Biographie

[The Three Stooges] He uses Stooge-like sequences in many of his movies (especially in the Evil Dead films). Raimi is a huge fan of The Three Stooges. He made many super-8 films that resembled classic Stooge shorts.

[Shemp] Often credits a character called a "Shemp", another homage to The Three Stooges. Most frequently, it is a "Fake Shemp", a reference to the Three Stooges shorts where a stuntman was used in place of Shemp Howard.

Often has a voice-over from a principal character at the end of his films (L'Armée des ténèbres : Evil Dead III (1992), all the Spider-Man films).

On-going in-joke feud with Wes Craven

Frequently casts Bruce Campbell, James Franco, J.K. Simmons, and his brother Ted Raimi.

During the mid-1980s, Raimi used to live in an apartment with actor Bruce Campbell, writer/director Scott Spiegel, writer/director Joel Coen, writer/producer Ethan Coen, and actresses Holly Hunter, Frances McDormand, and Kathy Bates.

The first director ever to do three live-action adaptations of a comic book character.

Over his years as a director, Raimi's 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 (originally bought by Raimi's father for the family when Sam was 14) has "played" Ash's car in the Evil Dead movies, Uncle Ben and Aunt May's car in the Spider-Man movies, Annie's car in Intuitions (2000), and Mrs. Ganoush's car in Jusqu'en enfer (2009), and has made cameos in nearly all of his other movies.

Joel Coen and Ethan Coen use many of Raimi's trademark camera movements in their films.

His oldest brother, Sander, died in a swimming pool accident at the age of 15 while on a scholarship trip to Israel. Sander used to perform magic tricks for Sam and his friends; when he died, Sam learned to perform the tricks himself.

I love the Spider-Man character. And that's what's at the heart of it. That's why I really love it. But there's another fun thing that I never had before where you make your movie and a lot of people see it and they seem to like it. So it's like oh my god, I've always been the nerd, lame ass guy on the side, but I made something that a lot of people like. I know that won't last for long, and I'm obviously riding the Spider-Man thing. He's a popular character for 40 years. So anyone who makes a Spider-Man movie gets to make a popular movie. But it's fun to be popular, even if it's a brief, lame thing, and even though I know it's not important. I can't help it. It's really fun and I know how quickly things turn in Hollywood.

Audiences really don't go see a lot of movies - except in L.A. and New York I think, and maybe one or two other cities, maybe Chicago - where there are foreign-born, foreign-speaking actors. That's just the culture we are.

And it was great making movies in college because if you made the right movie you'd get this cigar box full of $5 and $1 bills, you'd have like 500 bucks after a weekend. And it was like oh my god, we're rich! We've got to make another picture. But if the movie bombed, you spent a lot of money on the movie, on the ads at the State news, renting the theater, lugging these heavy speakers, the projector bulbs, [and] it was a washout, you realize this movie is not making money. I'm broke. I've got to make the movie that they want to see. So it was a great learning experience.

And I do think there's a new crop of American filmmakers coming. And they're in high school right now. They're in Mrs. Dawson's English class! They've got new tools, they've got computers and the video cameras, which are the equivalent of our super-8mm training ground. It's even better because they can shoot for free. We had to gather up like four bucks, five bucks to buy a roll of film, another three bucks to process it, and that was a very limiting [thing], in high school you've gotta rake leaves for three hours to shoot a roll of film! So these new filmmakers have these advanced editing tools with the incredible manipulation of imagery available on a standard computer."

I think if people love the source material, and that's really whey they're making the movie, then that's a natural outcome. That the things we all love, and work with the creators of the movie to save the things that were so effective. I think it's situations where people don't love the material, they just say, oh that was a big hit, it could be a big hit here. It's just generalizing. Things got lost if you don't understand why people like a thing. When you love something, it's easy to say, 'That's my son, cut out his heart? No, he needs the heart.' It's harder when you don't love the thing yourself.