Bruce Willis Agreed to Star in a Film Uncredited Only for Tarantino
While Quentin Tarantino had its share of big hits, he's also well-known for making odd films, catering to his own personal preferences, loaded with both cameos and allusions that you can only fully understand if you're as much of a cinephile as Tarantino himself.
Take Four Rooms (1995), for example, a farcical black comedy anthology, made right on the heels of the big hit which was Pulp Fiction.
To make it, Tarantino partnered with a number of his old buddies among filmmakers, including Alexandre Rockwell, Allison Anders, and Robert Rodriguez.
And he invited a number of notable stars to make cameo appearances in it, including Madonna, Antonio Banderas, and, perhaps most notably, Bruce Willis. And what's remarkable, Bruce Willis was not even mentioned in the credits.
In The Man From Hollywood segment of Four Rooms, Willis portrays Leo, one of the friends of the fast-talking, silver-tongued director, Chester Rush (played by Tarantino himself).
And in this case art imitated real life, as Willis and Tarantino were friends in real life, after collaborating on Pulp Fiction.
Grand success of that film helped Bruce to recover his career from a slump, and return to the status of one of the biggest stars in Hollywood.
So, as a favor to his friend, and to have some fun, Willis volunteered to work on Four Rooms for free – Four Rooms was a low-budget film, filmed for about $4 million, so there was no question of paying Willis anything approaching his usual fee, in any case.
And the role was not big, with Leo being a background character, almost a bystander to most of what happened in his segment of the film.
However, playing a role for free violated the rules of the SAG union. And that's why Willis also did not receive a screen credit for his appearance. Talk about no good deed going unpunished.
In any case, Four Rooms was not well-received by critics, and ended up a box office flop.
As Grindhouse (2007) proved later, Tarantino just isn't very good at making anthologies, perhaps because he uses them as opportunities for unrestrained self-indulgence as a filmmaker.
So, we can only hope that Bruce Willis and other people involved at least had fun filming it.