On Wednesday, it was revealed that Bruce Willis was retiring from acting after being diagnosed with aphasia, a rare cognitive disease that erodes the ability to speak and understand language. The news inspired an avalanche of appreciation for the beloved actor. Some former colleagues even apologized for things they’d said about him in the past.
And then there’s the Razzies. For the last four decades-plus, the Golden Raspberry Awards have been the anti-Oscars, “honoring” what they perceived as the worst in cinema. This year’s slate, which announced their “winners” mere days ago, included an entire category dedicated to Willis, who, over the last few years, has largely done smaller films, often direct-to-streaming, often several of them a year. The Razzies decided to belittle this, picking eight of these films to compete for the award called “Worst Performance by Bruce Willis in a 2021 movie.”
After Willis’ condition was made public, the Razzies tried to address it, though their response didn’t go over very well.
https://twitter.com/RazzieAwards/status/1509219110579712002
“The Razzies are truly sorry for #BruceWillis diagnosed condition,” the awards body wrote on their social media account. “Perhaps this explains why he wanted to go out with a bang in 2021. Our best wishes to Bruce and family.”
In a subsequent exchange with IndieWire, Razzies co-founders John J. B. Wilson and Mo Murphy doubled down on their support for Willis and his family, though they also added, strangely though seemingly in defense of their category, “In Willis’ defense, perhaps his reps should not have let him do such a high volume of work in so short a time.”
They later added, “We are still discussing how to handle the news about Willis’ diagnosis and will get back to you.”
In an interview with Vulture in late February, shortly after this year’s nominees were announced, Wilson and Murphy admitted that they regretted at least one nomination: Shelley Duvall in The Shining, after discovering that she’d undergone psychological distress at the hands of exacting director Stanley Kubrick. So it’s not impossible that they may at least apologize for what was at the least a poorly-timed dig, if not worse.
(Via IndieWire)
