Bruce Willis: 1994
Deep Dive with Kirk Minihane
Kirk Minihane conducts a retrospective on Bruce Willis's highly volatile film year in 1994. The episode contrasts the massive success of his
Key takeaways
- Quentin Tarantino originally intended the role of Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction for Michael Madsen before John Travolta was cast.
- The film Color of Night became a major controversy due to a battle between director Richard Rush and the studio over the final cut and rating.
Main topics
- Bruce Willis's 1994 filmography
- Pulp Fiction casting history
Notable quotes
I'll be deep diving until the day I die.
Conclusion
A nostalgic exploration of how a single year can define an actor's leg
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) Trust no one and accuse everyone in Who's the Bad Guy, the official Barstool Sports social deduction game from the brilliant mind of Nick Teraney. In what's quickly becoming the most popular new party game around, players are secretly assigned unique roles with the good guys trying to expose the bad guys and the bad guys doing everything they can to stay hidden. Each game unfolds under alternating day and night phases with roles like the cool chick, the shy guy, the gambler, el presidente, the mentalist, the planner, the funny guy, and more. Every round is unpredictable, chaotic, and ridiculously fun. Who's the Bad Guy is great for parties, pregames, family gatherings, or groups who just love deception-based games. Game night will never be the same. Shop now on Walmart.com. Speaker 4 (0:43) Hello, hello from rainy Watertown, Massachusetts. Speaker 4 (0:48) The power is working at 372 Main Street. Second floor, you walk up the stairs. Can't miss it if you're looking, if you're a hater. We don't like people who like us. People hate us, walk up, walk down the long hallway and give us the business. We appreciate that. That's what used to happen in the old days, folks. Cats and kittens, deep dive listeners, the deep divers. Get deep in there and get a little deeper. Deeper. How deep can you go? Even deeper. Hello, deep divers. Speaker 4 (1:22) Good Monday morning to you. Yeah, so in the old days, the president, this happened, I think, if I'm lying, I'm flying. My feet are currently on the ground. So I'm just saying I think I know this. I think it ended when President Lincoln was assassinated. Speaker 4 (1:41) Of course, if there was Twitter back then and True Social and Rumble and Grindr back then, there'd be all these conspiracy theories that he actually was assassinated. You'll get the angle of his head. And John Wilkes Booth said something in this play. And you work with this guy. And so actually, if you see, there's two Lincolns. But back then. You could go and air your grievances with the president and just wait in the White House. Did that end with Lincoln? I don't know. Anyway, I'm considering doing that here. So if you're a deep dive critic or a critic of mine, we may line you guys up in the hallway at 372 Main Street and come in, say your piece, and we can, I guess, move on from that. But anyway, hello. This is Deep Dive. I am Kirk Minahan. This is episode 11, 12, 13, 14, something of Deep Dive. If you're listening, you probably subscribe. If you don't, I'd appreciate it if you did and leave a review. If we can get to 2,000 reviews by the year 2042, my producer, Dave Cullinan, will have a sex change. He told me that. Or no, a gender reassignment surgery. He told me he will remove whatever's left of his penis and turn it himself. He will do it in 2042. We don't know how old he'll be at that point because we don't know how old he is now. Speaker 4 (2:55) So he's willing to do that in 2042. Not that he's the producer of this show, of course. I am the sole creative force and producing force of Deep Dive. So we begin today where we ended another episode not so long ago. That is the year of our Lord, 1994. I was 19 for most of that year. I turned 20 at the end of October that year, as I'll turn 52 in some... Oh, I don't know. 34 days or so, I guess, from this. I don't know. I'm not great at days of the month. 30 days in September, April, June, and November. I never understood that one. I mean, I understood it, but I was going to say I couldn't follow it, so maybe I didn't understand it. Speaker 4 (3:42) We did the John Travolta episode, part one. There'll be a part two down the line. One thing about this is, if I do a part one like I did Eastwood in the 90s or part one of Travolta or the Rocky series up till Creed, we'll get there, but I'm going to do deep dive. Speaker 4 (3:58) The other show, people who listen to this may, I do another show as well. You probably never heard of it. Kirk Minahan show. That will stop at some point. I stopped it for a bit. Now I came back. I'm enjoying it. But at some point, I'm not going to do that when I'm 74 years old. I'll be deep diving until the day I die. So, you know, you may get part two of John Travolta in 2050. I don't fucking know. What I do know. Speaker 4 (4:22) is that we ended John Travolta's career in 1994. Part one of that two-parter. And his career was in the doldrums at that point when he was rescued by a phone call from Quentin Tarantino saying, hey, I'd like you to play the part of Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction. Well, Tarantino had written that part for Michael Madsen, who decided to do, I think, Free Willy instead. So his time was taken. It was unavailable, so Travolta got the role. Somebody else wanted that role. That other person had, I think, one of the most interesting individual years ever in 1994. Speaker 4 (5:12) Two, one all-time great movie. One, I think, terrific forgotten movie. It's your Kirk Minahan movie recommendation of the week, which we'll get to later on. I feel like Dana Hersey in the movie loft right now. By the way, Speaker 3 (5:22) so Speaker 4 (5:24) when I was a kid in Boston. Dana Hersey hosted a show called The Movie Loft, which was on Channel 38, which also had one of my favorite shows ever, Ask the Manager, which was a morning show hosted by the general manager of WSBK TV 38, this guy Dan, and various other hosts. McDonough was one of the hosts. And they would ask him questions that listeners would send in to him. I would watch this in the morning when I was a kid. I was like, boy, Speaker 6 (5:50) was I a weird kid. It was Speaker 4 (5:51) old people and me watching. And they would ask these questions that would blow my mind. It would be like, Speaker 4 (5:58) you know, hey, you haven't had on whatever. I'm trying to think of it. You know, Hawaii 5-0 reruns lately. What's going on? And the general manager would say, well, we lost syndication rights. It's sort of expensive. And they would break this wall down. Because I would say, gee, why isn't Three's Company on 56 anymore? Why has it been on for three months? Then one day it shows up again. What happened? This guy, let me look this up. Speaker 6 (6:22) Let me make sure we're roadcasted, by the way. Speaker 4 (6:26) We're taking one of those deep dive left turns. We're away from, I teased what the episode was going to be and I thought it was something else because of Dana Hersey and we took a left. And right now we're veering, but we'll get back, I promise. But this is why you're listening and I appreciate you listening. And Scooby Dooby Doo. Speaker 2 (6:42) Bluetooth is on. Speaker 4 (6:43) The Roadcaster Pro is connected. Speaker 3 (6:46) Hear Speaker 4 (6:46) that click on the way? Speaker 3 (6:47) TV Speaker 4 (6:47) 38. Full episode from it. Speaker 6 (6:52) Ask the manager. Your chance. That Speaker 5 (6:54) spring training starts, boy, spring is, I mean, spring up here is not far away. Yeah, it sure isn't. Hey, Speaker 6 (6:59) look, we're continually criticized for not reading enough letters by half of the people. The other half want us to, you know, goof around. So I think today's show, let's Speaker 5 (7:12) satisfy the folks. Speaker 1 (7:14) Okay. My Speaker 5 (7:14) husband and I are big fans of the show, so I felt... Here we go, Cliff Allen. Excellent. I'd be happy to do that. All right, a letter comes to us from... Lyman and Bess O'Connor from White Plains, New York. And it says, Dear sirs, my husband and I are big fans of the show, so I felt obligated to answer Dan's pleas for more letters. Speaker 6 (7:30) Thank you. I Speaker 5 (7:31) think that the show is a good one and should stay on forever. Speaker 6 (7:34) Well, Speaker 1 (7:34) okay. Speaker 5 (7:35) One small suggestion. Could Cliff read the letters in the show more often? Speaker 6 (7:40) Okay. And we folks, we haven't read these. No, no, no. This is just the luck of the draw. We're Speaker 5 (7:45) just clairvoyant. Yep. She says that I don't want to offend anyone, but I think the Cliff is... Let's get to her. From Brookline, Patricia Strand writes and says, Dear Mr. Whoever you are behind the desk. Okay. Speaker 6 (7:58) All right. Speaker 5 (7:58) Here Speaker 4 (7:58) we go. Speaker 5 (7:59) We are back, and we're going to... Great. All right. He says, Dear Dan Cliff and the rest of the ATM crew. First of all, unlike the gentleman from Putnam, Connecticut, I enjoy Dan on ATM. See, this is one Speaker 1 (8:10) of Speaker 5 (8:10) these... I don't know why they do it. They do it like inside Speaker 4 (8:12) stuff. I like when they would ask questions about fucking... Actual stuff. I mean, come on. Let's see here. Oh, for Christ's sakes. I don't want to add a carpool to my family calendar. I don't have a family. And Speaker 6 (8:24) maybe if that cameras can just kind of pan around, they'll get to appear. It's important that you... Stan Speaker 4 (8:29) Hershey hosting this episode. ...accusing us of... A cabbage patch doll. But anyway, I don't know. I just want to have him ask a fucking question. Speaker 4 (8:39) It's been Speaker 5 (8:40) long. Speaker 6 (8:41) We've not accomplished it yet. Speaker 5 (8:42) Heard the request about the basket, and there it is. There it is. The Speaker 3 (8:45) basket's back. He's a busy guy, you know. Speaker 5 (8:47) He's from the Wild West. We're not asking to bring back something like Brockwood. Heard the request about the basket, and there it is. There it is. The Speaker 3 (8:55) basket's back. He's a busy guy, you know. Speaker 5 (8:57) He's a very busy guy. Off we go. Okay, continuing with Mr. Sylvia's letter. Jerry Sylvia from North Falmouth, Massachusetts. Speaker 5 (9:05) The issue about the dated, I think we handled that about dated Wild Wild West. We're not asking to bring back something like Broadway Crawford and the Highway Patrol from the 50s, which is clearly dated. Speaker 1 (9:16) Well, thank you. Speaker 6 (9:17) Wild Wild West, I thought, was a good show. I Speaker 4 (9:20) just am not sure that we'd have a time period for it. This is a late. It may be good to go over for a damn bit. They've asked questions. Old people write letters like, why isn't Wild Wild West the old TV show? It's a good show. We just don't have a program. They would break down this wall. And it was Dana Hersey with occasionally. Hosted with host the movie loft. Let's get a movie loft. Four minutes of bumpers. YouTube, I mean, the internet is a cesspool, obviously. But it's great for stuff like this. Speaker 6 (9:50) Here we Speaker 4 (9:55) go. End of Reynolds Ralph commercial. Speaker 1 (9:59) Thank you for joining us this evening. Don't forget, next Saturday, the movie-loved double feature presents Walter Hill's The Warriors, followed immediately by Alphabet City. And Monday night at 8, the unconvention begins at 8 o'clock with Clint Eastwood as the High Plains Drifter. Until then, I'm Dana Hersey. Good night. Speaker 4 (10:19) Fuck yeah. Those are the days. They'd come down. Movie Loft had like two floors and Dana would come downstairs. I don't know what the fuck he was doing on the top floor. But anyway, this was my youth. I don't even know how we got there. Dana Hersey, 38. I don't know. Anyway, so that's 1994. So, Tarantino gets a role with Travolta. Somebody else wanted that role. Didn't get it. And this person had, I think, as I said, one of the most interesting years of any actor. Speaker 4 (10:50) We look at great movies versus shit in the same year. Four films made that year. One is a classic, undeniable 1994. We just talked about it. It's one of the most famous movies of all time. One of the greatest movies of all time. Should have won Best Picture in my estimation that year. Another one is the Kirkman. Oh, that's Movie Pick of the Week, which we'll get to. Speaker 4 (11:11) One won the Razzie for the worst movie of the year. So really was in a movie that was nominated for best picture. Should have won best picture. Won best screenplay. The other one was a Razzie for worst picture and worst screenplay. I don't know if it's ever happened before. Probably. And the other one's an all-time bomb that we've talked about in another episode. Four movies that year. Pulp Fiction. Nobody's Fool. Speaker 4 (11:39) North color of night. We are going to spend this episode of deep dive looking at one year, a year. Like I feel like no other actors really ever had before or after during 1994 for somebody. I don't, we haven't spent much time. I don't know if I've said this name at all. Maybe in the Travolta, I suppose in the Travolta episode. Sure. We did. And that's Bruce Willis, 1994's Bruce Willis. Speaker 4 (12:06) 1994 is Bruce, I don't believe Bruce Willis belonged in 1994. Bruce Willis' 1994 is a subject, the topic of this episode of Deep Dive. Because I'm deep, I'm deep diving. Speaker 4 (12:30) I'm going to ride my road caster down to going to take a left turn on my way. Going to deep dive. Talk about nothing. Going to leave KMS for a while. Cause I'm deep. I'm deep diving. Speaker 4 (12:56) Oh, deep dive, deep dive, Tuesday, chilly dive, deep dive, call it right, deep dive, and we're back. So when you look at 1994 for Bruce Wills, as we always do. You do have to kind of look at where the actor is at this point. We'll do a Bruce Willis career, obviously, at some point. And to do one without 1994 is going to be, well, actually, honestly not strange because his biggest franchise is not accounted for that year. He does one the year after. His biggest film is not accounted for that year. That comes five years later. His television show, which made him a star. Speaker 4 (13:52) Moonlighting, you know, won't be discussed here. Even his singing career, the top 10 song, Respect Yourself, the remake. Speaker 6 (14:00) Bruno, whatever the hell that was, terrible song. Speaker 4 (14:02) But Willis in 1994, as he enters it, is as low as his career has been as a movie figure since he broke up. I'll just give you where he's at when 1994 begins. It's not good at all. Speaker 4 (14:25) So, you know, obviously he breaks out as a film figure with Die Hard. We know that. And as you know, becomes instantly one of the biggest stars in the world. And he's an interesting choice. Well, I'll do this in a deeper episode. But he's not conventional choice for that role if you only know him from Moonlighting. I'll say that. He's done some comedies. And, you know, you weren't really sure. Speaker 4 (14:48) who Willis was necessarily as a film actor, even after Die Hard. But he kind of bounces around. So he's in Die Hard, which is a huge hit. He's the voice in Look Who's Talking. Great. Huge hit. That makes the sequel big. Die Hard 2 is a big hit. But... Outside of the diehards, this is what you get from Willis in 91, 92, and 93, heading into his 94 year. So, 91, he does Mortal Thoughts, Hudson Hawk Bomb, Billy Bathgate. I mean, Hudson Hawk's a famous bomb. In the last Boy Scout, kind of a famous bomb. 92, he did a cameo in The Player, and he's in Death Becomes Her, which is a Zemeckis, like, legitimate bomb. It's a comedy that made $150 million worldwide, but against the budget and against the, you know, It's Streep, Goldie Hawn, and Willis, and Willis is miscast in this. It does not work. It's one of the rare Zemeckis at the time, whiffs. In 1993, he's in Striking Distance, which is Speaker 6 (16:02) just a boring Speaker 4 (16:03) movie. It plays as Pittsburgh. Speaker 4 (16:10) I mean, nobody. It makes like $70 million against $30 million. But again, at the time, considered a bomb and horribly reviewed. So he's coming off of... I'll get to the other movie. This is coming off 1990, where he has the Bonfire of the Vanities, Speaker 7 (16:25) by the way. Don't Speaker 4 (16:25) forget. So you're talking Bonfire of the Vanities, Mortal Thoughts, I Want to See It, Hudson Hawk, All-Time Bomb, Billy Bathgate. Speaker 4 (16:35) uncredited, which he does again, which we'll get to later, Robert Benton, the director, the great director. Nobody went to see it. Last Boy Scout, you know, against the budget, no go. Tony Scott, big hype. So when you get to 94 with Willis and striking distance as well, you're thinking, geez, we're in some trouble here. Like, what's going on? Speaker 4 (17:03) So the first movie in the U.S. that's released for Willis in 1994 is Color of Night. I don't even know how to describe Color of Night. I'm going to do my best here. I almost want to turn it over to my friend Cisco Niebert for a minute to talk about it. Speaker 4 (17:25) You know, I'll do that. We'll see what Gene and Roger have to say before I get into the backstory of it. So before we get to it, so the director is Richard Rush, who had not directed a film since The Stuntman, which is an excellent movie. Another recommended, 1980, it comes out. He gets nominated for Best Director for this movie, The Stuntman. He does nothing as a director in between. So it's a strange, really one of the strange careers of all time. I didn't know much about Richard Rush until I started looking at Willis' career. And it's a wild ride for him. Yeah, he was nominated for director and screenplay for 1980, The Stuntman, which is a really fun sort of dark comedy. He goes 14 years in between making movies. He doesn't make anything until Color of Night. He does this interview with a syndicated paper, a newspaper syndicate in 94. They call Color of Night a steamy murder mystery with double identities and hidden paths, which is true. We'll get to it. It's maybe the worst movie ever made, but we'll get to it. The thematics of Color of Night and the potential of that story became my mind extension of what we did with the Stuntman, said Rush64. But if Rush had known what a headache Color of Night would become, he probably would have stayed in hiding. What started out as an ordinary movie-making experience became a legal wrangle for creative control. One Rush ultimately lost and one that taught the filmmaker lessons about present-day Hollywood. This is a guy who started out making biker movies in the 60s for Roger Corman and worked his way up and made a movie called Freebie and the Beam, which is a sort of a James Caan sort of cult movie in the 70s. This is a revered Francois Truffaut himself called Rush's favorite Hollywood director in 1980. Loved the stuntman. And he went away. At one point, this is a story about Richard Rush in 89. This is nine years after making The Stuntman. I get off a lot of pictures, but I'm one of those guys that has to be in love. And so, quote, quote, quote, and so, this is from the LA Times again, it's been nearly a decade since we've had a movie from Richard Rush, the director of the critically admired The Stuntman, has returned to work. This is in 1989, directing a Diet Coke spot. It's the first commercial I've done in 20 years, said Rush, who got to start plugging products. Title of the journey to the kitchen, it's darkly humorous and Indiana Jones-ish,