The Bruce Campbell Watch 2009

[Brian Damage]

There comes a time to pick a celebrity to follow, to trumpet, to hold up for public consumption, for no better reason than you want the world to care about that person as much as you do.

For me, that time was 1998, when I launched the Bruce Campbell Watch in the pages of Time Out New York magazine. Why Bruce Campbell? To quote myself: “With a huge arsenal of B movies and a recurring role on ratings-grabbers Xena and Hercules, Campbell has attracted the same kind of cult following usually generated by household names like Duchovny, Shatner and Auberjonois. And with this new monthly feature, New Yorkers will learn what so many already know: that Bruce is the hardest-working, best-looking Detroit-born actor ever to command a cult following by replacing his own hand with a chainsaw.”

The project, such that it was, came about due to a series of conversations with otherwise intelligent people who had no inkling who this gem of an actor really was — and not at all because John Hodgman, then Campbell’s literary agent, dared me to do it. Imagine, though, never having seen him in Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead film franchise! Or on Fox’s 1993-94 sci-fi western The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr! And so, I listed all the Campbell-related shows and movies that would be airing on television every month, and each time, the man himself lended a final, Campbellian thought to the endeavor.

Primarily because my editors said so — repeatedly, and sometimes by threat of force — the Bruce Campbell Watch had to die. But it has been rewarding to see Campbell expand on his 1998 promise and cross over in a legitimate way into the mainstream. He wrote the 2001 New York Times best-selling memoir, If Chins Could Kill. He starred in the 2002 Elvis-at-a-nursing-home indie sleeper Bubba Ho-Tep. He had memorable cameos in all three of Raimi’s Spider-Man movies. He hammed it up in those Old Spice ads. And now, he steals scenes as second banana Sam Axe on cable TV’s top-rated show, Burn Notice (which wraps up its summer season tonight). It’s obvious that Bruce Campbell no longer needs the Bruce Campbell Watch, if he ever even did.

Sounds like the perfect time to re-launch the project. In Web 2.0 no less.

http://trueslant.com/johnsellers/200...ll-watch-2009/