Bruce Campbell Book Signing

Last week, Saturday, September 23rd, in Santa Barbara, at Metro Entertainment, Bruce Campbell sat to sign books, pictures, and other paraphernalia. The line was both surprisingly and unsurprisingly long. [Surprisingly long since he is a self-proclaimed B-movie actor, and unsurprisingly long as he's a VERY GOOD self-proclaimed B-movie actor.] The line had somewhere between 175 and 200 fans of the B-movie actor in it. I managed to get to be #120.

Bruce was only signing for 2 hours, and thankfully had a known rate of 100 people/signatures per hour.

Here's a picture of my fellow Bruce Campbell obsessed fans.



The lady on the right dragged one of her daughters to the book signing. She also confessed to having forced her daughters to watch everything that has Bruce Campbell in it. She has the DVD set of The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. She has seen all of his Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys episodes where he plays the character Autolycus, i.e., the Prince of Thieves. She went on and on about how he is at his best when he is playing against himself.

In the movie "Army of Darkness", Bruce plays the reluctant hero Ash. There are scenes where Bruce is the only actor on screen, but he's playing opposite himself... sometimes multiple versions of himself. She mentioned those scenes in particular, and I had to agree with her that those scenes were priceless.

In one of those aforementioned scenes, Ash is fighting with an evil incarnation of himself. He shoots the evil incarnation in an act reminiscent of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Harrison Ford kills the swordsman with the gun rather than duel him. Then Bruce blows the smoke from the end of his shotgun and says, "Good Ash, bad Ash, I'm the one with the gun." ;)

Here's a picture of myself in line, with 2nd book ready for a signature.



His first book was quite good. It was called "If Chins Could Kill". His could. ;) Here's a picture of the two of us, with him graciously smiling for the camera.



I intended to get my copy of "If Chins Could Kill" signed by him, but I couldn't find it. My helpful husband suggested I simply have him sign my boobs! Whereupon I explained, as graciously as possible, "I like Bruce Campbell, but I don't like him in that way!"

I'm sure that's just what a tired B-movie actor needed just then... a computer geek exposing her cleavage in hopes of a permanent marker signature being placed thereon. And having that deranged look on her face that would suggest to him that I intended to "never wash that boob again". ;)

Anyway, I "settled" for purchasing his new book, and having that signed. Much less dramatic than a boob-signing, but I think he'd prefer he not have too many horror stories to tell his wife and kiddies once he's done with this book signing tour!

Bruce was very funny in person. Unfortunately, I was doing a little of the "deer caught in headlights" thing, and so kept responding in very literal-minded, deadpan fashion. This would have been good if we were working comedically together, but since I was in fact the audience...

Our conversation went something like this:

BRUCE: What's happening?

I shook his hand.

SNOOPY: Nothing much. Uhm, can you make it out to husband's-name and my-name. I'm my-name.

BRUCE: So where is this husband slacker of yours? Why isn't he here?

SNOOPY: He had to work.

BRUCE: So, what do you do?

SNOOPY: I'm a computer programmer.

BRUCE: Yeah, well, those computers do need to be programmed.

SNOOPY: Yeah...

I think I told him thank you and said goodbye. I think.

I had all these wonderful, brilliant, witty conversations with him... in my head, before I got there. I had wanted to tell him that I loved his work. And teasingly say that my husband and I are his B-fans, i.e., he's a B-grade actor, we're B-grade fans... yeah, yeah, I know, very dorky. But hey, as I said, I'm a B-grade fan. ;)