That's the story Kevin told in his new whathaveyou "Too Fat for 40". He goes so far as to call Bruce Willis "a monster".
Question: If a director allows themselves to be bullied, isn't that their own damn fault?
Kevin Smith seems to be quite the bitch. He also went off on some rant about how Timothy Olyphant bullied him around during a movie one time. I think Kevin Smith might just be an ass and people find him hard to work with. He just wants to make himself look like the victim.
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Bruce Willis has been accused of being difficult to work with by others. He was fired from a Woody Allen movie, and even Sylvester Stallone made it clear he didn't like working with him on The Expendables. He basically is the stereotype of everything bad we are told a movie star is. Someone who is difficult to work with, thinks it is their way or the highway, and shows no respect to those around him.
The question is should Smith have gone this far in publicly criticizing Willis? Maybe, maybe not. I don't like the idea of publicly ripping someone for things behind closed doors. On the other hand he did not attack him personally, he kept his criticism to the specific experience of working with him on the movie.
http://www.chud.com/community/t/143557/difficult-actors/200#post_3363959
What I take from the whole Smith/Willis thing and his apparent docility with Wes Anderson — allowing for the very real possibility that Willis is a dick — is:
(a) Willis respects directors of substance.
(b) Willis, every so often, likes to do a small movie just because he should.
(c) Cop Out was a shitty cop comedy directed by a guy who admits himself he's not a good director. Moonrise Kingdom is the sort of ensemble film Willis likes to do every so often, made by a real director who knows what he wants.
(d) Willis told Smith on the set of Die Hard 4 "Yeah, we should work together" because they had fun on the set shooting the shit about Jersey and sports and flicks for a day or however long it took to film Smith's scenes. That's a little different from working for the guy. There's a lot of people I like to hang out with and shoot the shit, but I wouldn't necessarily want them to be my boss.