That was another hallmark of Bruce, a.k.a. Bruno, bartender nonpareil: his penchant for making gigantic entrances and exits. John Goodman, who became
That was another hallmark of Bruce, a.k.a. Bruno, bartender nonpareil: his penchant for making gigantic entrances and exits. John Goodman, who became a good friend of Willis’s at Cafe Central, remembers going into a bodega on St. Patrick’s Day when, “all of a sudden, the door slams open. Willis comes sliding in like he’s heading for second base—a hook slide into the newspaper rack.
“It’s the first time I ever knew somebody with that much charisma,” recalls Goodman. “He was very funny. He was magnetic. He kept it going and he kept all the drinks in his head, made them all very well, and he kept up a monologue. People were drawn to him. I was drawn to him.”
Goodman first went to Cafe Central with Kevin Kline one night in 1979, “and I kind of never left,” he says. “Everybody who was anybody wound up there. I had some dough from doing commercials, so I didn’t have to scrounge to go there. It was a great hang and always a friendly crowd, but Bruce was, number one, very attentive—a charming son of a bitch, confident in the way that I wasn’t.
“He would get so stoked when he’d come back from a good audition, you’d have to tie his feet to the ground,” Goodman says.
Delany wasn’t sure that everyone knew that he wanted to act. “I think he bided his time until he was ready. But he knew when he did, that would be it—no more bartending. When he took over Fool for Love, I think people were shocked and delighted at how good he was.”
Willis didn’t limit himself to Cafe Central, though. When a former maître d’ at Cafe Central, Kirke Walsh, opened the Kamikaze Klub, Willis was hired and became the attraction, “jumping around and playing his harmonica.” Walsh told Parker. That’s how he got the role of Eddie in Fool for Love, according to Parker, when the actor Will Patton let it drop at Kamikaze that he would soon be quitting the role in Sam Shepard’s tour de force about love, obsession, and the American West.
