Tapping Into Past Performances to Find the Right Tone: If the RJ the raccoon feels a little familiar to Willis fans, it’s probably because he tapped into his 'David Addison' character from the 1980s TV series Moonlighting to help him find the right approach. “I completely ripped that character off. That wasn’t even my idea. I was hired and that was one of the first things they said to me. They said, ‘What do you think about doing it like David Addison?’ And I thought, ‘Well, it’s something. It’s a way in.’
But it’s some of his attitude and some of that devil may care kind of stuff, but there are differences too I think. The overriding emotion in the actual doing of this or the actual creating of the character was just feeling so vulnerable and so lost, and wishing to God that I had one of the actors there that I was supposed to be in the scene with. And they said, ‘No, no, it works better if you just do it by yourself.’”
Willis believes having the opportunity to at least read the script with the other actors, even if it was done without any cameras or recording equipment, would have been helpful in his case. Willis explained, “Here is the problem: without seeing an entire script which you normally get, without the opportunity to rehearse with the other actors and at least get an idea of what… If I had an idea of what Wanda [Sykes] was going to do or what Garry [Shandling] was going to do…I was just guessing. All I saw was printed words on a board. They had stapled the script onto a board and maybe Karey would read Wanda’s lines but he wouldn’t do it the way Wanda had done it.
They wouldn’t even let me see or hear what the other actors had done. …It was impossible and that’s crazy-making because those are your tools. Those are the things you rely on as an actor to try to create [a character] or at least feel comfortable that what you’re doing is on the right track.”
Despite any anxiety he felt during the process, Willis is happy with the way things turned out in the end. “Then two years go by and they show you a rough cut of the film and it’s like someone has just done the most complicated, Euclidian geometry problem and gone, ‘Here is the answer.’ And you know why? Because everybody’s laughing. At the end of the day, all this s**t that we went through that was anxiety-causing and vulnerability and lost in the woods and all, that all goes away because you hear people laughing. That’s the answer to the puzzle they confronted us all with.”
Improvisation was Encouraged: Willis said that not only were they allowed to improvise, they were encouraged to do so by directors Karey Kirkpatrick and Tim Johnson. “I can tell you some things that I tried, but I’m not sure if it’s still in the film or not,” offered Willis. “There were so many things that got tried and because the story and the script continued to change, and the animation had to move on a parallel track along with that, I don't know what’s in the film now or not.”
And Finally, the Question Willis Always has to Answer…: It wouldn’t be a Bruce Willis interview if the subject of Die Hard 4 didn’t come up. Willis expects it at this point, having been asked the question in press junkets for every film he’s done since 1995. Asked if how involved he is in the development process, Willis responded, “Pretty involved. I’m pretty involved with it. They are still working on the script is all I can tell you. That, and the fact that I get asked about it all the time. ‘What are you going to do about Die Hard?’ But no news yet on the Die Hard front. We’ll see.”
