career.
Speaker 1: And I went to England to do a story about him,
Speaker 1: and like, I thought we were going to be like,
Speaker 1: you know, it was gonna be cool. We had this history,
Speaker 1: and you know, we knew a lot of people in
Speaker 1: common and a lot of my friends of Kiss directors
Speaker 1: and actors. And he wanted no part of that. He
Speaker 1: didn't want to talk about it. He wanted no part
Speaker 1: of it. I was in a spa in Windsor waiting
Speaker 1: for him, supposed to be there one night. I was
Speaker 1: there for nine Frankel stood vigil as Willis seemed to
Speaker 1: weigh whether or not he really wanted to be interviewed.
Speaker 1: I had the two bitchest editors in magazine history, so
Speaker 1: they would spend fortune sending you around the world in
Speaker 1: the hope that you hated your subject. So I mean
Speaker 1: I kept calling them every day and saying, I don't
Speaker 1: think this interview is happening. I think I should come home,
Speaker 1: and they were like, nope, you're staying because even if
Speaker 1: you never get to interview, and that will be the
Speaker 1: story Martha persisted, tried different tactics to appeal to Bruce.
Speaker 1: It was raining, pouring, and there was no good food
Speaker 1: to eat, and I was stuck in the spa. I
Speaker 1: mean all I did was swim, so and every day
Speaker 1: I would write to him and say, let's do it today,
Speaker 1: Let's do it today. And I had some funny ideas.
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, he has a big entourage. He
Speaker 1: always had a very big entourage. And I was there
Speaker 1: all alone. So I said, why don't we just sit
Speaker 1: down me, you and your people will play poker for
Speaker 1: an hour, the interview will be over. It'll be a
Speaker 1: great interview. You know, I'll make you sound even funnier
Speaker 1: than you are. He said, no, we have a lot
Speaker 1: of people in common. I don't want to talk about that.
Speaker 1: So we really were at odds. Finally, after well over
Speaker 1: a week, Willis agreed to meet when I do an
Speaker 1: interview on somebody. I watched everything, and so when I
Speaker 1: went to meet Bruce, I had seen all the clunkers
Speaker 1: and all the good stuff. You know, the die Hard
Speaker 1: movies are fantastic to watch. They take you to a
Speaker 1: place you've never been before. And so he wanted to
Speaker 1: talk to him about that, and he didn't want to
Speaker 1: talk about that. He didn't really want to talk about anything,
Speaker 1: which is funny after you've waited nine days in a
Speaker 1: spa in Windsor. I did the interview and he made
Speaker 1: them shut down the restaurant in the hotel, and then
Speaker 1: he like, oh, it's just a dragon. He wasn't fun
Speaker 1: and he wasn't funny, and I know he's all of
Speaker 1: those things. You know, I had seen him in action.
Speaker 1: I know he can be that. He was, you know,
Speaker 1: very serious, and he just kept telling me how you know,
Speaker 1: Hudson Hawk was a great movie and this one. I
Speaker 1: was like, Bruce, you know I saw it. You can't
Speaker 1: convince me of that. And it was really one of
Speaker 1: the first interviews that I just put it into the
Speaker 1: story and said, I didn't like this guy. He didn't
Speaker 1: like me. We didn't have fun. Willis was touchy and evasive.
Speaker 1: He kept asking her to turn off the tape recorder
Speaker 1: for him to explain what went wrong with Hudson Hawk,
Speaker 1: as though there had been potential for anything to go
Speaker 1: right with Hudson Hawk. Naturally, Frankel's editors at movie Line
Speaker 1: loved it. They weren't unhappy that it went like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was because I want to light the
Speaker 1: people I interview, I want them to do well. I
Speaker 1: want to root for them, and there was no way
Speaker 1: I could root for Bruce will Say. After this, four
Speaker 1: months and years afterward, people would approach Frankel with the
Speaker 1: idea that she and Willis were rivals, enemies. They wanted
Speaker 1: her to talk about what a jerk Bruce Willis was
Speaker 1: poked and prodded on. She'd sometimes indulged them. He had,
Speaker 1: after all, kept her waiting for nine days and then
Speaker 1: stonewalled her, and there was something else that bothered her.
Speaker 1: So I was already annoyed at him when he walked in.
Speaker 1: And then he made them shut the restaurant. He made
Speaker 1: them shut it down for two hours during dinner service
Speaker 1: so that nobody would come over for his autograph. And
Speaker 1: then he didn't throw three hundred bucks on the table
Speaker 1: for the waiter, so I did. So I was already like,
Speaker 1: this is not okay. You know, I want rich people
Speaker 1: to be more generous than not rich people. And Bruce, okay,
Speaker 1: he wants the restaurant close. I get it. Then pay
Speaker 1: the guy for the two hours that he missed. He
Speaker 1: didn't have that attitude, So we were really at hots
Speaker 1: But you know, it was the best think. He walked
Speaker 1: in and out of that hotel and nobody said a
Speaker 1: word to if nobody recognized him. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: important this part, because even when people weren't looking at
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis, he could feel eyes on him. He felt
Speaker 1: the need to get away, felt the need to keep
Speaker 1: to himself. All of that would fuel what would happen
Speaker 1: in Haley when journalists plowed forward. Well, that's when Haley
Speaker 1: was exposed to another side of Bruce Willis, the one
Speaker 1: where he's most definitely not smirking. When word of Willis's
Speaker 1: real estate acquisitions got out, a lot of Haley residents
Speaker 1: were excited by the possibilities. There hadn't been any radical
Speaker 1: changes to Haley in decades. Some people thought Haley's buildings
Speaker 1: were quaint, others thought quaint was just another word for
Speaker 1: old decrepit. Now someone with a singular vision was snapping
Speaker 1: up properties and professing his love for the town. It
Speaker 1: was like having a benefactor, or, as one columnist put it,
Speaker 1: Haley had found a sugar daddy. A few people had
Speaker 1: some fun with it. A local high school paper ran
Speaker 1: a cartoon that depicted main Street as Planet Haleywood, a
Speaker 1: nod to Willis's involvement in the Planet Hollywood restaurant franchise.
Speaker 1: Another paper, the Idaho Mountain Express, ran in editorial that
Speaker 1: cheekily suggested Willis should just buy the entire town as
Speaker 1: a holiday present to himself. That got the papers publisher
Speaker 1: an angry phone call. Willis did sometimes talk to the press,
Speaker 1: but he usually had to be angry. First. Things came
Speaker 1: to a head on that front when the Wood River
Speaker 1: Journal ran a story that Bruce Willis didn't care for
Speaker 1: not a bet. We did a story, and I can't
Speaker 1: remember the exact year, but I've been there for several
Speaker 1: years by then. We again, editor of the Wood River Journal.
Speaker 1: The Forest Service would lease uh land to private individuals.
Speaker 1: They've been doing it for decades. It was right on
Speaker 1: a lake, I think it was red Fish, like a big,
Speaker 1: beautiful natural lake. But somehow Willis got one of these
Speaker 1: leases and he built a really nice home on the
Speaker 1: right on the lake. This was another Willis property and
Speaker 1: escape a little further up the road from his escape.
Speaker 1: And we were doing a story because there was a
Speaker 1: lot of discussion in Washington. They wanted to drastically increase
Speaker 1: the prices that people had to pay for these leases.
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis, I'm sure it didn't bleeve twice about a
Speaker 1: price height, but the normal people and they were concerned
Speaker 1: about it. So the Wood River Journal wrote about it.
Speaker 1: We did an article about the about the proposal to
Speaker 1: increase the lease rates up there, and we took a
Speaker 1: picture of the outside of Bruce Willis's house and we
Speaker 1: published it. We didn't identify it as Bruce Willis's place.
Speaker 1: We just used it to show that these were not
Speaker 1: all just tar paper shacks up there where. There was
Speaker 1: some really nice, high end residences up there, of which
Speaker 1: this one was by far the nicest. The cabin could
Speaker 1: have been anyone's. There were a total of twenty three
Speaker 1: cabin owners who leased property at Pettit Lake on the
Speaker 1: Forest Service land, including Willis. There was nothing about his
Speaker 1: cabin that was demonstrably Willis esque. His name wasn't on
Speaker 1: a plaque out front or anything. But Bruce Willis stormed
Speaker 1: into the offices of the Journal, angry his privacy had
Speaker 1: been violated. He was enraged the fact that we didn't
Speaker 1: identify it. Um didn't assuage the matter whatsoever and what
Speaker 1: little advertising he did with us he canceled. I'm sure
Speaker 1: he if you asked him today, he would, you know,
Speaker 1: still have a chip on his should about it. I
Speaker 1: know what you're thinking, What did Bruce Willis need to
Speaker 1: advertise in the Wood River Journal. It's coming promise, but
Speaker 1: for now the Wood River Journal had broken its unspoken
Speaker 1: vow to protect its famous residence. Of course, losing any
Speaker 1: advertising is something that you don't want to have happened.
Speaker 1: But you have to have journalistic integrity. And if if, uh,
Speaker 1: somebody wants to cancel their advertising because of a story
Speaker 1: you did, if it's a story that was solid and
Speaker 1: it's a story you stand by, it's sorry you feel
Speaker 1: that way, Better luck next time. Willis also phoned reporter c. J.
Speaker 1: Carra Margin and said something pretty strange. Willis said that
Speaker 1: he heard the reporter had quote a vendetta against him,
Speaker 1: like they were feuding families in The Godfather. But Cara
Speaker 1: Margin argued he was just doing his job, just digging
Speaker 1: up information that was in the public interest, information like
Speaker 1: just what exactly Bruce Willis was planning for Haley. No
Speaker 1: one had a vendetta against Willis. He was investing in
Speaker 1: real estate and leasing federal land. Bruce Willis seemed to
Speaker 1: take reporting on his public activities very, very personally and
Speaker 1: with a dramatic flare. The tension became almost operatic, like
Speaker 1: Willis wasn't being reported on for business ventures so much
Speaker 1: as being besieged by goons out of die Hard. But
Speaker 1: Haley residents were mostly on Willis's side. He wasn't just
Speaker 1: snapping up properties. He was investing in the community too.
Speaker 1: Willis and more made donations to a local group advocating
Speaker 1: for victims of domestic violence. He donated to the local
Speaker 1: library and the Little League. One winter, when Haley seemed
Speaker 1: as though it might be overrun by snow, he donated
Speaker 1: snowblowers to the town. There was a real philanthropy in
Speaker 1: what Willis was doing. He was community minded in many ways.
Speaker 1: He was very generous in many ways, and uh I
Speaker 1: admired him for that. Haley was his hometown, now his escape.
Speaker 1: He could spend up to six months out of the
Speaker 1: year or more recuperating from the demands of stardom. No
Speaker 1: one in hay Haley asked Bruce Willis for his autograph.
Speaker 1: Sometimes city officials would float his name in political circles. Willis,
Speaker 1: they said, should consider running for mayor. Hey, there was precedent.
Speaker 1: Clint Eastwood was mayor of Carmel by the Sea in
Speaker 1: California in the nineteen eighties. But Willis wasn't about to
Speaker 1: run for office. What he wanted was to build up
Speaker 1: Haley more discreetly, and that's what Wayne A. Dare C J.
Speaker 1: Carre Margin and the town of Haley would soon realize.
Speaker 1: For Willis, there seemed to be appeal in treating Haley
Speaker 1: like a big, fresh, unpainted canvas. He was here for
Speaker 1: that final brush stroke. He had come to get away
Speaker 1: from it all, But in doing so, he realized he
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily want to get away from it all, just
Speaker 1: the parts he disliked, the unwanted attention, the insecure Hollywood types.
Speaker 1: At some point Willis might have realized he could start
Speaker 1: painting that canvas in his own image. The Willis effect
Speaker 1: was coming like a tidal wave, and with it would
Speaker 1: come some good things like prosperity and culture and movie stars.
Speaker 1: But there was always a sense that what Bruce Willis giveth,
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis could also taketh away. In Willis opened an
Speaker 1: office and retail complex that he dubbed the E. G.
Speaker 1: Willis Building after his grandfather Willis had bought the building,
Speaker 1: renovated it, and then least out space to a jeweler
Speaker 1: of furniture store and others. It was a pretty standard
Speaker 1: developer move, nothing too flashy. Nonetheless, Entertainment Tonight came out
Speaker 1: to cover the grand opening. One of the existing occupants
Speaker 1: of the E. G. Willis Building was the gang at
Speaker 1: the Wood River Journal. He bought the building that we
Speaker 1: were in. We were in the building before he owned it.
Speaker 1: He purchased it, and you weren't sure what was gonna happen.
Speaker 1: Dad gorm wrote an editorial about the odd situation. I
Speaker 1: remember I put a headline on the editorial it's hit
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis stars as quote the landlord, and uh, we
Speaker 1: were trying to make a little bit light of the situation.
Speaker 1: When the lease for the Journal expired, Willis's company didn't
Speaker 1: renew it, Wayne and Dair C. J. Carr Margin and
Speaker 1: the rest of the crew would have to move. We
Speaker 1: ultimately had to move, But I don't think it was
Speaker 1: I don't think he was any animosity towards us that
Speaker 1: to end our lease. It worked out fine because we
Speaker 1: got a better office in a bigger office just half
Speaker 1: a block away. So all's well, that end well. It
Speaker 1: was clear Willis wasn't overjoyed with the Journal, but who
Speaker 1: could complain When he did make a move, Like with
Speaker 1: the E. G. Willis Building, he put dozens of trades
Speaker 1: people to work for years at a time, carpenters, bricklayers.
Speaker 1: Haley was beginning to radiate with the glow of a
Speaker 1: movie stars affection. It was Hudson Hawk all over again,
Speaker 1: where Willis could have almost complete control. But thanks to
Speaker 1: his infamous press silence, no one knew what else Bruce
Speaker 1: Willis was planning for Haley, or that it would soon
Speaker 1: grow to include secret rooms, a clandestine security force, and
Speaker 1: car chases. Not movie car chases, but the real thing.
Speaker 1: This season on Haleywood, Bruce kind of thought that he
Speaker 1: would have the same effect as he would in New Jersey,
Speaker 1: and of course that wasn't true at all. It was
Speaker 1: just a whole different world, cowboy country. You know, you're
Speaker 1: getting out in the real West. He was flying a
Speaker 1: G two arm in arm with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was
Speaker 1: also flying a G two, and he would fly in
Speaker 1: at two o'clock in the morning, and I mean that
Speaker 1: woke you up. And there was this Victorian house Bruce
Speaker 1: Willis had bought for Tony Moore at that point to
Speaker 1: house or doll collection of course, Bruce and get up.
Speaker 1: There was a while it's harmonic and try to ruin
Speaker 1: it all. I'm just kidding, but I'm not a big
Speaker 1: lover of that kind of musy. Then something went sour
Speaker 1: and it was like, boy, biggo sour with Willis, You're
Speaker 1: likely to lose. He looked roughed up Fara and he
Speaker 1: said they smashed my equipment. Roughed me up, said they
Speaker 1: told me to get the hell out of town. Mr
Speaker 1: Willis doesn't like your newspaper type people are out here.
Speaker 1: You don't want to come into Mr Willis's town. Haleywood
Speaker 1: is hosted by Danish Woods. This show is written by
Speaker 1: Jake Ross, editing, sound design and mixing by me Josh Fisher,
Speaker 1: Additional editing by Mary Doo, Original music by Natasha Jacobs,
Speaker 1: mixing by Jeremy Thal, Research and fact checking by Jake Rosson,
Speaker 1: Austin Thompson and Marissa Brown. Show logo by Lucy Quentinia
Speaker 1: Our Senior producer is Ryan Murdoch and our executive producer
Speaker 1: is Jason English. Special thanks to the people of Hailey,
Speaker 1: Idaho and all those who've shared their stories. Haileywood is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio Until Next Time.