When most people dream of how it would feel to make it in Hollywood, it is the fame and fortune that comes to mind first for them. While that seems awesome from the outside looking in, there are other aspects of making it in Hollywood that are worthy of celebration including the chance to meet movie stars.
In this day and age, many people consider certain actors to be their heroes. While some actors seem to be nice to most people they come across, other celebrities are known to be rude to the people who approach them. Of course, even if a certain star has a negative reputation when it comes to fan interactions, there is a decent chance that they are still kind to their co-workers.
According to what one famous director has said about working with Bruce Willis, he not only treats fans he perceives to be rude poorly. Instead, the director in question claimed that working with Willis was “soul-crushing”.
Bad Attitude
Even though Bruce Willis was one of the most popular stars in Hollywood not that long ago, these days most people tend to avoid his movies. The main reason why that is the case is that in recent years, every time Willis has appeared in a film, it has seemed like he wasn’t put any effort into his acting. In fact, in recent years Willis seems so disinterested in working as an actor that it feels like he sleeps through most of his roles.
In addition to the current perception of Bruce Willis among moviegoers, he has also earned a really bad reputation in Hollywood. At one point, Willis even made his former friend Sylvester Stallone so mad at him for his unreasonable demands that Sly called Bruce greedy and lazy in public. With that in mind, is it any surprise that most of Willis’ peers no longer want to work with him so he has been relegated to B movies lately?
Soul-Crushing Experience
During Kevin Smith’s career, he has directed many very famous actors including the likes of Matt Damon, Chris Rock, Seth Rogen, and many more. In fact, after Smith directed Johnny Depp in one of his movies, the two men became friends. With that in mind, it didn’t seem too out of the ordinary when it was announced that Bruce Willis was set to star in one of Smith’s movies. Actually, it made all of the sense in the world since Smith had an acting role in Live Free or Die Hard, a movie Willis had previously starred in.
Despite the history that Kevin Smith and Bruce Willis had before they made the movie Cop Out together, things went horribly awry on the set of that film. Since Smith has always been a very outspoken figure in Hollywood, it isn’t overly surprising that he went on to tell the whole world about how bad his experience working with Willis was.
During an appearance on Marc Maron’s “WTF Podcast”, Kevin Smith talked about his experience making Cop Out. At first, Smith didn’t call out Bruce Willis by name during that appearance but he made it very clear that is who he was talking about while singing the praises of another actor. "Everyone knows who it is. Put it this way, remember the really funny guy in the movie? It ain’t him. He’s a f*cking dream. Tracy Morgan, I would lay down in traffic for. Were it not for Tracy, I might’ve killed myself or someone else in the making of that movie."
From there, Smith began talking about making Cop Out. "It was difficult. I've never been involved in a situation like that where, one component is not in the box at all. It was f*ckin' soul-crushing. I mean, a lot of people are gonna be like, 'Oh, you're just trying to blame the movie on him.' No, but I had no f*cking help from this dude whatsoever."
Surprise Ending
After years of Kevin Smith making it no secret that working with Bruce Willis was awful, things took a sudden and surprising turn in 2019. During an episode of Smith’s “Fatman Beyond” podcast, Kevin started by saying “time heals all f***ing wounds” before he revealed that Willis had reached out to him in a text.
According to what Kevin Smith revealed, over a few weeks, he got phone calls from a number he didn’t recognize so he didn’t answer. Then, he received a text from the same number which read; “Dear Kevin, I have pictures I want to send you. I need your home address. Love, Beedub.” After thinking about the text for a number, Smith concluded that he only knew one person with the initials BW so he replied; “Bruce?” Ultimately, Willis confirmed it was him and Smith asked him to call again and the two men had a conversation that Kevin called “f***ing lovely” and “f***ing strange”.