November 17, 2021 • 29 mins
Bruce Willis opens his biggest investment in Hailey yet—the two-story Mint bar and nightclub. Major acts draw modest crowds, but the real attraction is Willis and his band, who show up unannounced and rock long into the night. But having a major nightlife hotspot in the sleepy town leads to some big city problems, problems that leave some wondering where did the real Hailey go?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is an I Heart original picture this. You're a
resident of Hailey, Idaho, population of five thousand. Small town
life is treating you well, but sometimes you don't want
another quiet night. Sometimes you want to get loud. You
(00:23):
want to see some live music. There are a couple
of late night hangouts, like the Red Elephant Saloon, and
some of them have live bands, mostly local talent, nothing
wrong with that. They sound good. For bigger names, you've
got to head to catch them. Or Sun Valley, the
big ski resort destination about fifteen miles outside of town.
(00:48):
Hailey isn't necessarily the best place to turn the volume up,
but in June things change all of a sudden. You
can go see George Clinton, B. B. King, Bo Diddley
(01:08):
legends of blues and rock and funk on stage in
front of maybe a hundred other people in a small,
intimate setting. They jam and play late into the night
and into the wee hours of the morning. Haley has
never seen anything like it. Like most of the development
(01:30):
happening around this time, this is the work of Haley
resident and movie star Bruce Willett. He's turning the volume up,
way up. He bought which was just a seedy little
dive of a bar in Haley. That's Steve Kerns, then
(01:50):
the mayor of Haley, and he bought it and completely
remodeled it. What he didn't just remodey towards Pargolan down
and built the whole new building with an entertainment lounge upstairs.
And they brought in some quite a few naturally known
acts to play them in with a first class restaurant
downstairs as well. And that was a big deal for
(02:13):
Haley to have that sort thing happening. Of all the
Bruce Willis projects on Haley's main street. The mint is
the crown jewel, the pst Resistance. It costs millions and
it's fitting. Willis, after all, worked in a bar for
years before making it in Hollywood. Now he owns one.
(02:35):
It's a concentrated dose of Willis's urban New York lifestyle
injected directly into the veins of small town Haley, and
that mixture will soon prove to be combustible. This one
time cowboy bar would soon be the site of an
old school wild West showdown for I Heart Radio. This
(03:00):
is Haleywood. I'm your host, Danish Schwartz, and this is
episode four mint condition. The mint was easily Willis's most
ambitious project to date in Haley, since going on a
real estate buying spree under the veil of an umbrella corporation,
(03:20):
the Xnay Investment Trust. He purchased the ailing property for
two hundred thousand dollars from its owner, a man named
Wally Young, and set about reimagining it with the cat
out of the bag. Willis and his employees at Valley Entertainment,
which looked after his business interests in Haley, didn't deny
(03:42):
newspaper reports Willis was spending millions of dollars to take
the Rundown Dive Bar into a new era, one that
would showcase his love of music, with live act and
lots of Bruce Willis jamming with his own band, the Accelerators.
But if this was going to work, Willis needed a
(04:03):
little help managing the details, someone he could trust, and
Joe McAllister, Willis's friend and business associate, knew just the guy.
So Joe was actually doing some work on Bruce's house
on seventy Street in Central Park West when I really
started to get connected with Bruce. That's Rick Oliver, who
(04:25):
would go on to become heavily involved with the men.
I was Pedal corporate security for Paulo Ralph Lauren in
New York for close to ten years. Bluddy of mine
was one of his top designers, Kenny Thomas, but he
wanted to get some of that product out to celebrities,
and I said, well, you know, I can probably give
Bruce Willis into some of these clothes. He goes great,
(04:48):
you know, and I made it happen. Um, Bruce, Uh,
you know, he liked the thought. He you know, he
loved the clothes, and he said, you know, hey, who's
this Rick guy? I want to meet him. Uh. And
that's what a connection was made. I met him a
planet Hollywood. Uh. Mid nineties. Willis liked Rick, and Rick
liked Willis. A little later on, Willis even gave Rick's
(05:11):
friends a big surprise, Bruce do me a bachelor party
after I got married, and he actually barking it for me.
That's a good story to say. I had Bruce Barchen
for me. You know, Willis told him what he was
planning in Haley. And while you might expect Rick to
be excited about the opportunity to get into the burgeoning
Bruce Willis Industry. Rick was noncommittal. Joe invited me, I
(05:37):
don't know, probably twenty times, and I was like, you
know what, I'm not I'm not into this. You know,
I didn't know much about Idaho. The only thing I
know about Idaho was you know, skinheads and potatoes, right,
which happened that then? That wasn't the truth, right, It
was just just my perception, you know, living in Manhattan
at that time. The other thing that gave Rick pause
was that, well, not too many people looked like him
(06:00):
in Haley. There wasn't a lot of black people up there.
And initially I thought Joe was doing it to kind
of you know, uh, bring some ethnics city, bring culture
into the community, right, But Joe apparently wore Rick down.
Bruce always has something going on during the holidays, like
(06:20):
the fourth of July, he had a big fireworks show
at the Rodeo, and he always did a New Year's party,
which was you know, they bought everybody out, you know,
John Kennedy, um, his fiance, just a lot of major
Hollywood people and celebrities in general. So I would come
out to some of those events, um and uh and
visit when I wind up, you know, staying. I fell
(06:43):
in love with the place. Everyone seemed to fall in
love with Haley. It was just so idyllic, and Rick
had plenty of reasons to stay. Beyond the beautiful scenery.
He was proving useful to Willis's growing enterprise. I helped
him with talent, you know, by the talent, recommended talent,
and work with the artists when they got here, just
(07:05):
making sure that they were okay and they needed anything
artist relations if if you will, you know, I was
Joe's right here man, and people are trying to get
to me, to get to Joe, to get to Bruce,
right because Bruce isn't you know, he's really not approachable.
I mean you could see him, but he's not approachable,
especially from a business standpoint. So you know, talk to Joe.
(07:25):
And if they couldn't get to Joe, they would tell
me stuff to tell Joe or they want to meet
with Joe. And everything was kind of layered. There was
always something happening. But even though The Mint was set
to be Hayley's flashiest new hangout, not everyone would be welcome.
(07:52):
After eighteen months of renovation work, the Mint's grand opening
finally came in July five. The first floor was a
spacious square feet accented with dark red brick and green
awnings that blended into the nearby buildings, including the Haley
Town Center across the street. Haley had never seen anything
(08:17):
like it. If you're coming in from the street, off
to the left, it's like it is a couple of
small steps. You go up, and that's like the dining
area right. The bar would be to your right, and
the kitchen would be to the left of that, and
if you kept going straight you walk out the back door.
The ambience it was, it was it was pretty nice.
(08:38):
It wasn't like fine dining or anything. If you walk
to the right, there will be a staircase and an elevator,
so you can take either the elevator up or you
can take the stairway. Uh, And that's where the nightclub
would be. Two floors, both typically packed. Was good for
Willis and good for Haley, but not everyone was enthusiastic
(09:01):
about the change. As the old Mint was demolished, regulars
of the one time dive bar lamented its passing. Some
asked to take vintage bricks and playfully throw them through
an old window. A tribute to the bar's reputation as
a tough drinking spot for the tough miners that once
populated the town. The new Mint was definitely different. Here's
(09:26):
Rick Oliver again. So the original Mint was just like
an old cowboy that bar. Right, they carried down and
they really rebuilded. I think Bruce had like a five
star French chef in there cooking, so we haven't a
testing with the French chef. And Bruce is there and
(09:47):
to me is there Joe was sitting across from me,
and the French chef is bringing out all this really
good food. Right. Bruce goes, you know, when I was
a struggling uh actor an in Hell's kitchen, he us
to buy a big bag of frozen chicken wings, right,
and I go, frozen chicken wings. He goes yeah, he
goes Rick, and then you know, he goes and I
(10:07):
get this tomato sauce that go like Hines go no, no, no,
no no. He goes, like, came in a can. I go, Contadina,
goes that's it, Contadina. He goes, put that put that
on a men. He goes, chicken, I want the chicken
cooked in the Contadina tomato and you can see the
you can see the French chef like just getting red right.
(10:30):
I don't know if he was playing, if he was serious,
but I'm thinking he had to have been playing. But
Willis wasn't always joking. Early on, it seemed like Haley
might be stubborn when it came to the rules. Work
on the mint was briefly halted when Willis insisted on
putting in heated sidewalks, an amenity that ran a foul
(10:51):
of Hayley's city code. This wasn't a heated sidewalk kind
of town. Willis grew a little impatient. He said Haley
was making him follow every letter of the law, that
it was, in his words, getting ridiculous. He just wanted
to get things going, make as big an impact in
(11:12):
Haley as he had made in Hollywood. He wanted big acts.
We used to bring in acts like BB King, Junior, Wealth,
Charlie Daniel band. Uh. It was. It was a place
to be. But Willis's taste in music wasn't necessarily Haley's
taste in music. And while you think Willis would try
(11:33):
to cater to the locals, he seemed to be more
interested in what Bruce Willis wanted to hear, and he
brought in an act of various kinds from the East. Well,
most of it was jazz and the type of music
that you know you would find in the inner cities
(11:57):
on the East coast. Well, I shouldn't city from his area,
Lee Slander one time, Hailey resident lawyer and amateur music critic.
And it didn't go over at all with the locals
because they didn't understand it, or you know, it just
wasn't there. Uh, they're back at all. They still liked
(12:19):
um western. If he had a Western band, the place
would be packed, but he rarely did. Of course Bruce
would get up there wasn't a while it was harmonic
and try to ruin it all. I'm just kidding, but
I didn't. I'm not a big uh a big lover
(12:42):
of that of that kind of music. But just because
you showed up didn't mean you were getting in. The
mint may have been a public place, but it was
still subject to Willis's demand for privacy. He never permitted
any outside professional photography inside the building, and he sometimes
dictated who could be allowed on the dance floor. An
(13:05):
area firefighter who was ribbing Willis about his old sea
groom's wine cooler commercials ejected. Someone who wanted to bother
Willis or Demi Moore not allowed. He would slip me
a grand and say, hey, watching me, give me on stage,
give me on stage, but I want you to watch
to me, and you know, and I would you know,
go alright, cool, you know, I just sit fire. You know,
(13:26):
she had to go to bathroom whatever, I'd walk her
way outside the bathroom door, you know, stuff like that,
or hey, Rick, I got some people coming in tonight,
or don't let this person in door, so I just
covered the door. And they were times he would just
hang out, you know, but yeah, it was. It was
more like that than like, hey, I'll be on payroll
for security. He which is you know, like everything else,
you know, like his shows, like hey Rick, I need
(13:48):
you and I helped me out at the top of
the new entry list. Reporter Willis's longtime arch Nemeses. Definitely,
if if he knew reporters or something or someone you
know who was only to be a nuisance or pain
in the ass, he would see him and say, hey,
make sure that got in come in, But v I
p s like John F. Kennedy Jr. And Daryl Hannah.
(14:08):
They could waltz right in and maybe slip off. Some
were more private. That's because the Mint had some secrets
that were known to only a handful of people. You
know the old movies where they had the bookshelves and
you pushed the bookshelf and it turns into another room. Well,
there was another room, you know. You push that and
that's where the bathrooms are. And he's got a steam
(14:31):
room and seats about eight people. Willis had a hidden
room where he and his famous friends and his big
name X could gather in total privacy. We're not sure
if Haley's city code allowed for it, but it was there.
I remember we had George Clinton there and it was
(14:52):
time for the should start. What else says? Everyone's looking
for George Clinton in his band? And I'm like, what
the hell? We're all where where are they? Where could
they possibly be? As you know what, we hadn't check
one place? And I pushed open the door. I know,
all in a in that steam room, just smoking weed.
It was hysterical. I was like, man, you just need
(15:13):
to get on stage. Man, what are you doing? And
they're like, oh, sorry, And the amount of smoke that
came out. It was, it was. It was pretty funny.
But the real draw of the Mint wasn't the out
of town as it was Bruce Willis, who frequently appeared
on stage with his band, the Accelerators. You could just
be having a beer at the Mint and Willis would
(15:35):
just show up harmonica in hand. He wouldn't announce it
in advance. So if he would have done that, that
would have been a line around the block. Maybe he
didn't want the undue attention, but it's also hard to
be a performing artist on stage and not have undue attention.
Every time he did one of these you know on
(15:55):
the fly things, the place was packed. I mean, we
couldn't believe it. I mean, remember we were over at
Joe's house from morning and Bob kat Goldthwick, the comedian,
you know, he came over and he was like, hey,
I'm you know, looking for you know, Bruce Willis's house,
and you know, he's looking at me like as the
first black guy saw out there too, which probably was true.
(16:15):
We said, what's happening, Well, we're doing the show tonight.
Brucey called him and just said, you know, hey, let's
do a show. I believe it was a Sunday morning
because we were like, how is he gonna put this
this together? You know, we're gonna put it up on
a marquee, And sure enough put it up on the marquee.
And and that night it was it was at Blobcat
(16:39):
opened up with comedy and Bruce and Accelerators came up
and did their things. But that was that was normal
that and and Bruce Willis is Bruce Willis right, So
you know at the time his name, you know alone,
you know you hear Bruce Willis is there, and you're
gonna show up if you're in town. Willis and his
crew performed songs like show Me and who has a
(17:00):
Good Woman? Good Morning, Little school Child, The spirit is willing,
but the flesh is weak and more building out tune
after tune, in a style that was less singing and
more well. Willis had a name for it. In an interview,
Willis once described his singing style as quote coloring. He was,
(17:22):
in his words, someone who could holler loudly and in key,
but maybe his singing was beside the point. Bruce is
very very talented. I mean not just a good actor. Um,
he's a great musician as well. I'll be honest with you.
At the time, I was more impressed with him being
a performer on stage and and and playing the harp.
(17:43):
And you know, Bruce has got this flag about you know,
he's cool, he has swaged and and I was just
in aunt. I thought as a musician he was he
was better to be a musician than being an actor.
I mean, the diehard roles and stuff didn't him. Bruce
was okay as a musical performer. Let's put it that way.
(18:07):
He's a better actor than he used a musician. So
the reviews weren't unanimous. Even so, Bruce and his Accelerators
were easily the highest profile act in town, and that
made them a little bit of a target. There were
other local groups like the Barnet's, a risque for women
group that performed a gently salacious show. They like to
(18:30):
poke a little fun at Willis singing He's a Local
to the tune of He's a Rebel, Willis, they said,
just ignored it. The Mint also started holding outlandish events
like homespun versions of seventies game shows like The Dating
Game or The Gong Show, shows Willis might have watched
(18:51):
as a teenager area residents competed to win dinner at
the Mint. The Gong Show was like an early version
of America can Idol, where if the performers were terrible,
they were gone. I was in the Gong Show with Bruce. Yeah,
we did a Gong show thing I was. I wasn't
(19:12):
had a holy field and I had a piece of
taper in my hair, and you know, and and and
Bruce has come around with the broom, you know, when
somebody gets goned, and he'd come down and you know,
um yeah, and he'd sweep, you know, he'd go around
doing this thing. He's actually, he's incredibly funny. Where else
in the world are you going to see Bruce Willis
dismissing bad entertainers like a prototype Simon Cowell with a broom.
(19:35):
In his performances with the Accelerators and the Gong Show,
it was obvious that this was a Willis playground. Even
the Mint's restaurant disappeared, replaced with a series of pool
tables that better fit the leisurely hangout atmosphere. But it
also seemed like Willis couldn't decide whether the Mint should
(19:56):
be a business or just a glorified man Cave. An
employee told a reporter that Willis once declared the bar
open and free for everyone. The next day, the employee
said he came storming in scolding employees because the mint
was losing money. The original mint had been a rowdy
(20:17):
drinking spot full of ordinary miners who wanted to blow
off steam with a little drinking and maybe some fighting.
The new mint was more civilized. But any combination of alcohol, jealousy, music,
and late nights is bound to end in trouble. Rick
Oliver found that out firsthand. Most people at the Mint
(20:46):
were therefore a party to have a good time, but
not everyone was on their best behavior. Here's leash Slender again,
water or two of these guys, and I don't want
to get too close to the names because don't want
to get anybody in trouble, but a couple of them
had been in brawls and raising hell downtown late at night,
(21:08):
which was really unusual for us. It's a quiet little town.
Nine ten o'clock, it's locked up, everybody goes home, And
that did really get everybody's attention, he said, what's going on?
While people in Haley were mostly low key, there was
a contingent that didn't like being pushed around, and that
(21:30):
led to some real problems, not because of Willis, but
Willis's associate. There was that clash between perhaps one or
two or maybe more Bruce's hanger on is. It run
into a little problem with some of our local younger guys.
Sometimes these melee's got a little out of hand. A
(21:52):
man named Johnny Rolling told the press that he was
visiting Haley from out of town when he claimed a
Mint employee choked him and dragged him out by the neck.
He lodged a complaint with the Hailey District Court. Another patron,
Dale Disher, said he was also dragged out by his
neck and pushed down the stairs. In both cases, the
(22:15):
Mint security staff were the alleged culprit. Willis, of course,
rarely commented to the press about anything, much less accusations
of his customers getting knocked around, but spokespeople for Valley
Entertainment asserted that anyone pursuing legal action against the bar
was simply an opportunist looking to dip into Willis's deep pocket. Look,
(22:41):
there are fights in bars. It's certainly nothing the Mint encouraged.
But like in any bar, there were times when things
seemed like they were going to go further, much further.
And it was during one of those times that Rick
Oliver had to step up in a big way, and
not against one irate friend, but a whole bunch of them.
(23:03):
I kind of got into something one night. There was
a kid and he was I don't know, is its
proper to us the word gay, you know? But I
knew the kid because he owned a business. And catch
them a group of cowboys giving him a hard time.
I mean like, and they follow him into the bathroom.
When I saw him following into the bathroom, I go,
let me go, and I bet that you know they're
gonna give a hard time. Rick didn't like where this
(23:26):
was going. It's not that Haley was inherently prejudiced, because
they weren't. But this was the es when people might
be more prone to let bigotry slide but not wreck.
And sure enough then it's seizing him and I go, hey, man,
leave the guy alone, and they're like, you know, you know,
f you you want somebody, Yeah, let's go to take
it outside, just to get him away from him. You know.
(23:49):
It was a group of them, and I remember going
to my car and I had my casiled weapons permitting
everything they did. It was like something out of a Western.
There was wreck So sing off with a group of
homophobic cowboys in the middle of Hayley's main street, wondering
if he might need to reach for the gun that
was tucked in his pants. Well I didn't flash it,
(24:10):
but it was in my my belt, right, so you know,
I was like, well, what do you guys want to do?
You know? And they were all mouth and they were
they were kids, and they were just being drunk and obnoxious. Right.
Someone called the police. The police arrived and they saw
a black man with a gun in a heated scene
with a group of white guys. And Rick was taken
(24:32):
into custody. Yeah yeah, so you know, and they came
and even with the consteal weapon prevent you know, this
is so Idaho, they took me in and it was
you know, you know, I had a decent attorney in
I was released the next day on bail. But you know,
it wasn't like it shouldn't have happened. Thankfully, the Mint
(24:56):
had a few nights that were that intense, but when
they did happen, it caught people's attention. And because of that,
there's a kind of irony that exists within the Mint
that's worth mentioning. In retreating to Haley, Willis was looking
for an escape from the spotlight, but the Mint brought
it right to his proverbial front door. There was always
(25:18):
someone trying to get a good story. I remember, you know,
one guy came out coming from out of town. I
didn't really know what was going on, and he wanted
to have breakfast. And at the time I was doing
some p I security stuff, so I didn't know if
it was a case he was working on or what
have you. But as it turned out, he was with
you know, was his Star magazine. Yes, Star magazine. Star
(25:38):
for those who may not remember, was one of those
big tabloids in the nineties next to the National Enquirer
headlines like killer mom in secret romance with hunky prison guard.
It wasn't the New York Times. People are making up
stories and stories, you know, they just want to confirm
blah blah blah. You know, there was one, you know,
if I can recall correctly, something A got a mobster's
(26:00):
wife in New York and the mobster was, you know,
gonna put a hit on Bruce or something like that,
and we like, you know what, Bruce's probably got more
money in their whole mob family, the occasional potential shootout
and running with Tabloid's aside. Rick had a good time
with Willis with the men to and in Haley, but
after a few years there it was time to move on.
(26:23):
Rick eventually found life in Boise, Idaho, to be more
to his liking. He's still there today. I'm still an
artist management for a company called the Goal Agency Talent Buyer.
You know, I just finished came off a big summer
concert series here. Uh it's Expo Idaho. Ric also got
(26:44):
a taste of what it meant to be as famous
as Willis, even in a town as small as Haley.
I can remember being with him, me and him and
the girls. You know. It was like a Saturday afternoon
and we're at the Mint first and obviously it's closed
because it's it's the nightclub. It's in the the noon.
So we're in there with the girls and you know,
we're just in there dance and just me and him
and the girls, the girls referring of course to his daughters.
(27:08):
And we turn on the music and we danced and
then these people walk in, right, and we're like, you know, hey,
this is clothes today left, we got'm leaving. Then you know,
we do that for a little bit, you know, and
then we go next to the shorties to get I
think we'll get a nice pain or something like that.
And the same people they walk in and they're just
staring and and you know, I get a glimpse of
this right and I'm like, you know, what are you
(27:30):
guys doing it? And today started like try and talk
and this is like, you know what, I'm here with
friends and family and you know, what are you doing here? Like?
So I got a sense of that, and I got
that with just from being around, you know, working for
celebrities and and being in that kind of circle. Someone
always wants something, you know, It's it's a tough it's
a tough business. So now everybody knows that, you know, hey,
(27:53):
Bruce Willis live and de memor live and you know Hayley, Idaho. Right,
So people are coming out of woodwork for whatever reason. Increasingly,
Willis was realizing that he could still be found in Haley,
could still have people coming out of the woodwork, and
no matter what he did, his every move was going
to be subject to scrutiny. The bubble of privacy he
(28:17):
had wrapped himself in, had wrapped Haley in, was in
real danger of bursting. So Willis decided to lean into it.
Instead of being a quiet Haley resident, he opted to
get political and the result was a disaster of nuclear proportions.
The guy who had been sort of boost his money
(28:39):
guy was someone that people who were intimidated by. He
was apparently like a big dude, and he was still
around on the streets of Haley sometimes and people were
I don't think, like physically afraid of the guy, but
they were intimidated by him. If you're enjoying Haleywood so far,
(28:59):
remember to eight review and subscribe. It helps other people
who might want to find the podcast, and it really
helps us, the people who have made the podcast. Thank
you so much. Haileywood is hosted by Danis Schwartz. This
show is written by Jake Rawson, editing by Derrick Clements,
Mary Do and me Josh Fisher. Sound design and mixing
(29:23):
by Jeremy Thal, Derrek Clemens, and me Josh Fisher. Original
music by Natasha Jacobs. Research and fact checking by Jake Rawson,
Austin Thompson and Marissa Brown. Show logo by Lucy Quentinia.
Our senior producer is Ryan Murdoch and our executive producer
is Jason English. Special thanks to the people of Hailey,
(29:45):
Idaho and all those who've shared their stories. Haileywood is
a production of I Heart Radio. Until Next Time.
This is an I Heart original picture this. You're a
resident of Hailey, Idaho, population of five thousand. Small town
life is treating you well, but sometimes you don't want
another quiet night. Sometimes you want to get loud. You
(00:23):
want to see some live music. There are a couple
of late night hangouts, like the Red Elephant Saloon, and
some of them have live bands, mostly local talent, nothing
wrong with that. They sound good. For bigger names, you've
got to head to catch them. Or Sun Valley, the
big ski resort destination about fifteen miles outside of town.
(00:48):
Hailey isn't necessarily the best place to turn the volume up,
but in June things change all of a sudden. You
can go see George Clinton, B. B. King, Bo Diddley
(01:08):
legends of blues and rock and funk on stage in
front of maybe a hundred other people in a small,
intimate setting. They jam and play late into the night
and into the wee hours of the morning. Haley has
never seen anything like it. Like most of the development
(01:30):
happening around this time, this is the work of Haley
resident and movie star Bruce Willett. He's turning the volume up,
way up. He bought which was just a seedy little
dive of a bar in Haley. That's Steve Kerns, then
(01:50):
the mayor of Haley, and he bought it and completely
remodeled it. What he didn't just remodey towards Pargolan down
and built the whole new building with an entertainment lounge upstairs.
And they brought in some quite a few naturally known
acts to play them in with a first class restaurant
downstairs as well. And that was a big deal for
(02:13):
Haley to have that sort thing happening. Of all the
Bruce Willis projects on Haley's main street. The mint is
the crown jewel, the pst Resistance. It costs millions and
it's fitting. Willis, after all, worked in a bar for
years before making it in Hollywood. Now he owns one.
(02:35):
It's a concentrated dose of Willis's urban New York lifestyle
injected directly into the veins of small town Haley, and
that mixture will soon prove to be combustible. This one
time cowboy bar would soon be the site of an
old school wild West showdown for I Heart Radio. This
(03:00):
is Haleywood. I'm your host, Danish Schwartz, and this is
episode four mint condition. The mint was easily Willis's most
ambitious project to date in Haley, since going on a
real estate buying spree under the veil of an umbrella corporation,
(03:20):
the Xnay Investment Trust. He purchased the ailing property for
two hundred thousand dollars from its owner, a man named
Wally Young, and set about reimagining it with the cat
out of the bag. Willis and his employees at Valley Entertainment,
which looked after his business interests in Haley, didn't deny
(03:42):
newspaper reports Willis was spending millions of dollars to take
the Rundown Dive Bar into a new era, one that
would showcase his love of music, with live act and
lots of Bruce Willis jamming with his own band, the Accelerators.
But if this was going to work, Willis needed a
(04:03):
little help managing the details, someone he could trust, and
Joe McAllister, Willis's friend and business associate, knew just the guy.
So Joe was actually doing some work on Bruce's house
on seventy Street in Central Park West when I really
started to get connected with Bruce. That's Rick Oliver, who
(04:25):
would go on to become heavily involved with the men.
I was Pedal corporate security for Paulo Ralph Lauren in
New York for close to ten years. Bluddy of mine
was one of his top designers, Kenny Thomas, but he
wanted to get some of that product out to celebrities,
and I said, well, you know, I can probably give
Bruce Willis into some of these clothes. He goes great,
(04:48):
you know, and I made it happen. Um, Bruce, Uh,
you know, he liked the thought. He you know, he
loved the clothes, and he said, you know, hey, who's
this Rick guy? I want to meet him. Uh. And
that's what a connection was made. I met him a
planet Hollywood. Uh. Mid nineties. Willis liked Rick, and Rick
liked Willis. A little later on, Willis even gave Rick's
(05:11):
friends a big surprise, Bruce do me a bachelor party
after I got married, and he actually barking it for me.
That's a good story to say. I had Bruce Barchen
for me. You know, Willis told him what he was
planning in Haley. And while you might expect Rick to
be excited about the opportunity to get into the burgeoning
Bruce Willis Industry. Rick was noncommittal. Joe invited me, I
(05:37):
don't know, probably twenty times, and I was like, you
know what, I'm not I'm not into this. You know,
I didn't know much about Idaho. The only thing I
know about Idaho was you know, skinheads and potatoes, right,
which happened that then? That wasn't the truth, right, It
was just just my perception, you know, living in Manhattan
at that time. The other thing that gave Rick pause
was that, well, not too many people looked like him
(06:00):
in Haley. There wasn't a lot of black people up there.
And initially I thought Joe was doing it to kind
of you know, uh, bring some ethnics city, bring culture
into the community, right, But Joe apparently wore Rick down.
Bruce always has something going on during the holidays, like
(06:20):
the fourth of July, he had a big fireworks show
at the Rodeo, and he always did a New Year's party,
which was you know, they bought everybody out, you know,
John Kennedy, um, his fiance, just a lot of major
Hollywood people and celebrities in general. So I would come
out to some of those events, um and uh and
visit when I wind up, you know, staying. I fell
(06:43):
in love with the place. Everyone seemed to fall in
love with Haley. It was just so idyllic, and Rick
had plenty of reasons to stay. Beyond the beautiful scenery.
He was proving useful to Willis's growing enterprise. I helped
him with talent, you know, by the talent, recommended talent,
and work with the artists when they got here, just
(07:05):
making sure that they were okay and they needed anything
artist relations if if you will, you know, I was
Joe's right here man, and people are trying to get
to me, to get to Joe, to get to Bruce,
right because Bruce isn't you know, he's really not approachable.
I mean you could see him, but he's not approachable,
especially from a business standpoint. So you know, talk to Joe.
(07:25):
And if they couldn't get to Joe, they would tell
me stuff to tell Joe or they want to meet
with Joe. And everything was kind of layered. There was
always something happening. But even though The Mint was set
to be Hayley's flashiest new hangout, not everyone would be welcome.
(07:52):
After eighteen months of renovation work, the Mint's grand opening
finally came in July five. The first floor was a
spacious square feet accented with dark red brick and green
awnings that blended into the nearby buildings, including the Haley
Town Center across the street. Haley had never seen anything
(08:17):
like it. If you're coming in from the street, off
to the left, it's like it is a couple of
small steps. You go up, and that's like the dining
area right. The bar would be to your right, and
the kitchen would be to the left of that, and
if you kept going straight you walk out the back door.
The ambience it was, it was it was pretty nice.
(08:38):
It wasn't like fine dining or anything. If you walk
to the right, there will be a staircase and an elevator,
so you can take either the elevator up or you
can take the stairway. Uh, And that's where the nightclub
would be. Two floors, both typically packed. Was good for
Willis and good for Haley, but not everyone was enthusiastic
(09:01):
about the change. As the old Mint was demolished, regulars
of the one time dive bar lamented its passing. Some
asked to take vintage bricks and playfully throw them through
an old window. A tribute to the bar's reputation as
a tough drinking spot for the tough miners that once
populated the town. The new Mint was definitely different. Here's
(09:26):
Rick Oliver again. So the original Mint was just like
an old cowboy that bar. Right, they carried down and
they really rebuilded. I think Bruce had like a five
star French chef in there cooking, so we haven't a
testing with the French chef. And Bruce is there and
(09:47):
to me is there Joe was sitting across from me,
and the French chef is bringing out all this really
good food. Right. Bruce goes, you know, when I was
a struggling uh actor an in Hell's kitchen, he us
to buy a big bag of frozen chicken wings, right,
and I go, frozen chicken wings. He goes yeah, he
goes Rick, and then you know, he goes and I
(10:07):
get this tomato sauce that go like Hines go no, no, no,
no no. He goes, like, came in a can. I go, Contadina,
goes that's it, Contadina. He goes, put that put that
on a men. He goes, chicken, I want the chicken
cooked in the Contadina tomato and you can see the
you can see the French chef like just getting red right.
(10:30):
I don't know if he was playing, if he was serious,
but I'm thinking he had to have been playing. But
Willis wasn't always joking. Early on, it seemed like Haley
might be stubborn when it came to the rules. Work
on the mint was briefly halted when Willis insisted on
putting in heated sidewalks, an amenity that ran a foul
(10:51):
of Hayley's city code. This wasn't a heated sidewalk kind
of town. Willis grew a little impatient. He said Haley
was making him follow every letter of the law, that
it was, in his words, getting ridiculous. He just wanted
to get things going, make as big an impact in
(11:12):
Haley as he had made in Hollywood. He wanted big acts.
We used to bring in acts like BB King, Junior, Wealth,
Charlie Daniel band. Uh. It was. It was a place
to be. But Willis's taste in music wasn't necessarily Haley's
taste in music. And while you think Willis would try
(11:33):
to cater to the locals, he seemed to be more
interested in what Bruce Willis wanted to hear, and he
brought in an act of various kinds from the East. Well,
most of it was jazz and the type of music
that you know you would find in the inner cities
(11:57):
on the East coast. Well, I shouldn't city from his area,
Lee Slander one time, Hailey resident lawyer and amateur music critic.
And it didn't go over at all with the locals
because they didn't understand it, or you know, it just
wasn't there. Uh, they're back at all. They still liked
(12:19):
um western. If he had a Western band, the place
would be packed, but he rarely did. Of course Bruce
would get up there wasn't a while it was harmonic
and try to ruin it all. I'm just kidding, but
I didn't. I'm not a big uh a big lover
(12:42):
of that of that kind of music. But just because
you showed up didn't mean you were getting in. The
mint may have been a public place, but it was
still subject to Willis's demand for privacy. He never permitted
any outside professional photography inside the building, and he sometimes
dictated who could be allowed on the dance floor. An
(13:05):
area firefighter who was ribbing Willis about his old sea
groom's wine cooler commercials ejected. Someone who wanted to bother
Willis or Demi Moore not allowed. He would slip me
a grand and say, hey, watching me, give me on stage,
give me on stage, but I want you to watch
to me, and you know, and I would you know,
go alright, cool, you know, I just sit fire. You know,
(13:26):
she had to go to bathroom whatever, I'd walk her
way outside the bathroom door, you know, stuff like that,
or hey, Rick, I got some people coming in tonight,
or don't let this person in door, so I just
covered the door. And they were times he would just
hang out, you know, but yeah, it was. It was
more like that than like, hey, I'll be on payroll
for security. He which is you know, like everything else,
you know, like his shows, like hey Rick, I need
(13:48):
you and I helped me out at the top of
the new entry list. Reporter Willis's longtime arch Nemeses. Definitely,
if if he knew reporters or something or someone you
know who was only to be a nuisance or pain
in the ass, he would see him and say, hey,
make sure that got in come in, But v I
p s like John F. Kennedy Jr. And Daryl Hannah.
(14:08):
They could waltz right in and maybe slip off. Some
were more private. That's because the Mint had some secrets
that were known to only a handful of people. You
know the old movies where they had the bookshelves and
you pushed the bookshelf and it turns into another room. Well,
there was another room, you know. You push that and
that's where the bathrooms are. And he's got a steam
(14:31):
room and seats about eight people. Willis had a hidden
room where he and his famous friends and his big
name X could gather in total privacy. We're not sure
if Haley's city code allowed for it, but it was there.
I remember we had George Clinton there and it was
(14:52):
time for the should start. What else says? Everyone's looking
for George Clinton in his band? And I'm like, what
the hell? We're all where where are they? Where could
they possibly be? As you know what, we hadn't check
one place? And I pushed open the door. I know,
all in a in that steam room, just smoking weed.
It was hysterical. I was like, man, you just need
(15:13):
to get on stage. Man, what are you doing? And
they're like, oh, sorry, And the amount of smoke that
came out. It was, it was. It was pretty funny.
But the real draw of the Mint wasn't the out
of town as it was Bruce Willis, who frequently appeared
on stage with his band, the Accelerators. You could just
be having a beer at the Mint and Willis would
(15:35):
just show up harmonica in hand. He wouldn't announce it
in advance. So if he would have done that, that
would have been a line around the block. Maybe he
didn't want the undue attention, but it's also hard to
be a performing artist on stage and not have undue attention.
Every time he did one of these you know on
(15:55):
the fly things, the place was packed. I mean, we
couldn't believe it. I mean, remember we were over at
Joe's house from morning and Bob kat Goldthwick, the comedian,
you know, he came over and he was like, hey,
I'm you know, looking for you know, Bruce Willis's house,
and you know, he's looking at me like as the
first black guy saw out there too, which probably was true.
(16:15):
We said, what's happening, Well, we're doing the show tonight.
Brucey called him and just said, you know, hey, let's
do a show. I believe it was a Sunday morning
because we were like, how is he gonna put this
this together? You know, we're gonna put it up on
a marquee, And sure enough put it up on the marquee.
And and that night it was it was at Blobcat
(16:39):
opened up with comedy and Bruce and Accelerators came up
and did their things. But that was that was normal
that and and Bruce Willis is Bruce Willis right, So
you know at the time his name, you know alone,
you know you hear Bruce Willis is there, and you're
gonna show up if you're in town. Willis and his
crew performed songs like show Me and who has a
(17:00):
Good Woman? Good Morning, Little school Child, The spirit is willing,
but the flesh is weak and more building out tune
after tune, in a style that was less singing and
more well. Willis had a name for it. In an interview,
Willis once described his singing style as quote coloring. He was,
(17:22):
in his words, someone who could holler loudly and in key,
but maybe his singing was beside the point. Bruce is
very very talented. I mean not just a good actor. Um,
he's a great musician as well. I'll be honest with you.
At the time, I was more impressed with him being
a performer on stage and and and playing the harp.
(17:43):
And you know, Bruce has got this flag about you know,
he's cool, he has swaged and and I was just
in aunt. I thought as a musician he was he
was better to be a musician than being an actor.
I mean, the diehard roles and stuff didn't him. Bruce
was okay as a musical performer. Let's put it that way.
(18:07):
He's a better actor than he used a musician. So
the reviews weren't unanimous. Even so, Bruce and his Accelerators
were easily the highest profile act in town, and that
made them a little bit of a target. There were
other local groups like the Barnet's, a risque for women
group that performed a gently salacious show. They like to
(18:30):
poke a little fun at Willis singing He's a Local
to the tune of He's a Rebel, Willis, they said,
just ignored it. The Mint also started holding outlandish events
like homespun versions of seventies game shows like The Dating
Game or The Gong Show, shows Willis might have watched
(18:51):
as a teenager area residents competed to win dinner at
the Mint. The Gong Show was like an early version
of America can Idol, where if the performers were terrible,
they were gone. I was in the Gong Show with Bruce. Yeah,
we did a Gong show thing I was. I wasn't
(19:12):
had a holy field and I had a piece of
taper in my hair, and you know, and and and
Bruce has come around with the broom, you know, when
somebody gets goned, and he'd come down and you know,
um yeah, and he'd sweep, you know, he'd go around
doing this thing. He's actually, he's incredibly funny. Where else
in the world are you going to see Bruce Willis
dismissing bad entertainers like a prototype Simon Cowell with a broom.
(19:35):
In his performances with the Accelerators and the Gong Show,
it was obvious that this was a Willis playground. Even
the Mint's restaurant disappeared, replaced with a series of pool
tables that better fit the leisurely hangout atmosphere. But it
also seemed like Willis couldn't decide whether the Mint should
(19:56):
be a business or just a glorified man Cave. An
employee told a reporter that Willis once declared the bar
open and free for everyone. The next day, the employee
said he came storming in scolding employees because the mint
was losing money. The original mint had been a rowdy
(20:17):
drinking spot full of ordinary miners who wanted to blow
off steam with a little drinking and maybe some fighting.
The new mint was more civilized. But any combination of alcohol, jealousy, music,
and late nights is bound to end in trouble. Rick
Oliver found that out firsthand. Most people at the Mint
(20:46):
were therefore a party to have a good time, but
not everyone was on their best behavior. Here's leash Slender again,
water or two of these guys, and I don't want
to get too close to the names because don't want
to get anybody in trouble, but a couple of them
had been in brawls and raising hell downtown late at night,
(21:08):
which was really unusual for us. It's a quiet little town.
Nine ten o'clock, it's locked up, everybody goes home, And
that did really get everybody's attention, he said, what's going on?
While people in Haley were mostly low key, there was
a contingent that didn't like being pushed around, and that
(21:30):
led to some real problems, not because of Willis, but
Willis's associate. There was that clash between perhaps one or
two or maybe more Bruce's hanger on is. It run
into a little problem with some of our local younger guys.
Sometimes these melee's got a little out of hand. A
(21:52):
man named Johnny Rolling told the press that he was
visiting Haley from out of town when he claimed a
Mint employee choked him and dragged him out by the neck.
He lodged a complaint with the Hailey District Court. Another patron,
Dale Disher, said he was also dragged out by his
neck and pushed down the stairs. In both cases, the
(22:15):
Mint security staff were the alleged culprit. Willis, of course,
rarely commented to the press about anything, much less accusations
of his customers getting knocked around, but spokespeople for Valley
Entertainment asserted that anyone pursuing legal action against the bar
was simply an opportunist looking to dip into Willis's deep pocket. Look,
(22:41):
there are fights in bars. It's certainly nothing the Mint encouraged.
But like in any bar, there were times when things
seemed like they were going to go further, much further.
And it was during one of those times that Rick
Oliver had to step up in a big way, and
not against one irate friend, but a whole bunch of them.
(23:03):
I kind of got into something one night. There was
a kid and he was I don't know, is its
proper to us the word gay, you know? But I
knew the kid because he owned a business. And catch
them a group of cowboys giving him a hard time.
I mean like, and they follow him into the bathroom.
When I saw him following into the bathroom, I go,
let me go, and I bet that you know they're
gonna give a hard time. Rick didn't like where this
(23:26):
was going. It's not that Haley was inherently prejudiced, because
they weren't. But this was the es when people might
be more prone to let bigotry slide but not wreck.
And sure enough then it's seizing him and I go, hey, man,
leave the guy alone, and they're like, you know, you know,
f you you want somebody, Yeah, let's go to take
it outside, just to get him away from him. You know.
(23:49):
It was a group of them, and I remember going
to my car and I had my casiled weapons permitting
everything they did. It was like something out of a Western.
There was wreck So sing off with a group of
homophobic cowboys in the middle of Hayley's main street, wondering
if he might need to reach for the gun that
was tucked in his pants. Well I didn't flash it,
(24:10):
but it was in my my belt, right, so you know,
I was like, well, what do you guys want to do?
You know? And they were all mouth and they were
they were kids, and they were just being drunk and obnoxious. Right.
Someone called the police. The police arrived and they saw
a black man with a gun in a heated scene
with a group of white guys. And Rick was taken
(24:32):
into custody. Yeah yeah, so you know, and they came
and even with the consteal weapon prevent you know, this
is so Idaho, they took me in and it was
you know, you know, I had a decent attorney in
I was released the next day on bail. But you know,
it wasn't like it shouldn't have happened. Thankfully, the Mint
(24:56):
had a few nights that were that intense, but when
they did happen, it caught people's attention. And because of that,
there's a kind of irony that exists within the Mint
that's worth mentioning. In retreating to Haley, Willis was looking
for an escape from the spotlight, but the Mint brought
it right to his proverbial front door. There was always
(25:18):
someone trying to get a good story. I remember, you know,
one guy came out coming from out of town. I
didn't really know what was going on, and he wanted
to have breakfast. And at the time I was doing
some p I security stuff, so I didn't know if
it was a case he was working on or what
have you. But as it turned out, he was with
you know, was his Star magazine. Yes, Star magazine. Star
(25:38):
for those who may not remember, was one of those
big tabloids in the nineties next to the National Enquirer
headlines like killer mom in secret romance with hunky prison guard.
It wasn't the New York Times. People are making up
stories and stories, you know, they just want to confirm
blah blah blah. You know, there was one, you know,
if I can recall correctly, something A got a mobster's
(26:00):
wife in New York and the mobster was, you know,
gonna put a hit on Bruce or something like that,
and we like, you know what, Bruce's probably got more
money in their whole mob family, the occasional potential shootout
and running with Tabloid's aside. Rick had a good time
with Willis with the men to and in Haley, but
after a few years there it was time to move on.
(26:23):
Rick eventually found life in Boise, Idaho, to be more
to his liking. He's still there today. I'm still an
artist management for a company called the Goal Agency Talent Buyer.
You know, I just finished came off a big summer
concert series here. Uh it's Expo Idaho. Ric also got
(26:44):
a taste of what it meant to be as famous
as Willis, even in a town as small as Haley.
I can remember being with him, me and him and
the girls. You know. It was like a Saturday afternoon
and we're at the Mint first and obviously it's closed
because it's it's the nightclub. It's in the the noon.
So we're in there with the girls and you know,
we're just in there dance and just me and him
and the girls, the girls referring of course to his daughters.
(27:08):
And we turn on the music and we danced and
then these people walk in, right, and we're like, you know, hey,
this is clothes today left, we got'm leaving. Then you know,
we do that for a little bit, you know, and
then we go next to the shorties to get I
think we'll get a nice pain or something like that.
And the same people they walk in and they're just
staring and and you know, I get a glimpse of
this right and I'm like, you know, what are you
(27:30):
guys doing it? And today started like try and talk
and this is like, you know what, I'm here with
friends and family and you know, what are you doing here? Like?
So I got a sense of that, and I got
that with just from being around, you know, working for
celebrities and and being in that kind of circle. Someone
always wants something, you know, It's it's a tough it's
a tough business. So now everybody knows that, you know, hey,
(27:53):
Bruce Willis live and de memor live and you know Hayley, Idaho. Right,
So people are coming out of woodwork for whatever reason. Increasingly,
Willis was realizing that he could still be found in Haley,
could still have people coming out of the woodwork, and
no matter what he did, his every move was going
to be subject to scrutiny. The bubble of privacy he
(28:17):
had wrapped himself in, had wrapped Haley in, was in
real danger of bursting. So Willis decided to lean into it.
Instead of being a quiet Haley resident, he opted to
get political and the result was a disaster of nuclear proportions.
The guy who had been sort of boost his money
(28:39):
guy was someone that people who were intimidated by. He
was apparently like a big dude, and he was still
around on the streets of Haley sometimes and people were
I don't think, like physically afraid of the guy, but
they were intimidated by him. If you're enjoying Haleywood so far,
(28:59):
remember to eight review and subscribe. It helps other people
who might want to find the podcast, and it really
helps us, the people who have made the podcast. Thank
you so much. Haileywood is hosted by Danis Schwartz. This
show is written by Jake Rawson, editing by Derrick Clements,
Mary Do and me Josh Fisher. Sound design and mixing
(29:23):
by Jeremy Thal, Derrek Clemens, and me Josh Fisher. Original
music by Natasha Jacobs. Research and fact checking by Jake Rawson,
Austin Thompson and Marissa Brown. Show logo by Lucy Quentinia.
Our senior producer is Ryan Murdoch and our executive producer
is Jason English. Special thanks to the people of Hailey,
(29:45):
Idaho and all those who've shared their stories. Haileywood is
a production of I Heart Radio. Until Next Time.
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