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Being one of the most bankable leading men in Hollywood, Bruce Willis has his pick of juicy roles. The 55-year-old Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actor is one of the highest-grossing – and highest paid – actors today. But when Willis plays a cop – as he does in the Die Hard trilogy, 16 Blocks or Hostage to name a few – audiences respond. Always one to give the fans what they want, Willis returns to law enforcement on the big screen as Jimmy Monroe, a NYPD police officer, in Kevin Smith’s Cop Out, opposite comedian and “30 Rock” star Tracy Morgan.

“If I had a choice, I would do comedy all the time”, admits Willis. “It’s just the most challenging thing to make someone laugh, and the most rewarding thing in entertainment. To be funny you have to commit to the truth of the story you’re telling, even if it’s the craziest story you’ve ever heard, and act like it’s true. Whereas in drama, it’s just on the page…that’s easy to play. It’s much harder to do comedy.”

When Willis came across the script by Robb and Mark Cullen’s first shot at a screenplay, he knew he wanted the role. He says, “It was a laugh-out-loud script; it was a really amazing script that I literally went back and read three times to make sure what had made me laugh out loud could still make me laugh out loud.”

Although Willis realizes this may seem like nothing new to audiences on the surface, he does see one major difference, which was a big selling point for him – the lack of mention of the characters’ races. He says, “Cop Out is the 2010 version of the genre that’s been around since the ’40s: gangster films, cop films. I see things comparing our film to movies like Beverly Hills Cop – just good cop-bad cop movies, and somehow they always mention there were racial overtones in those movies. We never gave it one thought ever about whether this should have racial content. The fact that we get along so well, loved each other and are such good friends – it wasn’t necessary.” He continues, “Kevin didn’t talk about it, no one talked about it.  And we never thought, “Oh, somehow we have to work in this racial problem.’ I think this is the first time in history that a black actor and a white actor in a buddy cop movie, where they work together everyday…where that isn’t an issue.”

The chemistry between Willis and Morgan was also a relief for the veteran actor, as he sees it isn’t always so easy. Of Morgan, he says, “We clicked immediately, and on a lot of levels and in a lot of ways, we found that our timing was effortless. There’s a lot of overlapping dialogue in the film between our characters. I’ve worked with actors who can’t do that…at all. They just get flustered.”

Willis revealed that it was impossible for him to keep a straight face around the comedian, which made his days on the set much more fun. He laughs and remembers, “There were scenes every day where I was trying not to laugh, so they filmed me finally turning from looking out the window. I’d be listening to Tracy, pretending to look soulfully into space, and in reality I’m hiding the fact I’m laughing my ass off. There were times that we broke down, or the whole crew was laughing.” He smiles and adds, “We kept a lot of hard-core shit in the movie, but there are some things that were too hard to stay in the film. Kevin’s job, more than anything, was to keep us from getting too wild.”

Given the playful nature of the script and the set, Willis even allowed a jab at the Die Hard franchise – even with a fifth installment on the way. Shrugging it off, he says, “Had it not been funny, I would have said, “Maybe we should take this out,” but it was funny; it got a laugh.” Smiling, he adds, “I’ve been around long enough, I think, that I’ve earned the right to make fun of my own films.”

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This interview conducted and written by Paul Salfen

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