His Name Is Bruce Campbell

I've got a bunch of heroes. Martin Scorsese. John Frankenheimer. Shane Black. But there are heroes that don't always resonate with the public. Like Bruce Campbell. He is "Ash" from the "Evil Dead" trilogy.

Recently, my brother text messaged me with great excitement. Most text messages are generally ambiguous, but when it comes to my brother, I can tell. Especially when it comes to something like meeting Bruce Campbell.

So, my brother texts me and tells me, "I'm going to meet Bruce Campbell." I'm in Texas; he's in Buffalo. I'm just as excited as he is.

A few days later, he calls me and tells me all about the book signing and his long conversation with Bruce. I say long because my kid brother, my blood, got me three different books, all autographed by Bruce. And during this time of signing, he had a very cool conversation with him.

I'm not gonna go into the whole thing here, but I will say this. During the conversation, Bruce shared something with him which he prefaced with, "Here's some trivia.."

Apparently, Bruce was persuaded to write his first book, "If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor" by the "PC Guy" from the current Apple advertisements. The "PC Guy" is named John Hodgman and according to Bruce, was the reason for his first novel. Hodgman is a published author (Areas of My Expertise) and a contributor to both the New York Times Magazine and the Daily Show w/John Stewart. How's that for interesting. My brother also mentioned that he worked for Apple. Bruce followed that up with a comment about how he knew all these movie makers, since he was in the "business", and he was the only "idiot" still using a PC.

From the entire conversation, Bruce Campbell sounded just like I'd always hoped he'd be like. What's more, this was his first book signing tour and he still managed to take pictures and sign things that weren't his book. He is and will continue to be one of my heroes and inspirations.

-30-

A Julian Cordero Film

What's my next move? Good question.

I was talking to my wife this weekend about my next project. I'm rather torn, but I have so many ideas that I'm not sure what would merit the most attention.

I want to do a shoot 'em up flick, but I hesitate in writing it out. That's ultimately what I'll do in my first feature length film; I'm not sure if I'm ready right this minute for that.

I definitely want to do something contemporary and not too brainy. I thought about doing that introspective, heartbreak short I was going to shoot in Arkansas. That was something I was feeling at the time and I'm just not feeling that now. Not to say that I have to feel it. It's just too... boring.

My son, Terrance, pitched me an idea about a movie with superheroes. That sounds intriguing. My wife would love me to do a trilogy of shorts where I adapt my planned feature trilogy about relationships and the weirdness that men do... Did that make any sense? It's about relationships, about men, about drinking... about life.

I've been thinking about it more and more and more and more and I'm leaning towards starting the trilogy as shorts, to see if it can be done. This will ultimately show me whether I can fully develop each film in feature length.

But that idea about superheroes can be done in soooo many ways.

There are just too many things. And that makes me smile. Why? Because it tells me that I'm not going to get caught in a rut and just do movies about the same thing. I have westerns and actions films and period pieces and documentaries all trapped in my skull. I just gotta let them out carefully.

I recently joined two groups at Meetup.com:
San Antonio Actors Meetup Group
and The San Antonio Indie Film Meetup Group

Networking, at this level, has a lot of benefits. Although I've noticed that a lot of the other groups in town trash talk and bad mouth. You'd think that maybe you'd want to make as many allies as you could in case you need crew or actors or anything that might help you sharpen your skills.

Granted, if you don't like someone or you don't work well with them, there's no reason to work with them.

I don't know. Maybe that's the idealist in my still lingering about somewhere.

I'm gonna hammer out Part 1 of The Trilogy this Friday. I have high hopes for this one. I hope I can live up to them.

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