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Remembering Bruce Willis’s Career
So, there’s bad news today. Bruce Willis’s family announced to the press his retirement from acting, after a diagnosis of aphasia; who knows how bad his health is but, at 67, his career is over. In our strange age, the news came as an Instagram post by his daughter. I suppose the press is just as dead as Hollywood, so it makes sense to go to social media, but in the context, it’s one more baffling thing for the millions of fans, learning about life, the body, and mortality in the ghost world of the internet.
We are stuck with all these contradictions: It’s there in a personal post, but it’s spreading all over the world—it’s going to be recorded forever by computer memory, but it’s likely to be forgotten instantly by most people who glance at this bit of news. So, there is an end to all that — not even fame has any power over us anymore.
Willis is the last actor to have something of the combination of manly charm, comic talent, a few famous roles, working with remarkable directors and writers, and the luck that makes a star. The best we can do with an actor we admire is to enjoy his work and learn from his portrayals of character and enactments of story. If we learn about our society from the movies, we are likelier to remember and be grateful.
Our memories much more than the fantasies of the screen count now, so here are my essays on Bruce Willis:
- My Die Hard essay for Law&Liberty and the two podcasts I did on the movie, talking crime in American cities with Pete Spiliakos. This was a big issue in movies from the ’70s to the early ’90s, though unheard of now. Also, redemption for police officers with C.J. Wolfe, which is a theme as timely and as absent from our cinema. This is his most famous role, the movie likeliest to be remembered 50 years hence, not to say to become a national pastime for a while, as a Christmas movie! So read up, listen to the conversations, remember the citizen-hero: Director John McTiernan gave Willis something close to immortal fame as John McClane!
- Next, something much stranger: my essay on 12 Monkeys on its 25th anniversary, a fascinating Terry Gilliam fantasy of a techno-tyranny emerging from biological terrorism that spoke with newfound urgency in 2020. Willis was then at the peak of his powers, playing various kinds of working-class heroes that might save decadent, too sophisticated for their own good societies…
- Here’s a review of one of Willis’s recent movies, Death Wish (2018), Eli Roth’s remake of the ‘70s Bronson vigilante story. Worth thinking about how much deadlier our cities are, how cowardly and cruel our liberalism, and how impotent the citizenry is. This movie is a good jolt to begin such reflections…
- (I also lamented the scabrous roasts that make our decadence uglier with a taste for the sordid, more desperate than excited, and which quickly becomes boring. Willis was the willing victim of such an ugly spectacle, just as his career was going down the drain. It’s one of the ugly truths about our times that we tolerate or even pay for degrading spectacles…)
I’m really sorry for you, and for Bruce’s situation
I thought aphasia was a motor thing. An inability for form and speak words. Cognitive functions remain intact but making the muscles form the words doesn’t work. Can someone correct me? Bruce’s condition sounds more like dementia.
I’ve got an essay upcoming in Law & Liberty on Bruce Willis as citizen-hero, blue collar, but wittier than his elite antagonists, he’s the outsider, they have control or knowledge of institutional power, yet lose ultimately, & poetic justice is done. Hopefully, people will remember the all-American drama his best characters evoked, it’s what sets him apart as an actor, I think, in his time. At any rate, I wrote a passionate defense of those stories. I’ll post a link when it’s up!
I’ve always liked him and his movies. He threw all of himself into his roles. He is an American treasure and I was surprised and sad to learn of his illness. I wish him good treatments and good care going forward! Titus – thanks for the heads up.
My pleasure. Yes, the man now needs care, I hope he & his family will deal with this as best as can be…