ZFIMA1. [Past] I Saw Bruce Campbell !!!

I must be the luckiest boy in the world.

Friday night I get a call from a friend who I haven't talked to in weeks and seen in person in months. She wants to know if I can stop by and drop off a copy of Forbidden Zone (1980) that I had made for her some time back. I said sure.

I get over to her house and we get to talking. She asks me if I'm going to the horror movie marathon. I tell her "No" because I didn't know it was even coming up until just that day and it had been sold out for awhile. But I said that I was aware that Bruce Campbell was going to be there and he's probably the only reason that I would go in the first place. It turns out that she had some friends who bought tickets a long time ago and they had to move on Saturday and weren't going to be able to go and she'd call and see if they'd gotten rid of their tickets yet. She calls, they still have one left, and I can have it for free! Isn't that awesome!?

Since the ticket was free I didn't feel like I needed to go to the whole marathon or even huge chunks of it. I just wanted to see Bruce.

I stopped by the marathon in the afternoon to get an assigned number associated with my ticket. This number was to be used when Bruce did his book signing later that night and people would be brought up to the queue 15 at a time in numerical order. I was number 294. Their were only 350 tickets sold.

In an interesting turn of events my brother's ex-girlfriend, Julie, was working the door. She lives in Michigan and goes to school at U of M but was friends with the guy, Joe, who runs the marathon and volunteered to come down and help out for the weekend.

The Evil Dead screening was scheduled for 7:00pm. I set out for the theater at about 6:20. When I got there it was impossible to find a place to sit. Everyone who already had a seat claimed that the empty seat next to them really did have someone who was sitting there. So I meandered around the lobby.

As it got close to 7pm the murmur that had been in the lobby for the last 15 minutes changed and Bruce sort of came through the crowd. I couldn't tell whether he had come in the front door, the side door or some mystery door but he was being accompanied by Joe. Joe was sort of inroducing Bruce to some of his helpers. He walked Bruce up to my brother ex-girlfriend, Julie, and said "Bruce this is Julie. She's going to be helping out with the photos later on." Bruce said "Hi" and then they disappeared into some secret room.

So I knew Bruce was there and he was going to be introducing Evil Dead shortly. Since I couldn't find a seat I figured I'd have to find a good place to stand and watch the festivities. Luckily there was one at the top of the left aisle leading down towards the front of the theater. I stood for awhile. They played a few scary movie trailers. And then the house lights came up and you heard "Hello, Hello" as Bruce started talking into the mic as he walked down the aisle right past my shoulder and into the front of the theater. Everyone was cheering wildly.

Bruce was decked out in all black. Must have been in honor of Halloween. He wasn't really supposed to be do any Q&A before the movie but he did field some relevant Evil Dead questions from the audience. Evil Dead was his first feature film role. The movie was filmed in Morristown, Tennessee.

The cabin in the woods that they had been loaned for the shoot had been overrun by cows for sometime now and all of the floors in the place were covered in cow manure when they got there. They had to clean the place up themselves. Bruce said that the owner of the cabin had a stipulation in their contract that the cabin had to be returned to its original condition after they were done shooting. He joked about bringing in trucks filled up with cow manure afterwards to oblige the letter of the contract.

He told us about the first time he met Sam Raimi. He was walking down the hall in school. Sam was sitting on the floor of the hall dressed in a Sherlock Holmes outfit and was playing with dolls. Bruce gave him wide berth when walking around him.

Someone asked Bruce why Sam Raimi loved beating him up so much. Bruce talked about growing up in Michigan. Everyone made a big hiss because of the local dislike of Michigan because of Ohio State. Sam made a few jokes at the Buckeyes expense and finally said he give a rat's ass about the whole rivalry between the two schools.

He said since we were in Ohio we kind of understood what how bad winters could be but that winters in Michigan were worse than in Ohio. He said that one of their favorite things to do was go toboganning during the winters. Sam Raimi liked to try and ride his toboggan down the hill standing up with a rope attached to the front to steady himself. Apparently one time Sam made it all the way down the hill standing up and was celebrating down at the bottom. He had forgotten that Bruce was right behind him and when Bruce came down he slammed into Sam hard and Sam did a 360 degree spin in the air, ass over elbows. Bruce said that ever since then Sam has had it out for him.

To be continued...