Every fan’s wish is to see new Evil Dead movies. What can you tell us about those projects?

I’ll start with a theory: My theory is that the more of these movies that you make, the less impact they have. We’ve done three of them. To me, that’s 12 years’ worth of work. I don’t need anymore. But I understand the demand because people enjoy it and they think the movies are fun. But the trick is to keep it fresh. I tell people, “Tell me the plot of Nightmare on Elm Street 8, I dare ya. Or Jason 7.” They all blend together; it all just becomes mush. And the rules change, and you run out of ideas, and you have to dick around like, “What is it going to be? Ash Goes to New York City?” I don’t know. It may very well happen one day, but Sam’s busying doing a little thing called Spider-Man right now, so I don’t know if he’s going to reverse his engines anytime soon.

What about the rumored sequel with Ash battling Jason and Freddie?

That was a legitimate rumor, in that there was a brief discussion with New Line Cinema about it. But look at the realities of it. First you start with the creative realities of it, and that would be Freddie, Jason, and Ash all have different realities—they have different worlds the characters operate in. They have different rules: How strong are they? What are they capable of? How do you kill them? And obviously, with Freddie and Jason, you can’t kill them. There’d be no reason for me to be in those movies unless I killed them and walked away alive, the victor. I’d have to get that in writing. I mean, there’s no question about it—otherwise, why would I do it? I’d rather sit home and pull lint out of my navel. So creatively, we found it to be fairly constricting; and in discussing it with New Line, the only control we would have had is over the Ash character. So, sure, he could have snappy one-liners, but what if all the other storylines and dialogue sucked and we had no control over it? So, creatively, it was pretty bankrupt, I thought. And economically, you’re splitting the pie with two other franchises. That’s not what it’s all about. And I think the fans would have been ultimately disappointed.

What about the potential remake of Evil Dead with another director?

That’s pretty legit as well, but we have to focus our attention on it. We’re all busy doing other things right now. I think it’s going to happen, and I think we have a right to rip ourselves off. We’re not taking somebody else’s idea—this is something that we started, that we nurtured and created. The point is we still fully intend to scare the s**t out of people. It may be called Evil Dead, but I doubt that we’ll have the character Ash, I doubt if we’ll go back to that same cabin. It’s a remake of an Evil Dead thing, but there are lots of evil things and lots of dead things. There are lots of stories you can tell within that framework. I would personally, as a general rule of thumb, go low-tech—I’d get real simple and real primitive, just scare the living crap out of people, make it the scariest movie they’ve ever seen.

Do you think Sam Raimi will ever go back to making movies like that?

He might, but Sam’s always had a pedigree for high-budget filmmaking. I mean, he always makes movies beyond his means—so Evil Dead is a low-budget film in many ways, but in many ways it’s kind of a high-budget movie. We shot for 12 weeks; low-budget movies don’t shoot for 12 weeks. Doesn’t happen. They shoot for three or four or five weeks tops. I’ve got a buddy who made a movie in 12 days for a legitimate company that’s going to sell the movie. I’m like, forget it. So who knows? But right now he’s in a gravy train that’s going in a different direction.

What can you tells us about your upcoming cameo in Spider-Man 3?

Sam doesn’t tell me s**t until three weeks before the shoot. He’ll just tell me, “Don’t do anything in January.” He and the agents will work out some dates, but you don’t get the script. They’re not passing out dick to anybody. I don’t know how they get these movies made—no one gets a script. And then when I get my two pages for whatever scene I’m in, it has "CAMPBELL" in giant letters. If that sucker ever got out, they’d know who to hang—they’d come right for ya. They’re Nazis over there! So I have no idea. Sam just said, “I’m putting you in the next one.” I went, “S**t yeah, you are.” He seemed to agree. So I don’t know—we’ll do something stupid.

What’s it like to work on film projects with someone who’s a lifelong friend?

It’s an unfortunate thing to know a guy so well, because Sam knows back to when we were doing dumb talent shows as the Bonzoid Sisters, dressed in long underwear doing bad acrobatics—just stunts and flips. So he knew everything that I could do or not do, and he would exploit it. And I think that’s smart as a director.

Have you found that your movie parts are changing over the years?

Now it’s great—getting older, I can play fathers. In The Woods, this Lucky McKee movie, I get to play the girl’s dad. So she gets covered in all the blood, she gets tortured, and I get to show up and say, “Hi, honey! How’s everything going?” It’s great! It’s coming out for MGM this fall.

Which movie do you think you’ve had the most fun working on?

That’s dangerous, and that’s why I don’t look for a fun experience making a movie—I think movies should be hard. It means you’re doing something right. The movies I’ve had the most fun on sucked. They’re something about them that wasn’t engaging, and I think it meant that not everyone was putting in time or effort or whatever. I’ve had some projects that were dream projects, shooting in Utah, beautiful time of year, I only worked two or three days a week, I get to hike and mountain bike—but the movie sucked when it was done.

So I don’t use that criterion anymore. I use the criterion of “most satisfying.” The Evil Dead movies were satisfying because they got me into the movie business, and Bubba Ho-tep was satisfying because it was a completely independent film. The term “independent” is so over-used it’s unbelievable. If you’re a Fortune 500 company, guess what? You’re not independent—I don’t care what you say. If you raise money through doctors, lawyers, or an LLC—okay, you’re independent. On Bubba Ho-tep, the money was put up by the filmmaker. That’s independent. And it wound up being distributed by a major studio on DVD, MGM. Bingo. That’s a success story, to me, because we proved to them that we didn’t need them. That’s how it works.

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