Bruce Campbell Is Making an Ash of Himself
Bruce Campbell as Ash Williams
In 1981, The Evil Dead, a low-budget horror flick made by a trio of childhood friends—Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert, and Bruce Campbell—came out of Detroit and changed the horror landscape forever.
The Evil Dead was followed by fan favorites Evil Dead 2 (1987) and Army of Darkness (1992), with the series making Ash Williams, played by Campbell, an enduring horror icon.
Although Raimi, Tapert, and Campbell have all gone on to great success with other projects, fans have never stopped clamoring for more Deadites, more chain saw, more boomstick—and especially more Ash. In 2013, the trio coproduced a well-meaning but ultimately unsatisfying remake of Evil Dead, directed by Fede Alvarez—not that it was a bad film, but it was missing the blend of copious gore, smarmy one-liners, and Three Stooges–style slapstick that was the trademark of the original films.
Now, finally, the fans are getting what they want—on TV. Ash vs Evil Dead premieres on Starz this weekend, with Raimi at the helm and Campbell back as an aging Ash, forced to face the Deadites again after 30 years. (In a rare vote of confidence for the show, the network ordered a second season before the first episode aired.) The series also stars Lucy Lawless (Xena: Warrior Princess, Battlestar Galactica), Ray Santiago, Dana DeLorenzo, and Jill Marie Jones. Bruce Campbell filled us in on playing Ash again, his hatred of sex scenes, and his love of marijuana.
Interview by Christine Colby
Photographs courtesy of Starz Entertainment, LLC
Sounds like with Ash vs Evil Dead, all the elements are in place to finally satisfy the fans.
We’ve got the pooh-bah back, the man to give us the street cred.
Well, I think it’s also the combination of you and Sam and Rob as the three-headed Hydra of awesomeness.
It’s not a bad partnership, because we never deadlock. With three you never get a tie.
What did you like best and hate most about revisiting Ash?
Working with the boys—I liked that the most. And the blood, the fake blood. I’d forgotten how much I hate it. Hate it, hate it. I have to put old-lady plastic on all the furniture in my trailer. I have a rubber strip that goes all the way to the bathroom, so that if I have to go to the bathroom I can pull all my crap off and glop it on to the floor. So that’s definitely the worst. You have it on your hand, you touch your cup, put it over there, you wash that hand, then you pick it up with the other hand, it’s on that hand now, you touch your ear, it’s on your ear, you pick up your paper, it’s there, it’s on your iPad—everything is pink and sticky!
Pink and sticky, huh? Hey, that works for our readers.
Yeah, I guess so!
Do you ever feel sort of bullied by your fans, constantly requesting Ash, and more Ash, all the time?
But it’s good bullying! It’s not like they’re yelling, “You suck!” They’re yelling that they want more. And we would have enjoyed making more had Army of Darkness not bombed.
It’s so hard to think of that as a bomb.
Yeah, but you don’t have the history; you don’t have the perspective. I mean, it was $13 million—we went way over budget, we lost studio control, we had to shoot a new ending, it didn’t test well. It cost 13 million and made 13 million, which killed it. Killed it dead as a doornail. Do you know, I’ve starred in one studio movie in my life, and it was Army of Darkness. I’ve done small parts … but My Name Is Bruce wasn’t studio; it was released by whoever, later. Same with Bubba Ho-Tep. That wasn’t a studio movie; MGM picked it up later. But it just shows you that the series was dead as a doornail, with nails in the coffin, but thankfully Anchor Bay did a lot of DVD reissues and refueled peoples’ interest in the filmmaking process with behind-the-scenes [features], missing scenes, and all that crap. And now there’s 18 versions of Army of Darkness; you can’t get rid of the thing. It’s on American Movie Classics, for god’s sake. Ben-Hur, and Army of Darkness. It’s kinda awesome.
But that’s what killed it, so everyone who’s going, “Why did you guys stop making those?” It’s because you guys weren’t interested in the last one! Nobody went to see it, that’s why. But it sort of picked up steam after the fact. And then we did the remake a couple of years ago, which was well received, but we still got the sense of close, but no cigar.
I think everyone liked it; it was just different.
It was different, and they missed the humor. They were like, “Where’d that go?”
They missed you!
And they missed Sam, too.
I enjoyed it; I just look at it as a different thing.
That’s how we look at it, too, as producers. It’s another guy’s interpretation of those events. But now we’re in control again. We’re done fighting city hall, you know what I mean?
Do you ever wish it were, like, Brisco County that had captured the public’s attention—
We did when we started!
But what if, to this day, everyone was just like, “Brisco!” and had kind of forgotten Ash, and just wanted you to be Brisco all the time?
Um, no, Ash is a pretty fun character to play. Brisco was a lot of fun, but Ash is probably more fun, as there are less restrictions on his behavior. Like, he can have bad habits and it doesn’t matter.
Yeah, in the new show, it’s a little raunchier. It’s kind of like sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll Ash.
It is. It’s sex, drugs, and B-side rock ’n’ roll. You know what I mean? We’re gonna make a lot of alternative bands really happy. Because in almost every episode we’re using some song that makes you go, I kinda remember that. Or the old father watching the show goes, “Hey, I met your mother when they were playing that music!”
That’s your idea of what Ash would listen to?
Oh, for sure, not the pop rock ’n’ roll. Not the stuff that I wouldn’t listen to in high school. Stuff like AC/DC—I wouldn’t touch it. I was in Radio Speech, and we would sometimes play music for the study hall. And I would play, like, KISS or something, and put my finger on the turntable and just drag it to death slowly for like a minute, and people’d be pounding on the door, and I’m like [mischievous look], Hmm, and I’d just kill KISS or AC/DC over the course of a minute, and then I’d put on this piece of music called “Corn Flakes” that was like harpsichord music.
Harpsichord music. Is that what you listen to at home?
I listen to Lawrence Welk. I’ve taped it. I have 30 episodes of Lawrence Welk on tape.
Okay.
You don’t even know who Lawrence Welk is, do you?
No, I do, I vaguely do, I’m just not sure if I’ve ever seen the show.
You need to check it out. It’s so awesome, in a retro way.
Is he a crooner?
Well, he had a band. And it was—they played music, they sang songs, they would dance. It was an old-fashioned entertainment show.
When are we going to have the Bruce Campbell Variety Hour? I think the time is right.
I could do a Halloween special.
Yes, you could!
I’ll do a Halloween special.
Okay, we have that on record.
Well, I have a special this Halloween—it’s called Ash vs Evil Dead.
That’s a really good point. Okay, maybe next Halloween.
Yeah, next year.
What was it like doing an Ash sex scene?
Oh, I, uh … I don’t like sex scenes. They’re awkward.
I wonder, though, with Ash, if it was supposed to come across a little awkward.
Well, that’s fine. So it worked. I’ve never liked them. I met my wife on a movie; she was a costume designer, and one of our first scenes was a love scene, so she knows what they’re like on-set. They’re very staged, very choreographed—don’t show this, don’t show that, cheat this way, cheat that way—so I don’t like them. There’s nothing organic. If I can’t actually have sex with that woman, I’m not interested!
I couldn’t help but notice in the first episode that Ash uses Magnums.
He grabbed two of them! That was my idea. Because it might be a big night.
We were enjoying your High Times interview in the office earlier today.
Hrm.
Yeah, I had no idea. I learned a lot about you today.
Well, I’m an Oregon boy, you know. It’s a green, green state.
Do you have any smoking or growing tips for our readers, who of course would only indulge if they had medical-marijuana prescriptions?
My tip is, if you can watch it grow out of God’s green earth, a little seed that you plant [he slides a plant on the table over to him, bends over it, and peers at it], and you know what goes in that, and you know where it’s been, I have no issue with that. I’ve had my drug talk with my kids. If you get a little pill in front of you, and you have no fucking idea what’s in that pill, you don’t know what it’s been cut with, you don’t know what the doses are. You think they give a shit about your health, the people who made that little Ecstasy pill? No. They could give a shit about you and your liver and whatever it’s going to do to your brain and all that, so yes, there are downsides to anything you ingest that’s not a superfood, I suppose, but that’s my feeling. That’s the only medicine in my cabinet. I’m a 57-year-old man, and the average guy in his fifties has four medications.
That’s probably true.
It is. They’ve got boner medications; it’s usually heart shit. God forbid you should change your diet, right? Or get off your ass; get off your couch.
Well, you have to be very active to train to be Ash. It’s always a very physical role.
Well, I stretch more now. I blew my hamstring fighting a stunt guy on Burn Notice; I don’t want that to happen again.
I watched the New York Comic Con panel on the show, and Sam said, “The audience loves it when Bruce suffers.” Why do you think that is?
It’s just something he’s gotten in his head; he’s convinced of it.
You don’t think he’s right?
No, it happened at a bar mitzvah. Sam would do magic shows for bar mitzvahs in high school. He was a magician by trade. And I was his assistant, “Hung Low.” And whenever I would do something “wrong,” he would punish me. And the kids just thought that was awesome.
So this has been going on since then?
It happened early on, yeah. A little glint in his eye, lightbulb went off: Bruce in pain equals kids’ enjoyment. It hasn’t left him.
Rob Tapert, Bruce Campbell, and Sam Raimi with the Classic
You also mentioned that you take a little bit of revenge on the Classic [Raimi’s old car that he sneaks into every film he directs].
Only because he shouldn’t love that car so much! It’s an unnatural love.
And he took it all the way to New Zealand to shoot.
Oh, it got put on a boat.
I saw it in the pilot, and I was thinking, Is that the same car?
Oh, I know for a fact it’s the same car.
So he paid money to have that shipped—
We paid money to have it shipped.
It’s one of those things that fans love, though.
It is impressive, his obsession with that car, if you really follow it through his movies. I’d love to cut a series of clips together of the car’s performances. It’s in Darkman; did you know that? It’s hanging from the helicopter, the big helicopter sequence. Uncle Ben’s car in Spider-Man; that’s the car. A Simple Plan; it’s that car. And The Quick and the Dead; he had it torn down into a chassis and built a wagon on top of it. It’s in Oz the Great and Powerful; there are car parts in the tinker’s shop, all painted bronze and stuff. Oh, yeah. It’s in every one of his movies. The Classic. And you must refer to it as “the Classic.”
Oh, of course. I’ll even capitalize it.
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Ash vs Evil Dead: Bruce Campbell Is Making an Ash of Himself Bruce Campbell Is Making an Ash of Himself In 1981, The Evil Dead, a low-budget horror flick made by a trio of childhood friends—Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert, and Bruce Campbell—came out of Detroit and changed the horror landscape forever.
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