Back in 2011, my dad worked in the heart of Grand Rapids on Monroe Center St. and had my mom bring us all downtown to stand up the street because “the guy from Die Hard was going to blow up the coffee shop.” In hindsight, this wasn’t exactly right, but it wasn’t exactly wrong.
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Yes, Bruce Willis was part of a movie that filmed in GR, and yes, MadCap Coffee’s windows were shot out. However, Bruce had nothing to do with the latter; he wasn’t even in the city for his scenes. The movie was called Setup, and it was about a heist gone wrong and a betrayed man seeking revenge. Run-of-the-mill revenge story.
According to the owner of MadCap Coffee, Trevor Corlett, he was approached by a producer who asked if he would want his shop in a movie and if they “would be willing to have his windows shot out.”
So, they replaced the windows in the shop with prop windows, and sure enough, there was a “shootout” filmed at the intersection of Monroe Center and Ottawa Ave.
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