6Q: Bruce Campbell

Six Questions with: Bruce Campbell

Bruce Campbell is an actor, producer, writer and director. He may be best-known for his starring role as Ash in the Evil Dead trilogy of horror/slapstick movies. He is currently starring as Sam Axe in Burn Notice on the USA Network. You may also know him from The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., Bubba Ho-tep or many other films and television appearances. Gunaxin recently had a chance to interview Bruce via conference call, read about that experience below.

Six Questions:

Who is your favorite Athlete?
kobe1 He’s a Basketball fan and specifically of the Pistons. “I wanted LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavs, but they folded, because anyone but Kobe Bryant. But now I’m rooting for Orlando because anyone has to beat the Lakers, because I’m a Detroit Pistons fan originally, and the Lakers were always the evil West Coast people. And then I moved to LA and now I’m tortured because having lived there for ten years, now I see Kobe everywhere. But I hope Orlando shakes them up good, sets them up and knocks them down.”

Who is your favorite Hottie?
kelly-rutherford1 “I’m always a big fan of Kelly Rutherford, from when I worked with her on The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., so she’s definitely babe-a-licious. Just a lot of women I’ve worked with in the past; Elizabeth Hurley, I thought she was pretty babe-a-licious, Alyssa Milano. That’s the fringe benefit of being an actor, you get to, it’s sort of staged infidelity.”

Who is your favorite Comedian?
bruce-campbell Unfortunately I didn’t get to this one, since, to me, it seemed less important. So, for my own sake I’ll say: Bruce Campbell.

What is your favorite Movie?
evildead2 He loves to direct and he is great friends with Sam Raimi. So, to that end, he loves Raimi’s flicks. “Sam Raimi will never direct an episode of Burn Notice because it’s done too quickly. Sam is used to shooting these big, big, big, big, big movies, and it takes 100 days or more to film a two-hour piece of entertainment. We film these shows in seven days, so it’s a real different mentality of features versus television. So I wouldn’t wish that on Sam, because it’s actually a difficult challenge every week to pull these shows off, not that Spider-Man 3 isn’t, but we have a little bit of a different circumstance here.”

What is your favorite Gadget?
ufo05 This was such a cool answer: “As a kid I just blew stuff up. My brother had magnesium and we had sulfur and we had some other ingredients, gun powder, and we would just blow things up, so that was as close as I ever got. The best gadget my brothers and I ever made was a UFO, where we made it out of balsa wood strut. It was a rectangular shape with a dry cleaning bag over the top of it, with a couple of struts at the bottom that we glued handles to; and you light the candles on fire, the heat goes up into the bag and because the balsa wood is so light, it just lifts off into the air; and so we sent numerous UFOs from our neighborhood, and one of them got written up in the local paper as a UFO sighting.”

What is your favorite Beer?
mgd My first question and my favorite: “I gave up beer last March. I was only using it to wash my tequila down. But on the show, obviously, it’s a fake brand, but we are actually introducing Miller Genuine Draft 64. I think they’re doing a product tie-in, so Sam’s generic labels in some cases will now go to MGD.” Bruce asked my opinion, to which I replied it was ‘swill’. “Awesome. Okay, I’ll be sure to tell them.”

Hotel Inter-ContinentalThough there wasn’t really an introduction per se, as it was a phone call completely monitored by some lady named Christie, Bruce was welcomed and replied to each and every question he was asked with just about as much thrill and interest as you’d expect from the hero of the Evil Dead Trilogy: with humor and good grace. It was a bit difficult to get all six questions rattled off as I’d have liked to, but the way it was done was fair and non-biased. Basically, everyone was given as many opportunities to ask a question as the next person (and there had to have been at least thirty folks on there from various affiliations) and as you locked yourself in by hitting *1, your turn was placed in a queue and you were introduced each time the position came around. I was lucky enough to ask three questions myself, and two more on the list you see were answered just coincidentally.

Now, though I am a huge fan of Bruce as Ash, as an author, as Brisco County, and of course as Sam on Burn Notice, I really couldn’t turn into the slobbering geek I likely would have were this interview in person. Even so, he was cordial, humorous, and quite talky. He was asked about how he felt being shoe-horned into the genre he’s given in to, and Bruce admitted it was by choice and therefore, he enjoys it. He was questioned about Sam’s comings and goings in the new season of Burn Notice (tune in Thursday on USA) and told the person that much more information and background of not only him, but Michael and Fiona as well will be explored. He is fond of Sam as being a bit more realistic character of the group he has portrayed and is very fond of Sam’s enjoyment of, “the sexy ladies”. Another inquiry was regarding the shows locale and the near uprooting of the whole thing were it not for a year lease being forged. Bruce admitted that, though he’s from Oregon, the show being in Miami makes it different inasmuch as it’s the only show being shot there. Even CSI Miami is shot in California. Another fan asked about his preference for either voice acting or live, and Bruce said 50/50 but eluded to a film based on the kid’s book ‘Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs’ arriving in the fall with him as a lead. My kids love that book!

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