Chasing Blue Hairs: On the Road With Bruce Campbell, Ernie & Emma

People die all the time in Bruce Campbell movies, whether it be from Deadites, maniac cops, or screaming brains. It’s part of what has made him such a huge icon for horror fans. And while he’s hoping they’ll come see his newest and most personal film, he’s also hoping for a new audience. “I want the blue hairs, man!”

Death is part of his newest film, but in a different fashion to his most famous films. Written, directed by, and starring Campbell and produced by his wife, Ida Gearon, Ernie & Emma is his most mature film to date – in the most literal sense. Campbell plays Ernie Tyler, a widower facing a life on his own after his wife dies. “Gimme 50 and up,” Campbell said. “Those are the people who will relate to this movie. I hope 18-year-olds come. Bring a date. But it is for people who’ve had experience.”

Campbell is bringing the film to Austin this weekend as part of what he calls the “Did I Say That Out Loud?” Tour. He has done national tours before, both to sign his memoirs and also for his one-man-show, Bruce-O-Rama. But taking a film out on a 17-city, 18-date tour is new for him, and the heart of it is that two-night stand in Austin. The overnight stop makes sense, since not only is the whole tour being hosted by the Alamo Drafthouse, but it was Drafthouse founder Tim League’s idea in the first place. Campell said, “I knew Tim League way back, and I went, ‘Hey, Tim, can I show you guys a movie? You might not take it, but lemme show it to you,’ and they were gracious enough to take it and I went, ‘Let’s do the Drafthouse tour,’ because I want to support them as much as someone wants to support me.”

Doing something new like this tour is a perfect fit for this project. After all, the story of Ernie & Emma is of a man trying to find himself after the death of his wife – much of it at her behest. However, unlike so many of Campbell’s films, there’s nothing supernatural at play. Before she died, Emma (voiced by Robin McAlpine) left a series of notes. In them, she instructs the newly widowed Ernie to carry out a series of tasks at locations connected to their time together and, in doing so, find a way to start the next stage of his life. “It’s an adult movie, minus the sex,” Campbell deadpanned.

“I’m just really tired of watching movies that have no basis in reality whatsoever,” he added. “I’ve been in Marvel movies, I’ve been in all kinds of stuff that was fantasy and sci-fi or horror, and it’s like, ‘OK, yeah, great.’ But now, at my age, I’m just not interested in that stuff and it’s hard to convey to filmmakers when I pass on a project. Because sometimes they’ll offer more if you just say no, and I’m like, ‘No, you don’t understand. I’m actually just not interested.’”

Rather than just retreat from the industry completely, he ultimately had the best inspiration to finally make the kind of movie that he wanted to make. “My wife was tired of me complaining.”

Campbell called Ernie “a has-been. He drives an ’03 Continental because that’s when life was good, which was about 20 years ago. … He’s like a lot of guys my age. They throw in the towel.”

He’s also very much based on real people in Campbell’s life and their experiences, like a friend who suffered a life-changing tragedy, and his own father. There’s also more than a little bit of Campbell himself in Ernie. To all the locals, Ernie’s “the Pear Guy” from all his years on TV shilling pears for the Laurel and Davis pear packing company. That identity has kind of subsumed his own, in the same way that Campbell will always be Ash from the Evil Dead films. It doesn’t matter that he has a long career as a voice actor for cartoons, or a six-season run as a wise-cracking CIA officer in Burn Notice, or even had his own character arc in Homicide: Life on the Street, or that this is actually his fourth film as a director, and one of those, 2004’s A Community Speaks, was actually a documentary about land management in Oregon. Being “the Evil Dead guy” is something that Campbell admits he has had to come to terms with. Now, he said, “I’m fine with whatever perception people have of me because it put my kids through college.”

Yet being pigeonholed like that can be limiting, both creatively and career-wise. Take Ernie & Emma: “If this was made by a studio, I wouldn’t have the part. Paul Giamatti would have the part.” So making the film himself “just cut to the chase. I know what I’m capable of as a filmmaker and an actor and it just gets to the point where you go, ‘I don’t want to sit on someone else’s set where they know less than me.’”

In many ways, the production sent him back to his earliest filmmaking roots. While it’s a million miles from the first Evil Dead, it’s also the first time since then that he’s experienced that same level of filmmaking independence. Back then, “we got money from doctors and lawyers in Detroit, and the legal documents said they had nothing to do with the making of the movie, and as a result Sam Raimi had one cut. It’s his cut. We didn’t change the name of the movie. It’s our title. We didn’t have to touch that movie, good or bad. And ever since that time there’s been a studio entity between us and the art, and why is there a surprise? Universal’s been making movies for a hundred years. They know how they make movies. They wanna make movies the way they make them, not the way you make movies. They’ll let you make a movie within their system, but you’re on a conveyor belt, which is great. I’ve worked for Universal a bunch over the years, but it was time to do my own thing.”

Ernie & Emma almost had something else in common with Evil Dead, as Campbell originally planned to shoot back in Detroit. Instead, he shot it around his home in Oregon after Gearon asked him, “‘Don’t you want to sleep in your own bed?’ So, we shot it in my valley, within probably a 45-minute radius of my own home. And that never happens with me. I’ve shot movies in Bulgaria and Bogatá, Colombia, and I’m good, man.”

Not only did this mean he got to sleep in his own bed and location scout places he knew, but shooting in Oregon meant a certain authenticity and individuality that films trying to pass Toronto or Sofia as an American city can never manage. “I encourage any filmmaker. If you live in Buttcrack, Kansas, stay where you are. Shoot a cool story in Buttcrack, Kansas, because nobody else has.”

Of course, getting to stay home to make the film has now turned into hitting the road to screen it, and his plans don’t stop at the current Drafthouse tour. Wherever there is a blue hair with some real lived experience who wants to see this movie, Campbell wants to be there. “I actually want to do a retirement home tour for this movie. I want to go to the Villages in Florida.”

Ernie & Emma screens at Alamo Slaughter Lane (Oct. 9) and Alamo Drafthouse Lakeline (Oct. 10) with Bruce Campbell in attendance for a special Q&A for select screenings. Tickets and info at drafthouse.com. For more on the film, including future screening dates, visit ernieandemma.com.

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