Bruce emerged as a horror movie icon in director Sam Raimi's first feature, Evil Dead (1981). Audiences quickly latched onto Bruce's portrayal of the zombie-fighting lunkhead Ash, spawning enough interest for two sequels, Evil Dead II (1987) and Army of Darkness (1993). The Evil Dead movies have proven to have so much continuing cache with cult movie fans that there are currently multiple toy lines, t-shirts, comic books, and video games all based on the series, all featuring Bruce's grimacing, chainsaw-wielding face.

Between Evil Dead movies, Bruce developed a reputation as one of the hardest working actors in Hollywood, starring in a variety of low-budget genre fare (Maniac Cop, Moontrap, Mindwarp) and taking smaller roles in larger Hollywood projects (The Hudsucker Proxy, Congo, Escape from LA). In 1993, Bruce played the lead in the short-lived Fox cowboy show, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., and later won a fan-following as the recurring character Autolycus on the Hercules and Xena TV series. 2001 saw the publication of Bruce's autobiography, If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor, a humorous look-back at his career so far.

But for a guy who has already published his memoirs, Bruce Campbell still has more than his share of irons in the fire. In June, he released his second book, a novel titled Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way, and September 10 at 9:00 PM, ET/PT will see the premiere of The Man with the Screaming Brain, a made-for-the-Sci Fi Channel movie, that marks Bruce's feature film directorial debut.

The Deadbolt caught up with Bruce during his recent promotional tour for both projects. As Bruce explains, "We're trying to do a two-for-one deal this time around, where people can get a book, see a movie, whatever they want to do." (The full tour schedule can be found here.)

Aside from directing Screaming Brain, Bruce also stars in the feature, which he co-wrote with his writing partner, David Goodman. According to Bruce, "The kernel of the idea was given to [David Goodman] in a rowboat in 1986. And we've sort of been diddling with it ever since and trying to make it on and off really over all this time. Sci-Fi Channel got involved with some German tax money and away we go." However, Bruce admits that finally getting a greenlight for the long-gestating project wasn't as easy as it sounds. "We pitched it to everybody. There's a whole DVD extra where my partner and I get in front of a chalkboard and we list in the eighties, the nineties, and beyond who we took the movie to to get it made."

Bruce's website describes The Man with the Screaming Brain as "a story of greed, betrayal and revenge in the former Eastern European block. William Cole, wealthy industrialist, goes looking for a tax shelter in the wrong part of the world and winds up the guinea pig for a mad scientist, having his brain merged with that of Yegor, a former KGD operative. The two couldn't be more different, but they share one thing - both were killed by the same woman."

Throughout its development, the screenplay went through a number of significant revisions, including completely rewriting the script for Bulgarian locations after the producers realized how much cheaper it would be to film in Eastern Europe. "I didn't want to fake Miami USA for, you know, having shot in Bulgaria. So I rewrote it for Bulgaria and convinced the Sci-Fi Channel to let me do that. Because, otherwise, what are you going to do - have the gypsies play Latinos? It doesn't work. In the low-budget world, all I needed for the story was a fish-out-of-water, sort of culturally-different thing anyway, so that was fine."

Though Bruce found shooting in Bulgaria difficult due to the often non-existent infrastructure, he remains cheerfully pragmatic about the concessions that independent filmmakers are frequently forced to endure. For example, "98% of [Screaming Brain] was set at night. Now the movie is 100% set at day. So that's a big concession. They don't want to pay for extra wardrobe, so instead of two story days, you make the movie take place over one day, so nobody changes anything. In the low-budget world, you're constantly giving crap up."

Bruce maintains that, despite the Sci-Fi Channel's involvement, he shot Screaming Brain as a feature film, drawing on his past experience directing episodes of the Hercules and Xena TV series and the independent documentary Fanalysis. He does acknowledge that coming from an acting background has definitely strengthened his directing ability. "I'll see if an actor's struggling and I'll know it more than some other director. But in the same sense, if you know why they're struggling, you're either going to help them or slap them in the face. So I'm more aware of what actors need, but I'm also more aware of what actors try to get away with. I'm a pretty good watchdog."

However, while the cast includes Ted Raimi, Stacy Keach, and Tamara Gorski, the actor with the most screen time in Screaming Brain is Bruce himself. When asked about the difficulty involved in directing himself in a scene, Bruce commented, "Well, it's just mechanics, really. I find a guy who is my height and I have him block without me there, so that I can step back, look through camera lenses or whatever, and make sure it's fine. Then I would boot him out, pretty much at the last minute, and then step in and shoot."

Fortunately, such mechanics weren't an issue with the comic book version of Man with the Screaming Brain, which Bruce and David Goodman adapted as a four-issue series for Dark Horse Comics. Calling comic books "tricky little buggers," Bruce refers to the adaptation as the "director's cut" of his original script, noting that Dark Horse "can make it at night, they can have wind and rain, and it doesn't cost them anything."

The comic series is Bruce's second foray into publishing this year - the first and most significant is his new novel Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way, a satirical riff on relationships, Hollywood politics, and the vagaries of Bruce's film career. Since composing his memoir If Chins Could Kill, Bruce admits that his writing process has refined itself over time. "I'll get up at like 4, 5 in the morning. I'll [write] until 1 pm and then I'm done. It took me a while to figure out how much I could write per day and how much rewriting would be done. It's interesting with the second book now, being fiction, you have to pull out more of it out of your butt. It was interesting to see how much I could do in a day."

The novel's plot revolves around Bruce doing research on love, romance, and dating to prepare himself for a coveted supporting role in Mike Nichol's new romantic comedy, Let's Make Love. When a studio executive accuses Bruce of infecting the movie with a "B-movie virus", he has to travel to Hollywood to confront the faceless bureaucrats who are trying to torpedo his career.

Although the novel features cameos by a large cast of fictionalized Hollywood celebrities - such as Nichols, Richard Gere, Renee Zellweger, and Elizabeth Taylor - Bruce isn't worried about industry reprisals. "Honestly, I'm not really too worried because lawyers are pretty persnickety and they weren't - you know, Mike Nichols is a public person and it's a parody, a novel, so everything's fake. And honestly, I'm not really revealing any secret drug habit or something. I'm pretty much keeping in the same vein of, you know, that Mike Nichols is a really top-notch director. I'm not saying that 'Oh yeah, he's a hack' or whatever."

Bruce is also producing a "six-hour unabridged audiobook version" of Make Love "that's done like a radio play...with sound effects and stuff", which should be released later this summer. When asked about the possibility of turning Make Love into a feature film, Bruce joked, "It'd be starring Ashton Kutcher. Knowing me, they'd never use me, they'd use him instead." Still, Bruce is cautiously optimistic about Make Love's marketplace reception and the chances of him writing another book. "I tell people that creative decisions are often determined by economic reality, so I've got to kind wait for this one to run its course. I think the response has been good. We're up to number 20 on the New York Times best-seller list."

Though lesser celebrities might consider releasing a movie, a comic book series, and a novel in the span of a few months as "having a full plate," that doesn't even cover all of the projects that Bruce has coming out this summer. In the recently released Sky High, you can see Bruce as Coach Boomer. According to Bruce, "It's actually my third Disney movie, so it's fun to go back and do some live action stuff."

However, putting a few Disney movies under his belt doesn't mean that Bruce is turning his back on horror. He's already filmed a supporting role in Lucky McKee's thriller, The Woods. "I play the lead girl's father who drops this troubled teen off at a girls' school in the middle of nowhere and it's kind of her worst nightmare come true. It really should be called 'The Creepy Evil Women.' I'm not really the hero type, I'm just more the mild-mannered, professor-like father. It was fun to sit back and let somebody else take all the blood in the face."

Bruce also recently announced that he'll be starring in an Untitled Bruce Campbell movie for Dark Horse Films, a project that, on the surface, sounds like the Evil Dead equivalent of Galaxy Quest. The film centers around a small town that - when faced with an invasion of monsters - decides to call on "that Evil Dead guy" to help them solve it. The only problem is that the real Bruce Campbell doesn't own a shotgun, has never used a chainsaw, and has no idea how to kill a zombie.

When asked if the Raimi brothers or any other horror icons might be making appearances, Bruce opined, "Oh, I'll probably try to cast anyone who'll let me, who'll let me use them. Because I think it's that type of movie, if you're playing yourself, you might as well get a bunch of other characters too. I have a little stable of actors that I want to use to play sheriffs and crooked politicians, that sort of crap. So we'll see. It's supposed to take place in a small town and I'm hoping to do it in Oregon, where I live. I'm sick of shooting in Bulgaria and weirdo countries like that."

Despite the fact that Bruce obviously enjoys returning to the genre that jumpstarted his career, he is critical about certain trends in the recent resurgence of mainstream horror movies. "First, the thing that bothered me was the excessive humor. Then it was just horror films that were just stupid. Now they're too obtuse. I'd kind of like to get back to just a horror film that's actually scary and doesn't have to use just strange imagery - just make it scary."

According to Bruce, that's the primary goal for the Evil Dead remake that Sam Raimi's production company, Ghost House, is actively developing. Bruce notes that his involvement with the remake "depends on what's going on when we do it. I think we'll be producers on it and we'll make sure that it matches our sensibilities, but I don't think there's a place for me in it." Bruce is dismissive about early speculation regarding the film's casting, stating that, "we don't even know if it's going to have an Ash character, honestly. It'll be about evil things and dead things...the idea is just to make a scary movie."

Reflecting on the legacy of the Evil Dead trilogy - which has spawned an uncanny number of DVDs, videogames, comic books, and toys - Bruce acknowledges that awareness of the films has "grown like a wart. I can't really explain it. It was one of those movies that never really took off. It had a slow beginning in the first place. It's always been slow, but steady."

Even though his face will now and forever adorn a million black t-shirts across the globe, Bruce argues that being the figurehead of a film franchise really isn't as strange as you'd think. "It's still a fairly small franchise. Even Freddy and Jason are bigger than Evil Dead in a way. Now they have Freddy vs. Jason and all these dumb combos. So we're not really in that league. It's fine. I enjoy it. It's good for our initial group of investors who we owe a great debt to."