It has never been much of a secret that director Kevin Smith had a very difficult time working with Bruce Willis on the set of their 2010 comedy Cop Out. News of tension emerged within a few months of the film opening in theaters and both sides depicted a working relationship that was not complimentary. Now, in Smith’s new book about his entire career titled “Kevin Smith’s Secret Stash: The Definitive Visual History”, the director is detailing what he calls the “true darkness” of working with Bruce Willis.
Heading into Cop Out, Smith was a huge fan of Bruce Willis due to projects like Moonlighting and Die Hard. Smith even got along with the actor after he played a small supporting role in Live Free or Die Hard. This made Smith excited to direct Willis in Cop Out but the director says in the book, “Cop Out could have been a great experience if it were not for the fact that I met true darkness in Bruce Willis. I love making movies and he does not, at all.”
Things started awkwardly on the very first day of shooting of Cop Out (originally titled, A Couple of Dicks). Smith has told a variation of this story in the past but his book goes into a longer version about how Willis was immediately upset one day of the production when Smith allowed his co-star, Tracy Morgan, to improvise his dialogue. After the scene was shot, Smith writes, Willis “was never nice to me again for the rest of the show.” The chapter goes on to be about one Bruce Willis story after another with Smith writing “he’s very lazy” and after the actor got mad at Smith for allegedly “contradicting” him in front of the crew, he claims that Willis went back to his trailer and punched a hole in the bathroom wall. Near the end of the chapter, Smith writes “If he had fired me”, noting that Willis had the power to do that as the biggest star on the film, “I would not have cared.” Yikes!
At the time of the initial dispute, Willis’ side of things had the actor alleging that Smith “Smokes way too much pot” and that he “didn’t interact with the actors” on set. Smith did admit to smoking pot but denied that it affected his job performance. He went on to add that he “dealt with every actor who wanted to be dealt with on that set.”
It’s a shame all of this animosity came out of a movie like Cop Out. The buddy cop action-comedy revolved around two veteran NYPD partners (Willis and Morgan) who were on the trail of a stolen, rare, mint-condition baseball card that find themselves up against a relentless, memorabilia-obsessed bloodthirsty gangster. Despite being Smith’s highest-grossing film, earning $55.6 million worldwide on a $30 million budget, the film received a dismal 19% on Rotten Tomatoes and it certainly isn’t viewed by Smith as a highlight of his career.
What are YOUR thoughts about what Kevin Smith said in his new book about Bruce Willis?