Bruce Willis Deeply Regrets Starring In This Flop With Tom Hanks And Morgan Freeman

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Tom Wolfe's social satire "The Bonfire of the Vanities" was published in 1987 and was constructed as a wry, readable send-up of New York's high society at the time. Its story follows a callow yuppie named Sherman McCoy who, while out on a drive with his mistress Maria, accidentally head into the Bronx. A series of small misunderstandings results in Maria taking the wheel and accidentally running over a Black teenager, Henry Lamb, then fleeing the scene. The accident is covered by a burned-out tabloid reporter named Peter Fallow, whose reporting leads to McCoy's arrest. The bulk of the narrative then focuses on McCoy's trial. No one is wholly good in "Bonfire," and most of the characters are largely bad.

The book was infamously adapted into a feature film by Brian De Palma in 1990, and, boy howdy, is it bad. Every character is miscast, with Tom Hanks playing Sherman McCoy and Melanie Griffith playing his mistress. Meanwhile, Bruce Willis plays Peter Fallow, who's no longer a burnout; instead, he's a dandyish celebrity drunk who barely seemed invested in the story. The film also features Kim Cattrall as McCoy's wife, Morgan Freeman as the judge in the case, and an uncredited F. Murray Abraham as the District Attorney.

De Palma's "Bonfire" was a massive bomb, grossing only $15.4 million at the box office on a budget of $47 million. It was also roundly panned by critics, with some comparing it to the "Police Academy" movies. It currently has a 15% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and was nominated for five Razzie awards. The production was also infamously troubled, and author Julie Salamon wrote a famous book, "The Devil's Candy," all about how everything fell apart.

Of course, the film's cast has since worked very hard to distance themselves from the project. In 1996, Willis spoke to Playboy Magazine (transribed on the interviewer's website) about the movie, stating that "Bonfire" is the only film he would never want to do again.

Bruce Willis thinks he knows what went wrong with The Bonfire of the Vanities

Willis had several issues with "Bonfire." Firstly, he thought that it was the victim of prejudice. Many people had read the original novel, and Willis resented the pundits who declared the film was no good before having even seen it. That kind of bad faith take, Willis felt, kept people away. There was no way to earn back the audience's trust if it was released "pre-reviewed," so to speak. To quote Willis directly:

"It was stillborn, dead before it ever got out of the box. It was another film that was reviewed before it hit the screen. The critical media didn't want to see a movie that cast the literary world in a shady light. In the reviews, they were recasting the film. They were saying, 'If we were doing this film, we would cast William Hurt instead of Tom Hanks,' or whatever. Well, if you were doing the film, then that might mean you had some f***ing talent and knew how to tell a story instead of writing about what other people are trying to do."

Critics, of course, often hear this refrain ("Can you do any better?") when they write up a bad review. One can see how Willis would be bitter, though, as "Bonfire" did have high expectations to meet, and poor casting led people to believe that it might be terrible. It wouldn't be until critics actually saw it, of course, that their suspicions would be confirmed. "Bonfire" is indeed pretty terrible. The film plays with broad archetypes and tries to make a panicked hero out of a miserable millionaire.

Ultimately, though, Willis agreed with the critics.

Bruce Willis felt he was miscast in The Bonfire of the Vanities

Readers of Wolfe's book had very strong opinions as to who should be cast in a film adaptation, and neither Willis nor Hanks was on anyone's list. Also, because the book was so sardonic and cruel, it robbed a conventional film audience of a traditional hero. Willis felt those were the two biggest contributing factors to the film's massive failure. He continued: 

"But they were right. I was miscast. I know that Tom Hanks thinks he was, too. The movie was based on a great book. But one problem with the story, when it came to the film, was that there was no one in it you could root for. In most successful movies, there's someone to cheer on." 

It's not a very good story when the climax of the film is a heroic scene wherein a vapid yuppie throws his mistress under the bus.

Even De Palma came to agree with the critics. In a (sadly now-deleted) interview he conducted with Empire Magazine in 2008, the filmmaker admitted his fatal mistake was making Sherman sympathetic when the character should have been an antihero at best. He felt the material warranted a more cynical approach, however, and didn't have the temerity to do that in 1990. He even agreed that Hanks was miscast, feeling now that John Lithgow (whom De Palma had made "Raising Cane" with) would have been a better choice.

And, of course, there was a messy, messy production to contend with, which included a lot of studio tinkering and bad, last-minute decisions. Reading "The Devil's Candy" may provide a good bit of insight into the way Hollywood productions can go horribly wrong.