The moment Sam Raimi knew he wanted to be a director
Sam Raimi began his filmmaking journey far removed from the Hollywood system, crafting his own films independently. Remarkably, he honed his skills through these early efforts and eventually parlayed them into a storied career. At the time, such a path to Hollywood success was rare, a stark contrast to the more accessible avenues available to aspiring filmmakers today.
You see, stories of directors hitting the big time after getting their foot in the door with their own no-budget films are now fairly common. In the 1990s, people like Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez, and Christopher Nolan pioneered this DIY spirit with Clerks, El Mariachi and Following.
Fast-forward to today, and it sometimes seems like anyone with an iPhone and a unique idea can put together a passable film, which they can show to the world on YouTube, social media, and film festivals. Obviously, this is an oversimplification—it’s still very difficult to make a film—but a generation embracing an attitude of ignoring Hollywood gatekeepers can only be a good thing.
In the ’70s, though, the idea of making your own films with your friends and turning that into a career was almost unheard of. Thankfully, this didn’t stop a young Sam Raimi from pursuing his dream. It wound up leading him to the very top of Hollywood as the director of a blockbusting Spider-Man trilogy.
Where did things start for the young filmmaker-in-training, though? Well, it all began when Raimi’s father gave his 12-year-old son a Super 8 camera. The boy – one of five kids in a Jewish family in suburban Michigan – was immediately fascinated by the wonderful gizmo. He was already a budding magician and was intrigued by the idea of putting together new illusions in the form of short films.
Everything subsequently jumped up a notch, though, when Raimi hit tenth grade in Groves High School. Why? This was when he met Bruce Campbell, a kindred spirit who also made his own Super 8 films. Crucially, though, Campbell was a looker. This meant Raimi and his little brother Ted could put Campbell in the films they were making. With characteristic self-deprecation, Raimi once said, “Bruce starred in all of them. Because he was the only good-looking one, and he still is. ‘Girls like you? You go in front of the camera. Girls don’t like us? We’ll stand behind it!‘”
Indeed, Raimi credits meeting Campbell and two other Super 8 buddies, Tim Quill and Scott Spiegel, as the key components in his beginning to think of filmmaking as a viable career path. In 2022, he told Rolling Stone, “It was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, these guys get together every weekend. They’ve got partners. Somebody can film. Somebody can throw the pie. Somebody can take the pie in the face. This is everything we need.'”
The Evil Dead maestro concluded: “One kid had costumes, like two suit jackets from a garage sale. Another kid had a tripod, and I thought, ‘It’s possible. I can join up with these guys, and they have similar interests.’ That really was a giant advantage for me to find somebody else after making movies for three years on my own from the age of, like, 12. Suddenly, I actually could take it on as something that I wanted to do for the rest of my life. It seemed possible at that point.”
