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Incident in
Hailey
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The following images are still
pulls from DV footage shot by me on August 8, 1999, in Hailey,
Idaho. I had gone there with Keythe Farley to shoot a short
segment about the town for the Independent Film Channel show Split Screen. (The segment was eventually killed by IFC in response
to pressure from Willis's lawyer, but more on that later.) We
were drawn to Hailey by an article in the L.A.
Weekly (written by Nancy Rommelmann)
about Bruce Willis's purchasing a home there and opening some businesses
on Main Street. By all accounts Willis did much to help Hailey
(he said publicly that he didn't want to see the town "die"),
and Main Street truly looked much better for his tasteful and
expensive improvements.
But after awhile Bruce Willis
quite suddenly decided to close the doors of what were his two
most popular businesses, a night club called the Mint and a
diner called Shorty's. Nobody seems to know exactly why Willis
shut the places down. Most accounts have it that he threw a
temper tantrum or two and just fired everybody. His reputation
in the town--which had previously seen him as somewhat of a
hero--now suffered; a gauge of one's character as a business
owner in Hailey is how one treats the help, and Willis did not
score many points by suddenly putting people out of work
without apparent reason. Willis's actions left a trail of bad
vibes and lawsuits.
We went to Hailey determined to
talk to as many people as we could about what happened there.
What was it like to have a movie star living in this town of
less than 5,000 people? How was it to have his generosity so
easily given and just as easily taken away? And why did Willis
do what he did?
Most people we encountered were
eager to talk and treated us with courtesy even if they didn't
want to talk. But Bruce Willis's security personnel in Hailey
(he still owns buildings on Main Street and uses the Mint as a
party spot when he is in town) apparently were not pleased by
our presence, as the following photo story shows.
Click on the thumbnail image to
see a larger picture.
PRESS: You have permission to
publish these pictures. Credit "Brian Flemming" if you wish.
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On August 8, 1999, around
dusk, we were getting a panning shot from Shorty's (which has
re-opened under new ownership)...
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...to the Mint.
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Two young men--who would
later claim to be employees of Bruce Willis's businesses--pulled up in a
silver BMW convertible and took our picture.
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They then trotted into
Shorty's. The yellow-haired one snapped a picture over his shoulder as
he ran. We were amused by their behavior.
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The other one took a picture
of our car (you can see him through the window). Meanwhile, the
yellow-haired man talked frantically on the BMW car phone as if
he were in an emergency. He kept looking our way and tried to
duck his face away from our camera at the same time. It was a
struggle for him.
Of course, we had no idea
who these men were and had no particular interest in them at the time.
All we knew is that they were acting like they were in a movie.
When we left Shorty's, the
two men followed us in their BMW. We pulled over and parked. They
circled the block. We pulled out into traffic again. They
followed. We were getting less amused.
We parked across from the
Liberty Theater (also owned by Willis) and shot some footage of it. The
two BMW men parked and ran inside the theater. I decided to shoot the
license plate of their car with my camera. That's when all hell broke
loose.
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The skinny fella with the
hair colored yella came running out of the Liberty, screaming,
"Get the fuck away from my car right now!" Strange rule--they
take pictures of our car, we can't take pictures of theirs.
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I soon found myself penned
in by thugs. An obese thug I hadn't seen before held my camera
with both hands and forced it to point at the ground. He held
his face four inches from mine and glared at me with a
practiced look that was nearly menacing.
I was accused of "stalking"
Bruce Willis (although we had attempted neither to contact nor
to photograph Willis while in town--and had no idea even if he
was in Hailey at the time).
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Finally, a thug who actually
looked like he worked out showed up and took charge. He said,
"I'm an ex-Navy S.E.A.L., and you guys are screwing up."
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This ex-military thug
flashed a badge. He said, no kidding, "I'm a licensed security
officer and I have the right to obtain you." Well, he certainly
didn't obtain me, thank God. But one might say he detained me.
Unlawfully. (I later filed a criminal complaint with the Hailey
Police Department. Hailey's Prosecuting Attorney, to nobody's
great surprise, found an "insufficient factual basis to support
the filing of criminal charges in this matter." Hailey's
police chief told me one of the goons, apparently the Navy
Seal above, left the state of Idaho before he could be
interviewed by the Hailey PD.)
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I yelled out to Keythe (who
was down the street and not being obtained at the time) to call the cops.
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Strangely, even when the
Hailey PD showed up (in about one minute flat), the thugs did
not tone down their menacing behavior. They apparently felt
free to surround me still.
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One even lunged aggressively
at my camera.
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Finally two of the thugs
agreed to go inside the Liberty Theater. The rotund gentleman
on the left is the one who held my camera and glared at me.
He's even scarier from the front.
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The Navy S.E.A.L. watched
his pals go, but he still seemed hell bent on obtaining me.
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While the one Hailey police
officer at the scene talked to my partner, the S.E.A.L. ignored
my repeated requests to "Back away from me!"
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He seemed to think he was
performing the duty his pal described earlier--to protect the
Liberty "from anything."
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From photography? I had
asked.
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Finally I convinced the
Hailey officer to get the thug away from me.
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But the yella fella (far
right) still yelled threats from the distance: "If you fuckin'
film me, I swear to God..."
Who was this guy, we
wondered. Don Corleone?
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Only the arrival of backup
from the nearby town of Bellevue got the Willis goons under control.
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Whew! Finally it was over.
I'm sure I was this close to being obtained. After he talked to the
Willis thugs, Officer Jones offered us some comforting news...
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"I've got their word that
they won't follow you out of town."
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What started all this? We were,
um, photographing a building. From across the street.
* * *
Three days later, I got a call
from L.A. attorney Marty Singer, who is apparently the legal branch of Bruce
Willis's goon squad. He wasn't calling to apologize. He
demanded that I stop harassing and defaming his client--but
could not mention a single act I'd committed that fell into
either of those categories. I asked him, "What exactly is it
that you want me to stop doing?" He couldn't say, but he did
threaten a lawsuit for my "tortious conduct." Another
interesting insight into Bruce Willis's world: I get detained,
harassed and manhandled on a public street, and Willis's lawyer
complains about my tortious conduct. I suppose I should have
gotten pushed around a little less tortiously.
But the legal bullying didn't end
there. When Singer finally discovered who I was working for, he sent a blistering
four-page letter to John Pierson, "Split
Screen's" producer, and to the IFC brass threatening a lawsuit and
alleging (without support, naturally) all sorts of unseemly behavior by
me. Despite a valiant lobbying effort by John Pierson, IFC buckled--they
refused to show the segment, which was scheduled to air in October
1999. Now Pierson and I are left to mouth off to various news outlets
(see links below).
So what's the deal with Bruce
Willis? I dunno. When his thugs took such an interest in us, we were
about an hour from leaving town with a pretty even-handed story--some
interviews with Hailey people that were essentially split down the
middle about him. Some people still think he's great for Hailey
(although, admittedly, very few are without reservations about
the manner in which he closed his businesses). Overall, the
story was pretty much an unsolved mystery--nobody but Willis
likely knows why he did what he did. This wasn't the sort of
segment destined to garner major media attention.
But, ironically, Willis's own
security personnel, on no real provocation from us, turned this story
that wouldn't have even been a blip on Willis's radar into one with
convincing proof of a sinister side to his organization. And
now that Marty Singer's threats have killed the piece (at least
on IFC), the press is having a gay old time feasting on its
carcass. And journalists who have received similar rough
treatment by the Willis syndicate are now popping out of the
woodwork to tell their stories. To be continued...
Brian Flemming
vagrant@slumdance.com
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