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Salon Interviews Bruce Campbell
vonpookie writes "Salon has posted an interview with Bruce Campbell on the subject of his new book Make Love The Bruce Campbell Way, as well as on Tom Cruise, his career, and the realities of the movie biz." From the interview: "Q:Seriously. There was a hilarious interview with Cruise and Spielberg in Der Spiegel recently, reporting that there was a Scientology tent on the set of War of the Worlds, because in between shots Tom wanted to help people kick drugs and alcohol. A: I can believe that. That's fine; it's sort of a way of life for Tom. It's not really a charity. It's more like his religion. Q: He's got a reputation for it! A: Yeah, he's got a reputation for helping people. But my feeling is, 'Shut up and act.'"
This is news for nerds... Ok... Film nerds, but still nerds.
Just because your particular brand of nerd-dom doesn't care about Bruce Campbell doesn't mean the rest of us are indifferent... I hope!
"Good, Bad, I'm the guy with the gun."
Would you even be asking this question if it were an article about Harrison Ford's latest book?
Bruce Campbell is a cult film actor. Cult films are generally appreciated by Nerds. This is so because of the often campy, but entertaining, material of the cult films.
In a related subject, Nerds are known to "Geek out" when they see a cult film actor, such as Bruce Campbell, in major films.
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I'm not a horror film fan, but I very much enjoyed Campbells Brisco County Jr. He reminded me of Clint Walker but not quite taking anything seriously. It was a great series.
When the hell did /. turn into a celebrity gossip site? News for nerds? Really?
/. is not a programmer. Some of us nerds have interests and skills beyond pure technology, Linux, and programming.
Everyone that reads
You obviously don't know who Bruce Campbell is.
I'll give you a hint: He's Ash. The Ash.
If you still haven't got it, you're not a nerd, and you are excused.
1. Salon is the only remaining indepdendent online news site with actual journalists that I know of.
2. They don't require payment, they require payment or sitting through an ad. If you can't be bothered to watch an ad, then they can't be bothered to waste bandwidth on you. Seems fair enough.
3. Their political commentary is completely irrelevant in this context.
"because in between shots Tom wanted to help people kick drugs and alcohol. "
translates:
"because in between shots Tom wanted to help people convert over from drugs and alcohol to scientology."
I see a lot of "who the hell is Bruce Campbell?" posts and I'd like to make a few points -
Really? Where? Look through this article, and you'll see just about every post extolling his movies. I understand you wanted to write a post about Campbell, but don't pretend he's unknown around these parts!
For the record, a friend of mine went to high school with Raimi and Campbell, and still has a copy of a movie they made back then - using his mother's car and running around the campus at Cranbrook (a private school in the Detroit burbs). The plot was basically about the President being kidnapped - back then, he didn't have the CGI available to have Spiderman lend a hand...
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I'm noticing a disturbing trend here.
One of the reasons I joined Slashdot in the first place (in late 1997) was the wide variety of geek-like interests that CmdrTaco and Hemos held -- from Linux / BSD / UNIX, to Perl, free sw / open source, Python, C, or Java programming, to gaming, to crackers/pirates, to Jon Katz's sometimes-interesting rants on culture, to cult movies, to casemods, to online rights, and a curious & growing interest in Apple (Jobs had just rejoined), etc.
But now there seems to be a lot of geeks that have a real track mind. They don't know classic cult TV or movie heros. They bitch about music / musicians because they're not a kernel mod. They hate TV or movie news (Battlestar sucks, Firefly sucks, Buffy/Angel sucked, Babylon 5 sucked, etc. --- What do you watch, The Weather Channel?).
Basically, all they want to talk shop! It's all about is Linux, or FOSS license pro/cons, or how Apache, MySQL, perl, etc. will somehow create a New Geek World Order.
What happened to the renaissance geek? Where's the passion for the obscure and beautiful, no matter the subject area?
-Stu
When it comes to being a geek, Bruce Campbell DOES matter. He is brilliant, quirky, hilarious and has produced some of our collectively favorite movies as well as a couple very honest, sincere, well-written books.
I've had the pleasure of meeting the man in real life (he lives in Medford, Oregon) and though I've met a long of noteworthy people, none have been so charming and friendly and unrushed as he was. Bruce Campbell may not be a Tom Cruise, but he has a viewpoint and a way of looking at the entertainment business that would benefit most of today's "hot stars/starlets" to adopt.
Buckaroo Bonzai, Adventures of Brisco County Junior, Evil Dead series... HELLO?! He makes nothing BUT geek films. This is incredibly on-topic for Slashdot. A-fucking-men.
Tom Cruise is a freaking nut job.
He completely attacked and condemned Brook Shields for her choice of publicizing her experiences.
He is a hypocrite for having the nerve to attack someone for their own belief in their experiences when he isn't able to not blather on endlessly about his own.
He isn't honest or sincere when he claims to be helping people. His exchange of addictions to drugs for addictions to crackpot religions is completely offensive. His personal resentment for "pseudo-science" is based purely on the fact that they told him that he was hyperactive and had behavioral issues when he was a child.
There is one main reason that WotW did so well, the scientologists all went to see it , in order to support Tom and thereby support their own income they went, probably multiple times to make it seem to everybody else like it was a worthwhile movie, rather than some remake POS. Don't try to suggest that an organization with the money that the scientologists have didn't have a direct effect on the amount of money that Tom's POS movie made.
Bruce, on the other hand, hasn't really turned the world on it's ear since Army of Darkness. It was that single brilliant movie filmed 20 years ago (give or take - too lazy to find out exactly when) that strangely continues to buoy him to B-list celebrity status.
Go watch Bubba Ho-Tep and try telling me that again.
Comment of the year
All religions and philosophies expect a person
to be willing to examine and modify thier lifestyle in
order to achieve some higher level of enlightenment.
But most religions do not expect you to pay your
way to paradise in cash. Or to have to pay to
gain the teachings of the faithful.
In fact, much like Open Source, most religions
are perfectly happy with giving away their
teachings to anyone interested in learning more.
Also like Open Source, it can be open for abuse by
those who do not accurately apply what they have learned,
or attempt to modify what is available in less beneficial
ways.
Not all distributions of Religion expect you to act,
Love, or Hate in the same way. Some want you to
abide by thier CodeBase, and reject strange and
unusual package management tools. Others allow
you to roll your own, and encourage the expression
of ideas and exploration into new areas of application.
And some are based on a foundation of mutual trust
and respect, with the goal of being totally free and
beneficial to all who come to build on the community.
Blindly challenging everything is not belief, it is a
lack of Scientific Detachment.