If Chins Could Kill

The name Bruce Campbell should be familiar to any fan of Xena or Hercules. Most familiar, perhaps, for playing the roguish Autolycus, Bruce is a long time friend of executive producer Rob Tapert, and his Renaissance Pictures partner Sam Raimi.

In the summer of 2001, Bruce released his autobiography, entitled If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor. It chronicles the story of a young man from the suburbs of Detroit, and his involvement with the dark powers of Hollywood.

My wife bought this book for me, and I devoured it in two sittings (the second being an all-night marathon session). It is a tremendous joy to read, and I recommend it to anybody who is a fan of Bruce Campbell, as well as anybody who is interested in what it's like to be a working actor in the business today.

In this book, I learned about the formation of the "Detroit Mafia" -- a group of teenagers bound together by a love for film, and a strange sense of humor. They exposed miles of Super-8 film making home movies, developing their own technique by the seat of their pants.

I discovered a strange habit of director Sam Raimi, and learned of Bruce's quest to destroy "the classic." It seems that Sam's 1973 Delta Royale has been used in a lot of films. The car was used in the Evil Dead trilogy, and has been used in several movies over the years -- up to and including Sam's recent work For Love of the Game, The Gift, and Spider Man.

The book focuses quite a bit on the early years -- several chapters are devoted to the making and marketing of the original Evil Dead. Fans of that film series will no doubt find this fascinating -- but other readers will enjoy this story as well because Bruce writes with a conversational style that really draws you in. (The tone is reminiscent of his short essays available through his website, www.bruce-campbell.com).

In addition to Bruce's engaging style, the book is full of mini-interviews with Sam, Rob, Josh, and other friends "in the biz". Photos (with humorous captions) appear on nearly every page, and the trivia (and embarrassing stories) will leave you chuckling for hours.

For fans looking for the skinny on the shows Hercules and Xena, there are a couple of chapters at the end about Bruce's involvement with the shows (focusing on two major events -- his first directing gig, and the finale of Hercules). But fans looking to this book for insider views of those shows will probably find themselves disappointed.

In fact, there is one almost glaring omission -- the series Jack of All Trades. It's mentioned once, in the biographical blurb inside the book jacket. This isn't surprising, however, because much of this book was written before his work on that series. It still would have been nice to have a chapter or two about that show.

Still, I highly recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of Bruce Campbell (even those who aren't fans of Bruce Campbell, because you're sure to be a fan by the end of this book). It is an engaging, witty, and honest tale.

This excerpt from the introduction, perhaps, sums it up best:

So, another actor writes a book about his glamorous, whirlwind life. Personally, as an ex-Detroiter, that crap bores me to tears. I've always been more interested in the working stiffs of Hollywood, ninety-nine percent of whom are overlooked in those phony, "tell all" books. For every Bruce Willis and Steven Spielberg, there are a hundred no-name slobs scraping out a living in a shockingly difficult profession.

Therefore, this is not a memoir about what I said to so-and-so at the Beverly Hills Hotel. It's also not about an actor's "meteoric" rise or "tragic" fall. Rather, this book is dedicated to the players on the second string, the B people, if you will, and I cheerfully include myself in that lot.

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