Bruce Willis Interview - Hostage

Q. What was it about the book that struck you because you must get sent lots of stuff?Actually I wasn’t sent it, I read the book on my own. I bought the book and it sat on my shelf for about a month and I picked it up and got caught up in it, read it overnight and called and asked about the rights and fortunately they were available, that was about four years ago.

Q. So, what is it that got you excited?

It’s a really complicated novel, really complicated story and in turning the novel into a film it was a good opportunity for me to make a movie that had some action, that was a psychological thriller that wasn’t “a Bruce Willis movie”.

Because of the success of a couple of films that I’ve done; The Die Hard series, Armageddon, films like that, I’ve saved the world I think 6 or 7 times now and I think that audiences have started expecting if I’m in a film that I’ll save the day and this story was about a guy who didn’t look like he was going to win, it looked like he was going to lose. The Director, Florent Siri, and I worked very hard at constructing a story that had multiple obstacles in it; emotional, psychological and physical obstacles, and right up to the very end it does look like I’m not going to succeed.

Q. And whose idea was it that your daughter make an appearance in the movie?

It was my daughter’s idea to ask to be in the film and in years past all three of my kids have appeared in films with both their mum and myself.

In this film I insisted that Rumer come in and audition for this part, I said “I’m not going to give you this part, you have to earn it”. So she came in and auditioned and won the part.

Q. I wonder what impact it has on you when you’re visualising your character’s daughter and it is your daughter, albeit acting a role, does that make the tears a little bit easier?

You bet! It just took that whole storyline to a much more emotional level. I think that I got to places emotionally that I might not have been able to get to if I was working with another actress that was not my daughter.

All I had to do was imagine any one of my kids being held hostage and they had to dry me off. It is an emotional movie and I think that anyone with kids can relate to having one of your kids snatched.

The tag line of the movie now is ‘Would you sacrifice another family to save your own’ which is kind of a difficult dilemma in itself.

Q. Did you need to be very supportive of Rumer on set or was she confident enough?

She did it herself, she’s a tough little kid and she’s got some acting chops… I left her alone, I didn’t want to direct her but she brought ideas to it, she didn’t overact, she didn’t push anything, she knew in that scene outside that less is more which is a very grown up acting concept.

Q. What was the most demanding scene? Was it in the back of the ambulance naked down to the waist with two other men?

That was demanding from a purely… “vanity” point of view, I read the script and it was “shirt on, shirt on, shirt on, shirt off”… so I had to go and work out a little so I was in shape. No one wants to look like, no offence to him, the other guy there. [laughter]. But it was a kind of cool story line to have that there. The most demanding part was the last three minutes of the opening eight minutes - the bit outside the house to getting into the house and finding the boy, a very difficult days’ shooting. As a result it involved everyone on the film, it set the bar for what we had to get to at the end of the film.

Q. I know you’ve worked with Kevin [Pollak] before, how keen were you to have him on board?

He was terrific, it was my idea to suggest him for this role, not that I’m taking credit for that, he’s just a great actor. He really turned in an understated non comedic performance. He’s known to be a very funny man and he turned in a really great performance that is crucial to the end of the film.

Q. Do you think he’s underrated?

I think that’s changed. He works all the time now. Not just comedic roles but also very serious roles, I think this film is going to go a long way for him.

Q. You’ve got a birthday coming up and it’s been reported you’re going to do another movie as the world’s best known cop: John McClane?

Yup! Die Hard 4.0!

Q. You’re meant to start slowing down when you hit 50. Why not you? What have you done to beat that barrier?

I don’t know, I have worked out off and on. I hate working out. Because I work out for films now solely I come to associate it with work. I did ‘Hostage’ then I did a Robert Rodriguez film called ‘Sin City’ where again I had to be completely naked, (it was shot tastefully so the good parts won’t be seen) [laughter] but I was literally hung by the neck, with my hands tied behind my back, so I had to stay in shape for that but as soon as that scene was shot I stopped working out, that was about a year ago. I just did five days of work on a film called ‘Alpha Dog’ directed by Nick Cassavetes and I had to do what ten, fifteen, twenty years ago was a really simple stunt, I had to run and get away from the feds and in one move climb over a six and a half foot concrete wall and pop down on the other side and land on the side walk.

It was the first time I ever thought “what if I fall on my ankle, go over on my ankle or break a bone…” and I took pause, then to make matters worse the character I’m playing in Alpha Dog is a real life guy who was there and Nick said “Jack, show Bruce how to go over the wall!” and he hops up over the wall jumps down. No pressure on me now!

It was the first time I actually had to stop and think am I going to get through this and not embarrass myself, not go to hospital, not get a cast on my leg! The jumping off the roof of Nakatomi towers – those days are gone.

Q. You’ve achieved longevity in an extraordinary fickle industry, how have you managed that?

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Moonlighting which kicked all this off. So I don’t pay much attention to it except when I get asked but twenty years is a long time to be famous. Twenty years is a long time to still be asked back, to be asked to be in the big juicy Hollywood films and to be in little independent films and I really still love acting.

All joking aside I really still think I’m still learning how to act. I always thought and said that my best work would come in these years, from 40 to 60 if I was fortunate enough to hang around. But it is hard sticking around. Look at Clint Eastwood, doing it for 45 years it’s a good goal to have. I enjoy acting, I really do. I got to work with one of my heroes and a gentleman, your own Sir Ben Kingsley on a film I’ve just finished shooting in Montreal called ‘Lucky Number Slevin’, with Sir Ben Kingsley, Morgan Freeman, Josh Hartnett and Lucy Liu and I was having a great chat with Sir Ben and he said “We’re like gladiators aren’t we? Even though you’ve just won a battle or got hurt in battle we suit up again, maybe a different suit and walk out and fight”.

I’m fighting the same fight I’ve been fighting for the last twenty years, just a different outfit every time.

But the real task if you’ve had any success at all is how you do something different, how you say a line you may have said in another film and try to communicate an idea you may have had in another film and try to keep it fresh and interesting, it gets harder all the time.

Q. What are your targets for the forthcoming decade?

I’m doing a bunch of films, I just worked four weeks in Montreal and I really enjoy that, I really enjoy not having to work three and a half to four months. I enjoy not having the studio say you have to bring the film in.

You see hundreds of movies every year and the director directs the film and the actors are out in front, I’m the one sitting here and if the film fails it’s that I fail not that the director or screenwriter or filmmakers fail - that’s the nature of the game.

It’s so much more fun for me as a person, as an actor, to just go in for a couple of weeks and just play a character and get in and out.

Q. How much has the business of acting and being a celebrity changed since you started?

Being a celebrity: and you guys see this probably as much if not more than I see in the States, it was as if ten or twelve years ago, not necessarily the press but certainly the tabloid media took a look around and realised that no one was going to stop them from doing what they do and it has gotten so much more venal, so much more vicious.

I don’t know if you’ve been to LA lately but situations similar to the one in which Princess Diana lost her life happen in Los Angeles all the time. Not saying people lose their lives but I’ve seen near misses and near car accidents many, many times.

The paparazzi, they’re out of their minds, cutting across four lanes of traffic at 60 mph and they’re organized and there are no boundaries whatsoever, I wish it were otherwise. Unfortunately, I hate to even say these words, but I think it might take an innocent person getting hurt or killed before they say actually you guys have gone too far. That’s the celebrity part.

The actor part, how’s it changed? It’s changed a great deal since 9/11. It used to be easy to get films made. There used to be heads of studios who were creative, people who run the studios now are business people. They are, by and large, accountants who look at the bottom-line and run it as a business and maybe that’s the way it should have been done but I certainly miss the old days when creative people ran the studios who were willing to take a risk.

A good example: do you know how hard it was for Clint Eastwood to get ‘Million Dollar Baby’ made? Incredibly hard! And now it’s become the film it’s turned out to be everyone’s taking the credit for it.

But it would seem that Clint Eastwood directing a film and acting in it with Morgan Freeman and Hilary Swank, and they’re all Oscar winners, it should have been easier to get that film made but there is a fear in Hollywood I’ve only seen in the last five years. Studios are afraid to take risks they used to take on creativity.

Q. Will you be having a big party for your 50th, any particular plans and what would be your ideal 50th birthday present?

I hope so! I was meant to have a big bash but I think there’s going to be, I’m told it’s a surprise, not the party but the musical guests are going to be a surprise. I had my wish list of bands and singers I’d like so we’ll see who shows up.

Q. Any names?

Tony Bennett, the Allan Brothers, Nora Jones…. Or Tom Jones – I love Tom Jones, he played at my 40th birthday which was just awesome! You know 50 is the new 40 anyway, so! And a present? This is what I say every Christmas, I send out a card and I say “as I now own three of every thing on earth, [laughs] please don’t send me any gifts this year, just make a donation to the foster care foundation”.

I don’t know if I need anything… you know what I ask for are hand-made gifts. Gifts that somebody actually took the time to make I appreciate them so much more than anything I could get myself.

Q. Why foster care?

The National Foster Care Fund is a fund I started last spring because it didn’t exist. It’s a federal programme in the United States and you’d think there would be some kind of fund to help these kids who need help.

My plan is to create a scholarship so these kids can go to College and create incentives for the kids when they’re nine or ten years old so that when they get to be 18, when they age out of the system, they will have done well enough to earn a scholarship. I don’t know what the system is here, but it’s so much easier to adopt a child from a foreign country than it is to adopt from your own country.

Q. Bearing in mind the huge variety of roles you’ve taken on in the last five years, what do you think the public perception of Bruce Willis is?

I’ve never really paid much attention to it. I suppose I should have. I’m from South Jersey, I don’t know if you know anyone from there. I never really have lost my blue collar background. I never really got caught up in the bullshit of Hollywood. I never became an actor because I wanted to be famous it kind of happened and I was as surprised as everyone else was.

I’ll tell you my little theory on the perception of Bruce Willis. If I meet fifty new people a year – that would be a lot. Actually meet someone and become friends with them. Everyone else I don’t meet that year, around the world has an idea of who they think I am based on films I do, interviews I do, tabloid stuff they read, TV shows, gossip, whatever people hear.

But what that really is is like a holograph of me. It’s not who I am as a man and it’s not who I am as a father. Because who I am as a man and who I am as a father is far more important to me than any perception in the public of whether my work is good or bad.

The audience I work for is my peers and there is a network of colleagues and actors who see each other and that’s the audience I look for now. The rest of it… as long as I keep being invited back that’s good.

Q. Cybill Shepherd was over here a few months ago doing London theatre she said she’d love to revisit the characters of ‘Moonlighting’, I wonder if that had any spell in your ten year plan?

I don’t watch TV, I watch movies on TV and I watch sports and that’s about it, I don’t watch the news, haven’t watched in about ten years but I’m told that every time Cybill appears on a talk show that she looks right at the camera and says “Bruce, if you’re watching I’d love to do the reunion show or the movie of Moonlighting” and I just don’t…

The good news is the DVD of the first two years will be out this coming summer, (quick plug).

But I’m going to sit down with Glenn Caron and do the commentary for five or six episodes. But here’s what I say about that, in jest, here’s the order it would go in before I do the ‘Moonlighting’ reunion show; I would become a judge on American Idol, I would be the centre square on Hollywood Squares, and then I would do the ‘Moonlighting’ reunion show. I’m kidding! I’m just kidding!

It’s been twenty years and sixteen since we finished the show and while there was a lot of hubbub at the time, time heals everything. And the real truth about the format, one hour, two characters, one camera show is the hardest entertainment format that exists, it was really difficult for Cybill and I. In the first two years of that show there was an episode that we did which I would put up against anything that’s ever been on TV. The first two years were probably the most amazing time of my life and I would put them up against any two years of my entire life.

You have to remember it was a quantum leap for me. I had achieved the level of doing off Broadway plays in New York and I went out to California to see the Olympics in 1984 and I had just gotten an agent in New York and I got to California and got a call and they said “Hi, we’re your California agents” and I didn’t know I even had California agents! And the second audition I went in for was ‘Moonlighting’ and in those days Aaron Spelling did ‘Moonlighting’ and I wasn’t Aaron Spelling leading man material so it took a while for Glenn Caron to convince him I was right for the part.

But it was a grind, by the fifth year we were really worn down. I think I’d rather leave it alone and let it retire undefeated.

Q. What do you think of the state of the Action movie at the moment.

This film solved the puzzle for me, I was widely reported and widely misquoted when I said was going to take a break from action movies.

What we call Action movies now are nothing more than they used to call Cowboys and Indian movies, and then they called them Gangster movies, and then they called them World War II or World War I or Korean War or Vietnam War movies and then they had Cops and Robbers – it’s just stories about good triumphing over evil, this goes back to the Greeks, Shakespeare was telling about good triumphing over evil and sometimes it didn’t work but that’s what these films are. I was around for the first Die Hard and when Mel Gibson did the first Lethal Weapon we both kind of set templates for the modern version of good guys versus bad guys, but over 15, 20 years, they got bastardised and I started saying no to… ‘Die Hard on a Plane’, ‘Die Hard at the White House’, ‘Die Hard in a Delicatessen’, ‘Die Hard…’ everywhere… and I got sick of it.

I got sick of running down the street with a gun in my hand going “NO!!” so I needed to take a break and what I also said that was reported less was I thought the genre needed to reinvent itself and the stories to get a little smarter.

I really think Hostage is a smart story. I don’t really see it as an action film. I think it’s more of a psychological thriller as much as it has action and guns.

Hostage is out on the 11th March 2005