"Bruce Willis has been diagnosed with aphasia, a condition where a person loses the ability to communicate, his family revealed on Wednesday. As a result, the Die Hard and Pulp Fiction star is "stepping away" from acting indefinitely. The news comes more than a week after the actor celebrated his 67th birthday." https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/bruce-willis-health-aphasia-164436520.html _________________________________________________ I really hate to hear this; Bruce Willis has been a favorite of mine since the 1980s. I hope this is something they are able to treat; I really don't know anything about aphasia... this is the first I remember hearing of it. Thanks for all the entertainment, Mr. Willis.
Watched him in Moonlighting and the part where he kissed Cybill Shepherd, she slapped him and then kissed him again. Have watched all of the Die Hard movies as well as The Expendables that he was in. Also, other movies of him, like RED, RED2 and Armagedón. He turned out to be quite the "action" star.
This is too bad. A quick read says this condition is due to either a stroke or to head trauma, with there being other less-common causes. Man, you just never know...
I was talking with someone about Willis the other day, and learned that he lost a good part of his hearing from doing his own stunts. There's a scene in one of the Die Hard movies where he's under a table shooting a gun...that's where the hearing damage occurred. Gotta love safety on the set, huh?
I often wonder why we were never offered ear plugs. You could get a nice pair of sun glasses but nothing to protect your ears and hearing. Now what is puzzling why did they use a powder charged weapon in a movie when they had post processing ability to dub gunfire without endangering anyone on set. It is not necessary to have a gun discharge when making a movie. Today you can do anything using software from Adobe and other big players in computer graphics. One of my big dislikes is all these movies being made without any real actors, just a bunch of mush thrown together for the kids I guess. I hate those mech movies and turn them off, also anything labeled Marvel Comics is a cue to change channels for me. There is a reason people at gun ranges wear ear protection.
I agree with all of your points. When you watch the "Director's Cuts" and the behind the scenes stuff, you see that these people"act" in 3 second spurts, then it's all cobbled together with a background soundtrack that makes it seem fluid. Plus the endings are always too neat & tidy. At least with today's software they can cobble the lie without the environmental damage of a ton of cellulite all over the cutting room floor (if they even call it the cutting room anymore. Maybe now it's the copy/paste/delete room.) Regarding shooting...I always wear foam plugs AND headphones.
I recently read that Willis was the 6th choice for the lead in Die Hard... "In 1987, Bruce Willis was still a relatively unknown actor. He had a starring role on ABC's "Moonlighting" and a hit comedy, "Blind Date," under his belt. But despite his rising star, he was not the first choice for John McClane. Prior to his casting, producers presented the script to Arnold Schwarzenegger (although this is disputed by producer Steven DeSouza), Burt Reynolds, Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford and Richard Gere."
It's funny the number of "Can't imagine anyone else in that role..." actors who were 5th or 6th down the list.
This was one time they made the right choice. I wish I had a tiny percentage of the Die Hard series box office receipts. I never much cared for Stallone simply because he out of the blue one day declared himself a spokesman for the Vietnam Vets while he never answered the call and was busy making porn movies. He never appeared to be an invalid in any of his movies. I did like the first movie in the First Blood series but it became a bit too much there after. There was one more I liked but I can't remember the name of the movie, he was a mountain climber and a group of people stole a lot of cash and lost it while trying to off load in mid air from two planes. The movie was great and lots of action.
That is sad to hear. I met Bruce about 30 years ago in a small remote Oregon mountain town. He and Demi were there staying at a bed and breakfast that was owned by a lady I knew that was the first swimsuit model on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Brucie or Brucie as I called him was just a regular guy with a sense of humor.