Happy Sad Confused - War of the Planet of the Apes and Bruce Campbell

Episode Date: October 12, 2016

It's a geek's dream come true on this week's "Happy Sad Confused" as Josh Horowitz gets an exclusive update on "War of the Planet of the Apes" and welcomes a veritable icon in Bruce Campbell. First up on the podcast is a spoiler free chat with "Apes" star Andy Serkis, director Matt Reeves, and producer Dylan Clark. Serkis reveals that he considers the saga as his "Apehood", tracking an amazing arc for his character, Caeser. Plus, the trio reveal what kind of villain we can expect from Woody Harrelson and the scale of the war to come next July 14th when the film opens. Then things get groovy when Ash himself, Bruce Campbell visits the podcast studio, as "Ash Vs. Evil Dead" returns for a second bloody and delightfully depraved season on Starz. Campbell is a consummate storyteller and certainly brings it in this chat admitting "the biggest scam of all time is to be an actor", plus why fighting a possessed colon sucks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

D.C. high volume, Batman. The Dark Nights definitive DC comic stories adapted directly for audio for the very first time. Fear, I have to make them afraid. He's got a motorcycle. Get after him or have you shot. What do you mean blow up the building? From this moment on,

none of you are safe. New episodes every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts. The Jeep Wrangler 4xE. It's electrified. So you can boogie, wugi, wugi up a mountain over creeks or boogie-wogie-wuggy through a desert where you get bit by a pit viper. So you boogie-wogie-wuggy back to camp and ask your friends if they'll suck the snake venom out.

When they say, no, you boogie-wugi to the nearest hospital for a dose of anti-venom. And boogie-wugi your way to a full recovery. They electrified Jeep Wrangler 4xE. Learn more at jeep.com. Jeep is a registered trademark of FCA, U.S. LLC. Hey, guys, and welcome to happy, sad, confused. I'm Josh Horowitz. This week on the show, a special sneak peek at War of the Planet of the Apes and a geek icon like no other Mr. Bruce Campbell.

But first, joining me, as always, to get you guys up to speed is Sammy. Hi, Sammy. Hi, Josh. How's it going? It's going great. How about you? I noticed a tickle in your throat. What?

something, something's off. Which is my new, my new sexy persona. Well, I, so I spent the last weekend, New York Comic-Conning it up, and I can give you guys as one done. As I do, as you would expect. I can give you the brief rundown on that, but I want to hear about your weekend because you just came from the land where Shaila Buf got married. I, the, okay.

So you were in Vegas. I was in Vegas. And when I found out that Shia LaBuff got married, the weekend I was there, I was so mad. I was to not have seen it or, like, known it was happening while I was there. I really, he live streamed it. Yes. There was a lot of live streaming going on these past few days. There was a live stream of Shia's wedding in Vegas, and our friend Shalene was Facebook

live, her arrest protesting the Dakota Pipeline. She is a warrior. She really is. We're thinking of you, Shailene. We are, as always. No, truly. She's a unique lady and, you know, props to her for. standing up for a cause she truly believes in.

As you do, in Vegas, you stood up for a cause you believe in. Partying. I was partying. You ever see the hangover? It was like half of that. It was your first time in Vegas, right? Yes. And I, you know, I really, like I said, I got off the plane, and I was like, this is the worst

place in the world. I hated here. And then I had, like, two and a half drinks. And I was like, I'm never leaving Vegas. And you caught, what shows did you catch? You know, I happen to have got, well, last week I talked about seeing Hamilton. Right. So everyone's going to think I'm just such a bitch because this week I saw Celine Dion's

1,000th performance in Las Vegas. I sure did. How many times did she pound her chest when she was singing? She was bruised by the end. She was like mealing over and bruised. I actually watched a little Celine Dion over the weekend too. I think she was profiled on Sunday morning either this weekend or the past weekend. And it was a very sweet, touching interview talking about her.

Renee. Renee. A lot of Renee talk. The one man she's been with, she said. Excludes. She said she never kissed another man besides Renee. She talked a lot about him during the show. She's animated.

Well, okay, so here was my weekend in brief. Yeah, tell us about your weekend in brief. So I did a bunch of interviews, some of which we did for the podcast, some of which you'll be hearing the next couple weeks that I'm very excited about, moderated a fun panel. It was the resident evil underworld. So had a bunch of kick-ass women like Milo Jovovich and Kate Beckinsale. And that crowd was insane in the best possible way. And then I went for fun.

I checked out the Power Rangers and John Wick panel. This was like the Lionsgate panel. I really went for John Wick to be frank. But the Power Ranger stuff actually looks pretty good. You see, the trailer looked pretty good. Yeah. It was, yeah. I mean, I didn't grow up with Power Rangers, so I have no allegiance to it.

But it looks like a decent flick. So I'm going to give it a shot. And John Wick looks awesome. The new trailers out there. He doesn't love a decent film. flick. I love the flicks. Love the flicks. But, and then I went to the, um, they had a little like cocktail reception for John Wick, uh, in which, uh, I chatted a little bit with Keanu, but more importantly, um, I, and I posted this photo on Instagram. They had a little VR thing for, like,

a new John Wick experience where you can shoot up a thousand people if you want on the rooftops of New York. Maybe it feels a little weird right now, but, but hey, whatever, whatever floats your boat. As long as Keanu's there. Right. And, uh, Ian McShane. was there, and he donned, like, you know, the visor, like the whole apparatus for the first time, very, not even warily. He was, he was into it. So I've had an amazing photo of him in the VR thing shooting me with his guns because he didn't know what was in front of him. But maybe he did, maybe he didn't see me. I was going to say it, the visor wasn't even working.

She's just like, I hate this guy. So that was, yeah, so a lot of fun stuff at New York Comic-Con. I only saw, like, 5% of the stuff there. But one of the other things that was there that is a big part of this week's show is. is War of the Planet of the Apes. And this is, as I say in this interview that you're going to hear, a franchise that I really love. I mean, I love the original films, but what they did in Rise, which was the James Franco movie a few years back. And then really with Dawn, which was one of my favorite movies a couple years ago, Andy Circus, once again, as Caesar.

Matt Reeves was the director, who has also done things like Cloverfield and Let Me In. And he, both of these guys are back for war of the planet of the ace, which opens next July. So I got a really fun opportunity in that they let me take a sneak peek at some footage, about 15 minutes of footage that was like some unfinished scenes. It was, you got to sort of see the mocap. This is like one of those things. Oh. Yeah, it was really cool. And I talk about it a little bit in the conversation, but to see the performers in Andy Circus, who's like the master of mocap, he's like the Lawrence Olivier of mocap.

Smoket. And to see the dedication they have to have. Because, like, you have to imagine, I mean, you know, acting is always putting yourself out there. But to, like, be in that silly suit in this, like, real environment and having to, like, pretend like, you're an ape. It's, like, it's extreme. And to see it without, like, all the bells and whistles added on, you're like, oh, God, these guys are some of the best actors out there. So a lot of cool stuff. They also show some kind of, like, teaser, or stuff that's not out there yet.

That included the new villain, which is Woody Harrelson. Looks like true badassery. Like he's like, this is not fun. But he's such a cool guy. Nope. Nope. This is not going to look like a cool guy to hang out with. But he's like your cool stoner uncle.

So the first conversation you're going to hear today is about a 20, 25 minute chat I had with the brain trust of War of the Planet of the Apes. So you're going to hear Andy Circus himself, who is just amazing and needs to get some kind of awards recognition at some point for these kinds of performances. Matt Reeves, who's a director I really admire. and the producer of this trilogy, Dylan Clark. So that's going to be the first conversation. Then a little later, kind of the big, chunky heart-to-heart that we have on this week's show is, as I said, a true geek icon. It's Bruce Campbell, who, you know, I grew up totally into the Evil Dead movies and to have him here talking at length about Ash versus Evil Dead, which is his series returning to stars for a second season. We talk about a lot of stuff.

We'll talk a little bit more about that in the break in between these two conversations. But as I said, first up, if you are an apes fan, if you are a fan of kind of like intelligent blockbusters, I think you're really going to dig this conversation. We really dig into sort of some stuff that's got to come in War of the Pond of the Apes without revealing too much. Don't wait. We've got months and months to go before the film. But this will give you a good taste of what's to come in the next installment of this franchise. So here's my conversation with Andy Circus, Matt Reeves, and Dylan Clark. Hopefully you'll be able to tell.

apart. If not, just know that they're equally one-third each, the guys are responsible for the apes films. Yeah. And important to know that Josh did this interview while dressed in a gorilla costume. I was going to say in a mocap suit, but the suit, but either way it works. Well, in your head, it was as a gorilla costume. Yeah, exactly. Mocap gorilla. Please don't have that visual. Enjoy this conversation, guys, and we'll see you on the other side. I'm joined by the triumvirate that is very much responsible for perhaps my favorite franchise going.

I was just telling you guys. I mean, I loved what RISE did in terms of setting up this kind of new interpretation. And it's tough to up the ante, but you guys did it with Dawn. Dawn was such a beautiful piece of work. And now it's time for war, guys. Here we go. So talk to me a little bit about, I guess Matt, maybe start us off in terms of deciding to come back. into this franchise right after it's a huge undertaking needles to say when did

you know you had more story to tell and when did you like how much of the story did you know before the first film the second film was finished you know I think we knew that we had more story right away right as we were doing it I mean one of the exciting things for me in getting involved with the franchise was the way in which it was done the way that rise entered that world it was not a retelling of anything. It was an entry point into a universe that already existed, but from a perspective that you'd never seen, from the ape point of view, and to identify with apes. And so we know that that 68 film and what the world becomes is way off in the distance. And the question

then becomes, how do we get there? And when you change the story from a question of what happens to why did it happen, how did it happen, it becomes more psychological and more character-based, which is, I think, what the franchise does so well and why people are surprised. by it. And so we for sure knew that because, see, what was exciting for us in Dawn was it was the one moment where it could have been the planet of humans and apes. And of course, that doesn't happen. And so we knew that we were going to be ending at a place where a giant conflict was going to be entered. And so we definitely knew that the story was going to be continuing from that point. But what was exciting was to try and take what that story was about and pull it into

this next story in a much grander way that focus things even more intimately on Caesar, because it's not just about the war between the humans and the apes. It's the war within all of the characters' hearts, and specifically for Caesar. I mean, Caesar in Dawn, he has this conflict with Coba, who is his brother, and he is forced in the end to kill him, which is devastating to him. There's a tenet of ape, shall not kill ape, and he did. And if he could have known exactly what was in Coba's heart. Caesar, as we begin this film, is burdened with the idea that if he had known,

that he might have been able to prevent this war from happening. So he's got tremendous guilt. And then what ends up happening and what we're doing is that the story pushes him even more deeply into that conflict so that if he didn't know why it was that Coba couldn't coexist, this film pushes you into that with Caesar so that he is tested in a really, really powerful way.

You mentioned Coba, who kind of looms so large, that performance that Toby gave was so astonishing in the second film. And it sounds like that, that performance, that relationship kind of haunts Caesar, as you were just saying. And this one was, can you elaborate on that for you, maybe, Andy, in terms of that relationship and what, I mean, I would argue that, like, already, having just seen these first two films and a little bit of footage you guys just snuck me in to look at, that the arc of this character is remarkable. it's this has to be kind of like the role of a lifetime in a sense it really is I mean it's been well it continues to be an extraordinary journey and to and it is our this is our apehood you know this is this is really is I mean that's that's how I've kind of thought about it when we're going into this

third movie it's it's you know the brethren getting together to make to make you know the next stage of the evolution of this character which is a very complex one but sort of to pick up on the point about Cobra and the relationship of Caesar to Cobra. You know, Caesar was brought up with human beings, has love for human beings, was loved by human beings. And so it's diametrically opposed, sort of philosophically to where Cobra starts off,

which is a creature that is brutalized, tortured, and, you know, totally oppressed. So, as Matt was saying, to not have that understanding and yet to then have to kill his brother is a pretty huge event at the end of the daughter. and we pick our story up two years later and you know Caesar is in the throes of this as Matt was saying this is an incredible guilt but also the

guilt at wanting his kind to survive yeah and feeling himself drift away from understanding the opposition just just and as the ape loss grows so he finds himself unable to connect more with with his humanity and and the sort of the need the necessity and the kind of burgeoning desire for revenge, it finally leads into a point where where, you know,

where he goes to an incredibly dark place, let's put it that way. So it's, it has been the most phenomenal arc and is and continues to be, you know, I think one of the, I think it's, I always knew when I read Rise, you know, when I read the first script for Rise,

it was just the most beautifully nuanced, incredibly well written and Matt and Mark as they've gone on and into the into dawn and war have just continued to push and push and push this all of the kind of you know all the realms possible within the within that character to to reflect us to put again put us under under that under the you know examine the human condition through Caesar's eyes is there at this point in the franchise a kind of like a you know whatever we're calling this apes 2.0 or 3.0 or whatever like story Bible

in terms of, like, what this world is, what's going, is there, are there things going on on the other side of the planet? Where does this go, as you say, we know where this is headed in a broad strokes kind of way. Do you kind of like, when you set on the path of the third film, no, like,

not to get greedy, but now I know, like, you know, that we could do a few more of these, potentially, we might as well know where this is going, or is that jumping to shark a little bit? Is that jumping ahead too far for you guys? No, I think we know. Yeah, well, I think Matt, touched on it. We know where this franchise ends up. We know that it's going to become the

1968 apes, and those apes are very different from the apes that we're experiencing now. We have been fascinated, and we want to explore what Caesar has to grapple with, and seeing him start as a revolutionary and rise to a leader in Dawn trying to figure out if coexistence as possible to now pushing them even further into the depths of his soul. That experience of watching this nation intelligent society that mirrors us, our closest animal cousin, is just such a rich experience that you really are emotionally tied to these characters. It's Caesar's point of view, and you're seeing this world through his point of view. So I think you just want to, you care about these characters so much,

You want to see just every kind of chapter in their lives and what's going to happen in these movies. So I think we had a lot more story to tell, as Matt said, from dawn to war. And we don't get greedy. We really are trying to do one complete movie. And we hope that in doing that and presenting that, we're offering up other characters and other themes to explore along the way because we want to know where this journey continues. And one question is, how much abuse can you give poor Caesar? He's been through a lot. PTSD, there's a lot of going on.

This guy's haunted by a lot of things. By the fourth or fifth film, you're going to just be cowering in a corner. I'm worried about you, Andy. Well, and that, by the way, which one of the things I'm so proud of this movie is the suspense we feel as Caesar's grappling, whether he's going to get his humanity back or not, is he going to follow the path that leads to Coba, or is he going to be the leader that we know and love.

That is so, the canvas of that is so rich. And what Matt did with Mark and the writing was he presented this very dark path But he also presented a counterbalance with some other characters and some other things that along the way that provide levity and humor and emotional uplift. So that while it becomes a story of revenge and grappling with darkness, it also has these moments of uplift and emotional high points. One of the things that's fun about the movie for us is that Caesar goes on a kind of mythic quest. and what he finds, though, along the way to his destination is the most unlikely sort of encounters with characters who he accumulates. So here's this guy who's on this death mission, and as it goes,

and he's trying to be as hard as he can be, he picks up sort of characters along the way who, you know, we know what Caesar is at his core, and even though we're watching him at his darkest moment, and we are seeing him be Clint Eastwood like at moments, you know, in his ruthlessness, you also sense that as he's encountering these characters, that they can't help but start to bring out the humanity again and him again.

And one of the things that's been the case from the beginning of this reboot, you know, in Rise, he was such a incredible underdog. And you're so root for him because you so empathize with him. And this process continues in a very grand way in this saga of war. What's necessary in succeeding someone like Koba for an antagonist? and the character that Woody Harris has played. Do you have to go in a different kind of a direction? And what would you say about the guy that we're going to see on screen?

Well, I think what's important, what we try to do with Coba. See, Coba was an antagonist, but we didn't see him as a villain. And he was a tragic character. But if you approach each of the characters with understanding, then you start to understand the psychology that drives. I mean, you know, why Coba. Coba's reaction was extreme. but you also understand it if you had spent your existence being tortured by humans the idea that

somebody could say you know those guys who tortured you maybe we could live with them and his whole beginning of his life was a horror he was redeemed by what caesar did he was freed from bondage and then it's like well maybe you're going back in and he's like i'm never going back in and if you can't relate to that then you really can't empathize with the point of view and that's really what we tried to do with woody and what he does so beautifully in his performance is that he Look at the test that humans are in. Like, he is extreme, but the world is extreme. In his view, this is the last shot.

This is it. He is just trying, you know, I mean, the way we look at it is that he is willing to go to brutal lengths to create a world where maybe there won't be that kind of brutality again in the future. So that puts them, it pits them against each other. But when you understand his perspective, even though we're totally with Caesar, you don't look at his character and go, oh, well, he's just evil. Right. Because evil doesn't really work that way. Is it important at this point as you're well into now this kind of new iteration to have allusions to the quote-unquote classic apes films? I mean, even in the small footage I saw, I don't know if it's a conscious illusion or not, but when I see a beach scene, I can't help but think the end of the original planet of the apes.

Are there things like that that you made sure to put in this one that you can... There are. We're aware of all of that stuff because that stuff's fun. I mean, there's other, I guess, you know, like there's little details all along the way that are definite, I guess you could call them east. If you're real fans of the original films. However, one of the things, because people asked us before, oh, it's very clear you guys were trying to do conquest and then battle. And the weird thing is we weren't.

And on this one, even more so, people have said, oh, which one is this one like? This one is unlike any that we've ever done. I would say all of them are unlike any. I think you can make the comparisons. And we are definite fans of the original franchise. We love those movies. But when we're setting out to tell these stories, it really is always about what is this character doing and what is he grappling with and what are the themes inside of that that matter to us.

And sometimes they reflect back on these movies again that we cherish. We are cognizant that some of this imagery is going to call back, oh, wow, that feels like 68. Deliberately, that's great. But again, if it didn't work for this story and this character, it wouldn't be in our movie. We wouldn't come at it in a, you know, try to jerry-rig that. experience. It's more like trying to be in and have respect for the universe that we're in, but the stories are new stories within that universe because they're the stories of characters that are being told that you haven't seen yet. And so it connects, but it's still its own unique

story. What struck me, and I was telling you guys before we started rolling on this, when you showed me some of this early footage, and some of the footage was, you know, it's obviously not complete. It's, I got to see sort of a little bit. It's all not complete. Just be very clear We put you in the process that is this crazy filmmaking Which is Matt having to direct in very challenging circumstances With Andy having to act in very challenging circumstances Well, what I was going to say, and really what struck me

And we've all kind of talked about this Is the kind of the commitment level That the actors have to go through for this kind of process But to see Andy you on screen You know, in your crazy get-up That maybe isn't crazy to you at this point in your life but it's a thousand percent commitment you can't it's just it's kind of astonishing to watch and to see that raw performance um has anything changed about the way you approach this you

you're you know you're acknowledged as like kind of the master of this art but like is it's is the technology changing is anything about this process changing for you i think the main thing that's changed is the perception actually is that people are beginning to understand that this is this is acting and no more no less certainly on this side of it you know, that when we get together, you know, Matt and the actors get together to shoot a scene, the process is exactly the same in terms of understanding it, breaking it down, you know, deconstructing it, you know, working on the dialogue, working on the linguistic fluency of the characters or, you know, the choreography and the in the moment beats.

I mean, you treat it exactly the same as you would shoot any other form of filmmaking, any other live performances. sure um so i mean i think you know motion capture technology is actually an you know sort of apart from this is in a very interesting place where it sits in in the world of next generation storytelling because it will it will absolutely if you take you know where where you see stories how they're going to be told in 20 or 30 years time you know it is this more immersive sort of form of movie making VR a all of that kind of stuff i think motion capture will sit right bang slap in the middle of all of that but in terms of the technology now for filmmaking

it's the I tell you what the things that have changed are the understanding on the visual effects side of how to and with each iteration we were just talking

about the renders and the skin the texturing the blend shapes of all and the understanding of how to interpolate the actors' performances

that's kind of a constant constant you know improvement all the time but in terms of you know what has been great

and what is so great about working with Matt is that he, it always feels like, with all the paraphernalia that's going around on a big film set, he always creates the time to make it about the simple thing of wishes performance. And that is an incredibly risky, rare and very dangerous thing to do with, when you're pushed, when you know, when you're at 4 o'clock in the morning in the middle of snow, you know, in a slow, you know, blizzard or, you know, and you've got 12 actors in Lycra body stockings, you know. Right, let's take half an hour to talk here to the scene. Really, we're going to do that. But, hey, it's necessary to get into that emotional place. Absolutely.

And in all of the actors who play The Apes and of the humans, for that matter, you know, having that level of attention to detail performances in this kind of movie is rare, really incredible. As I recall, Dawn was not necessarily the easiest shoot. I feel like it almost killed you, Matt, as I recall, a little easier going this time, slightly at least. Is there less pneumonia or something? Well, yeah, so I didn't get pneumonia, so that was good. We did, though. Yeah, Andy got, no.

Close, though. No, no, no. But hyperthermia. There was one day where I saw Karen, who plays Maurice, the orangutan tank, literally shivering. I was like, oh, my goodness. Like, I thought, we were just doing crazy things. But I would not say that the shoot, here's the way in which it was easier was that this time I knew what to expect. The way in which it was harder was we were much more ambitious, because now that I knew what to expect, we wanted to push it further.

and we did. From a technical standpoint or kind of a broad or a like filmmaking standpoint, can you tease anything in terms of, because there's some very memorable from a filmmaking perspective scenes that I think of in Dawn that you try to achieve

in this one, any sequences you're particularly proud of in terms of what you went after? Oh, yeah, I mean... The title's war. You have to give us war in this. Well, for sure. We have I mean, of course, the thing about it is is that I think that the scale of this film is obviously much greater than any of the three.

I mean, it is a war. And so you get these grand scale battles. But for me, what is exciting is that for all of the sort of canvas that the giant war is, this giant spectacle, it's the intimate stories that that play out against that backdrop that continue to be at the forefront. And so, you know, like, I love what you said, what you said about the clip that we show with Andy and what you saw. And I was saying earlier today that I can't wait.

I couldn't show it, but the clip I really wanted to show is a piece of acting by Andy that honestly I've never... It's a level of commitment that is so astonishing that it blows me away to even think about it.

And when people who we can give the spoilers away to watch that scene, they go, oh my God! Because the level of performance is just so beautiful. He's so bearing his soul. And to me, what's exciting,

and I remember when Dan Lemon, who is our VFX super from Weta, he said, wow, I think we're going to have to invent new software to try and track that emotion into Caesar. I mean, it's just incredible. I'd just like to add a little bit more

on the performance part of it. It's watching Andy do this from infancy, Caesar, and rise to now mature Caesar in war, it is all about the acting. And, you know, as the producer of this movie, watching Matt come in and embrace the process as the outsider and really get underneath it

and figure it out. He always, for him being a passionate fan of apes, he always connected to the apes and wanted to be an ape. And so that when he saw Rise, he figured out that, wow, the technology allows you to do it. But it wasn't until he saw all of the takes that Andy did before the rendering that he understood just how far he could take this process. And it only gets down to great acting.

We have great actors that play all these apes. But Andy Circus is, you know, Matt and I just, we sit back and so much is discussed about the visual effects part of this, the photo real apes and Weta is amazing at it, but as Joe La Terry at Weta will say, it isn't possible without the

performance. Sure. The performance is what gives this technology the higher caliber thing that they have and that's Andy. And so watching I mean, I get kind of, it is a put, you know, going through this whole, this process, watching it as a, as now a student,

but a fan and being part of it with these guys is just, it's remarkable. And I've always wanted to be able to bring audiences into the process. Because every time we do show them, if they ever come visit the editing with Matt, and they see a scene that's just cut with our actors doing the performance of apes, it's mind-blowing. And so if you could just bring, at some point, I will ask Fox to put the DVD out. Yeah, it's illuminating. And it kind of makes you appreciate it all the more. And it also shows you just what a master craftsman Matt is. You know, again, he's, he, you ask the question about, you know, the shot selection so much is found through the this you know just being on the set and we were

limited on on dawn with our 3D cameras he he was more ambitious in this movie it's much bigger in scale um and he had more freedom because we took away those those big cameras and he was able to do stuff that um again we don't want to give it away it's one of those things that when you come and see the movie you will be blown away with by just what matt's doing with the camera and working with his actors uh and finally not to mention another franchise but just they're all friends of ours right Star Wars have you finished your time on episode 8 can you say anything Andy in terms of your duties there very briefly I mean I did my stint on it earlier this year and it's sort of well yeah I mean it's

was Ryan a different kind of experience Ryan's great Ryan's a terrific yeah terrific director and he had a very clear clear version of what he wanted to do with the story yeah that's gonna be it's gonna be a great film Matt as a friend of Andy and JJ's do you know how big supreme leader snoke is? Is he a giant or is he just a small guy overcompensating? I don't know. I can't tell that. I can't tell this one.

Fair enough. Gentlemen, thank you for your time today. Thank you for sneaking me a little look at this footage. You've got my tickets, tickets, because I'll see it a few times. I can't wait until next July. War of the Planet of the Apes. It begins. Cool, man.

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That was a little war of the Planet of the Apes preview just for you guys. The film doesn't open until next July 17th. Hopefully that will keep you, you know, excited and ready. A little taste. There's a lot to come. And there's a lot to come on this week's episode. As I said earlier in the show, this week we've got a turn. rapscallion of a guy.

You like that word, Sammy? That was impressive. Well, he is a rapscaliant. Yeah, but I've literally never heard one person say that in my life. Thank you for that. He is Bruce Campbell, and his name is synonymous with horror and sci-fi, thanks to predominantly his role, of course, as Ash in the Evil Dead trilogy, and now the Evil Dead show, which is called Ash versus Evil Dead, and it is on stars.

and we talk a ton about how Evil Dead even got started, his career in depth, and especially his association with Ash and his, I was going to say love, hate relationship. It's really not. It's all love. He seems to really embrace this character, and it's thrilled that he's getting to do it 30 plus years in. He's a very funny guy, a lot of funny anecdotes in this. We talk a little bit about Briscoe County, a TV show that I really loved growing up, and a little bit about why Sam Ramey just loves to abuse him like no other man. I hope you guys enjoy this conversation with, yes, I will call him a Rapscallion, Sammy. With the Rapscallion himself. Bruce Cumberl. Ladies and gentlemen, Bruce Campbell, has entered the building. How are you, sir?

Good. Thanks for having me. Thanks for being here today. I'm a big fan of yours, big fan of this show, as I was just telling you. the man, the myth, the legend that is Mr. Sam Ramey visited us right before the show launched last year. And I'm still with you guys. It's good. It's good stuff. And I've seen a few episodes from this season. Good. So, um, you're talking a lot of, uh, you're talking, talking a lot of ash. You've talked a lot of ash over the last couple decades. You ever get

tired of it? Is this character? I don't get tired of Ash. I get tired of talking about Ash. Oh, no. No, well, look, I mean, it makes sense. Playing Ash, I'll do all day. Yeah. You know, if I'm best known as Ash, then I'm going to ride them into the dirt. Let's do it. You want Ash? You got them. Because now we have a format where people can finally get it. You can get the amount of ash that they were looking for, which is never ending. But talking about Ash is, it's only as interesting as the questions at the end of the day. Right. It's all the pressure's on me now. Well, no, what it is. The fun is coming up with different answers for the same questions. Because, yeah, I mean, in the course of these years,

I would imagine I'm not going to come up with maybe anything new. You've probably heard every But the good news is now, as a TV show, Ash is doing a lot more. There's a lot more character insight. We're seeing his hometown. We're seeing his father this year, his old girlfriend, old pal of his. So we will see new sides of Ash. And I never get tired of that. Right.

Somebody said, are you tired of playing Ash? I'm like, no, it's just starting. Because TV, you're just starting to realize what the extent of this character. Sure. And it's more than you're blow home. hardness, you have to. But the movie, you can get away with a guy being a jerk for 90 minutes or whatever, but a TV show, you've got to drag him along, and you have to have them root for the hero, even if he's a jerk. Is there anything weird about the fact that in the last year,

I would imagine you've played this character more than you did in the previous 30? This is what we tell fans, that if you want the material, you'll go to TV. And that was part of our pitch to Sam Ramey of like if you put all our eggs in one basket again make another evil dead movie because Sam made the last Evil Dead movie in 1991 that's when we filmed Army of Darkness came out a couple years later but Sam hadn't started making expensive movies yet right it all started after that you know Spider-Man and Oz the Great and Power of all these are not cheap movies none of them and it took Sam to a new level and And truth of the fact is, do you really want a $200 million evil dead movie?

It would kind of defeat the entire purpose. Right. And the funny thing is, if you put that much money into it, there would be questions about Ash's character. Should he say that to that little kid? Right, right, right. Should he really do that? Should he punch that old guy in the face?

The answer is, hell yes, but you're cheap enough that you can get away with anything, basically. We can do it because, you know, that's the downside of these $100 million movies. Right. is now you have to please everybody. It has to be PG or PG-13. You know, it's amazing. The producers know. If you take a movie and it used to be R, if you go PG-13, you can make another 20 million.

Right. Just because you're reaching a bigger audience. So the trick was, how do we bring this story back in a format that is satisfying and that we can give people what they want? And it's a very narrow bandwidth. We got interest in doing this as a TV show from, I'd say, half a dozen legitimate suitors. Yeah. And one of our key questions was, what are your content restrictions? Because we got buckets of blood, then we're willing to use them.

Well, yeah, I mean, know how to use them. So are you going to let us use them? And the other factor, too, honestly, was, you know, Sam Ramey gets final cut as a director. Sure. There's only about a dozen guys who have that, men and women. And we asked one network, and the head of the network leaned back in his chair, and he goes, You know, Sam, we're really good at what we do here. And I was like, oh, my God, that was his answer.

That was his answer. Central casting, evil studio head. I just left out the laugh. Right. But so that's what we were looking for was the best home. Yeah. And Rob Tappert, our other partner, had just finished working. with stars on Spartacus, which is a very unrestricted show.

Sure. His penis is on parade. You better watch out. Your penis might come out soon. Yeah, that's right. A cameraman was telling me the first day he filmed in a sauna sequence, he made the mistake of putting the camera about three feet off the ground. And as every guy exited the sauna, his penis led the way.

He's like, I got to get on another show. But it just lets you know that they're not concerned. If it's a premium cable, you're there because you want to be and you're going to see what they show you. And I have to say, it's not like we're trying to take advantage of it to go, oh, we're just going to give you blood and boobies and swear words. That's not the idea. Right. The idea is if we come up with a crazy sequence, like in episode two of this season, Ash fighting a possessed colon, you can do it. Yeah. Without going,

ah, shall we run that up the flagpole and say it was salutes and make sure it's okay with the sensors and run that by somebody, we don't have to check with anybody. So for like 25 years, you'd been asked by many people like me about the return. When are they going to do another even done? Right. So that makes a few questions I have. Yeah. One is when you finally got on set or rather, I'm not going to ask like the, like, you know,

it was it hard to get back into character. I'm more interested. Did you have any doubt that the audience would follow you there? I mean, you'd heard it from so many people. Sure we did. You still had doubt. I'm 50 years old. What the hell?

People want to watch an old-ass actor running around banging his, banging his head on stuff. We didn't know, but the funny thing is it actually works with the character, Ash. He was never qualified 25 years ago. Now he's completely unqualified. Now, but see, as an actor, though, I want to see that. I want to play that guy now. You play some strapping handsome guy when you're 35 years old. Big deal.

Right. You can take on the deadites. Give me some geyser who wears a man girdle and has dentures and dyes his hair. And, you know, now I'm there. Now I got something to work with. Right. Because it's all bravado at this point. That's all he's got.

You know, the muscle tone is going. Right. Well, I mean, I think, and I would say that, like, back in the day, and part of what I enjoy about the character when I think about it, and I would put him on that same shelf with someone like Kurt Russell and Jack Burton in big trouble, was that kind of like that false kind of bravado, that bravado that really didn't have enough backup. Because Ash doesn't have any skills. He has no military training.

Yep. He's not CIA, FBI, which I think is fantastic. It's too easy. It's the writer's lazy format where they go, okay, a tough grizzled ex-cop is stuck in the air vents. And the movie called Die Hard. He's got to be a cop. Yeah. That's a cop out.

Yeah. I pitched that to a Hollywood writer who wrote one of the Indiana Jones movie and one of the lethal weapon movies. Very just a high-end Hollywood writer. And I said, you know, Jeffrey Baum is his name. Did Briscoe with you as well, yeah. He did. He did. Great writer. And I said, Jeffrey, that movie would have been a lot more interesting to me if the guy was an accountant who in all the melee, it's just a random accountant got up in there.

And he's in his suit. And he's never fired a gun. He doesn't own a gun. And Jeffrey gave me this weird look. He goes, then how would he win? I said, that's for you writer to figure out. Sorry, man. It's not all easy.

Maybe he's smart. Right. Maybe he goes, how do I find a gun? How do I, now that I have a gun, how do I use a gun? Is the safety on or off? I don't know. As an audience member, now I'm terrified. Yeah.

Will he succeed? And you're rooting for the guy. If he's a cop, oh, give me a break. It's so easy. And then if he failed, he'd be a lousy cop. What kind of a cop are you? So when you're on set, because you obviously have not only metaphorical ownership over it, you were, you were obviously a producer, you co-created this character with Sam and Rob. So on set, do you ever, or in the writer room or anything, do you ever say something like Ash would never say that?

Do you kind of like play that card? No, I just say what Ash would say. You swap it out for. We don't have to make phone calls. Yeah. We don't do that. And look, it's a friendly challenge with the writers, and I say this to them. You give me good words to say that no other character can say, because writers do this a lot, they'll write a scene, and you can swap out any dialogue with any actor.

Right. That means you're not doing your job. Theoretically, no actor should be able to swap his dialogue with any other actor because it's so perfectly tailored to them, and only that character would say those words in that order. That's actually a really good exercise for a writer looking at the page. They're at your script page, and if you can swap all the characters' names, go. Go back to the drawing board. You flunk my class. And so, you know, again, in a friendly way, you say, if you give me those words, I'll say them word for word.

And I have very often done my scenes word for word. Sure. And I said, and if you don't, and if you phone it in, don't be surprised at what you see in the dailies. Just don't be surprised. Yeah. Because I have to do what I have to do. I'm the final arbiter of what comes out of his mouth. And you're the one that gets the blame and the credit.

Well, we, sure. Oh, absolutely. And look, I know writers I have a lot of respect for, but look, I've been doing this a lot longer than they have playing this character. And especially now we get up to speed, you really get a sense of it. And I think the writers will eventually come around how Ash speaks. Actors start speaking like writers write. And by the end, the writers write how the actor talks. Sure. They find out what you're good at and what you're bad at. And they hopefully tailor that. What's the stage direction, the stunt in the script that gives you the hebi-ge-bees? When you read that, you say, oh, Jesus, how am I going to? Why do I have to do this? Beat. Meaning.

When it says beat. Beaten down? No. Oh, a beat. In between lines. Oh, you hate that. They're telling the actor to take a beat. God, in terms of delivering the line.

I'm like, oh, now you're telling me how to deliver my line. Dramatic pause here. Yeah. I'm like, well, how can we not do that? It's just so, I'm so belligerent. But don't tell me the rhythms. Yeah. And from a stunt perspective, what's the one, if there's like a...

Oh, the one this year. You know, you fight a possessed colon. And you said, that's going to be an interesting day at the office. That's going to suck. And it did. But what sucks for an actor doesn't suck for an audience. I was going to say, I've seen that episode that it's great. No, you can't...

You have to let all that roll off. Because if you go, it's all about my personal comfort. I shouldn't be doing this show. Right. The Evil Dead movies have never been about personal comfort. comfort. So in this case, you have to grin and bear sequences like that, hoping that they will mention stuff like that in the reviews, which they've been doing. And then you go, okay, I'm glad we did that scene. You've also done some excellent casting this year who should say

an actor out of my childhood Lee Major. So everybody's childhood. I'm not seeing him in a while. He goes back so far. He's your grandmother's childhood. He still got it, though. He still got the presence. Oh, he's awesome. Yeah, he's got that thing. He still got it. And he has, he explained, I got one more show in me. I got one more. Like, he wants to star in one more show. Amazing. You guys already been in three shows that went over 100 episodes.

Now, to an average actor, like the show I was on Burn Notice, it went 11 episodes. I'll probably, for the rest of my professional life, never work on another show that goes 100 episodes. Sure. Only because of the likelihood of it not happening. Yeah. Lee's done that three times. And I would imagine it's a short list of people that you can think of that can play Ash's dad. It was very short.

I think there was one name on it, and it was Lee Majes. It was like, look, don't make us look. Ask Lee if he's available and get Lee. And then we'll worry about it. If Lee says no, we'll worry about it. And you word him out too. You shoot this still in New Zealand, correct? Yeah.

Which is an interesting lifestyle choice. I mean, that's your life. I mean, you're spending a good, poor. of your life out there. Well, it hit me this season. I was walking around Auckland, and I looked around and I went, it no longer feels weird being here. Which felt weird.

Right, exactly. That's what made it weird. It's my fourth TV show now down there. That's right. And people wonder, why New Zealand? Um, they've had a crew base that has been slowly training since Hercules and Zena. And the piano. Yep.

Avatar, Lord of the Rings, King Kong. These are not significant shows either. These are difficult shows to do. The stunt teams in New Zealand are, oddly, some of the best in the world, and we have them. My stunt guy, Raiso Wieselilov, from Bulgaria, from Sofia, Bulgaria. His favorite comment is, fuck this shit. And if he sees me, he'll go, fuck this shit, boss. Because he'll add boss, which is nice.

Respect, that's good. Yeah, because I know that they've just pulled them across the room. And every time I see him limping across the set, Ryshow, how you doing? Fuck this shit, boss! But I know that means he said, and he says to me, he goes, boss, all we need are seven more years, seven more seasons than I can retire. I'm like, Rishow, if we go seven more years, I'm in a wheelchair.

And your head's going to be on a... That's okay, boss. I will double you in a wheelchair. Anywhere do you want to go, boss. That's an important relationship for an actor, especially in the kind of stuff you've done that to get along with your stunt. It's more important than you realize.

And I say that with a smile on my face, but I'm dead serious. Because you find a stunt guy, very often you can find a guy who has a physical type. He's your size, your height, whatever, good-looking guy. But he moves like a turd. You know, and there are some guys. They're a statue waiting to go.

They don't have any smoothness or movement to him. It's all very stiff because they're, just waiting to do the gag. Just jump out of the way of the car. They're not doing anything before or during. It's just that part. Right. But the Rysho, you know, we shot a sequence of Ash has issues with his own car, the Delta, this season that becomes something of an adversarial relationship.

It's a weird sequence. And they said, let's shoot the wide shot first in this arena. And let's just throw Rysho in there. and he'll show you the shape of it. Sure. Of this whole big sequence. And this guy from a wide shot, he just looked like a ballerina, just rolling out of the way. And when we'd get up, he'd pounced on his feet, and he would change his position and get ready to attack again.

He was moving the entire time. And very smoothly, and I went, that's better than I would have done it. And that's exactly what you want. You go, wow, that Campbell, he sure is nimble. It's a well-known fact that going back, decades now, Sam Ramey loves to abuse you. Yeah, that hasn't changed. Where did that start?

Doing magic shows for bar mitzvahs. Is that right? In high school. Sam would get invited to be a magician because that's what Sam's early stuff was a magician. And you think about it makes perfect sense. Slight of hand. And what are movies? The ultimate

sleight of hand. Absolutely. I was his assistant hung low and I wore a lab coat. And every time I would say something Sam would hit me with like a riding crop and the kids thought that was funny and I think Sam in his mind a little light bulb went off

and he went, pain is funny pain is funny I'd go to answer a we were in radio speech together that's how we first sort of spent time together because I dropped typing class in high school and I said give me something fun radio speech I'm like yeah let's do it

so I would go to answer a question that the teacher you know had posed a question I raised my hand chooses me, I start to answer, and I feel a number two pencil in the back of my neck, at the base of my neck, because Sam's sitting directly behind me. The teacher can't see it. Sam's well aware of the dynamics involved here. Again, knows his angles. He knows his... Oh, he knows. He visually, he's right there, because he knows that his sleight of hand is not being seen by the teacher. And during the course of my answer, he would slowly increase the pressure because he wanted to see

if who would crack first to me and I'm like I'm not cracking first he's going to break that tip off in the back of my neck so it was that sort of rivalry we'll take a look at the scars later yeah yeah I'd turn around and just incredibly afterward like what what the hell was that and he would just say completely matter of factly I tried to help you pal that's his view of the world I tried to help you sound and dynamic has not changed necessarily the implements are no he's good news is he's getting older like me so he can't move as fast. The forces and his grade on the, yeah. No, he shapes a little bit. It's not as formidable as it was. Who was the first person that told you or put the bug in your ear that

like you might have a shot at this professionally? Or was it, like, how long was it a pipe dream and how long, when did you get a glimmer of like, this could be a real thing? Last week. Well, actors, you're always trying to be relevant. You know, at first you'll do anything so I just wanted to work that's all it was if I was working then that's all you that's all I wanted yeah anything beyond that was just a pipe dream of bogus awards or fame or fortune that was all a crock it was that the biggest scam of all is if you can work as an actor because then I've just I've I've danced around the system right because I saw my dad in a play when I was about eight and that's what did it's always those early stories those early

indelible experiences because he was not acting like my father and that's shocking to a kid that's like a kid of eight it's like why is my dad having so much fun dancing with women that are not my mother what is that so i the context could have been much worse that world was very became very curious to me yeah for that reason and then in this theater group in suburban Detroit once you got to be 18 you could join so i did a bunch of summer plays because they would use kids in the summer plays they'd do south pacific or fear all of some big splashy musical yeah but then when I got 18 I could be in the shows you could actually audition to be in the real shows and I got directed by my father amazing because who wound

up being a guy who was my dad was an he was a madman he was a Detroit madman for 30 years but it wasn't that creatively satisfying so he got into theater as a diversion yeah so he directed a bunch of those plays and it was nice to then be directed by my father who I saw the professional side of my dad. Yeah. Where as opposed to, you know, go rake the leaves or whatever. This is more like crossed downstage left, sit here, stand up here. Well, why?

Well, because, you know, this and that. And it would be professional discussions. There were nothing like father and son discussions. And what did he make of, like, the first time he saw evil debt? What did he think? He was fine. My mother's the one that she got sick. And it wasn't because it was gross.

It was because her baby boy was getting hurt so bad. Yeah. She called me up one time after an adventurer of Briscoll County Jr. It was a Western I did years ago, 20 years ago on Fox. She calls me up. She goes, Bruce, you've got to stop letting them force you to do these dangerous stunts. I went, let's break that down, Mom. What are you talking about?

When you picked up that girl and you rode in front of that saloon and the windows blew out just as you went riding past, what if you dropped that little girl? I said, Mom, it wasn't me. It was a stunt guy. What if the stunt guy had dropped the little girl? I said it was not a little girl. It's a man, and it's a little person, and he's an African-American who owns a bar in Van Nuys California. And she just got more and more confused.

Each time I tell her, I was trying to explain. And so then I finally said, Mom, and she goes, none of that matters. What if the stunt guy had dropped the stunt guy? I said, then the effects guy with his finger on the button, if the horse didn't get to a certain spot, wasn't going to blow it. This is all planned, Mom. Believe it or not, she's like, oh, okay. She was just too exhausting. I'm just worried it took like that's 15, 20 years into your career by this time still, or maybe 10 or 15. I had to tell, well, she couldn't watch stuff after a while. I'd have to very selectively tell her, mom, let that one go. Right. You don't need that one,

mom. Little booie's going to get hurt. So scale of 1 to 10, like how, did you know what the hell you were doing on Evil Dead? How we were doing? like what you were doing, meaning like you from an acting perspective. Oh, no, no. That's how earn while you learn. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we didn't. How do you be, how do you star in a movie?

There's no book for that. Well, no. And what are you going after a persona? Right. Are you trying to dive into a character? But we didn't know. We never had any character discussions. We weren't that sophisticated.

We were inexperienced actors saying really crappy dialogue. And that can come across as campy humor. Right. Even though we doggone it, we were trying to do it straight. But you have lines like this. We can't bury Shelley. She's a friend of us. Well, she's dead.

You know what I mean? So, you know, that's the sort of thing you had. But by the end of the movie, we shot sort of an order. So in a way as our... You can see the progression of your skill. Absolutely. Well, you settle down. You forget the fact that there's a camera shoved in your face.

Because at first, look, it's hard to be unaware of that one-eyed monster. You know, this thing wants you to look at it, and you have to ignore it. And so it's just learning all those tricks. And any movie I do these days, I usually want to throw out the first couple of weeks of shooting because you're trying to figure it out. That's what's great about a TV show. If you can figure it out in the first season, and I think we got pretty close, you're good. And now we all know we got the job.

We're much more relaxed. There are expectations now, of course, whereas before they go, oh, I hope this is good. Now they go, this better be as good as last season. Right, right. And so that's what you fight against, but it's all part of the process. And were you guys, like, what was the attitude once it started to screen the first evil dead in terms of the reception, Stephen King giving this amazing quote? And like, were your minds blown? Were you shocked beyond belief?

We were 50-50, though, because half of the first. reviews were really bad yeah Atlanta had one of the best ones Sam Ramey took every bad idea he had and put it into a low-budget blender another newspaper was the headline was films that stoop I'm like this can't be good but then then on the other side this is what's so weird about reviews and this is why you can't live or die by good or bad ones then Kevin Thomas Los Angeles Times evil that is an instant classic. Stephen King, which gave us the great force field of protection,

was most ferociously original horror film of the year. And we're like, can we use that? We tracked him down. It's on the poster, right? Yeah. Of like, Mr. King. And this is 83. Stephen King was, you know, Stephen King.

Yes. They were making his movies left and right. So to get that, a lot of reviewers took a second look. and that helped a lot. Because it's funny, you can pray on people's ignorance. We know this from politics, that if you tell somebody it's an instant classic, they're going to go in wanting to see an instant classic. Right.

If you tell them it's a piece of crap made by some idiot and put it into a low-budget blender, that's all you're going to be looking for. So it is funny how they do color people's judgment. Yeah. You know. So, and where we're, you at in terms of the the roles, the many roles that came in the wake of the, all the evil dead films? I mean, did you feel like, quote, unquote, Hollywood knew what to do with you?

Did you feel like you were, you knew what to do with yourself? You knew what path to go out. I know what to do with myself, but the whole Hollywood thing has always been uncomfortable. I don't know anybody in Hollywood. I don't. I really don't. I live in Oregon. You know, My neighbors are ranchers and loggers. And, you know, a guy, my neighbor, the first day I moved in comes up in his beat-up L-TD. Guy across the street, he's a rancher. Hey, I understand. You used to play a cowboy on a TV show.

I'm like, yes, sir. Why don't you get your ass on a horse and help me run a hundred head of cattle up the road this Saturday? I'm like, you're actually serious, aren't she? He goes, yep, serious is a heart attack. I go, you got an extra horse? Yep. So I wore the loudest Hawaiian shirt I could find and a big straw hat. We've herded those cattle.

Seems like Briscoe County comes a lot. It comes out a lot. I have a great fondness for it. I mean, many people do. Well, that was the most officially heroic character I've ever played, where he did not have bad habits. He did give Little Billy his medicine. Right. You know, he kissed women appropriately, and there was no groping involved, as opposed to ash.

But the funny thing is, and that was a great character to play, because you actually had to summon the best parts of yourself. You had to hide all the sleazy parts. it yourself and try and a true acting stretch for Bruce you had to show you know show a little light on the good stuff but the the character asked for me you know this season he smokes angel dust you know this is not a character we're we don't play any of those games yeah which is so delightful there's no note of uh can we shoot an alternate right to that we don't have all yeah you don't do like there's no PG version that's going to be on the airlines at some points. No. We don't shoot any

alternate. I have to go in, when I go into do the voice work, like replacing dialogue and stuff, the words I have to replace are not for the American market. They're for other countries that I have to get rid of the boo-boo words.

So we're coming up with creative swearing when we go to do that. What's the most creative swear that you've had to... Dana DeLorenzo had a good one. She goes, what the fragal rock is that? and I use sort of older phrases like I'll say

we're going to get to the bottom of this horse pucky once and for all like a guy from Kentucky would say that I always like horse puck I always remember seeing

the like lethal weapon films sanitized for TV instead of a let's get those fuckers it was let's get those funsters funsters freaking you broke my freaking lip

it's freaking every way farking I don't know now I just put in a word because I don't care if it matches because it's not for the U.S. Right.

I'll go you know, get your pie hole out of here, whatever. It doesn't, I don't even if it's a D word, I don't care to match, it doesn't matter. I want to bring up the Cohn brothers just because you guys go way back with them as well. What was the initial relationship with Joel and Ethan? Joel was the assistant editor of Evil Dead. Crazy. So he got my coffee and, you know, our first words to Joel were, I need more cream in this, buddy.

but we knew that he was interested in filmmaking and Sam gave him a sequence to edit it was the sequence in the original Evil Dead of Ash chaining up his girlfriend on a table out in the workshed and a bunch of these little tiny micro edits and he really, so Sam was like Joel wants to just cut that

you try it because they started talking about filmmaking and then Joel's brother Ethan I believe was a statistical analyst for Macy like an analyst because these guys are both very brainiac type guys

and so that's how we met him and they said we want to make a feature how did you guys get the money for this right well we shot a super eight movie and we showed that to investors because we had done a bunch of super eight movies in high school you know that small small format that amateur projector where it gets caught

in the projector all the time and they took that they went okay that's one way to do it we want to shoot it like it's already been done. We want to shoot it in 35, 35 millimeter, and we'll do it all silently. We'll put all the sound in later because they wanted it to look like the movie was done

and they wanted to look like a movie, not a little superate amateur thing where you had to go, oh, I guess it'll look better than this. Right. And it's hard to imagine. So I played the part that Dan Hadea played in the movie of the guy who you can't kill him, keep hitting him with a shovel.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we shot it in New Jersey on some frigid night. So this is like a test run for Blood Simple basically? Yeah, it's a trailer. Amazing. They shot a trailer. And it's probably Googleable, like the initial original trailer to Blood Simple. And it looked great.

And because Joel was an editor by that point, you know, it looked slick. It was sharp. And it was the tagline of, you know, in Texas, you get what you pay for. And it was just very compelling. And here's what, here's the difference. They could say to investor, meet me at the local Cineplex and we'll show it to you. They could show it in a freaking theater. So those guys took our lame idea and improved on it.

They really did. Look, a three-minute slick trailer, they go, yeah, okay, yeah, it's going to look like that. Yeah, cool. How does it manifest when Sam or Joel Ethan give you a ring now? Is it just sort of like, hey, we got something for you? Can you show up or is it like more involved conversations? It sometimes doesn't happen at all. It happens most of the time.

Yeah, yeah, no, I've been in some Cohn Brothers movies, but it'll be more like, well, the part in the Hudsucker proxy. Love that one. Well, I got that because I just, I said no. They kept, I had auditioned for another one of their movies. How dare they make you audition? Look, these are the Cohn brothers. They want, and look, some directors are like this. They go, even though I know you, I got to see you.

You got to show me that you're that guy. So I had auditioned for, I don't know, not necessarily Bart and Fink, but it was one of those. A couple of lines thing, didn't get it. I went, okay. And then Hudzucker came up, and they were like, hey, can you come in and read for this? And I went, no. Let me try a different tack here. Well, and that is the most powerful word in the.

industry is no. And it's the only power that you have is saying no. And I was completely ready to have it go because I respect that. You don't want to cast me unknown. I'm working Jennifer Jason Lee, very accomplished actress. What if I'm a dope and couldn't do the role? So they relented and it worked out fine. Do you at this point have like one or two like audition nightmares in your brain that you keep coming back to? And thankfully, I have to say, I've auditioned for only, I've only gotten about three roles in 37 years from auditioning. Wow. The other ways have been making a movie myself, for producing it, putting myself in it.

Because I hated the process so much, anything to get around that end game. Yeah. Because what happens is most casting directors are ex-actors, let's just say it. and you know these are the former beauty queens who now are chain smoking cigarettes and they're bitter and jaded and they're reading across from you saying oh i love you i really love you and you're like okay and the only power that casting person has is to block you from going forward right they can send you forward but that doesn't guarantee you a role they cannot guarantee you a role no matter what they say No matter how why they have to go back to the director. The director or producer or somebody else will make that decision, not them.

Their job is to put a bunch of monkeys in the room and see which is the best monkey for the job. Right. That's their job. I felt that was a rip-off process because I know that I'm better than auditions. And there's a lot of actors who don't like auditions. The worst meeting I ever had was with Edswick, Mr. Famous Producer's Pants. I had what's called a general meeting. I'm always curious about these.

they are mostly worth worthless and ed's wick will attest to this one so it was about 30 something yep so he's going to produce his show but he's mixing a movie currently and if you want to have a meeting with him you go to the sound stage and they most sound stages now in hollywood have a little room off the side that's a quiet room and you can have make phone calls producers are always in that room you can never get them out so i meet him over in that room I'm a big fan of sound. The Evil Dead movies, Sam and I were making sound effects ourselves and cutting the Foley and doing our own.

We did it all ourselves. We're really into it. So I came walking in, and I had to wait for him, for he was mixing his movie, and I'm there for 15 minutes, watching him mix it, go back and forth, and back and forth over a sequence. And I came in, I went,

Mr. Zwick, your cricket foley is a little low at 312 feet. And there was just this dead silence, like dead silence. And other directors would have gone, ha, ha, ha, yeah, yeah, I got to really work on that. Okay, guys, yeah, bring the cricket folia up. And so that sort of killed it right from the start. Didn't go over. And he attempted to make small talk, and I attempted to make small talk. And it was, we killed about 15 minutes not talking about his project.

and we finally got around to it and I said look I don't want to waste your time it seems like a cool project I'd love to be a part of it and I left but the time I got in the parking lot my phone was ringing from my then manager going what was that

what was that and apparently Edswick the second I walked out of there turned to his assistant and he went this is why I don't do general meetings because I had completely wasted about 20 minutes of his time

so you will never see me in an Ed's Wic You would have been so good in The Last Samurai. It's a shame. Oh, yeah, with my little sense of humor and a little wink, yeah, that's going to be great. Me and Tom Cruise were so similar. Do you have any Pavlovian response when you hear the Briscoe County theme song, which still lives in perpetuity? I feel like on every Olympics. Right, yeah.

The sad part is, I've had people say, so how did you get the music from the Olympics to be on your show? I'm like, just stop. Stop. Give us credit for something. You know, they licensed this crap. all the time. Randy Edelman, who did the score, he's probably very happy about the whole scenario. I just love the fact that nobody knows what it is. They go, God, that's a great theme for the Olympics. Man, that's good. So a couple of last questions relating back to Evil Dead. I'm curious,

and I interviewed Sam many times over those years that we were talking about those kind of intermittent years. Was there any other extension or different kind of version of the franchise you wanted to see, still would want to see. Is there an Iscapedes evil dead show that you're, you have a hankering for, et cetera? With the television, you've got to tell a lot of stories. So you can do it all in this form. Oh, I'll go to New York City and fight Hercules. You know, there will be a musical in there at some point. Yeah, it's going to happen. The long as you stay on the air, you can't help it. Yeah. You know, Zina had a couple of singing episodes. I forgot that. Is that true? Yeah. And, you know, we got Lucy Lala. She can, she's got pipes. Amazing.

I'll get somebody to sing for me. I'll just do it Rex Harrison style. I'll just sort of talk it. Right. Yeah. Sing talk it. What is a deadite? Where is a deadite?

It could work. I'm working on it right now. So you clearly love New Zealand. Give me the worst location you've ever shot in in your career. Or most bizarre one that you've had to spend some time in. Shooting second unit, which is the smaller, usually stunts and special effects unit for our second film Crime Wave. Right. I was given the task to go out with a crew at night in the winter

above the hanging off a cherry picker over the Bell Isle Bridge over the Detroit River. It was 30 below. And we looked down and there was ice down below. And our camera angle was looking past a car and there wasn't supposed to be any ice. But we had our whole special effects truck with us and we're like, okay, well, let's try and drop stuff down and break the ice and it'll float away. Sure.

I had these great gloves. I threw a cinder block and it took one of my gloves with it. And it's just one of those moments you look at your hand and then you're like, I have 30 seconds to get this undercover. I'm going to lose my digits.

So I begged that, you know, the special effects guys always had the gear. So I got another Gortex glove and we wound up taking primer cord. Yeah. That's crap that blows, it blows shit up. You put it on top of something, and it blows down.

It feels the pressure, and it needs something to push against, which is, I don't know, I'm not prime record. I don't know how they do it. We had no permit whatsoever, but we figured this is Detroit. It's in the winter. The cops have all their windows rolled up in their cars. Let's blow the ice. Let's blow it. Oh, man, we blew it.

A freaking iceberg coming out from beneath the bridge. about a hundred pigeons that we had used shooting a scene that morning. We scared the hell out of them. So it's just, you know, you get in very extreme situations. The heat of Miami was always incredibly oppressive doing burn notice. Sure. You know, but we always had guest stars who were locked in trunks. And the best thing is, not a good gig on from burn notice.

You click the button and you open it up and you try and you pull the your guest star out. The soup. Oh, my God. This one guy, he stood, we had to pull him out and he's leaning again. against the car and off of his chin it was a steady drip for the entire sequence but thankfully he was supposed to be freaking out so we were like wow you were method this guy's good good he's acting there was no acting involved and at last the thing on evil that I wanted to mention because I really admired

and enjoyed what Fetty did with the the remake a few years back it was his approach it was a totally unique approach because he thought the original evil that was not done for laughs and he's right right so he's like let me just do a straight one. Yeah. And that's how he did it. If that had been more of a commercial success, would we not have the TV series? Things have made $97 million worldwide. So that's on the budget you guys did. That's a success. It's a big success. So, you know, I mean, were there alternate, was there a different plan in terms of integrating the universes or whatever? Now, we were very against it. We were very against combining universes. But now that we're in a TV world,

The universe has already exploded. Yeah. So I would come back and say, never say never, because the TV show may, it may foster the desire and the interest and the market for another movie. Be great. Why not cross them over? Because Jane Levy, I think she's great. She was great in that. And they put her through the ringer.

I'm sure she related, you related a little bit to what she went through. We gave the speech, you know, I told her what's coming. We call it the latex moment. What's bad? It's where an actor breaks down uncontrollably. And they try and rip the shit off of their face. Oh, yeah. So Jane Levy at one point was she had to do a sequence where it's raining blood for, you know, weeks.

And I think she just wandered off set and she started taking her clothes off, bumbling to herself. They had to, like, grab her, throw a blanket around her, take her back, sit her down somewhere quiet, have a good cry. And then get back to work. You have 10 minutes now get back on the set. Settle yourself, and we're giving you 10 whole minutes to get your check together. That's the psychic and physical costs that even though you can do. But I'm not telling stories out of school. It happened to all of us.

We all had the latex point at one point in another. I'm going to tear my latex mask off right now because we're at the end of our wonderful conversation. Guys, it's dangerous. Be careful. If they just put it on your face, it's not going to come off that easy. No, it's everywhere. So some actors go to rip it off their face. You're like, oh, my God, this is really difficult.

It's a true pleasure to have you in. I'm such a fan of your work and of this franchise. I'm so happy it continues on stars. Everyone check out Ash versus Eagle Dead. We found a good partner in them, and we're very grateful that the fans have accepted it. Keep supporting it, guys. We need a few more seasons of this one. Let's go five.

Not agree with a nice number. Right show, one seven. Right show, boss. Fuck this sheet, boss. I want seven. I will be there for you. For you, boy, you and me, wheelchair, boss. Thanks, Bruce.

Thank you. That was the one and only Bruce Campbell. Thanks again to our earlier guests on the show, Andy Circus, Matt Reeves, and producer Dylan Clark of War of the Planet of the Apes. Hope you guys enjoyed this week's edition of Happy, Say, Confused. Remember to rate and subscribe to the show on iTunes, spread the word to your your friends, and come on back next week. This episode of Happy Sad Confused was produced by Michael Catano, Mook de Mojohn,

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