Bruce Campbell knows why we are leaving Hollywood for good

There is an innate desire for young actors to be in Hollywood, something that draws them in to the light.

At some point, that light dims for everyone, and their attitude completely changes. Then, an appreciation for Americana builds.

'There's no such thing as a perfect little town.'

Gone pear-shaped

Iconic actor Bruce Campbell knows this feeling, and he figured it out through trial and error.

Campbell has been beloved for decades for his comedic horror franchise "The Evil Dead." He played his character, Ash Williams, in five films spanning 1981-2023, as well as a successful TV show that lasted three seasons.

Now 68, the Michigan native is clairvoyant as to why the film industry has left Hollywood behind, both personally and professionally.

In his own words, both actors and writers have "managed to piss off the industry so much" that production has fled to greener pastures.

"There's a little piece of paper floating back down to the ground in Hollywood, you know, and it's the last call sheet that they made for some guy," he told fellow actor Michael Rosenbaum recently on his podcast.

Comparing it to a flailing auto industry and the dying pear production where he lives in Oregon, Campbell says Hollywood has only itself to blame. The actor's exodus from the city was a long time coming.

"When I was 40, I just was like, 'What the hell am I doing in a city that I never would have lived here if it wasn't for the film business?'" he explained. That was his first run.

Campbell said he tried living without cell service for 20 years before Hollywood's siren call lured him back, only for him to learn the same lesson again.

"[I] ran away with my hair on fire, screaming," he said, after just one year. Next, he tried suburban San Francisco, where his daughter lives.

"Same thing after a year: screaming. How many times can a guy light his hair on fire? You know, not that many. So I bailed," Campbell recalled.

The solution for the aging star has been simple: Trade the glitz and glamour for small-town America. Short walks to the village and a slower pace at the store have been the prescription the actor needed.

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Our town

Campbell said that he came to a realization that at some point he was supposed to stop putting his "nose to the old grindstone" and instead shove his nose "in a flower."

The flower isn't Hollywood, and it isn't remote living, he found out. It's his little town.

"Our little town is not a perfect — there's no such thing as a perfect little town," he told the host. "There's so many annoying things: shopping at my local co-op, where everyone is moving at 50% of their normal speed."

Those annoyances turned to appreciation, and when he came back to the little town he "had grown annoyed with," all of a sudden he realized, "I'm not annoyed any more."

In fact, his opinion shifted to: "This is charming."

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1996. Albert Ortega/Stringer/Getty Images

That sucking sound

As for the industry side, Campbell said he saw Hollywood do nothing to keep a stronghold on production even back in the 1970s, when the town had no plan to "stop it from going to Toronto."

"They were faking New York City in Toronto in the '70s. And L.A. did nothing about it because it went, 'Ah, we're still 92% of the business,' you know, so they didn't do anything," Campbell described.

From there, the production moved to different states like Georgia, where Campbell says he can now hear an air-lock "sucking" noise as those jobs are pulled from that state, as well.

Campbell is happy where he is in small-town America, because if your next favorite miniseries sounds a bit off, like an American imitation, "you'll know they just bailed on the country entirely. They're shooting in Bulgaria."

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