#100. So Long, Bruce Willis
Listen to this episode ↗on Substack, where the show lives now
This is a short, unscripted bonus episode with no movie under review — Sonny, JVL, and Vic drop everything to mark the news that Bruce Willis is retiring from acting after a diagnosis of aphasia, and the whole half-hour is a career eulogy rather than a critique. Sonny lays out the backstory: the "open secret" of Willis sleepwalking through 29 red-box VOD movies in three years, and the same-day LA Times exposé (published hours after the retirement announcement) reporting that Willis had fired blank-loaded guns unsafely on set, which JVL notes was clearly fallout from post-Alec Baldwin reporting. JVL and Sonny debate whether Willis's family was exploiting his decline for paydays or reasonably cashing in before his earning window closed, and both rip the Razzies for a "worst Bruce Willis performance" category that, in hindsight, was punching down at a sick man. From there the three run through the highlights of his filmography with real affection — Sonny calling Unbreakable maybe his favorite Shyamalan movie, JVL declaring Nobody's Fool possibly Willis's best supporting turn and marveling at his unmatched versatility (able to anchor Die Hard, disappear into Pulp Fiction, and carry The Sixth Sense single-handedly), plus love for The Fifth Element, Sin City, Tears of the Sun, The Whole Nine Yards, and Moonlighting's screwball banter, with a tangent on his surprising jump from TV star to action star and comparisons to Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves as similarly durable, hard-to-classify leading stars. There's a long, funny detour into Hollywood baldness (Ted Danson's secret toupee, Sean Connery's hairpieces) and Vic's trivia about Willis growing up in Penn's Grove, New Jersey, before JVL predicts — correctly — that Vic's favorite press-screening memory of all time is the crowd going nuts for the Jet Li showdown in Lethal Weapon 4.
From the show notes
A bittersweet bonus episode on news that Bruce Willis is retiring.
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of the Sub-Beacon. I'm Victor Matus along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a reminder, the Sub-Beacon is now available through Patreon. Go to subbeacon.com, you'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, leave a review, come out to the coast, have a few laughs. Speaking of which, today we're talking about one of our favorite actors, Bruce Willis, who is recently in the news. Sonny, what's happening?
Sonny00:00:37Bruce Willis, technically Bruce Willis' family, Demi Moore, his, I think, I guess former wife technically, I don't know if they...
Vic00:00:46Emma is the current wife.
Sonny00:00:47They got divorced, but she announced that Bruce Willis is retiring from acting because he is suffering from a failure... ...of aphasia, which essentially is a, to describe it as early onset dementia is not quite right. There are versions of aphasia that are early onset dementia-ish, but it's essentially a difficulty understanding what others are saying or doing. And a difficulty making yourself understood to others, you know. So, you know, for... I have been hearing rumors of this sort for months. And I think it was essentially an open secret in Hollywood for the last year or two. Wow. That the reason that Bruce Willis has been doing all of these kind of low budget, crappy, red box VOD movies where he's in it for like two scenes. And he's kind of sitting down in a lot of them. Yes. And anytime there's an action sequence, he's like, his stunt double is like obviously the guy doing the work. I, again, I had been hearing for a couple... A couple of months just, you know, from random people that I kind of dismissed because what do they know? But like that he had, he was, he was suffering from early onset dementia. Apparently it's not quite that, but, you know, whatever.
Vic00:02:09It could be an undiagnosed stroke or a diagnosed...
Sonny00:02:14Well, I mean, who knows? Who knows? Aphasia, one of the precursors to that is often a stroke, you know, or head trauma of some sort of, you know, a brain injury of some sort. So the, anyway, long story short, he is... He's suffering from this disease and it's a bummer. And it kind of, it sets in stark relief some of the, like, nastier things folks have been saying about his movies for the last two or three years. How he's been doing, you know, six or seven, like, really crappy VOD movies for the money, you know, whatever.
JVL00:02:49He's done 29 films in the last three years. Yeah. So, like, he's making... That is one quarter of his entire career. So, put... That's amazing.
Sonny00:02:58So, he's making a bunch of junk and he's getting, you know, a couple million bucks per movie and whatever. So, all of this happened...
JVL00:03:05Did you see what happened to the Red Letter Media guys, by the way?
Sonny00:03:07No, what happened?
JVL00:03:08Like, last week they did a thing specifically about, like, the junkie Bruce Willis. Oh, I did see this. And this came out, like, 48 hours before the news about him broke.
Sonny00:03:21At which point everybody was like, how could you guys be making fun of this guy who has health problems?
JVL00:03:26And they were like... We didn't know. We were just talking about the work.
Sonny00:03:31Well, they hinted at it. They hinted at it in there. Anyway, it sucks. It sucks. And so, the other angle to this... We'll talk about this a little more, I think. The other angle to this is that shortly after Demi Moore's announcement, like, six hours or 12 hours after Demi Moore's announcement, the Los Angeles Times published a story, a deeply reported story. With, like, 20 sources, a bunch of them on the record. 3,000 words. 3,000 words about Bruce Willis' aphasia, right? And... Quick turnaround. A very quick turnaround. But so, what happened? So, part of the story... For the editor's dream, yeah. So, part of the story is about how Bruce Willis almost pulled an Alec Baldwin on set. He fired a gun that had a blank in it in the direction of somebody when he wasn't supposed to. And I think this happened twice. And, like, people on set were like, what is wrong with him? Why can't he... He needs to, like... He needs to be safer than this on set. And if I was texting with you guys about this, we're all journalists. I think it's fairly obvious what happened here. After the Alec Baldwin thing, there was a general call for stories about this sort of thing. Sources were reached out to say, do you have any stories about people being unsafe with guns on set?
Vic00:04:54It's not just Alec Baldwin.
Sonny00:04:55It's not just Alec Baldwin. It's not just Alec Baldwin. This is a thing that has to happen elsewhere. You know, tell us your horror stories. And they kept hearing about this Bruce Willis thing, which I'm sure a bunch of people told them about. And when they started reporting it, they found out there was actually a deeper story here. That Willis was, you know, had brain problems. He was not all there. And then they started digging into who his entourage and who was managing his affairs. We can talk about that a little more, too, JBL. I think I have a slightly different take on this than I think you or the L.A. Times. Story does, but it's neither here nor there. And and what what ended up happening was they have an entirely different story that was ready to go. They reach out to the family. They say, hey, we're going to run with this. We need comment. And so to me, more, you know, puts out a statement. He's retiring. Got ahead of it. Now everybody's just talking about his aphasia and him retiring instead of, you know, him maybe almost killing somebody on set. So anyway, it's it's all a very sad story. I mean, I like the saddest thing about it really is he. Bruce Willis was always a super self-aware action star in a way that I am very funny. And like his his comedy was not based on like hacky one liners, but like actually interacting with people and having good repartee. I mean, go back to even Moonlighting, which is essentially a screwball comedy, right?
JVL00:06:15It was amazing.
Sonny00:06:15Yeah. And and like that, all of the humor, all of the humor in that is based on like patter back and forth timing comic time.
Vic00:06:24Like something from the 40s, you know, like.
Sonny00:06:26And he. You know, he carried that through, I think, to a lot of his other movies, even like The Fifth Element or, you know, the Die Hard with a Vengeance in particular, I think. And, you know, to have that taken away from him, I think, is the is the saddest and like kind of cruelest part of the story. And maybe it just bummed me out, man. Like, I've always been a big Bruce Willis fan, even like I don't I never wrote about any of his junky VOD stuff because I was like, a guy wants to make money. He's, you know, he's. He's done being a big box office star. I can't hold it against him.
Vic00:07:01I don't remember the last the most recent Bruce Willis movie I'd seen or a movie that I'd seen with Bruce Willis. But what might have probably the Expendables? Oh, wow. That was the Death Wish. He was in the Death Wish.
Sonny00:07:13Death Wish was the last one, you know, it was like 2015 or 16, I think.
Vic00:07:17I feel like that was even later. That was later because that was a sub-Beacon substandard episode, I believe.
JVL00:07:22Yeah, we did an episode on it. Yeah. Or Split, right? He was in Split. I guess it's only three or yeah, right? Oh, right. Of course.
Sonny00:07:26That would be the last one. Because he was at the end. He was at the end of Split and then Glass. Glass. He was. But I think he was. I mean, again, I well, I don't know. I mean, who knows? Oh. I mean, who knows where he was mentally?
Vic00:07:39Yeah. I mean, but I never, you know, you know, it was handled and edited obviously very well. JVL, do you have thoughts?
JVL00:07:48You know, there are a couple. It's interesting trying to figure out if there is a bad guy in this story or not. On the one hand, I understand his family and maybe him. Maybe he was participating in this, rolling him out to collect as much money as possible because he wasn't going to be able to work anymore. Right. I mean, I understand you could say, like, look, how much money do they need? But you know, like on the other hand, like you do want to provide for your family and I mean, if your grandchildren at some point, like you want to if you were in some sort of legacy.
Sonny00:08:24Right. If you're a guy who was making. You know, even even post the $20 million paydays for the Die Hard movies, if you're a guy who's making five to $10 million a movie and all of a sudden you are faced with a future where in like two years you're not going to be able to make anything making 29 movies at two million bucks a pop.
JVL00:08:43And there is no other in three years and you may wind up, God knows, with tremendous medical expense. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, that in particular. So I you know, I'm sympathetic to that to a large degree, the people who there's been I've seen people say, like, oh, elder abuse. Well, I don't know that it's abuse. I mean, he was being wheeled around and carted into movies to make a ton of money. But the thing which really got me in the L.A. Times story was there were a couple directors who did movies with him and then had chances to do them again. And they they they didn't. And the reason they said they didn't was because they felt. Like, they would have been participating in really, like, tarnishing, wow, his legacy as an actor and that they just thought they they thought it was almost impossible to make him look good and that he's Bruce Willis. And this is a this is an old aspect of Hollywood, right, where, you know, stars trust the directors and they trust the DPS especially to, like, shoot them nice right now. Don't we? I think I said this to you guys. When we did the Baywatch thing that I was shocked that the directors put Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson on screen in the way that they did because they looked awful. And your job is to protect you. Look aging. I look aging is terrible for everybody right now. Not everybody gets to look like Paul Newman. Paul Newman walked away and Robert Redford, God knows, walked away from film looking amazing. You know, like, and he didn't look young. They looked old. They looked their age, but they looked great for their age. That doesn't get to happen. Everybody. And, uh, I don't know, I, I was on the one hand, you understand why the family wants to make money. On the other hand, you wish that they would be protective of Willis and his, his public legacy in ways that like the other artists were right. Does that make sense? Like there's this tension between, and actually I don't think we know everything about this.
Sonny00:10:56Um, I'm curious to see what else comes out. I mean, look, here's my, um, my take on this thing from a artistic legacy point of view is that I, I have simply ignored all of the VOD red box output. I like, I'm not interested in the movies and I am not interested in, in writing about them except at possibly as a contrast to like what Nick cage has been doing. Right. I think I mentioned, I think I mentioned Bruce Willis. Briefly. And in the Nick cage piece I wrote a few months back, um, last year, uh, when pig pig came out because like there is a difference in the quality, there's a difference in the quality of work that Nick cage was doing in his VOD red box style movies. Then there is with what Bruce Willis is doing now, knowing what we know, fairly obvious why that, that difference exists. And like, uh, I, I'm glad that I didn't, I'm glad that I did not go long on that aspect of it because it, it. It really is. I mean, those are the assholes at the Razzies with their, you know, uh, worst Bruce Willis performance in 2021 category where they just listed the seven movies he made. Um, and you know, like, oh, look at, look at this guy. He's, you know, he's making all these movies like, uh, your awards show sucks anyway. And like, it's predicated on cruelty and being a dick. And like, if you, I don't know, I just like that sort of thing drives me crazy. Because I, I, I, I don't see there's as a, as a movie lover and as a lover of Bruce Willis movies, like it's just not fun. Like punch that's punching down, punching down and, uh, we don't punch down in this house.
?00:12:39Yeah.
JVL00:12:40I, I agree in total with that. Like I've always thought the Razzies was cruel and I'm sorry. You know what? It's really fucking hard to make a movie. It's really fucking hard to make a good movie. You know, you, you've got to have like 150. 50 different artists all coming together around a vision in ways that work. And it, you know, it, it's really hard to make it work out. Right. Right. Walter Murch called it. It's like winning a game of negative 20 questions. And, uh, I, you know, I'm sorry. I'm glad that you cool kids can, can talk about all the movies that didn't work out. Good.
Sonny00:13:24Good for you. But they're not even cool kids. They're just, I mean, it's like neckbeard guys. Yeah. It's, it's the total it's, it's comic book guy, the, the award show. And like, I don't know, man, anyway, let's celebrate, celebrate Bruce Willis.
JVL00:13:42It is weird to say goodbye to an actor like that. Cause he's not. Yeah. Right. No, but we are like, it is saying goodbye. Right. I feel retiring. Who else just stepped away? Robert Redford has stepped away recently.
Sonny00:13:53Sean Connery.
Vic00:13:54Remember he made a very. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So here's, here's stepping away and you kept the thing. Maybe he'll come back, but he didn't.
Sonny00:14:01So this is, this is an interesting thing. I remember, uh, I remember when I interviewed Michael Caine, when I worked at the Washington times interviewed Michael Caine and he told, he, he was like, yeah, you know, Gene Hackman announced he retired and then just like went away and didn't make any more movies. And like, I don't have any interest in announcing a retirement, but when I don't, when I don't get offers anymore, I'll stop making movies, but I like making movies. And, but Gene Hackman was a guy who retired like after, I think it was. Yeah.
JVL00:14:26Welcome to Moose port.
Sonny00:14:27Yeah. Which was like two movies after the Royal Tenenbaums. Yeah. Um, and just, just went away. Just like there was a photo of him from a year or two ago that circulated on, on Twitter. It was like, he just, he just, he looks old now. He just went away. Yeah. And like in, in actors don't really do that. That even Robert Redford.
JVL00:14:46Didn't Michael Caine just retire?
Sonny00:14:47No, there was a story going around about my Michael. Somebody, somebody.
JVL00:14:51I thought that was his last, his last was in the Nolan movie.
Sonny00:14:53No. No, but I, I mean. Yeah. We talked about this when tenant came out that, that, I mean the, the, I think the last line that John David Washington says to him is goodbye, Sir Michael or something like that. That's right. And like, that felt like that felt very much like Christopher Nolan saying. Yeah. Adios.
Vic00:15:11I'm not gonna cast you anymore or that, or that, that was his message. That was his not so subtle way to say, okay.
Sonny00:15:18Uh, but yeah, but like actors, actors of Bruce Willis's caliber do not retire. Arnold Schwarzenegger hasn't retired. Sylvester Stallone has not retired. Yeah. Mel Gibson, you know.
JVL00:15:27Bruce Willis is. Yeah.
Vic00:15:29They died. They don't retire. Bruce Willis is 67.
JVL00:15:32He just turned 67. So. Well, I guess this is a testament to American healthcare because these guys always used to die in their primes because not in their primes, but you know, die before they got to be really old because so much sex, drugs and rock and roll. That's right. Right. And now.
Vic00:15:47Or, or, or you, you know, or you have something like what, what happened to William Holden? Remember how he died? No. He, he was, he was drinking and then he just banged his head. On the coffee table and decided to, uh, you know, you know, just, you know, shake it off and take a nap on the couch and then he bled to death because nobody came. You know what I mean? They just, oh, I just banged my head. Let me just. And that was it. It wasn't, I thought he died of alcoholism, but I mean, you know, related, it was drink related. Um, all right. So let's celebrate that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, he Bruce Willis made, uh, being bald very fast. It was fashionable before it was fashionable and people were trying to do stuff with their, with what remaining hair they had on their head. And I think about Sean Connery, God bless him. Yes. I remember Sean Connery before the untouchables remember him in, you know, the hair pieces even never say never again. Um, and I was thinking of, uh, another, uh, uh, another actor who, who was also similarly, uh, trying, you know, wearing hair pieces. Oh, Ted Danson was the same way for, for a long time, you know, because they couldn't, it was too shocking, but he did this whole, but you know, and, and it was, it was part of his macho look and it totally worked, you know, having, ha having that Ted Danson's
Sonny00:17:00not bald, right? He just has like that shock of white hair.
JVL00:17:03No, but he has a hairpiece. He's bald. That the hair he, what you see in the good place is a, is a wig.
Sonny00:17:09Yeah. Oh really? Yeah. He's bald. No idea. Yeah. See, um, see, I don't know. I, I just assumed he had a nice full head of hair.
Vic00:17:17It's a really good one. No, he finally, you know, when he finally acknowledged it, like in one of the last episodes of cheers, uh, and he was making a joke too. I think it was, uh, uh, Diane at times like, or, or Kirstie Allen, and he's like, look at this. And he started and he does this thing. Cause everyone knew, you know, a lot of people knew about it and, but he, his character decides to admit that he is wearing a thing, a piece, uh, in any event, um, a, he was born in, he, he, he was an army brat, right? So he was born in Germany. Uh, but he grew up where JVL Jersey, where in Jersey, I'll give you a bonus points. Oh boy. Uh, I don't know this. I'll tell you where I thought he was. And I was very close. Uh, I, I thought he was born in, I thought he grew up rather in Carney's point, but close Penn's Grove. Wow. Yeah.
JVL00:18:08Exit one. Yeah. Out there. Next to deep water. That's right. Deep water. Penn's Grove. Exactly.
Vic00:18:16Thank you. I didn't even know that people lived down there. I thought it was just like a refinery.
JVL00:18:19Nothing else there.
Vic00:18:20Right. I mean, it's, it's just, there's a nuclear power plant. Oh yes, there is. Because when you go over the bridge on the horizon, you can see it. You can see it. You can see the cooling tower. You can see the cooling tower. You can see the cooling tower. We're the same person. Yeah. Anytime I drive, uh, you like when I'm about to enter Delaware, I always see the, the Carney's point water tower. And that always reminded me of Bruce Willis, but it was Penn's Grove. That's where it was, which is you see signs for that as well. So way down there, that's where he's from anyway. Uh, and, and, and then, and then he just sort of came onto the scene, I guess in, in, in moonlighting, but it's really, for me, I thought quite remarkable, the jump he made. Uh, cuz he did go basically from moonlighting and he still had one more year left on that show. He did die hard in the middle of moonlighting. Yes. He did it on a hiatus. Yeah. And it was not just a good movie. It was, it was, uh, like he made a jump from TV to being a massive, to a massive blockbuster where I remember George Clooney, I think one of his first movies was peacekeeper.
JVL00:19:17Uh, peacemaker, peacemaker and, uh, and Clooney's attempt to jump to the big screen took like three or four tries. Yes. Yeah. He did from dusk till dawn. From dusk till dawn. He did peacemaker. He did a couple other things. Out of sight. Uh, out of sight works as a movie. I like that movie. But the others didn't. Right. Right. He did, they did the Batman movie. That didn't work. Yeah. It took him a while to really find his footing in movies. Right. Right. And not Bruce Willis.
Sonny00:19:45No. Yeah. So, uh. People, people actually like revolted against Bruce Willis. Like potential customers were like angry about him being in the poster and stuff like, how the guy from Moonlighting being an action star, we don't believe it. He's got a gun. Come on. Yeah. This is not.
Vic00:20:01That's funny. It doesn't make any sense. No. And, and, and it's, it's, it's hard as, as you were just pointing, pointing out with these other, uh, actors to, uh, you know, pull off, I, again, I running scared the Gregory Hines, Billy Crystal cop movie. You know, there are, there are, there are scenes and I don't know where I came across it recently and there are scenes where it's clear they're trying to make Billy Crystal into an action star because there's a lot of guns and things. And he's on the, and he's funny, but he can, but like Bruce Willis is funny, but he can also do that.
JVL00:20:28But it just didn't quite work for, you know, trying to make Gregory Hines into an action star too. That and white, uh, white, white nights with Mikhail Bryshkinov.
Vic00:20:39That's right. And a young Helen Mirren, um, your favorite happy Bruce Willis slots.
JVL00:20:46You know, I just, he is such an off kilter movie star, right? And we, we, we have in our head. Heads that movie stars fit certain types of buckets, right? There is your carry grant bucket, which is essentially what George Clooney is. There is your, uh, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone bucket, right? The, the muscle bound action star, there is your Tom cruise bucket, which is like industry unto himself and Bruce Willis just sort of hangs around almost in like a little, this little universe of him and Keanu Reeves, where a totally durable leading man who does great work in multiple decades in multiple genres, who doesn't really look like a leading man, right? He doesn't fit any of the classic versions of it. Um, and he works both as a lead and as a supporting actor he's so nobody's fool might be my favorite movie.
Vic00:21:53Oh, that's a great movie.
JVL00:21:54Yeah. And that's a great movie. With Paul Newman. And Paul Newman is great in it. And Bruce Willis is fabulous in it too. And he makes Paul Newman. He just puts Paul Newman over the top.
Vic00:22:04I have a question for you as a supporting actor and nobody's fool.
JVL00:22:08Yeah. Melanie Griffith. Besides the cop, is the cop, is that Philip Seymour Hoffman? Am I wrong? It's Philip Seymour Hoffman. Ah. Philip Seymour Hoffman. Okay. Uh, you know, and so he can do a big movie like the fifth element, he can do a movie like the sixth sense, which he carries in. I believe every single scene, I believe he's in every single scene. No, no.
Vic00:22:31I mean, there are some scenes that are, are there any without Joel Osmond? Oh yeah. Like with the mom and stuff.
JVL00:22:35I mean, he's just, he straps that movie onto his back and carries it. You could throw him into like an art house thing, like pulp fiction where there's a bazillion different things going on and he's, he's, he's great. And then you could put him in something like die hard, which is a genre defining. Yeah. Masterpiece. And he is so good that he makes the movie work, but then lets the movie happen around him. Yeah. I just, we just don't have a lot of, a lot of leading men and a lot of actors who can do all of those different things.
Sonny00:23:12Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, his versatility is, is obviously key. I mean like even in movies that don't work, like bonfire, the vanities, right? Like he's still very, very good in, in that. Um, I, I mean, I, I always liked him as like, it's, it's weird. It's very weird looking back through his filmography over the last few days, just to like kind of pinpoint what my favorites were, because sometimes, sometimes I would go with something like tears of the sun. He's fantastic in tears of the sun.
Vic00:23:40Um, just like, as like the action violence quad, really a plus, plus, plus, and that
Sonny00:23:48one. Uh, but he, and he's also good in like the heavily stylized sin city as hard again, you know, the, like the, the, you know, cop with a heart of gold, um, great in the whole nine
JVL00:24:00yards action comedy. That's great.
Vic00:24:05And then another quadrant killer. That is a quad. Boy, Amanda. Oh, well that's, that's required for Amanda peed, I think.
JVL00:24:13But the, uh, you know, the other thing is the, just compare him to Sandy Bullock, who we talked about on Friday, Sandra Bullock is. I think an equivalent level movie star, but you look through her body of work in the number of the number of really good movies that she's been in versus the number of really good movies that well, this is in is just, so his project selection was really, really top notch.
Vic00:24:42Yeah.
JVL00:24:43And I don't know if that's just the luck of the draw or if that was him being intentional or if it was that the, his specific talents made him. Yeah. Suitable for all those roles. I don't know what it is, but you know, she's doing great work in a lot of movies, many of which are not very good. He's doing great work in a movie, a surprising number of which are really, really quite good.
Sonny00:25:08Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I like just great, great project selection is part of it. I mean, and also just like he, he is a exceptionally compelling screen presence and he can make mediocre stuff very, very good. Right. Like Unbreakable, for instance, I was going to mention Unbreakable. Yeah. Unbreakable is I like, I I've gone on this, this, this rant before, but Unbreakable is the movie that like pre sages the whole comic book boom, right? It comes out in 2000. It is literally about comic books and like the mythology of comic books and you know, uh, heroes and villains and all that. And like he is, he is outstanding in that. And it's not a very typical role for him cause it's kind of more quiet.
Vic00:25:51It's not the whole movie.
Sonny00:25:54Yeah. He is very, he's very, he's more dour than he kind of usually is, but it sells it. He sells it. I love, oh God, I love that movie. I, I, Unbreakable might be my favorite Shyamalan and it's one of my favorite movies of the 2000s.
Vic00:26:09I revisit it all the time. There are certain scenes that he, he really decided to go very dark. I thought, uh, Shyamalan in that movie, the opening with the train thing, which is so, you know, disturbing. Um, in the ER.
JVL00:26:20Well, this is great just in that little scene flirting with the girl on the train. Yeah. Yeah.
Vic00:26:25Like it's a tiny little throwaway bit of work. But it's fabulous. And the whole movie is an origin story movie. It's not like, you know what I mean? Until the very end, it's just him discovering and-
Sonny00:26:33Well, you don't realize it until- Yeah. That's right.
Vic00:26:36Until it gets there. Again, it's like- And it's exciting because he's there and he's in the garage with his son and he's like, how much weight can you add to the, you know, what he bench presses.
Sonny00:26:42It's a great scene. One of the craziest, the craziest experience I have ever had at a press screening was the press screening for Split.
Vic00:26:50Oh.
Sonny00:26:51Uh, which is where... Remember where Bruce Willis shows up at the end and it loops back to Unbreakable. 'Cause I remember thinking in this movie, like while I was watching it, literally while I was watching it in my notes, I had, man, I really think the only way you can sell this movie is if like Bruce Willis shows up at the end as Unbreakable. 'Cause it's like Philly. Universe. It's, you know, whatever. And then it fucking happened and the crowd lost it. Like it was a combination, you know, critic, you know- And audience. It was a radio winner- Yes, radio. Crowd. And even the critics were like, like pumping their fist. It was the craziest thing I've ever seen in a movie theater. I mean, it was just- It's the scene at the bar, right?
Vic00:27:34It was amazing.
Sonny00:27:35They're at the bar and it's on the news on the TV. Yeah. Well, he's at a diner. He's at like a diner. He's like watching the news.
JVL00:27:40Sonny, I'm gonna, this is how, how well Vicka and I know each other. I can tell you what Vick's favorite experience at a press screener was. Okay.
?00:27:49I know.
JVL00:27:50Yeah. Yeah. I know what he's going through. I know what he's going to say. Do you want me to say it? Do you want me to say it? So, should I write it down on a note card and hold it up so that you believe me when
Vic00:27:59I- Yes. Yeah.
JVL00:28:02Write it down. Write it down JVL. Hold on one second.
Vic00:28:05You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna text it just to Sonny. Okay. Yeah.
?00:28:09So, I don't know. Here we go.
JVL00:28:11Hold on. Uh-huh. And we've seen many movies together. We've seen many, many movies. All right. We've been to the, I should say we went to the-
Vic00:28:17If it's this one, I'll be shocked. I should say we went to the theater together a lot. I should say. Go ahead. Lethal up in four.
JVL00:28:23That's it. That's it.
Vic00:28:25Because it's the scene with Jet Li and his henchmen and they're in the house and Renee Russo is there and she's pregnant and this gunplay is going on and everybody was so excited about that.
JVL00:28:41I have never in my life seen an audience pop for a movie the way that audience popped for Lethal 11.
?00:28:50Yeah.
JVL00:28:50Everything about from Chris Rock to Jet Li to Joe Pesci to the whole heritage like it's family thing. That crowd went nuts for it. And Sonny, I feel, you know, Vic completes me.
Vic00:29:09You had me at Lethal Weapon.
Sonny00:29:12All right. I'm sure it's fine.
?00:29:20We'll see you next time.
Spot something wrong in this episode? Suggest a correction →
Comments
Loading…