Bruce Willis and Misery

I'd hate to have to carry a stage play from a bed! I hope he pulls it off.

When evil is viewed as good, righteousness is viewed as evil.

This is the only type of gigs Bruce will do now.

You haven't seen the front page of this board then. He has several projects in the pipeline. Of course, IMDb doesn't list anything on the legitimate stage.

Walter Matthau once said that movie acting is "retirement acting." You always had the chance for another shot until you got it right. Working on Broadway means no second takes -- the saving grace for most movie actors. "I've learned how to reach the back row with the flicker of an eyelash," Matthau said. "Movie acting is nothing." And this wasn't sour grapes -- he was quite successful at it.

"Anyone can act in the movies," Hoyt Axton once said. "They keep letting you do it over and over until they like it." Hoyt was fantastic as a singer on stage, but he wasn't going to try Broadway -- or even way off Broadway in the stix.

Liz Taylor, who'd been very successful in movies, finally tried her hand at the legitimate stage -- the reviewer I read said she was competent, but that was all. She was used to being able to have all those takes in order to be good. Jodie Foster had similar problems. Stagework defeated her and she had to crawl back to movies. In fact -- like Montgomery Clift -- she simply couldn't project, that is, be heard beyond the footlights. Some people need that microphone.

Bruce Willis, on the other hand, started on the stage and in a sense, never left it -- he built his own stage in Idaho, where he'd perform in plays just to keep his chops. I can't see any of the stars of The Expendables being that dedicated to the craft of acting. It's common in England, where they see acting as an art. Here in America, people just want to be movie stars and make a shipload of money. It's rare to see someone who really wants to ACT.



When evil is viewed as good, righteousness is viewed as evil.

Based on the book?