If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor (56 page)

"How's that ice in your 'A' feel, Montana?"

"The ice in my 'A' feels really cold!" she replied innocently. "It's almost all the way in..."

"Do we need to stand back? I mean, is this gonna come out of your 'A' with any force?"

"Hard... to... say..." Montana responded, obviously straining at the effort. "This cube in my 'A' is a little larger than normal..."

That's when I slapped a hand over my mouth.
Oh... my... God,
I thought.
This is it -- she's really gonna shoot that thing out her 'A'!

Montana stopped giggling, hunkered down, and
squeezed.
The resulting ejection made a noise that would be best described by saying the word "sport." Let me just go on record, folks -- it was not spectacular. Still, I'm sure the millions who checked out the Web site were not disappointed -- Montana gave it her best shot, she was a real pro!

To wrap up our session together Montana jumped into my arms and we got a lovely portrait together: two dedicated artists, working hard to improve the quality of life for all mankind.

THE VENUES

You may not be aware of this, but books have ratings just like TV shows. Although there are countless thousands of booksellers in the U.S., both independant and chains, only specific ones are known as "reporting" stores, meaning they are important enough, based on marketing criteria, to report sales to the publishing world.

The most famous reference for how well books perform is the
New York Times
bestseller list. It's a compilation, generated weekly, based on data gathered from these "reporting" stores. As an author, I was encouraged to sign in as many of these stores as would have us, knowing that if we did well, word would spread quickly.

To give balance, St. Martin's Press and I agreed that it was important to acknowledge and appreciate the little guys, so we added a good mix of independant and university bookstores to our tour. I was told, by more than one small bookstore owner, that a single good event could help them turn a failing month around.

This is a big country, with a huge variety of tastes, and nothing showcases them more than bookstores. The venues were all over the map, and not just geographically, but stylistically as well. The variety of bookstores seemed endless -- from chains, where you couldn't tell them apart, to family-owned stores in New England where you'd expect to see Bob Newhart walk in any second.

Movie theaters turned out to be perfectly good places to hold signing events, particularly since the book has a movie theme. The fringe benefit of holding them in theaters was that I could sneak in the occasional showing of
Fanalysis,
a documentary I recently completed about "fandom." It also didn't hurt that the
Evil Dead
films were enjoying a limited theatrical re-release.

I signed books outside brand-new multiplexes, in the musty lobby of a theater chain past its prime, and on the stage of vintage theaters like The Tampa, built in 1912 for vaudeville performances.

To my amazement, this theater, smack-dab in the middle of a depressed downtown, was one of the most ornate buildings I had ever seen -- enough so as to rival the great Fox movie palaces in Detroit and St. Louis. The ceiling of the theater was painted like a sky, and "stars" twinkled after the houselights went out. The outline of an entire European village stretched above the proscenium, perfectly backlit, as though the sun had just set.

The theater had been through its dark days, of course, nearly facing demolition in the late 1970s after showing Kung Fu double features for a decade. Recently, it had received several facelifts, including a gloriously modern sound system. There are few joys grander for an actor than to be on a legitimate stage, in a beautifully restored auditorium, rich with history, and field questions like, "Will there be an
Evil Dead IV?"

A fair share of venues can't be as easily classified. A groovy place in Austin, Texas, is the Alamo Draft House, where they show movies, but they also serve alcohol and bar food in a beer hall atmosphere. I also signed books at science fiction conventions, comic book stores, video stores, several churches, which always brought a different flavor to the
Evil Dead
questions, college auditoriums, malls (including the third largest in America), Virgin Megastores, and even an Internet salon.

Often, apart from all the hoopla, the most important signings took place in dull warehouses, far from any crowd, in strategic cities across the country. These were the "stock signings." A prevailing theory is that signed books "in stock" have a better chance of selling. Most authors are happy to pitch in, because a signed book can't be returned to the publisher. Naturally, I was eager to help and autographed copies until my left hand seized up.

A signing that became the most significant, after the fact, took place on my birthday, June 22, at 5 World Trade Center -- on the mezzanine level. In a sad irony, my most vivid memories of the World Trade Center were nothing but pleasant. The Borders employees had done this type of thing a million times, and ran the operation like a Swiss watch. Even amid the chaos, they had the presence of mind to present me with a birthday cake, candles and all. After September 11, I'll certainly think twice every time my birthday rolls around.

I'LL BE SEEING YOU IN ALL THE UNFAMILIAR PLACES...

One of the highlights of a book tour, or any road trip, is seeing old friends and family. The kickoff at the original Borders Books in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was an ideal situation -- the crowd was stacked to the hilt with friends and family.

Brother Mike showed up with his clan. Brother Don, still the soldier, was pulling weekend duty in Butt Crack, Wisconsin, or some such place. "Charles the Aged" was there, aka my dad, Charlie, and I think it was particularly fun for him. Being a University of Michigan graduate, Ann Arbor represented many fond memories.

Once the signing began, familiar faces from the past began to appear at an astonishing rate. I looked up from a book to see a tall man, about my age, gently rocking back and forth. His arms were outstretched in friendly recognition.

"Huh? Huh?" he said with a grin.

I squinted at him.
Why is he rocking back and forth like that?
Then it hit me. He's rocking like that because he's Bob Rasmussen, and he's doing the Rasmussen shuffle! I'm referring to a nervous habit Bob had when he delivered his lines onstage in high school -- a subtle, but incessant rocking.

"Bob, you old rascal! How the heck are you?"
Whoo,
I thought.
I remembered this time, but how long can I keep it up?

That's when Maureen showed up -- Maureen from
waaay
back -- Maureen from photo shoots with Mike Ditz who always happened to put us in the same shot. Funny how that worked, funny how Mike could pair us so specifically, so often. That's why Mike is my friend.

Maureen was not alone when she showed up looking so dazzling at the signing -- she was with three of her
four
kids. For some reason, the twenty-four-year lapse since our last photo shoot seemed like a mistake.

"Twenty-four years ago? No. I saw you more recently than that," I said, sounding convincing.

"You did not," Maureen said, looking at me the way she used to when I said something stupid in front of her -- which was usually whenever I was in front of her. Still, it was great to see her, as well as another surprise visitor, Ellen Sandweiss, one of the starlets of
Evil Dead
and a good pal.

Before I could write "Ellen, where's the five bucks you owe me?" in her book, Sam Raimi's folks showed up -- Mr. and Mrs. (I still can't call them Larry and Celia) Raimi, and Sam's sister, Andrea. As Mrs. Raimi approached the table, she lowered her sunglasses and squinted at me in that knowing way.

"This book better make money," she said without cracking a smile.

Mrs. Raimi always had a way of wishing you well by making it sound like a threat -- and God bless her for it. In our darkest days of making the first
Evil Dead,
she was always surreptitiously slipping us money behind Leonard's back, winking, and encouraging us, no,
threatening
us to press on.

I don't see Scott Tyler, Lisa Davis, or her brother Steve very often these days, but in the early seventies, we traveled in a tight pack. When Brother Don mentioned their names again, in context with a hometown lunch together, I jumped at the chance.

It was amazing to see how, in some ways, old friends never change, but I was startled to see how much they each, in their own way, resembled a parent or sibling. In Scott Tyler's case, he was a dead ringer for his older brother Brian. Steve Davis sounded just like his father, and his sister Lisa, who was quite the neighborhood hottie, looked a lot like her mom -- which is not an insult.

Before I left town, I got a call from Toni Wilen. In the book, I longingly described this high school girl's enigmatic beauty. Apparently, it was pronounced enough to be brought to her attention, so we laughed and talked for several minutes about her current life as a married woman with a good job at a law firm. As the conversation wrapped up, Toni's tone changed significantly. She lowered her voice and spoke in more of a whisper. "Bruce, look, before you go, I have to tell you one thing..." I must admit, I imagined a response that would have suited me twenty-six years ago, like, "Bruce, I've always had a secret crush on you," or some equally flattering remark. But what I heard was:

"You spelled my name wrong in the book. It's not W-y-l-e-n, it's W-i-l-e-n."

When you cover a country as big as the United States, you're bound to bump into people in the least likely places. I was signing books in a small Oregon town and I glanced up from the table to see Toby McGuire and Kirsten Dunst, the lead actors from Sam Raimi's
Spider-Man
film. Not wanting to make a ruckus in front of the crowd, I lowered my voice.

"Hey, you guys? What the hell are you doing here?"

"I've got relatives around here," Toby said. "We were visiting, and happened to see the sign out front. Good crowd."