American SubGenii

Bob Black is known for Naked Video (1986), The Tales of Para Handy (1994) and City Lights (1984).

In 1979 with his Detroit friends, Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert, Bruce Campbell raised $350,000 for a low-budget film, The Evil Dead (1981), in which he starred and co-executive produced. Completed piecemeal over four years, the film first gained notoriety in England where it became the best-selling video of 1983, beating out The Shining (1980). After its appearance at Cannes, where Stephen King dubbed it "the most ferociously original horror film of the year", New Line Cinema stepped forward to release "Evil Dead" in the U.S.

After co-producing Crimewave (1985), a cross-genre comedy written by Sam Raimi, Ethan and Joel Coen, Campbell moved to Los Angeles and quickly gained a foothold producing or starring in genre films such as the Maniac Cop (1988) series, Lunatics: A Love Story (1991), Moontrap (1988), and Mindwarp (1991), a post-apocalyptic "Jeremiah Johnson", during which he met his wife-to-be, filmmaker, Ida Gearon.

Campbell then rejoined his Detroit colleagues to star and co-produce the second and third films in the Evil Dead trilogy (Evil Dead II (1987) & Army of Darkness (1992)), completing 12 years of work on the cult favorite.

This rough-and-tumble background was a plus as Campbell made his foray into television, first starring in the highly touted Fox series The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. (1993), then as a recurring guest-star on the hit show Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993).

With these under his belt, Campbell easily made the transition to director, helming numerous episodes and recurring as the King of Thieves in the #1 syndicated Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995), and its follow-up phenomenon, Xena: Warrior Princess (1995).

Bruce has since expanded his range on television, appearing in anything from Disney's update of The Love Bug (1997), to decidedly dramatic turns on the acclaimed series Homicide: Life on the Street (1993) and The X-Files (1993). At the invitation of ABC, Campbell ventured into the world of sitcoms with a recurring role on ABC's Emmy-nominated Ellen (1994), participating in one of the three touted "out" episodes.

But Campbell didn't abandon his film roots. During that time, he had featured roles in the blockbuster Congo (1995), John Carpenter's Escape from L.A. (1996), and the award-winning independent crime drama, Running Time (1997). He followed these up with roles in Paramount's romantic comedy, Serving Sara (2002), Jim Carrey's The Majestic (2001), and all three of Sam Raimi's blockbuster Spider-Man movies.

After a return to episodic television in the swashbuckling series, Jack of All Trades (2000), Campbell took the title role in MGM's cult sleeper Bubba Ho-Tep (2002). His directorial debut, Man with the Screaming Brain (2005) premiered on the Sci Fi Channel, and Dark Horse Comics published the comic adaptation.

Campbell then directed and starred as himself in My Name Is Bruce (2007), a spoof of his B-movie career, then re-teamed with Disney for their fun-filled hit, Sky High (2005).

Campbell has since made the leap into other forms of entertainment, and is enjoying his role as an author with back-to-back New York Times bestsellers: a memoir entitled "If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor", and his first novel, "Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way".

In the multi-media industry, Bruce has enjoyed voicing characters for Disney's animated TV series The Legend of Tarzan (2001) and the Warner Brothers feature The Ant Bully (2006). He also portrayed the character of "Mayor Shelbourne" in the animated hit film, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009). Recently, Campbell voiced the role of "Rod Torque Redline" in Cars 2 (2011), the sequel to the smash Disney animated feature and for the immensely popular game, "Call of Duty".

In 2013, Bruce co-produced the hit remake of Evil Dead (2013), joined his filmmaking pal Sam Raimi on Oz the Great and Powerful (2013), and completed an impressive seven-year run on the spy show, Burn Notice (2007) (2007-2013), USA's #1 show on cable.

More than two decades after the release of Army of Darkness (1992), Bruce returned to his most iconic role for Ash vs Evil Dead (2015), a highly-anticipated series premiering on the Starz network on Halloween 2015.

Robert Edward Casale Jr. was born on July 14, 1952 in Kent, Ohio. The younger brother of Gerald Casale, Robert grew up in Akron, Ohio and was trained as a medical radiation technologist, but eventually left that job to become a key founding member of the New Wave band Devo. Casale not only played guitar, bass guitar, and/or keyboards on every last album by Devo, but also co-wrote several songs as well. In addition, Robert also worked on various albums, films, and television shows as a music mixer, score arranger, music producer, and music production engineer. Casale died of heart failure at age 61 on February 17, 2014. He was survived by wife Lisa, son Alex, and daughter Samantha.

Gerald Casale was born on 28 July 1948 in Ravenna, Ohio, USA. He is an actor and director, known for Tank Girl (1995), Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (1995) and Casino (1995). He has been married to Krista Napp since 11 September 2015.

Del Close was born and raised in Manhattan, Kansas, and attended Kansas State University, after touring with a sideshow act for a period of time in his teenage years. In 1957, at the age of 23, he became a member of the St. Louis branch of "The Compass Players", the direct precursor of "The Second City", which opened in December, 1959. Most of the St. Louis cast went to Chicago, but Close chose New York and a budding career as a hip, young stand-up comic in competition with Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Bob Newhart, etc. That same year, he also appeared in the off-Broadway musical, "The Nervous Set", of which an original cast album exists. Close came to Chicago in 1960 and, more or less, made it his home for the rest of his life, always gravitating back there after a few months or even years elsewhere. Perhaps he understood instinctively the advice Paul Sills gave Stuart Gordon some years later: "Come to Chicago", they Close directed and performed at "The Second City", until he was fired (major substance abuse problems) in 1965.

He spent the next five years in San Francisco eating acid and touring with the "Merry Pranksters" on their famous psychedelic bus, creating light images for Grateful Dead, and working with The Committee, a North Beach equivalent of "Second City", which Close helped organize. It was at "The Committee" that he first began seriously to develop his ideas and techniques of long-form improvisation, although "Second City" had experimented with long-form as early as 1962. Close returned to Chicago in 1970 and set up a free, open-to-all workshop at the Kingston Mines Company Store, the café attached to the Kingston Mines Theatre Company on Lincoln Avenue (where the parking garage of Children's Memorial Medical Center now stands). He drilled his students -- everyone from acid-dropping love children to a vice-president of the Foote, Cone and Belding advertising agency -- in the basic principals of improv and theatre games, and in the specifics of "The Harold", a long-form improv technique developed by Close. At a time when most improvisation mainly focused on creating single scenes, Del devised "The Harold" as something not unlike a sonata form. Several themes would be established, a community of characters would be introduced, and then the resulting scenes would play off each other in comedic counterpoint -- characters from one environment moving to another and phrases and images recurring, each time accruing new meaning. Going to this from conventional sketches was like going from arithmetic to calculus. (Why was it called "The Harold"? When he introduced it, one of his students said, "Del, you've invented something, you get to name it". Del said, "Well, the Beatles called their haircut "Arthur", so I'll call this Harold". He later regretted the flipness. "Probably my most significant contribution and it's got that stupid name").

The weekly public performances at Kingston Mines sometimes had as many as 20 performers participating. After a few months, Close hand-picked a dozen of his best, and moved operations down the block to the Body Politic for twice-weekly workshops and Sunday night performances. He named the company "The Chicago Extension Improv Company", as an extension of his San Francisco work. The best-known players to emerge from the troupe were "Broadway" Betty Thomas, Dan Ziskie, Brian Hickey and Jonathan Abarbanel.

Before leaving Chicago, again, in 1972 to perform for Paul Sills in a Story Theatre production at the Mark Taper Forum in LA, Close and "The Chicago Extension" had begun to explore scenario improvs based on dreams. The techniques the "Extension" developed after Close left became Dream Theatre, which continued at the Body Politic over the next five years, although with different personnel. Close returned to Chicago in 1973 as resident director at "The Second City", a position he kept until 1982. It was during this decade that he taught and directed a long list of TV and film comedy greats, including John Belushi, Bill Murray, John Candy, Don DePollo, George Wendt, Audrie Neenan, Eugenie Ross-Leming, David Rasche, Shelley Long, Ann Ryerson, etc.

Upon leaving the troupe, Close pursued legitimate acting opportunities with a number of theatres, including Wisdom Bridge, Remains, Goodman and Steppenwolf. He won his Joseph Jefferson Award in 1985 in a radical "Hamlet", directed by Robert Falls at Wisdom Bridge. Close also did TV and film work, appearing in The Untouchables (1987) and Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), among others. It was during this period that Close finally beat his long heroin addiction (although he continued to smoke cigarettes and marijuana), in part truly shocked by the excesses and death of John Belushi, and, in part, because, as he told Jonathan Abarbanel, "I've decided I want to live".

Close was enjoying his new theatrical vistas, as well as a successful professional partnership with Charna Halpern and ImprovOlympic, which allowed him to concentrate on further development of "The Harold", and on team improv. Close was 64 when he died of complications due to emphysema the evening of March 4, 1999, just five days shy of his birthday. He left no survivors, although he claimed to have fathered an illegitimate child by a woman in Minneapolis sometime in the late 1950s. Close requested in his will that his skull be given to the Goodman Theatre so that he could play Yorick in the company's next "Hamlet". However, Halpern, his executor, was unable to persuade doctors to remove Close's skull, and it was cremated along with the rest of his body.

Close was one of three titans of improvisational theatre who put it on the map, refined it, and turned it into the fixture of comedic and acting technique which it has become. The first was Viola Spolin, who started the work in the 1930s with her development of theatre games -- originally for children -- as exercises in imagination. She didn't utilize them for public performance. It was her son, Paul Sills, who was able to take theatre games and use them as the basis for development of satirical revue comedy. Sills and a group of brilliant cohorts, including Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Shelley Berman, Sheldon Patinkin and others made this work the focus of various company experiments in the mid-1950s, including the Compass Players in Chicago and St. Louis. In 1959, The Second City opened, co-founded by Sills, Howard Alk and Bernard Sahlins. Close arrived on the scene a year later. Within three years, both Sills and Alk had left the troupe to pursue other ventures. Alk continued to work in the improv field, but died young. Sills has retained improv and theatre games within his artistic repertory -- it is part of the basis of his Story Theatre -- but has not devoted his career to it. Close, then, became the third titan of improvisation after Spolin and Sills, and the only one to devote his artistic life and best theoretical thinking to it. He fully understood pain and suffering as a basis for comedy, as well as the nature and limitations of the comedic form. The Harold, the scenario, long-form improv -- call it what you will -- is his personal legacy to the field; while his own boundless, sometimes manic drive as a charismatic teacher and director have done more to establish improvisational theatre around the world than anything or anyone else. The explosion of improv troupes and teams and classes (the Museum of Contemporary Art offers an improv class, for example), and the inclusion of theatre games and improv exercises in standard acting curricula, are the result of the work of Spolin and Sills and Close. With specific regard to long-form improv and Close's own contribution, that legacy will grow even greater through the next generation, as his students and acolytes inherit the world of comedy.

Nancy Collins is known for Interiors (1978).

Robert Crumb was born on 30 August 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He is a writer, known for Crumb (1994) and American Splendor (2003). He was previously married to Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Dana Morgan.

Mark Dery is a cultural critic, essayist, and the author of four books: Escape Velocity, a critique of the libertarian-bro ideology that dominated the Digital Revolution of the '90s; two studies of American mythologies, The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink and the essay collection I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts, and, most recently, the biography Born To Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey. He popularized the concept of culture jamming and, in his 1993 essay, Black to the Future, coined the term Afrofuturism.

Devon started his career as a young actor in Vancouver, Canada. First in the theater, and then moving onto smaller roles on TV. His breakout role was the title character in the Universal motion picture, Casper. He went on to star in many more films during his teens such as Now and Then, Little Giants and Wild America. In his early twenties, Devon sought out edgier projects. Movies like Idle Hands, SLC Punk, Final Destination, Slackers and playing 'Stan' in the acclaimed video for Eminem's hit song of the same name, directed by Dr. Dre. After a small break out of the business, Devon returned and has completed multiple projects.

Lon Milo DuQuette is known for Aleister Crowley: Revolt of the Magicians, Beyond Lemuria (2007) and Magical Egypt (2001).

J.R. 'Bob' Dobbs has been married to Constance Marsh since 1955. They have six children.

Phil Drummond is known for Expansions 'Move Your Body' (2003).

Philip Galinsky is known for The Old Man Sherm Show (2016), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999) and Quality of Life: The Giuliani Years (2000).

Growing up in Portland, Oregon, Matt Groening did not particularly like school, which is what originally turned him towards drawing. In the mid-1980s, he moved to Los Angeles and started drawing a comic strip named "Life in Hell", which eventually became published in the newspaper where he worked. In 1988, James L. Brooks, looking for a filler in the television show, The Tracey Ullman Show (1987), turned towards a framed "Life in Hell" strip on his wall and contacted Groening. The animated shorts that Groening created were The Simpsons (1989).

Penn Jillette was born on 5 March 1955 in Greenfield, Massachusetts, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for Penn & Teller Get Killed (1989), Penn & Teller: Bullshit! (2003) and Hackers (1995). He has been married to Emily Zolten Jillette since 23 November 2004. They have two children.

Kesey burst into the literary scene with the "Cuckoo's Nest" in 1962 which he wrote from his experiences working at a veterans hospital. During this period, he volunteered for the testing on the drug LSD. After writing his second novel, "Sometimes A Great Notion," he bought an old school bus dubbed "Further." With Neal Cassidy at the wheel and pitchers of LSD-laced-Kool-Laid in the cooler, Kesey and a band of friends who called themselves The Merry Pranksters took a trip across America to New York's World Fair. It would be 28 years until Kesey published his third major novel, "Sailor Song," in 1992, and he later said he lost interest in the novel as an art form after he discovered the magic of the bus. The bus ride was immortalized in Tom Wolfe's 1968 account, "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test." The movie version of the "Cuckoo's Nest" swept the 1974 Academy Awards for best actor, best actress, best director, and best picture. But Kesey, who has never seen the film, sued the producers because it took the viewpoint away from the character of the schizophrenic American Indian, Cheif Bromden. Kesey was diagnosed with diabetes in 1992 and set down root in Pleasant Hill, in the mid 1960s, after serving four months in jail for a marijuana bust in California. His rambling red barn-house has become a landmark of the psychedelic era, attracting visits from myriad strangers in tie-dyed clothing seeking enlightenment.

John Phillip Law was born on 7 September 1937 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was an actor and producer, known for Barbarella (1968), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) and Space Mutiny (1988). He was married to Shawn Ryan. He died on 13 May 2008 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

His mother was a teacher and his father a dentist. He attended West Point, joined the Army, and earned an undergraduate psychology degree at the University of Alabama while in service. Next he earned a master's degree from Washington State University and a doctorate in psychology from the University of California at Berkeley. In 1959, Leary joined the faculty of Harvard University. There, he met professor Richard Alpert and began a series of controlled experiments with psychedelic drugs. Four years later they were fired for using undergraduate students in the tests. They retired to Millbrook Estate, a 63-room mansion in upstate New York. People like William Burroughs, Abbie Hoffman, Jack Kerouac, Aldous Huxley and Allen Ginsberg came and went, all united by a desire to experience better living through chemistry. In 1970, he escaped from the California Men's Colony at San Luis Obispo, where he was serving a 10-year sentence for possession of two marijuana joints. His bust-out was aided by the Weather Underground and his third wife, Rosemary. He and she roamed from country to country. In Algeria, they took stayed with Eldridge Cleaver, who ultimately kidnapped his guests after a political disagreement. They escaped and fled to Switzerland. In 1973, at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan, Leary was arrested by agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Extradited to the United States, he was sent to Folsom prison near Sacramento. He was paroled in 1976. Leary's life turned to lecture tours, stand-up comedy, writing books, cyberspace and the Hollywood party scene. He launched a much-ridiculed lecture tour in 1982 with Watergate villain G. Gordon Liddy. He learned of his prostate cancer in January 1995 and celebrated his remaining lifetime through his own website.

Brett Marshall Lefferts is known for Epic (2013).

Paul Mavrides was born in 1945 in the USA. He is a writer and art director, known for Kamillions (1990), Beware of Greeks... Bearing Guns (2000) and Grass (1999).

Robert Mothersbaugh was born on 11 August 1952 in Akron, Ohio, USA. He is a composer and actor, known for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), Sky High (2005) and Heavy Metal (1981). He is married to Alison Martinello. They have two children. He was previously married to Maria Linda Borisoff.

Graduate of Woodridge High School in Peninsula, Ohio.

Attended Kent State University (1970-73) in Kent, Ohio, to focus on attaining an art degree. While at Kent State Mothersbaugh met Jerry Casale and Bob Lewis, who ultimately joined him in forming the 1970-80s avant-garde band Devo.

Awarded an honorary doctorate degree (2008) from Kent State in humane letters. Dr. Mothersbaugh has reciprocated KSU in diverse fashion as is his style-- gifting it with music & art, as well as time-- which is spent touting the Kent State experience through public promotions & media spots.

Alan Myers was born on 29 December 1954 in Akron, Ohio, USA. He was an actor, known for Human Highway (1982), Pray TV (1980) and We're All Devo (1983). He was married to Christine. He died on 24 June 2013 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

Negativland is known for A Better Paradise Volume One: An Aftermath (2024), Popaganda: The Art and Crimes of Ron English (2005) and Stand by for Failure: A Documentary About Negativland (2022).