Latest / Half the Picture / #26 - BRUCE CAMPBELL

Transcript

#26 - BRUCE CAMPBELL · Half the Picture

0:00
I'm sick of bleak movies, bleak movie making.
0:02
Modern filmmakers, their favorite filter is a green gray filter.
0:07
Here we have it look a little more like a parking garage.
0:09
This movie you're gonna see eyes, faces, and they're gonna be healthy looking.
0:13
This is sort of a marker. It's like where I am now.
0:15
You show a double bill, evil dead, and earning an Emma.
0:18
And you can see the pivot. It's a big pivot.
0:21
Everything is a B movie now.
0:24
All the Avengers B movie.
0:26
Anything that has fantastical elements.
0:28
Spider-Man B movie because it has a radioactive spider.
0:32
They're very often more entertaining than a movie.
0:35
Because the filmmakers usually give it their best shot.
0:37
Pretending that Sam was like a big Hollywood mogul.
0:39
He'd fake smoke as a guy with his feet up on the desk and he'd go,
0:42
Who's on top?
0:44
Who's on top?
0:45
So I got the text, you know, who's on top, Sam?
0:48
When it was Sam's help.
0:49
Because they took the weekend.
0:50
Who's on top? Who's who's on top?
0:52
You are Sam.
0:53
You're the guy behind Iron Long.
0:56
He just got that distributed after getting his YouTube followers
1:00
to harass the local theaters.
1:02
Essentially, I have not seen the movie,
1:03
but I love the approach.
1:05
Get the middle guy out of it.
1:07
The more removed you get from the process,
1:09
the more removed you get.
1:18
Hey everyone.
1:20
I'm Billy and welcome back to Half the Picture.
1:22
It's my great pleasure to say that I guess this episode
1:25
is the one and only Bruce Campbell.
1:26
We'd just like to say that this episode was recorded a week
1:29
before Bruce made his recent announcement regarding his cancer diagnosis.
1:32
We were deeply saddened to hear the news.
1:34
And me and everyone else at Half the Picture
1:36
would just like to take the time to wish him the very best.
1:38
Bruce's work has been a part of my life since childhood.
1:41
From his iconic role as Ash Williams and the evil dead franchise
1:44
to his amazing cameos in Sam Remy's Spider-Man films
1:46
to other great stuff like Bubba Hotep
1:48
and of course the amazing books is written to
1:50
The Man's an absolute legend
1:51
and it was so much fun having him on the pod.
1:53
By the way, remember to like and subscribe to the podcast
1:56
as it really helps us get more amazing guests on the show.
1:59
So without further ado, let's roll on my conversation
2:01
with the one and only Bruce Campbell.
2:04
Enjoy.
2:05
Hello Bruce, welcome to Half the Picture.
2:07
How are you doing today, Chief?
2:08
Very good, thanks.
2:09
From Oregon, lovely Oregon.
2:12
All right, that's right.
2:12
Your few hours behind us
2:14
were in a Brick lane, London.
2:15
Well, that's where evil dead caught on was the UK.
2:18
We couldn't get arrested in the United States
2:20
and then palace pictures took it on
2:22
and pretended that it was a big Hollywood movie
2:25
and they started to do some big numbers at the theaters
2:28
and then New Line Cinema back in the States
2:31
that we couldn't even get them on the phone.
2:33
Now they want to talk, right?
2:35
So thanks to the UK.
2:36
Sam Remy swears to this day
2:38
that he makes us refer to England as mother England.
2:42
England was the birth of America.
2:44
You know, it's also the birth of evil dead.
2:46
That's right.
2:47
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:47
Because it was quite, I mean, even though it was accepted here
2:51
and beloved for a long time,
2:52
it was also quite controversial.
2:53
I mean, like, I want to say about the British census.
2:55
Yes, yeah, banned it and cut it to pieces.
2:58
They couldn't handle the sort of
2:59
that some of the stuff you guys were getting away with over there.
3:01
What the hilarious thing is
3:02
after the ban was overturned and caught,
3:04
everyone wanted to see what the video nasty was.
3:08
And evil dead was was number one of the videos in 83.
3:12
The shining was number eight.
3:15
So you out dead Kubrick himself.
3:16
Kubrick himself was left in the dust,
3:19
and stuff.
3:20
Yeah, well, it's an incredible film.
3:21
And in fact, you met, you met, it's great that you bring it up
3:23
because I did want to start there, if I may,
3:25
because I mean, that was the beginning of your career as an actor
3:27
and Sam as well as the director.
3:29
And, and it's, and that movie,
3:31
it's crazy to say this, I guess,
3:32
but especially I guess for you guys who made it.
3:34
But it's 45 years old this year.
3:36
It's the 45th anniversary of the first evil dead.
3:38
Well, it's actually even older than that.
3:40
It's older than that.
3:41
We shot the film in 1979.
3:44
Everyone says 81 or 82.
3:47
Those are the years that attributed evil dead.
3:50
It was filmed in 79.
3:52
I think completed sometime in 81.
3:54
It was overseas like an 82.
3:56
So there were multiple years that we were trying to finish the movie
4:01
before it actually came out.
4:02
So sure, 45, 46, you know, who's counting.
4:06
But for me, 2029 will be, will be 50.
4:10
The sense you guys went down to that cabin in Tennessee.
4:12
And, and think, and think about the movie,
4:14
having revisited it and they run up to this chat,
4:16
it was fascinating, I mean, because obviously I'm a huge fan of it,
4:20
of course, but like going back to it and revisiting it in detail.
4:22
The fact that it seemed to capture something,
4:24
not only something sort of new about, you know,
4:26
that it could be done with the horror genre,
4:27
the way that Sam, obviously, as a director,
4:29
approaches filmmaking and his connecticism and his energy,
4:33
but also you as an actor.
4:35
That was the beginning for you.
4:36
And the energy of the film is so quintessentially useful.
4:39
Like it feels so much like it was made by a bunch of friends
4:42
getting the gear together and driving down to Tennessee
4:44
and making this, this, you know,
4:45
little independent horror film that ended up changing
4:48
in some ways.
4:49
I mean, as close as you can get to high school kids making a movie,
4:52
I mean, I was 21, Sam was 20,
4:56
and we were full of youthful enthusiasm,
4:59
enough to take money from investors in Detroit, Michigan,
5:02
you know, 150,000 of their dollars to go make this movie.
5:06
So yeah, we were full of reckless abandon.
5:09
Would I do that now?
5:10
Would I do what Kevin Koster does?
5:14
Put his house against the loan to make a movie?
5:17
I don't think so.
5:19
Because it was dentist, I want to say, right?
5:20
That you guys went to, it was dentist tonight.
5:22
No, it wasn't just then, it was a whole array of businessmen.
5:24
Dentists led the church as they seem to make a lot of money
5:27
and we're happy to invest in weird stuff.
5:30
We got money from investors we never met,
5:32
only because they knew other investors.
5:34
And looking back on the film now, after all this time,
5:36
you know, 50 years since you shot it,
5:37
45 years since it was released,
5:39
they had its Detroit debut.
5:41
I mean, what's your relationship like now to that movie
5:43
right back in the beginning?
5:44
I mean, how do you look back on it now?
5:45
I guess as an experienced scientist,
5:46
as a finished film, then, like, say, went on to change so much.
5:50
Well, it's true.
5:50
It's a crude finished product,
5:52
but we're not going to do the George Lucas thing
5:54
and go back and try and make it look pretty after all these years.
5:57
It is what it is.
5:58
We fought with the Army we had in 1979.
6:01
I'm happy that it did survive
6:03
because of, I think it's a good horror film.
6:06
And it's a good well-paced horror film.
6:08
It's not too long, not too short.
6:10
And it's very hard to hit it.
6:13
We didn't want to make something
6:14
that was going to be milk-coast.
6:16
So we had no limits when we shot the thing
6:19
and then we had no limits when we exhibited.
6:22
Because, you know, it's unrated
6:24
that the first two evil dead movies have zero rating,
6:27
which is why I think on Army of Darkness
6:29
they came down very hard on us.
6:30
Because then they were like,
6:31
oh, now you want a rating for the third one.
6:35
And we're like, yeah.
6:36
And they were like, how about NC-17?
6:38
So we've all said ratings issues,
6:40
but that's fine.
6:41
That's another matter.
6:42
My movie I just made got an R, which it shouldn't have.
6:45
But, you know, there you go.
6:47
Yes, that's right.
6:48
And you'll like this movie just debuted, right?
6:49
In the Valentine's Day.
6:50
That was the idea.
6:51
We just had our premiere at the beautifully restored
6:54
Holly Theater in Midford, Oregon.
6:56
This thing was from 1930,
6:58
ran the run of live shows and movies.
7:02
Until the 80s did its usual Kung Fu movies
7:05
and then ducked out, was abandoned for years.
7:08
Jim Belushi lives in this area.
7:11
It was a big supporter of it, got behind it.
7:14
And about 10 years later, they fixed it up.
7:17
And so we thought, let's premiere our movie.
7:19
It was shot in this area at the Holly.
7:22
And so it was fun.
7:23
A thousand seats in this theater.
7:25
So surprisingly, large theater in a small town.
7:28
That's amazing.
7:29
And how did they go down?
7:31
Were you pleased with the reaction to people we had?
7:32
A thousand people in a thousand seats.
7:34
It was good.
7:35
It was everything that we had hoped for
7:37
as far as people enjoying it.
7:38
You know, it's a hometown crowd.
7:40
So it will never have that boisterous of a crowd again.
7:43
But you know, they seem to enjoy it.
7:46
And it was really just for all the people who worked on it
7:50
and the locals too.
7:51
And what can you tell us about that movie, I have interest.
7:53
Because when I was doing my research,
7:54
I knew it was coming out and now there's some more screenings planned
7:57
for the next couple of months.
7:58
I mean, what can we look forward to from it?
8:00
Because I know you've directed it as well as starring in it.
8:03
It was an opportunity to finally do what my wife and I had always threatened to do.
8:07
It was do something of our own that where there are no masters,
8:11
where we are the master, master of our own destiny.
8:14
And so my wife, I've been married to her for 35 years.
8:19
You know, you get to know him pretty well.
8:21
And she's like, hey man, you're not getting any younger.
8:23
So when are we going to pull this trigger?
8:25
So I came up with a story that was contained yet not contained.
8:30
It's sort of a miniature epic.
8:32
The life of a guy after his wife dies.
8:34
Very mundane subject, but happens to everybody.
8:39
And everybody reacts differently.
8:41
So I thought, let's make a story out of it.
8:45
Let's have a guy's wife die who is completely competent.
8:48
And yet he's not.
8:50
And she knows it.
8:51
And she knows that he's going to be worthless without her.
8:53
And so she helps guide him through a series of letters that she left for him
8:57
about what to do with her ashes back through their life through good times, bad times.
9:03
And then she sort of helps him move on.
9:05
So it's a love story kind of from beyond the grave for the horror fans,
9:09
apologies in advance.
9:11
Zero blood, zero shotgun, zero chains.
9:16
I'm getting an R rating for this for language and some drug use.
9:22
That's what gives me the R rating.
9:24
So it's basically a hallmark movie with swearing.
9:27
It's like a Disney movie with drugs, alcohol, and extramarital sex.
9:33
We're going to do some sneak previews.
9:35
I love old theaters.
9:38
You have more beautiful theaters than we do.
9:40
But we have a couple old ones that you know, 100 plus years old.
9:42
There's great theater, the Hollywood theater in Portland, Oregon.
9:46
April, we're going to do a little sneak.
9:48
Then the Egyptian theater in Boise, Idaho, we're going to do a sneak there in May.
9:54
And then we're going all the way back, crawling all the way back into the room.
9:56
The Redford Theater in Detroit was where we premiered Evil Death.
10:00
And the theater is still there, still maintained.
10:03
And I'm going to show the movie there in June.
10:04
Pretty much starting September, it's going to 20 cities with a very cool theatrical
10:09
stain called Alamo Drafthouse.
10:12
They love movies.
10:14
They love movie makers.
10:17
They just love movies.
10:19
They were the first sort of beer and pizza place
10:22
while you're watching your movie kind of deal.
10:25
That they have these big tables where you can put our stuff and eat.
10:28
And they never had ads before the movies and things like that.
10:32
And so very, very movie friendly.
10:34
So we're going to go there.
10:35
And I've known those folks for 25 years.
10:39
So we're going to go there and go to their theaters.
10:44
And then we're going to let this thing expand naturally,
10:47
because we don't have a distributor.
10:48
We don't have a studio.
10:49
We don't have anything.
10:50
So it's all me running around with this, you know,
10:54
it's a, what do they call it?
10:55
Not a DCP digital cinema package,
10:58
but the size of, you know, cell phone.
11:02
I caked that around with me rather than the prints,
11:04
the old 35 millimeter prints.
11:06
I've done that.
11:06
And now it's not time to go with a much smaller thing.
11:09
Much easier to carry around.
11:11
Well, it's fantastic.
11:12
I can't wait to see it.
11:13
I mean, are there any hopes that maybe that you can bring it to the UK?
11:16
Incidentally, you're up saved at least one of my movies.
11:19
So, you know, maybe it'll shine some light on Ernie and Emma.
11:23
Yeah, I'm, I'm due a European tour.
11:25
So I will absolutely come back to the UK.
11:28
I'll go to whatever theaters are the most appropriate
11:30
for kind of a wacky little indie movie.
11:33
You know, everyone loves to say indie.
11:35
When they say indie, I'd love to find out where the money actually came from.
11:38
This is indie.
11:39
This is indie as you're ever, ever going to get.
11:42
You know, it's my white cheques, basically.
11:44
That's what this is.
11:45
That's how indie this is.
11:47
Fantastic.
11:48
Well, I can't wait to see it.
11:48
Like, say, you know, being the fan of yours, I am.
11:50
I can't wait to be a fan of as well of your directorial stuff.
11:53
You know, like, my name is Bruce.
11:54
And obviously in the television, you've directed and movies.
11:56
It's, you know, it's a man of the screaming brain, of course.
11:58
It's great to that you find that you've got another movie coming out.
12:00
So, you know, that you've, that you've, uh, behind the camera as well as in front of it.
12:03
Well, this one's different.
12:04
This one is just, um, how do we try and make an artistic project
12:11
as close to the bone as we possibly can?
12:13
How can we get it as ownership free as we can?
12:17
So, when I go to sell this movie,
12:20
there's no one else they have to deal with.
12:22
But us, there's no uncles, there's no cousins,
12:24
there's no business partners, there's nothing.
12:27
So, that's what makes, we just wanted to make it really easy on ourself.
12:31
I mean, I called these theaters up and booked these,
12:33
these screenings.
12:34
I didn't have to have a distributor, you know, to do that.
12:37
And so, I'm just going to continue doing the same thing myself.
12:40
I'll get as much done as I can between websites,
12:43
cell phones, and I have an agent who books theaters.
12:46
So, after we're done with the Alamo run,
12:49
we hope to then be able to run right into another run of theaters.
12:53
And maybe, you know, have it grow.
12:55
The old days, they used to sort of bicycle the prints around.
12:57
They'd go to 10 cities and 10 cities and 10 cities and they'd move it around.
13:01
And they would expand it if the numbers made sense.
13:04
Now they try and hit you with 4,000 screens,
13:07
but if it doesn't make it gazillion dollars, they'll yank it.
13:11
So, I'm trying to do the old fashioned way,
13:13
just moving around slowly, get the word out, and see what happens.
13:18
Great, yeah.
13:19
Because I know what you mean about the way of distribution has changed.
13:21
Like, you know, when you think back to the 80s,
13:23
I mean, when you guys were starting out,
13:24
like it was a different setup.
13:25
Like, you know, a movie could sit in a theater for,
13:27
or a cinema for a lot longer and slowly get you have an audience.
13:30
Oh, yeah, they didn't have the pipeline that they had to get through.
13:33
And they were way more independent theaters
13:36
that would show things like Rocky Horror.
13:40
There were a lot more of that independent cinema.
13:43
And thankfully, some of them are still alive.
13:44
And I tend to show this movie in half of them.
13:47
Because those are the best theaters to show them at the great old acoustics.
13:51
They're large auditoriums.
13:52
So if you can fill 600 people, the reactions to 600 people in a movie
13:56
is way better than 150, you know, you get the experience.
14:00
And a lot of it's taken over by young people.
14:03
They're fixed in curtains and sound systems and all that.
14:06
And, you know, they're being clever with this.
14:08
And movie theaters have got to figure this out.
14:10
Otherwise, they're going to go down the toilet.
14:12
They should be willing to show anything at any time to anybody.
14:16
Absolutely.
14:17
And that's the beauty of things.
14:18
Yeah, places like the Prince Charles,
14:19
Herelondon, who have always been great champions of your work in Sam's.
14:22
I mean, and mentioning Sam there.
14:24
Like, I mean, because I mean, it wasn't so long.
14:26
I mean, just the other week, I watched San Help.
14:28
San Raymond is still at it.
14:31
Is still at it?
14:32
And you're, and as are you, I mean, like, you've got,
14:33
you've got, you know, as well.
14:35
You'll manage to kick it.
14:38
Yeah, I mean, and it was just so great seeing back.
14:40
And obviously, and you're obviously a part of that sort of,
14:43
I guess, mythos that is built through his filmography.
14:45
Like, you've always, you're, you know, there,
14:47
like the Evil Dead movies and the Spider-Man movies and that,
14:50
you know, and then now in San Help and me.
14:52
And I just want to ask, like, obviously,
14:54
as a fan of both of you guys were going back to
14:56
when I was just out of diapers.
14:58
I mean, like, what, what are you guys still sort of close
15:01
and chummy is that you were back in the day?
15:03
Do you still hang out and, you know,
15:04
we don't hang out as much as everybody has lives to live.
15:08
He has 18 kids now.
15:09
And, you know, he, that, that takes up his time.
15:12
And he's, you know, when he makes a movie, he disappears.
15:14
So, you know, it's fine.
15:16
That's what, that's why we have texting.
15:17
So I can torment him.
15:18
But we, we just lost a couple close friends
15:20
so we've been running into each other more often than not.
15:24
And yeah, same, same, doing the same gigs.
15:28
And what you said there about your latest movie
15:29
and how you're sort of spearheading the release of it
15:31
and kind of, and maintaining that, I guess,
15:33
that control in terms of getting the movie out there
15:35
and, and developing, and obviously making the movie.
15:37
I remember when I read your book,
15:39
If Chins Could Kill, which is fantastic, by the way,
15:41
if anyone has never, hasn't read it, your first book.
15:43
You mentioned, you said something really interesting
15:46
when you were talking about, when you were writing about
15:48
what it was like making the evil dead back in the eighties
15:50
and how you, Sam and Rob got the movie finance
15:53
and then, you know, shot the movie over this incredible sort of,
15:56
you know, kind of, it's gone down to history.
15:58
It's a grueling shoot, but out of it came the movie.
16:00
And then, and then after that, getting the movie released,
16:02
which took a long time, but eventually got out there.
16:04
Like, you write in the book about how, at the time,
16:07
you guys almost didn't quite know how good you had it.
16:10
Because, because you were in deep,
16:11
it's sort of up and coming filmmakers
16:13
and you had this movie that you'd made,
16:14
you know, and you got to finance yourselves,
16:16
you had such sort of creative control over like every aspect
16:20
of the, of the, even down to the posters.
16:22
And so one thing that you have
16:25
in your, to your advantage,
16:26
if you get the financing privately,
16:28
on the original evil dead, we edited the trailer,
16:31
the coming attraction you see in theaters.
16:34
It was our poster.
16:36
We took our agent suggestion to change the name
16:39
from Book of the Dead to Evil Dead.
16:42
He thought Book of the Dead was too soft.
16:44
People would have to read for 90 minutes, you know.
16:47
So, but yeah, it was essentially ours.
16:49
And so ever since that time, having worked a lot
16:53
within the studio system, you never get the same
16:57
freedom.
16:58
You never get the same, you never get the same respect
17:01
as self-respect.
17:03
It's the golden rule, right?
17:04
The guy with the gold makes the rules.
17:06
So, you know, if you don't like the way a studio does business,
17:10
that's the way they do business.
17:11
If you take their money,
17:13
that's how they will let you handle their money
17:18
with lots of eyes on that money and lots of opinions.
17:22
And I get that, I would do the same.
17:23
If I gave some filmmaker a million dollars to go make a movie,
17:27
yeah, I'd be up the guys butt.
17:29
The nice thing is to keep all these people away
17:32
just by doing it yourself.
17:33
It's the greatest risk.
17:37
But it's also the greatest reward,
17:38
because you own it all and be because creatively,
17:41
there's zero person to blame but yourself.
17:45
So, the movie's good.
17:46
Sure, I'll take some credit.
17:48
If it sucks, that's me right here.
17:51
There's no one else to blame.
17:52
I can't blame a distribution,
17:54
can't blame my agent, the studio.
17:56
You know, there's no one left to blame.
17:58
And I, you know, as Americans,
18:00
we're pretty good about deflecting the blame
18:03
away from ourselves.
18:04
You know, we don't want to take blame for shit.
18:06
But, I don't mind taking blame
18:09
because we were able to do it completely unencumbered.
18:13
And any given day, I could film anything I wanted to,
18:15
you know, for 27 days.
18:17
That was pretty fun.
18:18
Yeah. And how important do you think it is the main
18:20
try and maintain that sort of creative control,
18:22
if you can?
18:22
I'm doing it's key to sort of making.
18:25
In the arts, it's critical.
18:26
But see, the problem is,
18:28
and there's nobody, nobody's the bad guy here.
18:31
This is sometimes studios are portrayed as bad guys.
18:34
They're just a company that makes movies
18:36
that wants to make money with the movies that they make.
18:38
And sometimes the only way they know how to make them
18:40
is really big.
18:41
They think bigger is better, you know?
18:44
So, but the only drawback is that as a result,
18:47
they shave all the edges off.
18:49
They'll have all these test screenings to see
18:52
if their $100 million investment is going to be saved.
18:56
And if these people really don't like this one part of the movie,
18:58
they're going to make changes if it's
19:01
part of their audience that they want.
19:02
And I've seen movies change drastically
19:05
between test screenings.
19:08
And to me, that's not filmmaking.
19:12
When you start second guessing yourself
19:15
and you have 15 drafts to movie,
19:18
look, I'm reading a book about W.C. Fields,
19:20
the great old, a vaudevillian juggler
19:23
who became an actor, W.C. Fields.
19:25
Even going back to a guy like that,
19:27
this is in the 20s.
19:29
The teens in the 20s,
19:30
they still did not shoot with a finished script.
19:34
They didn't start filming with a finished script.
19:37
And I've read this over and over and over
19:40
in dozens and dozens of movie books.
19:42
Nobody starts these movies with a finished script
19:44
and it's one of the worst things you can possibly do.
19:47
Let's start building this building without blueprints.
19:51
Yeah, we need a foundation and many walls
19:55
and share windows and doors,
19:57
but without those plans,
20:00
you can get the best builder in the world,
20:02
the best director, actor,
20:04
and your building will still go like that
20:08
if you don't have blueprints.
20:09
So, script is the blueprint.
20:11
So, we made sure on this one
20:12
that we shot the film
20:15
when we wanted to shoot it,
20:17
which was June.
20:18
My State of Oregon is the most beautiful in June.
20:21
It's a very outdoorsy movie,
20:24
tons of outdoor scenery.
20:25
And so, we wanted that to be peak.
20:27
We wanted to shoot in our home state,
20:29
in my home valley,
20:30
so I could sleep in my own bed.
20:33
And those are very rare occurrences,
20:35
especially when the producer says,
20:38
no, we're going to shoot in Georgia
20:39
because they have the best film incentive.
20:42
So, you know, we got to make every decision
20:45
that was a key creative decision.
20:49
Like, this movie would have looked like Georgia
20:51
if some other producer had done this,
20:54
because they wouldn't have let me shoot in Oregon.
20:56
As a result, it looks like no other movie,
20:58
because Oregon looks like Oregon.
21:00
You know, river, it's mountains, valleys,
21:02
streams, it's all at the gorgeous state,
21:04
but everything looks like Georgia now
21:06
because everyone's shooting in Georgia.
21:09
So, those decisions creatively,
21:11
in my opinion, are ridiculous.
21:13
I was even thinking of
21:16
showing the movie, maybe to the rest home nearby
21:18
or the university.
21:20
You see what young folks think,
21:23
what people in their golden years think.
21:25
And then I went, wait a second, wait.
21:27
Now, I'm just like a studio.
21:29
You go with your gut.
21:30
You don't go with what a college kid says,
21:32
hey, tighten up back too a little bit.
21:35
I didn't believe that character,
21:37
you know, that chair of character.
21:39
Why?
21:40
Now, you're just like a studio.
21:42
So, you know, it's me and the editor of my wife,
21:45
that's what locks this picture.
21:47
It's a great place to work from,
21:48
because there's no,
21:51
there's no anxiety to it.
21:53
I mean, speaking of like script test screenings
21:55
and like audience notes,
21:56
I've heard a lot about how frustrating
21:58
the air, those can be and how sometimes the audience
22:00
can really get the movie,
22:01
and sometimes they completely miss the point.
22:03
And I mean, you ever had to deal with that,
22:05
with your movies, like what,
22:06
I mean, do you have like a memory of like
22:08
the maybe the most ridiculous kind of like
22:10
the audience or studio note
22:11
that you got back from a screening, you know.
22:13
Well, promise they just don't
22:15
is the audience.
22:16
The studio misinterpreted
22:18
what the audience thought is more accurate in my case.
22:22
We showed dark man,
22:23
Sam's dark man,
22:24
and I was working in the sound department,
22:27
just helping him out.
22:28
So, we go to these screenings,
22:29
and after the movie day,
22:30
they would ask you what,
22:32
what movies did you like the most,
22:34
and why,
22:35
and what movies did you like the least, and why?
22:37
And one of the scenes that they always liked the least
22:40
was the scene where dark man is killed in a lab explosion.
22:45
His girlfriend moves on and starts to date
22:47
a wealthy developer.
22:49
So, Sam wanted to show that the guy was the real creep.
22:52
So, after they have a date,
22:53
he comes back his apartment,
22:55
and he's all,
22:56
he looks like he just took a shower,
22:57
he's got a towel on,
22:59
moves to the end of his bed, opens up a box,
23:02
and he's got a shimmer of gold on his face,
23:04
and he dumps the box to the contents out on the bed.
23:06
It's gold crew brands,
23:08
and he drops his towel and dies on top of the money,
23:11
and basically has sex with money.
23:13
And then it cuts to him the next day,
23:15
in his suit and tie,
23:17
and he's charming and handsome,
23:18
but the audience knows his secret.
23:20
The studio wants everybody to be happy.
23:22
So, they go,
23:23
okay, you gotta give it to that scene,
23:25
because it makes people uncomfortable.
23:27
Even though as a filmmaker,
23:29
he completely succeeded,
23:31
because so many people said,
23:33
I was uncomfortable.
23:34
That's the point.
23:35
So, test screenings can actually work,
23:38
not only don't help,
23:41
they work and they can work against you,
23:42
very often, very often.
23:44
It's fine, everyone's trying to figure it out.
23:46
Again, there's no bad guy here.
23:48
It's just people seem to think they can do metrics for movies,
23:51
and that certain algorithms can sell movies.
23:55
I've never believed that.
23:56
Make a movie, tell a story,
23:58
people either like it or they won't.
24:00
Yeah, and it seems to be,
24:01
it's a bit,
24:01
in some ways, it seems that's where
24:04
a film's in cinema is sort of moving towards,
24:06
in some ways.
24:06
That's the direction.
24:07
There are algorithms in AI
24:08
and how do you sort of gauge these things?
24:10
I mean, it seems like that's becoming more important.
24:11
Well, this filmmaker, I'm just going to ignore the whole damn thing.
24:14
I don't really care.
24:15
This doesn't relate to me.
24:17
I can still make movies digital or with film,
24:20
analog, however,
24:22
we can still do it.
24:23
So, you know, if I was in high school,
24:24
though, I have to say, I would use AI all day long.
24:29
So, movies have been in high school.
24:30
We couldn't afford to make a civil war movie.
24:32
We had to fake everything.
24:33
I've, you know,
24:34
smoked drifting in from out of frame
24:36
that where the battle was,
24:37
because you can never see it.
24:38
Now, man, we could add hundreds of soldiers
24:40
clashing into each other,
24:42
huge epic battles
24:43
and put ourselves right into the middle of it.
24:45
Scan ourselves,
24:47
put ourselves into it.
24:48
That would have been a blast.
24:49
So, yeah, people are going to have to figure it out.
24:51
Artistically, legally,
24:53
copyright, everything.
24:55
Yeah, yeah.
24:56
And it's a bit,
24:56
and I think we're only just really at the beginning of that.
24:58
We're debatting those questions, yeah.
25:01
And go about to your career, you're acting.
25:04
When I rewatched Evil Dead 2 for this interview,
25:06
something that I actually hadn't really
25:08
appreciated before from your performance
25:10
is the fact that like,
25:11
because I think the thing,
25:12
what so many people talk about with Evil Dead 2 is, you know,
25:15
is obviously that really brilliant mixture of comedy
25:18
and horror that you guys accomplished
25:20
and ups the ante of the first in almost every way.
25:23
But like, the thing that I sort of appreciated the most going back to,
25:26
it was the fact that for basically the first half of that movie,
25:29
it's kind of just a one-hander with you.
25:31
I mean, literally, I mean, you're right-hand, you know,
25:33
gets possessed,
25:34
and then you basically having a wall with your right hand.
25:36
And I mean, you do have cutaways to the other,
25:38
sort of side characters here and there,
25:40
who are on their way to the cabin.
25:41
But for most of that first half of the movie,
25:43
it's you basically being terrorized
25:44
in a loan in this cabin.
25:46
And yeah, and I guess-
25:47
Yeah, Dino Dieloranis was not crazy about that.
25:49
He didn't think you could do one character for-
25:52
It's 20-some odd minutes that he's completely alone.
25:55
And, you know, to me, that's the most interesting part of the movie
25:57
because it really makes the audience has to focus too.
26:00
Just like our lead guys,
26:02
nothing else to distract you from the needs at hand,
26:05
which is this one man's survival
26:06
while everything's going nuts on a cabin.
26:08
And then people break in and completely misunderstand what's going on, you know.
26:13
It's, um,
26:14
and hopefully they will then sympathize with him
26:16
because they know what he was going through.
26:18
Evil Dead 2 is where we sort of stretch a little bit.
26:20
Evil Dead 1st Evil Dead is a little stiff.
26:23
We were still trying to figure out what's going on.
26:25
We made our second film, Crime Wave, which bombed.
26:27
So we were very nervous.
26:30
So we went, you know, went back to the core.
26:32
What if Ash didn't die?
26:34
What if he was caught in some malevolent entity
26:36
and hurled through the woods?
26:38
So that's really how it-
26:39
So like, Evil Dead 2 is never really meant to happen ever.
26:42
Any of the Evil Dead,
26:43
all the lineage really ended with Ash getting killed
26:46
at the end of the movie, which would have been very satisfactory.
26:48
But, you know, we wanted a career after our second movie bombed.
26:52
So we went, let's make another Evil Dead movie,
26:55
which led to more Evil Deads, which eventually
26:57
Army of Darkness sort of killed the whole franchise for 15 years.
27:01
Because we spent too much money in it bombed.
27:03
So, you know, there you go.
27:04
Like I said, there's never meant to be.
27:07
But it did survive.
27:08
And-
27:08
And Evil Dead is like a cockroach.
27:11
Well, it's not really a, it's a, you know,
27:14
it's not really a trilogy or anything like that.
27:17
It wasn't really meant to be like that.
27:19
Some George Lucas story.
27:21
There you go.
27:22
Yeah, but then the thing about your performance is that,
27:24
like say, like it's basically for the first 30 minutes or so,
27:27
at least 35, like you're kind of in the house on your own
27:30
and you're having to hold the center as an actor.
27:32
Like you're so much the star of the movie
27:34
and like in every sense at that point, it's you in the house.
27:37
And like I say, it is the most interesting part of the movie for me as well.
27:39
Because I just, it's so inventive and the way that you play off what's happening.
27:44
And obviously, I mean, I know a lot of that is Sam behind the monitor,
27:47
like, you know, in front of all the,
27:48
the 50 gallon, gallon drum of vape blood at you and all this stuff.
27:51
Do you remember what it was like as, I guess, just as an actor,
27:54
like having to hold the center, like for such a huge chunk of the movie?
27:57
Like having to be-
27:58
There was none of that perspective.
28:00
It's just making a movie with Sam.
28:02
That's it.
28:03
But the character was way more central.
28:05
So that was more fun because you could do more with it.
28:08
Sam could do more whether you could tell a longer elongated story.
28:11
If you stuck with this guy and went through all of his foibles.
28:15
So I think we were both in favor of that.
28:17
You could spend more time trying to figure this out.
28:20
And we were much more relaxed together.
28:21
This first time video replay that I saw.
28:25
This is like 86.
28:26
We do a take.
28:27
I'd run back.
28:28
We see a black and white replay.
28:30
You know, and then if we both kind of laughed and did it thumbs up,
28:33
we'd move on for the next one.
28:34
It was good.
28:35
It was very good working relationship.
28:37
That's how we got into a very good rhythm.
28:38
I remember having a story from Beckian Baker,
28:41
the actress who worked with Sam on a simple plan,
28:43
which is, you know, another fantastic movie.
28:45
And she said that she said this thing of like,
28:48
when they were shooting,
28:49
if there was a take that Sam wasn't totally happy with,
28:52
or something went wrong,
28:53
or something, he would go like,
28:55
like that, and he almost like a buzzer.
28:57
He's like, eh, like, you know, let's go again.
28:59
He had all kinds of insults.
29:02
Yeah, he said that take was perfect for somebody else's movie.
29:05
Oh, man.
29:07
It's fine.
29:07
I mean, I know he's half kidding.
29:10
But we're, we're Michigan, guys.
29:11
We're full of sarcasm.
29:13
Still are.
29:13
Well, that's the vibe I get.
29:14
And it just makes me laugh.
29:15
I mean, like, and, but it also kind of like say,
29:17
that sarcasm, but also, I guess there's a warmth there.
29:19
I mean, you guys, obviously,
29:21
you know, you've worked together so much.
29:22
Well, there's certainly a, yes,
29:24
there's a mutual respect that goes a long way.
29:26
You know, we're pretty relaxed because we,
29:28
you know, we both think this is all kind of funny
29:30
that we were able to do this.
29:31
We still think it's funny.
29:32
We have a, the joke we used to say is,
29:34
we'd be in their offices in Ferndale, Michigan.
29:38
And a variety used to post weekly box office.
29:42
Pretending that Sam was like a, like a big Hollywood mogul.
29:45
He'd smoke us a guy with his feet up on the desk
29:48
and he'd go, who's on top?
29:50
Who's on top?
29:53
And we'd look down and say, you know,
29:54
someone says on top.
29:56
So this time, so I got the text, you know,
29:58
who's on top, Sam?
29:59
Who's on top when it was, came time for, you know,
30:03
send help because he would, he, they took the weekend.
30:06
So he would have put his feet up.
30:07
Who's that tap, who's on top?
30:09
You are, Sam.
30:11
You are.
30:11
So he's still on top.
30:13
So it's a, it's, yeah, and that energy, obviously,
30:17
is, in fact, all of the stuff, you know,
30:19
that he's done and the Evil Dead movies
30:20
and the stuff you guys have been together.
30:22
And it's true that you guys,
30:23
because I think the thing that the people know,
30:25
one of the many things people sort of know about the Evil Dead movies
30:27
is that like the great sort of influencing
30:29
on you guys when you're making them was the free stoogees.
30:31
I mean, in many ways, the Evil Dead was kind of a free stoogees movie,
30:35
but with like blood and guts standing in
30:37
for the custom pies.
30:38
And am I right in thinking that you guys even spoke
30:41
to the stoogees when you were making Evil Dead 2,
30:43
like you phone them up, like they were a pretty old bonnet point
30:45
and you phone them up and go to chat.
30:46
No, that's a little too disjointed.
30:49
We got them on the phone about like 1974,
30:52
when we were in high school, Scott Spiegel,
30:54
who co-wrote Evil Dead, figured out how to call Larry Fine
30:59
of the three stoogees.
31:00
So yeah, we called it a couple of times.
31:02
And then Scott co-wrote Evil Dead 2,
31:05
which is really where all the stoogees influence came,
31:08
because he was the nut.
31:10
We were all fans, but Scott was like crazy,
31:13
you know, collecting talk to these guys on the phone, massive fan.
31:17
And did they, I mean, do you remember what you guys,
31:19
would you just ask them like, oh, you know,
31:20
how did you do that shot, all that movie,
31:22
or was it just like, was it just fandom kind of,
31:24
it means, well, we did episodes,
31:26
just something or, you know, you know,
31:29
didn't this hurt or didn't that hurt.
31:30
And he'd say, you know, the thing goes away on payday,
31:33
you know, he had his little catchphrases too.
31:36
So I think it was happy to just talk to people.
31:38
No, it's lovely.
31:39
And now, of course, we've got another Evil Dead movie coming down the pipe.
31:42
It's coming out this year, Evil Dead Burn.
31:44
And you and Sam and Ann Robby, yes,
31:46
and you have an interesting relationship with the sort of Evil Dead movies,
31:50
not just the ones obviously that you made,
31:51
and then Ash versus Evil Dead, which you guys made,
31:53
you know, back in 2015,
31:56
but also like the Evil Dead remake that Fedy Alvarez did in 2013.
32:00
And now we had enemy at Evil Dead Rise,
32:02
and then by Lee Cronin and now we've got you with a burn.
32:05
I mean, and I know you're an exact producer on the project,
32:07
and like you guys sort of maintain,
32:09
you like sort of shepherd in the talent, I guess.
32:11
Am I right in saying that?
32:12
Yeah, they direct to all the rectus who come in and do the movies.
32:14
We're trying to get them as much free reign as we can
32:17
within the Evil Dead confines.
32:18
There's a few rules that, you know,
32:20
we suggest that they follow.
32:23
Most of them did.
32:24
Some of them didn't, you know, no big deal.
32:27
And some are just fun creative suggestions.
32:30
We have our old library from the first Evil Dead
32:34
on quarter inch real to real tape.
32:37
So they're welcome to use any of those weird effects
32:40
as they blend into their modern,
32:42
cool library of 3,000 effects that modern sound guys have.
32:46
100,000 effects, you know.
32:49
So we offer little things like that up and a little bit of guidance,
32:52
and they can't spend too much money.
32:54
They have one, we're really the, we're the most strict about that.
32:59
Like play within your little sandbox,
33:01
but stay within your sandbox.
33:02
You know what I mean?
33:03
These are the toys you were given.
33:05
You got to play with these toys, not these toys.
33:08
And so you work all that out.
33:09
And we've had the very, generally,
33:11
very good relationship with these directors.
33:13
You know, Sam tends to be the impetus behind picking them
33:17
as he should.
33:18
And then Rob and I tend to just try and support them
33:21
by not being the guy in the set with his arms crossed,
33:25
looking like he does belong there.
33:27
I don't, I hate being on other people's sets.
33:30
Work it out, man.
33:31
Go shoot your movie.
33:32
I'll see it later.
33:33
So yeah, it's been enjoyable.
33:34
And I'm impressed.
33:35
You know, the last evil dead movie made more than
33:38
all the rest combined.
33:40
And are you excited by what Sebastian is coming out with from the movie?
33:44
I mean, and is it exciting?
33:45
Are we, is it going to be?
33:46
I have not seen the finished thing yet.
33:48
There's still doing previews and stuff like that.
33:50
But I'm satisfied with him as a director.
33:52
So fantastic.
33:53
Well, I can't wait to see it.
33:54
And I like to say, I think it's so great that you guys,
33:56
I say, I guess Sam, as you say, sort of takes more of the,
33:59
the, the, the, the front seat roll in terms of picking the directors.
34:01
But I love that with those, with now the free sort of evil dead movies,
34:05
you know, outside of, I guess, the main trilogy.
34:07
Well, with these ones, honestly, I've been sort of getting a little bit further back.
34:10
Because the first one, Fetty Over was dead.
34:13
You know, we were pretty, we were pretty uptight about that.
34:16
We wanted it to be, you know, certain, certain ways to be followed,
34:20
certain rules, certain things.
34:22
So I mean, I was with that all the way through,
34:25
sat in on the mix, you know, when we were finishing it up,
34:28
same with lead cronins, I said it on the mix, very involved in editing and stuff.
34:32
But I've kind of realized now that the most respect you can get
34:36
these guys is let them fail too.
34:38
To, for me, it's been much more enjoyable just seeing what they come up with
34:43
rather than being in, in their, in the room with them,
34:47
when that's really their job.
34:49
And it's also not the job of a development executive either.
34:52
My distance is, is out of respect and for the process, let them, let them do it.
34:59
I'll see it eventually is let them get on with it.
35:01
Yeah. And you mentioned something before about how like you,
35:04
on Darkman, you're involved in the sound department and then on this, what, you know,
35:07
and I know you've always taken like a, a keen interest in,
35:09
in post-production, like editing and sound.
35:11
And that's what I mean, that's where I started.
35:13
I mean, I did, I did editing and post a university that was my degree.
35:17
So I've always had a very strong interest in that area too.
35:20
So I just, I guess I want to ask, like what, what is it's,
35:22
the sort of fascinates you so much about that part of the process?
35:24
I guess as an actor, but then also as a filmmaker.
35:26
Well, to be sound is half of it, you know,
35:28
especially if you make a horror movie, sound is half of the equation.
35:32
You know, you really scary without even seeing anything scary, you know.
35:35
So we spent a lot of time on the first evil dead,
35:39
working on the sound effects, working on the folly and getting footsteps right.
35:44
And because we, A, we thought it sounded cool.
35:47
And B, it makes your movies sound better and sound more professional.
35:52
And it can help you tell the story.
35:55
We have a scene in my movie where the guy Ernie Tyler,
35:59
he's a pair of salesman, he's a sales manager for a Laurel and Davies pair company.
36:04
And so he's finally explained to his dead wife,
36:07
he pulls into an abandoned pair facility.
36:10
He puts his wife sashes on the hood of his car and he gives her what I call
36:15
sort of a really lowman speech about how he he didn't really
36:20
Amazon didn't take his job or automation or anything like that.
36:24
That he he quit, he quiet quit.
36:27
He just he phoned it in for so long that he finally got fired.
36:31
And so he's sort of admitting this thing to his wife.
36:34
And he's a very lonely guy in this sequence.
36:36
And so I'm thinking what are the lonely sounds in the country?
36:42
You might have the distant trains pretty cool, mostly at night, those are cool.
36:46
Distant dog, but that can be irritating.
36:49
The flag pole on a playground where you hear a clang clang clang after they take the flag down.
36:55
It's just an empty playground, the flag is down.
36:58
So we found with the sound designer, we found a very light aircraft.
37:04
It was a prop airplane that was going clearly overhead,
37:09
not fast, not going to a major airport, it was just been
37:18
really slow over the head and it sounded really
37:23
solitary.
37:24
And so what was cool about
37:27
depending which theater people see this in,
37:30
you know, we did the 7.1, the whole Atmos mix,
37:34
where you can take that little airplane and they show you a digital box
37:38
on your monitor and you can trace where you want that airplane to go in the theater.
37:44
Like go from this corner of the theater up over the center of you,
37:48
over to the rear left, you know what I mean?
37:51
And so we just had to go straight, come from behind him,
37:55
as he's walking toward us and then just eventually went over, I had to pass.
37:59
And it just added to like a loneliness.
38:03
And then he pulls up one time, his wife sends it back to their first house.
38:08
Their starter home, which is gone.
38:10
It's bulldozed.
38:11
And a brand new McMansion is in its place with an asshole owner who comes out,
38:17
wait, what are you doing in my property?
38:18
You know, that's sort of shit.
38:20
So we did two things in that scene.
38:23
Before he even opens his door, we hear a big dog going,
38:26
go, go, go, go, go.
38:27
It's an asshole dog.
38:29
As he's opening the door, we hear that dog in the foyer echoing in his foyer.
38:34
Slams the door.
38:35
Yeah, what do you want?
38:36
And then so I start talking to this guy.
38:39
We also found in this neighborhood,
38:41
there's always, there's workmen doing shit all the time,
38:44
these new neighborhoods that come popping up.
38:46
For three years, there's nothing but workmen in these neighborhoods.
38:50
So we just decided to have a lawnmower, just go,
38:55
the whole scene, just go all the way around the perimeter.
38:59
This is some fucking asshole lawnmower.
39:02
You know, and it's fun in the country,
39:04
you get to play with birds too.
39:06
A bird is not a bird is not a bird, you know.
39:09
What birds do you want?
39:10
You are crows.
39:12
You want birds to mean something.
39:13
Are they happy birds, distant birds, angry birds?
39:17
You know, it's a deal.
39:18
And then editing them out is kind of tricky to create
39:22
like a good background sound.
39:24
But I will say, there's a couple things that are really cool about sound now.
39:29
Like they can make our dialogue on the noisy bridge in Manhattan,
39:33
sound like it's in a studio.
39:34
They've got the noise reduction capacity now to actually overdo it.
39:40
To the point where you don't get the feeling of where you are,
39:43
if filmmakers have got to be careful,
39:45
you always got to know where you are.
39:47
And what I found recently,
39:50
once I started mixing this movie,
39:51
I know how my voice sounds from over the years.
39:55
So as we're mixing this, the guy was applying correction,
39:58
like sound canceling.
40:02
It did improve the general sound,
40:05
but then it changed what my voice sounded like.
40:08
Because I kept going, guys, what is happening with my voice?
40:12
I don't understand.
40:13
What did we had to finally track it down and realize that there was a program
40:18
that he had to clean up the track that did clean up the track.
40:22
But my vocals are on that track that gets affected in whatever way it makes quieter.
40:29
So they're changing my voice.
40:31
So I finally had them.
40:32
I have stripped all of that off every single bit of it off
40:36
and just do the old-fashioned EQ of tone modulation.
40:41
They could clean up a little bit.
40:43
And then I would just bring up backgrounds sometimes.
40:46
The other thing we did in this desolate pair facility was just
40:51
cicadas, you know, two o'clock in the afternoon.
40:53
You know, they're like crying mantis.
40:55
They really becomes a noise.
40:58
It's beyond crickets,
40:59
quicker to the peaceful nighttime one.
41:01
But during the day,
41:02
these bugs cicadas get kind of angry sounding.
41:06
So yeah, I love the whole bit.
41:08
Because even a subtle scene like that,
41:11
you can mix in two and three and four sounds.
41:13
But my theory, too, is not too many.
41:16
Once you get past, I think, three or four,
41:18
the ear can tell the difference anymore.
41:21
It's a balance, isn't it?
41:22
I mean, one time we had Walter Merch,
41:24
who's a fantastic sound designer.
41:25
Well, he was a proponent of not too many.
41:28
Yeah, and he said,
41:29
and I remember,
41:30
he talked to him about apocalypse now,
41:31
which obviously he did.
41:32
He edited the picture and also did the sound.
41:34
And I think the sound,
41:36
he spent a year on the sound alone working on that movie.
41:38
I mean, just like not only layering all those textures of the sound,
41:41
but also just balancing it.
41:42
I mean, that movie basically invented
41:44
in many ways surround sound, I want to say.
41:46
In the cinema, it was a pioneer.
41:47
It's impressive.
41:48
And if you're going to do apocalypse now,
41:50
you might as well have big sound.
41:53
Exactly.
41:54
Yeah, and I feel like sound more than picture for me anyway,
41:56
especially is like,
41:57
you can spend,
41:58
I almost spend a way longer on the sound,
42:01
than in some ways,
42:02
than on the picture,
42:02
where if I'm editing something.
42:03
But the picture I have today now,
42:05
the stuff you can do with the pictures
42:07
equally as impressive,
42:09
and yet you can go too far.
42:11
The car I drive around is in 2003 Lincoln.
42:15
And it's this old man's car kind of.
42:17
And it's kind of a champagne car.
42:20
And when the light hits it right,
42:21
it's a little goldeny.
42:23
So while we were going through doing the picture,
42:26
where I bring our camera man back in,
42:29
and we would go to this post-production facility
42:31
with the big screen,
42:33
with the full resolution now with,
42:35
okay, what are you going to do with these images now?
42:38
It is amazing how much
42:40
you can do.
42:41
And so we've had to find the edge to a fixing stuff,
42:45
like you can fix spaces,
42:47
but how much are you going to fix spaces
42:50
until it starts to get too plastic or artificial?
42:53
But anyway, what's cool is,
42:55
they could isolate the Lincoln
42:57
and put a little box around it.
42:59
And then they would track where it moved,
43:02
and they would apply that color
43:05
to wherever that car moved.
43:07
I'm explaining it wrong,
43:08
but basically, they can isolate things.
43:11
If you like, we have an urn all the time
43:13
that he's carrying around.
43:15
So we can just put a little,
43:17
we can put a little spotlight on that urn.
43:20
He goes to a crash site.
43:22
And wait, it's a little teeny cross
43:25
beneath this big tree,
43:27
but guess what?
43:28
We can go deep,
43:29
put a little spot on that cross.
43:31
You know, and it's subtle stuff that's kind of amazing
43:34
in what you can do.
43:35
Same with the visual effects.
43:38
My movie doesn't really have a visual effect in it,
43:41
but there's 80 visual effects in the movie
43:43
that help composite things,
43:45
adjust things, tweak things,
43:48
paint things out, get rid of stuff.
43:50
You know, there's a ton of cleanup
43:51
that you can do.
43:53
And I took all advantage.
43:55
It is amazing now what you can do with it.
43:56
I mean, I remember what Bonjou Hose said
43:58
when he was doing parasite,
43:59
you know, the house that that family lives in.
44:02
I mean, like, it was a set.
44:04
They built it, you know,
44:05
is that even the garden,
44:06
but then they were using CGI and, you know,
44:08
visual effects, they could,
44:10
they would create the illusion that this was a house
44:12
just in a suburban South Korean neighborhood,
44:14
but you absolutely believe in it.
44:15
You don't, you look at that,
44:16
moving, you don't think,
44:17
oh, that, that feels off, you know.
44:18
It's so, it is amazing these days
44:20
what you can do with subtle,
44:21
but precise effects, you know,
44:23
and the skill in the movie.
44:24
Oh, very much so.
44:25
And something that I've always admired about you, Bruce,
44:27
like as a, as a fan,
44:29
and so on, like I say,
44:30
who, you know, big family,
44:31
have not only the thumbs you've done,
44:32
but the, the books you've written,
44:34
like, hailed, you know, hailed to the chin,
44:35
and, and if shins could kill your biographies,
44:38
there's something that you say,
44:40
I think the opening sort of chapter of If Shins Could Kill,
44:42
you talk a lot about sort of blue collar Hollywood,
44:45
and kind of, and being a proud sort of,
44:46
at the time, you know, being a proud sort of,
44:48
be movie actor, like owning it
44:50
and embracing it and loving it.
44:51
And, and that idea of blue collar Hollywood
44:54
is interesting because on the podcast recently,
44:55
we added, we had some,
44:56
a couple of sort of first time,
44:58
up and coming filmmakers on the pod recently,
45:00
who had done a sort of British gangster film,
45:02
and they were talking about sort of working class,
45:04
sort of filmmakers, and working class actors,
45:06
and how in, in this country, anyway, in the UK,
45:08
there is still a little bit of a stigma
45:09
against working class and blue collar actors.
45:12
It's an historical thing.
45:12
I mean, 50 years ago, when Michael Cain was first dying,
45:15
it was a lot harder for like,
45:16
that's all that Michael Cain to get at roles.
45:18
We were just going for office accent,
45:19
but there's still a little bit of a stigma there today,
45:22
in terms of like, you know, working class actors
45:23
and blue collar actors getting,
45:26
getting parts and getting into the industry.
45:27
And I don't, I guess I just wanted to ask,
45:29
like, what's your experience being like of that?
45:31
I mean, I guess coming from Michigan,
45:33
and then obviously talking about blue collar Hollywood.
45:36
I mean, do you think there's a stigma in Hollywood?
45:38
I was like, I respect a good solid days work.
45:41
You don't have to work too much.
45:42
Yeah, I think having a sense of getting something done
45:47
and without pretense, you know,
45:50
it's hard enough making movies without all the other stuff,
45:54
but look, I say this about being movies.
45:56
They're harder to make,
45:59
because you have less money and less time.
46:02
And more is asked of you.
46:04
So actors have to actually work harder on a B movie
46:08
for less money with less chance of it being seen by anybody.
46:12
So I have a reverse Eric,
46:15
where I can slow down and you can pay me more,
46:19
and I'd be happy to work for Paramob,
46:22
but I can work fully functionally outside
46:26
of that world and be very happy in it
46:28
because there are roles that I could do in a B movie
46:32
that the A movie would potentially,
46:34
if I was an A-list actor, if I was Tom Cruise,
46:38
they would not let him do Bubba Hota.
46:40
They'd talk them out of it.
46:41
Where's your face, Tom?
46:43
Where's your face?
46:44
So you don't see Bruce Campbell for the entirety of Bubba Hota.
46:47
I could do it without batting an eye
46:48
because I don't have to play the popularity game,
46:52
or build a brand so much.
46:54
You can just be an actor in a movie, in a B movie.
46:58
And B movies, the funny thing is,
47:01
everything is a B movie now.
47:04
Dr. Strange, B movie, all the Avengers, B movie,
47:09
these would be anything that has fantastical elements
47:13
is a B movie.
47:14
These, like it's a Spider-Man is a 1950s B movie
47:20
because it has a radioactive spider.
47:22
It's so funny that I think B movies
47:24
have just been found.
47:26
They're very often more entertaining than A movies
47:30
because the filmmakers trying desperately
47:32
to become an A filmmaker
47:34
and they're gonna usually give it their best shot.
47:37
So I think B movies are a great showcase.
47:40
And for us with directors, Petty Alvarez,
47:44
gotten in Sam's office about Evil Dead 2013
47:49
because of a seven-minute short
47:51
that he released called Panic Attacker.
47:54
It was all his animation,
47:56
his special effects company that did this.
47:59
And if he hadn't done that,
48:01
he wouldn't be the director that he is now essentially.
48:04
He just, he took a wonderful,
48:06
I like that, like my current example is the guy
48:09
behind Iron Lung, the horror movie.
48:12
He just got that distributed in the United States
48:14
in 3,000 theaters after getting his YouTube followers
48:20
to harass the local theaters essentially.
48:23
Had not seen the movie, can't vouch for it or him,
48:26
but I love the approach, I love it, love it, love it.
48:30
Get the middle guy out of it.
48:32
I'm going to write to theaters in September.
48:35
There's no distributed to take
48:38
at least a third of that money or to boss me around
48:41
or try and move me out, you know.
48:44
So this is, the whole process has been really fun again.
48:48
Going back to doing everything.
48:49
You do the trailer, so we did our own coming attraction,
48:52
we did our own trailer, we did our own poster,
48:54
we're doing our own, our own everything for this,
48:58
our own campaigns, our own touring.
49:00
To me, I don't know any other better way
49:03
because the more removed you get from the process,
49:06
the more removed you get.
49:09
I like to kind of keep my hands in and the whole thing
49:12
and watch the whole thing play out.
49:13
It's a film like you're sitting in those audiences.
49:15
Like now, the movie's done.
49:17
I gave it my best shot.
49:18
The movie's going to be what it is.
49:20
Now I get to see what the hell they thought
49:22
about this thing and it'll be a huge learning curve.
49:26
But I'm not going to make changes
49:27
in order to make three more people happy.
49:29
And if none of them like it,
49:31
I'm still not going to change anything
49:33
because it's me making a movie right now,
49:37
not trying to fake a movie from 30 years ago.
49:40
Yeah, and it's you, I guess one of the things
49:43
that keeps that you're a movie,
49:44
and not any logistic.
49:44
Well, like if you get to be a geezer like me,
49:46
you start to care about different things.
49:48
Like I don't, I don't really care
49:50
about those fantastical stories anymore.
49:52
They were fun when I'm in my 20s and 30s
49:55
and you can act them all out, do the make believe.
49:58
But now I'm not so much make believe.
50:00
I kind of like the world of reality now.
50:03
And it's fun telling a story that is a little more realistic
50:06
than some other movies that I've seen.
50:08
So like for example, it's not as white-washed
50:11
as a hallmark movie because they're,
50:14
they're incredibly popular here in the States,
50:16
but they're very, very hosed down.
50:20
They're very sanitized.
50:22
There's a lot of sparkle dust over everything
50:25
and nothing is too harsh, nothing is too strong
50:28
or mean or anything.
50:30
And I think there's room for that,
50:31
but there's also room for that,
50:32
plus a dose of reality.
50:34
My character in the movie is both likable and unlikeable.
50:39
And because that's just who this guy is.
50:42
And so the question is whether you wanna go
50:44
with this guy on a journey and what,
50:46
and what are you gonna get out of it at the end?
50:48
So I hope to, I also man, I did this
50:51
because I'm sick of bleak movies, bleak movie making,
50:55
bleak endings, bleak characters,
50:58
modern filmmakers, their favorite filter
51:00
is what I'm calling like a green gray filter.
51:03
They get into the post-production when they're doing the post
51:06
and they go, can we have it look a little more like a hospital?
51:10
Can we have it look a little more like a parking garage?
51:14
Can we do a little more like that?
51:15
And I'm like, you know what, this movie,
51:17
you're gonna see eyes, you're gonna see faces
51:20
and they're gonna be lit and they're gonna be healthy looking
51:24
and they're gonna have makeup and they're gonna look,
51:26
you know, it was fun to operate in a world that,
51:30
you know, look, I've started my day face down
51:33
looking at a cellar floor more days than you can count.
51:38
And I would say to myself, very often,
51:40
is this how am I gonna continue to start my days?
51:43
Is there any face down looking at a cellar floor,
51:46
covered in blood?
51:47
And so the answer's hell no.
51:49
So this is sort of a marker.
51:51
It's like where I am now.
51:52
You can show evil dead, you show a double bill,
51:55
evil dead and earning Emma.
51:57
And you can see the gap between the pivot.
52:00
It's a big pivot.
52:02
The trajectory, yeah, yeah, yeah.
52:03
I would agree that so much of the sort of the prevailing style
52:05
of sort of a lot of modern movies is that kind of,
52:08
I mean, it's almost in a way, like even down to the way
52:10
they look now, I mean, like even you go sort of
52:12
in the sort of Netflix or even post Netflix world,
52:15
where like everything kind of looks,
52:16
there's that sort of sheen to it.
52:18
It's kind of almost looks like sort of subfincher.
52:19
Oh, how movies are becoming very standardized.
52:23
How you shoot.
52:24
I see this shot, that shot, this shot, that shot.
52:28
I did one thing very snotty in the movie
52:31
because what happens is continuity people,
52:33
I always come up to you in the movie.
52:35
And they go scene 32 that you're filming now.
52:38
It should be 10, 19.
52:41
And they take their watch and they give it back to you.
52:43
And then you do another scene.
52:45
And the same person comes up and they take your watch.
52:47
And it's 207 in this scene.
52:50
And I used to say, who cares?
52:54
Who cares?
52:55
If you're looking at the watch, we're all in trouble.
52:56
If your eye is wandering that much during the scene,
52:59
that you gotta know what time it is.
53:01
Unless it's part of the story, you know.
53:04
And so what I did in this movie is I never touched my watch
53:07
once and it's set for real time where I'm filming.
53:12
If we're shooting a scene in a car and it's 1101,
53:17
well, that's the time that we shot that shot.
53:19
I didn't touch it throughout the whole movie
53:20
because I actually want to, I'm going to watch one time
53:23
and just look for my watch and just see what time it is.
53:27
See if anybody knows.
53:28
So there you go, that's coming out.
53:29
Come soon, man, to a theater near you.
53:31
Yeah, man, I can't wait, honestly.
53:33
And I really hope you say you're planning on coming back
53:35
to Europe and doing, hopefully maybe there'll be some screenings.
53:39
Yeah, I can't wait to see it.
53:40
That'll be fantastic.
53:41
One last question that we ask our guests on our picture is,
53:44
so today in the industry, you know,
53:46
all the great filmmakers out there,
53:48
like, is there anyone out there right now?
53:49
I mean, you're an actor who has worked
53:51
on with so many great directors, like obviously like Sam,
53:53
but also John Carpenter and the Coins
53:55
and you know, so many great people.
53:57
I mean, like, is there anyone out there right now
53:58
who you're particularly, who you're a fan of,
54:00
who you would like love to work with if you could get the chance?
54:02
Like me and that in there, one of their films
54:04
or one of their stories, like, oh, I would love to do that.
54:06
Is anyone out there right now that you're looking for it?
54:09
I'm Clint Eastwood.
54:10
Oh, of course, of course.
54:11
Because he's done by three o'clock every day.
54:13
That's my kind of guy.
54:15
He is the most efficient filmmaker working.
54:17
And the guy's, you know, pushing 100.
54:19
And that's always been his case.
54:21
I just read a big book about him.
54:23
I'm a big fan, movies, summer goods, summer bad.
54:27
I don't really care about his politics.
54:29
He's just, he's an efficient filmmaker
54:32
because he always hated the wasteful expense.
54:35
He always hated it.
54:36
And he fought it and he fought it.
54:38
And because he kept his movies reasonable in time and money,
54:42
he always worked.
54:43
And Warner Brothers had a deal with him for, I don't know,
54:46
what, 50 years they've been in business with Clint Eastwood
54:49
because he doesn't lose money.
54:51
Because he goes, I'm not gonna shoot for more than 30 days
54:53
or more than this or more than that.
54:55
And that's, to me, it's okay to have restraints on your art.
54:59
Because if you make a deal with that guy who runs Warner Brothers,
55:03
I won't waste your money.
55:04
They'll leave you alone.
55:06
He's smart because he goes, you should leave me alone
55:10
because I won't waste your money.
55:11
That's pretty much the deal that he would make.
55:13
I'm not gonna go over budget
55:15
and I'm not gonna ask you for a bunch of reshoots.
55:17
I'm gonna shoot my movie and that's just gonna be the movie.
55:20
But you gotta kind of let me do it that way.
55:23
And they did.
55:23
Frank Capra, the filmmaker Frank Capra, very similar.
55:26
He made a deal with that Columbia,
55:28
who was an asshole, Harry Cohen.
55:31
I think it was Harry Cohen.
55:32
He said, look, as long as I don't go over budget,
55:35
you gotta leave me alone.
55:36
And he went, okay, fine.
55:38
Because all you really did care about was money.
55:40
He wanted to really keep things tight.
55:43
And so Frank Capra made sure to do that.
55:46
So I have no problem being a filmmaker
55:48
who has an awareness of time.
55:50
I learned that in New Zealand,
55:52
working on Hercules and Zena
55:53
because they had time restrictions on the crew.
55:57
They didn't want to do overtime.
55:58
And I thought there was fantastic.
56:00
Yeah, I remember what Clint said about that was specifically
56:03
was that I think it wasn't the only.
56:05
It was one of the directors he worked
56:06
of back in the old days, you know, in the 60s.
56:08
Before he himself was directing
56:09
and the guy said, you know, you should only do,
56:12
you know, the way you shoot a scene
56:14
and how many takes you do.
56:15
Like, keep it minimal and keep it down
56:17
to like even like one or one set up.
56:19
It most because that way, the studio is cut.
56:21
Jan Ford, even only shoot a certain amount of a scene.
56:26
He would not shoot it all the way through.
56:27
He would only shoot the part that he wanted.
56:29
And they hated that.
56:31
They're like, shoot the whole damn scene.
56:32
He goes, no, I don't want the rest of it.
56:35
Then you hear about modern filmmakers, you know,
56:38
45, 50 takes, 100 takes, Kubrick shooting.
56:42
You know, I would have strangled Stanley Kubrick
56:45
with my bare hands or quit.
56:47
Now he would have fired me.
56:48
That's fine.
56:50
But it was the idea being as well
56:51
that like, you know, the studios then can't come in
56:53
and then re-edit your movies
56:54
because there's only so much, like you've totally
56:57
directed it.
56:58
Like it's only like one take or one set up to work with.
57:00
So they can't come in and then re-edit them
57:02
and take them out.
57:03
Yeah, I would rather film how I want to film,
57:05
even if it was not economical
57:07
and know that no one's going to change it,
57:09
even if I shot in a non-economical way.
57:13
Even if I shot a ton of footage,
57:15
I would still want to have the say
57:16
over all of that footage
57:18
because then I would want even more control, you know.
57:21
So look, the easiest way is be your own bank.
57:24
That's by filmmakers, you want the solution
57:26
to all your problems.
57:28
Want your own movies.
57:29
Save your money.
57:31
Aye, well, I think that's a lovely note to end on Bruce.
57:33
I mean, what can I say?
57:34
Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
57:36
I've been a fan of yours as I say for so many years
57:38
and I can't wait to see your new movie as well.
57:40
I honestly can't wait.
57:41
I'm so stoked.
57:41
It's a trailer online, go check it out.
57:43
I will.
57:44
I'll post a link to it in the episode as well.
57:45
Do it, thanks.
57:46
All right, man, be good.
57:48
You too, mate, take care.
57:50
Hey, everyone.
57:51
Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Bruce Campbell.
57:56
Remember to like and subscribe to the podcast
57:58
so you never miss an episode.
58:00
And stay tuned for more exciting interviews and guests
58:02
coming soon on half the picture.