PHOTO CREDIT: Mike Ditz
When it comes to navigating the three-ring circus of showbiz, Bruce Campbell takes a practical approach as an actor, producer, writer and director in the film and TV world. Growing up in the Midwest in Royal Oak, Mich., played a big role in that mindset. Campbell says he was never a party guy and didn’t really hang out and “do the whole Hollywood thing.” He’s lived outside of Hollywood for 20 years.
“A lot of us are used to work, getting up in the morning, putting in a full day of work,” Campbell says. “It’s nice to apply some of those traits to my flaky industry.”
Campbell’s current tour features a screening of his 1987 film, Evil Dead II, a Q&A with the audience about his career and an opportunity to promote his new book, Hail to the Chin: The Further Confessions of a B Movie Actor.
Many of his relationships—whether personal or professional—are a result of the Midwest. He fondly recalls meeting his wife in Eagle River, Wis., during the filming of sci-fi thriller Mindwarp, at what he calls “an ill-fated movie studio there in the middle of nowhere.”
While he was going to high school in Beverly Hills, Mich., he became friends with director Sam Raimi, which lead to a working relationship that included the Evil Dead trilogy.
In 1981, they released their first film together, The Evil Dead, which pitted Campbell’s antihero, Ash Williams, against the dead. It offered them a chance to utilize their Michigan roots.
That level of creative freedom is something they wanted to return to following a less than satisfactory experience creating their follow-up film, Crimewave. “We had just gone over budget and had the film kind of taken away from us,” Campbell says. Evil Dead II reimagines the first film with a comedic twist and a bigger budget.
“We had more experience, and we had just enough control that it was a good filming experience,” Campbell says. “We weren’t really enjoying this whole Hollywood thing too much, and so Evil Dead II was a little bit of a return to the roots, more money. Then we injected a little bit of humor this time around. We partnered up with a guy, Scott Spiegel, who is a big Three Stooges aficionado, and he co-wrote it with Sam. It’s got a whole new flavor to it.”
The twist appealed to Campbell, who was also a fan of The Three Stooges’ physical humor. “We didn’t want to make a grim horror movie, so we thought, ‘what the hell, let’s try something a little crazy,’” he continues. “We were licking our wounds because our second movie bombed, so it was really important that this movie did not fail. The most important thing was finding a good atmosphere to make a movie that would keep us in the industry. We thought we might get mustered out, so it was important to us to not screw this one up.”
Fortunately, the film was well received and became a cult B-movie favorite. Campbell says his time on set was full of special memories, though he couldn’t pick an all-time favorite story.
“You’ve got to be careful with the favorite story thing, because they usually mean you’re not working hard enough if you can sit around telling jokes,” he says.
Evil Dead II’s preference in using set props over CGI adds to the charm the film has for fans as well as Campbell. “It’s right there in front of you,” Campbell says of the benefits of using props. “You don’t have to act. You’re not acting in front of a green screen to a guy with a tennis ball on a stick. It’s a cheesier approach and trickier to pull off, but it’s easier for an actor.”
He was happy to give Ash a satisfying farewell recently in three seasons of the Starz TV series, “Ash vs. Evil Dead,” set after the third Evil Dead film, 1992’s Army of Darkness.
“It was great, because it was a chance, many, many years later, actually decades later, to revisit the character with a lot more experience as an actor,” Campbell says. “I think there were more stories to tell. We had more of Ash’s mythos to explore, so yeah, it was great. We will always be eternally grateful to Starz for coughing up the dough.
“Fans got much more material, and it was unrated, so TV actually wound up being the best thing as far as fans go,” he continues. “It was unrated television, and if we made a movie, it probably would’ve been rated R.”
Campbell has kept busy of late, including hosting the most recent season of the long-running series, “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!”
He’s keen to try new things and feels he’s thrived thanks to not staying in one place too long. “Job rotation, little bit of this, a little bit of that,” Campbell says. “In Detroit, they used to job rotate on the line building cars. Same thing for me. I’m doing a lot of writing right now, because you can’t make a movie unless you got a script. It’s time to generate a lot of material, so I’m writer-boy right now. Then, hopefully, I’m clearing the decks in 2020 to get back and do a movie.”
He’s excited for fans to have the opportunity to purchase the paperback version of his new book, which came out earlier this month. “[I like that] there’s no studio involved,” he says. “The book world is way less hands-on, which is just great. It’s just how I like it.”
Bruce Campbell will host a screening of Evil Dead II, followed by a Q&A with the audience about his career, at the Pabst Theater on Saturday, Sept. 28, at 7:30 p.m. Copies of his new book will be available to purchase and come with VIP tickets.
