Bruce Willis to retire from acting

[Timby]

Sadly Bruce has now been diagnosed with dementia too. https://variety.com/2023/film/news/bruce-willis-dementia-aphasia-retire-1235525599/

This is sad. Frontotemporal is also, like, the worst type of dementia for the patient to suffer. My maternal grandfather had it.

With Alzheimer's and a lot of other types of dementia, the sufferer is rarely aware of it, and usually only at the onset of symptoms, early in the disease. Alzheimer's patients are mostly pleasant, just prone to confusion and may have bad reactions to that from time to time, but even those episodes are forgotten and they go about their day. It's slow and terrible, but it's not really until the very end that the patient truly suffers.

With frontotemporal, the underlying knowledge of dementia is there, and the personality changes are permanent. Perfectly nice people become raging combative monsters, and then realize it for a bit, but ultimately know there is nothing they can do. This is on top of the aphasia, which is one the most frustrating things in the world of medicine, and comes in two flavors: Expressive and receptive. With receptive, imagine your friends are having a conversation in a completely different language, except you took that class in high school. You know some of the words, but have no idea what they are saying no matter how slowly and clearly the pronounce it.

That is bad, but imagine the reverse (expressive). You are speaking perfect English, but the words coming out don't make any sense to your friends. They can also identify the words and know what they mean, but you aren't putting them in any order that they can understand. You keep saying "I love barbecue and beer," but they don't know why you just said "Pelicans biting California is fine for now, thanks."

 

[TedShatner10]

This interview from around a decade ago hits different now and not so long after his odd flubs on The One Show:

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He is definitely unusually tired and drowsy here, and again he goes off on weird tangents, pauses too much, and has an inappropriate mood swing almost right off the bat at the puzzled, struggling interviewer (his co-star looks very concerned about him publically exposing his already declining mental faculties).

 

[Owain Taggart]

That is bad, but imagine the reverse (expressive). You are speaking perfect English, but the words coming out don't make any sense to your friends. They can also identify the words and know what they mean, but you aren't putting them in any order that they can understand. You keep saying "I love barbecue and beer," but they don't know why you just said "Pelicans biting California is fine for now, thanks."

Yeah, terrible way to go, and sounds very frustrating to the person experiencing it. I recently read a novel, The Storied Life of A.J Firkry, and in it, the main character ends up getting Aphasia, and they never explicitly state which type, but they way you describe it, it sounds like expressive is the kind the character had, as other characters he spoke to were perplexed at his string of words and realized something was wrong. They're making a movie out of this novel, and my hope is that it will bring widespread awareness of what it can do to people.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

lost hearing in one ear due to an onset explosion that went off at the wrong time.

The Fifth Element, probably...the pyrotechnics and noise during the battle inside Fhloston Paradise were out of control...

 

[TedShatner10]

The Fifth Element, probably...the pyrotechnics and noise during the battle inside Fhloston Paradise were out of control...

Also allegedly he got hit in the forehead by a pyrotechnic fragment or blank shell casing on Tears Of The Sun a few years later.

 

[JesterFace]

Unfortunately memory loss is familiar, my grandmother suffered from it in her last years.

Losing memory, it feels like one of the worst diseases because it robs you of what you are.

 

[Starkers]

This is sad. Frontotemporal is also, like, the worst type of dementia for the patient to suffer. My maternal grandfather had it.

With Alzheimer's and a lot of other types of dementia, the sufferer is rarely aware of it, and usually only at the onset of symptoms, early in the disease. Alzheimer's patients are mostly pleasant, just prone to confusion and may have bad reactions to that from time to time, but even those episodes are forgotten and they go about their day. It's slow and terrible, but it's not really until the very end that the patient truly suffers.

With frontotemporal, the underlying knowledge of dementia is there, and the personality changes are permanent. Perfectly nice people become raging combative monsters, and then realize it for a bit, but ultimately know there is nothing they can do. This is on top of the aphasia, which is one the most frustrating things in the world of medicine, and comes in two flavors: Expressive and receptive. With receptive, imagine your friends are having a conversation in a completely different language, except you took that class in high school. You know some of the words, but have no idea what they are saying no matter how slowly and clearly the pronounce it.

That is bad, but imagine the reverse (expressive). You are speaking perfect English, but the words coming out don't make any sense to your friends. They can also identify the words and know what they mean, but you aren't putting them in any order that they can understand. You keep saying "I love barbecue and beer," but they don't know why you just said "Pelicans biting California is fine for now, thanks."

There was an article on our local news about a chap with the exact same kind of Dementia. He started exhibiting symptoms when he was 50! His wife didn't realise what was going on initially with his mood changes. Genuinely thought their marriage was breaking down until they got the diagnosis.

My mum spent around the last ten years of her life suffering with dementia (suspect it was vascular but never seemed to get an accurate diagnosis from the doctors) so I know what a horrible disease it can be. Fortunately her medication did seem to mitigate the anger she showed early on. Whilst she couldn't process that I was her son she knew my name and did always recognise me on some level (she would routinely introduce me to people as her brother) I always feel so sorry for people whose loved ones don't recognise them anymore. I also feel incredibly sorry for those who weren't able to see their loved ones in care homes during the pandemic or be with them at the end.

 

[Keith1701]

This is such sad news.

 

[Forbin]

Before I heard the diagnosis, I saw him in a really bad film 2021 called Cosmic Sin. I assumed he was doing the film on a lark without really caring, because he seemed to be phoning it in, as they, say, or reading his lines cold from cue cards. Now I know better. Damn.

 

[FPAlpha]

This is an excellent article about how his decline may have been masked by his more silent, impassive performances of the last 20 years or so (compared to the wisecracker of his early days).

I remember also allegations that he was rude and then there was the infamous appearance on BBC’s The One Show. This was later explained away by him having supposedly lost hearing in one ear due to an onset explosion that went off at the wrong time. However, all of that really looks now, with hindsight, to having been due to the at least one, if not both, of the two conditions.
https://www.vulture.com/2022/08/silent-bruce-willis.html

His hearing loss resulted from the scene in Die Hard when he was crawling underneath the conference table and emptied his gun through the table to get the goon standing on it.

He had no hearing protection and the gun was loud enough, even wth the blanks, to permanently damage hearing in his right ear if i remember correctly.

It's sad when someone is hit with that kind of disease - he won't die from it but to lose everything you are and be imprisoned in your own body not even recognizing the people closest to you is heartbreaking for everybody involved.

 

[Sci]

This is incredibly sad news. One thing that did strike me as very touching, though, was that the statement came not only in the names of Willis's daughters, but in the names of his current wife Emma and his ex-wife, Demi Moore. I think it says a lot about the quality of his character that he has not only been able to maintain such a close friendship with Moore, but that they're all close enough that her name is right next to his wife's in this announcement, and she's apparently taking part in caring for him.

 

[Owain Taggart]

^ Yeah, they were apparently very close even after their divorce. I wish more hollywood divorces were like that, as you always hear of a never-ending series of controversies.

 

[Sci]

^ Yeah, they were apparently very close even after their divorce. I wish more hollywood divorces were like that, as you always hear of a never-ending series of controversies.

More divorces, period. We should all be so lucky as to be able to maintain such ties of love -- even if transformed from romantic love into familial love -- if, God forbid, our marriages or relationships should fail. It definitely speaks to something very admirable about both Willis and Moore.

 

[Starkers]

Didn't Willis actually end up spending the first lockdown with Demi and their kids because of where he was at the time?

And I agree, it's really good that they've maintained a relationship. I appreciate that isn't always easy for a variety of reasons but it's good they made it work.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I think you might be right about that. Now that you mention it, he may have spent it with her and stayed there during the lockdown, which is actually rather fortunate given his state.