General Entertainment Bruce Willis diagnosed with Aphasia, to retire from acting

[CitizenVectron]

Bruce Willis diagnosed with aphasia, stepping away from acting

PAGESIX.COM

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The "Die Hard" star will be "stepping away from the career that has meant so much to him," his family announced in a statement to social media Wednesday.

 

Very sad. My dad had this after his stroke before he died, a number of years ago. There had been rumours that Willis had something like this after Red Letter Media videos regarding his more limited roles, recently (where it also seemed like he was being fed lines). Basically, Aphasia is where damage to the brain degrades your ability to understand and communicate through language.

 

[Kal-El814]

Ugh, that’s awful. 

[Derek]

Very sad. What a depressing time we're living in.

[skillzdadirecta]

Dude has made a killing money wise so he should just chill out and focus on his health and family.  His hear hasn't been in it for awhile but he still has been able to deliver great performances when he's motivated.  I never liked his politics,  but always enjoyed him as an actor since I was a kid.

 

This actually explains a lot about how he's been working in recent years.

[CayceG]

His latest movie had all of his lines dubbed and the ADR sounded 'worse' than the filmed lines. I wonder if it's come on pretty rapidly and the ADR is a consequence of that. 

 

 

So sad to hear. Age comes for us all. 

[johnny]

Oof, that's so rough. I remember people were ripping on how little effort he was putting into recent movies. Makes more sense now. 

[ort]

I haven't been paying attention to him at all and couldn't remember any recent flicks he's been in so I looked at his filmography and wow, he's only been making direct-to-video dreck for the last 7 or 8 years. I had no idea. Is he putting in a day of shooting on each one so they can put him on the cover or what?

 

Pretty sad, I guess he's been more or less retired for a while.

[Ghost_MH]

That's a shitty condition to come down with. I thought Oliver Sack's Musicophilia did a good job talking about aphasia; then again, all his books were great at describing whatever esoteric disorder her felt like covering.

 

[skillzdadirecta]

Quote

Is he putting in a day of shooting on each one so they can put him on the cover or what?

Pretty much. Oftentimes, he's on set with someone feeding him lines. He doesn't shoot with other actors and when they film the other actors he's in the scene with, they use a stand in for back of the head shots and stuff. This explains why.

[TheLeon]

Yeah, I heard the rumors that he had some kind of disability, and was barely aware of all the direct to video he’s been making for the last few years. Hopefully he can find some comfort in retirement. 

3 minutes ago, ort said:

I haven't been paying attention to him at all and couldn't remember any recent flicks he's been in so I looked at his filmography and wow, he's only been making direct-to-video dreck for the last 7 or 8 years. I had no idea. Is he putting in a day of shooting on each one so they can put him on the cover or what?

 

Pretty sad, I guess he's been more or less retired for a while.

I think that was the general idea. Pay him a million dollars a day or whatever, which is probably a massive percentage of your budget, and hope that’s enough to catch someone’s eye when they’re at the Redbox. 

[Bloodporne]

A good friend of mine works at a tattoo shop that Willis used to frequent and he's told me some stories about him being really out of it and sometimes incoherent. Now it makes sense I guess, damn. Just thought he meant he was fucked up on drugs or something.

[GeneticBlueprint]

This will probably come across as kicking him while he's down or being insensitive so I apologize, but I've felt like he's been phoning it in for the past ten or so years so seeing this news makes everything make sense. Very sad news and he will always be a legend in Hollywood.

[SoberChef]

RedLetterMedia recently did a video about "Geezer Teasers" and Bruce in particular. They even brought up the alleged health issues & then here we are not two weeks later. I feel awful for Willis & hope he has love & support from family & friends going forward. Hell of a way to fade away, but in the end, his legacy will live on forever & these recent years' of "work" won't even be remembered.

 

 

[Kamusha]

The Razzies literally just made fun of him last week for his run of direct-to-video releases, which is yet another reason why the Razzies are straight up trash.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

That really sucks. I wonder what happened to bring it on. I’ve really only ever seen it with CVAs and other brain injuries. 

[EternallDarkness]

10 minutes ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

That really sucks. I wonder what happened to bring it on. I’ve really only ever seen it with CVAs and other brain injuries. 

 

indeed, of course it could be repeated minor brain injuries from stunts over the years (not sure how much he relies on a stuntman) 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

4 minutes ago, EternallDarkness said:

 

indeed, of course it could be repeated minor brain injuries from stunts over the years (not sure how much he relies on a stuntman) 

That would be my best guess.

[skillzdadirecta]

8 hours ago, TheLeon said:

I think that was the general idea. Pay him a million dollars a day or whatever, which is probably a massive percentage of your budget, and hope that’s enough to catch someone’s eye when they’re at the Redbox. 

It actually works pretty well especially overseas where he's still a pretty big star. Him being on the box and in the movie means a ton of foreign sales.

[Greatoneshere]

4 hours ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

This will probably come across as kicking him while he's down or being insensitive so I apologize, but I've felt like he's been phoning it in for the past ten or so years so seeing this news makes everything make sense. Very sad news and he will always be a legend in Hollywood.

 

Same - I'm really sorry for his diagnosis, that completely sucks, but he more or less already retired from acting like 10 years ago in my mind. He was phoning it in long before this diagnosis from what I can get from the timeline, and he's always had a reputation in his later years as a diva and difficult to work with actor who shows up when he wants to shoot, etc. (just watch the movie What Just Happened? where Bruce Willis plays "actor" that is basically a caricature of himself, he also kind of mocks himself in Ocean's Twelve when he plays himself, and just listen to Kevin Smith's stories from the set of Live Free or Die Hard). 

 

Either way, I like him as an actor and performer and enjoy a number of his films, sucks.

[skillzdadirecta]

6 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

listen to Kevin Smith's stories from the set of Live Free or Die Hard). 

I thought the Kevin Smith stories were from Cop Out, the buddy cop movie he directed with Willis and Tracy Morgan. Either way, he got fired from the Expendables when he wanted like a million dollars for one day's work. Stallone replaced him in the third movie with Harrison Ford.

[Greatoneshere]

3 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

I thought the Kevin Smith stories were from Cop Out, the buddy cop movie he directed with Willis and Tracy Morgan. Either way, he got fired from the Expendables when he wanted like a million dollars for one day's work. Stallone replaced him in the third movie with Harrison Ford.

 

Oh he has stories from that too, but Bruce Willis had Kevin Smith (at that point just an actor in the movie) to do rewrites on set which led to a lot of interactions with Bruce Willis which is what led to Cop Out for Kevin Smith. But directing him made him hate Bruce Willis, hence the harsh Cop Out stories.

[skillzdadirecta]

1 minute ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

Oh he has stories from that too, but Bruce Willis had Kevin Smith (at that point just an actor in the movie) to do rewrites on set which led to a lot of interactions with Bruce Willis which is what led to Cop Out for Kevin Smith. But directing him made him hate Bruce Willis, hence the harsh Cop Out stories.

I don't think I ever heard the Live Free stories... he told them on his podcast?

[Greatoneshere]

2 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

I don't think I ever heard the Live Free stories... he told them on his podcast?

 

I watched them from Kevin's old Q&A specials on Youtube, one of his "evening with Kevin Smith" specials, can't remember which one though.  

[Kamusha]

26 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

Same - I'm really sorry for his diagnosis, that completely sucks, but he more or less already retired from acting like 10 years ago in my mind. He was phoning it in long before this diagnosis from what I can get from the timeline, and he's always had a reputation in his later years as a diva and difficult to work with actor who shows up when he wants to shoot, etc. (just watch the movie What Just Happened? where Bruce Willis plays "actor" that is basically a caricature of himself, he also kind of mocks himself in Ocean's Twelve when he plays himself, and just listen to Kevin Smith's stories from the set of Live Free or Die Hard). 

 

Either way, I like him as an actor and performer and enjoy a number of his films, sucks.

 

From what I heard he's just a veteran pro of an actor who hates working with directors who he feels like don't know what they are doing. So on the first day he shoots a movie he will ask the director a couple questions about what lenses he plans to use - and uses that to gage whether he feels like they know what they are doing or not. This is why some like Kevin Smith say he was enormously difficult, while other directors like Wes Anderson and Rian Johnson found him to be a sweetheart. The kid from Moonrise Kingdom is on Twitter and has nothing but good things to say about his experience working with him on set. I mean, he is still probably a diva, but it's a bit more complicated than simply that.

[Greatoneshere]

3 hours ago, Kamusha said:

 

From what I heard he's just a veteran pro of an actor who hates working with directors who he feels like don't know what they are doing. So on the first day he shoots a movie he will ask the director a couple questions about what lenses he plans to use - and uses that to gage whether he feels like they know what they are doing or not. This is why some like Kevin Smith say he was enormously difficult, while other directors like Wes Anderson and Rian Johnson found him to be a sweetheart. The kid from Moonrise Kingdom is on Twitter and has nothing but good things to say about his experience working with him on set. I mean, he is still probably a diva, but it's a bit more complicated than simply that.

 

I mean, he's more than just a diva of course, just that he hasn't been trying to act for 10 years. His last two good movies were Moonrise Kingdom and Looper (as you mentioned) and both of those came out in 2012. He didn't parlay that into working with more good directors, so . . . I dunno. Maybe the aphasia does go that far back since most of his movies since have been through a friend of his' production studio, clearly a friend who could get him money to save away and keep his medical condition out of the press. But that way of gauging if a director is good or not isn't very smart. Some directors leave a lot of lens work to their DP's and camera operators team and are still great directors. Many directors can't draw and don't storyboard, and are still great directors. The easiest way to tell if a director is good or not is look at their entire body of directorial work, simple as that. Watch all their previous movies (within reason) and you'll either click with them or you won't, I'd think (usually, at least, no method is foolproof). 

[Fizzzzle]

Kevin Smith's story of Bruce Willis on Die Hard where he (Willis) asked the studio to use Smith's rewrites, the studio pushed back, so Willis said "okay, then find someone else to play John McClain" are hilarious.

 

Kevin Smith is also pretty notoriously difficult to work with (one of the reasons he uses a lot of the same actors over and over again), so I can imagine how the dynamic changed a lot when they were both trying to be the one in charge.

 

 

[skillzdadirecta]

14 hours ago, Kamusha said:

From what I heard he's just a veteran pro of an actor who hates working with directors who he feels like don't know what they are doing. So on the first day he shoots a movie he will ask the director a couple questions about what lenses he plans to use - and uses that to gage whether he feels like they know what they are doing or not.

A lot of old school actors did that with directors to make sure they knew what the fuck they were doing. I don't have a problem with that... the actor/director relationship involves a lot of trust.

[BloodyHell]

On 3/31/2022 at 2:41 AM, Fizzzzle said:

Kevin Smith's story of Bruce Willis on Die Hard where he (Willis) asked the studio to use Smith's rewrites, the studio pushed back, so Willis said "okay, then find someone else to play John McClain" are hilarious.

 

Kevin Smith is also pretty notoriously difficult to work with (one of the reasons he uses a lot of the same actors over and over again), so I can imagine how the dynamic changed a lot when they were both trying to be the one in charge.

 

 

I've seen a lot of smith stuff, and I've never heard of him being hard to work with 

 

He was a shit head with critics and stuff, pulled some dumb stuff but I've never heard complaints about his on set behavior as far as treatment of actors. Most who worked with him seem to love him. The reason he reuses actors is because he considers them family, and his stuff takes place in the "View Askewiverse". 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, BloodyHell said:

I've seen a lot of smith stuff, and I've never heard of him being hard to work with 

 

He was a shit head with critics and stuff, pulled some dumb stuff but I've never heard complaints about his on set behavior as far as treatment of actors. Most who worked with him seem to love him. The reason he reuses actors is because he considers them family, and his stuff takes place in the "View Askewiverse". 

I can imagine he potentially could be difficult to work with, not simply as a director, but because he writes his stuff too. Writer/directors can get awfully precious about actors staying on the script. I don’t think there is a right answer to that sort of thing, but I can see how an actor who likes to “explore” could class with a writer/director who just want them to perform the lines they wrote.

 

Would be interesting to see what exactly people complained about with regard to Smith, as he appears to be rather easy going in general.

[Fizzzzle]

21 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

I can imagine he potentially could be difficult to work with, not simply as a director, but because he writes his stuff too. Writer/directors can get awfully precious about actors staying on the script. I do think there is a right answer to that sort of thing, but I can see how an actor who likes to “explore” could class with a writer/director who just want them to perform the lines they wrote.

 

Would be interesting to see what exactly people complained about with regard to Smith, as he appears to be rather easy going in general.

I think that ultimately why he's difficult. He has a *very* specific scene in mind when he shoots and doesn't tolerate deviation.

[Greatoneshere]

I've never heard of Kevin Smith being a difficult director. It's possible, but he doesn't seem the type. Hell, Seth Rogen started smoking weed while directing due to seeing Smith do it on set during Zack and Miri Make A Porno and still be able to make a movie (I find this movie very funny, btw). 

[Keyser_Soze]

Actor Bruce Willis Becomes First Celebrity to Sell Rights to Deepfake Firm

COLLIDER.COM

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The actor calls the technology "a great opportunity to go back in time."

 

[Jason]

Quote

While all advancements have the potential to be used nefariously, there's no denying deepfake technology offers an intriguing solution to the future of television and movies. 

 

As opposed to going with the obvious solution of, god forbid, new talent? 

[Derek]

13 hours ago, Jason said:

 

As opposed to going with the obvious solution of, god forbid, new talent? 

No, yuck. I want Jimmy Stewart in the next phase of Marvel.

[unogueen]

So are digital actors folly to copyright status? That's a can of flesh eaters.