#but I MET TED RAIMI AND HE WAS SO NICE

[autisticstevenuniverse]

Xena Con day 1! (Part 3)

Now THIS is what I came here for! Most of our picture and autograph tickets are for tomorrow, but today we met Ted Raimi!! And he signed one of my beautiful art cards! He even liked and joked about my name (in a nice way), though I obviously blacked it out here.

I also got to be one of the 30 people playing yes/no trivia about the show and I made it to the last 4 before getting one wrong! We also signed up for karaoke tonight!

[cellard0ors]

GalaxyCon Trip/I met Ted Raimi (Part 1)

So today I traveled down to North Carolina:

It's only about a 3 hour drive from where I live, so I managed to check into Galaxy Con fairly early - regardless it was PACKED.

There was a lot of art and a lot of people and a lot of merch, but obviously the best moment was meeting Ted Raimi.

First off, Ted is very real and down to earth. I was very shy, but he was quite nice, asking how I was enjoying the con and if I was claustrophobic because he knows there's a lot of people around and I was just 😶 while internally trying to project normalcy.

He also shook my hand and his hands are soft! I did my best to look into his eyes when speaking, because my Dad always made a big deal about that when I was growing up but it was hard.

@nofate88 also kept teasing me about my face, because apparently I smiled a lot and sort of swayed/bounced on my feet when speaking to him. I asked if he only signed photos available at his booth and he said he'd sign anything as long as it wasn't a check.

I think asked him to sign my commissioned/framed artwork by @lacteaway. He was really bowled over by the art and asked if it was okay to take photos and I told him of course. He took pictures of the art before and after he signed it:

He also told his assistant/helper about how the art was of his character Travis in The Quarry. He THEN told her - behind the picture no less - that there's actually a lot of porn for the character!!! TED, NO! WHO TOLD YOU?!? DO NOT PERCEIVE ME!!!!

Anyway, once signed, he returned the photo to me and the assistant took a selfie!

It was a great day and @blookitty is to thank! It was wonderful to meet him and tomorrow I'll get a professional photo op! 😍

[draganwhorror]

What has been the most disappointing celebrity encounter that you're comfortable sharing? For example, they were rude, pushy about sales, or their staff kept trying to rush people through the line? Also, your BEST and most delightful encounter!!

Honestly, I have never encountered a rude celebrity. None of them have been pushy either. I've had more issues with con staff/security being kind of abrasive than I did with a celebrity or their handler/agent.

I suppose a celebrity who was a little...disappointing, I guess, was Katey Sagal (Peg Bundy/Sons of Anarchy). She was very pleasant and nice, but she also came across as kind of... indifferent or like she wasn't super keen on meeting fans. It was nice meeting her, but the interaction wasn't anything to write home about.

As for my most delightful encounter... Well, I've had quite a few of those. The first time I met Billy Boyd (Pippin from LotR), he took my phone and went crazy with selfies. John DiMaggio (voice of Bender the robot and Jake the dog) did the same thing.

Uh... Michael Rosenbaum (Lex Luthor from Smallville) was kinda flirty and tried to get me to buy his CD (jokingly).

Mary Lynn Rajskub (24) was so excited about a photo I brought in to have signed that she took a video and put me on her Instagram story while at the con.

Robert Englund wrapped his arms around me and told me to get cheek to cheek with him.

Joey Fatone hugged me as soon as I walked up to his table.

Cary Elwes complimented my shoes when I met him.

Both Sam Raimi and Eli Roth gushed over my Intruder shirt when I met them.

Dermot Mulroney got super excited when I brought up a Hulu movie he did that no one ever talked to him about.

Jack Dylan Grazer told me my loser/lover tattoo was badass, then asked if he should get a tattoo.

And the first time I met Ted, he was very... excitable. I handed him a photo from The Midnight Meat Train to get signed, and he absolutely loved it. He gushed over it, then told me a story about Bradley Cooper.

So, yeah, I've had quite a few delightful experiences with celebs 😂

[a-binary-choice]

Ted Raimi - Proof & Context

An addition to this. If there are DMs between Ted and the girl, those are never gonna be shared. The only ‘proof’ the people on Ted’s side have is what the girl in question is sharing with them, and their own gut feeling of a man most of them haven’t even met, because of what they’ve seen of him in interviews (we did too at first!!) and their ‘friends’ (online not irl) who say he’s perfect, because he talked to them for 5 min and he was nice to them. Some of them think he’s just a ‘white knight’, if he were he could’ve solved this in a non sus way….

One fan made a very clear, articulate video about it too which has been the top tweet in his name tag - which has now been deleted, tumblr knows because people have launched an attack on the ppl trying to speak up (I shouldn’t have been tempted to attack them back, I apologise for that), but he’s still following a minor who locked her Tw profile and they’re keeping very quiet about it all - update: her profile has been purged and is now unlocked again. The girl deleted her TikTok very quickly after we notified one of the Ted defenders about the new proof we dug up and according to the new proof he’s def in her DMs and not just following her. So ofc the girl is now protecting him and making sure nothing incriminates him in anyway. Of course, she’s been saying FOR MONTHS how much she loves him and wants him SEXUALLY. Despite her being UNDERAGE, and there being a 42 year age difference (let that sink in for a second).

[vasiktomis]

I accidentally ran across the Ted Raimi fan blog with the weird interactions with him and hoooooly shit. Holy shit. I’m so concerned for this individual. I’m NOT trying to victim blame here, but I will say it made me feel sick to my stomach that some people don’t see the risks and dangers of opening the door to that kind of attention. Obviously the one who takes advantage of that kind of fan is the real monster, but that type of fan behavior IRL should NOT be normalized and envied. I still feel sick about the whole thing.

It’s pretty shocking to see 100% of the replies being ones of envy and support — however, the replies are also coming from people who reacted………not so great to the attention that was shone on Raimi’s personal politics. That’s a community of fans who very much seem to have built an echo chamber around him being a nice guy, of being their friend, of being an angel actually. It’s hard to blame a 21 year old fan for not noting the strange implications of his behaviour toward her when this is the attitude of the fans she interacts with. There was an unhealthy relationship there already before she even met him.

It’s an uncomfortable boundary to need to set when a fan divulges very dark personal information like she did. What is the idol supposed to do in that situation? That type of behaviour from a fan is absolutely not okay. The celebrity is there to sign pages and do photo ops. Your mental health is none of their business.

Having said that, Raimi is a 56 year old minor celebrity who operates in a genre that attracts weirdos. By this point, he should know how to behave toward a young fan who is actively being weird at him. Walking them out to their car and telling them you want to communicate with them regularly, during a hug……. how can that not be interpreted as a pass. He called her pretty. He bought her clothes. From the sounds of it (so long as the fan’s descriptions of the events aren’t entirely made-up), it’s safe to say he was okay with encouraging her behaviour, at the very least.

Anyway I’m just filtering out his tag and blocking the folks who are engaging with the posts in an unhealthy manner. This is like Jason Spisak 2.0 (and just like Spisak, Raimi’s thinning hairline, horrible fashion sense, and apparent hard-on for people who are barely legally able to share his presumable drinking habit are not worth supporting as a fan imo).

Travis is Miku etc etc

[thedeaditeslayer]

Detroit-born director Josh Becker discusses 'Morning, Noon & Night'.

Here’s an interview with original Michigan Mafia member Josh Becker which covers the Super 8 days, The Evil Dead, and more.

Deep in the sleepy suburbs of Detroit, around the mid-1970s, something strange started bubbling. It was a weird cinema mania, a mania which so gripped a circle of neighborhood kids coming up in the Birmingham school district that they devoted their weekends to making their own movies. Eventually, this rag-tag crew, led by director Sam Raimi, cobbled together enough cash to make the audacious, groundbreaking horror cult classic The Evil Dead, which legendary drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs dubbed “The paint-the-room-red, vomit champion of the 1980s." That success launched a host of careers, including that of Josh Becker, who would go on to form Panoramic Pictures and carve out his own slice of Hollywood, directing dozens of his own films and TV episodes for the next three decades. Recently, he’s moved back to Michigan, but that doesn’t mean he’s done making movies: His latest film Morning, Noon & Night is a comedic drama about a group of semi-related, regular people battling their various addictions. It was shot locally, with all local talent. Metro Times: So you’re a made man in the Wiley E. Groves mafia? Josh Becker: Hah! If you care to put it that way. MT: There was a whole collective of talent that formed around Sam Raimi at that time, what was going on over there? JB: Well Sam and I go much further back than Groves. MT: So you were like elementary school thugs? JB: The Raimis lived around the block from me in Franklin and I’ve known Sam since he was 8 and I was 9. I met Bruce Campbell the first day of 7th grade at West Maple Junior High, because our lockers were next to each other alphabetically: “Becker, Campbell.” MT: Wow, what a neighborhood, to produce all these guys that ended up in the film business. JB: It’s kind of a lot: There’s Ted Raimi, who I spoke with the other day, and he’s moved back to Michigan, and their other brother Ivan, who co-wrote many of Sam’s movies. He was my best friend for quite a long time. John Cameron, who was part of our group, who produced several of Joel and Ethan Coen’s movies and TV series like Fargo, and Scott Spiegel who went on produce and direct the Hostel movies for Quentin Tarantino. MT: Were you guys all a clique at the time? JB: Yeah, we all knew each other well. I was close friends with Ivan first. MT: Did Bruce just have a vision of being an actor then? JB: Oh yes. Bruce and I were in drama club. We were doing plays together in junior high. He was always a ham. As soon as we could get him into the movies we were making, we did. We had a school project on ancient Greece for history class and I did a Super 8 movie on Oedipus Rex. Bruce played King Creon. MT: Was it harder trying to make home movies back in the day without digital cameras? JB: Not really. Super 8 was easy to use. The big thing was having the gumption to go do it. I did a terrible job on Oedipus Rex, but I think I can be forgiven because I was 13 years old. MT: Of course you went on and had a famously difficult shoot on The Evil Dead, which was shot for next to nothing down in the backwoods of Tennessee. JB: Bruce Campbell and I talk all the time and we were pleased on a certain level that we got the hardest shoot of our life out of the way first. It's all been easier since that. MT: A lot of it was at night, and you were running around in the woods… JB: It was almost all at night! We would shoot for crazy hours, there were 18 of us living in one house. W shot in this cabin with no heat. The reason we shot down there and not in Michigan was so we could avoid the winter, but it turned out to be the worst winter ever in Tennessee — lots of snow and freezing rain. Then six weeks in, most of the crew left and Sam, Bruce, Rob Tapert, I, and one other guy stayed for the next five weeks to finish the movie. Then we had pickup shoots back up here in Gladwin and Brighton and other places. If you add it all up we probably shot film for 20 weeks. MT: A lot of the movie is just Bruce alone in the cabin fighting with special effects, so that makes sense. JB: What happened is after everyone left, Sam quickly rewrote the script so that there’s a big long stretch of Bruce just going crazy, which I think is the best part of the movie. I think that was some of my best lighting work, if I do say so myself. MT: So, you guys all learned on the fly, and really taught yourselves film school? JB: Yeah. We made many, many Super 8 movies on our own before we started making more professional films. MT: So you learned D.I.Y filmmaking — how to shoot on the run and work with whatever you’ve got? JB: By the time you get to my age, you’ve been through so much that none of it is particularly daunting. This new movie Morning, Noon & Night I shot in 15 days, for $100,000, never went into overtime, and never missed a single shot. MT: You haven’t had giant budgets to throw away, so you’ve learned to work fast and cheap, but in control. JB: Fast, cheap, good. And you learn working for years in television, where they don’t tolerate overtime, and if you don’t get it they just don’t hire you again. MT: You worked on Xena: Warrior Princess for a long time, right? JB: I was the only director to make it through all six seasons. MT: How was working in New Zealand? JB: Wonderful. I was probably there 35 times between 1993 and 2001. I started off working on Hercules, writing and directing from the beginning of that. MT: So you were down there when they were making Lord of the Rings? What was the film business like there? JB: It was sporadic. They had just done The Piano with Holly Hunter when we got there. Peter Jackson lucked out in a big way, because right when he got the green light on LOTR, Hercules got canceled, and he just took our entire crew and hired them. So many of the effects people I worked with on those shows went on to win Academy Awards for The Lord of the Rings and King Kong, etc. They’re incredibly talented, and nice. MT: How many Oscar winners worked on Alien Apocalypse? JB: (Laughs) None!

[brokehorrorfan]

Interview: Ted Raimi (Ash vs Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, Darkness Rising)

Cult actor Ted Raimi discusses his new film, Darkness Rising, which hits select theaters and VOD on June 30. He also talks about the 30th anniversary of Evil Dead II and his recent return to that universe on Ash vs Evil Dead. Perhaps most exciting, Raimi reveals exclusive details about his upcoming feature directorial debut, a psychological horror film titled The Seventh Floor.

Can you begin by telling us a little bit about Darkness Rising and how you got involved?

Darkness Rising was a good script. A friend of mine, Austin Reading, directed it. We've worked together in the past on a few things, and he’s a good director. He asked me to do a cameo in it. Normally I don't do those, but I really liked the script, and I like Austin's directorial style too, so I said yes. It's a good, spooky haunted house movie. There's a lot of those, but I think this one's unique. The cameo that I do is a period piece, so that made it doubly interesting.

I'm sure you get approached for horror movies all the time. What attracts you to a particular project?

Any number of things. Artistically, if it's something that hasn't really been done before. Haunted houses are certainly nothing new, but it's how this one approached that was very original and great. Typically, if they're not friends handing my scripts like Austin did, they need to get you on a scary level that is a genuine fright. Cheap scares are easy. Monsters popping out of the darkness is a simple thing to do. Jacques Tourneur, this American director who pioneered that, has been imitated so many times we've forgotten where it originally came from.

That said, things that really scare me I love to consider. For example, one of my favorite horror moments of all time is in a movie that is mostly terrible: The Amityville Horror. It's a dreadful movie; I'm not a fan of it. But there's a scene where the guy who wants to buy the house goes to the bank and get gets like $78,000 in cash - remember, this is the '70s - and he puts it in the library. He walks next door to talk to the owner and says, "I'm ready to make you an offer." Then he walks into the other room and the money is gone. That is absolutely frightful. Your whole life is gone. Your family is in trouble. That's true terror. If scripts can approach something in that manner, that excites me.

You appeared on Ash vs Evil Dead last season. How did it feel to return to the Evil Dead universe after all these years?

It was fantastic! It was like a high school reunion, but with new kids that I hadn't met yet. All my old pals were there - Bruce Campbell and Lucy Lawless and a lot of the crew and the producer, Robert Tapert - but then there's these new guys, played by Ray Santiago and Dana DeLorenzo. Those guys are just tremendous! They're like the next generation of Ash. It was great to work with everybody. And I got to put the monster suit back on, for better and for worse, as well playing Chet Kaminski.

What was it like to get back in that Possessed Henrietta costume?

Trepidatious, but glad I did it! There's a new team in New Zealand that recreated Mark Shostrom's amazing original creation along with the guys from KNB special effects. They did a good job. It was challenging. It was still just as hard as it was 30 years ago, but I'm glad I did it. It turned out good, and we had a good time making it. Bruce and I were there again, 30 years later. It was the weirdest deja vu. The cabin was the same, we were in the same costumes. It was like we had gone forward in time 30 years. Usually you want to go back, but we went forward. It was weird!

Was it strange to be on an Evil Dead set without your brother Sam Raimi in the director's chair?

No, not at all. It's still his vision, but now there's new directors that have their own vision to add to it. It makes it very refreshing.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of Evil Dead II, which remains one of the best horror sequels of all time. How do you feel reflecting back on that time in your life?

Good! That was my Screen Actors Guild card intro. In those days, you had to have a line in a feature film that was also Screen Actors Guild, so I agreed to do that movie. I thought, "This will be an easy way to get my SAG card." But it was, in fact, that hardest way I could have ever done it. It was the equivalent of, say, there's a train that goes underneath the Alps from Italy to Austria. You can take this train. Alternately, you can hike the Alps all by yourself in bare feet. And I went, "Oh, I guess hiking the Alps in bare feet must be the way to go!" So that was that.

You voiced two characters on Buddy Thunderstruck for Netflix. What was that experience like?

It was great. Those guys at Stoopid Buddy Stoodios are terrific, immensely talented. That show was written by a guy named Tom Krajewski, who really wrote some fine episodes and very funny dialogue. It was great, because it’s stop-motion animation and all done in Burbank, California. Normally, these days cartoons are all outsourced to India, China, places like that, but this was done frame-by-frame in Burbank, just like Disney used to do in the '20s. It was cool. I really felt like I was working on something iconic. I thought it turned out very good.

Plus, it's nice to do something that's kids-friendly for once in my life. Usually, everything I do you can't show kids - except for maybe a couple of Spider-Man movies, and even those are a little scary for the young ones. I've got cousins and nieces and nephews that can actually watch something I did, as opposed to, "Well, when you're a little older, you can watch Uncle Ted's stuff!" [laughs]

I know it's early, but have you heard anything about a second season of the show?

I haven't yet, but Netflix is very, very quiet about their shows. We can't get a peep out of them. I think it has something to do with how they aggregate their ratings; I don't really understand it. I have not heard anything, but it certainly seems to be a popular show. Fans approach me about it when I go to conventions. It was a lot of fun. I was very grateful to have done that. It's nice to not shave and get in a booth and drink coffee and do your lines. It's incredible that you don't have to go to set and do all that stuff. It was fun.

As someone with your longevity in the industry, do you have any advice for upcoming filmmakers or actors?

Always try to make the make the greatest movie you possibly can. Don't make an okay movie just to make a movie. There's enough crap out there, and your movie will get lost, and you will be known as a mediocre filmmaker. Make the greatest movie you can. If it falls flat on its face, well, at least you tried.

One other piece advice: don't ever try to be a cult filmmaker or cult actor. The audience decides that for you. There's nothing you can do about that. A lot of people have tried to be a cult actor but failed in one way or another. Some actors desperately try to be as strange and as outlandish as possible. It's not that they're bad actors, but it's not up to you. I tried to do the best I could, thinking I was a pretty straight-ahead actor, and all of a sudden I was a cult actor and doing conventions and all that.

Speaking of conventions, what are those like from your perspective?

It's a wonderful thing. You get to meet fans. When you do movies and especially television, which I've done so much of, the best you can hope for is to sit in your living room with some of your friends, drinking booze and having a laugh, and then it's all over and everyone goes home. But when you go to conventions, you get to meet the thousands of fans that go to these things, and you say, "Oh, my God! All you guys watch it, too? That's awesome!" And I'm a fan myself. Most actors go to those things I think because they have to, but on the last day I'm there I'll close up shop early from shaking hands and doing panels and stuff, and I'll go walk to the floor. I love to see all the cool stuff, because I really love horror.

Are there any celebrities who you were really excited to meet at a convention?

Are you kidding? Yeah! I don't really care about autographs personally, but I've met some icons. I just met Dario Argento. It was insane meeting him. When he was alive, I met Jonathan Harris. I used to watch re-runs of Lost of Space when I was kid, and Jonathan Harris played Dr. Smith. He was awesome, an old Shakespearean actor. Also Malcolm McDowell and other guys who I always loved as a kid, thinking, "I'll never meet him," but I've finally met them all. They were were awesome and great inspirations. Also a lot of directors, like Dario and John Carpenter, who I first met at a convention and have since spoken to many times. It's a wonderful thing. And now I'm one of them! These young actors go, "I've seen you in so many things since I was a little kid!" So I guess I'm like one of those guys I used to admire when I was kid. It comes around, and that's a good thing.

You've worked with so many great filmmakers - not only Sam, but also the likes of Wes Craven, Bernard Rose, William Lustig, Takashi Shimizu, to name a few - and I know you've done some shorts of your own. Have you ever thought of directing a feature?

Yes, I'm directing my first feature this year, as a matter of fact. It's called The Seventh Floor. Veva Entertainment is producing it, and we're pre-pro now. We don't start shooting until September, at the moment. It's a thriller. I can't tell you what it's about, but it's psychological horror. I'm very excited about that. It's not traditional horror; there's no monsters or zombies or anything like that. It's more in your head.

And this year I created a campaign for the Starz network, which was a really wild experience. If you look online, it's called the Shemps Beer ad campaign. I created it when I was shooting Ash vs Evil Dead, so it was wonderful. Rob Tapert gave me a nice chance to work with Starz, so I made this for their online presence. It was really fun. I didn't know I'd also like advertising. It's the same old story that motivational speakers always tell, but it's kind of great. Somebody says to a kid, "You like playing the trombone?" Kid says, "I don't know, I never tired it." So I tried to be an ad man, and I wound up really like it. It’s odd.

I know you can't give away any details, but are there any particular films or directors you're drawing inspiration from before you get behind the camera on your first feature?

For this one, Roman Polanski and Dario Argento. Both of those guys are incredibly influential; Roman Polanski for his ability to build tension where there seemingly is none, and Dario Argento for his filmmaking style and the speed at which the action happens. It's unbelievable. I've studied them to get a sense of it. I'm also heavily inspired by David Cronenberg. He for the same reason that I like Polanski. He's able to create such amazing moments where there is no action, but you sense a palpable tension.

If you think of Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly, you think about Jeff Goldblum transmogrifying into the insect. But if you watch the first act, there's a scene that lasts about 10 minutes where Jeff Goldblum is talking to Geena Davis in his laboratory, which is in this warehouse. Nothing happens. There's just dialogue, and yet there's something so fearful about the whole thing. It's the greatest magic trick any director has ever done. I don't know he did it. There's no spooky music or spooky camera moves, and yet it's absolutely frightening. I'm still trying to figure that one out. I've watched that first act probably six times trying to get it, but I can't. If I can recreate that to some degree, I'll be a very lucky director.

I have to say, I was excited to learn that you're getting behind the camera, but to hear you mention Polanski, Argento, and Cronenberg as influences, I really can't wait to see it.

Thank you! That's a nice compliment. You really seem to know your stuff! You really did your research.

Do you have any other upcoming projects we should be on the lookout for?

No, just that movie. It's keeping me very busy. That, and a pipe broke in backyard, so I've got to take care of that. That's on a personal nightmare note. [laughs] Normal crap happens to Hollywood people too, just in case anyone's wondering! Fans think it's funny. They see you on TV a thousand times, and they don't know that you also go to Trader Joe's and 7-Eleven. They're like, "You do?" And I'm like, "Yeah, do you think everything magically appears in my house?" Nope! [laughs]