Hail to the Chin

by Bruce Campbell

  The premise of gullible yokels enlisting an overblown actor to thwart evil had already seen the big screen with films such as Three Amigos and Galaxy Quest, but Mark’s spin on it followed Alan Ladd’s lead by having the actor play himself.

  That actor turned out to be me.

  In Mike Richardson’s office, with Mark at his side, I recapped what I thought was their plot:

  “Okay, let me get this straight – a small town is cursed with a monster, so they kidnap Bruce Campbell, thinking he would be an authority on monsters, but he turns out to be a worthless asshole and almost ruins everything.”

  “Exactly,” Mark nodded.

  “I’m in. Where do I sign?”

  Mike Richardson had already made a deal with video distributor Image Entertainment. With Dark Horse holding all the creative cards, I would only have to deal with Mike and Mark, who were thoroughly rational human beings.

  Now we’re getting somewhere, I thought.

  Bouncing ideas back and forth, we were all in sync that the film would be set and shot in Oregon. The monster, however, wasn’t such an obvious decision. Bigfoot seemed like a good fit for the region but not necessarily for the story.

  Since I was a resident of southern Oregon and familiar with the local history, I wanted to make the creature more relevant to the area. In the mid-1800s, the entire infrastructure of my region, including gold mines, was basically built by Chinese immigrants. I started investigating Chinese lore in hopes of finding a suitable candidate and a “Protector of the Dead” popped up – a former tofu salesman who went on to become immortalized as Guan Di, the Taoist god of war and protector of the dead. Seeing Guan Di as a vengeful spirit that haunted those who disturb the peace, I thought, That’s it. That’s our guy!

  Guan Di, savior of bean curd.

  The elements came together, and the premise of the story – to be called My Name Is Bruce – was established: In the past, a mine collapsed, killing all the Chinese laborers inside. The mine and consequent graveyard has been protected by Guan Di until modern-day locals disturb the miners’ resting place. Guan Di then materializes and systematically hunts down the local bumpkins. Described as a giant red-faced warrior wielding a halberd, Guan Di was not a character I had seen on-screen before – and even though our movie was bound to be campy, at least our monster wasn’t going to be your run-of-the-mill vampire, zombie or demon.

  WELCOME TO GOLD LICK

  Generally speaking, there are a few fundamental rules of filmmaking:

  1. Never start making a movie until you have a completed script.

  2. Never start making a movie until you have the funding.

  3. Never use your own money.

  4. Never shoot on your own property.

  Okay, so I blew all four and started before anything was ready. With a pending fall book tour solidly committed, I had to move forward on the project, or it would be delayed until the following year.

  I needed help, so I brought in Craig “Kif” Sanborn, my “indentured artist” who had recently finished putting the finishing touches on my Make Love book and was begging me for money (I added that for effect). He also had some experience scouting and securing locations, not to mention the ability to do eight other jobs, so Kif was a mainstay during prep.

  We scouted the nearby town of Jacksonville, Oregon, a historic mining town (the entire town is a National Historic Landmark) that had experienced a boom in the 1860s when gold was discovered. The actual history of this small town fit nicely within the backstory of My Name Is Bruce and its status meant that the buildings still had much of their bygone charm.

  Kif to the Rescue!

  Unfortunately, our rigid timeline meant we would need to film smack-dab in the middle of the local Britt Festival, a popular music jamboree that the town had absolutely no interest in interrupting. In fact, the city charter itself actually forbade issuing filming permits of any kind during the festival.

  We were Britt out of luck.

  I wasn’t expecting this and had to quickly adjust what my vision for the movie was.

  I finally said, “You know what? In Man with the Screaming Brain I took over a Russian military base and built a backlot on that. I’ve got property. I am going to damn well build a backlot.”

  Ignoring the numerous cardinal rules, I decided to fund the beginnings out of my own pocket until I could be reimbursed – after all, the deal was pending. What could go wrong?

  When I told Mike of my executive decision to build the fictional town of Gold Lick on my own property, I was met with an ominous silence. Realizing that he had probably stopped breathing, I explained to him that Gold Lick was supposed to be a dilapidated small town – it wouldn’t need new fixtures or four walls, and it could totally be ramshackle and funky.

  After a noticeable gulp for air, Mike replied, “Well, I just hope it doesn’t look like crap.”

  We had budgeted for location rentals and set decoration, but we hadn’t planned on building an entire town square from the ground up. It was a crazy notion, but I was so desperate for a return to my roots that I wanted to literally make a movie in my backyard.

  I got what I wanted, all right – I got it in spades. So did my wife. The ensuing chaos of excavation, construction and self-financing would become so stressful that the experience actually sent Ida to the hospital, fearing she was having a heart attack. Thankfully, she was not, but during the shoot that followed Ida could barely contain her chronic throbbing scorn for my ridiculous scheme.

  Convincing Mike to go for it was one thing, convincing my ailing wife to allow it was another, but convincing the municipal government to let us do it was the most difficult of all. Towns without a history of filmmaking are a double-edged sword – on one side, you have an excited citizenry eager to give you the key to the city. On the other, you have a bureaucracy so unfamiliar with filmmaking that everything you say is completely alien.

  Trying to convince the local planning commission to let us build a series of semi-modular, temporary structures that violated more building codes than an inspector could count was a crazy notion.

  The commissioner’s initial response was, “You want to build a what?”

  Admittedly, there was no precedent for my outlandish request, so I took Oregon’s film commissioner up on an offer he had made only a week earlier: “Bruce, if there is anything you ever need, just let me know…”

  I called him up. “Do me a favor. Help this local commissioner guy out. He thinks we want to build Dollywood or something. He’s just trying to do his job, but he needs to learn about the bogus nature of movies and sets. We’re gonna dismantle the damn thing when we’re done.”

  I never heard another word about it.

  Crossing my fingers and concluding that we had been issued a “don’t ask, don’t tell” permit, I cut the ribbon and authorized the construction of Gold Lick immediately.

  The task of building the three or four structures that we weren’t officially building was another exercise in true “indie” resourcefulness. New, store-bought lumber was out of the question due to budget, so I put an old-fashioned ad in the local paper: “Got Wood? We’ll haul away scrap lumber in trade (meaning for free).” The response was mind-boggling. Calls came in from all over the valley – one guy had sixteen feet of old fencing, another fellow had an old deck, and it went on like that until there was enough material to fill two twenty-four-foot trucks.

  Brother Don came over from Michigan to help gather the lumber, mainly because Kif was sarcastic and irritable and I wanted someone else to talk to. For the next several days, the three of us drove around southern Oregon, loading up every old board, plank, beam, slat and toothpick we could get our splintered hands on.

  Got Wood?

  My own land was not without its own share of useable wood. The lower part of the property had once housed the original homestead from the thirties. The decayed lumber salvaged from the site had great character and wound up being per fect for the ancient Chinese cemetery and m
ine shaft we also had to build.

  As if God Himself wanted to smite me for shooting a film on my own property, a lightning bolt shot down from the heavens one night and split a beautiful pine tree right down the middle. We were all in the house at the time and heard the massive explosion. Don swears he saw it happen. Within a week, that once stalwart pine was a dead skeleton of brown needles.

  Rewind to a few years earlier. I met a group of local woodworkers who owned and operated a portable Swedish lumber mill that could have been a prop in a Hellraiser movie. To make a living, they would hook up this wonderfully efficient machine to the back of their pickup truck and take it wherever someone wanted raw timber milled.

  I engaged the services of these portable millers and they dragged the carcass of the pine to a clearing.

  “Nice piece of wood. Shame about the lightning. What size lumber would you like?” the miller asked.

  We decided on Western-town-style slats. The beautiful ponderosa provided enough wood to face an entire building. To my surprise, the lightning strike altered the color of the wood itself and gave that batch of lumber a unique character we never would have gotten otherwise. Production Design by Mother Nature.

  But the real gold strike came from down the road. I was driving home after scouting an area outside of Jacksonville and spotted a faded sign on the side of the road that read: “Items for Sale” and provided a local phone number. Upon closer inspection, the sign was leaning up against a motley assortment of old metal, which turned out to include a miniature train engine and a small-gauge rail track.

  In My Name Is Bruce, the collapsed mine bookended the story. The mine should have a cart and track poking out from the rubble. Intrigued by the weird stuff on display, I called the number on the sign and spoke to a curmudgeon named Lowell.

  “Yeah, what do you want?” he asked, not sounding happy about the call.

  “Well, I saw your sign out front, sir, and I thought that you might have some stuff that I would be interested in using, or even buying.”

  “Hang on a minute.”

  Moments later, Lowell emerged, roaring on his ATV through a cloud of dust, asking again, “What do you want?”

  “Well, I’m making a movie, and we need some cool old stuff to dress our sets.”

  Lowell grumbled a bit as he opened a couple of gates. “All right, follow me.”

  Up the driveway was a wonderland of vintage vehicles and tarnished farming, construction and industrial equipment. Lowell used to mine on his own property, so he actually had old mining equipment in addition to the stacks of rail tracks.

  Seeing the drool seeping from my mouth, he asked, “So, you’re building some buildings, and it’s supposed to look rustic. Is that what’s happening here?”

  “Um, yeah. Exactly.”

  “Well, come on over here. My wife made me buy this and I don’t know what the hell to do with it.”

  Lowell opened up a shed and revealed a hoard of wood that had been taken off a barn. Weathered but still solid, it was exactly the type of stuff I was hoping to find.

  “I want all of it,” I told him.

  I walked around agape at everything I wanted to buy and “loaded my cart” with corrugated steel, nine-by-twelve beams, roofing materials, metal signage, a 1930s Rambler and even a doggone windmill. In his seventies, Lowell was a hoarder who had finally decided to sell off his collection to fund other aspects of his life. I needed a bunch of his stuff to build a town. The timing was perfect. Lowell, of course, had his own bulldozer, forklift and flatbed, so he was even able to deliver.

  To ensure that nobody died from a rotting piece of wood causing a set to fall over, the key framing and everything sunk into the ground was purchased brand-new – but the siding, facades and picturesque charm all came from the collected resources. Finished off with some antiques, a wooden Indian and a large fountain, Gold Lick took shape.

  All this out-of-pocket business was a bit over-the-top, as my wife will attest, but I was hoping to put enough pressure on the wallets to make sure this deal did not fall apart. It was definitely a white-knuckle situation, but the deal got signed and the official cash began to flow.

  TOWNSFOLK

  There was one final element necessary to complete the return to the salad days. There wasn’t much of a point shooting a movie in my backyard if the cast and crew weren’t full of the like-minded individuals and fun-loving Shemps I called friends.

  Ted, “Wing-ing” it.

  Naturally, I started with Ted Raimi. I like working with Ted because he makes my acting look subtle. He had already developed an elderly Chinese character who would be perfect for the caretaker of the mining graveyard and I knew he could add a certain amount of satirical sleaze to the role of my agent, Mills Toddner. Thankfully, I didn’t have to pay him for each role.

  The part of Bruce’s ex-wife went to Ellen Sandweiss, who endured our shenanigans back in high school and suffered much, much worse as Ash’s sister in the first Evil Dead. The roles of two “close” ranchers went to Tim Quill – a high school/Army of Darkness alum – and to Danny Hicks who played the infamous Jake in Evil Dead II.

  The challenge in casting was to avoid members of the Screen Actors Guild. Five years earlier, Ted had changed his status in the guild to “Financial Core,” a seemingly insane decision to become a fee-paying nonmember. A SAG card is considered critical to professional actors and I thought Ted had lost his mind by apparently turning his in!

  The allure of Fi-Core is the option to work both union and nonunion jobs. In return, you forfeit the right to vote and to get a SAG award – neither of which ever applied to me anyway. Interestingly, it was two conservative presidents of the Screen Actors Guild who championed this notion over the years – Charlton Heston and Ronald Reagan.

  Unions aren’t an option when you’re counting pennies, so the only way to keep My Name Is Bruce on budget was for me to go Fi-Core and open the door for non-union actors. If I wasn’t union, nobody else had to be union. This was to be the first completely non-union movie I had done in decades. I’m not saying it was good or bad, as I have been a union member for most of my professional life, but it was the only way we could have pulled it off monetarily.

  Without union restrictions, we were able to fill the rest of our cast with Oregon actors. The quaint town of Ashland was nearby, so we had access to the many actors and resources utilized by that town’s annual Shakespeare Festival, which is a full-blown operation. Grace Thorsen, our leading lady, was a trained Shakespearean actress and played our seemingly untamable shrew quite nicely. Taylor Sharpe, the movie geek who kidnaps Bruce, was plucked right out of high school theater.

  Anybody who auditioned but didn’t get a part was given the offer to be a silent resident of Gold Lick (i.e., an “extra”). Aspiring actors made eager extras and their enthusiasm helped give our fictitious town an additional layer of personality.

  Now all the movie needed was its monster.

  Our costume designer turned us on to Jamie Peck, a local prop maker and costumer for children’s theater productions. His repertoire included crafting strange masks and animal costumes, then performing in them. Jamie was the perfect combination. Not only could he create the Guan Di mask, but he was also big enough to play the Tofu Titan himself! Win-win!

  The fabrication of Guan Di was a joint effort between Jamie, the costume designer and Melanie Tooker. Mel specialized in special effects makeup and had transformed me into an elderly Elvis for Bubba Ho-Tep. When she wasn’t turning Ted into the decrepit Chinese caretaker or building blood-spurting dummies, Mel was responsible for the monstrous elements of Guan Di’s appearance, including the gruesome hands and neck.

  All the pieces were finally in place. It was time to roll in Gold Lick.

  HEARTS OF DORKNESS

  The general public remains fascinated by the filmmaking process, so Hollywood continues to pump out behind-the-scenes documentaries and featurettes about the various tricks of the trade. I wanted to jam-pack the DVD
edition of My Name Is Bruce with as much stuff as possible, so I brought Mike Kallio up to document the making of the film. Kallio was an independent filmmaker in his own right and very capable of spearheading the documentary.

  Kallio edited all the behind-the-scenes footage together and presented it as if the MNIB experience was a descent into madness. Winking at Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, the documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now, Kallio called his featurette Heart of Dorkness – a testament to the trials and tribulations of low-budget filmmaking. His take on the production was prophetic.

  If a production has money, shooting on location is not a problem. You can afford to “tame” a wild area to suit your needs. You create a way in and you create a way out. Tents and mobile toilets are set up and a massive base camp of trailers and equipment trucks create an ad hoc Gypsy camp. You make things happen.

  If you don’t have money, it’s man versus nature – you’re at the mercy of whatever irritable flora and fauna are lurking in the area.

  My hobbit house became the VIP club for the actors and the extras claimed the area around the trampoline as their domain. A former garage became the makeshift production base camp and my office was defiled to become the greenroom/hair and makeup stations. A few odious trailers were brought in to line the perimeter of Gold Lick and serve as storage workshops for costumes and effects makeup.

  Man Posing As Director Torments Local Actress

  In 2006, High Definition wasn’t standard yet, but it was definitely up-and-coming. My director of photography, Kurt Rauf, was a veteran Evil Dead Shemp – and yet another old friend. We discussed the trending technology and decided to shoot in HD, mostly because it was all the rage.

  I wound up calling it HDelay. No matter which format you’re shooting in, you’re going to have to change lenses a lot. With traditional film cameras, it’s an easy five-minute switchover and you’re ready to go. With HDelay, it was a schedule-screwing hassle. You had to take the lens off and do some strange back-focusing BS. Okay, it isn’t BS, but it sure seemed like it when my night was wasting away while some chart came out and you had to put a thing on another thing so some other things wouldn’t expand and contract and make the first thing fall off. None of the above is an issue these days, but we were trying to be ahead of the curve and we paid the price.