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Interview w/Bruce Campbell

credit goes to Meh with this terrific interview....

I had a chance to talk to the legendary B movie actor and let me tell you it was an absolute treat. This is the second time I have interviewed Bruce Campbell and true to form he doesn't hide behind his people... he is an in your face, straight to the point... fun guy! Its pretty rare I call a celeb and they answer their own phone. Normally they have somebody answer it and hand it to them nce they are far to superior to actually do it themselves.

Last week I called Bruce and picked his brain about My Name is Bruce as well as some of his other films and it was a great chat. Bruce had me laughing so much that most of the interview was him cracking one liners and me laughing to keep taking notes. So be glad I got as much as I did... the interview was much longer but when you are laughing so hard you cant breathe it can make it tough to record things.

First off I had to cover the very obvious topic. Bruce Campbell is best known for his work in SpiderMan. Yes that's right. His most important role was in Spiderman and I asked him if he felt at all bad about stealing the Spotlight from Tobey Maguire and the rest of the lesser known cast.No it serves them right not being able to hold onto their own. I come from the midwest the weather is perfect.

Of course in true CNN style I had to followup to find out more about the rumor that he would be cast in Spiderman 4 and 5 as Spiderman and that Tobey Maguire had been replaced. Word is that Tobey will instead have a small cameo role with Bruce Campbell as Spiderman. He of course spilled the goods telling me;That rumor is absolutely true. I believe strongly in taking the path of WC Fields who started all of his own rumors. I am determined to follow this path myself. The rumor therefore is completely true. I am also determined to start really confung people.We then moved onto more horror specific topics... and topics that have a little less bullshit and a bit more fact involved in them. Because yes kids Bruce is not playing Spiderman he and I are completely screwing with you and I pretty much just made those questions up to see how Bruce would respond. One of the things I really like about Bruce is the fact that he is hugely popular but also not afraid to take risks. I asked him about his choice of films and whether he felt and pressure when choong his projects.If you fail thats ok so long as you try. My only goal as an actor is to entertain the fans and film goers. I dont have a plan in doing this I just do whatever I feel I can. I put the effort out to entertain and sometimes people like it and sometimes they dont.I prefer B Movies primarily because I find them to be the only true original and creative filmmaking being done right now. The funny thing is that right now all the so called 'A movies' are 'B Movies' anyways. If you have a guy getting bit by a spider and mutating thats a B movie... if you dress a guy as a Bat is that not a B movie concept as well? My Name is Bruce is a clasc B Movie. The nice part is I can look around at any one point and there is nobody there to tell me what to do and complicate things. I am happy to take responbility for the success and or the failure. Films and entertainment need a ngle vion. You do need alot of people to make that vion one voice but it does take one voice to bring it together. The reason I like Bruce Campbell so much and his projects is not only because of the way he chooses his projects but the roles he plays. He plays the B-Movie leading man to a T and I like that about him. He doesnt try to be something he isnt or make his movies something they are not. Its what makes Bruce so popular and his films so much fun to watch. The cheese factor is at times heavy, but not ignored by him and makes the film fun! One of the other topics Bruce and I touched on is the new trend of horror films and frankly the lack of effort put into alot of them.Mainstream horror films a lot of the time lack any style to them. When you watch Evil Dead you get a sense of Sam Raimi's Style. He puts a Heavy print on his films. You cant say that about modern horror. They are all flashy and glossy and horribly Gross. Just take a look at the new 'Torture Porn'. Where the hell did that come from? Its not horror. Horror means your horrified. Where is the scare in Torture Porn? I dont want to be disturbed when I watch a film. If I want to be disturbed I can watch the current political race on TV.It takes a lot more work to build suspense then it does to put some guys wiener in a vice for 7 minutes. Your being lazy and your being excesve because you don't know what scary is. Scary in my opinion is a guy going to take his eye out with his finger. You don't need to see it. You just need to believe its going to happen. Its different styles. Torture Porn is ok, but like any trend it will swing back to more cerebral horror.It takes more work to build suspense then put some guys wiener in a vice for 7 minutes. your being lazy and your being excesve becuse you dont know what scary is. scary in my opinion is a guy is going to take his eye out with his finger. You dont need to see it, you just need to believe its going to happen. its different styles, its ok, but like any trend it will swing back to more cerebal horror.

Pretty heavy stuff and quite frankly stuff I completely agree with. My biggest issue with the new 'Torture Porn' niche of horror is that in many cases it is exactly as Bruce put it... LAZY filmmaking. No story, no effort to build suspense.. just a weak stab at throwing as much crazy shit on the screen as posble. Of course this is not always the case. I enjoyed Hostel, and I also enjoy SAW but there are lots of horror films that cross over the line of horror.. to torture porn and frankly... terrible and lazy filmmaking. Next we moved onto My Name is Bruce which is Bruce Campbells newest project. He laid out to me how he got involved with the film and what it was like to play himself.. all be it from a different perspective.

My Name is Bruce is like a bad Bob Hope movie with blood and de-capitation. I am pals with Mike Richardson who owns Dark Horse Comics and he and I worked on developing the movie. Mike knew I liked directing and wanted to do more.In my Name is Bruce I get to play a different Bruce Campbell. It wasnt hard to play the role because I am playing a different character, not me. I am the only guy who knows what the real Bruce Campbell is like and that I am not really playing Bruce. What is even wierder is the things in the movie that are true that only I know about. The movie is a secret message to myself. I am winking to myself withing and tormenting the fans along the way.There are scenes in the film where I actually recreate dialogue with fans verbatim. I get to respond however in the movie how I really would have liked to in real life. You cant always push a guy in front of a bus but in the movie I get a chance to do it. The only chance I get to really abuse fans is in my movies nce I can not really do it in real life.Now of course Bruce Campbell like any celeb has some serious whack jobs come up to him and ask some stupid questions. I am sure he has alot of whacky bloggers and journalists do the same. So next time you ask him to gn your left testicle.. do it with care. But in all seriousness it was alot of laughs as Bruce talked about his crazy fans who do odd stuff. He obviously has hordes of normal all be it over excited horror fans that he loves and really appreciates. One of the other aspects that I touched on with Bruce was on directing himself. I could never wrap my brain around how you could do that. Whether its Bruce Campbell or Mel Gibson... it has to be alot of work. Bruce agreed.I made a very bad movie called Man with the Screaming Brain. I got kinda used to directing myself with that project. The only major issue I have directing myself is when I refuse to come out of the trailer. I then have to go banging on the trailer and ask myself to come out of the trailer. But in doing so I find myself out of the trailer and then back inde the trailer and then I just get confused and tend to give up and just wait till I am ready to come out.

There are alot of recognizable faces from all of Bruce's past films including Evil Dead and Army of Darkness. Bruce made a deliberate choice to bring back people he has worked with before in this film.In My Name is Bruce all the hacks are coming back. The idea again was to torment the fans throughout the course of the film. Fans will do the 'oh theres the blacksmith from Army of Darkness'. Its for the fans so they can constantly say 'oh my god that is so and so'.I put Ted Raimi in all of my movies so I look like a better actor. We have made about 11 movies together. He was also cast in Spiderman because of his genius acting. He has three roles in My Name is Bruce. He plays an 88 year old chinese man, my agent and Luigi the gn painter who keeps having to re-paint the population gn for the city nce people keep dieing. I think fans will most enjoy the reverent nature of the film. The movie by jackasses and for jackasses. None of this is taken to seriously here. I have grown men nging in the movie. It is really fan fiction turned upde down. This is as if we took fan fiction and gave it a horror rewrite. If filmgoers walk out with a confused look on their faces I have succeeded.

One thing about Bruce is he really is an icon and fans love him. I asked him what he thought it was that made him and icon with fans and he really did nail it.I dont hate what I do. I dont mind making these movies at all. I am not gonna make fun of B-movies nce I think they are where its at creatively. I do not have a dere to leave the B-Movie genre to persue a mainstream movie career. I am not going anywhere and I think fans know I am not looking to jump ship.

In clong I wanted to ask him about his future writing plans and whether he had more educational literature planned milar to his 'Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way'I am currently thinking about doing a book called Vagabond: The Gypsy Life of an Actor. What it is about is everytihng I do when I am not making movies. My time spent living in bulgaria, getting groceries, being attacked by a pack of wild dogs, flosng my teeth. The mple things and ridiculous adventures. Fans can send me their money now nad when I am done writing the book I will send a copy to them.

Last... we couldnt help but ask about those rumors of an Evil Dead Remake / Sequel.

Sam will perputuate it and will say I told you so. Sam and I both have no problem with making a remake or a sequel but we just dont have time right now. These Evil Dead movies are a long hard slog that takes a long time to make and Sam is busy with Spiderman.

Great interview!

I've heard how "down to earth" Bruce can be, this proves it.

Thanks for posting this Justin!

Great interview!

I love Bruce, he and I see eye to eye on many things.. and he will always be my favorite actor because of how down to earth he is about what he does.

:rock

really great interview. bruce campbell is gold.

Great interview Bud, I must agree Bruce is very down to earth...I met him at the monster mania convention last year and chatted with him for few minutes......Real nice guy...

-matt

Sweet interview!

Thanks for posting it up.

Excellent read! We need to do more interviews again.

Awesome read and he's one of my fav's. Im a little down on the fact that he railed against modern horror or as he put it more specifically the porn/gore/torture stuff. Bad movies ade everything is relative and going back 20/25/30 years films like EVIL DEAD and most others at the time were condered excesve and overly violent. Not only by mainstream film goers but even by horror fans. Not every horror fan was into "the video nasties".

Sure films like SAW are obviously being made every year because they are a cash cow at the box office but is that anything new? And as far as some of todays horrors going to far on the violence and being short on scares....well what about films like CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST? CANNIBAL FEROX? BURIAL GROUND? I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE? etc etc. Theres true emotional horror like HALLOWEEN and then theres exploitation films like the said bunch I mentioned. Im not insane about Eli Roths films but it was nice to see some extreme flicks back on the big lver screen. Horror freaks in the 70's and 80's had a total FEAST at the theatres.....the past 10 years we've been lucky to have films like WRONG TURN; HOUSE/REJECTS; and HOSTEL because they brought the gore and shock back to the movies. I'll take my horror anyway I can get it...vhs; straight to dvd etc. But I love being able to go see a killer horror in the movies. Anyway I think theres a trend nowadays to be against "torture" flicks but they undeniably have their place in horror love em or hate em.

Yep!

This interview was posted here in somewhere, maybe on the Evil Dead thread. Reading it I'm sure Bruce is going down each time he try to do another movie (not Evil Dead 4). Did you saw the trailer? I thought it sucks... What the hell he was thinking about this kind of freak? Always someone ask him about Evil Dead sequel it's the same bullshit, like "bla bla bla waiting for Sam bla bla bla I'm ready to do this, I want it but you know and bla bla bla..."

Drag yourself to hell!

really great interview. he seems like such a down to earth guy!