Fan 1: I heard a rumor you would be the captain on the new Star Trek show…
Bruce: Did you hear that on the internet? [laughter] Listen, there is only one place you should go for information about me. Bruce-Hyphen-Campbell-dot-com. If you leave out the hyphen, you get a Dodge dealership in Michigan.
Fan 2: I heard a rumor that you own a Dodge dealership in Michigan? [laughter]
The other night we saw Bruce Campbell do a Q-and-A session before a book signing, and then show his new movie, The Man with the Screaming Brain. It was awesome. He has an odd level of disrespect for his fans, but his fans eat it up, because he’s hilarious.
Fan: Is there going to be an Ash vs. Freddy vs. Jason?
Bruce: That is a bankrupt idea, man. I mean, imagine you get that phone call. The producer says “We’re thinking about doing Ash vs. Freddy vs. Jason, do you want to direct?” Well, being a creative person, you ask “How much creative control do I get?” and they say “one-third.” Okay, you think, well, how about money? They think for a minute and say “one-third.” Well, you’ve got two associates, so you’re now getting one-ninth of NOTHING. That’s a five-minute phone call, man.
From there, he spent quite a bit of time railing against all the upcoming movies, letting us know they’re all bankrupt ideas. Dukes of Hazzard, Starsky & Hutch, Herbie the Love Bug, and Batman Begins all got some of his ire. The best was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which is going to be “fucking weird!” Bruce said “Gene Wilder is funny, Johnny Depp is just weird!”
After the Q-and-A, we went to get dinner while he did the book signing, and then we came back to find a line stretching around the block for the movie. We already had tickets, so after about an hour of standing outside, we got seats up in the balcony again, and watched Bruce introduce the movie.
He explained that the producers called him up and said “You’re filming in Bulgaria.” It wasn’t a question. He was going to film two movies at the same time, so a friend of his got to film his movie first. That was Alien Apocalypse, which was set in Portland, Oregon. But all the extras had heavy Bulgarian accents, so he had to dub all the dialog in the movie, and the whole thing was very weird. Bruce learned from this, and adjusted his script to be set in Bulgaria.
The best story, though, was about a pink Vespa that he rides in the movie. He explained that all of the normal infrastructure associated with the movie was run by Bulgarians, so there was an odd culture clash, and things got done on the Bulgarians’ schedule (meaning slower than normal).
A few weeks ahead of time, Bruce told the transportation department that he needed a Vespa for a scene in the movie. They had to be able to paint the Vespa pink and wreck it, so it shouldn’t be a brand new Vespa, either. The guys assured him they would get one, and over the course of the next few weeks, Bruce got more and more nervous, because there was no Vespa, despite assurances that they were working on it. Finally, the guys told him they found a Vespa. Bruce said “great!” and asked “We can paint it pink, right?” and the guys assured him “yeah, yeah.”
So they painted the Vespa pink, and tied streamers to the handles, and filmed the scenes, and things were great.
The next day, Bruce was walking on set with his translator and one of the production assistants, a pretty young Bulgarian woman. As they walked past the area where they were filming the scene where the Vespa got wrecked, the production assistant burst into tears. Bruce asked the translator why she was crying, and he said “Oh, that’s her Vespa.”
Naturally, when the pink Vespa burst into flames in the movie, it got a hearty cheer.