December 22, 2021 • 35 mins
Things come to a head in Hailey as Bruce Willis enlists the help of a rogue security force to chase unwanted visitors out of town. Soon, a life-altering event threatens to end the love affair between Willis and Hailey.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is an I Heart original. On August, a Hailey
police officer named Jason Jones gets a call. The dispatcher
tells him he needs to report to the Liberty Theater,
the movie palace owned by Bruce Willis and Demi Moore.
(00:24):
There's a problem. There's a disturbance, a possible fight in progress.
When Officer Jones arrives, it takes him some time to
make sense of the scene. There are a number of
men he recognizes employees of Willis's, including members of his
security team. They appear to be visibly angry. Their anger
(00:47):
is being directed at two men. Officer Jones doesn't recognize.
One of those men is holding a camera. Officer Jones
squeezes himself in between the two parties. He take one
of the strangers aside and asks him what's going on.
The man identifies himself as Keith. Standing nearby is his partner, Brian.
(01:09):
The two had been deployed to Haley to film a
segment for the cable channel i f C. They're reporting
on Bruce Willis's business dealings in the area, and so
far it's not going great. Brian will counts what happened
before Officer Jones arrived. They were filming from their car
when two men in a silver vehicle began following them.
(01:31):
When Brian and Keith pulled over, the car circled the
block and then pulled over right behind them. That was weird,
but it got weirder when Brian and Keith drove to
the Liberty Theater. The car followed them. As Brian and
Keith got out and began to film, some of the
men ran up and tried to wrestle away their camera.
(01:53):
In the police report, Brian said one of the men
had insisted he was a licensed security officer who had
a right to quote obtain them. So the security officer
wasn't a stickler for the English language, but he still
felt entitled to approach the filmmakers and attempt to confiscate
(02:14):
their equipment. When questioned, the security guys said they were
responsible for protecting Bruce Willis's properties from what from anything?
Even Cable channels Officer Jones referees the situation for a
bit before sending the filmmakers in one direction and the
(02:34):
locals in the other. Jones tells the filmmakers that the
security men have promised not to follow them out of
Haley how reassuring. As strange as it sounds, this wasn't
an isolated occurrence. Leash Lender, a lawyer practicing in Haley,
(02:54):
recalls that another journalist had once run into his office
obviously distraught. He said, when I got out of my
car down downtown on Main Street, a couple of guys
gave up to me and said get out of here
with those cameras. Mr Willis doesn't like your newspaper type
people are out here. He was incredulous. I said, well,
(03:21):
what's this all about. I have no idea what you're
talking about. Well, he said that happened, and I said, oh,
come on, he said it yeah. I said, well, why
don't you do this, Why don't you go down there
and drag your coming out and just stand around and
see what happens and then come back and tell me
because I didn't believe it. Well, he came back and
(03:42):
about it. It It couldn't have been twenty minutes. He looked
roughed up to her up and he said, they smashed
my equipment, rough me up, but they told me to
get the hell out of town. And he wrote a
big piece of about it, and it was in one
of your new York newspapers and the Eddie Know What
(04:06):
was something like, um, you don't want to come into
Mr Willis's town. Mr Willis's town. Like everyone else, Lee
thought he was living in Haley. So what exactly was
Bruce Willis trying to hide? And why had the town
of Haley suddenly become an impenetrable fortress where security idly
(04:29):
attacked anyone asking questions? Wasn't this idyllic Haleywood? Well? It was,
but not for much longer. For I Heart Radio. This
is Haleywood and I heart original podcast. I'm your host
Danish Schwartz, and this is our final episode. Until for
(04:51):
their notice, it had all been so simple. A year prior,
when Haley was still in the throes of being Bruce
Willis's pet town. His band Jammed at the Mint Shorties
was serving up eggs well into the night. The Liberty
was putting on plays and hosting movie premieres. The E. G.
(05:14):
Willis Building was home to businesses and retail office space.
Willis even owned a ski mountain, and after abandoning plans
to resurrect his hometown of penns Grove, New Jersey, Haley
was once again the sole object of his affections. Things
couldn't be better on the surface anyway. Beneath the flashing
(05:36):
marquees of the Mint and the Liberty, there were whispers
that things weren't going so well, that despite appearances, Willis's
businesses were falling victim to mismanagement, that Willis himself was
not quite the hands on boss he needed to be
because he was busy being a huge movie star. Bruno
(05:58):
was no longer minding the store. The first crack in
the veneer came at Shorty's, the casual diner Willis had
put up in for two years. The place had been
the premier greasy spoon in town. Hub Caps lined one
of its walls and the jukebox blare tunes from the
(06:19):
fifties while patrons eight burghers and fries. Then in the
spring of Willis stormed in with a message, everyone was fired,
go home. The words hit employees between the eyes in
classic Willis fashion. There was no explanation offered. One day
(06:40):
Shorty's was rocking out, the next it was shuttered. The
Mint was next that winter. In spring, people walking by
were surprised to see a notice posted on its doors,
closed for slack. It read slack is the regional phrase
used for the decrease in business when it's too warm
(07:01):
for skiing but too cold for summer tourism. Some businesses
were seasonal just to avoid slack, but the Mint had
never been a tourist dependent destination. It was a rock
and roll joint. To some Haley locals, closed for slack
rang false. It was too pat too easy. It was
(07:22):
a little foreboding, and sure enough there was another wave
of layoffs. The Mint staff got pink slips and no
indication of when or if they'd be asked to come back.
Willis's big plans were put on hold. Two He'd had
buildings earmarked for a recreation center for fitness and other pursuits,
(07:46):
but those projects sold. Plans for a Willis owned hotel
went by the wayside. The offices of Valley Entertainment, his
local company handling Haley business, put up black sheets on
its windows, blocking out all natural light. Doesn't exactly scream hey,
we're in business. He even stopped paying for the annual
(08:08):
Fourth of July fireworks show. Only the Liberty remained fully open.
It's still played Bruce Willis and Demi Moore movies and
Moore's Victorian house was still stocked with two thousand dollars,
but locals who drove by the local airport, craning their
necks looking for Willis's private jet, were claiming they weren't
(08:29):
seeing it. As often the slack excuse was tossed around.
People thought that the businesses would rebound when the tourists
came back, except in the winter of and into when
you'd expect the Mint and shorties to open their doors,
they didn't, not for long, anyway. The Mint reopened, but
(08:51):
only briefly. Vacant spaces in the E. G. Willis Building
remained vacant, and that's when Haley began to think something
was a miss in Haleywood. At first, it was just
the local press who peppered employees at Willis's Valley Entertainment
with questions. Mostly they got the brush off. Willis, they said,
(09:14):
was a fixture of Haley and would remain so he
wasn't going anywhere. But if he wasn't going anywhere, why
were his businesses locked up? And why did anyone outside
of town looking for answers get followed, harassed or confronted
and told to leave? What is it? They were afraid
(09:34):
of someone finding out. As the months went on and
Willis remained silent, the national entertainment media began to pay
attention to the story about the movie star who had
swept Haley off its feet, only to leave it at
the altar. Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you everything
that happened. One of the first journalists to head out
(09:55):
to Haley was Nancy Rammelman. So I had gone from
my first story for bonap a team magazine. Um, I
guess in like the well, I don't know, winter of
nineties seven or something like that, I can't remember. And
when I was there, um, a lot of people were
talking about Bruce Willison Haley, and you know, he'd come
(10:15):
and maybe he wasn't there anymore, and it was just
sort of like a topic of conversation. Roman also wrote
for l A Weekly, a well respected and influential newspaper
that covered a lot of Hollywood stories. It was full
of fists up, no old barred kind of journalism. So
when his back in l A, I was talking to
my editors at the l A Weekly, and he said, Nancy,
(10:36):
don't you think that's a story. So I did. I
went out to Haley probably about eight months after I
had been there originally and reported on the ground. So
there was Nancy approaching Haley residence about the sudden disappearance
of their benefactor. Some seemed agitated, cautious, like they were
(10:57):
afraid of something or someone. But Nancy was used to
getting reticent people to talk. She's a real pro. I
happen to do stories that sometimes they're around really difficult topics.
I wrote a book a couple of years ago, called
to the Bridge, about a woman that threw you know,
children off a bridge and killed one of them life.
I interviewed John Wayne Gacy like I'm used to walking
(11:18):
into places where you're not just asking like how's the
grilled cheese today? Turns out it's somewhat easier to talk
to people about John Wayne Gayzy than about Bruce Willis.
When Nancy arrived in Healey, she found a fair amount
of Willis apologists, still in awe and weary of criticizing him. Like,
(11:38):
think about it. You've lived in this town or maybe
fifteen years, maybe your whole life, maybe generations of your
family have lived there, and all of a sudden, there's
a movie star that comes and says, I want to
be part of this community. Well, you're gonna take them
at face value, right, And this is pretty exciting in
a sense. I mean you you can't help but be
sort of starstruck. So I think people really want it
(12:00):
to appreciate that. And of course there's you know, the
reflective sunshine. You'd go home and you say, oh my god,
I saw to me in the store today with your girls.
They were buying tuna fish. I was buying tuna fish too.
You know. It's it's sort of like maybe you're having
this shared experience, but in reality, or at least the
way it turned out in this case, you really weren't.
(12:21):
Nancy said that many of Haley's denizens were also fed up.
I would say the majority of people I spoke with,
and this could be the case. Just like we know
from you know, Twitter or yelp, unhappy people like to complain.
So I think I did get my share of sort
of unhappy people. Uh. Speaking in the in the article too,
(12:43):
one resident who went unnamed, said Haley was quote a
definite case of before and after, like you see in
those magazine ads for plastic surgery, and it was Willis
wielding the scalpel at least, Nancy wasn't followed in her
car like the filmmakers who'd run out of town earlier. No,
but I was told to be careful about that. Now, well,
(13:06):
you know, I just have to highly doubt there was
a squad of Willis informants. But you know what there
could have been the you know, the people like hey,
my pal, Hey, you know, listen to me a favor, like,
you know, just keep an eye out, you know, we
want to keep this kind of private. Like you know,
if you think, if you see that someone's around her
sniffing round, just let me know. It's like something like
if you're in good Fellows or something. It's like, oh,
(13:26):
you know, the guy likes me, I better like I
better do maybe what he wants. I have no idea.
This is completely you know, conjecture. And the informants or
security guys or whatever they were hadn't just accosted Brian
and Keith, the duo from the i f C. Andrew Gumbel,
a reporter for The Independent out of England, was also
followed in his car, this time by two car loads
(13:49):
full of supposed surveillance experts. They refused to offer him
any explanation. Why he was being tracked and photographed as
he weaved through town. When Gumble lagged down a police officer,
they ran the license plates of his pursuers, and that's
when speculation about the motives of these men turned into fact.
(14:10):
The plates were registered to Bruce Willis. A security detail
had set themselves up as a century around Haley, warding
off anyone posing uncomfortable questions. Brian and Keith had been
lucky to leave town with their footage escaping like two
journalists evading a banana republic in a foreign country, but
(14:33):
the i f C chose not to air it, preferring
not to risk angering Willis. When journalists left town, they
left without an answer. Willis wasn't talking, but he hadn't disappeared.
Just the opposite, Bruce Willis was about to make a
rather dramatic reappearance in Haley. It's September of ninety nine,
(15:06):
and Willis's movie The Sixth Cens is in theaters across
the country. You've probably seen it. It's about the kid
who sees dead people. Naturally, it's playing in Haley at
the Liberty Theater. Even though Willis had been evasive about
his plans for Haley as of late. It's no surprise
his big movie is playing in his opulent theater. What
(15:28):
is surprising is that Willis is there, not on screen,
but in the flesh, handing out popcorn to bewildered audience members.
Willis still owns the Liberty, hasn't given that up, and
apparently one of his employees called in sick, so Willis
stepped in to hand out concessions. Did anyone ask Willis
(15:52):
what his plans were in Haley beyond handing out soft pretzels.
It's hard to know, but they had to be wondering, right,
I mean, his other businesses had shuddered. There was a
kind of whiplash. It seemed like Willis was done with
Hay late until he wasn't. I think it's sort of
like when you have a breakup with someone, journalist Nancy Rommelman. Again,
(16:14):
let's say you break up with someone but you really
still kind of want to be with them, and like
you think you're broken up, but there could still be
a chance, and then there's the port where you know
there's no chance. Well, they were sort of in between
the could be a chance on the no chance stage,
like the s He's not coming back, but I think
they still sort of wanted to keep a smile on
(16:37):
their faces, keep the possibility that they could come back.
But it was sort of like not in denial so much.
There was just a little bit of hope still alive,
that that they would be coming back, and that maybe,
you know, maybe the town had done something wrong, like
maybe they hadn't performed exactly well enough, Like what could
(16:58):
they have done better to make this work? And I
think that's probably the wrong question, um, But if you're
these people, then you could understand them asking themselves that
The answers came pretty quickly. A few months before Willis
was behind the popcorn counter at the Liberty. He had
let go of something else, Shorties, the fifties style diner
(17:21):
he had opened three years earlier, after rumors that it
might become a pancake joint. It turned out the new
operator was a local businessman named Jacob Greenberg, who pledged
to keep the fifties aesthetic intact. Pretty soon, other properties
were coming up for sale, all will Is owned, all
located in Haley or nearby. Catchum, that's when Haley really
(17:44):
started to take notice. This wasn't a trial separation this
was a divorce and not Willis his only one. In June,
Bruce Willis and Demi More announced their separation after over
a decade of marriage. The reasons varied depending on which
(18:06):
supermarket news outlet you chose to believe, but in Moore's
own words, it was just time. Willis moved into their guesthouse.
More stayed in their home. Eventually, Bruce bought a property
ten miles away in nearby Catchum, and suddenly things started
to make a bit more sense In Haleywood, Willis had
(18:29):
fallen in love with the town around the time he
had fallen in love with More. Maybe Haley was the
home that once belonged to both of them, and it
didn't feel like home to Willis anymore. Maybe it was
just cleaner this way. Was this why Haley was being ghosted? Willis,
true to his nature, would never say time passed, the
(18:52):
millennium ended without a bank. Gradually, Haley became more of
a vacation destination than a full time home for Willis.
He played a few dates with his accelerators, but the
house he had shared with More seemed to be occupied
mostly by More and their kids. Their divorce was finalized
(19:12):
in two thousand and so it began for Haley. After
over a decade of being Willis's personal project, the town
had to prepare for life without him. There would be
no more big movie premiers, no more announcements of Warren
buildings being resurrected, no more excitement, no more Haileywood. After
(19:37):
reopening a couple of times, the Mint went up for sale.
Soldier Mountain was donated to a nonprofit. The liberty went
to Company of Fools, the theater group will Is imported
from Virginia. Through it all, he never, at least publicly
offered a reason why anyone wanting to know was getting
strong armed out of town. But if you talk to
(19:59):
an tough people, the answer can be found back where
it all started at the Mint. So I moved to
New York. I probably had my my jeep stolen, my
wallet stone, my passport stolen New York. Even though I'm
(20:23):
originally from New York, I grew up in Florida and
then moved back to New York. And it it ate
me for lunch. In the beginning. Rob Cronin's life in
New York City got off to a rough start in
the nineties, but as the New head bartender a Planet
Hollywood in Times Square. The job Perks made up for
it perfectly. Example, on our grand opening party, at one point,
(20:47):
you know, we had the cast of Saturday Night Live
sitting at the bar, and you went down and it's like,
oh my Adam Sandler, David's Bay, Chris Farley, all those
guys who I got to know you better over the years.
Uh there as well. And then the next morning, after
(21:07):
the gred opening party, I came and to set the
bar up for regular business and Sylvester Stallone was sitting
at the bar with we just filled in doing a
live feed, and you know, I'm behind the bar just
setting up and he was just twenty four year old.
Over all of me, it was pretty neat. Pretty soon
(21:29):
Rob was commiserating with another bartender, Bruce Willis, who was
then a partner in the Planet Hollywood chain, along with
other stars including his then wife Demi Moore. The first
time Demi ever came in the restaurant, her plane was delayed.
Uh the closing the restaurant down. These three women walk in.
(21:51):
I don't I've never seen them before, and I tell
them what they're closed, and they asked if they can
lurk around, and so I started trying to giving them
a little out of tune. And then I looked closer
and it was to me in a trench coat and
dot Martin boots and her hair pulled back. I hadn't
even recognized her. I was mortified. So I walked back
(22:13):
up and said, well, since you owned the place, I
guess we could throw yet burger and we became friends
after that. She apparently was amused. It made a couple
of different magazines where she had said, you know, they
didn't even recognize me in my own restaurant, And eventually
she introduced me to Bruce. Bruce and Rob were kind
(22:34):
of bartender brothers. Bruce knew what that life was like,
and pretty soon Rob was moving up the ranks of
Planet Hollywood, opening locations in Chicago and Miami. Willis soon
brought Rob to Haley to manage a restaurant Willis was
about to open. Originally, it was going to be something simple,
a steakhouse, but when Willis turned forty, well some men
(22:59):
by convertible, others go bigger. It was it was his
birthday weekend when he turned forty, and the famous party
planner Colin Calie was in town and he, uh, you know,
he and Bruce into me just started talking and uh,
(23:20):
the concept literally changed in an afternoon. Went from you know,
a casual locals steakhouse saloon sort of feel to a
high end restaurant with a world class nightclub on top.
And we turned that around. Unfortunately at Bruce's expense. You know,
(23:45):
it was not cheap. The project was. The Mint turned
that around from early May until we opened the week
of fourth or July with you know, a couple of large,
really well known Bruges bands, Bruce's band. It was the
busiest weekend of the year in Haley, between the rodeo
(24:07):
and the Fourth of July parade, and it was wild.
It was a tall order, but Willis and Cronin made
it happen. No expense was spared to open the Mint
in a matter of weeks, and it turned out no
expense was spared after it opened either. You know, when
you've opened up business and you say you're not worried
(24:28):
about it making a profit, that's a real fine line
because you especially in the restaurant and bar business, all
too quickly and easily that are thin margins. It goes
the opposite direction. And that's actually what you know happened
with the Mint. It was it became a monster. Bruce
(24:49):
Willis treated the Mint like it was right in the
middle of a busy metropolitan area flying in high ticket
musical acts. But according to Rob it was not a
product market fit. This community was not ready to support
uh fifty person cover charge. So, you know, we we
(25:11):
get to the point where, you know, all right, or
ten dollars ahead and let's packed to joint and try
and off set costs with liquor sales, and it just
didn't work. You just don't have the volume in town.
You have to to cover that kind of overhead. And
(25:33):
by the time you get through it, you know, payroll
and payroll, taxes and insurance and all that keeping a
ten thousand scriptfort building open even in the highest species,
and you're not going to pack it every night. You know,
when we first opened it was it was packed, and
it was never covering the costs of the high end entertainment.
(25:54):
Was never about getting enough bodies. It was just, you know,
once again, just get enough bodies at that initially budgeted
cover charge, and the public just wasn't willing to go there.
I was the one, you know, in my position, that
had to drop the bomb on him that you know, hey,
we need two dollars of more some months to cover
(26:19):
the bills, primarily pay roll. Willis had always wanted to
throw the biggest, best party possible as a bartender in
New York, as a TV star in California, and now
as an a list in Idaho. But throwing a bashed
night after night is well expensive and unsustainable. In the end,
(26:42):
Rob parted ways with the Mint amicably. It was my
ending at the Mint a little rough, absolutely, but I've
you know, what I've witnessed. It was, you know, maybe
the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but
the intentions were good. They really wanted to be a
part of the community and give back, and you know,
(27:04):
showed it with their checkbooks. But in trying to make
a small town feel big, Willis had turned Haley not
into his own private Idaho, but his own private Hollywood,
a tone that ran on Bruce Willis, and suddenly Haley
wasn't his getaway. It was his responsibility, and that, more
(27:25):
than anything, is why the relationship couldn't last. Other things
changed for Willis at the turn of the twenty one century.
He still had a few hits like Since City and
a fourth die Hard, but conquering the eighties and nineties
had been the zenith of it, all of the career
(27:46):
that had gotten started with Seagram's commercials and sparring with
Sibyl Shepherd on Moonlighting. Not long after a fifth die
Hard was released, in it was called a Good Day
to die Hard If you're keeping track, Willis moved on
to another stage of his career. Rather than top lining
huge movies, he settled into a role as a familiar
(28:09):
face in geezer teasers, a genre of video on demand
movies that enlist major movie stars to work for a
few days for a lot of money and then sprinkle
in their scenes Throughout Willis was in Six movies were released,
including Surviving the Game, Midnight in the Switch Grass, Out
(28:30):
of Death, Apex, and Cosmic Sin, where he gets to
put on a space suit again. This year, Willis even
took one more step towards armchair acting. He licensed his
image to a Russian cell phone company for an ad
where he's tied to a bomb, but Willis never went
near a set. Instead, Willis's deep faked face was superimposed
(28:55):
over a standing actor created with more than thirty thousand
images for vintage Willis movies like die Hard and The
Fifth Element. The man who once only wanted to drive
an hour or so from Haley to a movie set
now doesn't even have to leave his living room to
appear on screen. Heck, he doesn't even need to get
out of bed. Some speculate this process could be the
(29:19):
future for all Hollywood actors. In fact, it's a common
part of appearance contracts already. The commercial shows an image
of Willis, the ideal image of a young, smirking Bruce,
the image that was once the face of Hollywood and
of Haleywood, the image that once literally overlooked the highway
(29:40):
into town, but ultimately one that Haley never really got
to know. In eight nine, just a few years after
gold prospector and businessman John Haley laid claim to the land,
(30:01):
the town of Hailey, Idaho, was engulfed in fire. A
blaze tore through the business district, destroying most of the buildings.
Only bare stone walls were left standing. Idaho wasn't even
the state yet, but Hailey was resilient. Less than three
months after the fire, new buildings began to spring up
(30:24):
in their place. A lot of them were just a
single story to save on restoration costs. But the point
is if Hailey could do it once, they could do
it again. Here's leash Lender. Because of the valley. If
you think back it's history of being a mining town,
it had always been boom and bust. You know, one
(30:45):
day everybody in town, somebody strikes it rich and there's money.
Two weeks later they've all packed up and moved on.
It was very, very much from that Western motif, which
was real. That was the way that the West was.
(31:07):
And so people building big buildings or homes and then
just walking away from him not unusual at all. Um,
it was a boom and bust society. More than a
hundred years later, even after a Bruce Willis sized boom,
not much had changed. And he's just he got tired
(31:30):
of it. And that's his right if he didn't want it.
He doesn't really want to stick around here. Um, it's okay,
Well you know we've we've lived here. The people that
survived have been through those good and bad times. Four
hundred and twenty five years. The Halif today bears the
(31:51):
marks of it's Bruce Willis affair. The Mint is still
on Main Street, now owned by developer Paul Conrad and
his wife. Jenny. Shorty's is still here too, now operated
by Jacob Greenberg's son Josh. So is the Liberty. So
is that office building, now owned by someone else, but
still referred to as the e G. Willis likely said,
(32:14):
through the good and bad, Haley remains. So what do
we make of Bruce Willis? Small town citizen with big
time ambitions. He swept Haley off its feet before putting
her back down with a lack of grace. He went
(32:38):
there to get away, to feel normal, but then installed
all the bright lights and glips of Hollywood that he
was trying to leave behind. Maybe some said Bruce Willis
had a bit of a savior complex. He couldn't save
Penn's Grove, his hometown, though he tried. So we found
a place that may not have needed saving. Today. Bruce
(33:01):
and Demi both maintain their own properties in Idaho. They
even quarantined together during the first major wave of the
pandemic in tw and they're signed Willis may not be
totally done tinkering. In March twenty one, the county approved
a long planned private airport near Haley after lengthy debate
(33:22):
of the economic benefit versus the environmental impact. Willis hasn't
publicly confirmed he's behind the airport, but the application was
filed by the x Nay Investment Trust. We hope you've
enjoyed listening to Haleywood. Please tell a friend to binge
(33:45):
the show. I'm Danish Wartz. You can find me on Twitter,
Instagram and TikTok at Danish Wartz spelled with three z's
at the end, and you can also find me hosting
the podcast Noble Blood and sometimes as a guest on
You're Wrong About or Hysteria. You can also read my
latest novel, Anatomy, a Love Story, which comes out January,
(34:05):
and you should absolutely please pre order by from your
local indie bookseller. Check out some of our other I
Heart original podcasts like Operation Midnight, Climax, Newton's Law, and
Black Cowboys, and keep your Ears Peeled for Big Brother,
North Korea's Forgotten Prince and What Happened to Sandy Beale.
(34:26):
Haleywood is hosted by Danish Schwartz. This show is written
by Jake Rawson, editing by Derrick Clements, Mary Do and
me Josh Fisher. Sound design and mixing by Jeremy thal
Derrek Clemens and me Josh Fisher. Original music by Natasha Jacobs.
Research and fact checking by Jake Rawson, Austin Thompson, and
(34:49):
Marissa Brown. Show logo by Lucy Quentinia. Our senior producer
is Ryan Murdoch and our executive producer is Jason English.
Special thanks to the p full of Hailey, Idaho and
all those who've shared their stories. Haileywood is a production
of I Heart Radio h
This is an I Heart original. On August, a Hailey
police officer named Jason Jones gets a call. The dispatcher
tells him he needs to report to the Liberty Theater,
the movie palace owned by Bruce Willis and Demi Moore.
(00:24):
There's a problem. There's a disturbance, a possible fight in progress.
When Officer Jones arrives, it takes him some time to
make sense of the scene. There are a number of
men he recognizes employees of Willis's, including members of his
security team. They appear to be visibly angry. Their anger
(00:47):
is being directed at two men. Officer Jones doesn't recognize.
One of those men is holding a camera. Officer Jones
squeezes himself in between the two parties. He take one
of the strangers aside and asks him what's going on.
The man identifies himself as Keith. Standing nearby is his partner, Brian.
(01:09):
The two had been deployed to Haley to film a
segment for the cable channel i f C. They're reporting
on Bruce Willis's business dealings in the area, and so
far it's not going great. Brian will counts what happened
before Officer Jones arrived. They were filming from their car
when two men in a silver vehicle began following them.
(01:31):
When Brian and Keith pulled over, the car circled the
block and then pulled over right behind them. That was weird,
but it got weirder when Brian and Keith drove to
the Liberty Theater. The car followed them. As Brian and
Keith got out and began to film, some of the
men ran up and tried to wrestle away their camera.
(01:53):
In the police report, Brian said one of the men
had insisted he was a licensed security officer who had
a right to quote obtain them. So the security officer
wasn't a stickler for the English language, but he still
felt entitled to approach the filmmakers and attempt to confiscate
(02:14):
their equipment. When questioned, the security guys said they were
responsible for protecting Bruce Willis's properties from what from anything?
Even Cable channels Officer Jones referees the situation for a
bit before sending the filmmakers in one direction and the
(02:34):
locals in the other. Jones tells the filmmakers that the
security men have promised not to follow them out of
Haley how reassuring. As strange as it sounds, this wasn't
an isolated occurrence. Leash Lender, a lawyer practicing in Haley,
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recalls that another journalist had once run into his office
obviously distraught. He said, when I got out of my
car down downtown on Main Street, a couple of guys
gave up to me and said get out of here
with those cameras. Mr Willis doesn't like your newspaper type
people are out here. He was incredulous. I said, well,
(03:21):
what's this all about. I have no idea what you're
talking about. Well, he said that happened, and I said, oh,
come on, he said it yeah. I said, well, why
don't you do this, Why don't you go down there
and drag your coming out and just stand around and
see what happens and then come back and tell me
because I didn't believe it. Well, he came back and
(03:42):
about it. It It couldn't have been twenty minutes. He looked
roughed up to her up and he said, they smashed
my equipment, rough me up, but they told me to
get the hell out of town. And he wrote a
big piece of about it, and it was in one
of your new York newspapers and the Eddie Know What
(04:06):
was something like, um, you don't want to come into
Mr Willis's town. Mr Willis's town. Like everyone else, Lee
thought he was living in Haley. So what exactly was
Bruce Willis trying to hide? And why had the town
of Haley suddenly become an impenetrable fortress where security idly
(04:29):
attacked anyone asking questions? Wasn't this idyllic Haleywood? Well? It was,
but not for much longer. For I Heart Radio. This
is Haleywood and I heart original podcast. I'm your host
Danish Schwartz, and this is our final episode. Until for
(04:51):
their notice, it had all been so simple. A year prior,
when Haley was still in the throes of being Bruce
Willis's pet town. His band Jammed at the Mint Shorties
was serving up eggs well into the night. The Liberty
was putting on plays and hosting movie premieres. The E. G.
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Willis Building was home to businesses and retail office space.
Willis even owned a ski mountain, and after abandoning plans
to resurrect his hometown of penns Grove, New Jersey, Haley
was once again the sole object of his affections. Things
couldn't be better on the surface anyway. Beneath the flashing
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marquees of the Mint and the Liberty, there were whispers
that things weren't going so well, that despite appearances, Willis's
businesses were falling victim to mismanagement, that Willis himself was
not quite the hands on boss he needed to be
because he was busy being a huge movie star. Bruno
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was no longer minding the store. The first crack in
the veneer came at Shorty's, the casual diner Willis had
put up in for two years. The place had been
the premier greasy spoon in town. Hub Caps lined one
of its walls and the jukebox blare tunes from the
(06:19):
fifties while patrons eight burghers and fries. Then in the
spring of Willis stormed in with a message, everyone was fired,
go home. The words hit employees between the eyes in
classic Willis fashion. There was no explanation offered. One day
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Shorty's was rocking out, the next it was shuttered. The
Mint was next that winter. In spring, people walking by
were surprised to see a notice posted on its doors,
closed for slack. It read slack is the regional phrase
used for the decrease in business when it's too warm
(07:01):
for skiing but too cold for summer tourism. Some businesses
were seasonal just to avoid slack, but the Mint had
never been a tourist dependent destination. It was a rock
and roll joint. To some Haley locals, closed for slack
rang false. It was too pat too easy. It was
(07:22):
a little foreboding, and sure enough there was another wave
of layoffs. The Mint staff got pink slips and no
indication of when or if they'd be asked to come back.
Willis's big plans were put on hold. Two He'd had
buildings earmarked for a recreation center for fitness and other pursuits,
(07:46):
but those projects sold. Plans for a Willis owned hotel
went by the wayside. The offices of Valley Entertainment, his
local company handling Haley business, put up black sheets on
its windows, blocking out all natural light. Doesn't exactly scream hey,
we're in business. He even stopped paying for the annual
(08:08):
Fourth of July fireworks show. Only the Liberty remained fully open.
It's still played Bruce Willis and Demi Moore movies and
Moore's Victorian house was still stocked with two thousand dollars,
but locals who drove by the local airport, craning their
necks looking for Willis's private jet, were claiming they weren't
(08:29):
seeing it. As often the slack excuse was tossed around.
People thought that the businesses would rebound when the tourists
came back, except in the winter of and into when
you'd expect the Mint and shorties to open their doors,
they didn't, not for long, anyway. The Mint reopened, but
(08:51):
only briefly. Vacant spaces in the E. G. Willis Building
remained vacant, and that's when Haley began to think something
was a miss in Haleywood. At first, it was just
the local press who peppered employees at Willis's Valley Entertainment
with questions. Mostly they got the brush off. Willis, they said,
(09:14):
was a fixture of Haley and would remain so he
wasn't going anywhere. But if he wasn't going anywhere, why
were his businesses locked up? And why did anyone outside
of town looking for answers get followed, harassed or confronted
and told to leave? What is it? They were afraid
(09:34):
of someone finding out. As the months went on and
Willis remained silent, the national entertainment media began to pay
attention to the story about the movie star who had
swept Haley off its feet, only to leave it at
the altar. Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you everything
that happened. One of the first journalists to head out
(09:55):
to Haley was Nancy Rammelman. So I had gone from
my first story for bonap a team magazine. Um, I
guess in like the well, I don't know, winter of
nineties seven or something like that, I can't remember. And
when I was there, um, a lot of people were
talking about Bruce Willison Haley, and you know, he'd come
(10:15):
and maybe he wasn't there anymore, and it was just
sort of like a topic of conversation. Roman also wrote
for l A Weekly, a well respected and influential newspaper
that covered a lot of Hollywood stories. It was full
of fists up, no old barred kind of journalism. So
when his back in l A, I was talking to
my editors at the l A Weekly, and he said, Nancy,
(10:36):
don't you think that's a story. So I did. I
went out to Haley probably about eight months after I
had been there originally and reported on the ground. So
there was Nancy approaching Haley residence about the sudden disappearance
of their benefactor. Some seemed agitated, cautious, like they were
(10:57):
afraid of something or someone. But Nancy was used to
getting reticent people to talk. She's a real pro. I
happen to do stories that sometimes they're around really difficult topics.
I wrote a book a couple of years ago, called
to the Bridge, about a woman that threw you know,
children off a bridge and killed one of them life.
I interviewed John Wayne Gacy like I'm used to walking
(11:18):
into places where you're not just asking like how's the
grilled cheese today? Turns out it's somewhat easier to talk
to people about John Wayne Gayzy than about Bruce Willis.
When Nancy arrived in Healey, she found a fair amount
of Willis apologists, still in awe and weary of criticizing him. Like,
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think about it. You've lived in this town or maybe
fifteen years, maybe your whole life, maybe generations of your
family have lived there, and all of a sudden, there's
a movie star that comes and says, I want to
be part of this community. Well, you're gonna take them
at face value, right, And this is pretty exciting in
a sense. I mean you you can't help but be
sort of starstruck. So I think people really want it
(12:00):
to appreciate that. And of course there's you know, the
reflective sunshine. You'd go home and you say, oh my god,
I saw to me in the store today with your girls.
They were buying tuna fish. I was buying tuna fish too.
You know. It's it's sort of like maybe you're having
this shared experience, but in reality, or at least the
way it turned out in this case, you really weren't.
(12:21):
Nancy said that many of Haley's denizens were also fed up.
I would say the majority of people I spoke with,
and this could be the case. Just like we know
from you know, Twitter or yelp, unhappy people like to complain.
So I think I did get my share of sort
of unhappy people. Uh. Speaking in the in the article too,
(12:43):
one resident who went unnamed, said Haley was quote a
definite case of before and after, like you see in
those magazine ads for plastic surgery, and it was Willis
wielding the scalpel at least, Nancy wasn't followed in her
car like the filmmakers who'd run out of town earlier. No,
but I was told to be careful about that. Now, well,
(13:06):
you know, I just have to highly doubt there was
a squad of Willis informants. But you know what there
could have been the you know, the people like hey,
my pal, Hey, you know, listen to me a favor, like,
you know, just keep an eye out, you know, we
want to keep this kind of private. Like you know,
if you think, if you see that someone's around her
sniffing round, just let me know. It's like something like
if you're in good Fellows or something. It's like, oh,
(13:26):
you know, the guy likes me, I better like I
better do maybe what he wants. I have no idea.
This is completely you know, conjecture. And the informants or
security guys or whatever they were hadn't just accosted Brian
and Keith, the duo from the i f C. Andrew Gumbel,
a reporter for The Independent out of England, was also
followed in his car, this time by two car loads
(13:49):
full of supposed surveillance experts. They refused to offer him
any explanation. Why he was being tracked and photographed as
he weaved through town. When Gumble lagged down a police officer,
they ran the license plates of his pursuers, and that's
when speculation about the motives of these men turned into fact.
(14:10):
The plates were registered to Bruce Willis. A security detail
had set themselves up as a century around Haley, warding
off anyone posing uncomfortable questions. Brian and Keith had been
lucky to leave town with their footage escaping like two
journalists evading a banana republic in a foreign country, but
(14:33):
the i f C chose not to air it, preferring
not to risk angering Willis. When journalists left town, they
left without an answer. Willis wasn't talking, but he hadn't disappeared.
Just the opposite, Bruce Willis was about to make a
rather dramatic reappearance in Haley. It's September of ninety nine,
(15:06):
and Willis's movie The Sixth Cens is in theaters across
the country. You've probably seen it. It's about the kid
who sees dead people. Naturally, it's playing in Haley at
the Liberty Theater. Even though Willis had been evasive about
his plans for Haley as of late. It's no surprise
his big movie is playing in his opulent theater. What
(15:28):
is surprising is that Willis is there, not on screen,
but in the flesh, handing out popcorn to bewildered audience members.
Willis still owns the Liberty, hasn't given that up, and
apparently one of his employees called in sick, so Willis
stepped in to hand out concessions. Did anyone ask Willis
(15:52):
what his plans were in Haley beyond handing out soft pretzels.
It's hard to know, but they had to be wondering, right,
I mean, his other businesses had shuddered. There was a
kind of whiplash. It seemed like Willis was done with
Hay late until he wasn't. I think it's sort of
like when you have a breakup with someone, journalist Nancy Rommelman. Again,
(16:14):
let's say you break up with someone but you really
still kind of want to be with them, and like
you think you're broken up, but there could still be
a chance, and then there's the port where you know
there's no chance. Well, they were sort of in between
the could be a chance on the no chance stage,
like the s He's not coming back, but I think
they still sort of wanted to keep a smile on
(16:37):
their faces, keep the possibility that they could come back.
But it was sort of like not in denial so much.
There was just a little bit of hope still alive,
that that they would be coming back, and that maybe,
you know, maybe the town had done something wrong, like
maybe they hadn't performed exactly well enough, Like what could
(16:58):
they have done better to make this work? And I
think that's probably the wrong question, um, But if you're
these people, then you could understand them asking themselves that
The answers came pretty quickly. A few months before Willis
was behind the popcorn counter at the Liberty. He had
let go of something else, Shorties, the fifties style diner
(17:21):
he had opened three years earlier, after rumors that it
might become a pancake joint. It turned out the new
operator was a local businessman named Jacob Greenberg, who pledged
to keep the fifties aesthetic intact. Pretty soon, other properties
were coming up for sale, all will Is owned, all
located in Haley or nearby. Catchum, that's when Haley really
(17:44):
started to take notice. This wasn't a trial separation this
was a divorce and not Willis his only one. In June,
Bruce Willis and Demi More announced their separation after over
a decade of marriage. The reasons varied depending on which
(18:06):
supermarket news outlet you chose to believe, but in Moore's
own words, it was just time. Willis moved into their guesthouse.
More stayed in their home. Eventually, Bruce bought a property
ten miles away in nearby Catchum, and suddenly things started
to make a bit more sense In Haleywood, Willis had
(18:29):
fallen in love with the town around the time he
had fallen in love with More. Maybe Haley was the
home that once belonged to both of them, and it
didn't feel like home to Willis anymore. Maybe it was
just cleaner this way. Was this why Haley was being ghosted? Willis,
true to his nature, would never say time passed, the
(18:52):
millennium ended without a bank. Gradually, Haley became more of
a vacation destination than a full time home for Willis.
He played a few dates with his accelerators, but the
house he had shared with More seemed to be occupied
mostly by More and their kids. Their divorce was finalized
(19:12):
in two thousand and so it began for Haley. After
over a decade of being Willis's personal project, the town
had to prepare for life without him. There would be
no more big movie premiers, no more announcements of Warren
buildings being resurrected, no more excitement, no more Haileywood. After
(19:37):
reopening a couple of times, the Mint went up for sale.
Soldier Mountain was donated to a nonprofit. The liberty went
to Company of Fools, the theater group will Is imported
from Virginia. Through it all, he never, at least publicly
offered a reason why anyone wanting to know was getting
strong armed out of town. But if you talk to
(19:59):
an tough people, the answer can be found back where
it all started at the Mint. So I moved to
New York. I probably had my my jeep stolen, my
wallet stone, my passport stolen New York. Even though I'm
(20:23):
originally from New York, I grew up in Florida and
then moved back to New York. And it it ate
me for lunch. In the beginning. Rob Cronin's life in
New York City got off to a rough start in
the nineties, but as the New head bartender a Planet
Hollywood in Times Square. The job Perks made up for
it perfectly. Example, on our grand opening party, at one point,
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you know, we had the cast of Saturday Night Live
sitting at the bar, and you went down and it's like,
oh my Adam Sandler, David's Bay, Chris Farley, all those
guys who I got to know you better over the years.
Uh there as well. And then the next morning, after
(21:07):
the gred opening party, I came and to set the
bar up for regular business and Sylvester Stallone was sitting
at the bar with we just filled in doing a
live feed, and you know, I'm behind the bar just
setting up and he was just twenty four year old.
Over all of me, it was pretty neat. Pretty soon
(21:29):
Rob was commiserating with another bartender, Bruce Willis, who was
then a partner in the Planet Hollywood chain, along with
other stars including his then wife Demi Moore. The first
time Demi ever came in the restaurant, her plane was delayed.
Uh the closing the restaurant down. These three women walk in.
(21:51):
I don't I've never seen them before, and I tell
them what they're closed, and they asked if they can
lurk around, and so I started trying to giving them
a little out of tune. And then I looked closer
and it was to me in a trench coat and
dot Martin boots and her hair pulled back. I hadn't
even recognized her. I was mortified. So I walked back
(22:13):
up and said, well, since you owned the place, I
guess we could throw yet burger and we became friends
after that. She apparently was amused. It made a couple
of different magazines where she had said, you know, they
didn't even recognize me in my own restaurant, And eventually
she introduced me to Bruce. Bruce and Rob were kind
(22:34):
of bartender brothers. Bruce knew what that life was like,
and pretty soon Rob was moving up the ranks of
Planet Hollywood, opening locations in Chicago and Miami. Willis soon
brought Rob to Haley to manage a restaurant Willis was
about to open. Originally, it was going to be something simple,
a steakhouse, but when Willis turned forty, well some men
(22:59):
by convertible, others go bigger. It was it was his
birthday weekend when he turned forty, and the famous party
planner Colin Calie was in town and he, uh, you know,
he and Bruce into me just started talking and uh,
(23:20):
the concept literally changed in an afternoon. Went from you know,
a casual locals steakhouse saloon sort of feel to a
high end restaurant with a world class nightclub on top.
And we turned that around. Unfortunately at Bruce's expense. You know,
(23:45):
it was not cheap. The project was. The Mint turned
that around from early May until we opened the week
of fourth or July with you know, a couple of large,
really well known Bruges bands, Bruce's band. It was the
busiest weekend of the year in Haley, between the rodeo
(24:07):
and the Fourth of July parade, and it was wild.
It was a tall order, but Willis and Cronin made
it happen. No expense was spared to open the Mint
in a matter of weeks, and it turned out no
expense was spared after it opened either. You know, when
you've opened up business and you say you're not worried
(24:28):
about it making a profit, that's a real fine line
because you especially in the restaurant and bar business, all
too quickly and easily that are thin margins. It goes
the opposite direction. And that's actually what you know happened
with the Mint. It was it became a monster. Bruce
(24:49):
Willis treated the Mint like it was right in the
middle of a busy metropolitan area flying in high ticket
musical acts. But according to Rob it was not a
product market fit. This community was not ready to support
uh fifty person cover charge. So, you know, we we
(25:11):
get to the point where, you know, all right, or
ten dollars ahead and let's packed to joint and try
and off set costs with liquor sales, and it just
didn't work. You just don't have the volume in town.
You have to to cover that kind of overhead. And
(25:33):
by the time you get through it, you know, payroll
and payroll, taxes and insurance and all that keeping a
ten thousand scriptfort building open even in the highest species,
and you're not going to pack it every night. You know,
when we first opened it was it was packed, and
it was never covering the costs of the high end entertainment.
(25:54):
Was never about getting enough bodies. It was just, you know,
once again, just get enough bodies at that initially budgeted
cover charge, and the public just wasn't willing to go there.
I was the one, you know, in my position, that
had to drop the bomb on him that you know, hey,
we need two dollars of more some months to cover
(26:19):
the bills, primarily pay roll. Willis had always wanted to
throw the biggest, best party possible as a bartender in
New York, as a TV star in California, and now
as an a list in Idaho. But throwing a bashed
night after night is well expensive and unsustainable. In the end,
(26:42):
Rob parted ways with the Mint amicably. It was my
ending at the Mint a little rough, absolutely, but I've
you know, what I've witnessed. It was, you know, maybe
the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but
the intentions were good. They really wanted to be a
part of the community and give back, and you know,
(27:04):
showed it with their checkbooks. But in trying to make
a small town feel big, Willis had turned Haley not
into his own private Idaho, but his own private Hollywood,
a tone that ran on Bruce Willis, and suddenly Haley
wasn't his getaway. It was his responsibility, and that, more
(27:25):
than anything, is why the relationship couldn't last. Other things
changed for Willis at the turn of the twenty one century.
He still had a few hits like Since City and
a fourth die Hard, but conquering the eighties and nineties
had been the zenith of it, all of the career
(27:46):
that had gotten started with Seagram's commercials and sparring with
Sibyl Shepherd on Moonlighting. Not long after a fifth die
Hard was released, in it was called a Good Day
to die Hard If you're keeping track, Willis moved on
to another stage of his career. Rather than top lining
huge movies, he settled into a role as a familiar
(28:09):
face in geezer teasers, a genre of video on demand
movies that enlist major movie stars to work for a
few days for a lot of money and then sprinkle
in their scenes Throughout Willis was in Six movies were released,
including Surviving the Game, Midnight in the Switch Grass, Out
(28:30):
of Death, Apex, and Cosmic Sin, where he gets to
put on a space suit again. This year, Willis even
took one more step towards armchair acting. He licensed his
image to a Russian cell phone company for an ad
where he's tied to a bomb, but Willis never went
near a set. Instead, Willis's deep faked face was superimposed
(28:55):
over a standing actor created with more than thirty thousand
images for vintage Willis movies like die Hard and The
Fifth Element. The man who once only wanted to drive
an hour or so from Haley to a movie set
now doesn't even have to leave his living room to
appear on screen. Heck, he doesn't even need to get
out of bed. Some speculate this process could be the
(29:19):
future for all Hollywood actors. In fact, it's a common
part of appearance contracts already. The commercial shows an image
of Willis, the ideal image of a young, smirking Bruce,
the image that was once the face of Hollywood and
of Haleywood, the image that once literally overlooked the highway
(29:40):
into town, but ultimately one that Haley never really got
to know. In eight nine, just a few years after
gold prospector and businessman John Haley laid claim to the land,
(30:01):
the town of Hailey, Idaho, was engulfed in fire. A
blaze tore through the business district, destroying most of the buildings.
Only bare stone walls were left standing. Idaho wasn't even
the state yet, but Hailey was resilient. Less than three
months after the fire, new buildings began to spring up
(30:24):
in their place. A lot of them were just a
single story to save on restoration costs. But the point
is if Hailey could do it once, they could do
it again. Here's leash Lender. Because of the valley. If
you think back it's history of being a mining town,
it had always been boom and bust. You know, one
(30:45):
day everybody in town, somebody strikes it rich and there's money.
Two weeks later they've all packed up and moved on.
It was very, very much from that Western motif, which
was real. That was the way that the West was.
(31:07):
And so people building big buildings or homes and then
just walking away from him not unusual at all. Um,
it was a boom and bust society. More than a
hundred years later, even after a Bruce Willis sized boom,
not much had changed. And he's just he got tired
(31:30):
of it. And that's his right if he didn't want it.
He doesn't really want to stick around here. Um, it's okay,
Well you know we've we've lived here. The people that
survived have been through those good and bad times. Four
hundred and twenty five years. The Halif today bears the
(31:51):
marks of it's Bruce Willis affair. The Mint is still
on Main Street, now owned by developer Paul Conrad and
his wife. Jenny. Shorty's is still here too, now operated
by Jacob Greenberg's son Josh. So is the Liberty. So
is that office building, now owned by someone else, but
still referred to as the e G. Willis likely said,
(32:14):
through the good and bad, Haley remains. So what do
we make of Bruce Willis? Small town citizen with big
time ambitions. He swept Haley off its feet before putting
her back down with a lack of grace. He went
(32:38):
there to get away, to feel normal, but then installed
all the bright lights and glips of Hollywood that he
was trying to leave behind. Maybe some said Bruce Willis
had a bit of a savior complex. He couldn't save
Penn's Grove, his hometown, though he tried. So we found
a place that may not have needed saving. Today. Bruce
(33:01):
and Demi both maintain their own properties in Idaho. They
even quarantined together during the first major wave of the
pandemic in tw and they're signed Willis may not be
totally done tinkering. In March twenty one, the county approved
a long planned private airport near Haley after lengthy debate
(33:22):
of the economic benefit versus the environmental impact. Willis hasn't
publicly confirmed he's behind the airport, but the application was
filed by the x Nay Investment Trust. We hope you've
enjoyed listening to Haleywood. Please tell a friend to binge
(33:45):
the show. I'm Danish Wartz. You can find me on Twitter,
Instagram and TikTok at Danish Wartz spelled with three z's
at the end, and you can also find me hosting
the podcast Noble Blood and sometimes as a guest on
You're Wrong About or Hysteria. You can also read my
latest novel, Anatomy, a Love Story, which comes out January,
(34:05):
and you should absolutely please pre order by from your
local indie bookseller. Check out some of our other I
Heart original podcasts like Operation Midnight, Climax, Newton's Law, and
Black Cowboys, and keep your Ears Peeled for Big Brother,
North Korea's Forgotten Prince and What Happened to Sandy Beale.
(34:26):
Haleywood is hosted by Danish Schwartz. This show is written
by Jake Rawson, editing by Derrick Clements, Mary Do and
me Josh Fisher. Sound design and mixing by Jeremy thal
Derrek Clemens and me Josh Fisher. Original music by Natasha Jacobs.
Research and fact checking by Jake Rawson, Austin Thompson, and
(34:49):
Marissa Brown. Show logo by Lucy Quentinia. Our senior producer
is Ryan Murdoch and our executive producer is Jason English.
Special thanks to the p full of Hailey, Idaho and
all those who've shared their stories. Haileywood is a production
of I Heart Radio h
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