Moonlighting creator says Bruce Willis is “incommunicative”
Bruce Willis knew Moonlighting was going to come to streaming, and he's happy about it, says Glenn Gordon Caron
Aux News Bruce Willis
Moonlighting finally coming to streaming (on Hulu, to be specific) means that the show can reach a whole new audience. That whole new audience will then be able to appreciate a new side of star Bruce Willis, they may know primarily as an action star. Series creator Glenn Gordon Caron told the New York Post that he knows Willis is “really happy that the show is going to be available for people” even if the actor “can’t tell me that” amid his frontotemporal dementia diagnosis.
“When I got to spend time with him we talked about it and I know he’s excited… The process [to get Moonlighting onto Hulu] has taken quite a while and Bruce’s disease is a progressive disease, so I was able to communicate with him, before the disease rendered him as incommunicative as he is now, about hoping to get the show back in front of people. I know it means a lot to him,” Caron said.
“The thing that makes [his disease] so mind-blowing is [that] if you’ve ever spent time with Bruce Willis, there is no one who had any more joie de vivre than he. He loved life and… just adored waking up every morning and trying to live life to its fullest,” the creator shared. “My sense is the first one to three minutes he knows who I am. He’s not totally verbal; he used to be a voracious reader—he didn’t want anyone to know that—and he’s not reading now. All those language skills are no longer available to him, and yet he’s still Bruce.”
Heartbreakingly, Caron added, “When you’re with him you know that he’s Bruce and you’re grateful that he’s there, but the joie de vivre is gone.”
Willis was initially diagnosed with aphasia; his family announced the FTD diagnosis earlier this year. The actor’s wife Emma Hemming spoke about his health on Today last month, sharing, “There’s so many beautiful things happening in our lives. It’s just really important for me to look up from the grief and the sadness so that I can see what is happening around us. Bruce would really want us to be in the joy of what is. He would really want that for me and our family.”
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If anyone hasn’t seen it, I highly recommend Death Becomes Her. Not only is it an absolutely hilarious movie with groundbreaking effects that still mostly hold up well, with Willis killing it in an against-type role, but after his condition was revealed, the movie’s ending now takes on an incredibly moving new meaning that no one making it could have imagined.
“If anyone hasn’t seen it”Where’s your faith in humanity!
“…And then what?!”
In the trash where it belongs
So does this scene in “Atomic Shakespeare”.
That BMW logo on the horse is the kind of stupid joke that really tickles me.
And the shagpile saddle. That “Clean the bugs outta her teeth” really only works with that Noo Joizee bravado, too.It really is a massive loss.
My word Hawn is an absolute smokeshow in that movie.
One of my favorites to show people who haven’t seen it. So good.
bruce willis was always the coolest movie star and this slow degradation is heartbreaking. i’m just gonna pretend he went out on top in 2011 with looper and moonrise kingdom and then retired.
Yeah it kinda sucks when you look back at some of the crap he was involved in over the last few years and realise he was just trying to get as much done as he could before he wasn’t able to anymore.
Its a shame we’ll never get another top tier Willis flick.
And such respect for why he did it, to make sure his loved ones would be taken care of. He was reportedly still gettin 1 million per role, and he banked 21 movies in the last two years of his career. That’s a nice sum for his family.
Especially when public reaction to the quality of those movies, and the fact that he used an earpiece to have his lines read to him, was that he just didn’t give a shit anymore and couldn’t be bothered to learn the part. Nope – trying to be sure his family was as set for life as possible.
I watched Moonrise Kingdom the other day and I thought Willis was great, even though he was maybe a little miscast. I thought he was really good at the deadpan humor.
God, I wish he’d worked with Anderson earlier and more often. He was so great in ‘Moonrise Kingdom’ and I think he could have killed it in other roles like it.
Ah jeez, this really is sad. It’s going to make my annual Christmas Die Hard viewing that much more melancholy.
Yet more poignant? Die Hard is where his acting turn went down, so it’s pivotal
With Moonlighting finally easily available, I look forward to all the Gen Z people learning why there was a time when the idea of “Bruce Willis, action hero” was considered so laughable.
The great thing about Willis in ‘Die Hard’ was it was the birth of a whole new kind of action hero. Up until then there’d been Schwarzenegger, Stallone, JCVD: indestructible grimacing walls of muscle who plowed their way through enemies without emotion and without breaking a sweat. John McClane was a normal sized guy who panicked, got the shit kicked out of him, snuck around, cracked wise, and beat the bad guys using his wits more than his muscles. (And usually a very limited amount of bullets.) It breathed so much new life into the genre to have that guy be the protagonist.
Yet more poignant? Die Hard is where his acting turn went down, so it’s pivotal.Are you implying that because Die Hard was an action film, that strong acting was not required? Or delivered?
Pulp Fiction came out after Die Hard
Keep trying, it’s still not a Christmas movie.
It’s very sad. Dementia is a very cruel illness. And I say that as someone with direct first hand experience/observation. This must all be very hard for Bruce Willis’ friends and family.
My dad died from Lewy body dementia in August, and this all reads step-by-step depressingly familiar.
For some reason this article omits the Moonlighting creator’s last name. It’s Glenn Gordon Caron.
I was not prepared for how sad I was going to feel reading this and realizing that Bruce is already at the point where he can’t talk, and his family is no longer 100% certain that he’s even fully aware of the world around him anymore. Like, we all knew that’s where this was heading, but I think we were hoping he’d be lucky and it would progress super slowly and he’d still have at least a few halfway decent years left before it got to that point.
They probably wouldn’t have announced the diagnosis if the situation hadn’t begun to crater.
No one said he is “incommunicative.” The quote, which is right in the article you wrote refers to him being “as incommunicative as he is,” which means something very different. I’m not saying this isn’t sad or that Bruce Willis is actually doing quite well thank you very much, I’m just saying your headline sucks and undermines your credibility, which you should care about as a writer.
“The quote, which is right in the article you wrote refers to him being “as incommunicative as he is,” which means something very different.”
What do you think “as incommunicative as he is,” means? IT MEANS HE’S INCOMMUNICATIVE. It’s RIGHT fucking there.
Don’t be a cock.
Yeah the headline’s implication is that he’s entirely beyond any ability to communicate, which is not what Gordon is saying.
welcome to the 2023 AV CLUB!
When you’re on The AV Club, you can still occasionally recognize certain aspects of the site it once was. But its joie de vivre is gone!
Welcome to the modern AV Club
..pal!
That quote definitely means he is some degree of incommunicative, even if not totally.“ I was able to communicate with him, before the disease rendered him as incommunicative as he is now…”“He’s not totally verbal…All those language skills are no longer available to him, and yet he’s still Bruce.”I feel like the word choice is not wrong.
That headline removes all the intended nuance and context from the word in question. As someone who writes medical texts, I can attest: This is indeed a shit headline, which apparently intentionally misrepresents the situation TO GET FUCKING CLICKS. A genuine 100% asshole move.Let’s just throw this on the already 1,000-ton mound that is the AVClub’s Pile of Journalistic Shame.
Plus even if that’s what he said (which you’re right he didn’t) why would that be the headline? The interview is about Moonlighting and how Willis was happy it was coming to streaming. Not about whether or not he’s communicating.
I was unaware of his medical decline and initially thought the headline indicated he was just being an anti-social dick about the whole thing.
undermines your credibility, which you should care about as a writer.
AIs care not for credibility.
So Die Hard 6 is happening?
your credibility, which you should care about as a writer.- the A.V. Club
The headlines aren’t necessarily written by the writers. Most of the comments on these articles are equally as fucking stupid as the articles but nobody seems to be scolding anyone about that, or questioning what a ‘good comment’ is or whether failing to deliver one, ‘undermines your credibility’.
Re-read it. It’s not incorrect.
He’s not totally verbal; he used to be a voracious reader—he didn’t want anyone to know that—and he’s not reading now. That sentence alone scares the shit outta me. If there is anything I love, its simply reading. I blow through about 300 books a year of just about anything from classics to biographies to world history to trashy fantasy to manga. I am almost constantly reading something. My dream is to retire quietly in a little private library somewhere and devour books.And having that taken away from me sounds like the 7th circle of hell.
My dream is to retire quietly in a little private library somewhere and devour books.
Don’t step on your glasses after the bombs drop.
So glad to hear that about Moonlighting. His smartass, roguish persona plugged so perfectly into the John McClane character. That’s why it was so disappointing that the franchise eventually turned him into an action hero – he won in Die Hard because he was quick-witted. And his chemistry with Cybill Shepherd was off the charts.
To think, I initially gave Moonlighting a shot because Booger was in it.
He popped up this morning in our conversation at breakfast time when the wife and I were deciding on a movie for the weekend and we settled on The Expendables 4. Rotten shame about Willis, I liked Moonlighting so much that I bought the soundtrack album. His music video of Good Lovin’ with him riding a horse with BMW logos was kickass.
When we got married 25 years ago, we played “Good Lovin’” at the end of the ceremony as a homage
Bruce Willis casually winning a guest star Emmy, because he’s a NEAT GUY
Bruce Willis in this one scene is significantly more entertaining than the majority of the rest of the show.
It’s funny to realize a generation or two know him almost exclusively as an action star. When Die Hard was announced, action heroes were Arnold and Sly and Chuck. I couldn’t take the guy from Moonlighting in that role seriously. But what do you know, the man could do just about anything.
I beg to differ. Chuck Norris was definitely not as popular as JCVD. Chuck Norris is/was a C movie star at best. Arnold, Sly and JCVD coming in at a distant 3rd.
Except sing
I originally put that at the end of my post, but it seems a lot of people think highly of even his singing, so I decided not to kick him when he’s down.
The “everyman” action hero angle is part of what made Die Hard so successful, though. And many of his most successful non-Die Hard roles after that aren’t “action star” movies, either— Pulp Fiction, 12 Monkeys, and Sixth Sense aren’t anyway.
Of course. It was impossible to know that before it came out though.
I loved that fucking show.
Fifth Element will always be his best movie. It’s peak Willis.
“[H]e used to be a voracious reader—he didn’t want anyone to know that”.Willis always gave me the impression of being smarter than the image he sometimes put out. There was a kind of watchfulness in his gaze, like he was taking everything in and processing it. I think that was the secret to his performances that could mix drama and comedy so well.
Here’s a radical idea: no one talk about Willis’ condition publicly. Not his wife (who bizarrely did a media tour about it), not his friends, no one. Leave him be. Like Jack Nicholson, who is also dying.
Just watched the Moonlighting pilot, and I don’t think there’s ever been a greater debut TV performance by an actor. From second one he shows up as peak motherfuckin’ Bruce Willis and never lets up. I don’t think he ever had a better role for his talents.
This info seems too personal for a non family member to be releasing it.