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I think he's a long time martial arts enthusiast. Combine that with reports that he's apparently kind of a dick in real life and it paints a picture of a dude who would really appreciate an opportunity to use it. Joan Cusack is wonderful in everything the only thing I resent about her was her selfishly absorbing all of the acting talent in the family. She's always had plenty to share and lord knows John is in need of it.

I think Gibson and Willis are pretty similar in regards to the class of roles they were being cast in. Where they were generally cast as characters who were usually more everyday average types thrust into extreme circumstances. Schwarzenegger, Lundgren, Van Damme and Stallone were in kind generally cast in roles where they are mega-cops. Even in something in like Kindergarten Cop, Schwarzenegger has that opening scene in the nightclub. The funniest thing to me is how Steven Seagal clearly sees himself as belonging in the same class as Schwarzenegger, Stallone etc... when he is much more similar to Bruce Willis in terms of his physique even in the best of times, and equally questionable hairline.

No one cared who I was til I put on the mask - said the underaged kid trying to buy alcohol

You know what they say, possession is 9/10ths of The Exorcist.

It reminds me of the various jokes Family Guy did about old tough guys like Robert Mitchum and Joe Pesci and how antiquated they would be in modern definition of the term. While Willis wasn't what Steven Segal would become in the 90s in terms of body type, he had the unfortunate fact of being an action star in the time of Arnold, Stallone, Lundgren, Van Dam, and even Gibson. His saving grace was similar to Gibson in that they had legit acting abilities and were allowed to showcase them, while guys like Stallone and Arnold have only been able to really do so now in some of their more recent roles. Unfortunately the crossover success in an action star who could actually act was he gained an ego from it which has utterly ruined him for the last 15 years. Especially in a time when action stars now are usually leaner or muscular but not exaggerated like the stars of the 80s, a guy like Willis would be either a parody character or he'd be that guy you see on the cover a bunch of C-grade action DVDs that you kinda recognize but never really remember.

But as mentioned on this podcast he is the one Danny Trejo fears most. Plus he's related to the superior Cusack Joan. And not to toot my pop punk past but he has a pretty decent Fall Out Boy song written after him... Like that first album of their's was really good and I cannot stress how much I miss their original sound but I'm getting off topic. Does this make him a good actor? No but it DOES make him vaguely interesting.

In regards to Bruce Willis. How fucking insane is it to think how non-existent his career would be if he was a young actor today trying to make it as an action star. The thought that someone who even at the peak of his career could best be described as having a somewhat fit dad body, and questionable hair line making it as a leading man today seems almost impossible.

Yea I think my biggest issue with Cusack is that Better off Dead was a couple years before my time. I actually saw One Crazy Summer more than a handful of times and I think thats my favorite Cusack movie. And thats only in spite of him and definitely not because of him. Serendipity was the movie that really made me wonder just how in the hell he was considered such a go to romantic lead for as long as he was. High Fidelity just makes me angry to think about, the notion that someone as cool as Lisa Bonet is playing in the movie finding themselves attracted to Cusack's character is legit one of the biggest stretches of the imagination a movie has asked of me.

Joan is the superior Cusack

I've enjoyed Cusack in various things over the last 20 years like Con Air, Grosse Pointe Blank, and even Identity, but it seems like whenever a pitch is brought to him he's told the character that he'd be playing along with motivations and emotions behind them and his only response every time is "and he's on quaaludes right?" As for Willis, I've said in this forum before that the only time he's really tried in the last 15 years were in movies that either had Red or Die Hard in the title, and everything else he just phoned in. Looper is the one outlier as it does come off as a genuine performance from him but after the fallout from Cop Out and how he was canned from The Expendables 3, he's been almost completely straight-to-video, which is kind of sad considering he was a top leading man for the prior 25 years. Hell even when he gets a theatrical release it's like he can't remember how to do it, as in Death Wish he was basically mugging and laughing into the camera when his character is supposed to be a depressed vigilante hunting the people who killed his family members.

Yeah, it's been sad to see a guy who seemed so promising basically become the role he played in High Fidelity, which is his last good movie by my reckoning. I loved Better Off Dead and Say Anything... too, and liked the stuff he was doing with his pals Tim Robbins and Jack Black, like Tapeheads and Bob Roberts (and, I guess, High Fidelity again). Somewhere along the line he probably should have fired his agent, because unlike his sister Joan who has made a good career out of wacky character roles, John seems to have spent the last ~20 years wobbling between roguish leading man in forgettable romcoms and sinister bad guy in forgettable action films.

The boss makes a dollar, I make a dime. That's why I poop on company time