Bruce Campbell at the Tivoli
So I went to the Tivoli on thursday evening to see Bruce Campbell. He was almost exactly how I expected him to be. An amusing, witty jackass that knows he’s famous, but knows it doesn’t really make him all that. He talked about 15 or 20 minutes before showing his directorial debut, a movie set in bulgaria about gypsies, russian cab drivers with bling-bling, robots, frankenstein, Bruce Campbell doing a strange approximation of John Cleese, and random associated hijinks.
Just in case it isn’t clear, the movie was very low budget, silly and strange.
I don’t think I would necessarily sit through it again. It was pretty amusing to watch though, perhaps mostly since we had been warned by Mr Campbell at the beginning of the show, that we shouldn’t complement him on the movie until we actually saw it, as we might want our money back. He also warned that it had been funded by the Sci-Fi channel.
Most of his time talking before the show was spent answering questions from the audience about the movie, and random other things. I’m not entirely sure why but a number of the people asking questions were total morons. An opinion Mr. Campbell seemed to share, as he informed them as such. A choice example was a question asking if Mr Campbell was aware of an article that the questioner had read somewhere that suggested that due to the number of cameos and evil dead movies, Mr. Campbell’s face was more recognizable then any movie star.
To which Mr. Campbell responded by deriscively asking the questioner where he had read such an obviously false statement, and suggested that the internet might have been to blame for such a rediculous claim. Another great response was for the questioner who asked why Toby Maguire was chosen for the role of Spiderman, to which Mr. Campbell asked the questioner why they were asking him over the actual director of Spiderman, Sam Raimi. On the subject of when Evil Dead 4 might happen Mr. Campbell suggested it would require Mr. Raimi to stop making so much money from said Spiderman movies. However he did respond to one woman thanking him for being such an amusing character, that always brought a smile to peoples faces when he was onscreen, he promptly pulled $20 dollars out of his pocket and gave it to her on the spot.
His adlibbing on screen seems to be about how he generally deals with an audience in person. While we were all waiting outside to enter the theater, he passed by with the owner of Blueberry Hill, and gruffly asked everyone what the hell we were all standing in line for before anyone noticed him.
He wound up the talk by pointing out that this summer was full of B-movies masqueraded as A-list movies, and thanked the Tivoli and it’s attendees for supporting independent theater.
Definitely an amusing evening. If anyone else gets a chance to see him in any of the other 40 cities he is touring through, I would definitely suggest it. Assuming of course you know who he is in the first place.
