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One
Million Years, BC By Ted Raimi |
Ted Raimi says what must be said.
Bruce never had buck teeth
O.K. Bruce Campbell fans, just for the record; I am not Sam Raimi. That’s my older brother.
I’m Ted.
And I remember Bruce from about one million years ago and can speak about him with some degree of certainty. Let me tell you this: He was always an actor and the boy never had a bucktooth in his head.
Groovy!
Way back in nineteen seventy-five I was ten and if you were lucky, things were "real groovy" for you. And if it was a good time you were having, it might have been a "stone cold gasser". Cat Stevens was big and I remember "Kung Fu Fighting" playing every five seconds on the radio. Good-looking girls were " real foxy". Bruce was about sixteen and he and my brother Sam were high school buddies; and well into making movies.
Now Bruce did something not many sixteen-year-old kids would do: He let a ten-year-old kid hang around the set and watch him act [not long after, dear reader, Bruce let that ten-year-old act with him. But that is another tale]. It was about the best introduction to acting and making movies I could have had.
It was only Super-8 but back then hardly anyone under seventeen was making films. It was a really adventuresome thing for those guys to do in those days.
Swan Dive or Neck Dive?
To do physical gags, you have to be fit, which Bruce was (Still is. If you don’t believe me, watch any Xena or Herc that he’s in. You’ve never seen a man in his late thirties throw himself to the ground and against walls as much as that—unless he’s a football player). And you have to have a taste for the absurd. Something, to this day, he has never quite gotten out of his mouth.
While they were filming, my brother would say, "Now Bruce, I want you to do a neck dive down this flight of stairs, then get up, finish your dialog and them ram your head into this bowling ball on the wall and take a back dive. And Bruce would always say the same thing: "O.K." Like everyone else, I was amazed.
Don’t misunderstand. The lad wasn’t stupid. But if Bruce thought a scene could be made funnier or scarier or just plain better by nailing himself, he’d do it. Some performers would call it insane. But to Bruce, that was acting!
Girls, Girls, Girls!
Bruce is a nice looking fellow. No doubt about that. Shave his head, rearrange his eyeballs and give him a "right off the boat" Estonian accent and the girls would still flock around him. That’s all part of the charm. And as far as comedy goes, it’s’ one thing to see Quasimoto take a fall but when Ty Power does it, you can’t help but do a double take.
After your eyes are gouged out, what then?
Throughout his career, Bruce has mostly done comedy. I knew he had it in him to act other things as well. But I didn’t know how well ‘till I saw him play a cheap loser in the movie "Lunatics, A Love Story". And he played it with depth. Not an easy thing to do when you’re acting all day and then have to pull three or four hours in the producers office after shooting. Believe you me, I remember. If your still not convinced of his range, take another look at his Homicide eps.
Finally, I get to do more than a face grab.
In the BC classic, Evil Dead, Ash finds himself on the floor. Suddenly a pair of monster hands crash through and grab his face. Hard! Those hands were mine. Fun, huh? Especially for a twelve year old. But aside from this and one or two other bits, Bruce and I have never had much to do together in front of the camera. Until quite recently, that is.
In XWP’s King of Assassins (Bruce directing himself this time), Autolycus and Joxer fall, crash and gouge around in front of the camera in this Shakespearean farce of mistaken identity. It was a blast. It’s the sort of stuff he’d loved to do so much when he was sixteen. Not such a chore for this writer, either. I wasn’t grabbing his face through floorboards this time or had a fake mustache. Now I was acting with him and being directed by him. And while he’s directing, you’d better pay attention. He’s quite specific. Especially when it comes to timing gags, falls and other routines.
Some might say that shticks to high heaven.
I’d call it comedy.
Page Updated 03/30/00.