Speaker 1: This is an I Heart original. On August, a Hailey
Speaker 1: police officer named Jason Jones gets a call. The dispatcher
Speaker 1: tells him he needs to report to the Liberty Theater,
Speaker 1: the movie palace owned by Bruce Willis and Demi Moore.
Speaker 1: There's a problem. There's a disturbance, a possible fight in progress.
Speaker 1: When Officer Jones arrives, it takes him some time to
Speaker 1: make sense of the scene. There are a number of
Speaker 1: men he recognizes employees of Willis's, including members of his
Speaker 1: security team. They appear to be visibly angry. Their anger
Speaker 1: is being directed at two men. Officer Jones doesn't recognize.
Speaker 1: One of those men is holding a camera. Officer Jones
Speaker 1: squeezes himself in between the two parties. He take one
Speaker 1: of the strangers aside and asks him what's going on.
Speaker 1: The man identifies himself as Keith. Standing nearby is his partner, Brian.
Speaker 1: The two had been deployed to Haley to film a
Speaker 1: segment for the cable channel i f C. They're reporting
Speaker 1: on Bruce Willis's business dealings in the area, and so
Speaker 1: far it's not going great. Brian will counts what happened
Speaker 1: before Officer Jones arrived. They were filming from their car
Speaker 1: when two men in a silver vehicle began following them.
Speaker 1: When Brian and Keith pulled over, the car circled the
Speaker 1: block and then pulled over right behind them. That was weird,
Speaker 1: but it got weirder when Brian and Keith drove to
Speaker 1: the Liberty Theater. The car followed them. As Brian and
Speaker 1: Keith got out and began to film, some of the
Speaker 1: men ran up and tried to wrestle away their camera.
Speaker 1: In the police report, Brian said one of the men
Speaker 1: had insisted he was a licensed security officer who had
Speaker 1: a right to quote obtain them. So the security officer
Speaker 1: wasn't a stickler for the English language, but he still
Speaker 1: felt entitled to approach the filmmakers and attempt to confiscate
Speaker 1: their equipment. When questioned, the security guys said they were
Speaker 1: responsible for protecting Bruce Willis's properties from what from anything?
Speaker 1: Even Cable channels Officer Jones referees the situation for a
Speaker 1: bit before sending the filmmakers in one direction and the
Speaker 1: locals in the other. Jones tells the filmmakers that the
Speaker 1: security men have promised not to follow them out of
Speaker 1: Haley how reassuring. As strange as it sounds, this wasn't
Speaker 1: an isolated occurrence. Leash Lender, a lawyer practicing in Haley,
Speaker 1: recalls that another journalist had once run into his office
Speaker 1: obviously distraught. He said, when I got out of my
Speaker 1: car down downtown on Main Street, a couple of guys
Speaker 1: gave up to me and said get out of here
Speaker 1: with those cameras. Mr Willis doesn't like your newspaper type
Speaker 1: people are out here. He was incredulous. I said, well,
Speaker 1: what's this all about. I have no idea what you're
Speaker 1: talking about. Well, he said that happened, and I said, oh,
Speaker 1: come on, he said it yeah. I said, well, why
Speaker 1: don't you do this, Why don't you go down there
Speaker 1: and drag your coming out and just stand around and
Speaker 1: see what happens and then come back and tell me
Speaker 1: because I didn't believe it. Well, he came back and
Speaker 1: about it. It It couldn't have been twenty minutes. He looked
Speaker 1: roughed up to her up and he said, they smashed
Speaker 1: my equipment, rough me up, but they told me to
Speaker 1: get the hell out of town. And he wrote a
Speaker 1: big piece of about it, and it was in one
Speaker 1: of your new York newspapers and the Eddie Know What
Speaker 1: was something like, um, you don't want to come into
Speaker 1: Mr Willis's town. Mr Willis's town. Like everyone else, Lee
Speaker 1: thought he was living in Haley. So what exactly was
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis trying to hide? And why had the town
Speaker 1: of Haley suddenly become an impenetrable fortress where security idly
Speaker 1: attacked anyone asking questions? Wasn't this idyllic Haleywood? Well? It was,
Speaker 1: but not for much longer. For I Heart Radio. This
Speaker 1: is Haleywood and I heart original podcast. I'm your host
Speaker 1: Danish Schwartz, and this is our final episode. Until for
Speaker 1: their notice, it had all been so simple. A year prior,
Speaker 1: when Haley was still in the throes of being Bruce
Speaker 1: Willis's pet town. His band Jammed at the Mint Shorties
Speaker 1: was serving up eggs well into the night. The Liberty
Speaker 1: was putting on plays and hosting movie premieres. The E. G.
Speaker 1: Willis Building was home to businesses and retail office space.
Speaker 1: Willis even owned a ski mountain, and after abandoning plans
Speaker 1: to resurrect his hometown of penns Grove, New Jersey, Haley
Speaker 1: was once again the sole object of his affections. Things
Speaker 1: couldn't be better on the surface anyway. Beneath the flashing
Speaker 1: marquees of the Mint and the Liberty, there were whispers
Speaker 1: that things weren't going so well, that despite appearances, Willis's
Speaker 1: businesses were falling victim to mismanagement, that Willis himself was
Speaker 1: not quite the hands on boss he needed to be
Speaker 1: because he was busy being a huge movie star. Bruno
Speaker 1: was no longer minding the store. The first crack in
Speaker 1: the veneer came at Shorty's, the casual diner Willis had
Speaker 1: put up in for two years. The place had been
Speaker 1: the premier greasy spoon in town. Hub Caps lined one
Speaker 1: of its walls and the jukebox blare tunes from the
Speaker 1: fifties while patrons eight burghers and fries. Then in the
Speaker 1: spring of Willis stormed in with a message, everyone was fired,
Speaker 1: go home. The words hit employees between the eyes in
Speaker 1: classic Willis fashion. There was no explanation offered. One day
Speaker 1: Shorty's was rocking out, the next it was shuttered. The
Speaker 1: Mint was next that winter. In spring, people walking by
Speaker 1: were surprised to see a notice posted on its doors,
Speaker 1: closed for slack. It read slack is the regional phrase
Speaker 1: used for the decrease in business when it's too warm
Speaker 1: for skiing but too cold for summer tourism. Some businesses
Speaker 1: were seasonal just to avoid slack, but the Mint had
Speaker 1: never been a tourist dependent destination. It was a rock
Speaker 1: and roll joint. To some Haley locals, closed for slack
Speaker 1: rang false. It was too pat too easy. It was
Speaker 1: a little foreboding, and sure enough there was another wave
Speaker 1: of layoffs. The Mint staff got pink slips and no
Speaker 1: indication of when or if they'd be asked to come back.
Speaker 1: Willis's big plans were put on hold. Two He'd had
Speaker 1: buildings earmarked for a recreation center for fitness and other pursuits,
Speaker 1: but those projects sold. Plans for a Willis owned hotel
Speaker 1: went by the wayside. The offices of Valley Entertainment, his
Speaker 1: local company handling Haley business, put up black sheets on
Speaker 1: its windows, blocking out all natural light. Doesn't exactly scream hey,
Speaker 1: we're in business. He even stopped paying for the annual
Speaker 1: Fourth of July fireworks show. Only the Liberty remained fully open.
Speaker 1: It's still played Bruce Willis and Demi Moore movies and
Speaker 1: Moore's Victorian house was still stocked with two thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: but locals who drove by the local airport, craning their
Speaker 1: necks looking for Willis's private jet, were claiming they weren't
Speaker 1: seeing it. As often the slack excuse was tossed around.
Speaker 1: People thought that the businesses would rebound when the tourists
Speaker 1: came back, except in the winter of and into when
Speaker 1: you'd expect the Mint and shorties to open their doors,
Speaker 1: they didn't, not for long, anyway. The Mint reopened, but
Speaker 1: only briefly. Vacant spaces in the E. G. Willis Building
Speaker 1: remained vacant, and that's when Haley began to think something
Speaker 1: was a miss in Haleywood. At first, it was just
Speaker 1: the local press who peppered employees at Willis's Valley Entertainment
Speaker 1: with questions. Mostly they got the brush off. Willis, they said,
Speaker 1: was a fixture of Haley and would remain so he
Speaker 1: wasn't going anywhere. But if he wasn't going anywhere, why
Speaker 1: were his businesses locked up? And why did anyone outside
Speaker 1: of town looking for answers get followed, harassed or confronted
Speaker 1: and told to leave? What is it? They were afraid
Speaker 1: of someone finding out. As the months went on and
Speaker 1: Willis remained silent, the national entertainment media began to pay
Speaker 1: attention to the story about the movie star who had
Speaker 1: swept Haley off its feet, only to leave it at
Speaker 1: the altar. Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you everything
Speaker 1: that happened. One of the first journalists to head out
Speaker 1: to Haley was Nancy Rammelman. So I had gone from
Speaker 1: my first story for bonap a team magazine. Um, I
Speaker 1: guess in like the well, I don't know, winter of
Speaker 1: nineties seven or something like that, I can't remember. And
Speaker 1: when I was there, um, a lot of people were
Speaker 1: talking about Bruce Willison Haley, and you know, he'd come
Speaker 1: and maybe he wasn't there anymore, and it was just
Speaker 1: sort of like a topic of conversation. Roman also wrote
Speaker 1: for l A Weekly, a well respected and influential newspaper
Speaker 1: that covered a lot of Hollywood stories. It was full
Speaker 1: of fists up, no old barred kind of journalism. So
Speaker 1: when his back in l A, I was talking to
Speaker 1: my editors at the l A Weekly, and he said, Nancy,
Speaker 1: don't you think that's a story. So I did. I
Speaker 1: went out to Haley probably about eight months after I
Speaker 1: had been there originally and reported on the ground. So
Speaker 1: there was Nancy approaching Haley residence about the sudden disappearance
Speaker 1: of their benefactor. Some seemed agitated, cautious, like they were
Speaker 1: afraid of something or someone. But Nancy was used to
Speaker 1: getting reticent people to talk. She's a real pro. I
Speaker 1: happen to do stories that sometimes they're around really difficult topics.
Speaker 1: I wrote a book a couple of years ago, called
Speaker 1: to the Bridge, about a woman that threw you know,
Speaker 1: children off a bridge and killed one of them life.
Speaker 1: I interviewed John Wayne Gacy like I'm used to walking
Speaker 1: into places where you're not just asking like how's the
Speaker 1: grilled cheese today? Turns out it's somewhat easier to talk
Speaker 1: to people about John Wayne Gayzy than about Bruce Willis.
Speaker 1: When Nancy arrived in Healey, she found a fair amount
Speaker 1: of Willis apologists, still in awe and weary of criticizing him. Like,
Speaker 1: think about it. You've lived in this town or maybe
Speaker 1: fifteen years, maybe your whole life, maybe generations of your
Speaker 1: family have lived there, and all of a sudden, there's
Speaker 1: a movie star that comes and says, I want to
Speaker 1: be part of this community. Well, you're gonna take them
Speaker 1: at face value, right, And this is pretty exciting in
Speaker 1: a sense. I mean you you can't help but be
Speaker 1: sort of starstruck. So I think people really want it
Speaker 1: to appreciate that. And of course there's you know, the
Speaker 1: reflective sunshine. You'd go home and you say, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I saw to me in the store today with your girls.
Speaker 1: They were buying tuna fish. I was buying tuna fish too.
Speaker 1: You know. It's it's sort of like maybe you're having
Speaker 1: this shared experience, but in reality, or at least the
Speaker 1: way it turned out in this case, you really weren't.
Speaker 1: Nancy said that many of Haley's denizens were also fed up.
Speaker 1: I would say the majority of people I spoke with,
Speaker 1: and this could be the case. Just like we know
Speaker 1: from you know, Twitter or yelp, unhappy people like to complain.
Speaker 1: So I think I did get my share of sort
Speaker 1: of unhappy people. Uh. Speaking in the in the article too,
Speaker 1: one resident who went unnamed, said Haley was quote a
Speaker 1: definite case of before and after, like you see in
Speaker 1: those magazine ads for plastic surgery, and it was Willis
Speaker 1: wielding the scalpel at least, Nancy wasn't followed in her
Speaker 1: car like the filmmakers who'd run out of town earlier. No,
Speaker 1: but I was told to be careful about that. Now, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I just have to highly doubt there was
Speaker 1: a squad of Willis informants. But you know what there
Speaker 1: could have been the you know, the people like hey,
Speaker 1: my pal, Hey, you know, listen to me a favor, like,
Speaker 1: you know, just keep an eye out, you know, we
Speaker 1: want to keep this kind of private. Like you know,
Speaker 1: if you think, if you see that someone's around her
Speaker 1: sniffing round, just let me know. It's like something like
Speaker 1: if you're in good Fellows or something. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, the guy likes me, I better like I
Speaker 1: better do maybe what he wants. I have no idea.
Speaker 1: This is completely you know, conjecture. And the informants or
Speaker 1: security guys or whatever they were hadn't just accosted Brian
Speaker 1: and Keith, the duo from the i f C. Andrew Gumbel,
Speaker 1: a reporter for The Independent out of England, was also
Speaker 1: followed in his car, this time by two car loads
Speaker 1: full of supposed surveillance experts. They refused to offer him
Speaker 1: any explanation. Why he was being tracked and photographed as
Speaker 1: he weaved through town. When Gumble lagged down a police officer,
Speaker 1: they ran the license plates of his pursuers, and that's
Speaker 1: when speculation about the motives of these men turned into fact.
Speaker 1: The plates were registered to Bruce Willis. A security detail
Speaker 1: had set themselves up as a century around Haley, warding
Speaker 1: off anyone posing uncomfortable questions. Brian and Keith had been
Speaker 1: lucky to leave town with their footage escaping like two
Speaker 1: journalists evading a banana republic in a foreign country, but
Speaker 1: the i f C chose not to air it, preferring
Speaker 1: not to risk angering Willis. When journalists left town, they
Speaker 1: left without an answer. Willis wasn't talking, but he hadn't disappeared.
Speaker 1: Just the opposite, Bruce Willis was about to make a
Speaker 1: rather dramatic reappearance in Haley. It's September of ninety nine,
Speaker 1: and Willis's movie The Sixth Cens is in theaters across
Speaker 1: the country. You've probably seen it. It's about the kid
Speaker 1: who sees dead people. Naturally, it's playing in Haley at
Speaker 1: the Liberty Theater. Even though Willis had been evasive about
Speaker 1: his plans for Haley as of late. It's no surprise
Speaker 1: his big movie is playing in his opulent theater. What
Speaker 1: is surprising is that Willis is there, not on screen,
Speaker 1: but in the flesh, handing out popcorn to bewildered audience members.
Speaker 1: Willis still owns the Liberty, hasn't given that up, and
Speaker 1: apparently one of his employees called in sick, so Willis
Speaker 1: stepped in to hand out concessions. Did anyone ask Willis
Speaker 1: what his plans were in Haley beyond handing out soft pretzels.
Speaker 1: It's hard to know, but they had to be wondering, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, his other businesses had shuddered. There was a
Speaker 1: kind of whiplash. It seemed like Willis was done with
Speaker 1: Hay late until he wasn't. I think it's sort of
Speaker 1: like when you have a breakup with someone, journalist Nancy Rommelman. Again,
Speaker 1: let's say you break up with someone but you really
Speaker 1: still kind of want to be with them, and like
Speaker 1: you think you're broken up, but there could still be
Speaker 1: a chance, and then there's the port where you know
Speaker 1: there's no chance. Well, they were sort of in between
Speaker 1: the could be a chance on the no chance stage,
Speaker 1: like the s He's not coming back, but I think
Speaker 1: they still sort of wanted to keep a smile on
Speaker 1: their faces, keep the possibility that they could come back.
Speaker 1: But it was sort of like not in denial so much.
Speaker 1: There was just a little bit of hope still alive,
Speaker 1: that that they would be coming back, and that maybe,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe the town had done something wrong, like
Speaker 1: maybe they hadn't performed exactly well enough, Like what could
Speaker 1: they have done better to make this work? And I
Speaker 1: think that's probably the wrong question, um, But if you're
Speaker 1: these people, then you could understand them asking themselves that
Speaker 1: The answers came pretty quickly. A few months before Willis
Speaker 1: was behind the popcorn counter at the Liberty. He had
Speaker 1: let go of something else, Shorties, the fifties style diner
Speaker 1: he had opened three years earlier, after rumors that it
Speaker 1: might become a pancake joint. It turned out the new
Speaker 1: operator was a local businessman named Jacob Greenberg, who pledged
Speaker 1: to keep the fifties aesthetic intact. Pretty soon, other properties
Speaker 1: were coming up for sale, all will Is owned, all
Speaker 1: located in Haley or nearby. Catchum, that's when Haley really
Speaker 1: started to take notice. This wasn't a trial separation this
Speaker 1: was a divorce and not Willis his only one. In June,
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis and Demi More announced their separation after over
Speaker 1: a decade of marriage. The reasons varied depending on which
Speaker 1: supermarket news outlet you chose to believe, but in Moore's
Speaker 1: own words, it was just time. Willis moved into their guesthouse.
Speaker 1: More stayed in their home. Eventually, Bruce bought a property
Speaker 1: ten miles away in nearby Catchum, and suddenly things started
Speaker 1: to make a bit more sense In Haleywood, Willis had
Speaker 1: fallen in love with the town around the time he
Speaker 1: had fallen in love with More. Maybe Haley was the
Speaker 1: home that once belonged to both of them, and it
Speaker 1: didn't feel like home to Willis anymore. Maybe it was
Speaker 1: just cleaner this way. Was this why Haley was being ghosted? Willis,
Speaker 1: true to his nature, would never say time passed, the
Speaker 1: millennium ended without a bank. Gradually, Haley became more of
Speaker 1: a vacation destination than a full time home for Willis.
Speaker 1: He played a few dates with his accelerators, but the
Speaker 1: house he had shared with More seemed to be occupied
Speaker 1: mostly by More and their kids. Their divorce was finalized
Speaker 1: in two thousand and so it began for Haley. After
Speaker 1: over a decade of being Willis's personal project, the town
Speaker 1: had to prepare for life without him. There would be
Speaker 1: no more big movie premiers, no more announcements of Warren
Speaker 1: buildings being resurrected, no more excitement, no more Haileywood. After
Speaker 1: reopening a couple of times, the Mint went up for sale.
Speaker 1: Soldier Mountain was donated to a nonprofit. The liberty went
Speaker 1: to Company of Fools, the theater group will Is imported
Speaker 1: from Virginia. Through it all, he never, at least publicly
Speaker 1: offered a reason why anyone wanting to know was getting
Speaker 1: strong armed out of town. But if you talk to
Speaker 1: an tough people, the answer can be found back where
Speaker 1: it all started at the Mint. So I moved to
Speaker 1: New York. I probably had my my jeep stolen, my
Speaker 1: wallet stone, my passport stolen New York. Even though I'm
Speaker 1: originally from New York, I grew up in Florida and
Speaker 1: then moved back to New York. And it it ate
Speaker 1: me for lunch. In the beginning. Rob Cronin's life in
Speaker 1: New York City got off to a rough start in
Speaker 1: the nineties, but as the New head bartender a Planet
Speaker 1: Hollywood in Times Square. The job Perks made up for
Speaker 1: it perfectly. Example, on our grand opening party, at one point,
Speaker 1: you know, we had the cast of Saturday Night Live
Speaker 1: sitting at the bar, and you went down and it's like,
Speaker 1: oh my Adam Sandler, David's Bay, Chris Farley, all those
Speaker 1: guys who I got to know you better over the years.
Speaker 1: Uh there as well. And then the next morning, after
Speaker 1: the gred opening party, I came and to set the
Speaker 1: bar up for regular business and Sylvester Stallone was sitting
Speaker 1: at the bar with we just filled in doing a
Speaker 1: live feed, and you know, I'm behind the bar just
Speaker 1: setting up and he was just twenty four year old.
Speaker 1: Over all of me, it was pretty neat. Pretty soon
Speaker 1: Rob was commiserating with another bartender, Bruce Willis, who was
Speaker 1: then a partner in the Planet Hollywood chain, along with
Speaker 1: other stars including his then wife Demi Moore. The first
Speaker 1: time Demi ever came in the restaurant, her plane was delayed.
Speaker 1: Uh the closing the restaurant down. These three women walk in.
Speaker 1: I don't I've never seen them before, and I tell
Speaker 1: them what they're closed, and they asked if they can
Speaker 1: lurk around, and so I started trying to giving them
Speaker 1: a little out of tune. And then I looked closer
Speaker 1: and it was to me in a trench coat and
Speaker 1: dot Martin boots and her hair pulled back. I hadn't
Speaker 1: even recognized her. I was mortified. So I walked back
Speaker 1: up and said, well, since you owned the place, I
Speaker 1: guess we could throw yet burger and we became friends
Speaker 1: after that. She apparently was amused. It made a couple
Speaker 1: of different magazines where she had said, you know, they
Speaker 1: didn't even recognize me in my own restaurant, And eventually
Speaker 1: she introduced me to Bruce. Bruce and Rob were kind
Speaker 1: of bartender brothers. Bruce knew what that life was like,
Speaker 1: and pretty soon Rob was moving up the ranks of
Speaker 1: Planet Hollywood, opening locations in Chicago and Miami. Willis soon
Speaker 1: brought Rob to Haley to manage a restaurant Willis was
Speaker 1: about to open. Originally, it was going to be something simple,
Speaker 1: a steakhouse, but when Willis turned forty, well some men
Speaker 1: by convertible, others go bigger. It was it was his
Speaker 1: birthday weekend when he turned forty, and the famous party
Speaker 1: planner Colin Calie was in town and he, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he and Bruce into me just started talking and uh,
Speaker 1: the concept literally changed in an afternoon. Went from you know,
Speaker 1: a casual locals steakhouse saloon sort of feel to a
Speaker 1: high end restaurant with a world class nightclub on top.
Speaker 1: And we turned that around. Unfortunately at Bruce's expense. You know,
Speaker 1: it was not cheap. The project was. The Mint turned
Speaker 1: that around from early May until we opened the week
Speaker 1: of fourth or July with you know, a couple of large,
Speaker 1: really well known Bruges bands, Bruce's band. It was the
Speaker 1: busiest weekend of the year in Haley, between the rodeo
Speaker 1: and the Fourth of July parade, and it was wild.
Speaker 1: It was a tall order, but Willis and Cronin made
Speaker 1: it happen. No expense was spared to open the Mint
Speaker 1: in a matter of weeks, and it turned out no
Speaker 1: expense was spared after it opened either. You know, when
Speaker 1: you've opened up business and you say you're not worried
Speaker 1: about it making a profit, that's a real fine line
Speaker 1: because you especially in the restaurant and bar business, all
Speaker 1: too quickly and easily that are thin margins. It goes
Speaker 1: the opposite direction. And that's actually what you know happened
Speaker 1: with the Mint. It was it became a monster. Bruce
Speaker 1: Willis treated the Mint like it was right in the
Speaker 1: middle of a busy metropolitan area flying in high ticket
Speaker 1: musical acts. But according to Rob it was not a
Speaker 1: product market fit. This community was not ready to support
Speaker 1: uh fifty person cover charge. So, you know, we we
Speaker 1: get to the point where, you know, all right, or
Speaker 1: ten dollars ahead and let's packed to joint and try
Speaker 1: and off set costs with liquor sales, and it just
Speaker 1: didn't work. You just don't have the volume in town.
Speaker 1: You have to to cover that kind of overhead. And
Speaker 1: by the time you get through it, you know, payroll
Speaker 1: and payroll, taxes and insurance and all that keeping a
Speaker 1: ten thousand scriptfort building open even in the highest species,
Speaker 1: and you're not going to pack it every night. You know,
Speaker 1: when we first opened it was it was packed, and
Speaker 1: it was never covering the costs of the high end entertainment.
Speaker 1: Was never about getting enough bodies. It was just, you know,
Speaker 1: once again, just get enough bodies at that initially budgeted
Speaker 1: cover charge, and the public just wasn't willing to go there.
Speaker 1: I was the one, you know, in my position, that
Speaker 1: had to drop the bomb on him that you know, hey,
Speaker 1: we need two dollars of more some months to cover
Speaker 1: the bills, primarily pay roll. Willis had always wanted to
Speaker 1: throw the biggest, best party possible as a bartender in
Speaker 1: New York, as a TV star in California, and now
Speaker 1: as an a list in Idaho. But throwing a bashed
Speaker 1: night after night is well expensive and unsustainable. In the end,
Speaker 1: Rob parted ways with the Mint amicably. It was my
Speaker 1: ending at the Mint a little rough, absolutely, but I've
Speaker 1: you know, what I've witnessed. It was, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but
Speaker 1: the intentions were good. They really wanted to be a
Speaker 1: part of the community and give back, and you know,
Speaker 1: showed it with their checkbooks. But in trying to make
Speaker 1: a small town feel big, Willis had turned Haley not
Speaker 1: into his own private Idaho, but his own private Hollywood,
Speaker 1: a tone that ran on Bruce Willis, and suddenly Haley
Speaker 1: wasn't his getaway. It was his responsibility, and that, more
Speaker 1: than anything, is why the relationship couldn't last. Other things
Speaker 1: changed for Willis at the turn of the twenty one century.
Speaker 1: He still had a few hits like Since City and
Speaker 1: a fourth die Hard, but conquering the eighties and nineties
Speaker 1: had been the zenith of it, all of the career
Speaker 1: that had gotten started with Seagram's commercials and sparring with
Speaker 1: Sibyl Shepherd on Moonlighting. Not long after a fifth die
Speaker 1: Hard was released, in it was called a Good Day
Speaker 1: to die Hard If you're keeping track, Willis moved on
Speaker 1: to another stage of his career. Rather than top lining
Speaker 1: huge movies, he settled into a role as a familiar
Speaker 1: face in geezer teasers, a genre of video on demand
Speaker 1: movies that enlist major movie stars to work for a
Speaker 1: few days for a lot of money and then sprinkle
Speaker 1: in their scenes Throughout Willis was in Six movies were released,
Speaker 1: including Surviving the Game, Midnight in the Switch Grass, Out
Speaker 1: of Death, Apex, and Cosmic Sin, where he gets to
Speaker 1: put on a space suit again. This year, Willis even
Speaker 1: took one more step towards armchair acting. He licensed his
Speaker 1: image to a Russian cell phone company for an ad
Speaker 1: where he's tied to a bomb, but Willis never went
Speaker 1: near a set. Instead, Willis's deep faked face was superimposed
Speaker 1: over a standing actor created with more than thirty thousand
Speaker 1: images for vintage Willis movies like die Hard and The
Speaker 1: Fifth Element. The man who once only wanted to drive
Speaker 1: an hour or so from Haley to a movie set
Speaker 1: now doesn't even have to leave his living room to
Speaker 1: appear on screen. Heck, he doesn't even need to get
Speaker 1: out of bed. Some speculate this process could be the
Speaker 1: future for all Hollywood actors. In fact, it's a common
Speaker 1: part of appearance contracts already. The commercial shows an image
Speaker 1: of Willis, the ideal image of a young, smirking Bruce,
Speaker 1: the image that was once the face of Hollywood and
Speaker 1: of Haleywood, the image that once literally overlooked the highway
Speaker 1: into town, but ultimately one that Haley never really got
Speaker 1: to know. In eight nine, just a few years after
Speaker 1: gold prospector and businessman John Haley laid claim to the land,
Speaker 1: the town of Hailey, Idaho, was engulfed in fire. A
Speaker 1: blaze tore through the business district, destroying most of the buildings.
Speaker 1: Only bare stone walls were left standing. Idaho wasn't even
Speaker 1: the state yet, but Hailey was resilient. Less than three
Speaker 1: months after the fire, new buildings began to spring up
Speaker 1: in their place. A lot of them were just a
Speaker 1: single story to save on restoration costs. But the point
Speaker 1: is if Hailey could do it once, they could do
Speaker 1: it again. Here's leash Lender. Because of the valley. If
Speaker 1: you think back it's history of being a mining town,
Speaker 1: it had always been boom and bust. You know, one
Speaker 1: day everybody in town, somebody strikes it rich and there's money.
Speaker 1: Two weeks later they've all packed up and moved on.
Speaker 1: It was very, very much from that Western motif, which
Speaker 1: was real. That was the way that the West was.
Speaker 1: And so people building big buildings or homes and then
Speaker 1: just walking away from him not unusual at all. Um,
Speaker 1: it was a boom and bust society. More than a
Speaker 1: hundred years later, even after a Bruce Willis sized boom,
Speaker 1: not much had changed. And he's just he got tired
Speaker 1: of it. And that's his right if he didn't want it.
Speaker 1: He doesn't really want to stick around here. Um, it's okay,
Speaker 1: Well you know we've we've lived here. The people that
Speaker 1: survived have been through those good and bad times. Four
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five years. The Halif today bears the
Speaker 1: marks of it's Bruce Willis affair. The Mint is still
Speaker 1: on Main Street, now owned by developer Paul Conrad and
Speaker 1: his wife. Jenny. Shorty's is still here too, now operated
Speaker 1: by Jacob Greenberg's son Josh. So is the Liberty. So
Speaker 1: is that office building, now owned by someone else, but
Speaker 1: still referred to as the e G. Willis likely said,
Speaker 1: through the good and bad, Haley remains. So what do
Speaker 1: we make of Bruce Willis? Small town citizen with big
Speaker 1: time ambitions. He swept Haley off its feet before putting
Speaker 1: her back down with a lack of grace. He went
Speaker 1: there to get away, to feel normal, but then installed
Speaker 1: all the bright lights and glips of Hollywood that he
Speaker 1: was trying to leave behind. Maybe some said Bruce Willis
Speaker 1: had a bit of a savior complex. He couldn't save
Speaker 1: Penn's Grove, his hometown, though he tried. So we found
Speaker 1: a place that may not have needed saving. Today. Bruce
Speaker 1: and Demi both maintain their own properties in Idaho. They
Speaker 1: even quarantined together during the first major wave of the
Speaker 1: pandemic in tw and they're signed Willis may not be
Speaker 1: totally done tinkering. In March twenty one, the county approved
Speaker 1: a long planned private airport near Haley after lengthy debate
Speaker 1: of the economic benefit versus the environmental impact. Willis hasn't
Speaker 1: publicly confirmed he's behind the airport, but the application was
Speaker 1: filed by the x Nay Investment Trust. We hope you've
Speaker 1: enjoyed listening to Haleywood. Please tell a friend to binge
Speaker 1: the show. I'm Danish Wartz. You can find me on Twitter,
Speaker 1: Instagram and TikTok at Danish Wartz spelled with three z's
Speaker 1: at the end, and you can also find me hosting
Speaker 1: the podcast Noble Blood and sometimes as a guest on
Speaker 1: You're Wrong About or Hysteria. You can also read my
Speaker 1: latest novel, Anatomy, a Love Story, which comes out January,
Speaker 1: and you should absolutely please pre order by from your
Speaker 1: local indie bookseller. Check out some of our other I
Speaker 1: Heart original podcasts like Operation Midnight, Climax, Newton's Law, and
Speaker 1: Black Cowboys, and keep your Ears Peeled for Big Brother,
Speaker 1: North Korea's Forgotten Prince and What Happened to Sandy Beale.
Speaker 1: Haleywood is hosted by Danish Schwartz. This show is written
Speaker 1: by Jake Rawson, editing by Derrick Clements, Mary Do and
Speaker 1: me Josh Fisher. Sound design and mixing by Jeremy thal
Speaker 1: Derrek Clemens and me Josh Fisher. Original music by Natasha Jacobs.
Speaker 1: Research and fact checking by Jake Rawson, Austin Thompson, and
Speaker 1: Marissa Brown. Show logo by Lucy Quentinia. Our senior producer
Speaker 1: is Ryan Murdoch and our executive producer is Jason English.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to the p full of Hailey, Idaho and
Speaker 1: all those who've shared their stories. Haileywood is a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio h