If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor (a book review post)

I didn't come by Bruce Campbell the normal way. That is to say, I didn't come by Bruce via The Evil Dead or anything related to it. Sure, I had heard of it. I had plenty of friends during high school who were big fans of the Evil Dead 1 and 2, and I even saw Army of Darkness when it came out, probably opening weekend, but, honestly, I wasn't all that impressed. Also, honestly, I got so tired of all of the "boomstick" jokes. Not that that had anything to do with Bruce; I just had this one friend, Tad, who could run anything into the ground.

I came to Bruce through The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., one of the most underrated shows ever. Back in a time when I never watched TV (I still don't "watch TV"), I made sure to video tape every episode of Brisco. It made me a true Bruce fan, and I spent years looking for his low budget flicks just to see how they were. Things like Mindwarp, Maniac Cop, and Lunatics: A Love Story. One of my favorites, and one I actually own, is Bubba Ho-Tep; of course, that one came later.

And, yes, I love Bruce Campbell's chin. Almost as much as I love Patrick Warburton's (but we're not talking about him).

Which brings us to the book, If Chins Could Kill. While I frequently see it termed an autobiography, and while it is in fact autobiographical, it would be a mistake to call the book an autobiography. "Autobiography" implies that it is the story of the person's life, and Chins does contain stories, but it's more a series of anecdotes rather than being a story. Anecdotes that aren't always even in chronological order. They more follow along thematically as sections of Bruce's life, so they sometimes shift out-of-order as he changes topics. There's nothing wrong with the book not being an autobiography; I'm just saying that it doesn't really fit into that category as you might expect "the story of someone's life" to fit into it.

As a series of anecdotes, the book is well worth the read. Well, if you like Bruce Campbell, it is. There are amusing stories from his childhood, even more amusing stories from his days when he and Sam Raimi were first getting started, and, well, just amusing stories, at least one of which has to do with Bruce and his own "boomstick." And lots of photographs. Then there's the stuff when he goes to work on Hercules and kind of doesn't come back. Not that he didn't come back, but he chose to spend time doing that and Xena for a long while, much to the chagrin of his agent and others. But, hey, I loved the character of Autolycus; he was the only reason I ever watched Hercules or Xena.

I actually have what I guess is the second edition of the book, and it contains an added section about the book tour itself. That was the section that I found most interesting. Maybe it's because I'm an author or maybe it's because he talks a good bit there about his interactions with his fans, but, whatever it is, I'm glad they threw that section in.

What it all comes down to is this:
If you like Bruce Campbell and are interested in getting a look behind the curtain at how bits of Hollywood work, you will most likely enjoy this.
If you're not a fan of Bruce or you don't know who he is from a can of Campbell's soup, you should give this a pass.

The Tick (or How I Wish I Could Write) (an IWSG post)

There are always two forces at play: the way things are and the way we want things to be. Both things pull at us: acceptance and desire. It's a rough road, but it's one we all have to make our way down. Well, that's not actually true. Giving into acceptance is always an option. Allowing things to just be the way they are even when we want things to change.

However, there are areas where acceptance can be a good thing. To a certain extent.

A while back, I had the opportunity to hear Jeff Kinney speak. He's the guy that writes the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. Now, I've never read any of them, but my kids have really enjoyed them, so I wanted to hear what he had to say, so my younger son and I went to a Q&A and book signing he had at the Shulz museum. The thing I found most interesting is that he never wanted to be a writer; he wanted to be a cartoonist (see the link to the Shulz museum?). However, the more he tried to get into being a cartoonist, the more he found he didn't quite fit. It came down to the fact that he couldn't draw a circle.

I'm almost completely serious about that. What he actually said is that it was because he couldn't draw the same character over and over and have that character look the same each time he drew it. He also said he can't draw circles and implied that those two things are related, which I can see. If, as an artist, you can't freehand a circle, it makes it difficult to draw heads.

After many years of trying to be a cartoonist and just not being able to get anyone to pick him up and having  the reason repeatedly be that it was because his characters never looked the same, he realized he was going to have to do something else. But what? This is that point where the struggle between the way things are and the way you want things to be can be really debilitating. He could have just given up. Thrown in the towel. Gone off to flip burgers.

He could have surrendered and just accepted that he couldn't be a cartoonist and gone off to do something else entirely. Like flip burgers.

Instead, he wrote The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, because, in that format, it didn't matter that he couldn't draw a circle. It was okay for his characters to never match. Sure, it's still not in his ideal world how he would have it be, but he's doing something close to what he wanted to do, and he's been very successful at it.

At this point, you may be wondering what any of this has to do with The Tick.

The Tick, of course, is a comic book, but it's not one I ever read. The character was invented by Ben Edlund, and the comic series started up at a time when I just wasn't interested in spoofs and the like. Actually, it was my low time for comics in general, the end of high school and beginning of college. I'd pretty much dropped down to just Spider-Man, X-Men, and Batman at that point. Once I got back into comics for real, I didn't pick it up because it was farther into the series than I wanted to try to go back and get, and I hated picking up series, especially new series, somewhere in the middle.

However, when The Tick came out as a live action TV series in 2001 with Patrick Warburton as The Tick, I was all over that. Mostly because of Warburton who has the greatest voice/chin combo in the world, but, after I started watching it, it became because of the writing. Which is Wow. I mean, there were such great lines in this show:

• And, so, may Evil beware and may Good dress warmly and eat plenty of fresh vegetables.
• And isn't sanity just a one-trick pony anyway? I mean, all you get is one trick, rational thinking, but, when you're good and crazy, oooh, oooh, oooh, the sky is the limit.
• Destiny's powerful hand has made the bed of my future, and it's up to me to lie in it. I am destined to be a superhero. To right wrongs, and to pound two-fisted justice into the hearts of evildoers everywhere. And you don't fight destiny. No, sir. And you don't eat crackers in the bed of your future, or you get all... scratchy.
• Eating kittens is just plain... plain wrong! And no one should do it! Ever!
• Everybody was a baby once, Arthur. Oh, sure, maybe not today or even yesterday, but once. Babies, Chum: tiny, dimpled, fleshy mirrors of us-ness that we parents hurl into the future like leathery footballs of hope. And you've got to get a good spiral on that baby or evil will make an interception.
• I'm taking off the kid gloves and putting on the very mad gloves.
• Well, once again, my friend, we find that science is a two-headed beast. One head is nice; it gives us aspirin and other modern conveniences. But the other head of science is bad. Oh, beware the other head of science, Arthur; it bites.
• You know why super villains are so unhappy, Arthur? They don't treasure little things.
• When you get in bed with evil incarnate, it always steals the covers.

That last one is my favorite.

The point, though, is this:
I wish I could write like that. I really do. Ben Edlund is credited with writing the TV show, but I'm not sure if he was the only writer or not. I do know that Douglas Adams was the only writer of his books, and I wish I could write like that, too. Do you see a connection here?

But, see, I just don't think that way. At all. I read (or watch, because Monty Python falls into this same category) this stuff, and all I can think is "where in the world did that come from?" My mind just really isn't wired that way. So this stuff that I love, this bizarre stuff that I wish I could do, I will never be able to do. It's just not my thing.

So I could decide that since I can't write in this "Monty Python" way that I just won't write at all. I could decide that.
But I don't.
I don't decide that, because I'm a good writer. I'm a good story teller. I'm just not good at those kinds of stories with bizarre leaps of logic.

And you know what? That's okay, because I'm embracing the kind of writing that I am good at, because I like that stuff, too. Like Jeff Kinney. He never became a comic strip artist and had his own syndicated strip the way he wanted, but he is doing cartoons, and he likes what he's doing even if it's not the thing he most wanted to do. It's that conflict between what is and what is wished for.

All of that to say this:
Just because you may not be able to do something (like bizarre humor or epic fantasy or hard sci-fi) that you really want to do doesn't mean that you can't do something like it. Try things out and figure out which thing you are good at and grow that thing. Grow into that thing. Maybe it's not what you always dreamed about, but it might be close. Or it might be something you end up liking even more. The point is that you shouldn't give up the struggle just because that one thing, that one thing you always thought was the only thing, is out of reach. Keep struggling and striving and working and being but don't ever just accept defeat. Accept the thing you can't do and subvert the things you can do to get as close to that thing as you can.