The movie Bruce Willis wanted to delete from history: “It sucked”
Throughout his career, Bruce Willis was no stranger to the public ignominy of a flop. After all, the Die Hard icon made a host of questionable films that died at the box office and were gleefully eviscerated by critics.
In the early 1990s alone, he had a run of pictures that called into question his leading man bona fides, including Hudson Hawk, Billy Bathgate, and The Bonfire of the Vanities. Willis only publicly condemned one movie from this period and would’ve preferred it was deleted from history. However, it was ironically the only one that performed respectably at the box office.
It probably felt like a safe bet when Willis signed up for 1993’s Striking Distance. After all, it was a cop thriller with a big summer release and saw Willis play an alcoholic detective who plays by his own rules to track down a serial killer murdering people close to him. Columbia Pictures chairman Mark Canton was bullish about the film’s prospects, declaring that he “couldn’t be more enthusiastic” about what the leading man and director Rowdy Herrington were cooking up. Unfortunately, those would prove to be famous last words.
After extremely poor test-screening results, the Striking Distance team returned for reshoots. Willis was reportedly extremely unhappy to be brought back and probably wasn’t best pleased when Herrington told Entertainment Weekly that the film, in that state, was “a little too confusing. The audience has to work too hard”. There was a ton of pressure on the duo to turn this thing into a hit, though, so Willis reportedly did what he was known to do on previous faltering projects: he took over.
An anonymous source involved with Striking Distance told EW that the star “called the shots like he did on Hawk and like he used to do on Moonlighting. He had scenes rewritten. He did what he wanted to do.”
In a moment of inspired wordplay, the mystery source sardonically added, “We were working with ‘Orson Willis.'”
Naturally, rumours abounded that Willis commandeering the project from Herrington led to bad blood on the set. However, the filmmaker always deflected any negativity directed toward the star, saying, “If this movie doesn’t succeed, it’ll be my fault, not Bruce’s.”
Ultimately, Striking Distance made $77million worldwide on a budget of $30m, ensuring it didn’t lose money. Unfortunately, it only cobbled together $24m of that total in the US, meaning its domestic reputation was still that of a bomb. Critics attacked the movie with gusto, accusing it of being an incomprehensible collection of cliches that have been executed better in many, many other similar titles.
Over the years, both Willis and Herrington have dismissed the movie despite it overcoming the odds to become a cult classic to the denizens of Pittsburgh. In fact, to the surprise of most non-natives, the local City Paper’s readers once voted it the best movie set in the city. However, the semi-ironic love of the steel city wasn’t enough to stop Willis from categorically summing it up after stating that “it sucked” when asked about the film during a 2004 appearance on On the Record With Bob Costas.
