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 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. 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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
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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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. 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 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
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 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 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. 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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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
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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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. 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. 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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 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, 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 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 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
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, 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. 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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,
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 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, Idaho and all those who've shared their stories. Haileywood is a production of I Heart Radio. Until Next Time.