Kevin Smith Regrets Talking Shit About Bruce Willis After Working Together On “Cop Out”
Yesterday we learned the sad news that 67-year-old Bruce Willis is taking a break from acting because of a diagnosis of aphasia, a condition that affects a person’s cognitive abilities to communicate, whether that be speaking, writing, or understanding language. Plenty of people have reached out with their thoughts on the matter, the majority of them being to celebrate the work Bruce Willis was able to do before his health forced him to step back from a career that spanned over 4 decades. But the tone of Kevin Smith’s comments on the matter were just a little different than most. Kevin decided that now is the best time to take back what he said about working with Bruce Willis on the 2010 buddy cop box office bomb Cop Out.
Cop Out starred Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan (as seen above at the movie’s premiere 12 years ago) as two NYPD detectives trying to track down a rare baseball card that was stolen by a memorabilia-obsessed gangster, so that Bruce Willis’ character can pay for his daughter’s expensive wedding. It’s the only movie Kevin Smith has directed that he didn’t write, and let’s just say, Kevin’s not the only one who thought it wasn’t very good. Over on Rotten Tomatoes, it holds an 18% rotten rating, with a 39% audience score. It could have been one of those predictable studio comedies that come and go without much thought, but now it’s known more for how much Kevin Smith hated working with Bruce Willis.
On a 2011 episode of the WTF with Marc Maron podcast, Kevin Smith stated that he only really took the gig on Cop Out because he was a huge Bruce Willis fan and that it would be a dream to work with Bruce. In actuality, according to Kevin, Bruce “wouldn’t even sit for a fucking poster shoot.” Kevin also told Marc Maron that had it not been for Tracy Morgan, Kevin, “might have killed either myself or someone else in the making of fucking Cop Out.” Kevin also talked extensively about how much he truly didn’t like working with Bruce in Kevin’s 2012 memoir Tough Sh*t: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good, and further dragged Bruce during a Q&A at the 2012 San Diego ComicCon.
Shortly after the news broke about Bruce’s health struggles, Kevin hopped on Twitter to acknowledge that what Bruce is going through sucks, and that he probably didn’t have to come so hard for Bruce Willis back in the day.
Long before any of the Cop Out stuff, I was a big Bruce Willis fan – so this is really heartbreaking to read. He loved to act and sing and the loss of that has to be devastating for him. I feel like an asshole for my petty complaints from 2010. So sorry to BW and his family. https://t.co/npSgvkb5v7
— KevinSmith (@ThatKevinSmith) March 30, 2022
Bruce hasn’t responded to Kevin’s recent act of humility, but he might not ever do so (at least not publicly). And who knows? Maybe Bruce Willis is sitting at home thinking, “That’s nice of Kevin, but I still hated making Cop Out.” But an apology is an apology, and Kevin clearly felt the need to make one, and thus attempt to make amends with the A-list tough guy he trolled for audience laughs for over a decade. But it’s got to feel good to get that off his chest. A feud can truly chip away at your soul, and really, a person should only have one major long-running feud in their lives, and Kevin’s hatred of full-length pants was established long before his hatred of working with Bruce Willis.
Pic: INSTAR