Bruce Campbell: King of B
by Valerie Stulman
Today, Campbell relishes the fact that, although not an A-list movie star, he makes his living in the business.
“For every Bruce Willis and Steven Spielberg, there are a hundred no-name slobs scraping out a living in this
shockingly difficult profession,” says Bruce Campbell in the introduction to his autobiography, If Chins Could Kill;
Confessions of a B Movie Actor. Best known as the star of the legendary Evil Dead trilogy of horror films, Campbell has hacked
out a living as an actor over the years becoming a cult hero to some, but managing to remain anonymous to many others.
It all started in the suburbs of Detroit, Mich. where he first met friend and future director Sam Raimi in his eighth grade
drama class at Wylie E. Groves high school in 1975. Raimi joined Campbell’s ever expanding boyhood gang, coined, the
“Detroit Mafia,” living, breathing and eating movies. From his first super 8 hand-cranked, Kodak Brownie
home movie to the early college thriller-spoof, The Happy Valley Kid, there was never a question about what Campbell wanted
to do with his life. When he, Raimi and Raimi’s college roommate, Rob Tapert decided to make their first professional
movie, they eschewed Hollywood, and starting in 1979, took four years to raise the gargantuan sum of $350,000 and piecemeal
together what would later become the classic, Evil Dead movie.
In 1983, Stephen King called Evil Dead the most
ferociously original horror film of the year; it even beat out The Shining as a best selling video in England that year. The
trio joined the ranks of Hollywood pros, subsequently producing two sequels. But during the shoot, the cast and crew wondered
if it would ever be finished. They roughed it for months in a ramshackle unheated cabin in rural Morristown, Tenn. According
to Campbell, it was hands down, the worst and best experience of his life.
Today, Campbell relishes the fact
that, although not an A-list movie star, he makes his living in the business. “Acting,” he says, “celebrates
the human condition.” He’s also produced [credited on all three Evil Dead films] and segued into directing on
his old friends’ Raimi and Tapert’s hit syndicated T.V. series, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. From there,
he took on the recurring role of Autolycus, AKA the King of Thieves in the series, after Tapert called and told him that the
part of despicable rogue was “just right” for him.
Campbell took the jab in stride, because Autolycus
is his favorite kind of character, “He’s a charming lech, a hero and villain at the same time, a naked version
of what every man would like to do [to women], but is trained not to.” Later, he reprised the likable swashbuckler on
the Hercules companion series, Xena: Warrior Princess.
Campbell is decidedly un-Hollywood and makes no bones
about his disillusionment with Tinsel Town. “The Hollywood I see [today] is different than the one I saw as a kid. There’s
a weird fascination with fame and fortune. By portraying false images of Hollywood, pretty people have been flocking here
for years. I tell it more like it is [in my book.]”
He recently moved to Oregon, where he “met
more people in a week than he met in LA in four years. You can park your car, see a hit movie the day it opens, there are
no lights [at night], no sounds. You get to know your neighbors and they don’t care if you’re an actor. In fact
they make fun.”
His neighbors teased him about being a T.V. cowboy; in his short lived, but highly touted
Fox series, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., and promptly dragged him on a cattle drive, which was decidedly unglamorous.
But he didn’t mind. In fact, he relished it. Whether earnestly describing the man who provided food and swept up after
the cast and crew, on his “Brisco” series, as “heartbreakingly real and honest” or riffing on the
last time he shemped, Campbell lets you know he’s a regular guy. [FYI, shemp is a phrase coined during the making of
Evil Dead. Taken from the Three Stooges, it means, a fake actor. To shemp means to do nothing of importance.] His favorite
place to shemp is Escalate, Utah, newly designated as a national monument, because there’s no one there, “It
has rugged, raw, remote terrain and large distances.” Having enough space is something Campbell cares about deeply and
over-population is his number one cause. He believes overcrowding leads to every other problem there is in society.
Campbell’s currently shooting a new movie, low budget of course. “Bubba Ho-tep” is a comedy, in which
he plays a 70-year-old Elvis, who lives in a rest home in East Texas. His co-star, Ozzie Davis, thinks he’s Jack Kennedy.
Campbell’s only grouse is that he has to spend over two hours a day in make-up. But, he is the first to admit that it’s
way better than being a security guard, which is one of the horrible “real” jobs of his not too distant past.
Campbell has also been promoting his book, which is available in bookstores and at www.Bruce-Campell.com. He says he plans
to go to every Fangoria horror convention out there in order to promote it. In fact, he admits shamelessly with a laugh, he
may even invent a new one, so that we can all go.
Favorite book:
Anything by Bill Bryson or Dayton Duncan, both non-fiction writers and particularly likes In A Sunburned Country
Favorite band: “I’m a crooner guy.” Likes Dean
or Frank.
Favorite sport: Likes
to watch basketball and play softball.
Favorite film:
Bridge on the River Kwai
Favorite actor: William Holden
Favorite video game: Evil Dead:
Hail to the King. Doesn’t really know how to play, it’s just shameless promotion.
Favorite Issues: Population. “There’s too much. It leads to every other problem we
have in society. We all remember some place where we used to play that is now a strip mall.”
Birthday – June 22, Cancer
