Scoop Satire: Where Was Bruce Willis On 911?

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As the arduous task of clearing the debris and bodies grinds to a halt some 9 months after the unprecedented terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre, American citizens are beginning to ask pointed questions of the Bush administration and US intelligence services.

Why was such an obviously carefully planned and orchestrated attack not suspected beforehand? If it was suspected, then why was no action taken? And, perhaps most importantly, where was Bruce Willis?

“What’s going on in this country when a bunch of fanatics can hijack a plane and deliberately crash it into New York and Bruce Willis doesn’t lift a finger to stop them?” asked an irate Frank Cornfield, 27, of Iowa.

“Don’t get me wrong. Willis has done this country truly heroic service in the past. Time and time again he’s shown that even if you’re just one man that doesn’t like to play by the rules, you can still stop any number of crazed foreigners with wisecracking American knucklepower and advanced automatic weaponry. No one’s questioning that. But when it comes to the really big one, where is he? Nowhere, that’s where.”

Nor is it just Willis under scrutiny. Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwartzenegger, Denzel Washington, and Steven Segal are just some of a long list of Hollywood stars who have been accused of negligence in their country’s hour of greatest need.

Political commentator Tom Speedmann said that the lack of any non-stop, suspense-packed, daredevil action on the stars behalf was a ‘national disgrace’.

"You can't seriously expect the American people to believe that Bruce Willis couldn't have just thrown in his badge, 'requisitioned' a jet, picked up a special hand-picked team of edgy guys who like to live on the outside of the law like Schwartzenegger, Segal, Mel Gibson, and Wesley Snipes, as well as a couple of solid, normal kind of guys who you shouldn't push too far like Ford, Washington, Nicholas Cage maybe, then caught up with each of the four airliners in mid-air and had a two-man team climb from the wing of his jet onto the tail of the hijacked planes and cut their way through the baggage section using some kind of high-tech device to stop it from de-pressurising, before bursting through the rear of the plane to take out most of the foreign terrorists and have a climactic showdown with the charismatic leader who appears to have them beat when he's standing there with a bomb in his hand until one of them manages to pull the 'emergency door-eject' button so the terrorist gets sucked out while the other team-member wrestles with the controls and manages to put the plane down safely even though the undercarriage has failed so all the passengers start clapping and it's all seen on tv and they're national heroes?"

Both Hollywood and the Whitehouse have refused to comment on the reasons for the stars non-appearances in the tragic attack, and the actors themselves have kept low profiles.

However, unofficial sources say the reasons may have been contractual and casting disputes.
One source, who wished to remain anonymous, claims to be an FBI agent who was present as bureau negotiators tried desperately to finalise an attractive remuneration package for the stars willing involvement in the project.

"The main problem was Bruce. He figured that if he was going to be the guy that rounded up this awesome team of edgy guys and flew the first plane, then he should get a larger cut, which of course pissed everyone else off big time. Then there was all kinds of production difficulties. Steven Segal was already committed making a documentary about his penis, and Sylvestor Stallone was unavailable due to brain-damage, so we we're looking at maybe Keanu Reeves or Eddie Murphy. But then that got vetoed by the Whitehouse itself, saying they wanted someone with more experience. So we're thinking Nick Nolte, Sean Connery. Then someone mentioned Jim Carrey and that was when the first jet hit the tower and it was all too late."

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