Interview: Bruce Campbell

You definitely don’t remember, but we’ve actually met once before, years ago at a book signing. I have a photo of me hugging you, and you looking thoroughly disgusted.

Well, normally, it’s just strange to have someone ask to hug you. You know, this is one of the very few professions where you meet people and they go “Can I have a hug?” So now I just tell them that my wife won’t let me. It’s the only way to get around it.

So I have a rare photo then?

Yeah, you actually do. Two women in Dallas last night asked to hug me and I turned them down. They didn’t like that. But it’s not like I have to let people hug me. You know what I mean? It’s my own personal little bubble here.

That’s true. Though I imagine you get a lot of people just wanting, I dunno, a piece of you. What do most people want, do you think, when they meet you?

When they meet me, they don’t act like they want anything. They don’t want to talk; they don’t want to chit-chat; they rarely ask questions. It’s usually me dragging it out of them. Like, hey! How you doing? [And they respond] “…umm.”

In a nervous way?

Yeah—in a nervous way. But it could so easily be interpreted as, you know, they’re nonplussed. But inside, I think they’re dying. You know what I mean?

It’s a very strange thing. I ask, what do you do? “Nothin’.” Do you work? “Yeah.” Well, that’s not nothin’. “Oh, and I go to school.” Again, that’s not nothin’. And that’s usually about as far as we can get because the next guy’s coming and people are trying to move everyone along. So it’s usually a series of strange conversations. A series of strange, non sequitur, unfulfilling conversations.

So it’s refreshing to have someone come along and be like, “Hey Bruce! How’s it going?!” It wakes me up. Because I think that the cocooning of America is definitely having its effect on the socialization skills of humans.

What do you mean by cocooning?

Well, you’re living in front of a TV screen, a computer monitor, a video game—no one is talking to humans any more. And a lot of my fans just don’t speak with other humans. Or they speak with their friends, but it’s computer-speak or game-speak or movie-speak. Not actual-speak. Not conversation.

It’s funny you say that because [the Alamo] generally has great crowds, who know how to watch a movie. But if you go to a regular multiplex, people are so rude. They’re so used to watching movies on television that they just talk to each other the entire time, like they’re in their living room.

Yeah, like there’s nobody else there. It’s amazing. It’s creepy.

So, there’s a scene in My Name Is Bruce where you’ve been kidnapped, and you’re trapped in the trunk of a car, and you say, “It’s finally happened!”

[Laughs]

Have you ever seriously considered that there might actually be some kind of Misery-style fan kidnapping?

Well, fans do get very excited, and very amped up. You know, they dress as you—well, they dress as Ash. I’ve met a lot of people dressed as Ash with the chainsaws and all that.

Right, they don’t dress as you in normal clothes. That’d be way creepier.

No, they don’t dress in my Tommy Bahama shirts or anything, no. So since I don’t have that issue, things aren’t so bad. But it’s just the cliche of the overenthusiastic fan. Because I was hoping that even if you took Bruce Campbell out of this particular equation, that the premise [of the movie] would still function: B-movie actor, thought of as playing heroes, but [asking him for help] turns out to be a massively bad idea.

Oh, sure. And it’s actually a lot like Army of Darkness in that you’re this guy who turns out not to be exactly what everyone expected…

Right—a little bit of a jerk, yeah.

And you go through this whole metamorphosis…

…who doesn’t have too many skills. And things don’t go well.

[Laughs] Right. But this movie isn’t about Ash, it’s about you personally. As far as the audience knows, anyway.

Yeah, well, if I confuse the audience horribly, I’ve done my job. If people go, “what the fuck was that? Why would you make yourself out to be like that?”

Obviously, though, a lot of it is embellished. Like, for example, you probably don’t live in a trailer that nice.

Right. My trailer is much worse than that. And I never feed my dog. It’s a glorified version of myself, if anything.

Making this movie, did you go through any self-realization exercise where you started to look at the character in terms of…

None! None, because I’m the only guy who knows Bruce Campbell. So I’m the only guy who knows I’m not playing Bruce Campbell. Even though I’m playing Bruce Campbell. So the trick is, which Bruce Campbell do I want to play? And ultimately, he’s just a character.

But at the same time, in the movie, I’m able to respond to fans the way I’d really want to respond. Like, sometimes I want to kick them in front of a bus. But I can’t, because then they’ll be blogging, “What an asshole! Brice Campbell was an asshole!” So with the movie, I can hide behind that a bit and say, “No man, that’s just a character! I would never do that!”

Though, I have seen you be that character during Q&As too.

Sure. But then, I’m metaphorically pushing people under a bus. And some people need to be pushed in front of a bus.

But look—it’s fair game. I’ve made a lot of bad movies, and people have a right to kvetch about that, and I’ll torment them about being shitty fans. It’s a two way street! That’s how I look at it. No one’s kissing my ass, so I don’t need to kiss theirs. And I’m saying that in the friendliest possible way.

There’s a lot of self-effacing stuff in the movie. Did you personally write all that or approve all that? Or was that process kept separate from you as far as how far they’d go in making you look like a jerk?

Well, I directed the movie, so in the end I can do whatever I want. And I did a couple drafts of the script. I sort of adapted what Mark Verheiden did in the production draft to make it workable based on the realities of shooting. And then the other phase was just to massage it into what I wanted. How I would do it.

The movie’s been finished for a while, right?

Well, we shot it in 2006. But a bunch of things happened, and people assumed it was doomed, dead or shelved like another Bruce Campbell movie. Image Entertainment, who financed the movie, got bought out halfway through making this movie. So there were four or five months where we had to shut down.

We got the movie in the can, but then [after the acquisition], we had to wait and see if the new company would cooperate, or fire everybody, or scrap the project. You know… you never know. But they continued on and pretty much left Image Entertainment alone. And then they made the decision to go theatrical, which was never the original plan—it was going to go straight to DVD. So then we had to go back and amp all the effects up—bring them to a higher resolution so that they’d look good in a theater. And we also had to go back and do all the sound in Dolby 5.1 and everything, so it took some time.

But, on a low-budget movie, you don’t have the big machine behind you to say, “Yeah, send it on up to post! Have ‘em spit it through and crank it out!” We look around, and there’s nobody there to do all that; it’s just us.

And then "Burn Notice" came along. And you can’t tell a TV show “no, I can’t be there because I’m finishing my movie.” They’re like, “So? Show up in Miami tomorrow and get to work.”

Do you like doing the business stuff? Is it something you normally have to deal with a lot?

Well, I’ve produced a lot of movies. I’ve produced a lot of stuff that I was in, like the Evil Dead movies. And I’ve directed some television stuff. So I don’t mind getting involved in the business stuff. It’s a reality that you have to deal with. Filmmakers are never just filmmakers. I have friends who make a movie, and don’t know what to do with it. And I’m like, “well, take your filmmaker hat off, and put your salesman hat on.” It’s real simple, but a lot of guys can’t do the follow-through. Or some people know how to sell movies, but don’t know how to make ‘em.

Do you think it's getting easier, or harder to sell movies?

Well, at this budget scale we’re still okay. I can get money to make these movies. Distribution can be an issue though, because [for theatrical release] you may be putting up more than the movie cost to make. So they have to weigh that. Are we going to put up even more money, or are we going to cut our losses and go straight to DVD. So I talked them into [a theatrical run for My Name Is Bruce]. I said, look, I’ll promote it—I’ve done tours before, and I’ve worked with Landmark Theatres and [the Alamo] and some other cool theaters promoting other movies, like Bubba Ho-Tep. So we just booked as many theaters as we could, and ended up hitting 22 of the bigger markets.

Does it matter to you if it goes to theaters or not?

No, not really.

Your fans are going to see it no matter what, right?

Yeah, they’re going to see it anyway. And plus—look, theaters are shrinking and home systems are growing. So there is going to be a tipping point there somewhere. And I think that people who follow what I do don’t necessarily need to see it in the theater. It’s more about getting the word out.

On the other hand, it’s great to have an opportunity like this where you get to see it with other people, and have that shared experience.

Oh, sure. And fans need to see it with other fans. Then you can bond and say “yeah, I hated that movie too!” or whatever. It’s definitely a different experience. The live experience still exists and I still have faith in it. But sometimes, a movie needs to go straight to DVD.

And I know Tim [League] said this during your introduction, but this is the fastest I’ve ever seen an Alamo show sell out. I’m one of those guys who when tickets go on sale for something I really want to see, I sit at my computer hitting refresh until they come up.

[Laughs]

But this time it paid off, because this screening sold out in three minutes. Which I think speaks to the dedication of your fan base.

I know! They’re good. Plus, we’ve been baiting them for years, and they’ve been thinking, “When’s this fucking movie gonna come out?”

It’s been the stuff of legend for the last couple of years. Are you tired of questions about when it’s going to come out?

No, I just feel bad. Because rumors can so easily get started-like there was a problem with something, or they ran out of this, or they got shut down. All you need is four or five of those to be floating around before it becomes real. If you read it eight times, it’s real.

I’m sure you’re sick of the questions about Evil Dead 4 though. It seems, from the outside, like so much of your time must be spent just dealing with these kinds of questions and pressures from fans.

I know every question. I know them all.

There was one interview though, back when I was promoting Evil Dead II, and I was doing one of these deals where you sit in the hotel room and they keep brining new guys in, and it goes all day. So the last guy came in and he was from some shitty cable station, and his equipment was falling apart and he couldn’t set anything up right, and I thought “Oh god, here we go.” And then, he started asking the most insightful questions I’ve ever heard. I couldn’t answer them! I was just like, “wow, I don’t have a pat answer for that!” He’d ask things like, “How do you learn your lines?” And no one had ever asked me that before! They just kept coming, left and right. And at the end I was shaking his hand going, “Thank you, thank you, thank you so much!” And he was like, “Yeah…whatever.”

Maybe it was his inexperience—not knowing he was supposed to ask you all those fanboy questions. Though, I was wondering… are you a fan at all? There’s a scene in the movie where someone drops an Ash figure into the fire, and you scream, “That’s a limited edition!” Is there any of you in that scene?

Well, I think he was only pissed because of the value of the thing. You know, he could have sold it. It’s just the dollar value, not the sentimental value. [Laughs]

So you’re not a collector at all?

It’s weird—my brother has a sawed-off shotgun from Evil Dead, but just because he likes guns. It has just never occurred to me to save anything.

That would probably enrage a lot of Evil Dead fans to know that your brother has that gun, but just because he likes guns.

And only because he likes guns. He doesn’t give a shit about the movie. My feeling is, collectibles should be in the hands of the people who really want them. I have a buddy of mine that I send stuff to that I should normally be keeping, because I know he’ll inventory it, keep it safe, always know where it is…

Collectors are crazy like that.

But they’re awesome at the same time. Because they preserve weird snippets of history—maybe it’s a program for a convention that nobody has seen for twenty years. Something that somebody else would have pitched. No one else has it. I like that idea.