His Name is BruceWednesday night, the roomie and I went to see My Name is Bruce at the Sundance Cinema in yuppie Hilldale. Afterward, there was a Q&A session with Mr. Bruce Campbell himself, making it quite the special moviegoing occasion.
First, a little about the film: My Name is Bruce is a satirical horror-comedy, a style/genre that has gained a lot of visibility and credibility since the groundbreaking Shaun of the Dead. (Dark Reel, another great example of this trend, was the big winner at The Dark Carnival film festival this year.)
Of the three, Bruce is probably the lightest in tone and the least 'serious'. Semi-autobiographical, the film shows an exasperated and impoverished B-Movie star (Campbell) struggling to get through the days, succumbing to despair, debauchery and truly grotesque amounts of cheap whiskey, until a deseprate young fan unleashes an ancient Chinese war god on his town and seeks Campbell out to save everyone (just like he does in the movies).
The movie is quite snarky and biting when it comes to the issue of obsessive fans, which made it all the more interesting to be paired with a Q&A session sure to attract... lots of Bruce Campbell's more obsessive fans. The whole experience could get pretty 'meta', as the roommate would say (and did, if I recall correctly).
Besides Bruce Campbell, the movie is mostly full of new faces/unknowns, with the exception of Ted Raimi, who plays three different roles (including a potentially dicey Chinese-American stereotype by the name of Wing). Despite being a movie that gives the fans a hard time, it's loaded with fan-pleasing cameos from previous Bruce Campbell movies (and Sam Raimi pictures) in the Evil Dead trilogy, some of whose characters... explicitly talk about their previous roles in these other movies.
So you've got a bit of a snake eating its own tail thing.
Anyway, long story short, Bruce, in Bruce, has to get over his self-loathing and despondency to, in half-assed fashion, save a small town from an inept monster (Guan-Di, who is supposedly based on an actual Chinese war god/legend, who, and this is critical to the plot... was also the God of Bean Curd. Right.)
(Also of note is the movie's use of music; not unlike Dead and Breakfast, yet another great horror-comedy, Bruce features a number of plot-advancing songs and musical numbers where cast members directly address the audience.)
The end result is a hilarious, nonsensical, rambling, raving movie, bouncing from one scene to the next, never taking itself too seriously, and always giving you a chance to laugh. It's difficult to describe it any more precisely than that; this is what I sometimes call a 'cotton-candy' movie... it goes by so fast, and you enjoy it thoroughly, but it sort of melts/disappears into your memory after the fact.
(I will say that Mr. Campbell must be incredibly self-confident to make a movie so much at his own expense. Then again, this is a man who proudly refers to himself as a B-movie actor.)
After the movie, Campbell came out and took questions for quite a while, and he is incredibly funny and quick in person. Sometimes the questioners were pretty snarky themselves, and he always took it with humility, without ever being a pushover.
For instance, someone asked him about whether he was doing the Old Spice commercials just for the money (he said of course he was, that they paid very well and he'd rub 'that smelly crap' all over himself for the cash). Another person asked if there were any movies he wished he'd never done, which led Campbell to play a game with the audience, where he'd turn his back and people could yell out movies he'd acted in that they'd like refunds for.
He couldn't even get turned around before someone mentioned Congo.
Campbell readily admitted that Congo, as well as some of his other movies, were unwatchable; he noted that Congo had such an impressive pedigree that no one thought it would suck when he signed up though, featuring as it did many of Steven Spielberg's technical collaborators, based on a book by then-megahit author Michael Crichton, etc. "They just forgot to hire a director!" according to Campbell.
At the same time, when he felt that someone was being unfair (like when an audience rudely asked whether he did Burn Notice just for the money, a show that he's actually quite proud of), he was willing to fight back (that particular jerk got called, well... a 'jerk', by Mr. Campbell. Rightly so too. There's a thing called etiquette in these situations).
He talked at length about the process of making the movie (the entire fictional town was built as a backlot on his Oregon property), casting and directing a small budget film, (Ted Raimi is great because he works so cheap for example, or the horrors that can befall a small cast, say from poison oak in a hastily built mountain town), the difficulties of working in Hollywood, demand for making new versions/sequels of your past successes, and the like. At times it almost seemed like he had a rehearsed answer for everything (which led an audience member to ask if he in fact had any more ready made answers to common questions, which was a funny moment that didn't phase him in the least).
Still, even for topics that he could never have anticipated (like a lunatic woman who thinks that Madison in the summer is as hot as Miami, or a man who repeatedly tried to pick a fight between Campbell and Ron Perlman, who is replacing him as the lead in a Bubba Ho-Tep sequel), he was never rattled or distracted, and showed a great deal of patience. It was one of the best personal appearances I've ever seen, and all the more noteworthy because he had originally only been scheduled to do one session that evening, but had his schedule literally quadrupled after they added shows to meet demand. (It must be nice to be popular though, and Campbell thought it was hilarious that My Name is Bruce beat the pants off of Clint Eastwood's high-brow Changeling movie, starring Angelina Jolie, in per-screen take thanks to his fans).
All in all it was a great evening, and shocking in that the theatre didn't charge one thin dime extra for the special, sold-out shows with Q&A sessions either. Thus, their normally somewhat elevated ticket prices became a fantastic bargain; I honestly expected, for the privilege of being in a small theatre, seeing the local premiere of a movie with the star/director doing a talk afterward, that there'd be some sort of surcharge, if not a hefty fee. I appreciate the lack of venality on Sundance's part, and it garners a lot of good will from me.
(Which could be the goal, for all I know. If so, it's smart business; there are a lot of indie theatres in this town, but Sundance is really starting to stand out with its customer friendly atmosphere.)
I heartily recommend that people see My Name is Bruce, either on DVD or in the theatre if they can. It joins an impressive list of movies that, whether on their own or through venues like The Dark Carnival, show us that horror movies don't have to be restricted to big budget cruelty porn ala Hostel, or low-IQ direct to dvd slasher/rubber suit flicks.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.
Who knows; maybe his next movie can show at The Dark Carnival itself. I can dream, at any rate. (Don't fuck this up if you get the chance, Dr. Calamari, you squid bastard)
First, a little about the film: My Name is Bruce is a satirical horror-comedy, a style/genre that has gained a lot of visibility and credibility since the groundbreaking Shaun of the Dead. (Dark Reel, another great example of this trend, was the big winner at The Dark Carnival film festival this year.)
Of the three, Bruce is probably the lightest in tone and the least 'serious'. Semi-autobiographical, the film shows an exasperated and impoverished B-Movie star (Campbell) struggling to get through the days, succumbing to despair, debauchery and truly grotesque amounts of cheap whiskey, until a deseprate young fan unleashes an ancient Chinese war god on his town and seeks Campbell out to save everyone (just like he does in the movies).
The movie is quite snarky and biting when it comes to the issue of obsessive fans, which made it all the more interesting to be paired with a Q&A session sure to attract... lots of Bruce Campbell's more obsessive fans. The whole experience could get pretty 'meta', as the roommate would say (and did, if I recall correctly).
Besides Bruce Campbell, the movie is mostly full of new faces/unknowns, with the exception of Ted Raimi, who plays three different roles (including a potentially dicey Chinese-American stereotype by the name of Wing). Despite being a movie that gives the fans a hard time, it's loaded with fan-pleasing cameos from previous Bruce Campbell movies (and Sam Raimi pictures) in the Evil Dead trilogy, some of whose characters... explicitly talk about their previous roles in these other movies.
So you've got a bit of a snake eating its own tail thing.
Anyway, long story short, Bruce, in Bruce, has to get over his self-loathing and despondency to, in half-assed fashion, save a small town from an inept monster (Guan-Di, who is supposedly based on an actual Chinese war god/legend, who, and this is critical to the plot... was also the God of Bean Curd. Right.)
(Also of note is the movie's use of music; not unlike Dead and Breakfast, yet another great horror-comedy, Bruce features a number of plot-advancing songs and musical numbers where cast members directly address the audience.)
The end result is a hilarious, nonsensical, rambling, raving movie, bouncing from one scene to the next, never taking itself too seriously, and always giving you a chance to laugh. It's difficult to describe it any more precisely than that; this is what I sometimes call a 'cotton-candy' movie... it goes by so fast, and you enjoy it thoroughly, but it sort of melts/disappears into your memory after the fact.
(I will say that Mr. Campbell must be incredibly self-confident to make a movie so much at his own expense. Then again, this is a man who proudly refers to himself as a B-movie actor.)
After the movie, Campbell came out and took questions for quite a while, and he is incredibly funny and quick in person. Sometimes the questioners were pretty snarky themselves, and he always took it with humility, without ever being a pushover.
For instance, someone asked him about whether he was doing the Old Spice commercials just for the money (he said of course he was, that they paid very well and he'd rub 'that smelly crap' all over himself for the cash). Another person asked if there were any movies he wished he'd never done, which led Campbell to play a game with the audience, where he'd turn his back and people could yell out movies he'd acted in that they'd like refunds for.
He couldn't even get turned around before someone mentioned Congo.
Campbell readily admitted that Congo, as well as some of his other movies, were unwatchable; he noted that Congo had such an impressive pedigree that no one thought it would suck when he signed up though, featuring as it did many of Steven Spielberg's technical collaborators, based on a book by then-megahit author Michael Crichton, etc. "They just forgot to hire a director!" according to Campbell.
At the same time, when he felt that someone was being unfair (like when an audience rudely asked whether he did Burn Notice just for the money, a show that he's actually quite proud of), he was willing to fight back (that particular jerk got called, well... a 'jerk', by Mr. Campbell. Rightly so too. There's a thing called etiquette in these situations).
He talked at length about the process of making the movie (the entire fictional town was built as a backlot on his Oregon property), casting and directing a small budget film, (Ted Raimi is great because he works so cheap for example, or the horrors that can befall a small cast, say from poison oak in a hastily built mountain town), the difficulties of working in Hollywood, demand for making new versions/sequels of your past successes, and the like. At times it almost seemed like he had a rehearsed answer for everything (which led an audience member to ask if he in fact had any more ready made answers to common questions, which was a funny moment that didn't phase him in the least).
Still, even for topics that he could never have anticipated (like a lunatic woman who thinks that Madison in the summer is as hot as Miami, or a man who repeatedly tried to pick a fight between Campbell and Ron Perlman, who is replacing him as the lead in a Bubba Ho-Tep sequel), he was never rattled or distracted, and showed a great deal of patience. It was one of the best personal appearances I've ever seen, and all the more noteworthy because he had originally only been scheduled to do one session that evening, but had his schedule literally quadrupled after they added shows to meet demand. (It must be nice to be popular though, and Campbell thought it was hilarious that My Name is Bruce beat the pants off of Clint Eastwood's high-brow Changeling movie, starring Angelina Jolie, in per-screen take thanks to his fans).
All in all it was a great evening, and shocking in that the theatre didn't charge one thin dime extra for the special, sold-out shows with Q&A sessions either. Thus, their normally somewhat elevated ticket prices became a fantastic bargain; I honestly expected, for the privilege of being in a small theatre, seeing the local premiere of a movie with the star/director doing a talk afterward, that there'd be some sort of surcharge, if not a hefty fee. I appreciate the lack of venality on Sundance's part, and it garners a lot of good will from me.
(Which could be the goal, for all I know. If so, it's smart business; there are a lot of indie theatres in this town, but Sundance is really starting to stand out with its customer friendly atmosphere.)
I heartily recommend that people see My Name is Bruce, either on DVD or in the theatre if they can. It joins an impressive list of movies that, whether on their own or through venues like The Dark Carnival, show us that horror movies don't have to be restricted to big budget cruelty porn ala Hostel, or low-IQ direct to dvd slasher/rubber suit flicks.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.
Who knows; maybe his next movie can show at The Dark Carnival itself. I can dream, at any rate. (Don't fuck this up if you get the chance, Dr. Calamari, you squid bastard)
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