Moonlighting creator Glenn Gordon Caron, updates on Bruce Willis’ health since his frontotemporal dementia (FTD) diagnosis earlier this year.
While speaking with the New York Post, he reveals how he tries to visit the Die Hard actor every month. “l’m not always quite that good but I try and I do talk to him and his wife [Emma Heming Willis] and I have a casual relationship with his three older children. I have tried very hard to stay in his life.”
“The thing that makes [his disease] so mind-blowing is [that] if you’ve ever spent time with Bruce Willis, there is no one who had any more joie de vivre [joy of living] than he,” the director continued. “He loved life and … just adored waking up every morning and trying to live life to its fullest.”
Caron mentioned that FTD has rendered Willis incapable of communication. He explained that it’s as though he now perceives life through a screen door. Nevertheless, Caron noted that when he visits, Willis still recognizes him.
“My sense is the first one to three minutes he knows who I am,” he said. “He’s not totally verbal; he used to be a voracious reader — he didn’t want anyone to know that — and he’s not reading now. All those language skills are no longer available to him, and yet he’s still Bruce.”
“When you’re with him you know that he’s Bruce and you’re grateful that he’s there,” he noted, “but the joie de vivre is gone.”
