Bruce Willis has jumped to the defense of controversial author James Frey, declaring he was unfairly attacked on Oprah Winfrey's TV show last month. Frey has been criticized for embellishing parts of his best-selling book, A Million Little Pieces, which was originally billed as a memoir. The Die Hard star says on TV show Access Hollywood, "Look at what happened to James Frey in the last two weeks. That's a great book and so is the follow-up book. And just because his publisher chose to say that these were memoirs, it took it out of being a great work of fiction... to this guy having to go be sucker punched on Oprah by one of the most powerful women in television, just to grind her own axe about it. Hey, Oprah. You had President (Bill Clinton) on your show and if this prick didn't lie about a couple of things, I'm going to set myself on fire right now. James Frey is a writer, OK? He can write about whatever he wants. It's fiction. It's just shameful how he was treated in some of these things."
While I agree with Willis that Oprah sandbagged Frey, I don't need to remind you that Frey himself marketed the book as a memoir when he couldn't sell it as a work of fiction. To compare Frey's occupation to any others is unfair. The act of reading applies our thinking like no other. Frey used a pretense to gain access, nothing short of betrayal,
On another note, I wonder how Willis's other favorite writers feel after this defense.
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