May 19, 1991
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By Glenn Plaskin, Tribune Media Services.
`Bruno`` was a kooky bartender prone to letting loose on his silver harmonica while roller-skating into Manhattan`s trendy Cafe Central. Pre-punk, weird and winning, he always came attired in voluminous parachute pants, headbands, ripped T-shirts, earrings and a spiky haircut. That was at night.
Every afternoon, at exactly 1 p.m., the penniless actor whose real name was Bruce Willis strutted more soberly into his ``office``-a telephone booth at the corner of 49th Street and 10th Avenue. On this particular day, a moment after 1 p.m., Bruno`s best friend, a broke piano player named Robert Kraft, called.
Jiving Bruno, who couldn`t pay his phone bill, satirically answered,
``Hudson Hawk Productions,`` a reference to the twosome`s newly composed theme song inspired by the Hudson River and the cold wind, or (in jazz lingo) the hawk, blowing off it.
Kraft had, in 1981, composed his ``Hudson Hawk`` funk-jazz instrumental while Bruno-embodied in the song as ``Little Eddie Hawkins``-wrote the words: ``Nickel in his pocket, time on both his hands, Little Eddie Hawkins lost in Candyland . . . .``
Lost Bruno. Quicksanded in Off-Off-Broadway. Living on tips. Someday, he dreamed, things would be different. Someday, ``Hudson Hawk`` would be a movie. ``That story has taken on mythical proportions, but it`s absolutely true,`` says a grinning Bruce ``Bruno`` Willis. And now, the actor who couldn`t pay his phone bill pulls down $12 million a film, reigns over his own production company-Hudson Hawk Productions-and stars in his very own brainchild, ``Hudson Hawk,`` an action-packed comedy caper opening Friday.
``This baby has been in the birthing room 12 years, and it`s a real labor of love,`` says the 36-year-old actor, who plays the world`s greatest cat burglar, Eddie Hawkins.
Reformed Eddie, just released from jail, decides to go into legitimate business with his best friend, Tommy ``Five Tone`` Messina (Danny Aiello). But the villainous Minerva Mayflower (Sandra Bernhard) forces him back into a life of crime, aided by a deadly CIA agent (James Coburn).
Galloping through Europe,``Indiana Jones`` style, Eddie delivers high camp and daredevil burglaries. After all, he`s been forced to steal a Leonardo da Vinci-invented ``gold machine`` that transforms lead into gold. Along the way, ``Hawk`` falls in love with an undercover nun (Andie MacDowell).
``It`s about greed and money in the `90s, with elements of a Bob Hope-Bing Crosby road picture,`` says Willis. ``It`s a comedy with broad slapstick and moronic wit, and it has huge action beats.``
This elaborately choreographed, $40 million-some say $50 million-effort has whipped up some controversy. Hollywood meanies have sniped over the dozens of script rewrites, snail-paced filming and cost overruns in Hungary, Italy and England; Willis` supposed bullying of director Michael Lehmann
(``Heathers``); and the replacement of original leading lady Marushka Detmers, who withdrew because of a back injury. That last bit prompted a feeding frenzy for the tabloids, which claimed Mrs. Willis, Demi Moore, raced to Europe in a jealous rage over Detmers, forcing her dismissal.
``Total fiction about Demi, the rest of it ridiculously blown up,`` says a bemused director Lehmann, 34, who terms the final product ``a
collaboration.``
Willis agrees: ``Trash, all of it untrue.`` Willis views the metamorphosis of the script as ``healthy,`` terms European film crews
``inefficient,`` and takes umbrage that he directed the director. ``That offends me. In no uncertain terms, Michael Lehmann directed this film. But I wasn`t a hired gun either. I conceived `Hawk` and had a lot of strong feelings about what kind of story I wanted to tell.
``I feel attacked,`` says the actor of his treatment by the supermarket tabloids. ``I`ve made them millions, and all they do is print lies. . . . And celebrities are nothing but commodities.``
Sneakers propped up at Manhattan`s Ritz Carlton, Willis is blunt, yet shy in conversation, outfitted in baggy jeans, sweatshirt, and blue basketball cap-with a Brutus-sized bodyguard hovering nearby.
``Greed, money, dollars still rule the world,`` Willis explains.
``Technology transformed into more money pollutes and poisons the world. Human beings are not important, but Eddie Hawkins counteracts what`s expected of him, and he`s completely logical in his code of ethics.``
The road from Hell`s Kitchen to Hollywood hasn`t been paved with yellow brick for Willis. Raised in blue-collar Carney`s Point, N.J., Willis was ``a naive kid`` who stuttered until his late teens: ``Stuttering made me very shy and uncomfortable, but it also forced me to overcome the stutter by making people laugh.``