If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor (34 page)

When I finally straggled back to Los Angeles, three months of "iffy" income had taken their toll -- I had no prospects for work and a mortgage that had to be paid.

Wait a minute,
I thought.
Mortgage... that's the key word -- maybe it was time to pass our mortgage to someone else.

In the late eighties, Los Angeles real estate was out of control. My wife and I sold our first generic house in ten days and pocketed $15,000 in the process. Our current house was closer to town, and had more to offer -- if we sold it, we could live off the profits. That's exactly what Cris and I did, and five days later, we walked away with about $45,000 in profit. Listen to me, I'm sounding like that infomercial joker -- "I made millions, from my
one-bedroom
apartment!"

32

THE DARK SIDE OF AMBITION

Cris decided to go back to school, so we relocated to the inland city of Chino -- known for two things: cows and convicts. With a new mortgage on my back, the only vague opportunity for work seemed to demand a return to Michigan -- again...

This time, it was to assume the role of producer. Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert managed to get their hands on some cash for a film Josh Becker wanted to do called
Lunatics -- A Love Story.

Josh: I remember sitting there on the back porch of my Hollywood apartment. I had no money and I hadn't paid any rent and I had no food and I thought, well this is pretty much the lowest point of my life. I have to think of an idea. This is the moment. I'm not getting up off this friggin' stoop here until I've got an idea that someone will buy, 'cause I don't have anything else. So, I just started to think about titles -- psycho and other words for craziness and crazies and lunatics.

Bruce: Was there some reason you were thinking about that type of --?

Josh: Well, I wasn't even thinking of any type of movie.

Bruce: I see.

Josh: I mean maybe I was thinking about horror movies, I don't know, and I hit on the word lunatics and I thought well what if it's not a horror film -- what if it's a love story? So I went over to Renaissance Pictures and pitched it to Sam and Rob.

The boys got behind the idea and convinced several
Evil Dead
investors to put up some cash -- some being roughly half the budget. In order to start filming, a lot more had to be raised.

I recruited David Goodman to help -- we were both still stinging from the
Brain
failure, and were determined to prove that raising money for an independent film could be done.

As we began the process of pounding the pavement again, I became grateful for all of those hours as a kid, glued to the TV watching
The Little Rascals.
Those kids put on a show of some sort nearly every episode and their fearlessness amazed me.

Darla: We need a stage curtain.

Spanky: No problem, my sister can sew.

Alfalfa: What about refreshments?

Froggy: I'll make lemonade!

I decided to adopt this hopelessly romantic attitude -- if we couldn't find cash, we'll just do without.

I fished out a Yellow Pages directory and began to make a series of palm-sweating cold calls. All I can say is:
God bless America.
The fact that merchants of every ilk actually bothered to hear our rambling sales pitches impressed me. Here we were, in a large metropolitan area during the cynical eighties, and folks were still willing to listen to a dreamer's tale.

Revelation #28e:
The secret to raising money is that there is no secret.

"Hello, sir, my name is Bruce Campbell, and I'm producing a film in this area. I was wondering if you'd be interested in a business opportunity..."

"Bruce. Look, I'm a busy guy. What do you mean?
Specifically."

"Uh, well, sir, we're wondering if you'd like to invest in the project."

"Why in the devil did you call me -- of all companies?"

"Well, sir, you have what we need," I said, my confidence building, "gasoline."

"Gas? For what?"

"For our cars and trucks, sir. We need to move our film crew around for about a month."

"All right, come on in and we'll talk about it..."

What followed was equally amazing: a deal for office supplies, catering, printing, film processing, lighting equipment, construction equipment, lumber, hardware, and paint. To the credit of these fellow entrepreneurs, all of these deals were made with a simple agreement of not more than a page and a half.

Goodman was busy hustling in his own right. He knew a wealthy crowd, and he knew where to find them.

Dave: I was pals with a lot of the parents who sent their kids to Camp Tamakwa, so I showed up on the day when all the kids got sent off. I was taking their luggage out of the trunks of the Cadillacs and Jaguars. I was schmoozing and throwing business cards into the trunks. I got two or three calls and eventually got one investment. You do what you have to do to get your movies made.

It was always a treat to watch Goodman race into my office and perform an impromptu victory dance. Whenever he did this, I knew he had snagged another investor.

Still, by the time shooting began, we were extremely cash poor -- the in-kind deals left us with very little hard currency in the bank. Ironically, it made negotiating very easy. When I told a crew member or agent or supplier that I didn't have that kind of money, I wasn't blowing smoke up their butt -- I really didn't have it.

The same principle even applied to director Josh Becker.

Josh: I just remember the first night of shooting where I had spent forty-five minutes setting up a shot, was just about to shoot it, and you walked out and went, "That's a wrap." I was like, "Oh but we just --" and you go, "No, no -- twelve hours is twelve hours. That's a wrap." I go, "Okay, I see how this works." You laid down the law.

Bruce: I did feel kind of cruel.

Josh: Look, you'd given your word to the crew. Once I realized that was the way it worked, that's the way it worked. But I was like, "You can't really mean this."

Fortunately, our ragged plan worked well enough to complete the film over the next year and a half and the investors got their money back -- plus a tiny morsel of profit.

'TIL DIVORCE DO US PART

The euphoric feeling that comes with true independence also has a price. All those months of making magic in Michigan were having another effect on the California home front -- a cold wind of alienation was blowing. Fueled by other follies over the years,
Lunatics
wound up being the straw that broke my wife's back.

My daughter Rebecca flew out to Michigan so she could drive back across the country with me. We had a great time taking pictures and writing a book about the experience, but when we got home, Halloween day, something was different about the place. Margarita, a woman who helped around the house, was there, but Cris wasn't.

I took Rebecca and my young son Andy trick-or-treating -- his dinosaur costume was a big hit with the neighbors. When we got home, Cris was still nowhere to be seen. I put the kids to bed and killed time by unpacking and watching television for a couple hours, but with each passing minute, my sense of dread intensified. It wasn't women's intuition, but I knew something was up -- Cris was never one to stay out late.

About 11:00 that night, she came home, but there were no hugs and kisses. Instead, Cris stayed on the other side of dark kitchen. "Hey, how you doing? Great to see you..."

"I've been thinking a lot about things and I'm not sure we want you back."

"Excuse me?"

Cris wasn't mean, but there was a resolve in her that I had only seen one other time, when she was giving birth to Rebecca, and I knew she wasn't bluffing.

"Is this open for discussion?"

Silently, she shook her head
no.
"How soon can you find a place to stay?"

Initially, this seemed out of the blue, but a year or so later I flashed upon an incident that should have sent up warning flares. I was taking a walk with Cris during a Fourth of July vacation -- she was weary of my excessive traveling and the inconsistency of our lives. I had no solution and could only offer, "I don't know what to tell you, kiddo. This is my life -- I'm not sure if it's ever gonna change. You may have to trade me in for a better model." I said it with a smile on my face, but Cris wasn't laughing.

There wasn't anything else I could say to change Cris's mind, but in the course of the next week, I certainly tried. With all sincerity, I offered to get out of the business entirely if it would keep things together, but it was too late -- Cris had truly lost all interest. In our six years of marriage, I was away from home for two of them and she saw no end in sight.

I'm happy to say that we managed to avoid damaging arguments in front of the kids, and those nasty custody battles -- we settled our divorce through the same lawyer. Cris wasn't after revenge, just a change of life.

There was one moment in the lawyer's office when I gave it a last stab. The lawyer had excused himself to get some documents and I looked over at Cris across the table.