A Year In The Career – 1984 – The Video Podcast

since the 1970s the film industry has been contending with the chin now gareth myles and simon appleton examine each year in the career of bruce campbell what do you say we go back up there just the two of us just to see what’s going on maybe spend the night hello and welcome to this a year in the career we’re looking at 1984 in bruce campbell’s career this is the podcast that looks at the career of bruce campbell one year at a time i’m your host gareth you can find me online at garethmoms.com or at gareth myles on twitter and you can get in touch with me on gareth a year in thecareer.com my cheerful co-host is simon appleton how are you simon i’m good still hanging in there with everything that’s going on excellent and where can people find you simon you can find my uh interesting movie blog at moviemustache.com and you can also find me on twitter at movie underscore mustache so if you enjoy it absolutely get in touch with us if you if you like you can throw us an email or tweet us and if you have any thoughts or you want to correct us on something or you want to throw in your tens answers uh then then then give us a shout we’d love to hear from you we’re totally independent we’re free to listen to so please do share us with your friends and family and secret lovers and all those sorts of things and uh and you know just let people know about us and it goes both ways of course um if you have a bruce campbell connection that you want us to well investigate or a site or a product or a service or that sort of thing that you think our listeners would benefit from then drop us a line we’d we’d love to hear from you groovy groovy and that’s an appropriate word to be using on this podcast indeed it is as we roll through the years this is the uh well the second year that we’re looking at um obviously uh the first year was 1981 where we uh had a bit of an analysis of the evil dead and uh how how charmed we were by it and simon had not seen the evil dead prior to uh preparing to record his podcasts uh and uh he was quite taken with it which is a good alkaloid for the evil dead so this this week we’re going to be looking at going back which was bruce’s follow-up movie made a a couple of years later and it it couldn’t be farther from the former because this where the the evil dead was uh varus and crazy this is gentle and heartwarming yeah yes and not not without it’s uh conflict along the way but um it’s it’s actually notable i i really i i think this film is a particular standout in bruce’s career because this is one of the only times that he genuinely does full-on drama he’s not being harmy he’s he’s giving a performance and it’s so early in his career you can see the potential of the man behind it because he he does give a decent performance and that is as brice chapman bruce campbell bryce chapman in there and going back so i’ll i’ll ask uh simon that you you haven’t seen this before um this again no i had not never even heard of it to be fair it hasn’t quite got the notoriety that uh the evil dead does all right so obviously i i read a brief synopsis of what it was and i thought it could could be interesting and it’s a an interesting coming-of-age type road trip almost although the road trip doesn’t go very far uh movie um it was a bit predictable but it was it was as i say it was heartwarming oh it’s reflective of that i mean the the both literal and uh the title obviously refers uh to both the in figurative and literal uh ways of thinking and going back in terms of growing up i like the characters so quite interesting it sort of demonstrates how people do change as they tend to grow and the point of which which we send our children off to college is a point at which they do change the the problem i found with this film was though because i would already read the synopsis not not the actual literally just a brief description of what’s going on i was waiting for the four years later we go back a bit to see the change in the conflict and again i had a pretty good idea of where it was going to be but it’s still an enjoyable experience it was certainly filmed in some beautiful areas of countryside and bruce does either grow or apply i’m not sure which a fantastic mustache [Laughter] yes it’s worth pointing out that that’s the best way to age people isn’t it by four years whenever you’re filming something a week later one turns into a long-haired bearded hippie looking type the other one looks very straight laced and and almost stick up his ass with a mustache and yeah yep that’s that’s that’s about it um yeah so the the story does follow um that actually i think uh imdb does quite well uh summarizing the story uh in 1964 two high school friends bryson cleveland leave there or clee as he’s called yes leave their suburban neighborhood in michigan to spend the summer in the countryside before going off to college the befriended local farmer jack bedell who we will be coming to on a number of occasions uh who offers them a place to stay as days pass cleveland helps jack around the farm and finds him the father figure that he lacks and that’s that feels really pointless putting that into the synopsis because as you say one of the the kind of things that happens for you to latch on to as the film goes along yeah anyway carry on uh while br bryce falls in love with a local girl named cindy the unforgettable summer ends too soon i i believe the the summer lasts two weeks by this stage i’m i’m not making fun of it no i shouldn’t do that because it’s just the synopsis i’m making fun of but memories linger four years later bryson cleveland drive up to jack’s farm and learn that there is no going back i i feel that that’s a maybe a better synopsis than you may have read the similar or similar one that i read where it actually tells you some of the plot details of what happens in that second half yeah i’ve obviously i i the synopsis i read didn’t get into the what happens in the second part but it it almost gives it away without saying if that makes sense you know because it’s i think the last words are there they find out there is no going back and of course then you realize the the only way this film did surprise me was i expected him to go back and find jack was dead yes so i was pleasantly surprised to find out he was still alive i was on spoiler for the listeners i was more disturbed by the outhouse scene if i’m honest yes yeah it’s it was kind of funny and i i do feel that there’s a line of dialogue there that really that it helps them that they’re not doing it damn through innocence they’re actually making a bit of a gag there i’m hoping but yes and going back was uh i it was a very difficult film to track down for many years it got a vhs release over in the states and that’s how i got it i imported it and when i was quite young i knew there was a dvd release recently which also features uh some extra features and a commentary from from mr campbell himself but i i haven’t managed to track that down i might actually go and purchase it after this this is over because i know it’s just there now that it’s six dollars on amazon.com so take you three years to get it but yeah it’s true but uh it would be worth having and especially for that commentary it’d be quite nice that would have been um for me to do before the podcast but i thought it felt more like a tv movie and that would certainly explain why it was harder to get a hold of doing a bit of digging into it uh there is uh there was a report somewhere that one of the companies that was involved in creating it had gone bankrupt and that caused some licensing issues for them actually released in the film uh but the the director and writer ron teachworth i think he might have been possibly one of the teachers in bruce’s school but he got a grant uh to produce this and he’d written memoirs about his uh summer that he’d had and i think these stories that happen in going back are are something to do with his growing up news and that might explain for the the very gentle nature of things because they’re his fond memories of that he can’t go back to now he what what we actually get and the director ron does manage to put across is that he he really the actors are so relaxed and natural in this that it almost feels like there isn’t a script and they know what they’re going to be talking about so they put things into their own words and have discussions in their own ways and that really helps create a a youthful friendship between the two leads nothing’s been forced on them so think they they know where they’re going with the conversation and they’re able to do that bruce himself is incredibly relaxed in the performance whereas in so many other films he applies a certain level of harm to it because he knows that’s what people are almost wanting whereas here you get a raw performance from him having to do what i like to think is improvisational drama with a point to follow and he’s very successful and that the relationships between each of the actors feel very natural because they’re they’re given the freedom to be able to to do what they want to do now bruce has gone on record and said this was his his first go-around is acting on film because obviously the evil dead doesn’t require acting just reacting the going are going back uh he actually had to sit down and think about characterization and that that proved to be quite a bit of a challenge uh especially whenever you know there’s money riding on things and they’ve got to deliver a decent performance that that is worth it in the end and that could be daunting for any actor especially considering that he was in the lead for this film yes if you look on the posters his name is a lot bigger than everyone else’s yeah well i think that booster was a re-release one the the video version that i have um it’s it’s very small at the bottom um and i think actually they they mention his co-star who plays cli cleveland uh christopher howe or ha however you want to pronounce it um yeah i was challenged by that one yeah i think it’s hall that’s i know one person who has that name we call it hall but that could be in northern ireland-ism so i would say how off the off off the bat but i’m not not entirely sure yeah well maybe he can run in and tell us what’s your name it’s in four letters we’re just in trouble hoi okay we’ll go whereas uh looking at the the names it’s it’s campbell and how ha ha ha and his name which begins with an itch so that could be you know it’s not alphabetized so he actually was seen as more of a lead perhaps at the time but as history shows uh bruce was the one with the career and recent releases uh show that he is title above our name above title which is uh apparently on posters the the other big star that is in it is uh the the actor who plays jack bedell and i’m only saying he’s a big star because uh i know his face from a number of other films and you will too know indeed who was also in crime wave and thou shalt not kill accept he’s got a particular look to him and i i really do like his look he plays a vietnam vet in all all three of the films well maybe not actually going back no i think about it he’s not he’s just a farmer isn’t he yes i think i know i think he i think he did go and serve i think he’s in one of the earlier wars that he might be in korea but perhaps that is uh something that they’ve taken from the real life actor who better to pay a vietnam vet than a vietnam vet exactly but there i think there was um there’s a line toward the end of this about how bruce campbell’s character is going to go back to what he did and avoid the draft and and go on so it’s 764 which is vietnam time so perhaps jack bedell had been in korea over the second world war or perhaps even the first world war given the age of him yeah but it’s a nice film as it goes along and it’s very gentle it feels very natural uh it looks quite well um some of the the shots are are quite bland but what he does is that there’s there’s a certain amount of what would be steady cam which is not steady cam in this obviously the the technology wasn’t there for steadicam where perhaps uh he’s he’s following the actors as they’re walking down the road and it does feel like you’re there with them yeah and that that is uh that helps the audience and members uh identify with these actors a great deal more as well so i think everything was was in the film’s favor um it’s just a bit of a shame that it never really got seen up until bruce a became a noon star and people started trying to find it like myself because i certainly wouldn’t pick this up off the video shelf for love nor money um back in 1984. also the fact that i was six at the time and probably would have been picking up the muppets instead hey don’t don’t put down the muppets love the muppets and i did like this film i i i really i got into the characters and things like this this time around i suppose maybe whenever i watched it the first time i was still expecting um i don’t know something to attack the cabin in the woods that they were staying in bruce and his cabins are just uh well mosquitoes they’re they’re where yes then in that uh nasty bunk house that they’re staying in which is pretty awful um and i i like that idea that you know what these kids are spending their summer doing is can you imagine any kid noi doing what they were doing in 1964 and jumping on the road and going and experiencing helping an elderly man fix up the farm no i’m an old cynic but no no um i think uh the words instagram iphone and signal might come into to play a bit more often if they were to try and uh remake going back in 2020 when we’re recording this now uh that this kind of thing wouldn’t happen at all i think just the footage recently seen in spain of british tourists would uh indicate yeah drunken maraudery i suppose would be we aren’t going home we aren’t self-isolating yeah yeah um and i had i i do quite like the idea of what they’re doing here and that’s it’s it’s very charming it’s it’s the what really sells this film for me is the the genuine feel of the relationships i mean as i said i knew what was like you say from the synopsis what was going to happen beforehand but the connections there did feel very genuine and like um seeing how those connections were still there when they go back but obviously things have changed and it felt very it just it felt very real it felt very genuine almost as you say like like bruce says about how he’s not acting in the evil dead he’s reacting in a way it’s almost like they said right you go listen backpacks bugger off we’re gonna film you yeah and and i i like the the the friendship between the two main characters survived i mean it felt again felt very genuine they seemed very comfortable around each other and it was like a very good bit of casting he just it was nice to see you see them on this adventure and then again going back on this adventure regardless of what happened there there was still that that friendship at the center of it yeah well if if you the listening public uh wish to watch this you can get it on amazon prime actually it’s it’s quite easy to get a hold of which i was a bit shocked about that copy on amazon prime is exactly the same as the vhs i have it’s it’s not the dvd copy which is a bit of a pain but i guess if you’re paying for prime it’s it’s free to watch on there so i do recommend people go out and and give it a go because uh it’s it’s one of those rarities in bruce’s career that you’ll probably quite dig when you see it because the man can act and he doesn’t it doesn’t advertise that too often in in a lot of the films that he does which you know i suppose if you’re making a career doing what you’re doing then why rock the boat and try to do what every other actor is doing yeah there’s some logic there i don’t know exactly what it is but who knows um one of the other things that bruce made it was actually i believe made in 1983 but uh it’s only seen that of date light of day around about noi is that the coen brothers uh went on to make a film called blood simple prior to making it they they put together an investment trailer and uh bruce played the role of julian marty which was played by dan hadaya in in blood simple which i don’t think the casting could be further away quite what do you mean they look almost identical yeah yeah i suppose um i think bruce might hit you with a chainsaw you probably would yeah yeah and did you get a chance to look at this okay two minutes i’ve seen the trailer yes uh he played a very good person in mortal danger shall we say the man sure can crawl out of a car he can he can he can cough and and and be in pain and it’s just it’s a really nice thing to do and makes you wonder have you seen blood simple i have not no i i can’t imagine what blood simple would be like how they gone with that casting you know dan hidaya is is a pretty incredible actor and um he’s been in or hadaya if you want to pronounce it that way i i’ve always said hidayah since i was a kid um he has a real particular performing type that he uses and he generally plays the same kind of character from from one film to the next but whenever it comes to when it comes to blood simple that was a a particularly career defining rule for him and he he really he cemented that film with his performance i couldn’t imagine that being bruce but obviously bruce was available at the time they were filming this uh this and they could have had anyone playing that role of falling out of the car and it’s just a nice bit of trivia that it was in fact him and it’s it’s one of those one of those things that you know it it could have been bruce but it’s another actor and what we’ve seen see that quite frequently throughout his career so next week we’re going to see where bruce lets another actor do his thing and thou shalt not kill except and another actor do his thing in crimewave we’ll roll it up there and uh we’ll come back to you with uh with a look at 1985 um and if you want to get in touch with us uh beforehand you can but by emailing us at gareth at a year in thecareer.com and simon you have an email as well i certainly do simon at the yearinthecareer.com excellent uh you can find us uh online and gareth myles for twitter for me and then simon as well at moody underscore mustache and other than that take care see you next time [Music] um see if you can get the beetles the beetles everybody’s crazy about the beetles down to beat no that’s not the beatles if i fell in love with you would you promise to be true and help me i understand a little more basement i’ll forget it who needs the beatles