The Joe Lansdale interview – The Hemingway of East Texas – Part 1
In the End it’s family and friends – Bubba Ho-Tep- Courtesy of Silver Sphere Corporation
In the End It’s Family and Friends
1428 Elm: Bubba Ho-Tep resonates with quite a few people because it deals with relevancy and aging. Do you think that is why it holds up so well is because those two subjects are timeless?
JL: Absolutely! It’s not just a cheap spook show. If that’s all it had, then it would have been just silly. I grew up with horror, science fiction, fantasy and crime but I also wrote a lot of mainstream and literary works.
I was trying to channel all of that but I was trying to write something that was entertaining and have this whole discussion about death. And how being famous and being rich and whatever you have doesn’t make much difference in the end if you don’t have family connections.
Just in my own life, my career has led me to meet really interesting people and travel all over the world. Probably things that I wouldn’t have done if I had not gotten into it. The most important thing for me has been my wife, my children, my parents and my brother.
That story is about that. It’s for people who look at people like Elvis and think, “My God! That’s the life.” They think everything is perfect.
But ultimately in the end it may not make a lot of difference because they can’t keep death away. It was that specter of death and mortality that the mummy represented. I tried to make that believable. If you have interesting characters, you can make people believe anything.
Finding the Deeper Story
Finding the Deeper Story – Bruce Campbell – Ossi Davis- Courtesy of Silver Sphere Corporation
JL (Cont.): You can take the slightest of stories and the silliest of ideas and develop them into something special. Bubba has had a lot of impact for me over the years. People still respond to it.
Because of the film, more people became aware of the story and I think the film certainly has that resonance. I think it’s due to Bruce, Ossie and Don in particular. Not to say the other actors didn’t have that impact, they all added to the soup.
Those two guys and that director, they really were this three-person team that lifted those ideas and concepts out of just genre bottom feeding. I’m talking about these low budget films which can be just wonderful and innovative and we got lucky that was what Bubba Ho-Tep was.
B Movies Actually Mean Better Movies
Don always ruffled at someone calling Bubba a B picture. Bruce and I would call it a B picture but what we meant was low budget. We also had great respect for B pictures.
But we also knew that there was something special about this. Bruce is great as Ash and that’s always going to be a character that he is going to be connected to but he’s going to be connected to this one too.
Join us tomorrow for Part 2!
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Next: The Joe Lansdale interview: Part 2
Susan Leighton can be found on Twitter and Facebook @SusanontheLedge. She is also featured on Friday Night Tights, the ultimate pop culture wrap up show at Nerdrotic Podcast every Friday night at 11 p.m. ET/8 p.m. PT. You can catch her weekly coverage on IFC’s Brockmire at TV Series Hub.