Bruce Willis has been chatting up some lucky web readers over his upcoming reemergence in "Live Free or Die Hard," talking movies and alienating "Armageddon" director Michael Bay along the way. Today: Bay's response!

The folks over at AICN hit the motherlode of fanboy crushing come to life this week when a certain forum poster named "Walter B." turned out to be none other than "Die Hard" star (Walter) Bruce Willis. Willis first emerged May 5 in a discussion over "Die Hard 4"'s PG-13 rating, encouraging skeptical readers to be patient because, PG-13 or no, "DH4" would be the best series installment yet.

The next day he returned to anonymously discuss the film, identifying himself as "someone who worked on the picture"; eventually he disclosed his true identity, but not before dropping the diss on Michael Bay (with whom he worked on 1998's "Armageddon": "[Bay] would have ruined DH4. Few people will work with him now, and I know I will never work with him again."





Later, he added more on the "Armageddon" experience: "I loved working with all the guys, the actor [sic] I mean. It was a great crew, but a screaming Director does not make for a pleasant set experience."

Writing on his own blog, Bay hit back at the comments:

"Hard to believe it really is Bruce saying that stuff on AICN. I loved working with Bruce. He gave me a big hug one month ago at the GM party and we talked for 20 minutes. We even talked about working together again! I mean it would be sad if he felt this way - he's never one to hide his feelings - I say sad, in that he wouldn't be man enough to say it to my face. But truly sad that such a big time actor would have to hide on a little talk back section. So I really don't believe this story.

I find it also totally odd that my agents at William Morris got the call from Bruce's people to inquire if I would like to helm Die Hard 4, but I was already on Transformers."

Willis has been busy "unofficially" discussing "Die Hard 4" in the media of late (see his live courtside F-bomb endorsement at a recent Nets playoff game). Perhaps it is because, as he posted on AICN, he just really wanted to bypass the Hollywood hype machine and get down to discussing the flick with "real" people on the internet. He certainly has been entertaining the wide-ranging variety of questions lobbied at him on the AICN forum; read the full thread for an entire day's worth of tense "is he or isn't he Bruce Willis" talk (a reader finally verifies it's Willis via video chat, before AICN honcho Harry Knowles gives his official confirmation).

Some highlights of the thread (click here to read at AICN):

• On "Die Hard 4" helmer Len Wiseman: "[Wiseman] will be remembered as the guy who not only brought Die Hard into the 21st Century, but brought it back to Life."

• On "The Last Boy Scout": "The Last Boy Scout started out to be a great film about Sports Gambling. Somewhere along the line it got changed into some silly f***ing chase to save a Senator that got me fired."

• On his duds: "I reject all judgment, and in general keep my own counsel, for good or bad. Which is why I can take credit for deciding to do movies like 12 Monkeys and Pulp Fiction, as well as having to hang my head for deciding to do dogs like Striking Distance and Sunset...."

"The lesson of Tears [of the Sun] was never start a film without a finished script."

"And Perfect Stranger was ruined by the producers."

• On "Die Hard 2": "The second was my least favorite, and the least fun. Far to [sic] self-referentially precious, the story was all over the place, and suffered from severe un-claustrophobic-ness."

• On being misconstrued in Vanity Fair: "Writers often need to present a "thesis" to their articles, and Peter Biskin chose the rating as his."

• On the MPAA: "I believe it'll come around to a less antiquated system, but who knows when. Jack Valenti ran that sytem into the ground."

• On missed opportunities: "The only 2 passes I regret are not doing Ghost, and passing on the part of Moose in The English Patient. I passed on Ghost thinking, a Romance with a Dead guy? And I was talked out of working with by my then agent. I also wanted to play the Andy Garcia part in Ocean's 11, but thought I would wait for a film with G. Clooney where it was just him and me."

"Live Free or Die Hard" hits theaters June 29 (and, if Bruno is to be trusted, will be good).