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Well, they don't come much bigger than this. Oh, yes. Bruce Willis. Bruuuuce Willis. Oh, baby. Big movie star. Biiiig star. Superstar.
And yet.
We currently find Mr. Willis staring out at us from the cover of the current People, next to the line "Brand New Bruce." Apparently, after his celebrity divorce and a mini-string of flops like Last Man Standing, The Jackal, The Siege, and Mercury Rising, he's back on top. It's the rehabilitation of Bruce Willis. It's the return of Bruno!
Wait a second. Didn't we go through this with Bruce Willis once already? Remember the Great Rehabilitation of '94 -- when he co-starred in Pulp Fiction, a move that, at the time, was applauded as 'daring' and, some argued, crucial to a moribund career -- a career still staggering from the maxi-flop-string of The Bonfire of the Vanities, Billy Bathgate, Hudson Hawk, The Last Boy Scout, Death Becomes Her, and Color of Night? In fact, isn't this the actor who many wrote off for dead way back in 1987, when he tried to leap from the brilliant TV series Moonlighting to the big screen, in such memorable forays as Blind Date and Sunset? The man who was widely regarded as the David Caruso of his day, before anyone had even heard of David Caruso?
Yes. He is that man. And he is, apparently, back. Again.
It's hard, sometimes, to like Bruce Willis. The man has, at times in his career, been draped in cheese like a Druid's draped in cloak. The harmonica? The 'Bruno' albums? The high profile Hollywood marriage, which reeked of Mount Olympus-era incest? ("We can't be expected to mate with mere mortals!") We mean, come on.
And yet.
Remember the holy trinity of movie stars who will forever be linked -- poetically, if not financially -- to the now-capsized Planet Hollywood chain? There was Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and -- celebrity wife in tow, cap on balding head, smirk ensconced on lips -- Bruce Willis. The three were like a Mount Rushmore of fame. But when you look at Schwarzenegger now, with his Madame Tussaud's grimace-smile and cyborgian life partner, you just wonder, "This was the biggest movie star on the planet? What were we thinking?" Stallone, too, seems these days more like a Spitting Image puppet of himself than the real thing. (What were we thinking?) Bruce Willis, however....
Well, when we saw Willis in The Fifth Element, a terrible French mess of a movie (Jean-Paul Gaultier and Chris Tucker, together again!), we finally had to admit: this man is a great movie star. Because he's gives great shtick. Which is not to belittle what he does in the least. Bogart was nothing but shtick and a cigarette. Jimmy Stewart was shtick and tremolo. Willis is shtick and a hairpiece.
The shtick, of course, consists of the smirk. And those twinkling little elf-eyes. And the occasional line judiciously delivered with that trademark tone of clipped desperation, which he perfected in Die Hard, still the one real bravura turn on his resume. And it's a good shtick. You, however, may hate the shtick. Maybe you can't stand the shtick. But you must respect the shtick.
So we say: Hurray for Bruce Willis. Yes, he's made a raftload of poop in his time, but, fifteen years later, we can still stand him. Heck, we even like him. Probably more now than before.
Plus, he's balding gracefully, which in our books counts for a lot. A lot.
In fact, of all the aging '80s era stars, Bruce Willis, now 45, is the only one we want to see at the Oscars™ twenty years from now, sitting in the front row -- where Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty are currently planted -- chortling and throwing incoherent barbs at the host and generally carrying on like bloated, arrogant Hollywood royalty. Does he deserve any lifetime achievement awards? Of course not. Does he deserve all the fame he has? Yes. Does he deserve even more? Well, first of all, Willis may have already reached the Speed of Fame -- an absolute barrier which, like the speed of light, can't be surpassed. And secondly, let's not get carried away here. But he does deserve to be a great big movie star. Because, as with male pattern baldness, he wears it so well.
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