Why am I reporting all of this? Because a pretty funny thing happened to Scott and Chris Saturday night as they waited to see a remastered print of The Evil Dead.
Here's how Chris recounts his cult horror claim to fame: "Scott and I sat in the front row at the old Pickwick Theatre - as an older moviehouse, there wasn't a lot of legroom anywhere else. After the screening of Bruce Campbell's new movie, Bubba Ho-Tep, we waited for the showing of Evil Dead. Campbell was joined by the three actresses from the movie, and the four of them announced that, since they've heard so many complaints about the quality of their acting in the original, they were going to read the script here to demonstrate how much their talents have advanced since 1979.
Evil Dead fanatics began to jump out of their chairs for the opportunity to read for "Scott" - the only actor not present at the screening. The woman who played Shelly pointed directly at Scott (not knowing he had the same name as the character he was to play) and said she wanted him to come up on stage and read the part. But Scott - less afraid of the undead than of public speaking - declined and slunk down in his chair. As I was nudging him to go up and fulfill his Evil Dead destiny, "Shelly" pointed at me and asked if I would try it. Never passing up an opportunity to be the center of attention, I got up and went onstage.
As the cast outfitted me in a vintage flannel shirt, I started to have second thoughts. Some in the audience had seen the movie 25 times. Up until 48 hours ago, I didn't even know who Bruce Campbell was. So I leaned over and whispered into Campbell's ear, "Look...um...I've never actually SEEN the movie. Is that a problem?" Campbell played off my remark immediately, repeating to the audience what I had told him. The uproar was immediate. From the audience's perspective, having me read for the part of Scott with the cast of Evil Dead was like asking Osama Bin Laden to throw out the first pitch at the World Series.
But Campbell and the others stuck with me. We read a good share of all the dialogue in the movie (of which there is remarkably little). Very early on it became clear that first-time writer/director Sam Raimi took a little time to advance and mature as a screenwriter. Lines like, "We can't bury Shelly..she's our friend," show that the learning curve for Hollywood scriptwriting is steep indeed. And I think that was the point. Campbell and the ladies of Evil Dead were, in addition to having a little fun, trying to show that it wasn't just their lousy acting that made the movie so unintentially funny; it was Raimi's hokey script.
The audience eventually warmed to me, probably because my lines were delivered with absolutely no sense of context, much like the original Scott. Campbell asked me after the reading why I wasn't available to do the part in 1979. I told him I was 4 years old. After the screening, one hard-core fan asked if I was a plant from the convention, put there to meticulously butcher Scott's lines for scores of Evil Dead fans. I just smiled. I didn't want to tell him that I was just there to see Moonraker.
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