If Willis asked his extended family to lie about his condition so he could keep working for a few years longer, long enough to earn enough to pay for years of care, then I'm on Team Lying Family! Willis isn't a public servant like a Senator, he's really a private citizen who has no obligation to the public but to do as good as job as he can, and he had a chance to take the money and run when he realized he needed to earn as much as he could as fast as he could.
What?
You make it seem as if dementia is like early stage cancer or MS, where someone can be diagnosed with it before it takes hold and then easily make life decisions with a clear mind. That's not how dementia plays out. It's one of those insidious illnesses that can look like a million different harmless disorders (B12 deficiency, depression, personality disorder, side effect of medication, etc.) until it becomes so bad that it's obvious it's dementia. By the time it becomes obvious, the person isn't really in a state to make clear-headed decisions like asking their family members to hide their medical condition for the sake of securing their future.
The point is, most dementia sufferers and their family members have no idea they have the condition until it's too late. The reason is that few people screen for dementia unless it runs in their family. So, this scenario you're painting, of Bruce Willis getting diagnosed and being so cognizant as to ask his family to hide his condition, rings false.
Even if for the sake of argument it was true (he decided to keep working as long as possible), there's nothing laudatory about it. Dementia is an extremely aggravating, if not infuriating disease for people to put up with. Working with Bruce Willis would've meant forcing the actors and crew to endure an exhausting number of retakes and other nonsense to deal with his deteriorating condition. A family member and I are taking care of a third member with dementia, and we literally made the decision to not get a professional caretaker precisely because of how aggravating she is.
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Otter (24464)
2 years ago
I am extremely familiar with dementia, thank you, and its course and effects on the person afflicted and their family, and I'm watching a painfully slow onset with someone I love in real life.
And I do think that Willis and his family have known that something was going seriously wrong for the last few years, why else would he have been taking every crap take-the-money-and-run job he could get? That would normally be considered career suicide, but it seems it was really the action of someone who knew he had nothing to lose.
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BeaSouth (3561)
2 years ago
I agree with your take and do not begrudge the man trying to provide for himself and his family knowing what was coming. We should strive to accommodate people with disabilities trying to be productive. I think you and I are on different ends of the political spectrum but you routinely make reasonable, well considered posts and I appreciate it.
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[deleted]
2 years ago
Not to sound cantankerous, but try to listen to someone who not only had two family members with dementia but two friends who has it in their family...instead of imagining what happened based on conjecture.
Bruce Willis didn't make the decision to continue acting in spite of knowing he had dementia and wanting to support his family. He probably had no idea that he had it, and neither did any of his family members until it was obvious that something was wrong. This is how dementia works. A person can have full blown dementia and still continue to keep working as if everything is fine, because they don't know that they have dementia and think they're perfectly fine.
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BeaSouth (3561)
2 years ago
I’m always willing to listen and would never disrespect your real life experience with the disease. I just don’t know it to be true that his illness was so far progressed that he was incompetent to make decisions about working or that he was being exploited in his final few roles
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Destinata (3564)
2 years ago
Otter, Bruce Willis could get a million dollars a day on his work, when he was at the top of his craft. The family sold millions of dollars worth of property, supposedly to pay for his care. The million-dollar-a-movie-for-22-garbage-movies-in-three-years deal was just to cash in on what was left of his carcass while he could still do a semblance of work. One producer who knew he could make money off of him finally walked away from it because he knew it was wrong. Like Fetterman wrong. And the family was saying things like, "Of COURSE he can still act! They wouldn't be paying him all that money if he couldn't act!" knowing full well they were paying him that money for the NAME. His name could sell a movie. And that was basically all he had left.
It's Bruce Freakin' Willis. He has enough money. He has enough money for 'round the clock care for the rest of his life.
The problem is how to keep that huge extended family and their significant others in the chips for the rest of THEIR lives.
It's a thing lately. From Biden to Fetterman to Willis, just use the impaired husk of a man until he drops in his traces. If there's money or power to be had, it seems to be the in thing. And only a few of us throwbacks seem to see how wrong it is.
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Otter (24464)
2 years ago
I'm sorry, but you're getting all worked up over a supposition. Yes, we've both formed our opinions on suppositions, I assumed that Willis's decisions were his own or partly his own, you're assuming his family is forcing a man who is incapable to line their pockets. Either is possible, neither of us knows the truth (and frankly the truth is none of our business), so why don't we be clear that our discussion is a matter of pure speculation?
Anyway, I have seen people in the early or even middle stages of dementia have rational opinions or express needs, so I think it's possible that Willis has been making at least some of his own decisions over the last few years. And we really don't know what his financial position was like before this, the "entertainment media" does tend to overstate celebrity fortunes, maybe he really did need the money if he was going to have care for the rest of his life and leave all of his wives and kids something. And who knows, maybe he realized there was a problem very early in the course of the disease, an actor might possibly be more aware of changes in his speech capabilities than a regular schmoe.
So maybe he actually needs the money, maybe his greedy family wants the money, maybe he's one of these people who takes their status as "the provider" so seriously he couldn't bear to retire without earning as much as he could. We just don't know.
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Destinata (3564)
2 years ago
I've seen some of the movies, so I know he was incapable when he made them. He couldn't even get the "fierce face" right. He used to say he liked comedies better than the action pictures because in the latter all he had to do was set his "fierce face" and spit out the lines. He couldn't even get the fierce face right.
They said "Of course" he could act, but he couldn't. And that other fellow who took you to school was right -- Bruce couldn't have made the call. He's made some odd role choices in the past, but NEVER for money. When he did 12 Monkeys, he took a pay CUT. When he worked on Nobody's Fool it was uncredited in the opening and on the DVD jacket. He'd made his pile long before, and he didn't need to make another.
We DO know the family sold the Idaho property for enough to pay for care for the rest of his life. Anyone who watched these movies could see that wasn't "Bruce Willis" in them. It wasn't even high school level acting. One director was saying he had to keep taking a scene over and over because Bruce kept shooting the gun before he was supposed to, at the back of the person in front of him. Thankfully these really WERE blanks, but Bruce just couldn't get it right. When the director finally just gave up -- with some language, apparently -- Bruce was reported to have said, "Did I do something wrong?"
There's enough info out there that you don't need to wonder. The writers don't blame the family, oddly, even though the family is on the record when they first announced the aphasia "diagnosis" (aphasia is a symptom, not a diagnosis) as saying, "Of course he can still act! They wouldn't be paying him all that money if he couldn't act!" even though they'd have to know that wasn't true. Lie to me, and I'll suspect your motives every time.
It's obvious you haven't watched any of the Bruceploitation movies or done any research, or you'd realize there's no room for your "maybes." I like you, but no. Just no.
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Otter (24464)
2 years ago
Again, none of that means he's incapable of actually *wanting* to work, for whatever reason. It just meant he was incapable of doing a good job.
You don't actually know what anyone's motives are.
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