Hail to the Chin

by Bruce Campbell

  When the art department summoned Sam and me to inspect the Delta, now that it was fully decked out, that sound emanated when I opened the door to sit inside.

  “Wow, Sam, that sound – it’s exactly the same.”

  Lucy, Rob and me.

  “Yeah,” he affirmed. “Kinda creepy.”

  Creepy and cool. This was the actual car Sam’s mother used to drop us off to watch A Clockwork Orange during high school. It was the same car we used in Six Months to Live, The Happy Valley Kid, The James Hoffa Story – all the Super-8mm classics we made in the formative years – not to mention every single one of Sam’s feature films. This car knew where the bodies were buried. It had some deep history. I’m not a method actor by any means, but it was really cool to have that crappy car back. It meant a lot. It made this real.

  The original cabin had to be re-created, both inside and out, to almost full scale. The results were breathtaking. Since Sam had gone back to the States to finish his pilot episode, Rob and I were the only two people, from a crew of three hundred, to have any recollection of what the Tennessee cabin from 1979 actually looked like inside.

  When I first stepped on the interior set, I felt like I was in a virtual reality video game. What impressed me about the meticulous re-creation was that wherever you went in the interior space, the perspectives were all correct. If I looked to the left of the fireplace, I saw the window that Steve Frankel, our only carpenter on Evil Dead, had originally carved out of the wall with a Skilsaw. In the hallway, doors on each side were placed exactly where they had been. The floorboards had the same width and wear; the chairs and even the doilies on the tables were the same as well as the “laughing lamp” from Evil Dead II.

  All in all, the process of resurrecting this wonky Evil Dead “thing” from our childhood made my head spin. From the time Sam got on board to the time it was on the air was only a year – warp speed in a Hollywood time frame.

  For some strange reason, with every opportunity for this to fall apart – legally, financially and logistically – we managed to do just enough right to pull it off. I knew eventually we would face the ratings demon, but for now we had won the battle.

  CON OF THE DEAD

  Once season one was in the can, we wasted no time at all in beginning the most sustained PR push I have ever been a part of – and I mean that in a good way. Starz got it. They understood that this show was not going to launch itself and that we had to spend money, make the rounds in the right places and get the word out. First stop: San Diego Comic-Con.

  Ten years ago, Charlize Theron wouldn’t have been caught dead at Comic-Con. Why should she go to that geekfest? Now that geeks run the entertainment world, you bet she’s gonna go there – along with every major Hollywood actor trying to launch or promote a show. Cons are here to stay and actors had better get used to it.

  The con itself is too big for its own britches. One hundred and fifty thousand sweaty people are jammed into a teeming showroom over a four-day period, so it’s not an event for the squeamish or claustrophobic.

  The San Diego Comic-Con isn’t really about fan interaction – it’s way too big and impersonal for that. When the main ballrooms hold six thousand people, it’s virtually impossible to have a one-on-one experience. Actors don’t go to the big “cons” to pat little Billy on the head – they go to get their show exposed to the hundreds of media outlets that converge at these events.

  As an example, one of our media events is known as a “roundtable” talk – five minutes each at ten different tables, with ten different journalists. At the end of an hour, you’ve had face-to-face interviews with a hundred outlets. Crazy.

  We launched the first Ash vs. Evil Dead trailer at Comic-Con and also on Facebook, where we got 10 million views – double the number of any other Starz show – and that got their attention.

  At the New York Comic Con (distinguishing its name by using no dash), Sam delighted the crowd by informing them that they were about to see the entire pilot episode, not just a few clips. The crowd went ape shit, waving their foam “chainsaw hands” in the air. During the screening, Sam and I stood off to one side behind the stage curtain, taking in both the show and the reactions from the crowd.

  Mercifully, the fans ate it up. Starz took note and they planned one hell of a Hollywood premiere. The first Evil Dead had what we thought was a fancy affair at the time – spotlights, an ambulance, limos, a cavernous theater – but it was nothing like the Ash vs. Evil Dead premiere, when several blocks of Hollywood Boulevard were shut down so Iggy Pop could sing for a thousand screaming fans.

  Hollywood, meet Evil Dead.

  The reviews began to come in. With Evil Dead, we always tended to grit our teeth because half of them were negative, but the feedback on AVED was mostly positive – with some of it great. After decades of making fun of the “cheap” this or “cheesy” that, critics could no longer pick on the production values, special effects or even the acting. After four decades, Evil Dead had morphed from a homegrown, mostly amateur operation into a respectable affair. Rotten Tomatoes, the modern arbiter of quality, gave AVED a 98 percent fresh rating – higher than any of the previous films.

  Ash vs. Evil Dead was set to premiere on Halloween 2015, which was perfectly appropriate. Then, in a surprise move, before a single episode aired, Starz pulled the trigger and picked up the show for a second season. This was a remarkable vote of confidence, not to mention a huge relief – my personal jinx of starring only in one-season wonders was broken!

  Evil Dead was our first baby. For Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert and myself, it was a professional voyage of discovery – not always smooth, but it got us into the film business and sent us on our way. A lot has happened since the first little movie got a distribution deal, but there was obviously something about the process of making these that brought us back again – maybe it was the artistic freedom, the over-the-top form of entertainment or the long association with like-minded people. Whatever the case, with Ash vs. Evil Dead we had officially crawled back into the womb – and it felt good.

  END OF ACT TWO

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Since I wrote the first Chins book fifteen years ago, there have been several key “passings” in my life that bear mention.

  “We’re orphans now,” old pal Mike Ditz sadly pointed out after I told him that my mother, Joanne, had passed. Mike had lost both of his parents already, so I was just catching up.

  “Yeah,” I said, the realization dawning. “Feels weird. I feel like I’m untethered now.”

  It did feel weird. Losing my mother in 2016 represented the new reality of life without parents. Everything I took for granted is now more precious in my mind – the phone calls, the holidays hang time, the shared sense of humor. I knew my parents would die eventually, but it wasn’t something I allowed myself to think about.

  CHUCK

  My dad, Charles Newton, made it to seventy-six. For a former Detroit “Mad Man” in the advertising business, that was a pretty good run. Being a full-fledged member of the cigarette-smoking, coffee-drinking, lunchtime booze crowd, I’m surprised he made it that far. In the end, he had seventy-five good years and one crappy one, when the wheels came off the tracks. Back surgery at age seventy-five was the beginning of the end.

  Charlie was definitely from the “older” school view of modern medicine, in that you basically did whatever the doctors told you to do. In this case, he reported back pain and they recommended surgery. The shiny doctor’s office brochures claim that you’ll be tap dancing again in no time, but it’s not always the case. Dad’s surgery didn’t take and they had to crack him open again. One thing led to another and between sciatic issues and bum kidneys it was game over.

  Dad died Election Day, 2006. His last morning was lucid but weak. I leaned close and whispered the boldest lie I would ever tell him. “It’s all good, Dad – John Kerry won the election. He’s the new president. Isn’t that great?”

  I figured what could it hurt? Charlie was a
shameless liberal and this might put a final smile on his face. He squeezed my hand a little bit.

  Aside from his being a generally nice guy, I’m mostly appreciative to my father for being what I call a generational go-betweener. He walked the edge of “toeing the line” and doing whatever the hell he wanted to do like me.

  My dad wanted to be a painter, but my grandfather, who was old-school, forbade it, so Charlie got into advertising, then amateur theater – edging his way toward creative expression. I’m thankful to him for being accepting of my “wholly creative” pursuits right from the start, as he didn’t want the same “half-fulfilled” dreams to plague me. Charlie’s frustrations ultimately led to my opportunity and I’ll always be grateful for that.

  JOANNE

  Joanne Louise Pickens passed in her sleep February 1, 2016, in Fenton, Michigan, outliving my dad by ten years. Fewer bad habits, I’m guessing. Mom had eighty-five good years and about three lousy months, which was a decent run by anyone’s standards. Being a practicing Christian Scientist, she only went to the hospital three times in her entire life – to deliver three boys.

  What started the end-of-days ball rolling for my mom was a fall, followed by a broken hip. It’s pretty standard stuff – old folks fall and things break. Naturally, as part of her rehab process she was introduced to pharmaceuticals for the very first time by way of painkillers. In these prescription-drug-addled days, my mother was a revelation to staffers.

  “Okay,” the nice nurse would ask, “how many drugs you are currently taking?”

  “None,” my mother would say matter-of-factly.

  “None?” the nurse would ask, eyebrow arched. “No aspirin? Advil? Tylenol?”

  “No.”

  “What is the name of your general practitioner?”

  “I don’t have one,” Mom would answer, like it was no big deal.

  “You don’t have one!?” the nurse would remark, incredulous.

  In the medical world, there was a lot more that my mother didn’t know – her blood pressure, previous ailments, allergies, you name it. Her lack of a history of even basic medical procedures was met with almost universal disbelief. It was kind of like she was a woman from Appalachia at the turn of the century – only this was the modern era.

  With regard to the human body, I did get one useful takeaway from watching my mother go through all this: Use it or lose it. In later years, Mom lived out a lifelong dream to move out west and live the rancher’s life – and that’s exactly what she did until she didn’t want to work that hard anymore.

  “I was done by seventy,” she would often say and her life did become more sedentary for the last fifteen years of her life.

  Mom passed, back at home, sleeping comfortably. I wrote her obituary. Here is a snippet from it that sums her up:

  As a mother, Joanne was kind, fearless and progressive. She was the type of mom who would lash a rope to her station wagon and drag the boys on a toboggan around the snowy Michigan roads a little too fast. She was the mother of three boys, a wife to four men and lover of everything western. Stunningly beautiful, Joanne loved Zane Grey books, Lipton tea and Anderson windows.

  LULU

  I was sitting in a restaurant with my assistant, Mike Estes, when a text from David Goodman blinked on my phone: “Lulu is gone.” Immediately my eyes began to well. Losing Celia Raimi, Sam’s mother, was a real knotted fist to the chest.

  Lulu, the nickname she used – also the name of her successful lingerie store – was something else. A towering figure in the Raimi household, even though she couldn’t have been over five-three, Lulu evoked awe and a bit of fear in the hearts of Sam’s friends – or anyone else who entered their house.

  Lulu didn’t laugh; she cackled. When she told a joke, she would crack herself up so much she could no longer finish the routine. Conversely, her rages, directed at the three fledgling filmmakers, were memorable and quotable. “I don’t know which of you is the stupidest,” she would often say at the beginning of a lecture about business, raising money or whatever she demanded that we learn.

  Lulu’s words were sharp, some would say even mean, but she would end each dressing-down by writing a check for the stopgap financing we seemed to always need for Evil Dead. Loaning us what would be the last amount of money, she held the check in her hand as she gesticulated. “The well is dry. You understand, you stupid idiots? The. Well. Is. Dry.”

  My first marriage was meant to be as small as possible. My bride-to-be, Cristine, and I felt that because it was such a personal thing, we should just do it ourselves with a couple witnesses. When I told Lulu of the plan, she looked at me and stated flatly, “If you don’t invite me to your wedding, I will never speak to you again.” I knew she meant it. Lulu was at the wedding.

  Lulu and I had some history, so I knew I had to go to her memorial in Detroit. After a long weekend of signing autographs, doing “photo ops” and generally clowning around at the Chicago Wizard World Comic Con, I only had one outfit left that was worth a damn. To my chagrin, it was the most “used car salesman” of anything I’d brought. This was not a solemn, respectful, “I’m sorry for your loss” outfit – this was a “Hey, where can a guy get a piña colada around here?” kind of outfit.

  In a panic, I called another of Lulu’s sons, buddy Ted, and asked if he thought it would be disrespectful if I showed up at Lulu’s memorial looking like a PGA official. Ted laughed.

  “Lulu would have loved that,” he said. “And the fact that you came from a job would have made her very happy. Just get here.”

  So, bright as a peacock, I bid farewell to a woman of great influence. Lulu was insightful, hilarious, a terrible driver but, most important, a second, loving mother.

  * * *

  With the three most influential people in my life now gone, the cutting of a historical, sociological, familial cord was complete and irretrievable. I used to be part of the next generation. Now I’m “it” – nobody outranks me anymore. We are the future old geezers.

  Writing this book, it was a little unsettling to relive stories about departed loved ones, even the happy ones, but I was buoyed by the fact that their positive contributions to my life have never faded. I see their influence on a daily basis in the projects I choose, the approach to business I take and the work ethic I apply.

  We all know people to whom we owe great debts of gratitude. These were my three.

  KNOWN IMAGE CREDITS

  Cover Design, Book Composition and Original Artwork by Craig “Kif” Sanborn

  Cover Photograph by Alistair Devine

  Contributing Photography by Mike Ditz

  Pre-Ramble

  Mike Ditz, Renaissance Pictures, Ltd., and Craig “Kif” Sanborn. Original If Chins Could Kill cover design by Philip Pascuzzo.

  1. Exodus

  Bruce Campbell and Ida Gearon.

  2. Jack of One Season

  Geoffrey Short and Craig “Kif” Sanborn. Production image(s) courtesy of Universal Studios. All rights reserved.

  3. Gnome, Sweet Gnome

  Bruce Campbell, David Gibb Photography, Mike Ditz and Craig “Kif” Sanborn.

  4. A Hunk of Bubba Love

  Melanie Tooker and Craig “Kif” Sanborn. Production image(s) courtesy of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. All rights reserved.

  5. Hello, Neighbor!

  Bruce Campbell, Ida Gearon, David Gibb Photography and Craig “Kif” Sanborn. Production image(s) courtesy of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. All rights reserved.

  6. Getting High

  Craig “Kif” Sanborn.

  7. Lovemaking

  Bruce Campbell, Mike Ditz and Craig “Kif” Sanborn. Original Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way cover design by Howard Grossman.

  8. The Big Thaw

  Charles Campbell, Rumen Yavev and Craig “Kif” Sanborn. Production image(s) courtesy of SyFy. All rights reserved.

  9. Apocalypse How

  Mike Ditz, Rumen Yavev and Craig “Kif” Sanborn. Production image(s) courtesy o
f SyFy. All rights reserved.

  10. Attack of the Screaming Brain

  Bruce Campbell, Melanie Tooker, Rumen Yavev and Craig “Kif” Sanborn. Production image(s) courtesy of SyFy. All rights reserved.

  11. Life on the Wild Side

  Bruce Campbell, Ted Raimi and Craig “Kif” Sanborn. Production image(s) courtesy of National Public Radio. All rights reserved.

  12. What’s My Name?

  Bruce Campbell, Mike Ditz, David Gibb Photography, Gary Sauer and Craig “Kif” Sanborn.

  13. Rise of the Master Cylinder

  Craig “Kif” Sanborn. Production image(s) courtesy of Sony Pictures. All rights reserved.

  14. Ashes to Axes

  Bruce Campbell, Ida Gearon, E.K. Keratsis and Craig “Kif” Sanborn. Special thanks to William Shatner. Production image(s) courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.

  15. To Iraq and Baq

  Bruce Campbell, Don Campbell and Craig “Kif” Sanborn. Special thanks to James Montgomery Flagg and the soldiers of the United States Armed Forces.

  16. Legends of the Fall

  Bruce Campbell, John Ales and Craig “Kif” Sanborn. Production image(s) courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.

  17. Afterburn

  Mike Ditz and Craig “Kif” Sanborn. Special thanks to Norman Rockwell. Production image(s) courtesy of The Orchard and Universal Pictures. All rights reserved.

  18. Hollywood in Pontiac!

  Howard Berger and Craig “Kif” Sanborn. Production image(s) courtesy of the Walt Disney Company and Universal Pictures. All rights reserved.

  19. Hardly Functional

  Bruce Campbell, Mike Estes and Ida Gearon.

  20. Kissin’ Hands and Shakin’ Babies — the Con Game

  Mike Estes, Celeb Photo Ops and Epic Photo Ops. All rights reserved.

  21. Crawling Back into the Womb

  Aaron Lam. Production image(s) courtesy of Renaissance Pictures, Ltd., the Los Angeles Times and Starz. All rights reserved.