Crave Online: Did you choose the best and silliest fanboy questions for the characters to ask you in the movie?
Bruce Campbell: Yes. Most of those questions were verbatim from real life.
Crave Online: Were there any that didn't make the cut?
Bruce Campbell: No, that was pretty much what we intended to put in.
Crave Online: Were you a diva on your own set?
Bruce Campbell: Yes, but what I did to combat that is I just stepped in front of the camera myself and showed Mr. Campbell how easy it really is. So the guy in the movie is Bruce Campbell, not Bruce Campbell.
Crave Online: How did Bruce the director deal with Bruce the actor?
Bruce Campbell: Not well. A lot of bickering. Most of it internal, thankfully. But it's okay. I'd rather be tormented by myself than some 21-year-old genius.
Crave Online: I'm guessing you're professional and easy to work with in real life.
Bruce Campbell: Well, let's hope that the movie being what it is has merely grains of reality. You still have to make a movie. You still have to show up on set. You still have to do everything and in the low budget world, you have to do it even faster. You actually kind of have to have your shit together.
Crave Online: You still bang yourself up pretty good.
Bruce Campbell: Yeah, I do. I know what my body can sort of handle. We didn't have enough money for stunt guys so I just did whatever we had to do.
Crave Online: Was the dance floor scene brutal?
Bruce Campbell: No, it was delightful dancing with Grace Thorsen.
Crave Online: But running into tables and bars looked rough?
Bruce Campbell: Mm, no, that's a bunch of big sound effects. Plus I'm running into actors. They're taking [it]. I'm running into them. They're the ones hitting the tables. That's right, then we fell down, but still my mind was elsewhere.
Crave Online: Can you still do a flip if you're called upon?
Bruce Campbell: I think I could but I don't think it will. I turned 50 this year and I blew my hamstring two days later to kick a stuntman in the face. So we'll see.
Crave Online: Was that on Burn Notice?
Bruce Campbell: Burn Notice, yeah.
Crave Online: How did you come up with the Cave Alien series that the fake Bruce Campbell is making?
Bruce Campbell: Well, it's sort of based on a movie I made called Alien Apocalypse which seems it needed to be ridiculed I think. A friend of mine directed it so it's fine. But where the beards, the face beards were confused with the wigs so the wigs were on the faces and the fake beards were on the head.
Crave Online: But there were so many unanswered questions, they had to make 2, 3 and 4?
Bruce Campbell: Absolutely and shoot 'em back to back like they do now.
Crave Online: Was My Name is Bruce also a chance to give all your friends work?
Bruce Campbell: Absolutely. That's the whole idea. I would use them regardless to whether it was a movie for the fans or not. There's a group of people that I enjoy working with that I'll just continue to do it. Unfortunately, Ted Raimi among them.
Crave Online: Bruce learns something in the end. Have you learned anything?
Bruce Campbell: Yes, don't make any more movies about myself for a while. Because it confuses people too much. We didn't care what the guy's name was. It's still about a character and his heroic struggle. So you've got to start him as a loser, otherwise the journey has no meaning.
Crave Online: Does it really throw people in the age of self-referential satire?
Bruce Campbell: I guess, but to make them kind of horrible, it disturbs some people.
Crave Online: On the actor's journey, have you learned anything?
Bruce Campbell: Yeah, just try and direct, but don't direct and act. But in order to direct these days, I have to put myself in it.
Crave Online: Upstart filmmakers must come after you all the time, so how picky do you have to be?
Bruce Campbell: Well, just no first time directors. I've learned that lesson. And really these days, I would rather just scrounge up the money and do my own thing. Do other stuff when it appears like Burn Notice, do that separately, then when I'm not doing that, because really I like spending my time doing stuff that I want to do. I don't really want to spend my time doing stuff that I don't these days. Over time you learn that. For the first 10 years, I took every job that was available. It didn't matter. Now I've got a pretty good list.
Crave Online: I sort of learned that too. No startups.
Bruce Campbell: Yeah. Yeah, no startups, right.
Crave Online: What are your favorite Bruce Campbell movies?
Bruce Campbell: I think the Evil Dead movies are worth a look. Bubba Ho Tep is a good one. Another cool movie is called Running Time, it's like a real time crime drama. A couple good TV things that aren't bad. There was a little two parter on Homicide that was good. You know, crap like that.
Crave Online: Are there any you like to quote?
Bruce Campbell: That I quote? No, I'm not a quoter.
Crave Online: That Evil Dead remake Sam Raimi always talks about keeps not happening.
Bruce Campbell: Right, it's kind of amazing, isn't it?
Crave Online: Do you think that's some sort of karma, like don't mess with that?
Bruce Campbell: Well, look, the movies were very difficult to make, both mentally and physically. I think there's probably a really good reason why Sam and I haven't looked at each other and gone, "We gotta make another one of those right away." The last one was 17 years ago. That's how recently the very last one was. Next year Evil Dead will be 30. So I don't know, I use the Indiana Jones IV analogy. I take a poll. I go, "Oh, you want Evil Dead 4? Okay, raise your hand if you liked Indiana Jones IV." Usually in a crowd of 300, one hand will go up. They saw it because it was sort of forced on them, but did they want it? Not really.
Crave Online: Finally, a definitive answer to the sequel question. But even the remake with new actors didn't happen.
Bruce Campbell: Yeah, the remake. The only way that a remake would interest me is if you went back and shot it in 16mm with a group of nobodies in some cabin somewhere.
Crave Online: But you asked him not to have a character named Ash in a new version?
Bruce Campbell: No, I haven't asked him anything particularly. It's his creation. I don't give him edicts.
Crave Online: You wouldn’t mind seeing some hotshot do Ash?
Bruce Campbell: You know what? I don't think there's been any decision because none of us have really thought about it that much. I think we would probably favor not calling a character Ash but I don't know. You've got three movies out there, and if you think about it, Evil Dead II was never supposed to happen because at the end of Evil Dead, Ash is dead. I mean, he's dead. He's clearly dead and the credits roll.
Crave Online: That never stopped anyone.
Bruce Campbell: Yeah, apparently not.
Crave Online: The Evil Dead girls still look good.
Bruce Campbell: Oh, they look great. The Ladies of the Evil Dead, the broads, the saucy dames. They did. They went to be soccer moms for like 20 years and now they're back. Back and better than ever.
Crave Online: They're starting to make deals for Spider-Man 4. How could you terrorize Peter a fourth time?
Bruce Campbell: I don't know, but it's got to be big. It's got to be pivotal to match the impact of the other ones. It's got to be bigger than naming the character, in part two defeating the character. I'm the only one who's ever defeated Spider-Man. Spider-Man 2, he does not get in that theater past the snooty usher.
Crave Online: How great a gig is Burn Notice?
Bruce Campbell: Good, really good. It's Miami when it's a little hot but sometimes you wind up touring when it's winter and sometimes you end up shooting a show in Miami when it's summer. That's just the roll of the dice but it's fun. Jeffrey Donavan's great to work with, Gabrielle Anwar and Matt Nix who created it is a really cool hipster. I think he's going to be around for a while.
Crave Online: When do you go back for season three?
Bruce Campbell: March unless we have a thespian strike.
Crave Online: Do you think they will at this point?
Bruce Campbell: You know, I don't know. It's fizzled before. They kept talking about striking last September and nothing happened, so I don't know. I think it's right to go after the internet because nobody's joking about the internet anymore. You used to laugh, "Oh, I'm doing a webisode." Yeah, so what? Now they're getting more and more serious.
Crave Online: But the producers hide profits already, why won't they just make a deal and continue their creative accounting?
Bruce Campbell: They will, but here's what I would do with the Screen Actor's Guild. I'd come up with some ridiculously low number but I would still come up with a formula, knowing that you can just adjust it later but you've got to get something going. You've got to get some money through the till because the guy who's coming with me on this road trip, he's 30 and he doesn't watch TV. It's all on his computer. And he's typical. He's 30, what about the guys who are 21 and 18 and 17. They're only watching their computer.
Crave Online: When DVD started, did that just explode your fan base?
Bruce Campbell: DVD like anything, when video came out though you could still get a fair amount of my stuff. Not as much but yeah, DVD made it much easier. Thank God for Amazon.
Crave Online: Where are the places you can go and get swarmed, and where can you be a nobody?
Bruce Campbell: Oh, where I live I'm pretty much a nobody. Most people don't care. People in Oregon, they're ranchers and loggers and environmentalists, don't really care about the whole movie thing. They're not impressed. That helps. No one really bothers me. The only time people notice is like airport screeners and that's their job. The homeland security guys giving me a wink or whatever, but I'm like, "Hey man, keep your eyes on the bags."
