Bruce Willis was asked to leave a Rite Aid for not wearing a mask and the jokes were good
Aux Features Bruce Willis
As much as we love to see a Bruce Willis news story in the winter that doesn’t have to do with whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie, this week found the actor dealing with a bit of bad press.
On Monday, Willis was asked to leave a Los Angeles Rite Aid after refusing to put on a mask, despite already having a bandana around his neck. The actor complied, albeit without making his purchase. The next day, he issued a statement to People, calling the incident “an error in judgment” and urging everyone to “be safe out there…and let’s continue to mask up.”
Perhaps Willis genuinely felt remorse over his blunder. Or maybe he was embarrassed by the inevitable dunking he received on Twitter. Let’s do a little roundup, shall we? Yipee-ki-ya, mother…ah, forget it.
Writer Daniel Kibblesmith parodied Die Hard with a title that’s quite horrific if you think long enough about the imagery:
Twitter user @crookedroads770 kept it simple:
Femi Oluwe refreshingly turned to a non-Die Hard movie for his zinger:
And even CNN’s Jake Tapper—feeling especially salty as of late from, well, everything—got in on the action:
But the crown jewel has to go to Kevin Smith, who slyly referenced his self-described “soul-crushing” experience working with Willis on 2010's Cop Out:
And there’s plenty more where that came from. But let’s also remember, Bruno made a mistake, he likely feels bad about it, and come this time next year, we’ll probably have forgotten about this and be back on that Christmas movie debate.
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113 Comments
Sure, he says he’s sorry for this, but I’m still waiting on an apology for The Return of Bruno.
In Bruce Willis’ defense, it wasn’t a double album.
No, it just felt like it.
Based on several news reports, we now know what Bruce Willis was shopping for:
Just like so many comebacks, Bruno wasn’t able to capture what really made his music great in the first place.
I remember watching the HBO special when it came out in the 80s that he made for it and the first half was hilarious. It was a great mockumentary about Bruno’s influence on all music since the 60s. Really fun and relaxed and using loads of rock history to play off. The second half, which was the live performance of the album, was, um, less good. Here’s the youtube link:
“Here’s the youtube link:” … um, yeah … but ah no thanks. we good?
I wonder what The Return of Bruno era Bruce Willis would think of the old humorless curmudgeon he has become.
I’m guessing like most humorless people, he wouldn’t realize he’s become so different and humorless. Or he’d view certain topics as being incapable of being humorous. Bummer, too, because he was amazing in Moonlighting and Return of Bruno in being able to poke and prod those things that deserved it. I know his smirk bothered folks but to teenaged me, he was revered.
For the basic cable broadcast of this story… “yipee-ki-yay, mask forgetter”
I’m paraphrasing but the Allmusic review to The Return of Bruno says he doesn’;t have the style or skills of The Blues Brothers. I say this as a blues musician with some street cred and bona fides that the Blues Brother do indeed kinda suck. I don’t care that they had a murder’s row of talent behind them. That just means the band was good, not Jake and Elroy. The BB = some kind of white boy minstrel show, but Bruce Willis was worse.
First of all, it’s Elwood, not Elroy. I’m not really qualified to judge Aykroyd’s harmonica skills – they seem fine to me – but Belushi was legitimately a great frontman. You can dismiss them as “white boy minstrel[s]” and act like their killer band didn’t matter, but the songs in the movie and on the soundtrack put the lie to that lazy assertion.If nothing else, the Blues Brothers were successful as ambassadors of blues music and some great musicians. It easy to forget that Aretha Franklin/Ray Charles/Cab Calloway/John Lee Hooker had ups and downs in their careers, and weren’t necessarily considered legends/icons in 1980 the way they are today. The Blues Brothers movie helped bring them back into the forefront of the public consciousness.Fun Fact: To bring this back to the discussion at hand, the kid trying to steal a guitar from Ray’s Music Exchange in The Blues Brothers grew up to be a chauffeur named Argyle, who drove another great blues musician to Nakatomi Plaza.
“Aretha Franklin/Ray Charles/Cab Calloway/John Lee Hooker weren’t necessarily considered legends/icons in 1980 the way they are today.”Half right. Maybe not Calloway and Hooker but Aretha and Ray Charles for sure were in the 80s.
Huh, I don’t know why I typed Elroy?The Ray Charles guitar scene is one of my favorite parts of that movie.They did have a killer band, but overall the music is mediocre. It’s like a Vegas review. Steve Cropper is one of the baddest white boys that ever lived. Compare Ackroyd’s harmonica playing to fellow white Boy Charlie Musselwhite which is whom they based the characters on apparently. Not the best example of Musselhite harmonica playing but an absolute killer cut from an early album.
12 Monkeys taught him nothing!
Well, he learned that he’s going to die anyway, and any attempt to change that will just lead you toward your fate.
It’s an ad-ver-tis-ment James.
That pronunciation brings me out of the movie every time, and single-handedly ended Madeline Stowe’s career. Did she ever make another movie?
I’m sure she has/had. It just always bothered me in this. She’s a tad snotty in this maybe, but she didn’t have a Madonna affectation or something throughout.
It’s sort of a big reference for some friends of mine. Maybe we’ve blown it out of proportion in the last 25 years.
“single-handedly ended Madeline Stowe’s career”Say what now?
SINGLE-HANDEDLY ENDED MADELINE STOWE’S CAREER!
She was on Revenge. It lasted four seasons on ABC. I will not stand for this Madeleine Stowe erasure.
That’s weird – she was also in the 1990 movie Revenge.Was there any connection between the movie and the TV show?
I never watched that show because it’s prime time soap trash, but I looked at her IMDB listing after reading your comment. I take back my original statement. I assumed that her career trajectory was in big budget prestige(ish) films with big time directors like Last of the Mohicans and Short Cuts. But those seem to be a blip on her resume, and Revenge is more in line with the bulk of the work she’s done.
Revenge is in fact prime time soap trash, but the first season was fun (I never made it through the series). At least we can both agree that Madeleine Stowe pronounces advertisement weirdly. Was she taught a mid-Atlantic accent at boarding school or something?
I lied. I watched the first three episodes, but I had forgotten Madeline Stowe was in it.Who can really tell why people pronounce things weirdly? Have you ever heard Shatner say sabotage? Why do people say tUmeric when there’s clearly an R in tURmeric? Why did my dad say Jay LEEno? He watched the Tonight show, and he must have heard it said the right way.
wait … that was the one with like a pandemic — a goddamn pandemic in that movie? and there were scenes with folks masked up in line on the streets and in an airport.What a fucking goober
i believe it was set in the far off time of 2024
Me neither.
This behavior is idiotic and bad anywhere in the US currently, but in LA this is exceptionally idiotic and awful.
I was going to make a Death Becomes Him type joke, but I am just so. fucking. tired! of being angry at assholes like him that wander into stores maskless. Seriously, what is their fucking problem?The UK announced 1 in 30 in London have covid. We are in a national lockdown. I went into my local Tesco last night and there were only 3 other shoppers (yay!) but I couldn’t believe what I was seeing – they were all maskless!! I said to a staff member stocking shelves “I can’t believe I am the only one in here wearing a mask” and he starts saying “No …” then looks around and goes “well that gentleman there has an exemption …. maybe you should get a discount for wearing a mask”. I’m like “I don’t care about a discount, I care about *my health*”, but dude acted like *I* was being a weirdo.Anyway, rant over …
There is an ongoing raging debate in my local community over whether it is “rude” to ask a stranger to mask up. It drives me insane. My repeated response has been “it is far more rude to fucking spread a lethal pandemic.”
Thank you! I keep telling people to mask up with fairly mixed results, but at least a few times people had legit forgotten to put their masks on and apologized profusely while also masking up.I’ve had conversations with a lot of people about how they don’t feel comfortable doing that but are glad I am, and I say more or less exactly what you did – that threatening someone else’s safety is much more rude than telling them to mask up. The example I use is I’m not worried about my manners if someone’s waving a potentially loaded gun around.
LoL yes one lady called me “mean”. I was like “It’s meaner to get a stranger killed because you were too stubborn to wear a mask.”
Yeah, they’ll definitely see me get mean if they don’t mask up or back off – my wife is a type 1 diabetic, so I pretty much view it as a threat on her life when someone tries to enter her space (or, by extension, my space since I would definitely pass it to her) without a mask.
So right on Christmas Eve I had to get a Covid test because I was exposed to someone with active Covid. I opted to do the rapid response, the PCR and the antibody test. Turns out I did not have Covid, however, I did have longer acting antibodies in my system. This means I had asymptomatic Covid at some point in the past few months, including while I was out in public. But, since I’m not a sociopath, I wore my mask everywhere in public. Knowing I didn’t expose anyone to Covid has been a huge comfort.And that’s why you wear a mask, because you may never know you’re the risk.
Doesn’t he have people to do his shopping for him?
He enjoys shopping, because it allows him to walk into various stores, look around in bewilderment, and say, “California.”
They absolutely do but sometimes they just need an ego boost.
I hate to think that Bruce Willis is this pitiful, but what are the odds that he wasn’t wearing a mask in Rite Aid just because he was hoping someone would recognize him?
Maybe they were out sick.
Probably, but even the richest famous people run out of milk and just decide to go get some rather than call an assistant.
“Or maybe he was embarrassed by the inevitable dunking he received on Twitter.”
Yeah, Bruce Willis definitely seems like a guy who is aware of twitter.
Also? Not a single one of those jokes was good.
He must have a Death Wish, and he’s probably going to Die Hard, unless he’s just Moonlighting as an anti-mask idiot. Hudson Hawk.
Payback!Oh wait that’s Mel Gibson…
Hudson Hawk is a fun movie. That is all.
It’s not great but it’s certainly more entertaining than many movies I’ve seen in my life.
I don’t agree, but the chapter about Hudson Hawk in With Nails justifies the purchase price of the entire book.
Well, now I have a new book to check out. Thanks, Internet stranger!
Also, Waterworld is a dumb-fun actioner, and even Ishtar isn’t nearly as bad as its reputation would suggest. These kinds of narratives tend to grow far beyond the movies that spawn them.
Glitter is legitimately terrible, though.
Waterworld isn’t quite as bad as its reputation, but I don’t think you can call it a dumb-fun actioner. It’s too long, too dour, too self-righteous, and too self-important. Kevin Costner doesn’t help by going out of his way to make his protagonist as unlikable as possible.It may be dumb, but the only fun and action come from Dennis Hopper’s scenery-chewing villain.
I’ve always liked Waterworld. It’s ludicrous but the post-apoc world it creates is fun.
It opens with a guy drinking his own pee, and the high concept is basically Mad Max on jets skis. I’ll grant that you have to ignore a lot of the ponderous reflections on the nature of mankind or whatever, but if you don’t think you’d enjoy watching Costner bungee jump out of a hot air balloon to save a boy from three crashing ski-doos or a floating fortress being stormed via water ski ramp, I don’t know what to tell you.
It’s certainly not a masterpiece, and it wildly overreaches on its themes sometimes, but I disagree that it doesn’t have a sense of humor about itself.
but if you don’t think you’d enjoy watching Costner bungee jump out of a hot air balloon to save a boy from three crashing ski-doos or a floating fortress being stormed via water ski ramp, I don’t know what to tell you. I would enjoy that, if it didn’t take 3 hours to get there. Oh, I’m sorry, it was actually 20 minutes, it just seemed like 3 hours.The thirst was hard with this one:
Never seen Waterworld or Ishtar, but I may have to now. Glitter is legitimately terrible, though.As is Gigli.
I mean, I’m not recommending them, exactly, but if you go in aware of their reputations as the biggest disasters of their respective decades, I think, like me, you’ll leave wondering what all the fuss was about.
Well, I watched them both last night, back to back, and was like, “What the fuck was Doobie talking about?! Those were terrible!” :-DIf they show up on a streaming service, I’ll probably end up watching them just for shits and gigs.
Dennis Hopper eating the scenery in Waterworld is great, otherwise I like The Postman better honestly.
One of Willis’ more underrated films.
I learned the words to Swinging On A Star from that movie. Good times.
Same!
He just wants to Die Hard 2.
I went to a press show of Hudson Hawk on a Tuesday morning. After about an hour I had had enough and went to leave, only to find that it was absolutely pissing down outside and I didn’t have an umbrella or raincoat. So that, your honour, was how I wound up watching all of Hudson Hawk.
Oh, Look Who’s Talking. You can bring Armageddon, but Bruce is Unbreakable Glass. The Cold Light of Day will show you The Last Man Standing, pal. Bruce’s gonna Live Free, or Die Hard, so Split before you get his Mercury Rising and he sees Red. Trust me, if Bruce Willis gets within Striking Distance, you better hope he takes Hostages so you have a chance for Extraction. If he doesn’t, you won’t Survive the Night without a visit to the Trauma Center, because his Reprisal is a motherfucker.
This reads like something Joe Biden would say if a factory worker offends him.
These are unacceptable unless you post them on a Twitter.
SOMETHING SOMETHING CORBIN DALLAS MULTIPASS.
Don’t Cop Out of wearing a mask, Willis! Or else your Sixth Sense will be thrown for a Looper and you’ll be seeing Red. North.
Well, at least he’s maybe a little ashamed? It’s more than I can say about the dozens of idiots protesting outside of city hall in my city at this very moment.
Yeah, he fucked up, but at least he acknowledged that he was wrong.It’s the people that double-down, play the victim, whine about freedom of speech – those are the real assholes.
He only apologized because his publicist told him too.
Yeah, Bruce Willis seems like a guy who does what his publicist tells him to do.
Probably, but at least he followed good advice.
I love the people here espousing all their righteous indignation…SMH.As if no one has forgotten to put on mask but realize it and put it on. Or leave it behind as they exit their car only to go back and get it.Don’t love it just how social media radicalizes folks 🙂
Now I Have COVID-19. Ho Ho Ho
I know this is not the time but;Hudson Hawk was good, damn it!
I agree, though I watched it the same week in 1991 that I saw Nothing but Trouble, and I suppose there isn’t a movie in creation that doesn’t benefit from that comparison.
The thing about a Covid cough is it’s wet and it’s dry.My, my, my, my.
I respect that Smith only chose to do an innocent joke, considering what a fucking cunt Willis reportedly was on the set of Cop Out.BTW… Few careers puzzle me as much as Willis’. Dude managed to switch from action to “serious” acting with gusto, then suddenly began to turn into a prick that apparently no one tolerates and stopped giving a fuck about anything.Like, Nic Cage started slumming it as hell but dude is apparently nothing but nice and he actually turns in great performances now and then, especially if a project excites him (I recommend watching interviews with him about Mandy – dude talks about it as if Panos Cosmatos saved him from a burning building by casting him in it).
I’d call it more disappointing than puzzling. Some people just stop giving a fuck once they get a certain level of fame/money. And that’s clearly what happened with Willis. He’s probably difficult to work with, but some people like that – Edward Norton and Christian Bale come to mind – still give great performances.Willis’ performances for the last ~20 years are just so fucking lazy. It’s insulting as a viewer to see how few fucks he gives. Planet Hollywood should have a display for all the envelopes Bruce Willis used to mail in performances.The disappointing part is that he has/had a ton of charisma, comedic skill, and acting talent. He could have had all-time great career if he could have been bothered to give half a shit.
I don’t remember what impression What Just Happened left on me, but his role in that film – as himself, so make of that what you will – was the last I saw him in where he seemed to give a damn. Admittedly, I haven’t seen him in much since he started doing a whole bunch of direct-to-DVD/VOD stuff.
I’m a little surprised that What Just Happened hasn’t gained at least a cult following. Like you said, it’s an example of Bruce Willis giving a damn, and it’s a rare recent example of Robert DeNiro giving a damn. I think we don’t hear about it much because it’s too incisive, too accurate about Hollywood. Lesson One: You can never shoot the (you know).
All I remember of it is that I liked Willis’ performance. It’s probably due a rewatch.
When Cop-Out came out on DVD in the UK it carried a sticker on the sleeve saying ‘For Die Hard Fans Only’. Liked that.
I find the lack of references to Lucky Number Sleven disturbing.
11-14 year old me who always thought he wasn’t good enough to be a love interest to Cybill Shepherd was proved right these last 20+ years. Not because of his looks (which was my point as a kid) but because he is a dipshit tool!
Man, we got a Bruce Willie and Anne Hathways story in the same day. AVC is my jam.
Zed’s Dead, Baby. Zed’s Dead.Next …
He felt a slight sting, but that was just pride fuckin’ with him.
“I’m from America, honey. Masks don’t mean shit.”
Rite Aid still exists? I thought the sale to Walgreens (originally blocked for antitrust reasons) finally went through. At least in my area, all the Rite Aids became Walgreens a couple of years ago.
Bandanas are better than nothing, but they’re not a substitute for masks, and mentioning that he had one around his neck seems to imply otherwise. This is not to defend him, as I assume someone offered him a mask if he didn’t have one on his person.
or…..maybe…. he is just another entitled straight white male boomer asshole
likely
What kind of vile, worthless person do you have to be to use your star power to bully drugstore employees, who are already risking their health for little pay?
Based on the article, there was no bullying of anyone. The employee asked him to put a mask on, and he walked out. Unless there’s more information not mentioned here, no one got bullied.
Marching into a store maskless when you’re a famous movie star and forcing some poor clerk or store manager to confront you is bullying.
Lol, no.I went to walmart a few days before xmas to buy some wrapping paper. I’m work from home and usually do curbside for my groceries so I haven’t been to a physical store in months.I got all the way to the sidewalk before I started thinking something was off,and that’s when I realized that I forgot to put my mask on.I could have easily wandered in without realizing and then had to leave and go back to get a mask.
Even now, almost a year into the pandemic and mask-wearing, when I go for groceries I still see people walk from the parking lot to the front door and be told “You need to wear a mask” and they put their hands on their face, realize they aren’t wearing it, say “Oh, I forgot.” and go back to their car and get it. This happens all the time. These people aren’t bullying anyone by “trying to get into the store without a mask”. They just forgot. It happens.Is this what happened with Willis? Who knows? But the fact that, according to the story, he didn’t say anything, he just left, makes me think that this wasn’t a “We don’t have to wear masks! It’s all a myth!” stand by him.
He was offered a mask and refused to put it on.
You know what he didn’t do? Try to stay in the store without wearing a mask. Or go on a rant about how he shouldn’t have to wear one.Some people are OCD about their masks. I have my own mask. I wouldn’t wear one that was offered to me by a stranger.I have no idea if any of these are right, no idea if Willis is an anti-masker or not. But compared to other people we’ve seen without masks in public who yell about how it’s all a hoax, this was a tame comparison.
So… let me see. Your theory is that Willis somehow wandered all through the Rite-Aid maskless, somehow unaware that he didn’t have one on, until the other customers complained, he was offered a mask and refused, and then had to be asked to leave, but that’s totally fine because he didn’t ALSO launch into an embarrassing idiotic rant?
Again, I see lots of people walking up to stores without masks, having forgotten theirs in their cat. It happens all the time.And in this day and age, I’m not taking a mask from a stranger – I’m leaving to get my own.There are many videos online of people caught in stores maskless ranting about not wearing a mask. When I saw this headline, I was surprised that Willis wasn’t doing this.Again, I have no idea if this was an isolated incident or if he is anti-masker. But the fact that he left the store without saying anything puts him well above the many anti-vaskers you see online.
He didn’t walk “up to” the store unmasked, only to realize he forgot. He walked into the store and wandered around unmasked. Your explanation seems highly implausible.
Have you been in stores since the pandemic started and mask-wearing has been mandatory? At least once every time I go for groceries I’ll see someone either get to the front door (as I already described), realize they forgot their mask, and go back and get it. The store I go to only has 1 mask-security person at the door and sometimes he’s busy and customers get by him without him checking them for masks. This happens.I also see people inside stores with their mask off of their face because they took it down for a moment and then forgot to put it back on. And so on.As I already said, I don’t know if Willis is an anti-masker. But unlike most stories of someone caught in a store without a mask, he didn’t yell and demand service even though he didn’t need a mask. He didn’t need security called to escort him out. He didn’t rant about Covid being a hoax and masks not doing anything. If this is a story about an anti-masker caught not wearing a mask in a store, it’s the calmest and mildest one I’ve heard.
It sounds like your friends and neighbors are just really bad at wearing masks. Because, nope, I have not been to a store where people walk in without masks. Everyone I’ve seen has their mask on from the parking lot. What with masks being required in stores now for months on end. Just like I generally don’t see people forget their shoes before walking into a store.
“I have not been to a store where people walk in without masks.” Well now I know that you’re either lying, or are not going to stores very much. This is a very common thing – turn on your local news and you’ll see a story about this now and then. People talked about this online a lot in 2020. Besides the vocal non-maskers, there’s lots of people that forget to put it on before getting out of their car.“Just like I generally don’t see people forget their shoes before walking into a store.” That analogy doesn’t make sense because you can instantly feel that you’re not wearing shoes once you step out of your car. You can forget to put on a mask and walk from your car to the store and not realize it.Look, I get it, you hate Bruce Willis. Go ahead and bash him. Just make sure you’re doing it for a legitimate reason.
Yeah, there are stores where jackasses deliberately walk in without masks. The jackasses aren’t innocently walking in because they “forgot” their masks, like you’ve been trying to claim.And, no, you can physically tell when you do and don’t have a mask on.And it’s not 2020. It’s 2021 and people have known they need to wear masks when going into stores for 9 months.
Seriously, based on your comments I don’t think you’ve been to a store since the pandemic started.“And, no, you can physically tell when you do and don’t have a mask on.” LOL. Sure, Jan.“And it’s not 2020. It’s 2021 and people have known they need to wear masks when going into stores for 9 months.” Yes, people know this. But people forget things. They forget to put their seat belts on. They forget their car keys in the car. They forget lots of things. The idea that you think it’s impossible for someone to forget to put their mask on is really silly.
As usual, I’d like a little more detail. Was he told to pull the neck thing up and refused? Did he forget and they just gave him the boot and he complied? I mean, I still sometimes get to the door of a store before I remember that I left my mask in my car.
I would have hoped there would have been more Cole / 12 Monkeys meme’s. It is about a world decimating virus
When fading fame hurts so much you walk around trying to get recognized.
“Zed? Zed’s dead baby – from COVID.”