Free If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor by Bruce Campbell Page B

otherwise be leaked to inquiring minds: So-and-so wears little purple Speedos, so-and-so's T-shirts have armpit stains, so-and-so has really smelly socks!
    As Tom and I became more comfortable with one another, I gathered the courage to invite him to a Super-8 marathon at our condo. Scott, Sam, and Matt Taylor were in town and we were all eager to show our stuff to a "professional." To my amazement, he agreed. What was an eighteen-year-old p unk to think as this man spent the night with us, laughing his famous ass off at our films? -- my diary answers that:

    As an asterisk to that story, this kind man later sent us five hundred dollars toward furthering our Super-8 career.
    The occasional role would crop up in the main theater that could be filled by a younger person and the apprentices provided the talent pool. For some unknown reason, my audition for a speaking role had to be in the form of a song. I couldn't hit a note if there were a gun to my head, but I had already learned the words to the hopelessly daffy, Love. Chris Lemmon, classically trained in piano, provided the accompaniment. What I wouldn't pay for a video of that performance.
    The audition ultimately led to a speaking role in Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys. I was the voice of a TV director and threw my lines from a side booth. Not quite on stage, but it was fine by me because, technically, it was my first "professional" job.
    Lunch was often spent at the local diner, Stacy's. The food wasn't so remarkable, but the style of management was. As I sat eating a gravy-drowned turkey sandwich, I couldn't help but notice local businessmen lined up at the cash register -- they weren't waiting to be cashed out, they were doing it themselves. I asked the waitress what that was all about. Very casually, she explained that at Stacy's, you cash yourself out.
    "Come on up after you eat, sweetie, and I'll show you how."
    The lease on our condo ended before the season did, so the last week of work I resided in what could only be called a flophouse. One night, while watching The Sand Pebbles in the lobby of the "hotel," I was asked to vacate my seat -- they had rented out the couch to an elderly transient and he was ready for bed.
    This period in my life was an intense mixture of fantasy and hyper reality -- sort of a jump-start to adulthood. In a footnote to all of this, I ran into several of the "stars" years later.
    Tom Smothers was waiting for a car at the Detroit airport.
    Bruce: Howdy, Tom! Bruce Campbell. Hey, you remember that summer of 1976?
    Tom: Uh, no, not really.
    Bruce: In Traverse City... I was your dresser and we showed you those wacky films of ours?
    Tom's blank look told the whole story. Clearly, his gig in Traverse City was one of many that year.
    Doug, the Western star, had the same nonreaction when I collared him after a screening in Hollywood. The summer may not have been a memorable one for them, but it certainly was for me.

7
    "COLLEGE SCHMOLLEGE"
    SIX MONTHS IN LIMBO
    The person who dragged himself to college that fall was a changed man.
    Three months in a dark theater left me pale, rail-thin and convinced that this was the life for me, and this damnable "college" thing seemed like a traffic jam on my road to the big "H."
    I was so busy over the summer that I wasn't able to register for college classes at Western Michigan University. In a panic, I begged my cousin Nancy to do it for me since she already lived in the college town of Kalamazoo.

    "Just sign me up for a bunch of theater stuff," I told her over the phone from Traverse City. I ended up with four classes -- all but one related to the theater.
    My dorm was Draper Hall. Some clever frat boy had removed a few key letters from the building and it became Raper Hal. As a starving, ex-apprentice struggling to get back to his fighting weight, this was the right place to be -- though not known for its selection of stunning coeds, Hal boasted the best food on campus.
    The dorm also housed a fine array