I sat down with Bruce Campbell the day after the SXSW premiere of Evil Dead, which he produced along with his good friends and collaborators on the original The Evil Dead trilogy, Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert.
The dapper B movie icon with the chin that just won't quit kept me on my toes with his biting sarcasm and absolute lack of pretension. Here's the complete transcript of the interview, during which he shares his thoughts on fervent Evil Dead fans, how much he enjoys taunting his old buddy Sam Raimi, and why he doesn't watch horror movies. You can read my story here and my review of "Evil Dead" here.
Alison Gang: I saw the
movie last night. What an
outrageous reaction.
Bruce
Campbell: Yeah. It was fun.
AG: Did you get the reaction that you were
expecting?
BC: Yes. Yeah, we’re good. We’re done. This is what you want.
You need a verbal reaction.
AG: Tell me
about this remake idea. Obviously
you were a little nervous about fan reaction and I know there was some in the
early days.
BC: Yeah, they
were visceral. They were
loud. They were nasty.
AG: What were
they worried about?
BC: That
everything would be ruined. If
there’s no Ash character then there’s no Evil
Dead.
All of
these absolute statements. And I’m
like, hey, relax. Sam’s behind
it. Rob Tapert’s behind it. I’m behind it. We are the only producers. There are no other cigar chomping producers
looking to make a fast buck. This
is the first movie that ever got us into the film business so as violently as
opposed as a fan is or careful as they are with this Evil Dead franchise, what do you think we are? We’re going to take more time with it
than the average fan I can tell you that right now. I care more than the average fan about this movie.
But we appreciate their zeal. We appreciate the fact that they care
enough to say, don’t screw this up.
You know, like verbally threatening us. Based on the reaction last night we didn’t’ screw them
over. That’s the goal when you
make a horror film, they’ve got to react.
If they don’t react, you’ve failed. You’ve completely failed. Laughter.
Nervous laughter.
Screaming. Hiding. It’s all good.
AG: Can I be
honest? I actually almost threw
up. And not because I was grossed
out but because it didn’t let up.
I didn’t get a chance to breath and I thought I was going to jump out of
my skin.
BC: It’s kind
of like a noose that gets tightened a little bit. You’re in a shoot and there’s no way out.
AG: I was like,
my knees were up to here, there’s people trapped all around me, I kind of
almost had a claustrophobic attack so I thank you for that.
BC: Good. I like that.
AG: Did you see
any of the internet buzz [after the premiere] or anything?
BC: Not
since. No. Fede’s [Alvarez, the film's director] been on it. He’s good. These younger guys, their fingers work good. I haven’t’ read it yet but I just
got an email with a link to a bunch of reviews so I can’t wait. Because the first Evil Dead was pretty much split. There were some very good reviews and some very bad
reviews. An Atlanta paper called
it the sickest of the sick, the first Evil
Dead. In another one, the
headline was 'Films That Stoop,' like they’re not even trying to be a legitimate
movie.
AG: Now,
sickest of the sick was a compliment to you I would imagine?
BC: Well no,
they followed it by saying Sam Raimi took every low-budget bad idea and put it
in a low budget blender.
AG: Oh
boy. Yeah.
BC: Yet, the
L.A. Times comes out and says instant classic. So that’s the thing with reviews, you can’t throw yourself
off the cliff for a bad one and you can’t go buy a new Cadillac with a good
one. The truth is usually
somewhere in the middle. Nothing
is ever that bad and nothing is ever that good.
AG: I read you were looking originally to make a comedy before you decided on doing the The Evil
Dead way back then.
BC: That’s all
we’d ever done was comedies. We
were Three Stooges fans. If we are
going to raise money from a group of business men in Detroit, comedy was like,
who’s your main actor or who’s your comedian that you know? None of us. But horror movies you can make with no name actors. Jane Levy [Mia in Evil Dead] had a lot of experience,
and Shilo Fernandez [David] and same with Lou [Taylor Pucci, who plays Eric] and all of the other actors. They’re all
good, solid actors but we don’t have like a star or starlet that everybody
knows. Horror movies can do
that. You can have no name people.
AG: Because the
gore is the star.
BC: The gore is
the star. Yeah, that’s pretty much
the deal.
AG: There
were a lot of low budget horror movies around that time. Why was the original Evil Dead different? Why did it hit the way
it did?
BC: Sam
Raimi. His visual style. I doubt that some of these other late
70s horror movies, like I Know What You Did Last
Night, Friday the 13th,
all of those movies were shot in about three weeks and it looks like it. The Evil
Dead took 12 weeks of principle photography. That was twice as long as we had intended. When you shoot that long you can take
an entire day to get one shot. We
would never do that again and have never done it since. It’s too inefficient. As a result there are shots in the
movie that are arrestingly cool that are not in any other low budget horror
films because they don’t have the time.
Roger Corman movies, god bless him for being so prolific, but
memorable? No. He makes impossible challenges, like make a movie in 10 days.
You’re going to get what you get.
You really are. The
occasional guys like [George] Lucas will come out of there, or [Francis Ford] Coppola. Out of
the hundreds of directors, very few survive that world because they were not
given a chance to do their stuff.
Sam from the get-go had these ridiculous ideas that Rob [Tapert] and I were like, 'Oh god, how do we do that? How do
we do that shot?' It was before
green screen. It was before blue
screen. So we just had to figure
out a way to do it. I think that’s
what set it apart. They knew that
there was somebody behind the camera that had a little more something going on.
AG: What did
you guys see in Fede [Alvarez, the film's director]?
BC: Sophistication. This movie is more sophisticated than
the original. He brings a really
interesting sensibility. He’s not
a kid. He runs a very successful
effects company in Uruguay and has a very good living and just got
married. He’s not a 21-year-old
know nothing. He has
opinions. He’s worked extensively
with special effects. We just
lucked out there. The rest was a
little bit of a gamble. Can he
make his day? What do you say to
actors? Does he know how to deal
with them? What if they’re pissed
off, how do you calm them down?
There’s a lot of that. But
he had it. I sat in on a lot of
the casting. To me, that’s what I wanted
to see. What does he say to that
actor to make him better without pissing them off? Actors are these weird, volatile creatures. So by the time those sessions were
done, I’m like he’s good. I could
see how when someone asked a question, he would answer it and how he would help
them understand more of what it is they should be doing and what he’s looking
for. That was very reassuring to
me. We were very fortunate to get Fede
and Jane [Levy]. We hit two
homeruns. One was with Fede and
one was with Jane.
AG: You’re like the king of this nerd B movie empire and you guys are shepherding this franchise. Was that ever how you saw
your career ending up way back when?
BC: Well, you
know, all roads lead to B movies.
You start B movies as an actor because that’s how you get in movies and
you end in B movies when your career is over. It’s a logical place to be. I just never left.
I have no problem with B movies.
I don’t apologize for them.
You can make more interesting movies. You can make twist endings. You can kill your lead character. You can cut their arm off. If this movie was made by a studio it would not be this
movie. It wouldn’t be anything
close to this movie. Thank
God.
I’m happy to work in a low
budget arena as long as I’m left alone because then all of the mental shit is
gone. It’s just the physical
challenge of making the movie without the politics and without any other
pressure. We wanted to give Fede
that environment. Sam is so
supportive of directors. He’d get
on Rob’s case and my case and be like, 'Hey what are you bugging Fede so much for? Leave him alone.' And we’re like, 'Shut up, we’re doing
our job.'
AG: What were
you bugging him about?
BC: Anything.You see the
film and it’s time for your editing notes. Well, we can either give him a lot
of notes or few notes. It depends
on what we thought. We each have things
that bug us about editing. That
shot seems very similar to that second shot. Why don’t we lift one of those shots? Do we need that shot? It’s stuff like that.
AG: What did
you really want to keep from the original?
BC: Some of the
sounds.
AG: Like what?
BC: Well the room where everything goes
down, where the chick is burned alive in the beginning and where they find the
book, there’s a wind in there that we buried with two other winds that is the
original Evil Dead wind. In the cabin for half of the movie is
this very dead, creepy, subtle wind and that’s in that room. Whenever you go in that room the
original sound is there and only there.
You can barely hear it but I can hear it.
AG: But you
wanted it there.
BC: Hell yeah.
AG: And then
the car, of course [the 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 that Campbell’s character drove in the original films.]
BC: The car I
don’t’ give a crap about. That’s
Sam’s. Sam’s obsession with that
stupid car.
AG: It
literally is the same car?
BC: I doubt it,
being in New Zealand. But find a
couple of car parts and glue them together and you’ve got a car.
AG: I saw Raimi's Oz the Great and Powerful and I noted your cameo in
there, only because I saw a picture of it ahead of time. I probably would have never known. What was that experience like in that
film?
BC: Well it’s
fun to go on the big movie sets because…to me it’s just fun. I looked at the makeup station they had. It was like the infinity mirror. They had to make up 200 people every
day in prosthetic makeups. That’s staggering. So I worked one day and it was one
incredibly long day but working with Sam was just like nothing else had
happened. It doesn’t matter the budget;
it all felt very small and personal when we actually got to film it. It wasn’t about this big spectacle. It was about dicking with the scene and
having fun with it. But the crew
didn’t know how familiar I was with Sam.
These were all people who were Mr. Raimi this, Mr. Raimi that.
AG: Mr. Hollywood.
BC: They’ve got
him…these crew members, they tip toe around him. Not because he’s mean but he’s a very competent director and
very confident. He knows what he
wants. He was getting pissy one
day, saying 'Well, that didn’t work, I’m going to do this and we’re going to do this
until we get this.' So I started
imitating him, and I was like, 'Yeah, we’re going to do this, we’re going to
shoot it 1,000 times in 18 different ways!' The crew members were looking at me like, 'Dude, what are you
sassing Sam for?' I’m like, 'You
don’t know anything. I went to
high school with this guy.' So that’s
great. And to watch a good friend
be so successful is just…that’s what it’s all about. That’s why you get in the business, to go, damn, Sam is swimming with the biggest of the
big dogs. He is a big dog. Sam’s a big dog. He’s’ a big Hollywood influence. Nothing could make me happier. I sit back and I laugh. I’m sure I’ll send
him an email about this weekend’s box office [for opening weekend of Oz], because I think he’s going to pull
it out.
AG: Last night you mentioned the sequel. You said that it's already been written or being written?
BC: Being
written.
AG: Okay. Does it bear any resemblance to the
other sequel or is it a whole different path that it’s taking?
BC: I think it’s
going to go completely crazy in a different direction. It won’t be anything like this movie. Nothing like this movie. Which is cool.
AG: One of the things about horror is that, to get the fans to keep coming back, you have to show them something new and it
gets more and more graphic, making me want to throw up and things like
that. I’m just curious, how much
more graphic do you think you can get?
BC: That’s not
it.
AG: No? What do you think it is to top it next?
BC: Just
different. There’s a lot of room
for different. It doesn’t have to
be more, just different. There are
different ways to show carnage and mayhem. I don’t know. Fede
will think of something. Sam will
tell us to leave him alone and he’ll come up with something big and ridiculous.
AG: Yeah. The arm cutting…I think I’m going to
live with that for quite a while.
BC: That was
cool. We got just the reaction
that we wanted. People were like, 'Oh my god, she’s doing it! Oh my
god, she’s still doing it. Oh, it
broke off.'
AG: My body was
reacting in a way that I had no control over. It was weird.
BC: Yeah. Isn’t that awesome though?
AG: It was
pretty awesome.
BC: This is the
beauty. People go 'Why are you in a horror movie?' Because the visceral
reaction that you can get from a horror film is so much bigger than dramedy or
a romcom or an action movie even.
This is where you get people to be vocal. That’s a powerful medium. Comedies and horror films.
AG: Oh
yeah. And watching it in theaters
with people is such a great experience.
What’s your favorite modern horror film, besides the Evil Dead of course, that’s come out
in the past couple of years?
BC: I haven’t
been that impressed with any modern day horror films.
AG: Really? Even Cabin in the Woods?
BC: I didn’t see it. Half of these things I
haven’t seen.
AG: What? Cabin in the Woods basically uses the beginning of Evil Dead.
BC: When I go
see a movie, I go to watch the actors working. I feel like I’m at work. I feel like I’m watching dailies.
AG: It’s not
fun for you.
BC: It’s
okay. Last night was a blast
because it was all about tormenting the audience.
AG: Well, consider me tormented.
BC: Good.
