#moonlighting 1985

CYBILL SHEPHERD as Maddie Hayes

CYBILL SHEPHERD as Maddie Hayes

I’ve recently gotten into Moonlighting, and it’s expanded my thoughts on certain things.

I thought Scream was largely responsible for certain prevalent media tropes both inside and outside of horror, but it turns out, Moonlighting did it first. Or at least was a heavily populariser.

It’s really interesting to see Bruce Willis in such a role. I’ve always considered him to be fairly one-note playing mostly stoic, occasionally grumpy characters with a dry, sarcastic sense of humour. When I heard he was all hip and stuff during Die Hard, which, admittedly, I’ve never watched, I found that hard to believe. I wasn’t impressed with him in Unbreakable, and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen The Sixth Sense in full; of course, I know the twist, and I remember watching bits of it when I was younger, but I don’t know if I ever watched it front-to-back or not. Same with The Fifth Element, and I remember watching one where he was either NSA or fighting against the NSA to protect an autistic boy, but I was more interested in how the autism was portrayed at the time.

Recently, I watched Lucky Number Slevin, and I loved his performance. There’s one moment between him and Josh Hartnett’s character that I thought was so well-done by both of them but especially on his part.

I’m not sure how impressed I am with him in Moonlighting, but it does show he was capable of more range than I believed he was. He does have great comedic timing.

And when I heard I heard he was something of a singer, I just assumed he wasn’t good. For some reason, I automatically assumed he was one of those actors who made the ill-advised choice to dabble in music despite having no talent.

But no, it turns out he can sing.