Bruce Campbell (Autolycus)

Bruce Campbell is NOT shy with the crowds. The moment he arrived on the stage, he declared: "Everybody, stand up!" (the crowd promptly complied) "Now raise your right hand and repeat after me." (ditto) "I, state your name... OK, about half of you are smart asses... hereby pledge for all here... to see to purchase without complaint... 'If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor'... I will not complain about the $23.95 price tag... that's nothing compared to what I'll spend this weekend." (What could any of us say? He was right.)

Bruce had a lot of fun with the questions... and sometimes with the questioners himself. For eample, any time he got a variant of "What was your favorite show to work on," he'd reply with "Let's see, what convention is this today? Right, Xena. Well, it's Xena."

The convention question also brought up a funny point from Bruce. He pointed out that when he started doing conventions the conventions were "HERCULES (big voice) and xena (little tiny voice) - the little girl's show!" This year, the convention is apparently for "XENA (big voice) and hercules (little tiny voice)" - how times change!

Bruce got the very deep and meaningful question "Who kisses better: Gabrielle or Xena?" His even deeper response: "Why don't you ask them?!" He also added that Ares kisses the best, but that wasn't ever on film. (Har har.)

The kiss with Renee O'Connor, though, rated as Bruce's most memorable moment on the show. "The kiss was good... but the script demanded that I grope her butt! You've heard of 'Buns of Steel', right? Winky winky! Wowwww. But I had to do *take* after *take* after..." it was hard to hear the rest over the crowd's cheers.

Bruce told a story about Tsunami that differed only slightly from a version that Lucy Lawless told a couple of years ago. He said that the filming of Tsunami was very tough because so much of the time was spent wet and sitting around in water. He, Lucy, and Renee made a $10,000 (Lucy said it was $5,000) bet that the first person to lose it and throw a tantrum would have to pay the other two. Which, of course, prompted lots of attempts to try to get the others to "crack." Bruce wrapped up the story with "I'm not gonna tell you how many thousands I lost..."

Bruce gave a great speech about how shows like Xena shouldn't be considered "guilty pleasures" by so many people. He pointed out that Emmies are given to shows like ER for best costuming and West Wing for best art direction, even though those shows would better win for "Best use of catalogs for doctor's equipment." He said the amount of work that the RenPic set designers do to completely remake the show's sets every week doesn't even compare to the work mainstream network shows do. The choir he was preaching to heartily agreed with him.

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